Wednesday, May 19, 2021

Althouse

Althouse

Perfection.

Posted: 19 May 2021 10:02 AM PDT

And I like my son John's Facebook post:

Sad to see that Charles Grodin has died at 86. Back in the '90s I loved watching him on his TV show and as a guest on other shows, and I also like him in The Heartbreak Kid (1972), with Cybill Shepherd.

I'm not surprised to see Rainn Wilson's effusive tribute to Grodin, whose grimly deadpan approach to humor seems like a precursor to the cringe-inducing awkwardness of The Office.

Wilson wrote: "R.I.P. Charles Grodin, one of the all-time comedy greats. His legendary wit and dark wryness inspired me beyond all measure. Just watch this… SO FAR ahead of his time...." And links to this:

"Don’t assume you feel comfortable with the same things you felt comfortable with in the before times... You’re a different person now. We all are."

Posted: 19 May 2021 09:11 AM PDT

Says one expert quoted in From "The Back-to-Sex Special: How to Prepare for the Post-Pandemic Summer of Sex/It's time to have sex again. Here's how to get ready, according to the experts" (Inside Hook).

The Hot Vax Summer discourse makes it sound like everyone is about to have the horniest summer of their lives, and if you don't, you're doing it wrong.... For many people, the prospect of impromptu hookups with random strangers never held much appeal, and holds even less in the immediate aftermath of a pandemic....

"It might take some time to feel comfortable opening back up, and sometimes our mind might be faster than our body. So, honor your body's pace.... Embrace the awkward..."...

"If your sex life has been mostly with yourself during the pandemic, you might be feeling a strange mix of emotions as you prepare to put yourself back out there — excitement, anxiety, maybe even dread — so it's important to check in with yourself emotionally as you go," says Kocak.

That said, remember that sex is something our bodies are literally built to do. No matter how long it's been, you're probably not as sexually inept as you fear. "It will be like riding a bike," says Sparks. After all, she adds, "You never really forget how to have sex."

It's not like riding a bike! You don't fall off if you're doing it wrong. And what makes you sure you were doing it right in the first place. With a bike, you were doing it right because you made forward progress and didn't fall. With sex, you rarely fall off and you aren't traveling from one geographic location to another — e.g., from your house to the park. You may think you're "traveling" through some abstract landscape from titillation to satisfaction — and there are probably towns in Pennsylvania called Titillation and Satisfaction — but you most likely began and ended at the same geographic coordinates. 

And if you've been assuming you're doing it right because it's "something our bodies are literally built to do," that's a crazily broad definition of what it means to do it right. But thanks for taking me back to the time when I was a little kid and asked my mother how babies are made. I have never forgotten her explanation, the sum total of it, verbatim: "Well, you know how men and women are physically built."

"Once the human tragedy has been completed, it gets turned over to the journalists to banalize into entertainment...."

Posted: 19 May 2021 07:27 AM PDT

"... I think of the McCarthy era as inaugurating the postwar triumph of gossip as the unifying credo of the world's oldest democratic republic. In Gossip We Trust. Gossip as gospel, the national faith. McCarthyism as the beginning not just of serious politics but of serious everything as entertainment to amuse the mass audience. McCarthyism as the first postwar flowering of the American unthinking that is now everywhere. McCarthy was never in the Communist business; if nobody else knew that, he did. The show-trial aspect of McCarthy's patriotic crusade was merely its theatrical form. Having cameras view it just gave it the false authenticity of real life. McCarthy understood better than any American politician before him that people whose job was to legislate could do far better for themselves by performing; McCarthy understood the entertainment value of disgrace and how to feed the pleasures of paranoia. He took us back to our origins, back to the seventeenth century and the stocks. That's how the country began: moral disgrace as public entertainment. McCarthy was an impresario, and the wilder the views, the more outrageous the charges, the greater the disorientation and the better the all-around fun."

From "I Married a Communist" by Philip Roth.

ADDED: From the Wikipedia article "Stocks": 

Public punishment in the stocks was a common occurrence from around 1500 until at least 1748. The stocks were especially popular among the early American Puritans, who frequently employed the stocks for punishing the "lower class." In the American colonies, the stocks were also used, not only for punishment, but as a means of restraining individuals awaiting trial. The offender would be exposed to whatever treatment those who passed by could imagine. This could include tickling of the feet. As noted by the New York Times in an article dated November 13, 1887, "Gone, too, are the parish stocks, in which offenders against public morality formerly sat imprisoned, with their legs held fast beneath a heavy wooden yoke, while sundry small but fiendish boys improved the occasion by deliberately pulling off their shoes and tickling the soles of their defenseless feet."

In the book of Job, we see God accused of using stocks: "He puts my feet in the stocks, he watches all my paths."

Job comes up in "I Married a Communist" — at the end of a rant about betrayal:

Professionals who've spent their energy teaching masterpieces, the few of us still engrossed by literature's scrutiny of things, have no excuse for finding betrayal anywhere but at the heart of history. History from top to bottom. World history, family history, personal history. It's a very big subject, betrayal. Just think of the Bible. What's that book about? The master story situation of the Bible is betrayal. Adam—betrayed. Esau—betrayed. The Shechemites—betrayed. Judah—betrayed. Joseph—betrayed. Moses—betrayed. Samson—betrayed. Samuel—betrayed. David—betrayed. Uriah—betrayed. Job—betrayed. Job betrayed by whom? By none other than God himself. And don't forget the betrayal of God. God betrayed. Betrayed by our ancestors at every turn.

"[W]hen 'Nothing Compares 2 U' made her a star, O’Connor said the song’s writer, Prince, terrorized her...."

Posted: 19 May 2021 07:34 AM PDT

"She writes that Prince summoned her to his macabre Hollywood mansion, chastised her for swearing in interviews, harangued his butler to serve her soup though she repeatedly refused it, and sweetly suggested a pillow fight, only to thump her with something hard he'd slipped into his pillowcase. When she escaped on foot in the middle of the night, she writes, he stalked her with his car, leapt out and chased her around the highway. Prince is the type of artist who is hailed as crazy-in-a-good-way, as in, 'You've got to be crazy to be a musician,' O'Connor said, 'but there's a difference between being crazy and being a violent abuser of women.' Still, the fact that her best-known song was written by this person does not faze her at all. 'As far as I'm concerned,' she said, 'it's my song.'... O'Connor converted to Islam several years ago and started going by the name Shuhada Sadaqat.... 'I haven't been terribly successful at being a girlfriend or wife,' she said. 'I'm a bit of a handful, let's face it.' But a few months ago, when she moved into her blissfully remote cottage, she found that several other single women lived alone nearby. Soon a couple of them had come by offering bread and scones, and she found herself with a crew of girlfriends for the first time since she was a teenager.... 'Down the mountain, as I call it, nobody can forget about Sinead O'Connor,' she said. But up in the village, nobody cares, 'which is beautiful for me,' she said. 'It's lovely having friends.'

From "Sinead O'Connor Remembers Things Differently/The mainstream narrative is that a pop star ripped up a photo of the pope on 'Saturday Night Live' and derailed her life. What if the opposite were true?" by Amanda Hess (NYT).

Prince harangued his butler to serve her soup! He weaponized his pillow in their pillow fight! He stalked her in his car and chased her around the highway! And he — he and not she — got to be considered crazy in the good way. She was crazy in the bad way, it seemed, but she's owning her brand of "crazy." 

She said she considered herself a "punk" and when "Nothing Compares 2 U" became a big hit, things felt out of whack, and tearing up the photo of the Pope restored her idea of order to her life.

She wears a hijab now (over a head that's still shaved). And if you read the comments section over there, you'll see, she comes in and answers people:  

@Just I'm an older lady now... not supposed to be beautiful : ) 

@Tom Q The Q'ran exists to confirm all previous scripture. So one can keep one's Star of David rings and Christian tattoos

FYI I am wonderful : )

@Barbara am not tortured any more : ) 

IT IS NO MEASURE OF HEALTH TO BE WELL ADJUSTED TO A PROFOUNDLY SICK SOCIETY

What is "the Biden wall"?

Posted: 19 May 2021 06:09 AM PDT

I'm trying to read "Mexico's coronavirus deaths are plummeting. The 'Biden wall' could be a factor" (WaPo) — just trying to understand what the headline means.

I'm glad to hear that the coronavirus situation in Mexico has improved, but why bring Biden into the picture and attempt to give him credit? He could be a factor. Because something he did is susceptible to being called a "wall." Can't we just be happy for Mexico and give credit to Mexico for competence? Why must it be about us? I have to presume that we are self-obsessed and partisan and WaPo is dedicated to making us click and then feeding us with pro-Democratic Party material.

Let's see if my presumption holds up. There's this in the 4th paragraph:

In addition [to things Mexico has done to control the virus], U.S. vaccinations appear to be blocking the southward spread of the virus.

Then, finally, in the 8th paragraph, we encounter the term the "Biden wall":

There may be another, intriguing factor. Malaquías López-Cervantes, a professor of public health at the National Autonomous University of Mexico, dubbed it the "Biden wall." With nearly half the U.S. population vaccinated with at least one shot, he said, fewer infections are being carried to Mexico....

So... the "wall" is the way there are lots of people going back and forth between Mexico and the United States but because of vaccinations in the U.S., there is less virus going along with them. Quite aside from whether Biden deserves to have his name on the vaccination effort — why not Trump's?! — it's perfectly silly to call the continued flow of people between the 2 countries a "wall." 

I hope Professor López-Cervantes intended to make fun of Americans when he chose that hot word "wall" to hook us into his theory. I'm not doubting that the theory is correct — that less virus in the U.S. means less virus carried into Mexico — I'm just interested in his deployment of the term "Biden's wall" and the way The Washington Post snapped it up and propagated it. It's an idea-virus that made its way from Mexico to the U.S.

"[Wilhelm Reich] treated mostly working-class patients and believed that they were 'carrying their past experiences around in their bodies, storing their emotional pain as a kind of tension'..."

Posted: 19 May 2021 05:21 AM PDT

"... which he called 'character armor.' Therapy could help, as could Marxism, but what was really needed, Reich thought, was a revolution in sex, the liberatory potential of which had been warped by an extractive economic system..."

From "Olivia Laing's Strange, Sublime Book on the Body 'Everybody' is, per the title, an interrogation of bodies, but not in the sense that bodies are usually interrogated" by Katie Waldman in The New Yorker.

This is a review of a book that is about a whole lot of people, not just Reich, but we're told he's the "central character" and "fragments of Reich's story are woven throughout." Somehow the book is "an interrogation of bodies, but not in the sense that bodies are usually interrogated."

The book skips over traditional sites of interest, such as health or appearance, to explore questions of force and constraint, and how, more abstractly, our physical forms can shove us into conceptual categories—Black, male—that then shape us further.... The book proceeds, via an almost dreamlike, permutative logic, from the body as prison to the body in prison to masses of bodies in prison to masses of bodies in protest. At the end, we are released on a note that is either utopian or dryly ironic. "The free body," Laing writes. "What a beautiful idea."

Here's the book, in case you're tempted to read it. I sort of am. Well, it's the sort of thing I definitely would have read 30 years ago.

"Amazingly, the bill became law on the 11th anniversary of 'Take Our Children to the Park and Leave Them There Day,' a holiday created by Free-Range Kids and once considered so wacky—so dangerous..."

Posted: 19 May 2021 04:47 AM PDT

"... that it was splashed across the pages of The New York Daily News.... HB 567 enjoyed bipartisan support, sailing through the Texas Senate unopposed, and winning the House with a vote of 143 to 5. The statute enshrining childhood independence is part of a bigger children's services bill ensuring Texans that the state will not intervene and remove kids from their homes unless the danger is so great and so likely that it outweighs the trauma of entering the foster care system.... In other words, it prevents poverty from being mistaken for neglect.... 'If the mom misses that bus, she gets to work late and loses her job. How does that help the child, if now she can't pay her rent? So she leaves her child home alone for 15 minutes.' .... [T]he bill also helps folks who choose not to helicopter parent, like Austin mom Kari Anne Roy, whose case made headlines in 2014. Roy was at home while her six-year-old played within view of the house for about ten minutes. A passerby marched him home and called the cops...."

From "Texas Becomes Third State To Pass Free-Range Kids Law/'You had the most right-wing members of the legislature signed on with most left-wing members'" (Reason).

ADDED:  I haven't written much on the topic of "free-range" children, but let me quote something I wrote last year:

When I walk (or drive) around my neighborhood and beyond, I often think or say out loud, "Where are the children?" Are they inside looking at big and small screens? Are they chauffeured to adult-run activities? It's so sad! Even in the 80s when my sons were little, the neighborhood had kids outdoors, playing randomly with each other. But back in the 1950s, when I was little, the neighborhood was a constant festival of kid-dom. So much active, inventive play. It was endless. Nobody wanted our parents to scoop us up and take us anywhere. The place was completely alive and completely kid-scale, and none of it had anything to do — as far as we could tell — with preparing for a prestigious and remunerative career. I can't imagine any parents barging in and trying to leverage things for the advancement of their offspring. We were, to ourselves, on our own.

Ah, I see — I was reacting to an article questioning whether "expensive activities" for kids were a rip-off. 

Today's article, about the Texas law, is about the economics of childcare too, but it focuses on relieving low-income families of the burden of accusations of child neglect. The older article was about whether high-income families should be seeking to buy extra advantages for their children. The "free-range" idea works from both ends of the economic divide to equalize the life of children. 

If children are left alone to be self-reliant and to invent their own modes of playing, then rich and poor kids might have very similar lives. More or less. 

Could we all — from both ends of the political divide — agree on that? 

Of course not! We must disagree. We cannot have political peace. How would we live in political peace? The adults don't know how to play well together, even those of us who grew up in free-range American utopia.

Sun.

Posted: 18 May 2021 05:11 PM PDT

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