Trendlist: Althouse

Tuesday, July 5, 2022

Althouse

"I am not a Trump supporter, in any way, shape or form. I have had the opportunity to have him on my show, more than once, and I have said no every time. I don’t want to help him, I’m not interested in helping him."
"WOMEN OF THE WORLD! We are being stripped of our rights over our bodies, our lives and even of our name!"
Will post-Roe legislation protect embryos left over from the process of in vitro fertilization?
"Some of you might decide that this place isn't for you, and that self-selection is OK with me. Realistically, there are probably a bunch of people at the company who shouldn't be here."
The baleful/baneful distinction.
"Real marriage comes the day you realise that this person [your spouse] is exquisitely designed to stick the burning spear right into your eyeball."
"I am appalled that even as a healer I have to get my cup poured into in this incident, but in this incident I will continue to pour into other people's cup as a way to pour into my own cup."
"Robert 'Bobby' E. Crimo III... performed as a rapper who went by the name 'Awake,' whose recent music videos included depictions of mass murder."
"A woman goes through a completely unique experience and surgery and finding oneself doesn’t change that."
July 4th.

"I am not a Trump supporter, in any way, shape or form. I have had the opportunity to have him on my show, more than once, and I have said no every time. I don’t want to help him, I’m not interested in helping him."

Posted: 05 Jul 2022 11:06 AM PDT

Said Joe Rogan, quoted in "Joe Rogan reveals if he will ever host Donald Trump on his podcast" (NY Post)(video at link).

"WOMEN OF THE WORLD! We are being stripped of our rights over our bodies, our lives and even of our name!"

Posted: 05 Jul 2022 11:02 AM PDT

"They don't call us 'women' anymore; they call us 'birthing people' or 'menstruators,' and even 'people with vaginas'! Don't let them erase you! Every human on earth owes you!"

Tweeted Bette Midler, quoted in "Bette Midler sparks debate by saying trans-inclusive language erases women" (NY Post).

Will post-Roe legislation protect embryos left over from the process of in vitro fertilization?

Posted: 05 Jul 2022 10:51 AM PDT

I'm reading "Infertility Patients and Doctors Fear Abortion Bans Could Restrict I.V.F./The new state bans don't explicitly cover embryos created outside the womb, but legal experts say overturning Roe could make it easier to place controls on genetic testing, storage and disposal of them" (NYT).

[M]any fear that regulations on unwanted pregnancies could, unintentionally or not, also control people who long for a pregnancy.... So far, the texts of the laws taking effect do not explicitly target embryos created in a lab.... By using the word "pregnancy," most trigger bans distinguish their target from an embryo stored in a clinic....

Some medical and legal experts have proposed... creating one embryo at a time by storing sperm and eggs separately and thawing them only to create individual embryos as needed...

[Another option] is called "compassionate transfer." A 2020 position paper by the American Society for Reproductive Medicine says the term refers to a request by a patient to transfer embryos in her body "at a time when pregnancy is highly unlikely to occur, and when pregnancy is not the intended outcome." For people who see the frozen embryo as human life, a compassionate transfer is a kind of natural death for the embryo, rather than having it destroyed in a lab.

Katherine Kraschel, an expert on reproductive health law at Yale Law School, noted that clinics could be forced to store embryos that embryologists have determined are unlikely to result in a pregnancy. "It could also mean that 'compassionate transfer' is recommended not to honor a patient's moral valuation of their embryos but because the state has imposed its moral valuation upon them," she said.

Another concern is that special consideration for the women who create participate in I.V.F. can — and therefore will — be portrayed as racist:

Judith Daar, dean at the Salmon P. Chase College of Law at Northern Kentucky University and an expert in reproductive health law, said that passing a state law that would distinguish infertility patients from those seeking an abortion risked having a discriminatory impact, "given that the majority of I.V.F. patients are white, while women of color account for the majority of all abortions performed in the U.S."

"Some of you might decide that this place isn't for you, and that self-selection is OK with me. Realistically, there are probably a bunch of people at the company who shouldn't be here."

Posted: 05 Jul 2022 10:27 AM PDT

Said Mark Zuckerberg, quoted in "Mark Zuckerberg Just Told Facebook Employees to Quit. He Missed the Most Important Point/In a call with employees, Facebook's founder tried to rally the troops" (Inc.).

The baleful/baneful distinction.

Posted: 05 Jul 2022 06:53 AM PDT

I'm reading a post at Instapundit:

MORE DOWNSIDES OF OUR FECKLESS RULING CLASS: Get Ready: A Baleful Consequence of Inflation You've Heard Too Little About.

I don't blog about economics, and not because I don't think it's important. I just think I have nothing worthy to contribute. I do, however blog about language, even when it's not important. In this case, I have the usage question: Should that be "baleful" or "baneful"? Are we talking about a "baleful consequence of inflation" or a "baneful consequence of inflation"?

According to Merriam-Webster:

The bale of baleful comes from Old English bealu ("evil"), and the bane of the similar-looking baneful comes from Old English bana ("slayer" or "murderer"). Baleful and baneful are alike in meaning as well as appearance, and they are sometimes used in quite similar contexts—but they usually differ in emphasis. Baleful typically describes what threatens or portends evil (e.g., "a baleful look," "baleful predictions"). Baneful applies typically to what causes evil or destruction (e.g., "a baneful secret," "the baneful bite of the serpent"). Both words are used to modify terms like influence, effect, and result, and in such uses there is little that distinguishes them.

If you've come this far, I suspect you'll conclude that it's not worth understanding the difference. The words aren't different enough for you ever to make an embarrassing or confusing mistake, and so few people even think about the difference that you have little hope of conveying a shade of meaning by choosing "baleful" over "baneful" or "baneful" over "baleful."

I've kept it in my head for over 50 years that there's a distinction here that you need to stop and think about before using either word, but at this point I'm about to conclude that I've been wasting my time. I mean, I was not even remembering the distinction, only remembering that there is a distinction and believing that I need to look it up every time.

Now, the OED says that there's an archaic meaning of "baleful" — "Unhappy, wretched, miserable; distressed, sorrowful, mournful." That's the idea I'd more or less remembered.

c1420 Anturs of Arth. xlii The balefulle birde blenked on his blode.

But the non-archaic meaning of "baleful" is "Full of malign, deadly, or noxious influence; pernicious, destructive, noxious, injurious, mischievous, malignant."

And "baneful" means "Destructive to well-being, pernicious, injurious":

1579 E. Spenser Shepheardes Cal. Aug. 173 Helpe me ye banefull byrds.

Thus, anyone using "baleful" interchangeably with "baneful" is on more solid ground than I would be if I insisted that there needed to be the subjective human emotion of sadness.

So, sadly, I am letting go of the baleful/baneful distinction. After 50 years, I lay down this burden.

"Real marriage comes the day you realise that this person [your spouse] is exquisitely designed to stick the burning spear right into your eyeball."

Posted: 05 Jul 2022 05:22 AM PDT

Said Terry Real — who's "personally healed" Bruce Springsteen and Bradley Cooper — quoted in "Have you got 'marital hatred'? Probably/He's the couples therapist to the A-list who says it's normal to have some (very) dark thoughts about your spouse. Terry Real talks to Andrew Billen" (London Times).

"I teach my students to always be respectful of the exquisite intelligence of the adaptive child. You did exactly what you needed to do back then to preserve yourself but I have a saying, 'adaptive then, maladaptive now'. You're not that little girl and you're not dealing with your histrionic mother. You're dealing with your husband. Things are different."

He has been married for 37 lively years to Belinda Berman-Real, who is also a therapist. With two sons now in their thirties, they have always rowed. One 12-hour fight was resolved by her saying forgivingly: "You really are an asshole."...

"Belinda's core negative image of me is that I am an undependable, self-centred, charming, narcissistic boy. My core negative image of her is that she is a controlling, insatiable, complaining witch."...

When he is not blaming our adaptive inner children, he tends to blame broken marriages on the West's cult of individualism. Born somewhere back in the Enlightenment, it has, he contends, produced since the 1950s a society of "rugged individuals" (largely domineering men) and "romantic individuals" (mainly women who big up their feelings). Such "grandiosity" is as poisonous as low self-esteem....

"Generally speaking, grandiose women are even more difficult to treat than grandiose men, not always but quite often. Grandiose women have advanced degrees in offending from the victim position," he writes. Such women, he goes on, can be "righteously indignant avenging angels"....

"When women move out of the traditional feminine role and move into the traditional masculine role, they don't do a better job with it than men have.... You break connection when you move into power. You see this with women these days. A lot of women when they finally do find their voice to speak do so in a manner that no one in their right mind could possibly listen to. I think the next step for culture is moving into — and I teach this practically — how to stand up to your partner and cherish your partner and love them in the same breath. Now, that's brand new for the culture.... I'm not interested in feminising men. I'm not interested in masculinising women. I think that we should raise our sons and daughters to be whole human beings. I like to think about smart, sexy, beautiful daughters and big-hearted, sensitive, strong sons."

"I am appalled that even as a healer I have to get my cup poured into in this incident, but in this incident I will continue to pour into other people's cup as a way to pour into my own cup."

Posted: 05 Jul 2022 05:03 AM PDT

Said Charles Murrell, "an artist and peace advocate in the Boston area."

Quoted in "Community Leaders Condemn Hate After White Supremacists March Through Boston/Photos and videos on social media appeared to show throngs of protesters marching under the banner of the Patriot Front, characterized by the Anti-Defamation League and the Southern Poverty Law Center as a white supremacist group; Boston Mayor Michelle Wu and other city leaders have spoken out" (NBC Boston).

According to a police report, Murrell was walking down the street when he was in the middle of a group of men with masks who shoved and pushed him. He fought back, and then more men went after him, knocking him to the ground. He received stitches to his hand and had cuts to his head.

This is a strange incident. Is there video of the attack on Murrell? The description begins in medias res: "he was in the middle of a group of men." Did he insert himself into the middle of the group as an act of art/activism? Or was he an ordinary pedestrian who found himself surrounded by men on the march?

And who were these men? Why were they masked if they were just marching down the street with flags and drumming? It doesn't seem as though they were chanting anything or giving interviews. But they had a "Patriot Front" flag. I've blogged about Patriot Front people twice: 1. December 2021/a march at the Lincoln Memorial, and 2. June 2022/31 people found in a U-Haul and accused of conspiracy to riot.

But I was most interested in Murrell's quote with the cup imagery: "I am appalled that even as a healer I have to get my cup poured into in this incident, but in this incident I will continue to pour into other people's cup as a way to pour into my own cup." There seems to be some accepted notion of a person's life or soul as a cup, and interactions with other people as a pouring of whatever is in your cup into theirs.

My google search turns up articles like this — "Pouring From An Empty Cup" — that make me think this is somewhat standard metaphor in therapy:

Pouring from an empty cup is where a person gives from a place of deficiency.... Many people who pour from an empty cup mistake selfishness with self-care.... There is nothing selfish about putting one's needs before others in order to function properly.... What you want is to feel good about yourself and to feel loved and accepted. Unfortunately, we cannot feel loved and accepted if we do not love and accept ourselves.... When we give from a full cup, we feel like much better people. Our inward motives are matching our outward actions. We are being our true selves....

"Robert 'Bobby' E. Crimo III... performed as a rapper who went by the name 'Awake,' whose recent music videos included depictions of mass murder."

Posted: 05 Jul 2022 04:31 AM PDT

"Crimo's most recent video posted to YouTube showed him in the aftermath of a school shooting. It ends with Crimo draping himself in an American flag.... Crimo had his own Discord server, where fans and people who knew him would chat. The community featured a politics board filled with nihilistic political memes. The most recent post before the shooting, which was posted in March, was a picture of Budd Dwyer, the Pennsylvania state treasurer who shot and killed himself on live television in the late 1980s, along with the caption 'I wish politicians still gave speeches like this.'... Crimo didn't frequently post about major political figures on his websites, except for two posts about former President Donald Trump. A video posted to Crimo's YouTube page on Jan. 2, 2021, appears to show Crimo among a throng of protesters cheering for Trump's presidential motorcade outside an airport. Crimo flips the phone's orientation to reveal his face at the end of the video. Crimo is also seen draped in a Trump flag in a June 27, 2021, post on Twitter. The post is captioned with only the word 'spam.'"

From "Highland Park shooting person of interest left online trail of violent imagery/Social media profiles show he performed as a rapper who went by the name 'Awake,' whose recent music videos included depictions of mass murder" (NBC News).

"A woman goes through a completely unique experience and surgery and finding oneself doesn’t change that."

Posted: 05 Jul 2022 04:25 AM PDT

"Being a little girl is a whole epic book, you know? You can't have that just because you want to be a woman."

Said the singer Macy Gray, quoted in "Macy Gray tells Piers Morgan: 'Just because you change your body parts doesn't make you a woman'" (NY Post).

Here's the whole interview, which begins with her explanation of why she thinks the United States needs a new flag. I'll make it start where Morgan introduces the topic, What is a woman? He asks her for her definition, and she answers before reflecting on what to say about trans women:

Morgan moves straight to the question of trans women participating in women's sports. He supports trans rights, but not that. She enthusiastically proclaims, "I totally agree."

But she doesn't stop there. She proactively asserts, "Just because you change your body parts doesn't make you a woman." He offers her some insulation from public opinion: "You feel that?" And she says, with vigor: "I know that for a fact."

Morgan informs her that she might be setting herself up for an attack. She answers: "But it's the truth."

After 2 and a half minutes, they move on to the next topic — the time she talked to Prince for 2 hours. He gave her what we're told was "great advice": "Remember, its' not about you." It's about art and how you make people feel."

In the end, they come back to the flag topic, and she tells us, "I love my country.... I'm proud of my country. I'm proud of where I'm from, being a woman, being black. I can honestly say I love everybody."