Ruling Elite Adds Two Skulls to Trophy Collection

“Mistah Kurtz – he dead.”

T.S. Eliot chose that line from Joseph Conrad’s novella Heart of Darkness as the epigram for his poem “The Hollow Men.”

Oh, come on, you know:

The novel, and the poem, about the terminal termitic decay of what we laughingly call “civilization,” and the “hollow men” who (barely) populate Western society?

With all that scarecrow and “straw men” and trophy-heads-on-pikes imagery?

“This is the way the world ends/Not with a bang but a wimper” and all that?

Or maybe you don’t.

And you don’t want to know, either. Not anything.

“What difference does it make?“

In a world where “Benghazi was a long time ago,” expressing what used to be called “common knowledge,” or asking what once was considered “a normal question,” is verboten.

You see:

Jason Collins is gay, therefore Jason Collins has always been gay.

That he’s gay is everybody’s business, but it’s nobody’s business that John Maynard Keynes was.

Get it?

You’d better.

Likes Long Walks on the Beach, and Porn Goddesses

Slate’s Dear Prudence advice column is a social barometer of sorts, so when columnist Emily Yoffe pivots on a major issue my ears twitch, because change must be afoot. This week’s chat with advice-seekers revealed a shocking reversal: Prudie is actually advising readers to cut back on the porn:

When I started writing this column I had a very laissez-faire attitude toward porn, but it’s irrefutable that excess consumption can interfere with normal sexual expectations. It’s one thing if your husband made a reasonable request. … It’s another thing if he’s withdrawn from you sexually, has refused to address this, then announces he can’t get turned on by you if you don’t look like the people on YouPorn. …you two need to talk about how hurtful his behavior has been over the past year, and that you hope he understands that putting his demands in such a demeaning way is not likely to turn you on.

What was the husband of this letter-writer requesting? That the woman shave down under or he wouldn’t get intimate with her. The bald eagle (aherm) look has grown so immensely popular this year it’s actually made headlines, and most commentators agree it was popularized by porn’s hairless superstars.

Okay. So porn is as standard (and standardized) in American males’ homes as sliced bread. Old news. What’s new news is that someone besides the ultra-feminist anti-porn crusaders and the ultra-Christian anti-porn crusaders is saying in a major public forum that maybe porn is not so healthy for relationships. Well, excess porn.

For what it’s worth, I don’t support the censorship of porn that’s performed (and consumed) by consenting adults. But I do object to the tacitly ubiquitous attitude that “porn is okay, and if you object to it you’re a prude, because everybody watches it.” It’s another form of political correctness. Let’s see a healthy dose of skepticism.

Bill Clinton Supports First Openly Gay NBA Player: ‘Proud to Call Jason Collins a Friend’

Former President Bill Clinton, who just joined Twitter this month, applauded the decision of NBA player Jason Collins to come out as gay.

Collins, a center for the Washington Wizards, wrote a lengthy piece for the May 6 issue of Sports Illustrated explaining his decision.

“I didn’t set out to be the first openly gay athlete playing in a major American team sport. But since I am, I’m happy to start the conversation. I wish I wasn’t the kid in the classroom raising his hand and saying, ‘I’m different.’ If I had my way, someone else would have already done this. Nobody has, which is why I’m raising my hand,” Collins wrote.

Many well-known names quickly rallied to his defense on Twitter, including Clinton.

“I’m proud to call Jason Collins a friend,” Clinton tweeted, linking to a longer statement at his foundation’s website.

“I have known Jason Collins since he was Chelsea’s classmate and friend at Stanford. Jason’s announcement today is an important moment for professional sports and in the history of the LGBT community,” Clinton said. “It is also the straightforward statement of a good man who wants no more than what so many of us seek: to be able to be who we are; to do our work; to build families and to contribute to our communities. For so many members of the LGBT community, these simple goals remain elusive. I hope that everyone, particularly Jason’s colleagues in the NBA, the media and his many fans extend to him their support and the respect he has earned.”

Jason Collins quietly paid tribute to Matthew Shephard, a young gay man who was murdered in 1998, when he changed his number to 98 in 2012.

— Michael Skolnik (@MichaelSkolnik) April 29, 2013

It was obvious. Jason Collins is the only guy in the NBA not defending a paternity suit. #gaydar

— David Burge (@iowahawkblog) April 29, 2013

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Cross-posted from the PJ Tatler.

Why Is The Search For Freedom Through Sex Doomed to Failure?

Who’s to Blame for Fueling Pop Culture’s 5 Worst Female Stereotypes?

Poor Seth MacFarlane. The guy sings one song about boobs and suddenly he’s #1 on the Hates Women List with a Steinem next to his name.  (That means if they capture him, she gets to rag on him incessantly. Who wouldn’t want a bullet after that?)

It’d be too easy to join the chorus singing, “MacFarlane hates women.” As a woman, I despise the cop-outs women often take, chiding every man as being both the desired master of her universe and the despised crafter of her fate. If we really believe in Girl Power, what’s our responsibility in all of this? Are we allowing the fate scripted by guys like MacFarlane to come true?

It took about 10 minutes to pull video for the following five most common stereotypes about women portrayed in Family Guy. The sad news is that it took about 15 to pull five examples of the same behavior from the most popular Girl Power reality television show out there: The Kardashians. Praised by some feminists as career women comfortable in their own skin, it has been observed that “50 years ago, the Kardashians could never live the way they do. It’s all thanks to the Feminist movement that they are who they are – and they embrace every benefit from it fully.”

So, culture judges that you are, tell me: Is the evidence compelling? Is MacFarlane a He-Man Woman Hater, or do the Kardashians prove that girls finally busted through the glass ceiling in the tree house and joined the club?

Totally Petarded: The Top 5 Masculinity Myths on Family Guy

Watch out, ladies in the dating world: Family Guy’s prized demographic is totally Petarded.

According to the show’s creator, Family Guy’s target audience is men ages 18-34.  This happens to be one of the most desirable demographics for advertisers and women looking to eventually get married and settle down.

Who hasn’t dreamed of a life with Peter Griffin?

Obviously, not all men between the ages of 18 and 34 are going to find the humor of Family Guy appealing.  Yet a growing majority of them do.  I long ago learned as a woman not to attempt to comment on the male psyche; why these men find Family Guy so appealing is not in my realm of interest.  However, the message Family Guy sends about masculinity is so apparent that I can’t help but laugh at this not-so-subtle irony:  Most women looking for men, the ladies trolling the clubs and hitting Happy Hours at the bars, are the ones who tend to stereotype men exactly the way they are portrayed on the show.

The Hitchcock, Capote, and Toby Jones Mystery

Help!

This is funny — and kind of weird.

I watched the film Hitchcock on pay per view the other day: it’s the story of the making of Psycho based on the fascinating 1990 non-fiction book Alfred Hitchcock and the Making of Psycho by Stephen Rebello, which I read and enjoyed many years ago. The movie? It’s not bad. Its take on the Hitchcock marriage is rigged and sentimentalized. But the cast is amazing — Anthony Hopkins, Helen Mirren, Scarlett Johansson, Jessica Biel, Toni Collette — and the glimpses of the true story that survive are still very interesting. It’s a small, satisfying entertainment about the movie biz.

However…  The movie is about ten times better than last year’s unfortunate HBO production The Girl, which starred Toby Jones as the Master of Suspense, and told Tippi Hedren’s version of their relationship during the making of The Birds. Hedren claims Hitchcock sexually harassed her, mistreated her, and ultimately destroyed her career — although my memory is that Hedren was an awful actress, which may have also had something to do with it.

Were the Oscars Sexist?

I only saw a few minutes of the Oscars, always an edifying spectacle if only because it has taught me how not to act in life: self-righteous, dolled up in Tom Ford and Karl Lagerfeld while speaking the language of Mother Jones and Karl Marx, prone to accepting little gold statues from a faceless politburo and then thanking them profusely for the honor, etc. This year the crapfest was hosted by Seth Macfarlane, who I actually think is more talented than people give him credit for.

Immediately after the crapfest was over–well, during it, too, thanks to asocial “social media”–all the hags and eunuchs on the blogosphere and in the glossy mags went into PC-status-seeker mode and began moaning about Macfarlane’s “sexism.” What do you think, dear readers? Was he sexist?

I’m not against denouncing genuine sexism, but I’m basically immune to the word now, except in its most extreme and virulent forms, thanks to its constant presence in our culture. (You can thank the hags and eunuchs for basically making it impossible to identify real racism and sexism in this country.) From what I can see Macfarlane said the word “boobs” too much, and this has offended certain people. Funny how it is now the progressive crowd that’s more offended by sexual language than Methodists and Baptists. On a lighter note, it’s interesting and somewhat refreshing that a media liberal like Macfarlane is finally the one being accused of an -ism. Nevertheless, Billy Crystal seems like the best choice from here on out.

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Previously from Robert Wargas at PJ Lifestyle:

Why Is Identity Politics Evil?

The Young Walt Disney’s Anti-STD Propaganda Cartoon

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Click to submit book suggestions for the new daily feature at PJ Lifestyle.

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Related at PJ Lifestyle:

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5 Biographies of Walt Disney

Walt Disney: Separating the Wheat from the Chaff

The Sun Rises Over the Hills As We Make Our Way to DisneyLand…

Netflix and Disney Tie the Knot

Why Women Ruin Everything For Women

It’s Valentine’s Day and romance is in the air. Am I allowed to say that? It would seem that romance is no longer allowed in American society, and I’ve recently figured out why. It’s not because of men, as women like to think. It’s because women ruin everything for women.

I’ve suspected this for some time but, last week, events transpired to confirm my suspicions. It all started with the Audi Super Bowl commercial. For those of you who missed it, a geeky guy is so overcome with confidence at being lent his dad’s Audi that he marches right into the big dance and kisses the prom queen. I loved it and, by the reaction shot, so did she. You know why? Because he was a man. Because it was romantic. No, the political correctness police opined, it was not romantic at all. In fact, it was “rapey.” Rapey.

That was bad enough, but it didn’t end there. The feminist shrews among our population then went after the iconic image of the sailor kissing a nurse in a spontaneous celebration for the allied victory over Japan in World War II. These were, by any measure, extraordinary circumstances. This VJ day kiss, one of the most romantic moments ever committed to film, the image that has made women swoon since 1945? Turns out that’s rapey, too, according to modern-day feminists. Do you know why men think women are crazy? It’s because women act crazy. And that, dear reader, is how women ruin everything for women.

Dear Sister Wives Star Kody Brown: Love Should Be Exclusive, not Divided

“Love should be multiplied, not divided.” — Sister Wives star Kody Brown

Polygamist Kody Brown and his four wives, featured on TLC’s reality show Sister Wives, challenges the show’s audience with that “prove me wrong” statement at the beginning of every episode. Now in its third season, Sister Wives follows the lives of Brown and his wives, Meri, Janelle, and Christine, all of whom he married in the early 1990s. The most recent addition, Robyn — younger, thinner, prettier — married into the family last season. The household also includes a total of 17 children (three of them Robyn’s from a previous marriage). The only legal marriage is between Kody and Meri.

Like most reality shows, there’s an element of train-wreck entertainment as we watch the daily lives of the “cast,” and like most reality shows, we can be certain that the editors and producers play a strong role in shaping the show’s narrative. In much of the first season, they portray the family as happy and loving — your average family next door — until they introduce the fourth wife, Robyn, and she and Kody begin courting. Jealousy between the wives begins to surface and escalates as Robyn and Kody eventually marry. There are serious cracks,  especially in the relationship between Christine and Kody now that she has been replaced as the the newest wife:

I have a lot of expectations and not a lot of appreciation, to be honest. And so, he’s walking into a hostile environment sometimes now. And we’re just at a point where we’re struggling to find ourselves. I don’t know if I care if it’s perfect anymore or if it’s what he wants anymore. It’s just so much work. And I know there’s a big payoff and I know for years and years we had a great marriage and a great thing. I just don’t know what I want anymore.

The 5 Most Underrated Pop Culture Heroines

Recently, I argued that we like heroines who act like men and so writers construct stories enabling women to physically compete. So what about the female characters that don’t act like men?

If writers don’t have a female character fight for herself and by herself, then we typically ignore them. Sometimes we ridicule them. If given the opportunity, we rewrite them. Then, we complain that there aren’t enough of them. There are many, and the comment thread on the last article mentioned a few. These are my favorite five.

5. Princess Buttercup, The Ignored Heroine

In The Princess Bride, Buttercup lives on a farm and falls in love with a quiet and dedicated farm boy. The boy, Wesley, goes off to seek his fortune so he may marry Buttercup, but his ship is attacked by the Dread Pirate Roberts. Buttercup despairs for Wesley’s death. Years later, the prince of the land choses her as his bride. Powerless to refuse him, she agrees. Soon, Wesley returns and rescues her and the land.

Targeted by an evil prince for her beauty, but with no physical way to resist him — no superpowers — Buttercup relies on her courage and wits to keep the prince and his henchmen at bay until help arrives. With Wesley’s help she escapes and together they save the kingdom from a needless war. But she got rescued and does not physically fight. She engages in elegant verbal sparring, of which I’d provide a video clip, but I can’t find any of those scenes online. They aren’t popular enough that anyone thought to upload them. I’ve rarely seen Buttercup mentioned as a feminist favorite even though The Princess Bride‘s cult following rivals Buffy the Vampire Slayer’s. Strong-willed and spirited she might be, but she’s just not manly enough to merit much attention.

Victor Davis Hanson on the Love Lives of History’s Great Generals

Alexander the Great

via A Short History of Amorous Generals | Hoover Institution.

“You’re a very bad man.
” So yelled Dorothy at the Wizard of Oz, once the imposing, larger-than-life face on the screen was revealed to be a mere projection of a tiny old man behind a curtain fidgeting with levers and knobs.

“No, my dear.” The embarrassed all-too-human wizard answered back, “I’m a very good man.
 I’m just a very bad wizard.”

Given the lurid allegations about Gen. David Petraeus with Paula Broadwell and Jill Kelley—many of them still unproven but perhaps with still more to surface from an FBI investigation—is the wizard Petraeus now revealed as a “very bad man”? Or is he just a “very bad general”—or both, or neither?

All we know for now is that Petraeus has confessed to a single extramarital relationship with his biographer Paula Broadwell. And he insists that the affair developed after he left the Army, during his directorship of the CIA. Under convoluted circumstances, the tryst became known to the FBI and, shortly after, to the Obama administration, leading to Petraeus’s resignation 72 hours after the 2012 presidential election. But what has all this got to do with any assessment of Petraeus as a military commander in the field?

Most Americans remain ambivalent about the personal lives of their politicians—how could they not be given the legacy of Bill Clinton? But even in the past, they seemed to have put up with infidelity and did not consider the affairs of a Warren Harding, Franklin D. Roosevelt, or John F. Kennedy as referenda on their political effectiveness. But there were important qualifications: The lapses should not involve illegality and be kept largely out of the newspapers—which stand in stark contrast to the public scandals that ruined the reputations of John Edwards, Arnold Schwarzenegger, Eliot Spitzer, and others.  It helps also to be effective politicians. They weather personal scandals far better than do mediocrities, whose fall from public life is rarely missed. Schwarzenegger’s sexual failings were well known—and dismissed—when he ran for California governor in a wave of popular goodwill, but came back to haunt him only when as a two-term ineffective governor, his tryst with his housekeeper became the proverbial straw that broke the camel’s back of voter forgiveness.

Judging Generals as Generals

Are generals, however, to be judged under different rules? Unlike most politicians, they operate under more stringent codes of personal conduct and are often in harm’s way with responsibilities for the lives of thousands under their commands.

History offers some rough guidelines to the real men who wore masks of command. In a word, many of the best were as pursuant of women as they were of the enemy—and the former did not seem to impair the latter. Arrian, Curtius, Diodorus, and Plutarch have as much to say about Alexander the Great’s alcohol-driven sexual liaisons as they do about his brilliance on the battlefield. The court biographer Suetonius related that Julius Caesar—the finest general that Rome produced—was alleged by a critic to be, “Every woman’s man, and every man’s woman.” Cleopatra seduced both Caesar and Marc Antony when they deployed to Egypt.

Read the whole thing.

And check out VDH’s newest at PJ Media:

Modern Wisdom from Ancient Minds

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More at PJ Lifestyle on books and history:

The 7 Creepiest Serial Killers in American History

Dissecting Baby Boomer Liberalism Like a Frog in Science Class

Dostoevsky’s 6 Nightmare Prophecies That Came True in the 20th Century, Part One

Race, Revolution, and Robespierre

23 Books for Counterculture Conservatives, Tea Party Occultists, and Capitalist Wizards

All the President’s Concubines

We already knew that Franklin D. Roosevelt was a lousy president — the Depression dragged on for 11 years, mostly on his watch, so the proper word for what he did to the economic calamity is “extend,” not “end” it — but the strange Bill Murray comedy Hyde Park on Hudson makes clear that FDR was a horrible man as well.

The movie is principally about FDR’s habit of employing his mother to call up local women, some of them cousins, and send them over to be the president’s concubines at his country house in upstate New York. It’s made clear to the women that they’re not to be taken seriously, they’re not to say anything, and they’ll be discarded as soon as the president tires of them, and in this film by Roger Michell (Notting Hill) all of this is presented as merry good fun and entirely suitable behavior by the iconic figure of the party that “cares about women.”

Laura Linney plays Daisy, a second cousin who is hurried into FDR’s life for unpaid sex work. FDR flirts with her by showing her his stamp collection, then takes her for a quiet country drive in his car, which is operated exclusively by hand controls due to his paralysis. But apparently the president was able to maintain an extramarital love life that can only be called Clintonian, or perhaps Kennedyesque. (Why is it that our most priapic presidents tend to be Democrats? Is it because they enjoy doing to the country what they do to unsuspecting younger women?) A more astute director would have played FDR’s womanizing as yet more evidence of the imperiousness of a president who famously used to lie around in bed in the morning dreaming up a price for gold, for instance declaring 21 cents to be the right number because sevens are lucky and 21 is three times seven.

Daisy, quickly accepted as the newest member of the household (though not the only concubine present), gets to witness the events of the summer of 1939, when (or so this movie would have us believe) the fate of the free world rested on whether or not the king of England would eat a hot dog.

The 5 Most Overrated Pop Culture Heroines

Even while women devour the Twilight books and flock to the recent release of Breaking Dawn 2 most revile the series’ heroine Bella Swan. The savvy modern woman prefers the vampire-slaying Buffy Summers. As a fan of both the Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Twilight franchises, I think that we have this partially backward and that the Buffy v. Bella arguments common on the web underscore dangerous assumptions about women. Feminists have co-opted Buffy and the female superheroes for the gender wars in order to perpetuate their illusion of no differences between men and women.

Conventional wisdom tells us that women can do anything men can. With rare exception owing to strength or stature, this is true. But we don’t always want to do what men do, and even if and when we do we have to account for our biology. Sometimes it is the strength and stature deficit, sometimes it is our heavier role in reproduction. The feminist intelligentsia thinks this unfair, so, couching their advice in terms of equality, they tell us to ignore biology. Accordingly, the female heroes who we admire today are the ones who work around reality.

It is great that we have heroes who happen to be women, but we mistake them as role models for womanhood. Five pop culture heroines to illustrate my point:

5. Hermione Granger, The Maligned Hero

Hermione helps Harry Potter figure out how to defeat the evil wizard Voldemort and, at great personal sacrifice, she accompanies Harry on his final quest.

As a role model for womanhood she is the best of this list. She shouldn’t even appear but for what we like about her. The oft-cited favorite Hermione part in the movies: when she punches Draco Malfoy.

Over eight films loaded with powerful women defying evil—Luna Lovegood, Molly Weasley, Lily Potter, Narcissa Malfoy—that inconsequential punch makes number six of the 50 greatest moments. What was a slap in the book was rewritten as the crowd-pleasing punch because we like it when a woman acts like a man, which is ironic considering the next most overrated heroine, Wonder Woman.

VIDEO of 2 and a Half Men Star: ‘You Cannot Be a True God-Fearing Person and Be on a Television Show Like That.’

via Angus T. Jones calls Two and a Half Men ‘filth’ – chicagotribune.com.

Actor Angus T. Jones, star of CBS’s raunchy television comedy “Two and a Half Men”, has urged viewers to change the channel, saying his new-found religious beliefs are at odds with his job playing a fun-loving teen on the popular show.

Jones, 19, who has played Jake Harper – the son of Jon Cryer’s character Alan – for nine years, appealed to fans to stop watching the show “and filling your head with filth.”

TMZ is reporting that the executives on “Two and a Half Men” and at Warner Bros. have seen Jones’s video where he calls the show “filth,” but that neither Jones nor his representatives have contacted the higher ups to announce his departure. At the same time, executive producer Chuck Lorre hasn’t responded to Jones’s comments yet either, a Zap2It television blog reported today.

Jones is headed in to a “Two and a Half Men” rehearsal this morning, according to Zap2It.

In a YouTube video made for the California-based Forerunner Christian Church, Jones said his recent Bible studies made him uncomfortable with the risque humor that marks one of the most-watched comedies on U.S. television.

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Emily Esfahani Smith’s Plan to Crush Hook-Up Culture and Revive Dating

Why The Master Is No Master-Piece

Why I’m Worried About Raising a Son in Our Upcoming Brave New World of Android Prostitution

How Today’s Young Women Learned to Sing the Truth About Hookup Culture

How Long Does It Take to Shift All the Way from Left to Right?

Should You Worry if Your Man Looks at the Bikini-Clad Women at the Beach?

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4 Benefits of Marrying Young

A recent article on Yahoo extolled “The Benefits of Marrying Later in Life.” The writer, who waited until age 46 to marry, listed the benefits of delaying marriage:

– Learning to love herself and accept her self-worth
– Time to become her own person
– Benefit of knowing who she is
– Experiencing life as her own complete person

With all due respect to the author, her list looks like a recipe for perpetual singleness. A decade or more of doing what’s best for “me” and learning to love and complete “myself” is not the best way to prepare for the sacrifices and selflessness required to be one half of a couple. Be honest: Would you want to marry someone who has spent two entire decades of her life “learning to love herself”? She’s going to be a tough act to follow.

According to the Pew Research Center, the median age for marriage in the United States has risen to a record 28.7 for men and 26.5 for women, which means that half are older than the median when they marry. Marriage overall has declined as well; barely half of Americans are currently married, a record low, compared to 72% in 1960.

But those averages don’t tell the whole story. More and more in our society, success is defined as progressing along a pathway that includes high school, college, graduate or professional school, a career with a 6-figure salary, and, after a long succession of “practice” relationships, perhaps marriage and children (if the woman’s AARP-eligible eggs hold out that long).

Of course, it hasn’t always been that way. Until the early 1900s, no one had ever heard the words “teenager” and “adolescence.” Upon reaching the age of maturity (usually in the late teens), young people were expected to court and marry in short order. If a 20-something lived in his parents’ basement, he usually had a good excuse — such as missing hands and feet, or being in a permanent comatose state. In the book From Front Porch to Back Seat: Courtship in Twentieth Century America, Beth Bailey describes the societal changes that led to our current dating and marriage culture and the new phase of life we now know as extended adolescence:

Because young people were released, to a great extent, from adult responsibilities and decisions, the act of choosing a lifelong mate did not seem so immediately important. Within youth culture, the emphasis in courtship shifted to the social and recreational process of dating…

In a span of about 50 years, we went from supervised courtship with the expectation that marriage would be the end result to casual, recreational dating and, eventually, cohabitation as an accepted precursor or replacement for marriage. As a result of these cultural changes, not only has the marriage age crept steadily upward, but so has the divorce rate. Currently around 50% of new marriages end in divorce, compared to 8% in 1900 and 25% in the early 70s, when no-fault divorce laws appeared.

In light of these statistics, I’d like to suggest four compelling reasons why marrying earlier in life (perhaps by the mid-20s) might be beneficial.

Sex Therapy on the Rise

I saw on Drudge that sex therapy with the use of surrogates is on the rise:

MIAMI (CBS4) – Sex therapists in South Florida say they are seeing an increasing number of patients using sexual surrogates to overcome intimacy and performance problems.

A sex surrogate is a licensed counselor who works with single people suffering from sexual problems to overcome their issues, often by serving as a surrogate to allow them to practice overcoming the sexual issue they are trying to overcome….

Dr. Sonjia Kenya said sexual surrogates working with patients in South Florida are helping adults with autism, wounded warriors, and mid-life virgins.

“They’re professional and successful in every other capacity of their life, but they’ve never hugged anyone intimately, or been massaged without all of their clothes off or walked down the street holding someone’s hand,” Kenya said.

Sessions with a surrogate range from learning to flirt, hold hands, and touch to full blown sexual intercourse.

I am not sure how I feel about this. On one hand, it is beneficial for those with crippling fear or a lack of social skills to learn how to feel safe with a sex surrogate, on the other, this practice has the potential to harm. What is your take on sexual surrogates?

Bridget Jones III

Bridget Jones will write a third diary for a movie. This diary will start 13 years after Bridget Jones, The Edge of Reason. The Telegraph speculates about what this fortysomething diary might involve:

 In the first diary, Bridget was in her thirties, so the new material should make her in at least her late forties. We can only speculate then how Bridget’s new diary – or more likely blog – would start: Inappropriate tweets 10, followers 95 (down five following yesterday’s said inappropriateness), hours wasted on match.com 7. 2012′s Bridget would surely be an avid Internet dater, going after the younger men. She’d be sniping about ex-boyfriends – perhaps ex-husbands – not over cocktails, but on Facebook, and debating the trials of parenthood on a Mumsnet forum. Yep, Fielding can have a lot of fun with 4G-enabled Bridget, but you can bet the bits that will stay the same.

Sally Newell has good instincts. While the naive antics and mishaps of this ditzy single woman in her thirties entertained in part because she was only a little bit pathetic, if fortysomething Bridget still hasn’t gotten her act together, then there will be no entertainment, just pity. But Newell’s conclusion caught my eye. Bridget Jones first appeared in a running column in The Independent in 1995. From one of those first columns:

Bridget’s friend Jude said: “We women are only vulnerable because we are a pioneer generation. In 20 years’ time, men won’t even dare start with F***wittage because we will just laugh in their faces.”

Well, here we are, almost 20 years on, and according to the dispatches from the hook up culture, men regularly dare to start not with just sex wittage but straight up propositions. Women don’t laugh at them but sleep with them. Women are still vulnerable, but you are a patronizing jerk if you say so. And according to the feminist orthodoxy, this is progress.

When Marxists Make the Anti-Family Argument Honestly

Isn’t it great when Marxists eschew the Saul Alinsky strategy of obscuring their unpopular objectives and instead return to the New Left tradition of openly stating their destructive goals?

Please, by all means, start telling us all about how you want to destroy each institution that sustains Western civilization.

Check out this fantastic piece at The New Inquiry by Madeleine Schwartz, “The Anti-Family,” lamenting that MTV’s Teen Mom show “does not attempt radical advocacy”:

In presenting these relationships in with dignity, Teen Mom acknowledges what it viewers may not wish to know: this is the shape of the family in America today. The show does not attempt radical advocacy, but it does understand that the most fundamental patterns in American life can’t be covered up. Teen motherhood, single motherhood, unmarried cohabitation—these are not plagues or social ills that pose a threat to the otherwise normal structures of everyday life. They are our new social reality.

What the show doesn’t get to is that this is a good thing.

There is nothing wrong with teenage or single motherhood. The things children need: economic livelihood, emotional support and an education, are not dependent on a nuclear family structure. Poverty is poverty whether it’s endured by two people or four. A couple cannot raise a child better than one can. Once we get rid of the idea that marriage is the privileged form of cohabitation and that women cannot raise children without the help of a man—ideas that the Left has been working to eradicate for decades—there is no reason that a teen should not be financially and emotionally assisted for her choice to have a family. The potential diffusion of the family (as the New York Times recently reported, it doesn’t look like the trends will stop anytime soon) is one of the most exciting things to happen to the American social pattern since sexual liberation. It means the end of what were just decades ago universal truths: every household must be headed by a breadwinning man; only when married will a woman have social value.

The problem is not teen motherhood. The problem is the legal system that makes the lives of teenage and single parents impossible. The shaming and belittling of teenage mothers is not just rhetoric: Teenage parents are actively discriminated against. Teen parents cannot receive financial assistance unless they live with their parents or marry. They cannot get welfare if they are not enrolled in an educational program.. In some cases, the state can deny all benefits to babies born to unmarried teenage parents. Welfare reform has taken money earmarked for families in need and diverted it toward programs aimed at promoting marriage and abstinence (For example: “Laugh Your Way to a Better Marriage”). All of this comes on top of the routine discriminations against single parents—higher insurance and tax rates, difficulties in obtaining housing and jobs—and those against the poor, who with the Hyde Amendment may not even have been able to abort if they had wanted. These policies were created with the explicit goal encouraging a two-parent model. They make any other option out of the question.

Really make a point to enter the parallel dimension and read the whole thing.

One almost reads stuff like this and wonders if it’s some Onion-style parody of Marxism. “The problem is the legal system that makes the lives of teenage and single parents impossible.” Translation: the real problem is that the United States has not fully implemented a wealth redistribution apparatus to subsidize teenage moms who “choose” to become single parents. Hmm… How might anyone manage that in the next four years?

About Madeleine Schwartz, whose work I look forward to following:

About

I have written for The Believer, The New Yorker online, The New Inquiry and The Daily, among other places. My work has been referenced in The Atlantic and The Economist.

Until May 2012, I was an undergraduate at Harvard, where I studied ancient and Renaissance history. As a student, I wrote a column about women at the university for The Crimson, was an editor at The Advocate and worked for the head of the Harvard library. From 2010 to 2011, I was a Ledecky Fellow at Harvard Magazine.

I am currently studying at Oxford as a Henry Fellow.

I wonder how how much money Schwartz has spent on her education…

Related at PJ Lifestyle:

‘Feminist Progress Right Now Largely Depends on the Existence of the Hookup Culture.’

What Are YOUR Five Favorite Classic Rock Songs?

Besides sex, politics and religion no topic stimulates aging baby boomer cocktail party conversation more than classic rock music. For this is our music; we grew up with it and it is the soundtrack of our lives.

Previously, I have written that asking baby boomers to name their first rock concert is always an engaging conversation starter.

And here is another musical topic, just as engaging – ask boomers to name their five favorite classic rock songs.

Fueled by some adult beverages, this discussion could last until it is time to go home, which for aging baby boomers always seems to be around 11:00pm.

(Ahh, I remember the good old days when 2:00am was my departure time!)

Do you need a few minutes to name your top five favorites?

(Think of this as a Sudoku exercise for brains over the age of 50.)

While the wheels inside your head go round and round, here are my top five:

Stairway to Heaven  by Led Zeppelin  (See last week’s column)

Kashmir   by Led Zeppelin

Bohemian Rhapsody  by Queen  (See this column from September)

Question  by Moody Blues

While My Guitar Gently Weeps  a Beatles song by George Harrison

Imagine just how much you can learn about a person by knowing their top five classic rock songs! (Obviously my selections prove that I am a complex, confused individual with a colorful past and zest for life!)

Now with the election finally coming to a close next week (at least we hope it will be over next week) this means 50% of your friends and family will be ticked off by the results.

So with family holiday gatherings just around the corner here is some useful advice.

Rather than stab your liberal uncle/aunt/sister/cousin/brother-in-law with the turkey carving knife when the dinner conversation turns to the election results, why not change the topic by asking folks to name their five favorite classic rock songs?

Try this friendly topic changer when the heat begins to rise, because if your family is anything like mine, I wish I had thought of this idea a long time ago.

Are you still contemplating your five favorites? If so, what shall we drink to stimulate the thinking process?  Correction, what is in my refrigerator?

The answer is sake! Gekkeikan Haiku Sake with its 15% alcohol content.            

Lately, I have enjoyed sipping cold sake on the rocks. The bottle, I just noticed has been partially consumed, a sure sign my husband has endorsed my new fad. (After all, he is married to a “complex, confused individual with a colorful past and a zest for life,” so the poor guy needs some relief.)

Gekkeikan Haiku Sake is according to the label: “light, with just a hint of dryness Gekkeikan Haiku brings hundreds of years of sake making experience to the modern palate.”

So when your gathering is boring and needs some lively conversation or it is too lively and relatives are at each other throats, then pour some Gekkeikan Haiku Sake over ice and ask folks to name their five favorite classic rock songs.

This is guaranteed to have the desired effect.

That is until someone yells Freebird and all hell breaks loose!

Sen. Bob Menendez. Prostitutes. Dominican Republic

via Women: Sen. Bob Menendez paid us for sex in the Dominican Republic | The Daily Caller.

Two women from the Dominican Republic told The Daily Caller that Democratic New Jersey Sen. Bob Menendez paid them for sex earlier this year.

In interviews, the two women said they met Menendez around Easter at Casa de Campo, an expensive 7,000 acre resort in the Dominican Republic. They claimed Menendez agreed to pay them $500 for sex acts, but in the end they each received only $100.

The women spoke through a translator in the company of their attorney, Melanio Figueroa. Both asked that their identities remain obscured for fear of reprisals in the Dominican Republic.

When shown a photograph of Sen. Menendez, the women said they recognized him as the man with whom they’d had sexual relations at Casa de Campo this spring. Both said they were brought to the resort with the understanding they would be paid for sex.

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Related at PJ Media:

Andrew Klavan: Three Things We Can Learn From the Menendez Sex Scandal

Related at PJ Lifestyle:

Wayne Brady: Bill Maher Likes His Black Men Violent and His Black Women Prostitutes

Uma Unsimulated?

Why I’m Worried About Raising a Son in Our Upcoming Brave New World of Android Prostitution

How Today’s Young Women Learned To Sing The Truth About Hookup Culture

Lena Dunham, Millennial Sell-Out

via ‘Girls’ creator Lena Dunham loses it with voting/virginity ads – Washington Times.

Not too long ago, I praised Miss Dunham’s critically acclaimed HBO show “Girls” for its candid depiction of the hook-up culture. With its painfully awkward and unerotic sex scenes, the Emmy-nominated show revealed just how grim and degrading sex in the era of post-feminism has become, especially for women.

The show’s message that casual sex leads to the objectification of women stood in direct contrast to the standard pop culture trope — found in shows like “Sex and the City,” magazines like Cosmopolitan, and movies like “No Strings Attached” — that sex with no strings attached empowers girls.

“I felt like I was cruelly duped by much of the television I saw,” Miss Dunham told the New York Times last spring on the eve of the debut of “Girls.”

“I heard so many of my friends saying, ‘Why can’t I have sex and feel nothing?’ It was amazing: that this was the new goal,” she said in another interview with The Times.

Sex, in other words, is not a casual thing. To act like it is leads to the objectification of women.

That was Miss Dunham 1.0.

To Miss Dunham 2.0, women really are just sexual objects, after all. They make important decisions, like voting for president, by consulting what goes on between their legs rather than by what goes on between their ears. As she advises in the ad, “You want to do it with a guy who cares whether you get health insurance and specifically whether you get birth control.”

Translation: The kind of guy you should have sex with (or vote for) is someone whose primary concern is not with who you are, what you want, or what you think, but with you not getting pregnant with his kid. To me, this guy sounds like a jerk. To Miss Dunham, this guy sounds like Barack Obama. This must be a joke right? “The video may be light, but the message is serious,” Miss Dunham tweeted last week.

Read the Whole Thing Right Now.

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Related at PJ Lifestyle:

Who Wants To Lose Their Virginity at the Ballot Box?

Why You Shouldn’t Avoid Lena Dunham and HBO’s Girls

How Today’s Young Women Learned To Sing The Truth About Hookup Culture

‘Feminist Progress Right Now Largely Depends on the Existence of the Hookup Culture.’