If your teenaged son had nightmares after reading "Beloved" in Advanced Placement English class...

... can you imagine responding by seeking to get the book removed from the classroom, engaging in public activism that included talking about the boy's dreams? Quite aside from the censorship angle, is this any way to treat your son?

IN THE COMMENTS: I said:

The book is a pain to read if you're not into [it]. I would never force anyone to read that book. The writing style is enough to give nightmares.

Robert Cook said:

Oh, rather like THE GREAT GATSBY, eh?

Let me answer that here on the front page, because this is important. Yes. It is like "The Great Gatsby." Neither book should be forced on anyone. It's destructive of the capacity to appreciate exactly what is most notable, the strange locutions. If you are not in the mood to get inside those sentences and luxuriate and ideate, it's a damned pain. If you've been assigned the book and so you feel like powering through it, everything that's good about it will feel like a speed bump. People hate speed bumps. These English teachers who imagine they are serving up delight are making it hateful.

I've said this already, but I don't keep repeating it as I've blogged about isolated sentences from "The Great Gatsby" in my "Gatsby" project. So let me point out one place where I made the point clearly:

My initial motivation was love. I thought of all the high school students — I remember being one — who were assigned this book and made to read the whole thing. That being the task, the really interesting sentences are speed bumps. They're completely annoying. You can't take the time to figure them out. What should be loved is hated. Later in life, I reread the book and enjoyed it, because of the worthiness of individual sentences.

The writing style of "Beloved" is, in my opinion, much, much worse than "The Great Gatsby." Chances are, a high school student will resist the project of reading this material, especially since the teacher might not emphasize the artistry of the style. It may be administered medicinally, by a teacher who wants her presumably bland and cosseted students to vicariously inhabit the condition of slavery. This is a terrible idea. Recommend "Beloved" for optional, outside reading and give the students the 19th century narratives written by Americans who were themselves enslaved. That's real and that's free of the pretensions of poetry.

"Barack Obama, the first female president."

A predictable headline — don't you feel you thought of it first? — after Newsweek's "The First Gay President," which played off Toni Morrison's famous declaration about Bill Clinton.

Do you regret referring to Bill Clinton as the first black President?...

People misunderstood that phrase. I was deploring the way in which President Clinton was being treated, vis-à-vis the sex scandal that was surrounding him. I said he was being treated like a black on the street, already guilty, already a perp. I have no idea what his real instincts are, in terms of race.

The "first female president" riff comes from WaPo's Dana Milbank. He doesn't mean it in the Toni Morrison way — that Obama's getting the kind of shabby/unfair treatment typically aimed at women — but in the way Morrison was misunderstood. Milbank's evidence for his proposition is that Obama has gone on “The View” 4 times and that he gave a commencement speech at Barnard. Obama is. speaking to women, boosting them, pleasing them, hoping to get something in return. Hello! He's not getting treated like a woman. He's not even acting like a woman. He's acting like a man, angling for the favor of women.

Milbank admits it:

His reelection campaign has been working for months to exploit the considerable gender gap, which puts him far ahead of likely GOP rival Mitt Romney among women. But Monday’s activities veered into pandering, as Obama brazenly flaunted his feminine mystique.

Pandering. Let's consult the OED:

1. trans. To act as a pander to; to minister to the gratification of (another's desire or lust)....

 2. intr. To act as a pander; to minister to the immoral urges or distasteful desires of another, or to gratify a person with such desires. Also in weakened use: to indulge the tastes, whims, or weaknesses of another. Now usu. with to.

Sorry. Pandering to women is not acting like a woman.  (Or being treated like a woman.)

And Milbank doesn't really know what "the feminine mystique" means. Betty Friedan defined her term clearly in her classic book, in the first paragraph of the first chapter, which was famously titled "The Problem With No Name":

The problem lay buried, unspoken, for many years in the minds of American women. It was a strange stirring, a sense of dissatisfaction, a yearning that women suffered in the middle of the twentieth century in the United States. Each suburban wife struggled with it alone. As she made the beds, shopped for groceries, matched slipcover material, ate peanut butter sandwiches with her children, chauffeured Cub Scouts and Brownies, lay beside her husband at night—she was afraid to ask even of herself the silent question—“Is this all?”

The "mystique" — she says a few pages later — was the pervasive cultural belief in "feminine fulfillment" in the home...

... the American suburban housewife, kissing their husbands goodbye in front of the picture window, depositing their stationwagonsful of children at school, and smiling as they ran the new electric waxer over the spotless kitchen floor. They baked their own bread, sewed their own and their children’s clothes, kept their new washing machines and dryers running all day. They changed the sheets on the beds twice a week instead of once, took the rug-hooking class in adult education, and pitied their poor frustrated mothers, who had dreamed of having a career. Their only dream was to be perfect wives and mothers; their highest ambition to have five children and a beautiful house, their only fight to get and keep their husbands. They had no thought for the unfeminine problems of the world outside the home; they wanted the men to make the major decisions. They gloried in their role as women, and wrote proudly on the census blank: “Occupation: housewife.”

No way Obama was "flaunting" his feminine fulfillment in the house. Presumably, Dana Milbank (who is a man) thinks he can pontificate about female matters and use a feminist catchphrase and give it whatever meaning it seems to have to him. He's got a longstanding column in the Washington Post, so he feels he can do that. Ironically, that feeling is utterly the opposite of feminism. It's patriarchy. And this patriarch, Milbank, is himself pandering to women. It's funny that he's attempting to flatter and impress women by tagging alongside the man he thinks all the women love, Barack Obama.

Milbank tells us that Obama told the college women that "'Congress would get a lot more done' if more women were there." And Obama gave the women the supposedly good news that "more and more women are out-earning their husbands. You’re more than half of our college graduates and master’s graduates and PhDs." (Presumably, he didn't tell them they're going to have a hell of a time finding a mate on their level.) Milbank goes on:

And they can look good doing it! “You can be stylish and powerful, too,” he said. “That’s Michelle’s advice.” 

And this makes him "a woman"... how? Oh, what's the point of looking for reason in Milbank's lame obeisance to the alpha male?

There were some ironies in the appearance. When the White House asked Barnard for the commencement speaking role, the college dumped its original speaker, Jill Abramson. In addition to being an actual woman, Abramson is the first of her sex to become executive editor of the New York Times.

Obama made no mention of Abramson, but he did mention that he knows the past three Barnard commencement speakers, including Hillary Rodham Clinton, whose presidential aspirations Obama dashed.

Ha ha. Step aside, ladies. The patriarch is here.

What do Bob Dylan, Toni Morrison, John Glenn, and Madeleine Albright have in common?

Obama is giving them all a medal — the Presidential Medal of Freedom.

Speaking for freedom, Bob's got an old song called "I Shall Be Free." It says:

Well, my telephone rang it would not stop
It’s President Kennedy callin’ me up
He said, “My friend, Bob, what do we need to make the country grow?”
I said, “My friend, John, Brigitte Bardot
Anita Ekberg
Sophia Loren”
(Put ’em all in the same room with Ernest Borgnine!)

It's not a slow jam, but like that Obama's slow jam the other day, it got that idea that sexual stimulation is what the country needs. (Speaking of old, there's that old Woody Allen joke: "I ... interestingly had, uh, dated ... a woman in the Eisenhower Administration ... briefly ... and, uh, it was ironic to me 'cause, uh . . . 'cause I was trying to, u-u-uh, do to her what Eisenhower has been doing to the country for the last eight years.)

Bob's most famous reference to the President is in "It's Alright, Ma (I'm Only Bleeding)":

While preachers preach of evil fates
Teachers teach that knowledge waits
Can lead to hundred-dollar plates
Goodness hides behind its gates
But even the president of the United States
Sometimes must have to stand naked

Lest you think that was sexy-naked, the year was 1965, and the President was LBJ.



Finally, back to the subject of freedom, here's one of my favorite obscure Bob Dylan songs, from the album we listened to all the time in college, "New Morning":

If dogs run free, then why not we
Across the swooping plain?
My ears hear a symphony
Of two mules, trains and rain
The best is always yet to come
That’s what they explain to me
Just do your thing, you’ll be king
If dogs run free

Run, dogs, run!

Romney having trouble raising money from Jewish donors who say they prefer "the Jewish candidate" — Michele Bachmann.

What's going on here? Republican fund raisers are exploiting Obama's weak support for Israel, but Mitt Romney is not doing so well with Jewish donors. If these donors aren't responding to Romney, and if they are indeed calling Bachmann "the Jewish candidate," are they really making a mistake, as the NY Post puts it, not realizing that she's Christian? I doubt it! Bachmann flaunts her Christianity, and her critics critique her for it. And a mere mistake could simply be corrected.

[S]ome in Romney's camp have been wondering whether Bachmann and her allies are pushing the "Jewish" rumor to help their own fund-raising, sources said.

Some! The dreaded some! Sources said. Maybe some in Romney's camp are pushing the Jewish rumor rumor to to help their own fund-raising!

The NY Post article goes on to say:

[Bachmann] has enjoyed strong popularity among Jewish voters and often talks about her stay on a kibbutz during the summer of 1974, when she was a teenager.

In a speech to the American Israel Political Action Committee last year, Bachmann recalled being guarded by soldiers while working on the kibbutz.

"While we were working, the soldiers were walking around looking for land mines," she said. "I really learned a lot in Israel."

She went on to say, "I am a Christian, but I consider my heritage Jewish, because it is the foundation, the roots of my faith as a Christian."

Bachmann also told an AIPAC gathering earlier this year that she and her family make sure each year to attend at least one Jewish-theme play or movie.

I think if any of these donors are calling Michele Bachmann "the Jewish candidate" they mean it in the figurative and satirical sense that Toni Morrison used when she called Bill Clinton the first black President.

People misunderstood that phrase. I was deploring the way in which President Clinton was being treated, vis-à-vis the sex scandal that was surrounding him. I said he was being treated like a black on the street, already guilty, already a perp. I have no idea what his real instincts are, in terms of race.

There's a somewhat common phrase "honorary jew." It's noted in the Urban Dictionary. It turns up over 20,000 Google hits, and, on the first page, we see discussion of whether Sarah Palin and, elsewhere, Hillary Clinton should be counted as "honorary Jews." Here's a cute blog post about Sarah Palin, noting 10 reasons why Palin counts as a Jew. You get the idea. The big one is support for Israel.

What might have motivated the Romney people to get the idea out there that Michele Bachmann is really Jewish? It could be to generate unease among voters who have some anti-Semitism.Think of the rumor that Barack Obama is really Muslim. The Romney people should not want people to think they meant to ignite that kind of suspicion about Bachmann. Oddly, Romney himself has to deal with the antagonism toward his religion — the religion he actually follows. You'd think his campaign folk would be more sensitive. It's almost as if they're trying to generate a rumor that Bachmann's not Christian at all to deal with his problem with some people thinking Mormons aren't Christian enough (or at all).

But what was the point of saying that the prospective donors are mistaken about such a basic fact about Bachmann? If you're trying to warm people up to your candidate, you don't normally insult them!

UPDATE: I'm told this proves she's not Jewish:

Maureen Dowd says "Rush Limbaugh... mocks 'Imam Obama' as 'America’s first Muslim president'" but what did he actually say?

Here's Dowd's column. You can search the radio show's transcripts here. It was a joke:

"If it was laudatory to call Bill Clinton America's first black president, why can't we call Imam Obama America's first Muslim president?"

To be fair, Dowd's use of "mocks" could be said to acknowledge it as a joke. But come on. She says:

Many people still have a confused view of Muslims, and the president seems unable to help navigate the country through its Islamophobia. It is a prejudice stoked by Rush Limbaugh....

If you're going to worry that comments plant the wrong ideas in people's heads, you should be more careful about the ideas you plant. Dowd took a Limbaugh phrase out of context. (Hey! Remember last month, when we were hyper-sensitive about the problem of taking quotes out of context?) In context, it was, first, a question, and second, always only a comparison to the famous Toni Morrison characterization of Bill Clinton as the first black president:

Years ago, in the middle of the Whitewater investigation, one heard the first murmurs: white skin notwithstanding, this is our first black President. Blacker than any actual black person who could ever be elected in our children’s lifetime. After all, Clinton displays almost every trope of blackness: single-parent household, born poor, working-class, saxophone-playing, McDonald's-and-junk-food-loving boy from Arkansas.

 "Trope" — I love that. AKA stereotype.

And when virtually all the African-American Clinton appointees began, one by one, to disappear, when the President's body, his privacy, his unpoliced sexuality became the focus of the persecution, when he was metaphorically seized and bodysearched, who could gainsay these black men who knew whereof they spoke?

 Ha. You know how I feel about "gainsay." It's the red flag of bullshit.

The message was clear "No matter how smart you are, how hard you work, how much coin you earn for us, we will put you in your place or put you out of the place you have somehow, albeit with our permission, achieved. You will be fired from your job, sent away in disgrace, and--who knows?--maybe sentenced and jailed to boot. In short, unless you do as we say (i.e., assimilate at once), your expletives belong to us."

(Shouldn't that be "all your expletives are belong to us"?)

Now, we all know that Bill Clinton is not actually black, so to say Obama is the first Muslim president in the way that Bill Clinton is the first black president actually implies that Obama is not a Muslim. As in: Christian faith notwithstanding, this is our first Muslim President. More Muslim than any actual Muslim person who could ever be elected in our children’s lifetime.

In context, please!

And answer the question: If it was laudatory to call Bill Clinton America's first black president, why doesn't the phrase "first Muslim president" work the same way?

There are some good answers to that question:

1. Back in 1998, when Morrison wrote her essay, Americans — or at least the Americans she was writing for — really did think it would be a fine thing to have a black president, but today, when Rush Limbaugh said that, Americans have a big problem with the idea of a Muslim president and Rush knows that.

2. Since we know Bill Clinton isn't black, calling him black creates no confusion. Calling Obama a Muslim, even as a trope, plays with — stokes — the doubts people have.

Bottom line: Am I criticizing Dowd? Only a little. She's stoking the misunderstandings of Rush Limbaugh that she knows NYT readers have. She doesn't care about giving him his due. But that's okay. He feeds on the things like this. I'm sure he'll have his fun on tomorrow's show. And it will give him license to spend a few more minutes massaging Obama-Muslim, Obama-Muslim, Obama-Muslim... into the listeners' confused mushy heads.

Here's the post where I collect my favorite quotes from the past year.

This is an annual feature of the Althouse blog. I go though the whole year of posts and pick out the quotes that I like best.

"I have so many opportunities from this country. I just don't want to see us fall backwards, you know?" Hillary Clinton, tearing up for the ladies in New Hampshire.

"It was a creed written into the founding documents that declared the destiny of a nation. Yes we can. It was whispered by slaves and abolitionists as they blazed a trail toward freedom through the darkest of nights. Yes we can...." Barack Obama.

"We know how to talk about eatin' fried squirrel." Mike Huckabee.

"A cartoon character is how I see myself and it's worked for me for 40 years. I would rather be a cartoon than a genius!" Dolly Parton.

"Because I'm an ordinary person, I thought that they meant, 'What's your biggest weakness?' If I had gone last I would have known what the game was. And then I could have said, 'Well, ya know, I like to help old ladies across the street. Sometimes they don't want to be helped. It's terrible.'" Barack Obama.

"In addition to keen intelligence, integrity and a rare authenticity, you exhibit something that has nothing to do with age, experience, race or gender and something I don't see in other candidates. That something is a creative imagination which coupled with brilliance equals wisdom. It is too bad if we associate it only with gray hair and old age. Or if we call searing vision naivete. Or if we believe cunning is insight. Or if we settle for finessing cures tailored for each ravaged tree in the forest while ignoring the poisonous landscape that feeds and surrounds it." Toni Morrison raved about Barack Obama.

"Doesn't it seem like she's being pimped out in some weird sort of way?" David Shuster, talking inanely about Chelsea Clinton.

"Listen, I'll never forget you. You were the only guys who would listen to me for a couple of months. Do you think I'd ever forget you?" John McCain, on the phone with the bloggers.

"I am not saying goodbye to you. I only wish to fight as a soldier of ideas." Fidel Castro stepping down as president of Cuba.

"I can no more disown him than I can disown the black community. I can no more disown him than I can my white grandmother." Barack Obama gives a speech about Jeremiah Wright.

"I don't get too high when I'm high, and I don't get too low when I'm low." Barack Obama, explaining that he has "the right temperament for the presidency."

"Oh, damn. Where did you come from? I’m white. I’m entitled. There’s a black man stealing my show." The Rev. Michael Pfleger channels Hillary's inner voice.

"Oh, this is so terrible: The people they want her. Oh, this is so terrible: She is winning the general election, and he is not." Bill Clinton channels the media's inner voice.

"Maintain." Bloomberg flips out.

"I've been to 57 states." Best Obama gaffe.

"Ladies, doesn't it all sound too familiar? Once again, a woman is told to put her dreams aside to benefit a man, to benefit a party of men. Obama, a freshman senator who has paid no dues, is treated like anointed royalty; while a hard-working woman who has battled her entire life to break the glass ceiling is treated like a leftover meal, and thrown down the garbage disposal. You know how this feels. You've been in Hillary's shoes. You've seen the pretty boys that come in the office, almost no experience. They glad-hand the boss; they take credit for your work, talk a good game with real specifics, and then what happens? They get promoted while you, the hardworking backbone of the office, are told to go fetch the coffee or set up meetings for these dweebs that couldn't carry your bra if they had to." Rush Limbaugh channels the feminists.

"We now know who the Democratic nominee will be." Tim Russert, speaking prematurely, on May 26. 18 days later, he died, prematurely.

"My name is such a vanilla, white-girl American name." Ashley Holmes, self-renamed Ashley Hussein.

"This was the moment when the rise of the oceans began to slow and our planet began to heal." Barack Obama at his most megalomaniacal.

And this is the moment when I hit the wall. This gets us through the first half of the year. You'll have to wait for Part 2.