"I remember the fur coats of the girls returning from Miss This-or-That’s..."

"... and the chatter of frozen breath and the hands waving overhead as we caught sight of old acquaintances, and the matchings of invitations: 'Are you going to the Ordways'? the Herseys'? the Schultzes'?' and the long green tickets clasped tight in our gloved hands."

That other sentence — "At the hookah bar, Jordan and Emily Wernet, a 25-year-old freelance illustrator of comics and tattoos, joked about the grotesqueness of a hand appearing inside a belly and about 'parasites,' 'popping one out,' and 'horrible little grubs' in the midst of more serious conversation about their fears of relinquishing sole ownership of one’s own body" —  made some readers feel that there was a "Gatsby" sentence gestating somewhere inside the womb of my Blogger account, so I thought I'd better pop out this post. I hope you don't find it grotesque, this string of words that F. Scott Fitzgerald, in full possession of the autonomy of authorship, determined to be, in fact, a sentence, worthy of a place in the pages of "The Great Gatsby."

And I hope it's not horrible that I ripped it out of his context and put it in my context as I, clasping tightly to my bloggerly autonomy, decided that this — this! — is a blog post. It is not for the professors, journalists, and literary critics to resolve the difficult question of when some quotes from this-or-that tossed together with some connective prose amount to a blog post. It's enough to say there's a divergence of thinking on this most sensitive and difficult question, and therefore it's up to me to decide what is worthy of publication here. My blog, my choice.

This "Gatsby" sentence has a simple structure. The subject is "I" and the predicate is "remember." How many sentences in the history of humanity begin "I remember...."? There's no end to where you can go from there (especially if you're not hung up on nonfiction and truthtelling). So string along the memories — the memorabilia, the "things... worthy of being remembered."

I remember the Michael Jackson memorabilia, the Bruce Lee memorabilia, the Martin Luther King Jr. memorabilia, Malcolm X memorabilia, the Jimi Hendrix memorabilia, the $43,350 Rolex watch, the fur capes and parkas....

I mean... I remember the fur coats.... They — the girls returning from Miss This-or-That’s — weren't wearing their fur in cape or parka form back in 1922.

Things remembered: fur coats, chatter, hands waving, matchings of invitations, and long green tickets. These remembered things give the reader a sense of the incompletely delineated human beings. Who are the unnamed girls and who are the "we"? There's the overspecificity of the people offstage, Ordways, the Herseys, and the Schultzes. There's the silly half-specificity of Miss This-or-That. These people — or, really, places (hence the possessive) — are, like fur coats and gloves, appurtenances to the human beings we are trying to see in this picture.

This is a mass of faceless humanity, cluttered with hands, waving and clasping. Hands appears twice in the sentence — the grotesqueness of a hand appearing — first, waving (connecting with others), and second, clasping a ticket (intent on getting to one's predetermined destination). The hands of the others reaching out are grubby and horrible and we've got a fear of relinquishing sole ownership of our long green tickets.

"At the hookah bar, Jordan and Emily Wernet, a 25-year-old freelance illustrator of comics and tattoos, joked about the grotesqueness..."

"... of a hand appearing inside a belly and about 'parasites,' 'popping one out,' and 'horrible little grubs' in the midst of more serious conversation about their fears of relinquishing sole ownership of one’s own body."

That's quite a sentence. I present it for your analysis, both formal and substantive. Free free to click here and take in the full context, which is quite interesting (and recently pointed at by Instapundit).

I wonder if Emily has designed tattoos for women's bellies that depict the illusion of seeing through to a distended womb with something grotesque inside.

"15 Things Overachievers Do."

Penelope Trunk's list is — in typical Trunk style — highly provocative, full of surprising details and counterintuitiveness.

2. They use pharmaceuticals. Adderall is de rigeur [sic] for the high-powered jobs in high-powered cities...

8. They get pregnant at 25. If they’re a woman, that is. It’s clear that only a very small, anomalous group of women can have a high-powered job when they have young kids. So women should make a plan to have kids early, and then they can position themselves for a high-powered job once their kids are all grown up....

12. They don’t write books. The book industry is dead. They have no control over distribution channels and they have no control over author publicity, so the value publishers add in the book business is pretty much zero.... So for now, if you have an idea, put it in a blog. Harvard Business Review says that people who are serious about ideas are blogging.

13. They don’t let themselves get fat....

Read the whole thing... and this other thing that — in accordance with item #15 — she stole the idea from.

"Kate Middleton's pregnancy: 10 stories I don't want to read."

Aw, come on. We're not supposed to amuse ourselves with the reproduction of the royals?

"The Duchess of Cambridge is expecting a baby..."

"... St James's Palace has announced."

The dominant twin.

What must this do to your mind, long term, going through this dramatic experience?

When a man agrees to be his ex-girlfriend's sperm donor...

... with a physician as intermediary and thereby avoids the obligation of paying child support, should he succeed if, later, he asks a court to require the mother to share custody of the child?

The man is the actor Jason Patric, who says he gave the sperm on condition that the woman not seek child support, at a time when, he says, he didn't have enough money.

I'll add what I'd put on a law school exam: If you need more factual information in order to answer, tell me what it is and why you need it?

Does Gov. Hickenlooper to refer to Obama's "pregnancy"?

Listen closely. I know Democrats are always thinking about pregnancy, but this is hilarious:



The Colorado governor obviously intended to refer to the "first few month's of [Obama's] presidency," but it sure sounds as though he says "the first few month's of his pregnancy."

I recorded (very roughly) from today's gripping episode of "Meet the Press."

"What's happened to humour? We're becoming American. Everyone gets so angry over everything."

Says Rupert Everett, who is openly gay, which I mention because he's also saying things like:

"Why do queens want to go and get married in churches? Obviously this crusty old pathetic, Anglican church – the most joke-ish church of all jokey churches – of course they don't want to have queens getting married. It's kind of understandable that they don't; they're crusty old calcified freaks. But why do we want to get married in churches? I don't understand that, myself, personally. I loathe heterosexual weddings; I would never go to a wedding in my life. I loathe the flowers, I loathe the fucking wedding dress, the little bridal tiara. It's grotesque. It's just hideous. The wedding cake, the party, the champagne, the inevitable divorce two years later. It's just a waste of time in the heterosexual world, and in the homosexual world I find it personally beyond tragic that we want to ape this institution that is so clearly a disaster."

And:

"I can't think of anything worse than being brought up by two gay dads... For me, being gay was about wanting to do the opposite of the straight world, so I think that's where my problems in this particular area come from. For me, personally, the last thing I would like in the entire world would be to go through cocktailing my sperm with my boyfriend and finding some grim couple in Ohio who are gluten-free and who you pay $75,000 to have your baby. To me it feels absolutely hideous."

His memoir is called "Vanished Years."

"'I am not particularly happy with Obama,' the retired auto-parts storeowner said of the man he supported in 2008."

"His wife, walking beside him on the Military Ridge state trail, overheard him voicing doubt. 'What about my reproductive rights?' she asked, clearly upset. 'No, we are voting for Obama!'"

Auto-parts... lady parts... somewhere in Wisconsin. 

Discussing his uncertainty, the retired couple walked off along the popular recreational trail in this small town...

How old does a woman have to be before she stops thinking first and above all about her reproductive rights? Well, at least they are still "discussing his uncertainty" as they walk away, even though she made a declarative statement about how the 2 of them are voting. Maybe he needed to work through his feelings to understand why he is so fuzzy about his reasons for doing what he is going to do.

"Firestone wanted to eliminate the following things: sex roles, procreative sex, gender, childhood, monogamy, mothering, the family unit..."

"... capitalism, the government, and especially the physiological phenomena of pregnancy and childbirth. She wanted to mechanize reproduction — gestating fetuses in artificial wombs — and raise the offspring communally, treating them no differently from adults at the earliest possible age."

Shulamith Firestone, dead now, at the age of 67.

Why did Firestone want to eliminate gender? She argued - taking Marxism and skewing it -- that all forms of oppression were rooted in an antagonism between men and women.

Here's the book — have you read it? — "The Dialectic of Sex: The Case for Feminist Revolution," published in 1970.

"Ultimately the question is, does 'mankind' really need men?"

"With human cloning technology just around the corner and enough frozen sperm in the world to already populate many generations, perhaps we should perform a cost-benefit analysis."

[W]omen live longer, are healthier and are far less likely to commit a violent offense. If men were cars, who would buy the model that doesn’t last as long, is given to lethal incidents and ends up impounded more often?

That's from the NYT, which is, of course, written for women. Stuff like this is considered light entertainment. It will be interspersed with serious articles about the "war on women." Enjoy!

***

That last link goes to a search within the NYT for "war on women." I was amused by the old things that popped up.

From 1927: "Berlin Men War on Women Who 'Doll Up' at Meals."

Also 1927: "Stanley (Wis.) Bachelors War On Nuptial Lures by Women." (I don't want to buy the article, but I can see this snippet: "... of Stanley have declared 'war on women.' An organization has been tentatively for 'mutual protection from devices now used by the fair sex to entangle single...'")

1911: "WAR ON WOMEN GAMBLERS.; Chicago Detective Visits Fashionable Houses to Stop Poker Games." ("Chief of Police McWeeny declared war to-day on poker playing by women in private.")

1972: "The Church's War on Women." ("Pope Paul VI has reaffirmed the rules of priestly celibacy and debarred women from formal investiture by bishops in Roman Catholic orders. There were to be no female deacons, let alone female priests.")

1943: "Dr. Mead, Anthropologist, Reports On Effect of War on Women's Garb; She Tells Members of Fashion Group, Inc., That Utility Clothes in England Will Do Much to Reduce Class Consciousness." (What? Again I'm not paying to get to the article, but, Googling, I found a Smithsonian article saying that during WWII, the U.S. and British commands commissioned Margaret Mead to try to figure out why American and British soldiers had trouble understanding each other. She discovered that the British couldn't answer the question what's your favorite color without getting all complicated about it and concluded it had to do with their class consciousness.)

Most apt, when it comes to the 2012 election, is this February 2011 editorial, "The War on Women."

These are treacherous times for women’s reproductive rights and access to essential health care. House Republicans mistakenly believe they have a mandate to drastically scale back both even as abortion warfare is accelerating in the states. To stop them, President Obama’s firm leadership will be crucial. So will the rising voices of alarmed Americans.

I'm guessing that the current usage of the term began right there.

"Your 'Pregnant' Other."

#1 on a list of "The Five Worst Pregnancy Trends on Pinterest."

(You'll love the photo!)

Senator Schumer "is known to cajole, nag, and outright pester his staff" about getting married and having babies.

The NYT seems to be celebrating the man for using his position in the workplace to harass underlings about their private lives:

Cupid’s arrow lands where it will, but many of the couples say that Mr. Schumer, a New York Democrat, has an unusual knack for guiding its journey. He keeps close track of office romances, quotes marriage-friendly Scripture (“God to man: be fruitful and multiply”), and is known to cajole, nag, and outright pester his staff (at least those he perceives as receptive to such pestering) toward connubial bliss.

Religion too! He sounds like the Steve Carrell character in "The Office" — the inappropriate boss, who doesn't know the normal boundaries.

Forget Master of the Senate. This is the Yenta of the Senate.

“What’s the holdup?” the senator asks couples who are dillydallying on an engagement. “Did you get a ring yet?” Other could-be-marrieds receive a simple instruction: “Get moving!”

The NYT thinks this is cute, but you know damned well that if a conservative politician were doing this he would be accused of making the workplace a hostile environment.

[H]is focus, like many a politician’s, never strays far from his legacy: first comes Schumer Marriage, then come Schumer Babies.

“Have kids; have a lot of kids,” Mr. Schumer, who has two daughters, is known to intone. “Start early and keep having them.”

Jeez, he's appropriating their marriages and their babies.

Sometimes, Mr. Schumer greets a former staff member, “So, is your wife pregnant again?” Other times, he does not even bother with the question. One former aide, who asked not to be named, recalled seeing the senator bump into a recently married couple, both Schumer alumni. “He just stared down at her midsection and said, ‘Well?’ ”

Staring at a woman's belly as a way to convey the desire that she get pregnant? War-on-women warriors would be calling for his head if he were a Republican.

“Our staff is a family,” Mr. Schumer said, his voice often taking a paternal tone. “I want them to be happy. I get worried that they’ll be lonely. So I encourage them. If I think it’s a good match, I try to gently — as gently as I can — nudge it.”

Picture Steve Carrell saying that directly into the camera.

“It brings him joy,” said Risa Heller, a former communications director, one of more than a dozen former aides who recounted his sayings, often while imitating his voice. “He picks good people to work for him, and when they pick each other, it’s even better.”

You want to get ahead in the Democratic Party power structure? Submit to the matchmaking... and make some babies. I'd like to know more about how this picking of "good people" is carried out. Are good looking women chosen to provide wives for the men? Do the women continue climbing in the party hierarchy or do they retreat into babymaking and husband supporting?

I'd like 10 years of data.

"What sexbots will do is widen the already growing chasm between the sexes, until only the fittest of the fit... can successfully leap across it to woo a human companion in the way that our genetic overlord intended."

Writes Heartiste, noting that "fitness is whatever gets one’s genes to the next generation, whether beneficial to civilization or note." I got there via Instapundit, who got there via Helen Smith, who makes the present-day observation that "20% of the alpha males [get] about 80% of the women" and says:

Those men who have more trouble getting women turn to porn and seem to ignore or be oblivious to women. I wonder how Sexbots will further change the landscape?

Here's my long-term view of that landscape. As men get absorbed into virtual-reality sex, there will be sex machines for women, replete with the elaborate stories women find titillating (including many things that are too dangerous to pursue in real life about which they currently read voraciously). The women, further relieved of motivation to form loving partnerships with men, will turn more and more to the government for support. Witness "The Life of Julia." There will be more and more of that as men depart from real life and submerge themselves more deeply in machines and women consequently feel more entitled to the government's functioning in the role from which men have escaped.

Women have the voting majority, and what will stop us from employing it in the interest of women as men demonstrate their lack of interest in us?

Will women still want to raise children? Some will, especially when it is well incentivized with government support brought about by unstoppable female voting power. We will have our choice of prime semen for artificial insemination. I'm sure the government will provide us with free services and facilitate our selection of the genetic traits we think will make the best children. Who knows what the next generations will be, as mothers produce children not because they found love from a man, but because of their ideas — possibly delusional — about what would make an excellent child? That's a new experiment. Presumably, in a world where men absent themselves from the real-world life of love and relationships, these women will choose, overwhelmingly, to have daughters. Those daughters will grow up and become part of the Electorate of Julias, further depressing any political power for men.

As this process goes on, perhaps that 20%/80% split Dr. Helen observes will be the actual ratio of men to women. But those men will not be alpha men. They won't even be beta men. And the men in the women's sex machines will be The New Alpha+++ Men. There will be no way to go back.

But this can only happen in America and whatever other free, wealthy, technologically advanced democracies there may be. So don't worry. It won't last that long.

"First gay couple to become fathers in UK spend £65k to ensure next child is a girl."

It's illegal to use IVF for sex selection purposes in the UK, so they had to come to America to pursue their goal. Barrie and Tony Drewitt-Barlow already have 4 boys and one girl, and they want another girl — or 2 or 3 — for little Saffron to play with:

The millionaire dad [Barrie] added: 'We can’t wait to spoil our new daughters. I want to buy them pink Prada dresses and babygros. We will recycle too. We are going to use Saffron’s old wicker crib from Harrods, which cost £5,000, and divide one of the £100,000 diamond necklaces she does not wear any more into individual pieces for the babies. And we want to decorate the nursery as a rainforest!'...

Tony said: 'If sex selection was not possible, we would still have more children and love them, whatever their gender. But the technology is available and we wanted girls to balance our family. It causes outrage but I bet most people would do it.... The kids love the idea of getting sisters. They are so close. They are all such different characters, but get along so well.”

Barrie... said: “Saffron’s clothes come from every designer from Gucci and Karen Millen and she has 500 pairs of shoes. We spent £50,000 having her room designed like a swanky London flat with a 39-inch plasma TV and furniture from Harrods. The boys are not as bothered about clothes, but we get them the latest iPads and laptops. People say we should not spoil them, but they deserve it."

We all deserve it, no? The question is: Do you have the money to buy it? They are rich, they can buy what they like? Do you have a problem with that? Or do you think they're choosing the wrong things? And if you do, what business is it of yours?

Is it okay to want a girl because you want a kid that you can dress up in fashionable clothes?
	Yes, but you can't use sex selection technology to get that.
	Yes, and go ahead and use sex selection if you can afford it.
	Yes, and the government should pay for sex selection treatment.
	No, that's the wrong attitude to have, but I'm not going to stop you from buying the technology.
	No, and you should be banned from using technology to get that.
	No, and people like you shouldn't be allowed to have children.
pollcode.com free polls

Wisconsin Citizens Media Co-op drops a load on Scott Walker.

Beginning with an "Editor's Note" — presumably an attempt at deflecting a defamation lawsuit — that reads:

What follows is one woman's account of the Scott Walker she knew at Marquette University. To the extent possible we have verified its accuracy, including the accuracy of details not printed here in order to protect the identities of the people involved. All of the elements are consistent: the principals were at Marquette University when the incidents recounted here allegedly happened, and "Ruth" did have a baby shortly thereafter. However, attempts to reach "Ruth" and her first husband have been unsuccessful, as phone numbers listed for each have been disconnected, and so far we have not been able to independently verify Bernadette's account.

They are orgasmic at Daily Kos — "OMFG!! Scott Walker's Got a Love Child?!?!"

Via Jay (in a comments thread here), who says: "Can you smell the desperation?"

Yes, I can. The recall election is Tuesday. I was going to link to something really desperate in Isthmus this morning, but the Isthmus site seems to be crashed right now. There's a lot of desperation and maybe all the desperados went there at once. Well, this is the link, if it works. The article is called something like Legal Cloud Gathers Over Scott Walker, and it purports to have sources that say that Walker is the target of a criminal investigation. Ah! The site is back. It's "Legal cloud gathers over Scott Walker as recall election approaches":

With the recall election only two days away, federal prosecutors are closing in on Governor Scott Walker, according to veteran political reporter David Shuster, former Attorney General Peg Lautenschlager, and former district attorney Bob Jambois.

In a conference call organized by state Democrats on Saturday evening, June 2, Shuster, Lautenschlager, and Jambois laid out evidence that Walker is a target of a federal investigation.

Wisconsin Democratic Party Communications Director Graeme Zielinski added that there is evidence of wrongdoing after Walker's time as Milwaukee County Executive, and that the investigation includes criminal activity during his time as governor.

Based on conversations with a lawyer who has knowledge of the investigation....

Quite the "legal cloud," no? It's less of a cloud of law than a swarm of Democrats. Desperate Democrats. Embarrassing. You just had a former President appear on behalf of your candidate. Why not a little grace and dignity as you approach the end?

UPDATE: "Daniel Bice, the 'Watchdog' reporter of the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel Online interviewed the anonymous woman who had the baby, but she adamantly denied that Scott Walker was the father according to a comment by Daniel Bice to the linked story." I wonder if Daniel Bice knows anything about the lawyer with knowledge of the federal investigation.

"Ann Althouse pushes back, and she has a point. But watch a few episodes of 16 and Pregnant..."

"... and you might think that 'it’s wrong' is a useful heuristic for people incapable of fully understanding what 'it will be hard' actually means."

Writes Instapundit, pushing back to my pushback on the "Dan Quayle Was Right" article.

Let's take a closer look at this "useful heuristic" concept, which expresses something truly profound about the role of traditional religion and other conservative philosophies in society. Look at what is being admitted. There are a whole lot of people who are insufficiently smart, competent, and emotionally stable to make a decision involving a complex set of factors, so we need to dominate their minds with a starker structure of "right" and "wrong," even where those of us who are really smart and able to process complex factors know it's not really a matter of right and wrong. 

Instapundit continues:

At any rate, after twenty years of hearing SUV drivers described in terms more applicable to Himmler, the 1992 condemnations of moralistic language from political leaders ring particularly hollow.

So... because lefties put their arguments in starkly moralistic terms, it's tiresome to hear about the way righties overuse morality talk. I get the point. In fact, what bugs me the most about lefties — what motivates me to go after lefties much more than righties on this blog — is the way they set themselves up as the good people and prance and stomp all over the place shaming and blaming the people who won't agree with them. Having lived in Madison for the last quarter century, I am fed up with their domineering bullshit. The reason my blog appears to skew conservative — when I am a political moderate — is that I am not surrounded by pious, overbearing right-wingers sneering at me and gasping about what a bad person I am.

BUT: I am not saying that domineering bullshit from righties is okay because lefties do it too or do it more or do it nearer to me. I don't like it.

"Many in India are asking whether the woman routinely referred to as the most beautiful in the world..."

"... and who occupies a place in Indian popular culture akin to Kate Middleton or Victoria Beckham, has an obligation to her fans to lose weight."

6-months after giving birth, Aishwarya Rai hasn't found her way back to that pre-pregnancy look.

One website posted a video, complete with elephant sound effects, entitled "Aishwarya Rai's shocking weight gain", which has been seen more than 500,000 times. "She is a Bollywood actress and it is her duty to look good and fit," suggested one commenter. Another added: "She needs to learn from people like Victoria Beckham who are back to size zero weeks after their delivery."

The criticism has started a debate about Bollywood's attitude towards women and motherhood. "There is a glorification of motherhood in India and Indian cinema," said cinema professor Shohini Ghosh. "But people are confused because they don't know whether to glorify Aishwarya in her new motherhood or lament that she is not looking like a runway model."

"Objects characteristic of business environments, such as briefcases and boardroom tables, make people more competitive..."

"... less cooperative, and less generous. Smells matter too: mere exposure to the scent of an all-purpose cleaner makes people keep their environment cleaner while they eat. In both cases, people were not consciously aware of the effect of the cue on their behavior. Or consider this one: people’s judgments about strangers are affected by whether they are drinking iced coffee or hot coffee! Those given iced coffee are more likely to see other people as more selfish, less sociable, and, well, colder than those who are given hot coffee. This, too, happens quite unconsciously."

From Cass Sunstein and Richard H. Thaler, "Nudge: Improving Decisions About Health, Wealth, and Happiness" (p. 71). From section of the chapter titled "Following the Herd," which deals with "priming," one of the influences on human behavior that government can figure out how to use.

***

I was searching through my ebook of "Nudge" today after writing that post about offering drug-addicted women $300 to get themselves sterilized. Offering money is the crudest way to incentivize behavior you don't want to compel (or can't — ethically or legally — compel), and I was interested in whether Sunstein and Thaler talked about sterilization. They don't, but they do talk about deterring pregnancy:

Teenage girls who see that other teenagers are having children are more likely to become pregnant themselves. Obesity is contagious. If your best friends get fat, your risk of gaining weight goes up.... (Page 55.)

Teenage pregnancy is a serious problem for many girls, and those who have one child, at (say) eighteen, often become pregnant again within a year or two. Several cities, including Greensboro, North Carolina, have experimented with a “dollar a day” program, by which teenage girls with a baby receive a dollar for each day in which they are not pregnant. Thus far the results have been extremely promising. A dollar a day is a trivial cost to the city, even for a year or two, so the plan’s total cost is extremely low, but the small recurring payment is salient enough to encourage teenage mothers to take steps to avoid getting pregnant again. And because taxpayers end up paying a significant amount for many children born to teenagers, the costs appear to be far less than the benefits. Many people are touting “dollar a day” as a model program for helping reduce teenage pregnancies. (Surely there are more such programs to be invented. Consider that a nudge to think of one.) (Page 234.)

Consider that a nudge to think of one? Are you nudged to rethink free birth control?

ADDED: The notion that hot coffee makes people less selfish and more "sociable" reminds me of the Coffee Party. Remember that? The liberal answer to the Tea Party.