Tuesday, March 17, 2009 - Posts
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Seriously, I write about sex, so I know I'm not the best one to ask. But it seems like ever since—well, I want to say ever since the Obamas got elected, it's all sex all the time. At least in the media. Usually, there are periods of time when you'll see more sex-related stories than others. In the spring. If there's a political sex scandal. If another low-ranking celebrity spawns another low-budget sex tape. After election night, I noticed there was a slow but discernible increase in the number of sex-related "news" stories. Sure, there were the obvious ones—the "aren't the Obamas sexy" ones (click here for the latest from the meme that wouldn't die)—and then there were the recession ones—call girls are dropping their rates! housewives are selling sex toys to make extra money! recession sex: here's how to have it!—but I expected at some point for all the sex stories to stop. But they haven't. They keep, well, coming. So, did the Obamas spawn this mini-sex revolution—or was it all that hope—or is it just me?
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If you have a pessimistic nature we live in gratifying times. There are two op-eds (here and here) in the New York Times today that are reminders that while we wait to see if the economy will stabilize or continue its free fall, parts of the world continue to bubble along ominously. These pieces describe the utter catastrophe of the resurgent Taliban both in Pakistan and Afghanistan. It's hard reading: the bombing of schools (the particular life-threatening danger to girls who are brave enough to become literate); the slitting of the throats of journalists and government officials; in Swat, the stringing up of decapitated corpses for being "un-Islamic." One op-ed ends with an ominous line that reminds us why these are not just troubles in distant lands we have had enough of:"[Pakistan] risks becoming a nuclear-armed Afghanistan". And in the Washington Post today is a story about what preventing this—if we can—will cost us. It is about the burial at Arlington Cemetery of 29-year-old Army Capt. Brian Bunting; his not-quite 2 year-old son was given the flag from his coffin. Capt. Bunting was killed last month in Kandahar by a roadside bomb along with three other soldiers. Bunting's widow, Nicki, learned a few days after his death that she was pregnant with their second child.
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Senator Chuck Grassley, Republican from the great state of Iowa, ponders the AIG bonus scandal:
I would suggest the first thing that would make me feel a little bit better toward them if they'd follow the Japanese example and come before the American people and take that deep bow and say, I'm sorry, and then either do one of two things: resign or go commit suicide.
And in the case of the Japanese, they usually commit suicide before they make any apology.
Grassley, of course, voted for bailouts that were structured in such a way as to allow taxpayer dollars to go to bonuses. But he’s not the only guy calling for ritual purification. “The American people,” as Grassley puts it, obviously want to focus their animus on something less nebulous than a broken feedback loop. Jim Cramer will do; anonymous cigar-smoking yacht club members who happen to work at AIG will do as well. Thus we get round-the-clock newspaper coverage of the unremarkable fact that a massive insurance corporation cannot simply rupture its contracts at will.
Grassley has a habit of saying appalling things, but he’s not stupid enough to believe that AIG’s boardroom fatcats are the only movers in this mess. A huge swath of Americans making large numbers of small decisions contributed to our current situation, so you have to wonder how far down the chain of moral culpability Grassley is willing to go. This collapse involved Wall Street bankers hawking mortgage-backed securities based on what they may or may not have known were lousy mortgages. It involved lowly local retail bankers knowingly making sketchy loans because they could just sell them on the secondary market to Fannie and Freddie. One step further down, it involved homeowners pretending they could afford the suburban McMansions of their dreams. I would venture to guess that it even involved some Iowans. But I don’t foresee Grassley calling for the blood of his own constituents.
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Can we talk about Caitlin Flanagan's underminer-y commentary on Michelle Obama's hostessing? Flanagan contributed a short essay to New York Magazine's cover story package on Mrs. O, and the entire thing is a litany of backhanded compliments:
Michelle Obama cuts a pretty figure in her big-and-tall gal ready-to-wear, and she has Joe Kennedy’s understanding of the power of family photographs to advance a political career. Like Hillary she lacks taste; her consumer preferences seem to have been rendered into being by the Mall at Short Hills. But ours is not the moment for taste. Or, for that matter, for a Nancy Reagan/Candy Spelling hyperattention to “gifting.”
Is Flanagan just a clear-eyed Obama observer, ignoring the swoons over Michelle's style and telling it like it is? Or is she just being contrarian to get our attention?
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According to new research in International Studies Quarterly, "members of households with girls tend to be less isolationist, more open to using military means to prosecute foreign policy, and more likely to feel that ongoing conflicts have been beneficial on net than are those who live with boys." Robert Urbatsch, a professor of political science at Iowa State, analyzed data on household composition and political opinions included in the 2004 National Election Study. Controlling for income, religiosity, and education, he found that people in households with girls (a proxy for "parents with daughters") had foreign policy views similar to those of people in households without children. In contrast, people in households with boys reported being significantly less hawkish and more isolationist than both groups—possibly because it is young men who are most likely to enlist. Parents of boys may find the prospect of war more personally threatening.
This seems like a good time to quote Plutarch's "Sayings of Spartan Women":
One woman sent forth her sons, five in number, to war, and, standing in the outskirts of the city, she awaited anxiously the outcome of the battle. And when someone arrived and, in answer to her inquiry, reported that all her sons had met death, she said, "I did not inquire about that, you vile varlet, but how fares our country?" And when he declared that it was victorious, "Then," she said, "I accept gladly also the death of my sons."
Would Spartans with daughters be more intense?
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In Sunday's New York Times Magazine, Peggy Orenstein has an essay about Facebook's impact on today's youth. Orenstein worries about two different, separate things: first, that college-age kids will find it difficult to forge new identities because of their social networking pasts, and second, that Facebook provides such a comforting connection that these members of Gen Y will lose out on "an opportunity for insight, for growth through loneliness."
As an older member of Generation Y, I think Peggy misses the mark a bit. While I'm certain college kids do spend a lot of their time networking socially, there's not a one-to-one correlation between their Facebook selves and their personas in real life (or IRL, as the kids say). Part of the reason Facebook is so popular is that it allows the user to control his or her experience. It truly is possible for an 18-year-old to delete their profiles or to have the wherewithal to defriend the people who made them miserable in high school. Even though they spend a lot of time on their MacBooks, I find it difficult to believe that they're not also disengaging from the computer, having late-night real-person chats with their floor mates, and experimenting with Sartre and sex, just like many college kids before them.
Which brings me to Orenstein's other point: that Facebook somehow alleviates or prevents the loneliness that many young people feel when first leaving the nest. Nothing sounds more alienating than being miserable at college and seeing Sarah's status message pop up about how she's "On her way to the Bon Iver concert with Dave." Being constantly confronted with your friends' social triumphs when you're flailing seems like it would be incredibly lonely-making. Even if your buddies are all similarly depressed or floundering in college, there's still something sterile about the clean lines and ice blue color scheme of Facebook. I find it hard to believe that it's a satisfying replacement for actual human contact, even for those born after 1990.
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