We question the denouncement of Weiner, speculate about the nature of the "arrangement" or "understanding" between Huma and Anthony (and Bill and Hillary), and compare the wrongness of sexting to pornography, adultery, and prostitution:
Showing posts with label Anthony Weiner. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Anthony Weiner. Show all posts
Thursday, 1 August 2013
Wednesday, 31 July 2013
"... and turning herself into a sex object for a man... she does not know — even if she is also turning him into a sex object. Twentieth-century feminism always linked the social progress of women with an expanding sense of self-worth — in the sexual as well as intellectual and professional spheres. A willingness to engage in Internet sex with strangers, however, expresses not sexual empowerment but its opposite — a loneliness and low opinion of oneself that leads to the conclusion that any sexual contact is better than no contact at all."
So writes Susan Jacoby, in the context of the Anthony Weiner story. I suspect that Jacoby was sitting alone at her computer when she wrote that. And I'm sitting alone at my computer writing this now. Is anything infinitely sad about writing at the computer? Is it sadder when you expect someone is waiting to read what you write and you expect them to write back? These days I choose, for each post, whether I want to allow comments or not, and for this one I haven't chosen yet. Is the sadness of what I'm doing right now dependent on whether I allow comments?
Or is this infinite sadness dependent on whether you are writing about sex, which I kind of am, or writing about sex while hoping that your reader finds you sexy?
As a feminist, she finds it infinitely sad, so perhaps you have to be a feminist to feel what's so terribly sad about a woman sitting at a computer, writing sexily to someone she expects will write back sexily. And perhaps the woman at the computer needs to be vibrant and young for it to be extremely sad for her to chose bodily solitude and sex in written form. Those are the words of the self-identified feminist, feeling sad about women writing alone and sexily at computers. Jacoby is 68 years old. Is she like Paul's grandfather in "Hard Day's Night," scoffing at Ringo for reading — "tormenting your eyes with that rubbish" — instead of "gettin' out there and living... Parading the streets!"?
That's not about sexting. It's timeless advice from the old to the young. Perhaps the elders in Jane Austen's life pressured her to quit writing about love relationships and get out there and fall in love.
But Jacoby seems most concerned with context:
(I'll put the comments on to make this more sad.)
So writes Susan Jacoby, in the context of the Anthony Weiner story. I suspect that Jacoby was sitting alone at her computer when she wrote that. And I'm sitting alone at my computer writing this now. Is anything infinitely sad about writing at the computer? Is it sadder when you expect someone is waiting to read what you write and you expect them to write back? These days I choose, for each post, whether I want to allow comments or not, and for this one I haven't chosen yet. Is the sadness of what I'm doing right now dependent on whether I allow comments?
Or is this infinite sadness dependent on whether you are writing about sex, which I kind of am, or writing about sex while hoping that your reader finds you sexy?
As a feminist, she finds it infinitely sad, so perhaps you have to be a feminist to feel what's so terribly sad about a woman sitting at a computer, writing sexily to someone she expects will write back sexily. And perhaps the woman at the computer needs to be vibrant and young for it to be extremely sad for her to chose bodily solitude and sex in written form. Those are the words of the self-identified feminist, feeling sad about women writing alone and sexily at computers. Jacoby is 68 years old. Is she like Paul's grandfather in "Hard Day's Night," scoffing at Ringo for reading — "tormenting your eyes with that rubbish" — instead of "gettin' out there and living... Parading the streets!"?
That's not about sexting. It's timeless advice from the old to the young. Perhaps the elders in Jane Austen's life pressured her to quit writing about love relationships and get out there and fall in love.
But Jacoby seems most concerned with context:
Sex with strangers online amounts to a diminution, close to an absolute negation, of the context that gives human interaction genuine content. Erotic play without context becomes just a form of one-on-one pornography....Sex without context is pornography (to Jacoby). It's arid and fake. Even the man's orgasm is fake: "phony gasps." Even the man must lack self-esteem. That's the wrong kind of equality, with the woman straying out into the "arid zone" where meager men satisfy themselves. That's "not the sort of equality envisioned by feminism," she says in the end. Women should shun this "lowest common denominator" sexuality that "debases the passion and reason of both men and women." Jacoby claims this end for feminism, but it's the oldest task in the world for women: channeling male sexuality, taming them, civilizing them, lifting them up, pumping the phallic lever for the elevation of us all.
Deep down, what does a man really think of himself when he must feed his ego with phony gasps of erotic pleasure from strangers in a digital vastness? What does a woman think of herself in the same arid zone of sex without sensuality?
(I'll put the comments on to make this more sad.)
This blog has been heavy on the Weiner coverage. 3 of yesterday's 14 posts had substantial Weiner content. But I passed on the Olivia Nuzzi story in yesterday's Daily News: "Anthony Weiner intern reveals why she, fellows joined New York mayoral campaign." It just looked like another woman trying to horn in on the Weiner action. Who is she? Who does she think she is? Yeah, campaigns have interns. She asserts that Weiner interns are hot to get to Huma and through Huma to Hillary, but that's not surprising or disturbing. Ambitious people seek to network and climb. Why is this even in the newspaper?
To my eye, it looked like Nuzzi's selling point was her ability to look somewhat pretty posing with tilted head; long, flowy, bleached-blonde hair; lips pursed just short of duck face; and a tight, sleeveless navy blue dress. Navy blue, for comparison purposes to a picture of Huma looking less pretty in a more frumpy navy blue dress. Navy blue, because Monica Lewinsky, the ultimate intern, historically wore, stained, and retained a navy blue dress. In case the subliminal hint isn't enough, the article has the name "Monica" inserted in an anecdote in which Weiner attempts to demonstrate his ability to remember the names of his 20 interns and incorrectly calls one Monica, then tries Monica a second time with the author. Not told whether any of the interns were really named Monica, we are left free to imagine that the lecherous Weiner intended to convey the message that he was looking for Lewinskyesque services from his interns.
I'd kicked the sext-crazed man around enough, and Nuzzi was such an unsubtle attention whore, so the best thing to blog is nothing. But that was yesterday. Why am I writing about Nuzzi today? Because there's another woman stepping out onto the stage of The Anthony Weiner Clown Show, and her I find amusing, and she's not an attention whore. She didn't realize she was on stage. She thought/claims she was giving an off-the-record interview. It's Weiner’s communications director Barbara Morgan:
There have long been soppy dreams that women in politics would mean kindness and cooperation. "My idea has always been that if we could bring the mothers of the various nations together, then there would be no more war." I wish I could find video of Vanessa Redgrave delivering that line in "Howards End." Her silliness is vividly apparent, in a story set at the beginning of the 20th century. It's absurd to hear the same idea recirculated, as ambitious women tear into men — like Nuzzi into Weiner — and into other women — like Morgan into Nuzzi. To quote Morgan: It’s all bullshit. I mean, it’s such bullshit.
I guess I'm supposed to denounce Morgan for calling Nuzzi a "slutbag," a "twat," and a "cunt." Those female-specific insults. But didn't Tina Brown call Weiner a "dick"? And, if so, shouldn't we give equality to women and get our share of gender-based insults? But Tina Brown didn't call Anthony Weiner a "dick." She referred to his "dickmanship." He's not a dick but a Person of Dickmanship. The equivalent would be to refer to a woman's twattishness. But that kind of distancing in the insults is for the official print version. How does Tina Brown speak off the record? Seriously, why do you think Barbara Morgan thought she could talk like that? Such a string of epithets can't come out of nowhere. There must be a culture.
And yet, if that were the culture, wouldn't there be thousands of ambitious interns like Nuzzi, whose climbing hit a ceiling, dishing out a million "Fuck you, you little cunt" quotes?
To my eye, it looked like Nuzzi's selling point was her ability to look somewhat pretty posing with tilted head; long, flowy, bleached-blonde hair; lips pursed just short of duck face; and a tight, sleeveless navy blue dress. Navy blue, for comparison purposes to a picture of Huma looking less pretty in a more frumpy navy blue dress. Navy blue, because Monica Lewinsky, the ultimate intern, historically wore, stained, and retained a navy blue dress. In case the subliminal hint isn't enough, the article has the name "Monica" inserted in an anecdote in which Weiner attempts to demonstrate his ability to remember the names of his 20 interns and incorrectly calls one Monica, then tries Monica a second time with the author. Not told whether any of the interns were really named Monica, we are left free to imagine that the lecherous Weiner intended to convey the message that he was looking for Lewinskyesque services from his interns.
I'd kicked the sext-crazed man around enough, and Nuzzi was such an unsubtle attention whore, so the best thing to blog is nothing. But that was yesterday. Why am I writing about Nuzzi today? Because there's another woman stepping out onto the stage of The Anthony Weiner Clown Show, and her I find amusing, and she's not an attention whore. She didn't realize she was on stage. She thought/claims she was giving an off-the-record interview. It's Weiner’s communications director Barbara Morgan:
“I’m dealing with like stupid fucking interns who make it on to the cover of the Daily News even though they signed NDAs and/or they proceeded to trash me... And by the way, I tried to fire her, but she begged to come back and I gave her a second chance.... Fucking slutbag. Nice fucking glamour shot on the cover of the Daily News. Man, see if you ever get a job in this town again,” said Morgan.Key word: balls. Paging Tina Brown, who — in "End the Damn Dickmanship!" — longed for a testosterone test to screen excessively masculine individuals out of the political arena. Brown acted like she thought her dreamed-of test would only exclude dickish men like Weiner, but I suspected — in my first Weiner post of yesterday — that Brown herself would score high on the test. And now we've got more ladies waving their hands around. Give me the test!
“It’s all bullshit,” she said. “I mean, it’s such bullshit. She could fucking — fucking twat.”...
“She sucked. She like wasn’t good at setting up events. She was clearly there because she wanted to be seen. Like it was, like, terrible and I had to like - she would like, she would just not show up for work... And then like she had the fucking balls to like trash me in the paper. And be like, ‘His communications director was last the press secretary of the Department of Education in New Jersey.'... You know what? Fuck you, you little cunt. I’m not joking, I am going to sue her.”
There have long been soppy dreams that women in politics would mean kindness and cooperation. "My idea has always been that if we could bring the mothers of the various nations together, then there would be no more war." I wish I could find video of Vanessa Redgrave delivering that line in "Howards End." Her silliness is vividly apparent, in a story set at the beginning of the 20th century. It's absurd to hear the same idea recirculated, as ambitious women tear into men — like Nuzzi into Weiner — and into other women — like Morgan into Nuzzi. To quote Morgan: It’s all bullshit. I mean, it’s such bullshit.
I guess I'm supposed to denounce Morgan for calling Nuzzi a "slutbag," a "twat," and a "cunt." Those female-specific insults. But didn't Tina Brown call Weiner a "dick"? And, if so, shouldn't we give equality to women and get our share of gender-based insults? But Tina Brown didn't call Anthony Weiner a "dick." She referred to his "dickmanship." He's not a dick but a Person of Dickmanship. The equivalent would be to refer to a woman's twattishness. But that kind of distancing in the insults is for the official print version. How does Tina Brown speak off the record? Seriously, why do you think Barbara Morgan thought she could talk like that? Such a string of epithets can't come out of nowhere. There must be a culture.
And yet, if that were the culture, wouldn't there be thousands of ambitious interns like Nuzzi, whose climbing hit a ceiling, dishing out a million "Fuck you, you little cunt" quotes?
Tuesday, 30 July 2013
"... especially when they’ve got a résumé like hers. Two decades ago, Hillary needed Bill, that much we could understand."
What bullshit! Written by Ann Friedman in New York Magazine under the heading ("Stand by Your Man? How Huma Can Do What Hillary Couldn’t"). I don't give a damn about Huma or what happens to her, but this is unmitigated trash about Hillary. Hillary did not need Bill. Not 2 decades ago, when he was running for President, and not 4 decades ago, when she graduated from Yale Law School.
In fact, there was strong pressure on women back in 1992 and 1973, even more than now, to go it alone and not stand behind some man. Hillary knew it was a career risk to go to Arkansas with Bill, and she chose it with eyes open. Friedman is purveying some made-up social history, asserting that we "understand" it, like it's in our cultural memory. But it's completely untrue.
I was around back then, and I remember the messages to women in 1973, the year Hillary graduated from Yale Law School, which was the year I graduated from college (and I read all the feminist books of that era). By 1981, the year I graduated from law school, the message that woman had independent careers and were not destined to be helpmeets to their men was itself so old-fashioned that it wasn't even said anymore. And by 1992, the year of Hillary's sit-by-your-man interview on "60 Minutes," radical feminism — with its active distancing from patriarchy — had been tearing through the culture for years.
Such pathetic nonsense about Hillary and her place in history. And as for Huma, the notion that she could now be some pathbreaker is so stupid I don't know where it came from. Some people — who are they? — got fixated on her — why? Because she's somewhat attractive? Because she's somewhat attractive and Muslim? Because she's somewhat attractive, Muslim, and close to Hillary? I'd like those people to confess what they're so enamored about. I bet they won't, because it's nothing but stupidity.
ADDED: I suspect that Hillary and Bill are responsible for screwing up the cultural memory. So many people subordinated their feminism to Democratic Party interests during the Lewinsky scandal. It erased memory of earlier feminist progress.
What bullshit! Written by Ann Friedman in New York Magazine under the heading ("Stand by Your Man? How Huma Can Do What Hillary Couldn’t"). I don't give a damn about Huma or what happens to her, but this is unmitigated trash about Hillary. Hillary did not need Bill. Not 2 decades ago, when he was running for President, and not 4 decades ago, when she graduated from Yale Law School.
In fact, there was strong pressure on women back in 1992 and 1973, even more than now, to go it alone and not stand behind some man. Hillary knew it was a career risk to go to Arkansas with Bill, and she chose it with eyes open. Friedman is purveying some made-up social history, asserting that we "understand" it, like it's in our cultural memory. But it's completely untrue.
I was around back then, and I remember the messages to women in 1973, the year Hillary graduated from Yale Law School, which was the year I graduated from college (and I read all the feminist books of that era). By 1981, the year I graduated from law school, the message that woman had independent careers and were not destined to be helpmeets to their men was itself so old-fashioned that it wasn't even said anymore. And by 1992, the year of Hillary's sit-by-your-man interview on "60 Minutes," radical feminism — with its active distancing from patriarchy — had been tearing through the culture for years.
Such pathetic nonsense about Hillary and her place in history. And as for Huma, the notion that she could now be some pathbreaker is so stupid I don't know where it came from. Some people — who are they? — got fixated on her — why? Because she's somewhat attractive? Because she's somewhat attractive and Muslim? Because she's somewhat attractive, Muslim, and close to Hillary? I'd like those people to confess what they're so enamored about. I bet they won't, because it's nothing but stupidity.
ADDED: I suspect that Hillary and Bill are responsible for screwing up the cultural memory. So many people subordinated their feminism to Democratic Party interests during the Lewinsky scandal. It erased memory of earlier feminist progress.
I'm not really indulging in cheap Weiner humor. I mean to demonstrate how cheap the humor we've been indulging in is. Here's the context:
You must remember this isn't something that happened yesterday. For us, this is an issue that's over a year old. And we'd gotten to this really great place with each other and we'd put it behind us to a place where we felt comfortable enough to move ahead to run for mayor. For us, this was a distant event. That doesn't change the fact that it's very hard to have it come up again.No one believes he's in this really great place with Huma, if he ever was, but what is the man supposed to do? Some people are telling him to get out, but — speaking of places — where can he go? This is it for him. If he doesn't make it through these narrow straits, he's got nothing.
She's not just railing against sexting, but against "testosterone," generally, as a driver of bad behavior.
Brown's pushing the old female superiority theory, which is the sexism that was once used to keep women out of politics and business. We're too delicate and too prissy to do what needs to be done. And what if it were a substance like testosterone — a liquid squirting through ducts — that could be extracted and measured and reported to voters and employers? Tina Brown says she wants that information, so we can discriminate. Imagine the world she suggests but doesn't really want us to imagine. Everyone gets a masculinity score, and we judge his/her fitness for power accordingly.
Ironically, Tina would probably score very high. How much testosterone fueled the headline "End the Damn Dickmanship!?
The no-secrets era of social media makes one consider the built-in risk factor of nominating high-testosterone men to positions of power at all.... Perhaps we need some kind of sexual DUI test developed to tell us what is likely to happen when middle-aged libido meets a whiff of power.She goes on to talk about some boat and train accidents, caused by cock, in her view. By contrast, there are women:
And politics is not the only arena to require this test.
Think about some of our prominent women in Washington right now. Can you ever even imagine—forgive me, Secretary—Katherine Sebelius uploading a crotch shot of herself on Instagram? Or Janet Yellen ordering up male hookers during downtime at the Federal Reserve? It’s preposterous.Can we imagine females causing sexual wreckage? A year ago, we were imagining Janet Napolitano "turning the department [of Homeland Security] into a female-run ‘frat house’ where male staffers were banished to the bathrooms and routinely humiliated." I would have forgotten that had Tina Brown's screed not reminded me.
Brown's pushing the old female superiority theory, which is the sexism that was once used to keep women out of politics and business. We're too delicate and too prissy to do what needs to be done. And what if it were a substance like testosterone — a liquid squirting through ducts — that could be extracted and measured and reported to voters and employers? Tina Brown says she wants that information, so we can discriminate. Imagine the world she suggests but doesn't really want us to imagine. Everyone gets a masculinity score, and we judge his/her fitness for power accordingly.
Ironically, Tina would probably score very high. How much testosterone fueled the headline "End the Damn Dickmanship!?
Monday, 29 July 2013
"... that Huma is 'standing by her man' the way Hillary did with Bill, which is not what she in fact did," according to an unnamed "top state Democrat."
If Hillary is pissed off, I would think it's because she doesn't want people reminded of her old stand-by-your-man routine:
I encourage you to watch the whole thing. Watch Bill bullshit to avoid telling an outright lie, and watch Hillary nod as her man wriggles through — lip bite at 6:15 — and marvel at her delight in his equivocations — her smug smile at 6:38! At 7:02, Hillary does a little "zone of privacy" riff that should feel irksome to women's rights advocates, since it's the key phrase in the law relating to women's bodily autonomy and Hillary is using it to say don't look at the selfish, women-exploiting things my husband has done.
After that, Bill is very animated and smiley, waving his hands about, theorizing about privacy, and at some point we see his big hand resting on and weighing down Hillary's demurely clasped hands. When did his hand get there? I ask out loud and scroll back to see how he managed to plunk it there. It's just suddenly there at 8:01 after a cut to Steve Kroft's face. CBS made that cut! We weren't allowed to see him segue from expansive explaining gesture to holding the woman down. At 9:03, after another cut, Hillary says they will not say anything more, no matter how much they are pushed.
And Kroft pushes, suggesting that they have reached — to use the classic adultery-tolerating buzzwords — "an understanding" and "an arrangement." Bill's all "Wait a minute, wait a minute" — and his big mitt is back on top of Hillary's hands — "You're looking at 2 people who love each other. This is not 'an arrangement' or 'an understanding.'" And then, in a very sincere, whispery tone: "This is a marriage. That's a very different thing."
Here's where Hillary jumps in (9:38) — with a harsh, Southern-accented twang and waggling her head around — "You know, I'm not sittin' here like some little woman standin' by her man like Tammy Wynette. I'm sittin' here because I love him and I respect him... and if that's not enough for people then, heck, don't vote for him."
The soft gentle man, and the sharp modern-but-not-modern woman. That moment was the triumph of a lifetime for Hillary. It made everything happen. It got her man elected President. That's so much more than anything Huma accomplished in her balky wan press conference with Weiner. Hillary is rightly pissed.
ADDED: Meade — who's sittin' by me right now — reads the post out loud and says "Bring in the comments... I think it will be great." So go ahead. Do comments. I have to moderate them, so there may be a delay and comments must relate to the text of the post to be approved.
“The Clintons are pissed off that Weiner’s campaign is saying that Huma is just like Hillary,’’ said the source. “How dare they compare Huma with Hillary? Hillary was the first lady. Hillary was a senator. She was secretary of state.”She wasn't any of those things in 1992 when she sat by her man on "60 Minutes" and claimed to be doing something more than whatever it was Tammy Wynette was singing about in "Stand By Your Man." And what Bill had done was worse than what Weiner seems to have done. Bill had sex with other women. Weiner merely sexted. And Bill was sitting there lying about it and Hillary backed him up big time, whereas in the recent Huma-and-Anthony TV stunt, the misdeeds are admitted.
If Hillary is pissed off, I would think it's because she doesn't want people reminded of her old stand-by-your-man routine:
“Hillary didn’t know Huma would do this whole stand-by-your-man routine, and that’s one of the reasons the Clintons are distancing themselves from all this nonsense,’’ the source said.I put up the old 1992 interview in my post about Weiner yesterday, and we watched the whole 10 minutes and laughed a lot. I scoffed: "This is the first female President of the United States?!"
I encourage you to watch the whole thing. Watch Bill bullshit to avoid telling an outright lie, and watch Hillary nod as her man wriggles through — lip bite at 6:15 — and marvel at her delight in his equivocations — her smug smile at 6:38! At 7:02, Hillary does a little "zone of privacy" riff that should feel irksome to women's rights advocates, since it's the key phrase in the law relating to women's bodily autonomy and Hillary is using it to say don't look at the selfish, women-exploiting things my husband has done.
After that, Bill is very animated and smiley, waving his hands about, theorizing about privacy, and at some point we see his big hand resting on and weighing down Hillary's demurely clasped hands. When did his hand get there? I ask out loud and scroll back to see how he managed to plunk it there. It's just suddenly there at 8:01 after a cut to Steve Kroft's face. CBS made that cut! We weren't allowed to see him segue from expansive explaining gesture to holding the woman down. At 9:03, after another cut, Hillary says they will not say anything more, no matter how much they are pushed.
And Kroft pushes, suggesting that they have reached — to use the classic adultery-tolerating buzzwords — "an understanding" and "an arrangement." Bill's all "Wait a minute, wait a minute" — and his big mitt is back on top of Hillary's hands — "You're looking at 2 people who love each other. This is not 'an arrangement' or 'an understanding.'" And then, in a very sincere, whispery tone: "This is a marriage. That's a very different thing."
Here's where Hillary jumps in (9:38) — with a harsh, Southern-accented twang and waggling her head around — "You know, I'm not sittin' here like some little woman standin' by her man like Tammy Wynette. I'm sittin' here because I love him and I respect him... and if that's not enough for people then, heck, don't vote for him."
The soft gentle man, and the sharp modern-but-not-modern woman. That moment was the triumph of a lifetime for Hillary. It made everything happen. It got her man elected President. That's so much more than anything Huma accomplished in her balky wan press conference with Weiner. Hillary is rightly pissed.
ADDED: Meade — who's sittin' by me right now — reads the post out loud and says "Bring in the comments... I think it will be great." So go ahead. Do comments. I have to moderate them, so there may be a delay and comments must relate to the text of the post to be approved.
Sunday, 28 July 2013
"According to two people told of the decision, the campaign manager, Danny Kedem, no longer wished to oversee Mr. Weiner’s bid for New York mayor after a week of bruising revelations about the candidate’s latest online conduct...."
What kind of campaign manager bugs out on you right when you need him? He should be your trusty champion! So inappropriate. Defend your guy! What? Are you trying to save your career? Your career is in campaign managing, and you dropped your guy when he was down.
Unacceptable. I don't really care that what Weiner did is is also unacceptable. This is a campaign. Did James Carville and George Stephanopoulos abandon Bill Clinton in 1992 when the Gennifer Flowers story hit?
What kind of campaign manager bugs out on you right when you need him? He should be your trusty champion! So inappropriate. Defend your guy! What? Are you trying to save your career? Your career is in campaign managing, and you dropped your guy when he was down.
Unacceptable. I don't really care that what Weiner did is is also unacceptable. This is a campaign. Did James Carville and George Stephanopoulos abandon Bill Clinton in 1992 when the Gennifer Flowers story hit?
1. I was reading this Wall Street Journal essay — "The Appeal of Embarrassment/Blushing, fidgeting, looking down — the more contrite a wrongdoer looks, the more likable he seems" — written by Robert M. Sapolsky, a professor of biology and neurology at Stanford University and author of the enticingly titled "The Trouble with Testosterone" and "Why Zebras Don't Get Ulcers."
2. I don't give a damn about zebras and their freedom from ulcers. (I'll just guess that when any given zebra slips toward ulcer-producing mental activity, some lion eats him, and that's the end of that trajectory.) But I am interested in the trouble with testosterone in connection with the subject of Sapolsky's essay, which is Anthony Weiner. Something about that ravaged face. Is he using testosterone to build up those muscles he shows off in his selfies?
3. Sapolsky's essay is not, however, about testosterone, but visible signs of embarrassment, like blushing. Is Weiner one of these people who do not blush like normal people? If so, Sapolsky suggests, we shouldn't trust him. "Numerous studies have shown that autonomic responses to strong emotions are blunted in sociopaths. Thus, in individuals there is a positive and statistically significant covariance between concern about violating social norms and concern with pro-sociality." (I'm resisting inserting an old joke here.)
4. Sapolsky's essay pulled me in enough to read it, but it didn't make the cut into bloggable. Something unsatisfying about the maundering. And it's just the same old thing about Weiner, really. Why isn't he embarrassed? The Stanford prof doesn't have anything new to say: Why doesn't Weiner blush? Maybe he did blush? Was anyone checking to see if he blushed? That's how Sapolsky ends it, saying it would be "nice" if there were some kind of blush-o-meter to check.
5. I thought I could find a way into blogging the essay I'd dumped time into reading with an almost-remembered song lyric with the word "blush." Was it Bob Dylan? I do a word search at bobdylan.com I see Bob's used the word exactly once: "Now, there’s a certain thing/That I learned from my friend, Mouse/A fella who always blushes/And that is that ev’ryone/Must always flush out his house/If he don’t expect to be/Goin’ ’round housing flushes."
6. That's not helpful. This friend Mouse always blushes. I thought the line was never blushes, which might help me with the Weiner/Sapolsky quandry, and anyway, it's a dumb Dylan verse, just some off the top of his head Basement Tapes foolery, where Bob not only wasn't above rhyming "mouse" and "house" but he also double-used "flush" in his low-effort rhyme for "blush."
7. I'm not getting any good material about blushing, and I'm completely distracted by the title of the song, "Open the Door, Homer." If you've listened to "The Basement Tapes," you know it as "Open the Door, Richard." What's with the Homer/Richard switch?
8. That turns out to be a much better question than did Anthony Weiner blush? For one thing, it's perfectly answerable, via Wikipedia. "Open the Door, Richard" was an old vaudeville routine:
2. I don't give a damn about zebras and their freedom from ulcers. (I'll just guess that when any given zebra slips toward ulcer-producing mental activity, some lion eats him, and that's the end of that trajectory.) But I am interested in the trouble with testosterone in connection with the subject of Sapolsky's essay, which is Anthony Weiner. Something about that ravaged face. Is he using testosterone to build up those muscles he shows off in his selfies?
3. Sapolsky's essay is not, however, about testosterone, but visible signs of embarrassment, like blushing. Is Weiner one of these people who do not blush like normal people? If so, Sapolsky suggests, we shouldn't trust him. "Numerous studies have shown that autonomic responses to strong emotions are blunted in sociopaths. Thus, in individuals there is a positive and statistically significant covariance between concern about violating social norms and concern with pro-sociality." (I'm resisting inserting an old joke here.)
4. Sapolsky's essay pulled me in enough to read it, but it didn't make the cut into bloggable. Something unsatisfying about the maundering. And it's just the same old thing about Weiner, really. Why isn't he embarrassed? The Stanford prof doesn't have anything new to say: Why doesn't Weiner blush? Maybe he did blush? Was anyone checking to see if he blushed? That's how Sapolsky ends it, saying it would be "nice" if there were some kind of blush-o-meter to check.
5. I thought I could find a way into blogging the essay I'd dumped time into reading with an almost-remembered song lyric with the word "blush." Was it Bob Dylan? I do a word search at bobdylan.com I see Bob's used the word exactly once: "Now, there’s a certain thing/That I learned from my friend, Mouse/A fella who always blushes/And that is that ev’ryone/Must always flush out his house/If he don’t expect to be/Goin’ ’round housing flushes."
6. That's not helpful. This friend Mouse always blushes. I thought the line was never blushes, which might help me with the Weiner/Sapolsky quandry, and anyway, it's a dumb Dylan verse, just some off the top of his head Basement Tapes foolery, where Bob not only wasn't above rhyming "mouse" and "house" but he also double-used "flush" in his low-effort rhyme for "blush."
7. I'm not getting any good material about blushing, and I'm completely distracted by the title of the song, "Open the Door, Homer." If you've listened to "The Basement Tapes," you know it as "Open the Door, Richard." What's with the Homer/Richard switch?
8. That turns out to be a much better question than did Anthony Weiner blush? For one thing, it's perfectly answerable, via Wikipedia. "Open the Door, Richard" was an old vaudeville routine:
Pigmeat Markham, one of several who performed the routine, attributed it to his mentor Bob Russell. The routine was made famous by Dusty Fletcher on stages like the Apollo Theater in New York and in a short film. Dressed in rags, drunk, and with a ladder as his only prop, Fletcher would repeatedly plunk the ladder down stage center, try to climb it to knock on an imaginary door, then crash sprawling on the floor after a few steps while shouting, half-singing "Open the Door, Richard." After this he would mutter a comic monologue, then try the ladder again and repeat the process, while the audience was imagining what Richard was so occupied doing.9. The door never opens, I think. What's that old line, when a door closes, a window opens? I immediately remember the lyric I was searching for at stage #5:
Jack McVea was responsible for the musical riff which became associated with the words "Open the Door, Richard" that became familiar to radio listeners and as many as 14 different recordings were made....
"Open the Door, Richard" was an early R&B novelty record, a song category that became a basic genre of rock and roll in the 1950s. It started the fad of answer song records. It was also the first commercial record to use a fade out ending....
The phrase "Open the Door, Richard" passed into African American Vernacular English and became associated with the Civil Rights Movement. When college students marched in 1947 to the state capitol demanding the resignation of segregationist governor Herman Talmadge, some of their banners read "Open the Door Herman." The Los Angeles Sentinel used "Open the Door Richard" as the title of an editorial demanding black representation in city government and a Detroit minister used the title for a sermon on open housing.
"Open the Door, Richard" became a catchphrase in broader American society, as well; the line appeared in routines by Jack Benny, Fred Allen, and Phil Harris. Jimmy Durante and Burl Ives each recorded versions of the song; opera star Lauritz Melchior performed it on national radio. Molly Picon recorded a Yiddish language version; it was also covered in Spanish, Swedish, French, Armenian and Hungarian. There were "Richard" hats, shirts, and jeans, and ads for products ranging from ale to perfume incorporated references to the song....
In 1967, Bob Dylan and The Band recorded an homage to the song as part of The Basement Tapes. Entitled "Open the Door, Homer," the chorus nevertheless repeated the phrase "Open the door Richard."
Some people, they like to go out dancing10. Children are the only ones who blush... that's what the evil mothers tell you. The evil mothers are the sociopaths who don't blush, and they'd like you to believe that no adults blush, so you won't attribute any significance to the failure to blush when caught in a shameful act.
And other peoples, they have to work...
And there's even some evil mothers
Well they're gonna tell you that everything is just dirt
Y'know that, women, never really faint
And that villains always blink their eyes, woo!
And that, y'know, children are the only ones who blush!
And that, life is just to die!
Friday, 26 July 2013
Texted Anthony Weiner to Sydney Leathers. I imagine that about what Bill Clinton might have thought about Monica Lewinsky. Oh, these men who marry excellent wives and then find there's not enough sex and — more perversely — none of the old crazy.
That made me think about the old political phrase "a little bit nutty and a little bit slutty." It was an attack, not a description of the perfect woman. Here's David Brock explaining the phrase:
My Imaginary Reader gasps and splutters out: Different times, different parties, different purposes.
Have I made you uncomfortable enough to call me crazy?
That made me think about the old political phrase "a little bit nutty and a little bit slutty." It was an attack, not a description of the perfect woman. Here's David Brock explaining the phrase:
If [Clarence] Thomas was completely innocent, Anita Hill would have had to be insane to go on national television and tell a lie under oath. Grasping for an explanation of the inexplicable, doing everything I could to ruin Hill's credibility, I took a scattershot approach, dumping virtually every derogatory—and often contradictory—allegation I had collected on Hill from the Thomas camp into the mix.... She was, in my words, "a little bit nutty and a little bit slutty."...What works as an attack on a woman's fitness for public life is also a description of the perfect woman.
Some conservative friends... did warn me quietly that the "little bit nutty and a little bit slutty" line, a reference to the classic nuts-and-sluts defense in sexual harassment cases, was in poor taste, or at least politically foolish, in that it handed my critics a club with which to beat me. The phrase certainly stuck, and it would be unearthed and brandished in my face in all future controversies over my work... I had fallen in with radicals of the Gingrich-Limbaugh stripe. After all, how far was the "nutty/slutty" line from Newt's rants about the "grotesque" and "sick" Democrats, or Limbaugh's slurs on blacks and women?
My Imaginary Reader gasps and splutters out: Different times, different parties, different purposes.
Have I made you uncomfortable enough to call me crazy?
Thursday, 25 July 2013
Said Sydney Leathers — if that really is her name — about Carlos Danger — which is the dorky and possibly anti-Hispanic name Anthony Weiner devised for himself.
Then: I'll finally get my satisfaction. I can be famous. Hey, journalist boys! I've got a story for you!
ADDED: I had the wrong link before. Fixed.
Leathers said after meeting on Facebook last summer, their private chats turned from politics to steamy sex almost instantly.People have some strange ideas about what's strange. And they also lie — even to themselves — about what's strange.
“I had messaged him, he poked me, we started talking a lot, became Facebook friends and started talking on other, more private channels,” she said. “It quickly got sexual, obviously. Which is strange. I was disappointed in him [in 2011], I thought he was a better man.”
“Anthony Weiner was not good at phone sex,” said [TheDirty.com editor Nik] Richie, quoting Leathers. “[He] would orgasm in 30 seconds.”It depends on what the meaning of "good" is. We are talking about phone sex. Some people hate long telephone calls. You can never get off the phone. They'll talk your ear off. But when Carlos Danger was on the phone, Leathers would never have to think I don't have time for this. It could always be simply Good old Carlos, what a funny, fast talker, and quite efficient at getting what he wants. But then he didn't call anymore. Sads!
Then: I'll finally get my satisfaction. I can be famous. Hey, journalist boys! I've got a story for you!
ADDED: I had the wrong link before. Fixed.
Wednesday, 24 July 2013
Said Gloria Steinem, quoted in a NYT piece called "Many New York Women Are Baffled at Loyalty Shown by Weiner’s Wife."
Why puzzle? Go with the simplest solution: They had an understanding. Must I explain the world to Gloria Steinem? I doubt it. I believe she is bullshitting, because what is the basis for having "great respect" for Huma Abedin? None!
And it's perfectly silly to say "Stockholm syndrome."
Why puzzle? Go with the simplest solution: They had an understanding. Must I explain the world to Gloria Steinem? I doubt it. I believe she is bullshitting, because what is the basis for having "great respect" for Huma Abedin? None!
And it's perfectly silly to say "Stockholm syndrome."
Stockholm syndrome, or capture–bonding, is a psychological phenomenon in which hostages express empathy and sympathy and have positive feelings toward their captors, sometimes to the point of defending them. These feelings are generally considered irrational in light of the danger or risk endured by the victims, who essentially mistake a lack of abuse from their captors for an act of kindness.A wife is not a hostage! She's someone who chose a life mate and voluntarily made vows to stand by him. Transferring that concept onto marriage is ridiculous (unless there's some actual imprisonment going on).
I know what you're thinking, but — and this is from March 2011, when Weiner was still a Congressman and while in the presence of Mayor Bloomberg — he said: "I’m going to have a bunch of ribbon-cuttings tearing out your [expletive] bike lanes."
I got there this morning via Dan Savage, because I wanted to react to the current denouncements of Weiner, and I knew Savage had written in support of Weiner. On his podcast, he'd said something like: All your kids are already sexting constantly, and you'd better adjust, the sooner the better, to a future in which everybody's going to have pictures like that out there. Here's some relevant Savage writing (from before Weiner resigned):
I got there this morning via Dan Savage, because I wanted to react to the current denouncements of Weiner, and I knew Savage had written in support of Weiner. On his podcast, he'd said something like: All your kids are already sexting constantly, and you'd better adjust, the sooner the better, to a future in which everybody's going to have pictures like that out there. Here's some relevant Savage writing (from before Weiner resigned):
While I hope Weiner comes clean, I hope [he] comes out swinging: He didn't do anything wrong, he didn't do anything millions of other Americans aren't also doing, he didn't break any laws. His privacy has been invaded. He's being attacked. He is the victim here. And if doing what Weiner has done disqualifies a person from public life, there won't be anyone qualified to be [in] public life in ten years time save the Amish.
Tuesday, 23 July 2013
New texts and pics have gone up on line, forcing Weiner to do an emergency press conference.
Huma was by his side:
Huma was by his side:
And in her first public remarks on the scandal, a clearly nervous Abedin said it took “a lot of work and a whole lot of therapy” to put her marriage back together.They're a power couple, yoked for power. Of course, they move forward. It's not that complicated. I don't even believe they indulged in "a whole lot of therapy."
"It was not an easy choice in any way but I made the decision that it was worth staying in this marriage,” she said. “I didn’t know how it would work out but I did know that I wanted to give it a try. I love him. I have forgiven him. I believe in him.... And, as we have said from the beginning, we are moving forward.”
Monday, 15 July 2013
"She wore bright-red lipstick, which gave her lips a 3-D look, her brown eyes were pools of empathy evolved through a thousand generations of what was good and decent in the history of the human race."
#1 on a list of "The Four Silliest/Creepiest Huma Abedin Descriptions in 'New York' Magazine's Weiner Piece," compiled by Isaac Chotiner, at The New Republic, who says "Abedin always gets good press, but this piece takes it to a new level." But it's not true that "Abedin always gets good press." Chotiner's wrong about that. And the selected lines from the New York piece (which is written by Mark Jacobson) are so gloriously absurd, that they must be intentional satire and not a new level of good press, so Chotiner must also be wrong about that. I'm giving the win to Jacobson, and I haven't even read his article yet. It's a tad early on a Monday for that. Here's one pull quote:
#1 on a list of "The Four Silliest/Creepiest Huma Abedin Descriptions in 'New York' Magazine's Weiner Piece," compiled by Isaac Chotiner, at The New Republic, who says "Abedin always gets good press, but this piece takes it to a new level." But it's not true that "Abedin always gets good press." Chotiner's wrong about that. And the selected lines from the New York piece (which is written by Mark Jacobson) are so gloriously absurd, that they must be intentional satire and not a new level of good press, so Chotiner must also be wrong about that. I'm giving the win to Jacobson, and I haven't even read his article yet. It's a tad early on a Monday for that. Here's one pull quote:
If it was a mystery why Huma Abedin decided Anthony Weiner was the man for her, there were clear practical reasons to stay with him. It was far more than the fact that she worked for Hillary, learned the haute Tammy Wynette drill from the best. Weiner was, after all, the father of her child. If the candidate didn’t want Jordan to grow up hearing how the naughty pictures had ended his father’s political career, why should his mother feel any differently? Then again, they could just love each other.I suspect that by the time Jordan is grown up, he and all the young people he knows will be sending photos of themselves in their underpants as the normal friendly way to say "hello." What will be hard — hard — to explain is why his father had to resign from elected office for such a thing. Why didn't Huma leave him? Maybe it was to say to the people of the future — including her grown-up child — that she knew, even back in the old days, that sexting is trifling, and the only real infraction was the husband idly flirted with other women. Who resigns from Congress or gets divorced over that?
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