Friday, February 14, 2014

LOVELESS.

Ever notice that while nearly every publication in the Western World sees Valentine's Day as a chance to indulge is some harmless romanticism, wingnuts take it as an opportunity to tell you love's just a scam and you should just get down to the miserable business of breeding?  Get a load of the cold open on Susan Patton's V-Day downer at the Wall Street Journal :
Another Valentine's Day. Another night spent ordering in sushi for one and mooning over "Downton Abbey" reruns. Smarten up, ladies. Despite all of the focus on professional advancement, for most of you the cornerstone of your future happiness will be the man you marry...
Apparently Patton is afraid some of her female readers (I know but look, anything's possible) have no mothers to call and tell them if they want ever to get hitched they better forget this "love" horseshit:
An extraordinary education is the greatest gift you can give yourself. But if you are a young woman who has had that blessing, the task of finding a life partner who shares your intellectual curiosity and potential for success is difficult. Those men who are as well-educated as you are often interested in younger, less challenging women.
So does Patton wants schoolly ladiez to date down? That'd be too easy:
Could you marry a man who isn't your intellectual or professional equal? Sure. But the likelihood is that it will be frustrating to be with someone who just can't keep up with you or your friends. When the conversation turns to Jean Cocteau or Henrik Ibsen, the Bayeux Tapestry or Noam Chomsky, you won't find that glazed look that comes over his face at all appealing...
You're probably beginning to catch on, from this oooh look at you with your stupid "education" you dateless hag schtick that Patton isn't here so much to help as to hector.
So what's a smart girl to do? Start looking early and stop wasting time dating men who aren't good for you: bad boys, crazy guys and married men. College is the best place to look for your mate...
Because by the time he sobers up it'll be too late. Also, Patton nags her lady readers that "men won't buy the cow if the milk is free," which I assume means you shouldn't indulge his lacto-porn urges till he puts a ring on it.
Not all women want marriage or motherhood, but if you do, you have to start listening to your gut and avoid falling for the P.C. feminist line that has misled so many young women for years.
Yeah, happy Valentines to you too, Miss Manners. Next, Matt K. Lewis at The Week --
Valentine's Day somehow manages to turn voluntary acts of kindness and warmth into perfunctory gestures, and romantic candlelight dinners into onerous burdens — all in the name of "love" (read: commercialism).
Lewis must have sensed that his readers might at this point mistake his POV as anti-capitalist and write stern letters to the editor, so he goes for sure-fire conservative signaling devices -- first, whining about Our Degraded Culture:
Just as Valentine's Day seems utterly harmless, much of the "wholesome" music we grew up listening to fostered this pernicious worldview. 
The Righteous Brothers, for example, sang: "Without you baby, what good am I?"
 Then, C.S. Lewis and Jesus! Finally, he tells us,
And if you do marry, forget about all that love at first sight nonsense. Find someone you'd be willing to go into battle with — or, at least, go into business with. That's not romantic, but it's wise.
Celebrate your exclusive rights tender with some coffee and donuts in the break room and then back to work! Does anything about Valentines Day bring joy or at least non-misery to these people? Well...
Obama's Valentine's Day gift to himself; dinner with royalty without Michelle
...no, actually. Nothing does. It's like even the specter of normal positive human feelings either gives them a sad or fills them with rage. I like to think of them as human beings, but I'm beginning to believe with Charlie Pierce that they are in fact the Mole People.


178 comments:

  1. Derelict4:56 PM

    Does anything about Valentines Day bring joy or at least non-misery to these people?
    What brings them joy is the misery of others, and what brings them misery is the horrifying thought that somebody, somewhere, is happy in a way they do not approve of.
    Thus the "forget all this love stuff." Which is especially poignant since it seems most of these people have never really experienced love as the rest of us humans understand it.

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  2. DN Nation4:56 PM

    That American Stinker link even admits that the Obamas celebrated an early Valentine's Day together last week. The main point of contention is that Obama would dare meet with a head of state. In any fashion, in any form, anywhere.

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  3. DN Nation5:01 PM

    Forgive me for my lookism, but I've found that reading Ross Douthat through the prism of "this is a pasty, paunchy, pudgy doofus with laughable facial hair and ill-fitting suits who blamed whisky dick on feminism of all things and nothing more" makes his emissions much more logical.

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  4. M. Krebs5:02 PM

    Someone said to me, "Happy mid-February," and then I realized: Hey, there's a war going on. A War on St. Valentine's Day.

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  5. tinheart5:09 PM

    Geezus, what would a conservative Valentine be? "I do not give out anything unearned, get your own candy, moocher!" Either that, or "I love you forever or until I can trade up."

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  6. RogerAiles5:23 PM

    Those men who are as well-educated as you are often interested in younger, less challenging women.



    And not just the well-educated men. Rupert Murdoch too.

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  7. RogerAiles5:35 PM

    http://cryptogram.com/hearts/?bg=blue&lines=Preserve%0Athe%20race

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  8. Despite all of the focus on professional advancement, for most of you
    the cornerstone of your future happiness will be the man you marry...


    Geez, get a new fucking melody. I've probably read this exact column a half-dozen times in the last twelve months, and countless more that have the same theme. It's obvious that these people aren't actually trying to influence anyone, since a) their target audience doesn't read the WSJ, and b) they clearly ignored this sermon the last fifty or sixty times they heard it. It's meant for an audience who'll read it and think, "Yeah, fuck them uppity bitches." But even so, can't you mix it up a little bit? The culture critics come up with a new IP to obsess over every now and then, and the theocons are always raising the stakes with ever more horrifying visions of the future - why can't you do the same?

    But all right, lady, I'll play along. You know, it's possible that many of those dreaded Women Trying To Have It All are interested in pursuing a relationship. What they are not interested in is getting A Man. And given that they've been bombarded by messages telling them that getting A Man is their highest priority since childhood - from television, from their friends, possibly even from their parents - I think they've had ample opportunity to make that decision. Maybe they're looking for someone who isn't expecting a dumb girl to make himself feel better. You know, humans aren't stamped out on a factory - we're a rather diverse and versatile species, and I suspect that these ladies can probably find someone who's going to make them happy without going fishing in Fraternity Stereotype Lake.

    Oh, and what's the deal with the "smart people conversations" thing up there, as though people with college educations never discuss anything but philosophy? Have you ever spoken to another human being, or do you find those bull sessions with your custom minifigs so engrossing that you don't feel the need?

    But back to the topic at hand, and specifically this "less challenging" shit. My former fiancee once got into a fight with my boss. Did this turn me off? Quite the opposite, in fact. I never got this wingnut anti-fem message that all men want a cringing, wilting flower - I'd rather be alone forever than with a woman like that. And by the way, I'm quite certain that she was smarter than me, for the simple reason that she spoke my language a hell of a lot better than I spoke hers.

    If this sounds angry enough to be personal, it's because - strangely enough - it is. When I was dealing with that MRA invasion on my old blog, I discovered that they'd found a picture of me and my ex. Noting her ethnicity, some of them argued that I should just "get another one." Say that to my face, I dare you. Now, am I comparing Susan Patton and her ilk to a pack of racist, misogynistic shitheads? Well...yeah. For you see, We're All In This Together, and if you fuck with my sisters, you fuck with me.

    (Oh, and one final note before I close out this overlong comment: Patton's advice about how you ladies should spend "far more time planning for your husband than for your career"? You make it sound so romantic, like buying a car or a house)

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  9. Mooser5:38 PM

    My wife shot her first husband, or so I'm told. He lived.

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  10. glennisw5:41 PM

    When the conversation turns to Jean Cocteau or Henrik Ibsen, the Bayeux Tapestry or Noam Chomsky
    Why, just the other day, me 'n Cletus were up to the bowling alley, when I said to him, "Cletus, when are you gonna get it that 'The Wild Duck' ain't about them Robertson boys? It's about betrayal and self-sacrifice up there in Norway!"

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  11. coozledad6:10 PM

    "Without you baby, what good am I?"

    Even if you don't like the Righteous Brothers, if you don't get that line and what it means for people who are likely to spend a big chunk of their lives together, you are beyond help.

    I was going to say I'm more of a Walker Brothers fan, but then I watched this. Maybe it's the combination of snake pants and hand-modeling that ruins it for me. This Scott Walker would still make a better governor.

    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2eAxCVTMJ-I

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  12. coozledad6:16 PM

    Must have been born there.

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  13. satch6:21 PM

    "You'd have to be a damn fool to buy a cow without a sample of the milk."


    Well, yeah, especially if you're relying on your milkshake bringing all the boys to the yard.

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  14. coozledad6:21 PM

    They would have turned me into a goth, but I was old enough to have to work.

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  15. satch6:23 PM

    "But this holiday also perpetuates bogus, unattainable notions about
    romance, love, marriage, and sex that has probably contributed more to
    our unhappiness (not to mention our divorce rates) than anything else."


    Wow... struck out again, huh Matt...

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  16. ADHDJ6:33 PM

    http://www.aynrand.org/site/News2?page=NewsArticle&id=5298&news_iv_ctrl=1021

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  17. MBouffant6:35 PM

    Start looking early and stop wasting time dating men who aren't good for you: bad boys, crazy guys and married men. College is the best place to look for your mate...I.e., get hitched, start breeding & do not dare to enter the job market.



    I've long suspected the efforts to "restore the traditional family," even if ascribed to Biblical patriarchy/nat'chul law complementarism/yada are really economic: Controlling workers is more difficult if a household has two income streams. Cut back to one wage slave per family (now w/ as many mouths to feed as can be forced out, because contraception is evil too) & the bosses have you entirely under their thumb.

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  18. That would explain the massacre.

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  19. JennOfArk6:55 PM

    That's not even mentioning the snotty assumptions she makes about college educated vs non-college educated people. I have an ex who didn't go to college and worked a blue collar job who was as smart - and smarter - than most folks with college degrees. I appreciated that about him the same as he appreciated my big brain; college just wasn't his bag but that did not translate into "knuckle-dragging mouth-breather" just as it doesn't with many folks who never went to college. A woman who would decide whether or not she loved you based on the number of years you spent in school is not a woman you want around (same goes for a guy who can only see the size of a woman's boobs, etc).

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  20. M. Krebs6:59 PM

    One assumes that this is Ms. Patton.

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  21. coozledad7:00 PM

    He was alright, for an Illinois Nazi.

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  22. Ellis_Weiner7:01 PM

    Just as Valentine's Day seems utterly harmless, much of the "wholesome"
    music we grew up listening to fostered this pernicious worldview.


    The Righteous Brothers, for example, sang: "Without you baby, what good am I?"

    Yeah, that must be it--aside from the fact that no one in the history of humanity ever referred to the Righteous Brothers as "wholesome," and that the notion of finding unity and fulfillment with one's beloved goes back to what'shisname, the Greek fella--Plato--this is an excellent observation.

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  23. whetstone7:04 PM

    Patton's actually not an unsympathetic character, despite how weary her schtick is:

    A) I would be the first woman in my family to attend college. The necessity of my continued education eluded my mother and father. My leaving their home before marriage was an utter disgrace to them. Princeton was unknown to my parents. They saw no honor in my admission to such a prestigious institution, and they were confident that I should be investing myself in other things. It wouldn’t
    have mattered where I wanted to go away to school. They were adamant
    that a young girl’s place is in her parents’ home, until she is in her husband’s home. European immigrants and concentration camp survivors, my parents couldn’t understand why at 18 years old, I didn’t direct my efforts towards finding a mate.


    B) That was in 2006. Fast forward a few years: And third, she isn’t married to a Princeton grad. In fact, she’s just out of what she calls a “horrible” divorce, after 27 years of marriage. “My husband’s academic background was not as luxurious as mine, and that was a source of some stress,” said Patton. “I think he felt a certain level of resentment.”


    Assuming both are true, you can kind of see where it comes from: neither her parents nor her husband respected what was a really significant achievement (first in her family to go to college, one of the first women to go to Princeton), so she's dead-set on ladies landing a man who'll appreciate it. Given her experience, I can't blame her instinct, just her base generalization. Her story actually sounds interesting, instead of the totally dead-on-the-page op-ed that any wingnut-welfare intern could have churned out.


    What women and men need isn't smarty-pants mates, it's decent fucking editors.

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  24. whetstone7:16 PM

    Just as Valentine's Day seems utterly harmless, much of the "wholesome"
    music we grew up listening to fostered this pernicious worldview. The Righteous Brothers, for example, sang: "Without you baby, what good am I?"


    And for just $4.99, you'll also get The Swinging Sounds of Matt K. Lewis!

    *"Too Proud to Beg"
    * "There's Still Sunshine When She's Gone"
    * "I Can't Get Next To You (Oh Well)"
    * "Some of Me"
    *"Signed, Sealed, COD, I'm Yours"

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  25. sophronia8:04 PM

    Yep. See the wingnut freakout over Michelle Obama having the temerity to wear a ballgown to a formal state dinner. It's a real head-scratcher unless you understand that despite all their excuses, they don't really care what she wears; they are enraged by the fact that she exists at all.

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  26. coozledad8:15 PM

    they are enraged by the fact that she exists at all.

    The fact she modeled that dress in a way that completed the designers' aspirations to art planted an entire garden of yucca spears up their ass. She's probably sold a goddamn warehouse full of those dresses. The photographs look like Ingres paintings.

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  27. Gromet8:15 PM

    I'm not sure I've ever been in a conversation that I could characterize as "turning to the Bayeux Tapestry." Chomsky has come up once or twice, but just as a gag.


    Worse, I can't safely guarantee that my eyes wouldn't glaze over if I was on a date with Susan Patton and she brought up Ibsen. It would depend on her take, I suppose. But prolly I'd glaze.


    So I'm dumb, right? Totally undateable?

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  28. coozledad8:19 PM

    If you're like me, you have to hope the conversation rolls around to pussy eatin'.

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  29. MBouffant8:22 PM

    No, she's unsympathetic because she's a ninny who hasn't learned a thing & has become her parents, apparently w/o irony (or noticing).


    Unless it's an editor who knows her background & can get her to apply it to her reasoning & typing I think some sort of psychological assistance might be more helpful.

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  30. MBouffant8:29 PM

    Every conversation I've had that turned to the Bayeux Tapestry involved "really big, innit?" "kinda faded now, huh?" & "Wow, dude, it was, like, the world's first graphic novel." Then the conversation turns elsewhere.

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  31. coozledad8:41 PM

    These are the same people arguing against marriage as a necessary economic compact for people who might otherwise be stripped of protections against crappy family members or ambulance chasing scuzz. Sometimes I think they've forfeited the entire idea of love in favor of loose cash.

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  32. Formerly_Nom_De_Plume8:48 PM

    Wow, all that and he invented scuba!

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  33. M. Krebs9:03 PM

    “My husband’s academic background was not as luxurious as mine, and that was a source of some stress,” said Patton. “I think he felt a certain level of resentment.”



    Sorry, but that sounds to me like the woman has some issues. It would be interesting to hear her ex's version.


    Good for her for being the first in her family to go to college, and good for the millions of others who've been the same. I'm sorry she didn't think her husband was her intellectual equal after 27 years. But you know what? Lot's of people have real problems. So fuck her.

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  34. mortimer20009:18 PM

    Y'know, probably like Matt Lewis, I went to the drug store for just the right last-minute Valentine's Day card for the Love of my Life (who rates only the best CVS has to offer), and, probably like Lewis, I was annoyed at having to pay $6.95 for 40 cents worth of colored paper and ink, too. But I don't think I could ever have eked 1200 words out of it. Bravo, Matt!

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  35. mortimer20009:20 PM

    Matt Lewis: ...the selling of sex is, at least, more obvious, and thus less insidious, than the selling of the romantic solution.

    The cure, of course, is the romantic final solution, in which you torture and kill your date by reading aloud from Matt's book of Palin quotes.

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  36. satch9:32 PM

    I'm thinking that Matt spends a lot of time sitting alone in a dim room with a Pabst Blue Ribbon in his fist and this on a continuous loop:
    www.youtube.com/watch?v=JcgZlzOFd-w

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  37. bekabot9:36 PM

    This is extra ridiculous because right now college-educated women are crushing it both in the marriage market and outside it. If there's a marriage crisis going on it's not taking place among well-educated women. Well-educated women (I blame widening inequality for this; today women with lots of access to education are likely to have access to lots of other resources, and resources are tempting) are getting married and staying married and reporting satisfaction with marriage at higher rates than at any time on record, so they don't need Susan Patton to scold them about The Way It's Done. Of course it's not a given that all this can be said about women who are lower down on the economic scale.

    Trust the WSJ to honk up a bunch of concern about problems that don't need fixing and aren't even problems while ignoring everything else. Beautiful. Classic.

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  38. M. Krebs9:48 PM

    I was really expecting her book publisher to be part of Murdoch's empire, but it's published by one of Simon & Schuster's shops. So what's she doing in the WSJ?

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  39. Bubba Zanetti9:51 PM

    College is the best place to look for your mate...



    This intellectual can't quite figure out the percentage of WSJ reader demographics that are under-25 females, can she?

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  40. bekabot9:51 PM

    The magnetism a bad crowd can exert over a person with a weak streak? But then, I have no idea. Your guess is as good or better than mine.

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  41. bekabot9:52 PM

    I think she may be talking sub coco to men who dream about women who are dewy but not ignorant. JMO.

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  42. Anyone over the age of twelve who bases their notions about romance, love, marriage, and sex on Valentine's Day experiences needs to have their head examined.

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  43. Bubba Zanetti9:55 PM

    Or men who dream about under-25 women who are willing to marry someone double or triple their age just for their "intelligence".

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  44. KatWillow9:57 PM

    I loved his "Undersea World" specials.

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  45. KatWillow10:01 PM

    Its really just a yearly reenactment of Western Courtship Rituals, maybe useful in keeping a marriage romantic. I dunno.

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  46. Dear Wall St Journal, I never thought this would happen to me...

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  47. montag210:03 PM

    Yup, that explains the tendency toward trophy wives among the very wealthy business class.

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  48. KatWillow10:06 PM

    I've college educated friends who never studied any of the Humanities. They took "marketing" "computer programming" "medicine". They say "huh?" when one mentions Shakespeare, let alone Ibsen. (then they belch and scratch)

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  49. KatWillow10:07 PM

    These columns are usually racist, as well. They're directed at middle class white women.

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  50. KatWillow10:08 PM

    Murdoch felt "unmanned" when his young wife defended him from a pie-thrower. Ungrateful dog.

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  51. KatWillow10:11 PM

    In high school I sneaked away from P.E. and hung out at the school library, reading plays. Ibsen, Shaw... I don't remember the others. "The Doll House" sounded interesting, but it actually wasn't.

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  52. coozledad10:15 PM

    You should have been around in the early eighties, when that MBA shit was taking hold. There are two distinct zombie narratives defining our country at this moment. One involves a slave force of workers condemned to an everlasting hell of pointless labor. The other involves people who pretended to read Ayn Rand.

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  53. "Could you marry a man who isn't your intellectual or professional equal? Sure.But the likelihood is that it will be frustrating to be with someone
    who just can't keep up with you or your friends. When the conversation
    turns to Jean Cocteau or Henrik Ibsen, the Bayeux Tapestry or Noam Chomsky, you won't find that glazed look that comes over his face at all
    appealing."


    Well, howzabout when you're out with HIS friends, and the discussion turns to great moments in HVAC, or the best way to back up an eighteen wheeler, or who's going to win the MMA match on Spike? On second thought, Susan, just shut up and put on this wet T-shirt...

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  54. Sounds like a pointy-headed elitist to me.

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  55. tigrismus11:14 PM

    Those men who are as well-educated as you are often interested in younger, less challenging women.


    So her advice is to get married in college? Sheesh.

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  56. M. Krebs11:39 PM

    I think I saw "The Doll House" at a drive-in once.

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  57. "Robyn? Why can't you just go to the party, find a nice young man... you know, I'd like nothing more than to release your full disbursement of the trust, but your father--God rest his soul--would have a seizure if I did that before you gave me a grandbaby!"

    "Mrs. Lay, your daughter hasn't been here for months. But... dinner is almost served. Will you be eating in the formal didning room, tonight, or shall I bring it upstairs? Or perhaps a ninth highball?"

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  58. teresa12:18 AM

    "avoid falling for the P.C. feminist line that has misled so many young women for years." Translation: You must marry a petulant spineless whiney asshole that believes he is a fictional hero from some action movie merely because he breathes and gets a boner at the same time. Then make him plenty of sammiches because the bastid is too lazy and ignorant to do it himself. Plus all his "guy" friends will call him a woman like you.

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  59. redoubtagain12:21 AM

    This is the part where I brag about my wife of 22 years.



    Youngest of seven; first to go to college (HBCU). She got two semesters in when she had to drop out to care for her ailing mother. She's not interested in going back, but she is interested in learning. She'll find out what she wants to know, and apply it. Like most smart people, college-educated or not.



    I have the (arts) degree; she has the practical knowledge. It works for us.

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  60. DocAmazing12:26 AM

    Bored by the Bayeux...

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  61. beejeez1:51 AM

    She use a lot of blue?

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  62. Tehanu2:50 AM

    You know, the Morlocks not only actually won that war, but they were the heroes. Susan Patton obviously envisions herself as the dainty Eloi princess, not realizing that the dainty Eloi were a bunch of useless drones.

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  63. avoid falling for the P.C. feminist line that has misled so many young women for years. Alternate translation: As you can see from my confused tripe I can't cite who these young women might be or how they've been misled, yet my rote trashing of "P.C." and feminists in the same sentence won me a spot on the editorial page of the Wall Street Journal.

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  64. philadelphialawyer3:35 AM

    "I'm not sure I've ever been in a conversation that I could characterize as 'turning to the Bayeux Tapestry.'"
    You're not sure? In other words, maybe there was such a conversational turning, but it "Blue Bayeux?"
    Thanks, I'll be here all week!

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  65. Even better, marry your professor.

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  66. Will you be discussing the Bayeux Tapestry? I'm a huge Bishop Odo fan.

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  67. Was Pam Grier in that one?

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  68. slocum4:13 AM

    Yeah, keep'er hands in your view at all times.

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  69. Spaghetti Lee4:39 AM

    Another Valentine's Day. Another night spent ordering in sushi for one
    and mooning over "Downton Abbey" reruns. Smarten up, ladies.



    Here, Patton employs the classic rhetorical technique of calling one's audience a bunch of pathetic losers, aka "The Sgt. Hartman school of motivation."

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  70. aka "Sgt Hartman's Lonely Hearts Club Band"

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  71. So, how is old Ibsen doing these days?

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  72. HaySeuss Christy! When will I ever learn to read the comments before throwing out one-liners.

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  73. I think you'll find that Dana Plato was not a "fella."


    (Hint: go to college dude, or you won't be able to keep up with yer edumacated wife and her friends.)

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  74. I agree she needs good editors, but then the general theory is that "editors" these days, at publications like the WSJ, are more like fight promoters than literary professionals. They were the kids in the schoolyard egging on the timid friends to "hit each other."

    Also, too, having lived and worked in about 14 different states from Alaska to Florida, California to North Carolina, Michigan to Texas (etc etc.), I have finally found myself in New England for the past 7 years. This the land where No Colleges Exist outside the status-conscious Ivy League (and hangers-on), and I gotta tell you I have yet to meet anyone here who seems to apply their zillion-dollar lofty degrees any better than I apply my lowly state-university ones. In fact, there are some real bozos here with those overpriced pieces of paper hanging off their asses.

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  75. Was there a gun in the First Act?

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  76. Mmmmm...Linda Rondstadt...my teenaged daydreams haunt me.

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  77. Im pretty sure that fucking tony blair was the last straw.

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  78. tigrismus8:04 AM

    "Older men like younger, less challenging women, so marry while you still are one!" Bah. Find a man who is up to the challenge, no matter what his age or educational attainment.

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  79. I just want to say im so sorry you had to endure the troll infestation. Even though blogs are public they are intensly personal and intimate spaces. That must have been terrible.

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  80. One really only has to marry--and annul--one woman with a penis to be shut of this "chastity-until-marriage" notion.

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  81. Im struck by her weird use of the word "luxorius"--its not the right word. Speakin as a person who enjoyed valentines day dinner watching my parents volley latin with my teenagers after spirited discussions of shakespeare and the process of directing arcadia i agree that at least you and your spouse need to value the same things. But you dont have to bring identical things to the marriage and 27 years is or should be a good amout of time to grow and learn together.

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  82. William Miller8:19 AM

    Oh man, that's bad. Funny, but bad.

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  83. On iphone. Apologies for the telegraphic style and crap spelling.

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  84. William Miller8:22 AM

    Upvote for "whisky dick."

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  85. We did discuss ibsen last night, oddly enough. Im watching netflixs spoof. Mafia show set in norway and my mother (83) went on a tear sbout how awful ibsen is and how terrible norwegians are. I guess ibsen still comes up in some conversations.

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  86. Dont you get it? Its the eealthy parents who read the wsj, white knucked because they want their daughter to earn her Mrs degree.

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  87. coozledad8:44 AM

    I was channeling one of my old roommates from college. He would have made that statement blankly while playing with his mustache.

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  88. Right--and that is fine. Even dullards and mbas need mates. The key issue is to be compatible and have a matched level of curiosity, adventure, aesthetics. My cousin who does props for the san francisco opera knows as much about art and theater as any collrge professor. Shes married to a guy who hand builds expensive bikes. Theres more to marriage than four bare legs in a bed.

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  89. coozledad9:19 AM

    Fucking Tony Blair is ALWAYS the last straw.

    ReplyDelete
  90. Funny you should bring that up because, every time I try to seduce a woman by reciting Ibsen, my mind wanders from the text and I keep thinking about how I want to give her head... uh... gobble 'er.

    ReplyDelete
  91. So mom's no fan of "I Remember Mama", I suppose.

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  92. mortimer20009:53 AM

    College is the best place to look for your mate...

    I'm sure. Stick to college men and you'll never see that glazed look when the conversation turns to Jean Cocteau, Henrik Ibsen, or the Bayeux Tapestry. Just ask the ten wives of these five guys:
    Sean Hannity (Adelphi, NYU)
    Louie Gohmert (Texas A&M)
    Steve King (Northwest Missouri State)
    Donald Trump (Fordham U., Wharton School)
    Rush Limbaugh (Southeast Missouri State)

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  93. chuckling9:53 AM

    Good points.From what I see between Roy's quotes and your additional information, she seems a woman deserving of empathy. I've often heard the same plaints in a non-ideological context, or from more liberal women, which is likely much more common given the demographics of gender, education levels, and ivy league grads. I'm not watcha'd call pro marriage and don't care a wit for the legalities of it, but I am pro decent people getting good things they want, so I'm sympathetic with that demographic's plight.


    I'm not in a position to judge her advice about finding a husband in college. As I met my spouse in college, as well as many of my other life-long friends, I don't think it's categorically bad advice. But of course it's not the only path. And I have a couple personal reasons to wonder, my daughter being one of them. She's graduating in a few months from what they call a highly selective college and all of her high school friends went to one or another of those institutions, so I know quite a few young women in Patton's target audience. I'm pretty sure that not a single one of them got married and to my knowledge none of them have had any kind of long term relationship. I don't know everyone's story, but husband hunting or finding is certainly not the norm. As poor chuckling is not from that kind of background, I don't know if things have changed that much. In my albeit limited experience, it seems most of the parents of of these selective school kids are relatively happy. Many of them went to selective schools themselves, though quite a few seem to have gone to big state U and then done well enough to send their kids to private school. Again, it's a tough world out there for a lot of people hoping for long term love. I find myself erring on the side of empathy these days.


    Anyway, I also agree with the line about decent fucking editors observation. A decent fucking editor would have edited out the "feminist P.C." line. But of course some crap like that is likely a pre-requisite for getting published in the WSJ. Or those indecent fucking editors may have just added it.

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  94. StringOnAStick10:37 AM

    "far more time Planning for your husband than your career" sounds an awful lot like telling women they should be the grasping, money-grubbing, take-it-all-in-a-divorce stereotype that the MRA guys are so sure exist in droves. You know, the thing that allows them to hate all women and fondle their handguns extra hard as they imagine hunting down the last one who turned down their cheeto-stained advances.

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  95. Best of the non-gender-defined committed-relationship season to you!

    We need to make Bill O'Reilly believe this is a thing.

    ReplyDelete
  96. StringOnAStick10:51 AM

    When we were first dating, I spent the Valentine's day weekend at my now-husband's condo. We made a turkey, skied, had fun, and then I took the carcass back home so I could make stock. When his co-workers asked him what he gave me for Valentine's day, he proudly said "a turkey carcass!". They predicted 1 more month before our relationship was over. It's been 23 years, and most of them are divorced, while we're still skiing, having fun, and avoiding commercially-enforced, made-up holidays.

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  97. In matters of this nature, I like to refer to the wisdom of Col. Nathan Jessep: "... if you haven't gotten a blowjob from a superior officer, well,
    you're just letting the best in life pass you by."

    ReplyDelete
  98. whetstone11:20 AM

    but then the general theory is that "editors" these days, at publications like the WSJ, are more like fight promoters
    This times a kabillion. I'm in the business and it's infuriating. As chuckling points out, a good editor would kill the line about PC feminism, because it's bullshit.*
    *My biggest complaint about journalism is that, while you can't get explicit facts wrong, you can get away with completely perverse misinterpretations.
    I'd say that it's a "fact" that there's not a damn thing about political correctness or feminism that says women shouldn't get married or have kids, but in the current state of affairs it's much worse to make a minor error on someone's name/title than to make a sweeping and inaccurate generalization about a matter of history and culture because that's just the writer's opinion, man, and who can say whether or not it's true?**
    **After all, it's all the liberals fault because of cultural relativism.

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  99. Meanie-meanie, tickle a person11:29 AM

    makes his emissions much more logical

    If no less nocturnal...

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  100. Meanie-meanie, tickle a person11:29 AM

    The Dewar's droop?

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  101. The_Kenosha_Kid11:33 AM

    You are not even Single fucking Ladies, you are unorganized grabasstic pieces of Cat Lady shit!

    ReplyDelete
  102. Wrangler11:55 AM

    If you leave school more or less incapable of relating to people who don't know anything about sfumato or Lie groups, then regardless of how much you know, you have likely left school less cultured than when you arrived. So that's an educational failure, since culture is the whole point of education. And the thing is, it's far from impossible to talk to less educated people about difficult conceptual material or recherche cultural artifacts. The problem is, there are a few right ways to go about it and an awful lot of wrong ways to go about it. Most of the wrong ways leave you sounding like a condescending blowhard. And, perhaps not coincidentally, this op-ed piece is fairly dripping with what appears to be unintentional condescension.

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  103. One of Mr. Aimai's first gifts to me was one of those vibrating foot massage/baths. The look on his mother's face when he told her was priceless. It basically said "What a fucking maroon! What an unromantic gift." But it was pretty darned romantic--it showed he cared about how I was feeling (I think I must have had more than ordinary foot problems after years tramping up and down the himalayas in flip flops and sneakers.)

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  104. I loved that movie! I never did find out why Mom hates Norwegians that much--I think she has Ibsen confused with Strindberg, frankly.

    ReplyDelete
  105. glennisw12:17 PM

    When we lived in the Pacific Northwest and I had a big garden, my husband's annual birthday gift to me (November) was a truckload of cow manure, to mulch the garden.

    ReplyDelete
  106. I'm slightly more sympathetic to the overall argument "find your mate in college or have trouble doing so" because the numbers and the social situation are biased in this direction. But that holds true for men as well as women. Its not a function of rapid female degradation by age at all. Its a function of the reality of modern social life. The period of life when you are (lucky enough) to be at a four year college--if you are lucky enough to do so without working two jobs to pay for it--is the last time you will be in the company of other single people 24/7 with leisure time for dating. After that the situations in which people can expect to interact with other unmarried or unattached people of the desired sex and sexual orientation declines because people's work and commute time aren't prime dating situations.


    But there's no real argument that seizing on the first or second youthful college age relationship works any better, long term, than red state early marriages (to get the cow) do. It probably doesn't. There's a lot of growth and change that happens to people after they leave college and in the context of the work and relationships they have. Maybe starter relationships work better for people than fixed ones for that period of their lives.


    The current US economy, especially for the upper classes, forces long periods of travel and compromise on both men and women. Its not a comfortable choice between high powered career/no spouse and good job/this spouse--choosing the relationship may mean ending the career entirely. One or the other of you may be being asked to move fairly frequently--I moved ten times in ten years between college and finishing graduate school in order to take advantage of the job offers or grants that were available to me. If I'd been married during that period one of us would have had to choose between marriage and career and that might have meant between marriage and employment entirely. In fact that is what happened to me, eventually.

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  107. LittlePig12:54 PM

    Maybe she's not crazy about Powdermilk Biscuits.

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  108. LittlePig12:56 PM

    The Lagavulin Limp?

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  109. LittlePig1:03 PM

    I remember my mom (a college purchasing agent) saying about certain young ladies "She's here for her MRS (degree)".

    ReplyDelete
  110. LittlePig1:16 PM

    Shoot. You beat me to the MRS.

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  111. Clay Schott1:19 PM

    There's really only a couple of things that you need to know about the Bayeux tapestry when speaking with Ms. Patton:


    1. it's technically not a tapestry, and
    2. it was made in England, not in France, though the French have embedded it into their mytho-historical stories.

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  112. sparks1:19 PM

    Poor Matt is lucky that there's no White Day like in Japan, he'd have to trot that romantic angst out all over again. Second thought, maybe it's we who are lucky.

    ReplyDelete
  113. The Scotch Slump.

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  114. Its a fact that most dresses she wears sell out in a few hours--especially the more affordable ones like the cheap black and white one she wore a few years ago.

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  115. smut clyde1:41 PM

    The arc of his moral universe, bending.

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  116. M. Krebs1:45 PM

    I blame feminism for spotted dick.

    ReplyDelete
  117. marindenver1:46 PM

    Are they an actual thing? I always thought Keillor made that up.

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  118. PersonaAuGratin1:57 PM

    The Angles and the Saxons still have a thing for it:

    Installed in 1983 in the old Grand Seminary, the museum welcomes around 400,000 visitors each year, most of them Anglo-Saxons.... per http://www.tapestry-bayeux.com

    (I had to look it up when I realized I didn't know where the tapestry is located, and had no memory of seeing it in the London/Paris museums I visited many years ago).

    ReplyDelete
  119. PersonaAuGratin2:20 PM

    Glenflaccid?

    ReplyDelete
  120. Now all we need is Brian Cox telling us how to pronounce it.

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  121. I'm supposed to be subbing in at NoMoreMrNiceBlog this weekend and I'm tossing around ideas to write about and it occurs to me that one thing that makes right wing writing about things, from Valentine's Day to Prison Reform, is the desire to turn every event into a symbolic battle between life's winners and life's losers. Its as though their entire belief system were to be summed up in the phrase "If you are a Hammer, strike; if you are a nail--endure the striking." The point of every incident or event is to determine who were the winners and the losers and then rejoice at the suffering of the losers and praise the winners. You see this all the time when you read the comment section in a newspaper or on Ann Lander's blog--people read about an incident or read a letter to Ann Lander and the first thing they do is not focus on the person's problem but assign blame for the situation to one or the other party. Once blame can be assigned then the readers line up to explain why the person writing in should simply shut up and take their punishment (the problem is their fault) or should strike back (the problem is not their fault, they must act to avenge themselves on the evildoer).


    With this valentine's day shtick it resolves itself into the following knee jerk reaction: Valentine's Day creates winners and losers. If someone is a "loser" they need to be punished and humiliated, or their loser status needs to be blamed on a bad actor. Women who don't have dates are losers and their lose status is blamed on: women who don't have dates and "pc feminism." Men who don't have dates are also losers, but their loser status is blamed on "women who won't settle" so they are off the hook.

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  122. Mooser3:04 PM

    "than red state early marriages (to get the cow) do"


    Oh, please, everybody's got the cow. We men won that little struggle long time ago. Sex is compulsory. The marriage is for the calf, the one that seemed so strangely unexpected.
    Haven't you noticed the sexual revolution? Everybody has birth control now.

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  123. Mooser3:09 PM

    Groucho Marx was being shown a potential school for his daughter. The Headmistress grandly waved at the girls and said "Aren't they a lovely group of young women?"
    Groucho is reputed to have replied: "Lady, in twenty years half of these women will be divorced!"

    ReplyDelete
  124. Mooser3:17 PM

    A younger women is "less challenging"? "Less freakin CHALLENGING? Uh, no!
    I am married to a woman nine years my junior, and it is undoubtedly going to take ten years off my life, maybe more. No doubt, she is making her plans accordingly.
    Did I mention I've heard she took a shot at her first husband? Less challenging, my sainted, fallen-arched foot!

    ReplyDelete
  125. Mark_B4Zeds3:20 PM

    You put whiskey on your dick? I find it's more effective if I pour it in my mouth, but I'll try anything once.

    ReplyDelete
  126. Red_cted3:25 PM

    "Those men who are as well-educated as you are often interested in younger, less challenging women."

    Cuz there's nothing I enjoy more than dating a ditzy chick you says "I don't get it" when I make an obscure joking reference to Rimbaud.

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  127. Another Valentine's Day. Another night spent ordering in sushi for one and mooning over "Downton Abbey" reruns.

    Gotta love those cultural "signifiers". Poor despondent liberal women, wouldn't they rather be down at the Chik-Fil-A munching fried goodies with their quiverful before coming home to watch "Duck Dynasty"?

    On a more important note, does this signal a new trope in porn?

    **DING DONG**

    "You order the stuffed bento box with extra eel?"

    Cue music

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  128. Wrangler3:34 PM

    Aimai, I don't want to embarrass you but there is something I want to say: you are probably the sanest person I have ever encountered, either in the real or in the virtual world. My favorite things you write are usually really simple, just you trying to get inside the head of normal people to bring to light what they're worried about in their day-to-day lives and how they're trying to deal with that. One of my favorite things you've written was during the pajama boy nonsense where you talked about how the ad was directed at parents who had college age kids coming home for the holiday, which would make it a good time to get things in order regarding healthcare. Obviously there's nothing mind blowing about that, but it's not something I would have thought of since I'm single and don't have kids, and there is something very comforting reading about such simple common sense.

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  129. Im really touched. You made my day.

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  130. J Neo Marvin5:59 PM

    It used to go like that, now it goes like this:
    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2Ih7KzKLLWA

    ReplyDelete
  131. M. Krebs6:06 PM

    Glenlimpet.

    ReplyDelete
  132. coozledad6:09 PM

    That sellout.

    ReplyDelete
  133. tigrismus6:10 PM

    I think by "less challenging" she meant less educated, as in younger AND less challenging, not so much that the one necessarily follows from the other. But she's nuts, so who knows?

    ReplyDelete
  134. realinterrobang6:19 PM

    I loved "A Doll's House," but by the time I was exposed to it, I knew damn well why it was pretty radical re women, although I did think Dr. Rank's case of congenital syphilis was honestly pretty damn shocking, to be honest.

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  135. realinterrobang6:20 PM

    Ow.

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  136. realinterrobang6:27 PM

    I can honestly say that Michelle Obama is the first First Lady of my lifetime (spanning back to the Carter years, although I don't remember much before Reagan) who actually has a style I wouldn't mind emulating.

    No offense to Hillary Clinton, whom I liked just fine, but her clothes mostly just didn't do it for me (and I'm someone who adores the Queen's suits and hats).

    ReplyDelete
  137. Emma_in_Sydney6:39 PM

    Actually the Bayeux tapestry is seriously awesome. A 70 metre comic strip in thread? It completely captivated my twelve year old graphic novel loving son just last year.

    ReplyDelete
  138. William Miller7:41 PM

    I had a friend in the Air Force many years ago who had to shave his 'stache because ... well, you know.

    ReplyDelete
  139. Red_cted8:29 PM

    Damn! Is that an obscure joking reference to Rimbaud?
    Seriously though, a few days ago I mentioned Paul McCartney to one of my 19YO employees and she asked "Who's that?"

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  140. satch9:04 PM

    Or put another way; they will have outgrown their "Starter Husbands" and will be more discriminating in the search for happiness and self-actualization the second time around.

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  141. ken_lov9:20 PM

    The intertubes fall apart; the centre cannot hold. It's long been impossible to distinguish sincere but bizarre comments from Poes; now with stuff like Patton's, the same applies even to the OPs. It's like the whole internet has been taken over by "The Onion".

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  142. realinterrobang10:00 PM

    I agree with Wrangler, except I'd add that you're also one of the more consistently insightful commenters I've ever seen on this here series of tubes, which is why you make it to my LiveJournal quotes posts so damn often. (Smut and B4 are often also well-represented, but for different reasons.) You and Kay at Balloon Juice just have a habit of knocking it out of the park in terms of understanding certain subjects.

    /very unfunny comment, my apologies

    ReplyDelete
  143. freq flag10:21 PM

    OK, I'll bite...is this someone everyone else (but me) recognizes?

    (I definitely agree with the assumption, though.)

    ReplyDelete
  144. J Neo Marvin10:22 PM

    Go Rimbaud, go Rimbaud, go Rimbaud, yeah, go Johnny go and do the Watusi!

    ReplyDelete
  145. When his co-workers asked him what he gave me for Valentine's day, he proudly said "a turkey carcass!".


    IYKWIMAITYD.

    ReplyDelete
  146. You don't recognize Dolores Devigny, love-lorn "spiritual therapist," and her aggressive dachshund Camaguey, from Life Outtakes? Sheesh, have you been living under a barrel inside another, larger barrel?


    [No, I don't know who it is, either.]

    ReplyDelete
  147. how terrible norwegians are.


    I know! The Minnesota ones keep saying "hotdish," and it only gets sorted out after you've slugged them.

    ReplyDelete
  148. 1. it's technically not a tapestry,


    ... but a tidal estuary.

    ReplyDelete
  149. Steve King (Northwest Missouri State)

    Whew, that was close.

    Rush Limbaugh (Southeast Missouri State)


    Whew, that was close.


    After all these years, the fact that my alma mater changed its name from Northeast Missouri State to Truman may have finally become clear.

    ReplyDelete
  150. BigHank5310:13 AM

    I'd say it's two-prong. The first prong is white pearl-clutching over the birthrate of the lower classes. Total racism as KatWillow notes.

    The other prong is straight-up authoritarianism: a place for everyone and everyone in their place, with designated breeders putting out crotchfruit at eighteen-month intervals. I've wondered if patriarchy itself isn't merely a sales tool for hierarchy. Once you've accepted the idea that one family member should be ordering the other around, you've entirely assimilated the idea that there should be orders, and that they should be followed.

    The least charitable interpretation of Patton's column, of course, is that she just trying to convince some members of her son's cohort of job-seekers to quit and thusly improve his odds of not moving back in with the parents.

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  151. Years ago--like 20--Mr. Aimai performed a Beatles song on his guitar at a faculty event. One of the new graduate students asked him, worshipfully, if he'd written it. It was probably Let It Be.

    ReplyDelete
  152. BigHank5310:31 AM

    It's their infantile grasp of morality. It's very comforting to believe that bad things only happen to people who deserve them. Why extend Medicaid? If those people deserved to be healthy, they'd have the money they need. Poor people are just lazy. Women who get abortions are just shirking responsibility.

    ReplyDelete
  153. coozledad10:31 AM

    Wrote it? Hell, I just improvised it! Now here's a little thing I wrote I call Hey Bulldog.

    ReplyDelete
  154. What Patton *really* means: Get busy breeding, white girls, haven't you been paying attention to modern demographics?

    ReplyDelete
  155. That one candy heart that reads "The money's on the dresser".

    ReplyDelete
  156. M. Krebs11:11 AM

    Uh, yeah, now that I know what it is, I agree.

    ReplyDelete
  157. M. Krebs11:13 AM

    Oh yeah.

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  158. M. Krebs11:19 AM

    Found by a Google images search Susan Patton. I think it's really her.

    ReplyDelete
  159. Red_cted12:28 PM

    I think the Chik-Fil-A quiverful scenario shows cinematic promise too.

    ReplyDelete
  160. M. Krebs1:43 PM

    Bayou Tapestry should be a zydeco band that specializes in Carole King covers.

    ReplyDelete
  161. smut clyde2:41 PM

    I want to be Aimai when I grow up.

    ReplyDelete
  162. Mooser3:41 PM

    It's your favorite foreign movie!

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  163. Mooser3:47 PM

    Perhaps, in a new twist on a stone-age trope, athjeletic co-eds could select their mates in a sort of "knock-out game".

    "Him have MBA, he mine!"

    ReplyDelete
  164. Mooser3:48 PM

    Frankly, any well-educated girl knows that when the Rimbaud comes out, it's time to go home. And unvarnished, too.

    ReplyDelete
  165. M. Krebs6:07 PM

    Wrong song, but up-voted anyway!

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  166. M. Krebs6:08 PM

    I'd settle for smut clyde.

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  167. redoubtagain8:13 PM

    Fronted, of course, by Clifton Chenille

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  168. redoubtagain8:16 PM

    Hatch Mor Chikin

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  169. freq flag11:32 PM

    Oh, the dog I recognize...
    (guess I need a bigger barrel)

    ReplyDelete
  170. freq flag11:38 PM

    Ah yes, the Gazoogle--I shoulda knowed.
    (the hemi-bouffant semi-bumpit helmet look gives her that B-52 vibe that just carpet bombs you with credibility)

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  171. This lady is the "Princeton Mom" who wrote that embarrassing column a year or so ago begging women at Princeton to date her son instead of concentrate on getting through, you know, Princeton. Apparently she married a non-Princetonian, and it didn't last.

    ReplyDelete
  172. marouanerossi1:50 PM

    Very great article . Thanks for this post

    Signals To Profit

    ReplyDelete