And the Award for the Silliest Article of the Week Goes to. . .

. . . "A Point of View: In defence of the nanny state" by Alain de Botton. The point of this strange collection of ramblings that the author tries to sell as "a point of view" is to suggest that you only become a mature human being when you welcome the attempts of others (in this case, the benevolent government) to infantilize you:

It is perhaps in the end a sign of immaturity to object too strenuously to sometimes being treated like a child. Why does the idea of a nanny state always have to be so terrifying? The libertarian obsession with freedom ignores how much of our original childhood need for constraint endures within us, and therefore how much we stand to learn from certain paternalistic strategies. It is not much fun, nor ultimately even very freeing, to be left alone to do entirely as one pleases.

The central idea here is nothing new. Playing the role of an eternal child is pleasant and fun. Who the hell needs to shoulder the burdens of adulthood, make one's own choices, and bear the consequences? Let's abdicate our responsibilities to somebody else.

The article offers two very strange arguments as to why the government (which is presented here as an all-powerful benevolent entity, which is truly God-like in its drive to improve the fallible and weak human beings) should "dare to exhort us to act well." The first argument is that religions have traditionally imposed a long set of rules and regulations on people. They even have rules about sex. To make this extremely complex idea even clearer to us, the childlike, unintelligent readers who need to be patronized at all times, the article here offers a photo of a kissing couple with the caption: "Religions have rules about sex."

The next argument as to why freedom from governmental intrusion is a silly thing to which one could aspire is the existence of advertisement. TV commercials and billboards exhort us to do bad things (here the author is kind enough to provide two ready examples of such bad things: eating crisps and buying cars), then there should be a competing source of propaganda (the government) to tell us to be nice and

forgive others, don't be mean about people you envy, dare to apologise, be slow to anger.

The author of the article never elucidates which government on this planet can convincingly promote such a message. Apparently, he believes that our childish brains are not ready yet for the information of such degree of complexity.

I think that everybody who has read this blog for any amount of time knows that I'm not a libertarian. Still, you don't have to be one to realize that the argument offered in Botton's article cannot withstand even the slightest scrutiny. Governments teaching people not to be mean and angry in order to counteract the deleterious influence of potato chips commercials is an idea that only a journalist who thoroughly despises his readers could have devised. If Botton's article is an example of the kind of paternalistic attitude he promotes, then I'll have to pass on it. Something tells me that most other people will also fail to welcome either Botton or the government assuming the role of morality police in their lives.

Saving the Intergrity of Canadian Journalism: Action Needed

A while ago I blogged about the attempts to introduce Fox News in Canada. Now there is an important development which doesn't bode well for the future of Canadian journalism. This is what Canukistani, the reader who alerted me to the news, wrote in his comment:

I’d like to make an update based on an article in the Toronto Star today. A piece by Stephen Scharper stated that the CRTC (Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunication Commission) “is seeking to relax restrictions concerning the broadcasting of specious information on radio and television.” Currently a Fox news or right wing American style radio shows cannot exist in Canada because the law stipulates that broadcasters “shall not broadcast any false or misleading news.” Last month the CRTC put a notice on its website that it wants to modify this law to “any news that the licensee knows is false or misleading and that endangers or is likely to endanger the lives, health or safety of the public.”

Now, this is very important. For now, we, the citizens of Canada, are protected by the laws of our country from an advent of irresponsible propaganda-mongers ready and willing to spread lies without any concern for the truth. If you have had any sort of consistent exposure to Canadian newscasts, you couldn't have failed to notice that Canadian newschannels differ greatly from their American counterparts in that they actually transmit news. Not political spin. Just news. Today we are about to lose all that. The result will be sad for all of us:

So who decides which information is false and endangers the public or is false and just funny entertainment for the masses? - A triumvirate appointed by (guess who?) our Conservative government. Of course we have nothing to worry about based on their long and distinguished commitment to transparency and evidence based policy i.e. two prorogations of parliament in one year, eliminating the census, increasing spending on prisons due to an increase in unreported crime. I could continue but I think that you get the picture. I can see in the near future where this new news channel which starts broadcasting in March could call the Liberal party a communist front organization which wants to bring a Soviet style regime to Canada while the CBC, referred to by conservatives as the Communist Broadcasting Company could not offer an accurate rebuttal without the threat of having its licence removed.

It is not too late, though. We can still act and at least try to prevent this from happening. Let's not allow Fox News come into Canada and spread its lies and propaganda. We don't need to subvert our own laws to help this unfair and imbalanced mouthpiece of hysterical right-wingers everywhere move into our country. Let's act! We only have until February 9 to make our opinions known, though, so there isn't much time left:

At a time of increasing economic turmoil and insecurity for the majority of citizens in North America, we seem to have a developing anti-democratic impulse on the right. Is a Kristallnacht coming? The CRTC is accepting comments on its proposed ruling change until Feb. 9. For information on how to submit comments, follow this link.

 Thank you, Canukistani! I would have missed this without you for sure.

Let's Feel Sorry for the Rich Folk!

Finally, an article that explains to all those envious losers out there how hard it is to make ends meet on the paultry income of $250,000 a year. The article that is aptly titled "Down and Out on $250,000" gives a detailed explanation of how difficult it is to get by on this tiny miserable amount:

It’s not exactly easy street for our $250,000-a-year family, especially when it lives in high-tax areas on either coast. Even with an additional $3,000 in investment income, they end up in the red — after taxes, saving for retirement and their children’s education, and a middle-of-the-road cost of living . . . In reality, to make ends meet, this squeezed couple would have to cut back on discretionary expenses – take a pass on a new suit, skip an annual vacation, and drop some kids activities. Unfortunately, the family would also probably save less, at the expense of their retirement or their kids’ educations.

The goal of the article is to shame all of us greedy underachieving fellow citizens of the hard-pressed families with such an income into rethinking our insistence that they pay taxes. Imagine that! A poor individual who leads a hand-to-mouth existence on just $250,000 per year will have to take a pass on buying a new suit. And all to pay some stupid taxes that do not benefit this individual in the least. I mean, it isn't like her uses the same roads as we do, relies on the same police officers and fire-fighters, expects the same military to defend the borders of the same country. And we expect such a valuable member of soicety  who gets nothing back from that society to give something back? That's just wrong.

 

Thank you, Mike, for pointing me towards this article.

What's the Difference Between Fox News and MSNBC?

I don't think I need to explain why I think Fox News is an insult to the very concept of journalism. There is no reporting they offer, just poorly presented propaganda. I have written about Fox News before and don't find it necessary to repeat myself. Today, however, I caught myself in a realization that I dislike MSNBC just as much and for the same reasons.

As a progressively-minded individual I am supposed to like MSNBC and use them as one of my main news sources. And I honestly tried to join my fellow liberals in their love for this channel. Of course, there is no doubt in my mind that Rachel Maddow, Lawrence O'Donnell, Keith Olbermann and Co are better human beings and more intelligent journalists than Brit Hume, Bill O'Reilly, and all those other screamers from Fox News. But the journalism these people with opposing political views end up producing is, in my opinion, of equally low quality.

I can't applaud any journalist who faithfully reiterates the party line with a single-minded abandon of a religious fanatic and without questioning any part of said party agenda. I can't do it even when the party line in question coincides with my own political beliefs. "The-Democrats-are-the-anti-Christ" agenda of Fox News is just as disappointing in its simplistic attitude to reality as the MSNBC's "the-Republicans-are-the-anti-Christ" spiel.  

Let's take Rachel Maddow, for example. I admire her a lot because it's impossible not to when seeing somebody so talented, beautiful, charming, and articulate. But has anybody noticed how much she has in common with Bill O'Reilly? Their politics are as different as night and day, of course, but their journalistic methods are eerily similar. It took me a while to notice this because as somebody who agrees with Maddow's politics, I am very inclined to admire her no matter what. Still, the more I watched her show on MSNBC, the more convinced I became that I'd already seen all these tricks somewhere else: the endless repetitions of very simple sentences of undisputed ideological power, the body language, the raised voice that keeps going up and up to accompany statements that become more simplified with each reiteration, an unwavering, fanatical party allegiance*. I knew I'd seen all that before. Finally, I couldn't keep hiding this from myself much longer: Maddow and O'Reilly have a lot more in common than their differing political view-points might lead us to expect.

I am convinced that progressive fanaticism is just as dangerous and scary as its conservative counterpart. There is nothing more terrifying than an unthinking agreement with any political agenda, irrespective of how attractive this particular agenda might look. Any thinking individual will unavoidably find him or herself in disagreement over a variety of subjects even with their closest allies. Intelligence always looks for its own way. Conformity is an impossible proposition for anybody who values their own intellectual independence. No promise of future political change can justify renouncing the right to one's own point of view.

This is why it's sad to see that these two major news stations have abandoned any attempt at real journalism in favor of spreading propaganda and ideological simplifications. Of course, that's easier than offering profound analysis, original thinking, difficult questions. Who needs to go to all that trouble when you can just repeat the same tired old mantras that the public is likely to eat up for lack of anything better anyways?

* Yes, this is just my opinion, like everything else on this blog (see the blog's header.) It will be fantastic if people avoid stating this very obvious fact of objective reality in the comments.

My Subscriptions

After years of grad school penury and a gruelling two-year-long job search process, I finally have a permanent academic postion and can indulge in my love of periodicals. Here are the journals and newspapers I subscribe to:


The Nation magazine is my absolute favorite. It is an example of truly superior progressive journalism. The Nation comes out every week and I practically dance around my mailbox every Monday, waiting for it to arrive. The writing style of The Nation's journalists is really good. After the feeble attempts at writing that come out of the so-called journalists writing for The New York Times and Washington Post, the style of The Nation's contributors is a breath of fresh air.

The articles address the most pressing political, social, economic, and cultural concerns. Last week's issue, for example, had (among other great things) a really good article by Sasha Abramsky on the current crisis in California. It finally helped me understand what is going on in that state and why it is falling apart. My favorite journalists who regularly contribute to The Nation are Alexander Cockburn, Katha Politt, Naomi Klein, and others.

At the end of every issue, there are very good reviews of interesting books of cultural studies, literary criticism, history, philosophy, etc.

A Kindle subscription to The Nation costs next to nothing, so I recommend you at least give it a try. Keep in mind, however, that the Kindle edition doesn't have the beautiful cover art, the great crossword puzzle, and the hilarious classifieds. For this reason, I overcame my Kindle-dependence and this year switched from a Kindle subscription to a paper version of the magazine.



El País is the leading daily newspaper in Spain. I started subscribing to it a couple of months ago and can say that it was a fantastic choice. Spanish journalism is truly superior to its US equivalent. It tells you a lot about the sorry state of the US print journalism when I always go to El País for the news on the events in the United States.

The most prominent Spanish and Latin American writers regularly contribute articles to El País. Juan Goytisolo, Mario Vargas Llosa, Rosa Montero, Almudena Grandes, Antonio Munoz Molina, Juan Jose Millas, and many other bestselling authors publish their articles in this fantastic newspaper. The equivalent of this would be seeing articles by Philip Roth, Margaret Atwood and Joyce Carol Oates in The NY Times every single day. Instead, NY Times regales us by badly written inanities from Douthat, Dowd, and Brooks.

Very well-written, progressive, well-organized, El País is also available on the Kindle. The day's issue is delivered to you on the stroke of midnight of the previous day.

The New Left Review is not available on Kindle. However, don't let this prevent you from checking out this great journal. The most prominent philosophers, journalists, cultural and literary critics, and academics write for this journal. Jean Baudrillard, Alain Badiou, Terry Eagleton, Perry Anderson, Eric Hobsbawm, Franco Moretti, the list of the eminent names that appear on the pages of New Left Review goes on and on. If you want to keep in touch with what these leading thinkers are doing and writing, this journal is for you.

Some people might get scared by the word 'Left' in the journal's title. Remember, however, that the very fact of being a thinker and a philosopher in itself means that you are on the left of the political spectrum. A conservative philosopher is a contradiction in terms.

Narrative is an online magazine of literary fiction available on Kindle. Its mission statement says that "Narrative is the leading online publisher of first-rank fiction, nonfiction, and poetry. A nonprofit organization, Narrative is dedicated to advancing the literary arts in the digital age by supporting the finest writing talent and encouraging readership around the world and across generations. Our online library of new literature by celebrated authors and by the best new and emerging writers is available for free."

I only started subscribing to it recently but the experience so far has been highly enjoyable. The amazing Joyce Carol Oates (whose fantastic, beautifully-crafted short stories I can read all day every day), Saul Bellow, E.L. Doctorow, Amy Tan, Jhumpa Lahiri, and lesser known but still very good authors have published in Narrative. If you want to keep in touch with what is happening with the English-speaking literature today, check out this magazine.


I first subscribed to St. Louis Post Dispatch in order to support journalism in this economically devastated area and to keep touch with what is going on locally.

It turned out that this newspaper isn't half bad. Of course, I have to skip letters from the readers that often exhibit the depths of bigotry I never encounter in real life. The 'Law and Order' section about the local crime is also very depressing. Still, it does the job of keeping me informed about the economic, political and cultural developments in the area.

Of course, I subscribe to the Kindle version in order to save paper and bring down costs. Before Kindle subscriptions appeared on the market, I always felt horrible about taking out a daily because of the obscene amount of paper it wasted. Now I subscribe to two dailies on my Kindle and as soon as I get a raise I am subscribing to Canadian Globe and Mail. Or maybe to The Montreal Gazette. Or both.

Of course, nobody can be all about politics, literary criticism, and intellectual stuff all the time. Even an academic needs to have fun and relax. My way of doing that is detective fiction. Alfred Hitchcock's Mystery Magazine and Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine are sister editions that offer great selections of short stories in the mystery genre.

I also subscribe to them on Kindle, which is beyond cheap, and once again, allows you to save paper.

I haven't seen much difference between these two magazines so far. This is why I subscribed to both. They compliment each other very well and offer stories for all kinds of tastes in the mystery genre.

Of course, give it to an academic to spoil even the most innocent kind of fun. Recently, I have been thinking of taking up a research interest in the mystery genre, so that all this detective novel reading I have done over the years doesn't go to waste.

But more about that in later posts.

Letters to St. Louis Post Dispatch

So I subscribed to St. Louis Post Dispatch on my Kindle. I know I sounds a little weird that I would even want to do that but I thought I should start supporting journalism in the economically devastated area where I now live.

The very first issue of St. Louis Post Dispatch scared me with the amount of sheer undiluted insanity contained in the letters to the editor. I was so scared when I saw those letters that I accidentally permanently deleted that issue from my Kindle. Then I thought better of it and went to the online version of the paper in order to comment on some of the letters for this blog. The letters in the online version are understandably better than in the print version. People who use a computer on a regular basis and read papers online can be expected to have at least the most basic level of education. Hence, they do not come out with  quite the same degree of madness exhibited by those who send letters to the print version. However, I was still able to dig up some veritable gems. Every signature contains a link to the actual letter so that my readers don't think I invented this.

Unfortunately, global warming is no longer about science; it has become a religion for those who seek to control our lives.

Michael Knes, St. Louis County

Unfortunately, Mr. Knes forgot to mention the actual names of the sad idiots who would want to control the lives of poor, uneducated country bumpkins like him.

Just read another letters claiming that everyone’s aversion to abortion is rooted in religion and also that women who are raped and become pregnant will not be able to get a abortion. This is just another red herring, raised by abortion lovers. I would like someone to truthfully tell me how many women in 100,000 are raped and how many of these women will become pregnant. Some of our aversion to abortion is not rooted in religion but in common decency because it takes a human life.

Ken J. Paynton ,

Stanton, Mo.

I wish to God in heaven that instead of reading "another letters" this person read at least one book. Ken J. Paynton here abandons all human decency in his statement that a couple of raped pregnant women don't really matter much. He further explains that common decency takes a human life, so this must be the reason why he does all he can to avoid being a decent human being. I suggest that instead of worrying about other people's reproductive organs, Mr. Paynton dedicate his energy to learning how to construct a decent sentence. This will help him pen letters to newspapers in the future, since this is obviously the only outlet for his indecent writing skills and helpless logic.

Reading Casey Croy’s letter “Rooted in Religion” December 11, I thought I would put aside my Catholicism for a moment to see why I am Pro-life. Then I thought, number one, abortion kills a human being. If I don’t like the death sentence for killers, why would I approve of killing an innocent baby??? So much for Pro-choice and no need to look for number two.

JoAnn Dinkelkamp

, Ballwin

The constipated tone of the letter makes me think that Ms. Dinkywink hasn't done a number 2 for a while, actually. I guess the intriguing process of taking her Catholicism off and then (presumably) putting it back on has been absorbing her entire limited attention span. On a serious note, however, did everybody notice how this person insists that it's the INNOCENT babies she doesn't want to get killed? Obviously, she would be pretty much fine with somebody wiping out a few of those guilty babies.

If you are surpised by the angry tone of this post on a nice and rainy Christmas day (or is it tomorrow? I keep getting confused about this), imagine how scary it muust be to live surrounded by these individuals. Something tells me that the editors avoid publishing the absolute worst among the letters they receive.

What Women Need According to WaPo

For anybody who has read my blog at least once before, it must be pretty obvious that I'm not the kind of a person who reads The Washington Post regularly. However, I do skim through it every couple of months to see what depths of idiocy its so-called journalists can reach. Today, an elderly indivudual named Richard Cohen has come out with an article titled "Why is there no female Tiger Woods?" where he offers a clumsy recitation of most idiotic myths about female sexuality.

Like many patriarchal losers of his ilk, Cohen cannot accept the simple fact that women might have sex for pleasure. This is why he goes out of his way to convince himself that the only reason why women have sex is to have babies. Conversely, the reason why women don't have sex is in order not to have babies. Cohen pretends that he doesn't know that modern methods of contraception allow women to avoid the danger of every sex act culminating in a pregnancy. This quasi-journalist is desperate for an explanation why nobody has had any sex with him for the past couple of decades. The sad thing is that his pathetic search for this idiotic explanation has to be done publicly, and the poor readers of his newspaper have to witness these embarrassing efforts at convincing himself that nobody wants him because of some obscure evolutionary designs: "Women seem not to have the evolutionary urge to couple with cheaply dressed strangers. They have a stronger need to mother — to have a child and then raise that child. . . Since recreational sex can lead to diapers, women have to be prudent. As they say down at the Fed, they have to consider the out years. This is why women more than men link sex to love and commitment. I'm not saying that all of them do or all of them do all the time. I'm just saying that there seems to be few women who behave as Tiger Woods did. Even women who have no moral compunction against multiple affairs draw the line at a number somewhat below Tiger’s." One can practically smell the desperation of this poor man, who is falling all over himself in order to keep believing that women haven't cheated on him, or if they did, at least it wasn't that often or with that many people.

I have noticed that men, who insist on some special link that women make between sex and love/commitment, usually are the ones absolutely incapable of offering even marginably passable sex to anybody. It is as if they were saying: "I can't offer you sexual satisfaction because I suck in bed. But I can offer you marriage and access to my wallet. And since you are a woman, that is what you need, right? Sex isn't that important to you, right? Please tell me it isn't. Please please somebody just tell me that women don't really need sex! Pwease, pwetty pwease!!!"

This image of constantly cheating men and women who have their noses perennially stuck in a baby's diaper is so near and dear to Cohen that it blinds him to one simple reality. If it were true, then who the men would cheat with? Unless the cheating man in question is gay (and there has been no suggestion that Tiger Woods is), then for every act of cheating by a man, there needs to be a woman present.


Cohen ends his article with a childish outburst against the group of people he sees as his biggest enemy: the feminists. He blames feminists for the fact that many women have discovered that sex is fun and does not have to be sacrificed to the needs of moth-eaten fools like this journalist. Cohen thinks that if he repeats something enough times, it will eventually come true: "The reason the Glass Ceiling has not broken is that women have other priorities — maintaining relationships and being a mother. This is the way it is, and this is the way it has always been." Note the hysteria in these last sentences. "It has to be this way because I can't deal with the thought that women might have other priorities. If they do, then what is my role in life? Who will need me?"

The answer is clear. In today's world nobody except an irrelevant rag like The Washington Post needs outdated chauvinists like Cohen. And the reason we still encounter the glass ceiling everywhere is not that we are only interested in babies and relationships. It's that wherever we go and whatever we attempt to do, we encounter a condescending jerk like Cohen  lecturing us on our needs.

The New York Times Blames Me for Americans Getting into Debt

I'm honestly getting to the end of my rope with The New York Times. Every single time I have opened this paper in the past couple of months, I have seen something annoying and weird.

Today's opinion column, for example, has revealed to me that the person to blame for the fact that more and more Americans get deeper and deeper into debt is . . . me. And other people like me. In the article "Is the American Dream Over?", David Brooks suggests that people "who can manipulate ideas and abstractions," who have "unique mental skills," and who are highly educated are to blame for the growth of the uncontrollable culture of consumption that drives people into debt. At a first glance, this point of view seems completely bizarre. When you read Brooks's line of reasoning that led him to this strange conclusion, however, you realize that, in terms of bizarre, you truly ain't seen nothing yet.

These highly educated people, says Brooks, "have tremendous cultural influence" and "unwittingly set the norms everybody else must live up to." Television networks, for example, fall over themselves to depict our upper middle-class, highly educated lifestyles. For Brooks, these educated cultured lifestyles consist of having "the bigger house (which now seems normal) or the multiple cars or the flat screen." People who don't have our high educational levels and the same sophisticated set of skills try to catch up with this lifestyle that we, the educated people, uphold and advertise. However, since they don't have the same set of skills, they go into debt, and "the consumption merry-go-round will begin again."

As a university professor with five degrees from extremely prestigious schools, I have to say that Brooks's vision of how educated people with "tremendous cultural capital" live is extremely strange and evidently inspired by silly TV shows. My current house is big, but it is rented, as I have no interest whatsoever in buying real estate ever. I don't drive, so there is no question of a single car, let alone multiple ones. And my TV is tiny and cost $260. The last time I shopped for clothes was May. And not because I don't like clothes, but because shopping is very boring to me. Over 20% of my income goes towards buying books. Otherwise, you have to possess a really wild imagination to see me as participating in the "the consumption merry-go-round."

Honestly, I'd love to have more influence on setting the cultural standards. I sincerely believe that everybody would win if we spent more money on books and less on cars, gas, expensive huge TV sets, and silly crap like that. Somehow, however, I don't feel that my high education has turned me into a cultural icon. A lot more people are influenced by the lifestyles of Paris Hilton and the like than by the way of life of even the most prestigious thinkers and philosophers.

The conservatives' favorite bugbear is the "educated elites" who have supposedly colonized mass culture and tell everyone how to live and what to do. (Thomas Frank's What's the Matter with Kansas?: How Conservatives Won the Heart of America talks about it beautifuly and hilariously.) This article is one more attempt to present people with high degree of education as hateful, superficial, and bad. If you take Brooks's argument to its logical conclusion, it seems that the best way to repair the US economy and cure people from consumerism would be to remove the educated people altogether, or at least to reduce our number significantly. This hatred of the educated people by the conservatives is very logical on their part. Anybody who is even marginally acquainted with what it means to think for yourself would be incapable of buying into any single item on the Conservative agenda. They need mindless drones, who would produce and shut up. Anybody with a mind of their own is potentially dangerous and should be silenced.

It is still curious to see, however, how far some people go in their desire to blame the educated people for every single of the world's ills.

Cooking and Chauvinism

Michael Pollan's "Out of the Kitchen, Onto the Couch" New York Times article is one of those annoying thinly veiled attempts to bemoan the ways in which modern women have abandoned their housewifely duties. I have written before about my love for cooking and my struggle to keep this hobby secret because of the chauvinistic connotations attached to it. Pollan's article is a perfect example of how a chauvinistic culture attaches all kinds of ideologically manipulative beliefs to cooking.

People seem to love cooking shows (Top Chef, Hell's Kitchen, Gordon Ramsay's Kitchen Nightmares), Pollan says, but this fascination with TV programs doesn't make them want to cook on their own: "Here’s what I don’t get: How is it that we are so eager to watch other people browning beef cubes on screen but so much less eager to brown them ourselves?" For some Reason, Pollan doesn't ask himself why all the people who watch "So You Think You Can Dance?"and "American Idol" don't rush to take dancing and singing lessons, why all the fans of Law & Order don't seek careers in law enforcement, or why everybody who watches 24 doesn't engage in torturing people on a regular basis. "A great many Americans are spending considerably more time watching images of cooking on television than they are cooking themselves", says Pollan, but forgets to add that there is a score of activities that we love observing on television even though we never engage in them in real life.

Pollan doesn't stop at lamenting the lack of popularity homecooking enjoys. He goes on to look for people to blame. The answer is easy for this journalist: blame the feminists. Big, mean and nasty feminists, it turns out, duped poor innocent American women into believing that housewifely chores might be boring, repetitive and unfulfilling: "The year Julia Child went on the air — 1963 — was the same year Betty Friedan published “The Feminine Mystique,” the book that taught millions of American women to regard housework, cooking included, as drudgery, indeed as a form of oppression." According to this male chauvinist, women loved dedicating their entire existence to cooking, cleaning, and doing the laundry. Then Betty Friedan came and magically convinced them they were miserable. Since women are inherently brainless, one book is more than enough to convince them that they hate activities that they, in fact, enjoy. It's surprising that these utterly stupid creatures even managed to read and understand the book in question, but this is yet another contradiction in this quasi-journalist's idiotic argument.

This kind of antifeminist reasoning inevitably leads Pollan into a breathless description of happy prelapsarian (that is, before cooking was "thoughtlessly trampled" by nasty feminists "in their rush to get women out of the kitchen") moment when women cooked and men sat around and observed their efforts: "Even when “everyone” still cooked, there were plenty of us who mainly watched: men, for the most part, and children. Most of us have happy memories of watching our mothers in the kitchen, performing feats that sometimes looked very much like sorcery and typically resulted in something tasty to eat." It doesn't matter to Pollan if the women he is dying to see back in the kitchen are interested in providing him not only with homecooked food but also with entertainment. The journalist then proceeds to enumerate his mother's cooking miracles in a tone of a whiny 5-year-old who wants mean feminists to give him back his mommy.

This kind of attitude is precisely why I don't tell people I cook. Chauvinists of Pollan's ilk are incapable of seeing cooking simply as a hobby, they need to attach ideological meaning to it.

What's Better: Getting Cancer or Getting Divorced?

According to Times Online's Jenni Russell, getting divorced and getting cancer are inextricably linked. In her article "Romance is the last thing a healthy marriage needs", she argues that getting divorced or widowed (which for her, are somehow similar) will inevitably cause a host of diseases, even if you remarry and live happily ever after with a new partner: "The divorced or widowed not only suffer a higher level of depression, but 20% more of them develop chronic health conditions such as cancer, heart disease or diabetes. They also have 23% more problems with mobility — such as climbing stairs. Those who remarry see a slight improvement in their health, but they are still far more likely to become ill than those who stay with their original companions. The researchers believe that the shock and disruption caused by the ending of a marriage can cause such anxiety that it damages the immune system, making it easier for chronic diseases to develop." According to this logic, staying with someone you don't love any more is still more beneficial to your health than starting a new relationship with a person you love.

Russell supports this ridiculous argument with a story about a friend of hers who suffered a breakdown as a result of a divorce. It's curious how every journalist always has "a friend" close by to support whatever idiocy they are promoting in their new article. The journalist doesn't care, of course, that her readers might have friends of their own who have had completely different experiences. Her friend was miserable after getting divorced, ergo everybody is miserable as well.

The main problem with relationships, Russell argues, is that people believe in and long for romantic love. When this kind of emotion fades (which in Russell's worldview is inevitable), many people decide that a relationship bereft of romantic love isn't worth maintaining. The journalist strives to convince us that the absence of love isn't reason enough for a divorce. Of course, she has a right to that point of view. She has an absolute right to live in a loveless, sexless, romanceless relationship because she has convinced herself that this will eventually save her from cancer. The only question I have is why she is desperate to see everybody around her in this kind of unfulfilling relationships? Are we honestly expected to believe that her only agenda here is to save us from cancer, heart disease, diabetes and limited mobility that, as she believes, awaits all of us who have been divorced? Or is this nothing but a fantasy on the part of a person who wants to see all of us who chose love, freedom, and romance punished for daring to do what she doesn't allow herself to do?

Woman's World

Of course, I don't read this insane magazine but I always stare at it at the supermarket checkout. The way they see a woman's world is beyond offensive. Look at the cover of magazine A, for example. The central article on how to "melt fat" is accompanied by two articles providing recipes for pasta and mocha fudge cake. Plus an article on Hollywood hairstyles. All this is followed by articles on how to get rid of stress and achieve a good mood. Of course, if you spend your life cooking, dieting, and maintaining a Hollywood hairdo in the process, your mood might become pretty lousy.

Now let's look at the cover of magazine B. Three articles on weight-loss, one on recipes, one on looking younger. And then, of course, an article on destressing and finding more energy. Evidently, you'll need tons of energy for all these diets and efforts to look younger.

And these are just two random magazine covers. Cook, diet, look pretty, destress, re-energize, and start the horrible cycle all over again.

When Will the Chauvinists Just Relax Already?

Following in the footsteps of an extremely uneducated article on male decline by Zincenko, Reihan Salam wrote an equally silly piece titled "The Death of Macho" in Foreign Policy. From the title of this article, I originally assumed that it's going to be a celebratory piece on the decline of macho mentality in a changing world that becomes more enlightened every day. For Salam, however, the death of macho is actually a bad thing.

The journalist starts out by repeating the tired statistic that claims men account for 80% of job losses in the recession, yet again refusing to ask about the men-to-women ratio of who had the jobs in the first place.

Not only is the issue economic, claims Salam. We also see it in politics: "The great shift of power from males to females is likely to be dramatically accelerated by the economic crisis, as more people realize that the aggressive, risk-seeking behavior that has enabled men to entrench their power—the cult of macho—has now proven destructive and unsustainable in a globalized world." The reasons why the journalist associates the aggressive, risk-taking behavior with men are never explained. This is precisely how chauvinism works. It makes baseless statements that support the existence of gender differences as if these differences were somehow self-evident.

Salam attempts to show that the world where women have more access to education and employment is dangerous for women too. Just think, if it's harder for men to find employment, they will not want to marry (which, apparently, should scare women out of their wits). The journalist never stops to think that the growing number of working women will easily compensate for this change in male economic status.

Equally suspect are Salam's efforts to blame the policies of the New Deal for the economic and social subjection of women in the 40ies and the 50ies. We all know what side of the political spectrum engages in a wholesale condemnation of the New Deal era and that is not the side that is very interested in supporting women's liberation.

Next, the author proceeds to analyze the situation in Russia in an attempt to warn Americans about the kind of gender relations that await the US. Salam sees Russia as a mini-US, an entity that came to existence in 1991, and that didn't have a very peculiar history of gender relations when it was part of the Soviet Union. In the XXth century, the difference between the ways gender was experienced in Russia (and the rest of the Soviet Union) and in the US were extremely different. But who cares about Russia's own history? Not Salam. Simplification is the trademark tool of this journalist's intellectual arsenal.

The problem with articles like Zincenko's piece on he-cession and Salam's article is that they promote the gender binary by analyzing the world in terms of men-against-women conflict. Binaries are, in my opinion, most pleasing to a lazy mind. Just the kind of mind that thinks it makes sense to compare gender relations in such culturally, historically, politically, and economically different places as China, Russia and the US.

Unhappy Women

Just as I was celebrating Ross Douthat's intellectual progress and his departure (at least this week) from chauvinism, I encountered a truly weird article in the UK's Daily Mail (as some of my readers might have guessed, Monday is my press overview day). Lucy Cavendish's "They have it all...so why is it so hard for some women to be happy?" is an example of gender chauvinism that sets out to belittle men in a very casual way, while apparently looking for the reasons why many women feel unhappy, bored, and unfulfilled.***

Cavendish's article is hard to understands because the terms she uses are extremely fuzzy. First of all, it's impossible to deduce whether she talks about women who are fulfilled professionally or not. In the intro to the article we read the following: "Loving husband? Tick. Gorgeous children? Tick. Exciting career? Tick. Yet still millions of harassed modern women feel there's a gaping hole in the middle of their life...." Then, however, the author proceeds to describe the women she has in mind, the "yummy mummies", who married rich and now spend their days between ordering around the nannies, playing tennis, and going to yoga classes. They have pretty cars and huge diamonds, Cavendish muses, so how come they are still miserable?

The answer, of course, is that being a coat rack that shows off the expensive furs or a Barbie doll in a cute car cannot make anybody happy. Cavendish, however, finds her answer in the tried and true favorite response of all journalists: the gender differences. While men, these boring, pedestrian creatures "are pretty happy to muddle along", women are people with "restless desires and dreams" who "are on an endless search to find fulfilment." Why don't men search for fulfillment on a similar scale? Cavendish's answer: "I don't think men are programmed this way. If their needs are met and life doesn't get too complicated, they are happy." You know, like dogs. You give them their chow, they are plenty happy. They are programmed (another idiotic expression journalists seem to adore) to be content with the most basic things.

Women, on the other hand, have higher aspirations and loftier goals in life: "I think women search all their lives, as if we are only ever fulfilled on a temporary basis. In a positive light, it is a search for continual betterment. We have only one life, the theory goes, so why not pack in as much as possible while you can? Why settle for 'all right' or 'OK' when something is gnawing away at your insides, urging you to try a different way of living." This kind of existential angst, this desire to find more meaning to life, this search for constant betterment is unknown to men. They are such simple and uncomplicated souls, they work, go home, and feel content with everything: "Maybe this is why the sexes will always be different. The type of routine that dominates men's lives doesn't seem to bother them. They get up, go to work, work hard, maybe socialise and then go home. They may grumble a bit, but they accept it. In fact, they seem to like it." Based on this description, nobody could expect such facile creatures to have any hopes and dreams that come outside the boring circle of work and home.

The author confesses that she also feels bored with her "perfect" marriage and family. One has to ask, however, how perfect can a marriage be where a woman sees men - and by extension her own partner - in such deeply chauvinistic terms.

*** I know the article was written in March, but I only ran across it today by following a link from the NYTimes. Besides, I didn't have a blog yet in March.

Daily Kos and the Future of the Media

I was thinking to subscribing to the New York Times on my Kindle. But then I discovered that for a fraction of the cost I can instead subscribe to a news outlet that is so much richer, informative, and definitely more fun. In short, I discovered Daily Kos. This is, without a doubt, the future of the media. This wonderful blog has updates several times a day. It's not just a collection of articles where every author pushes their own agenda. Instead, they provide you with links to interesting articles, videos and posts, so you can choose what you want to read for yourself.

In terms of fun, there is this wonderful thing called "hate mail-apalooza." Kos publishes the most ridiculous pieces of hate mail that the site receives. Here are the most fun parts of the recent sample that had me roaring with laughter:

dear socialist fuckstick,

i am well awear of the fact that liberals are immune to logic and reason, but allow me to try to prove to you that you are communist scum thrugh something called the scientific method:

1 a) FACT: you suck obamas cock every chance youget. you defend everythign he does and says and you are nothing more than an apologist. this makes you complicit in obamas actions.

1 b) FACT: obama is a well known socialist. this is evident his policies and his love of SELFDESCRIBED COMMUNISTS LIKE BILL AYERS!!!! so dont thinkthat he can hide his true nature for much longer. he will eventully be exposed and impeached. SOCIALISM CANNOT WORK OR RUSSIA WOULD STILL EXIST AND THEY WOULD NEVER HAVE LOST THE COLD WAR TO REAGAN!!! retard.

1 c) you are thusly a pro forma socialist; whether you like it or not. logic dictates this.

(2) FACT: you, sir, are a illegal immigrant. i dont give two shits whether you are an american citizen or not: you came here on taxpayer expense and you continue to drain our limited resources. you should be ashamed and go back to guatemala or whatever fucking middleeastern asshole you came from and try to sell yor leftwing bullshit there. [. . .]

sincerely yoursglenn

Even if this is a parody, it's a brilliant one. The Daily Kos site has the entire letter and a very fun poll to go with it.

As I said before, blogging is the future of the news media and of the entertainment industry as well.

Sexy Brides

I was about to start writing the second part of my review of Levy's Female Chauvinist Pigs, when I came across an article proving that Levy is not alone in her vision of American society as more and more sexualized in a very negative way.

In her article "Like a Virgin No More," the Newsweek's Kayleen Schaefer takes on modern brides who, instead of being "blushing, virginal and wrapped from head to toe in tulle and lace", are "more vamp than virgin" and "more bold than blushing." In her scandalized observation that on their wedding day most women today are not virgins and have nothing to blush about, Schaefer is several decades too late, so I won't even address her strangely outdated views on brides.

What interests me much more is the refrain that characterizes most of the publications on sex in America. "Our entire culture is loosening up and becoming more sexualized" says Schaefer, echoing Levy, Valenti, and many others. Here is yet again, this peculiarly American belief that talking about sex and performing it equals being sexually liberated. In fact, of course, it's just the opposite. People who create endless variations on the word porn (porny, pornified, porned, pornification, etc.) and people who talk sexuality to death are equally afraid of sex. The strong desire to have sex and the enormous fear of sexuality (Puritanical heritage) produce both the phenomenon Schaefer describes and her response to it.

In order to justify her discomfort with more revealing bridal gowns and "racy bachelorette parties", Schaefer comes up with an extremely belabored explanation for her fears: "While most sociologists agree that women admitting to lust and wanting to be sexually empowered is a good thing, they see a problem with making exhibitionism the centerpiece of the wedding ceremony: it might crowd out other aspects of the marriage." This article is far from being an only attempt to ascribe some social message and meaning to what is simply the author's discomfort with the idea of sex. Schaefer need not worry, however. Everything she describes in her article has as little to do with sexual liberation as her article itself.

Men in Decline

Following a reader's advice, I decided to forget the New York Times and read something different for a change. In USA Today, I discovered an article by David Zincenko titled "Decline of the Americal Male." The tone of the piece made me feel sorry I ever abandonedthe NY Times. Zincenko's article speaks more to the decline of journalism than to anything else.

The really sad part is that the piece provides very interesting and, in my view, important information on the difference between the way the recession treats men and women. There is a lot of data that I was glad to find out. Unfortunately, these facts are accompanied by the journalist's comments and are used to support his blatantly anti-feminist agenda. As a result, it's difficult to take aanything Zincenko says seriously.

This is how Zincenko introduces himself at the beginning of the piece: "someone who has spent his career working to save an endangered species men". Grammatically, the sentence makes very little sense but ideologically it is even harder to comprehend. Men are not separate species, they can't be endangered by themselves. If men are extinct, so will be women.

Zincenko continues to whine about "the endangered male" for a while until he comes to the real root of the problem: women's liberation. Over the past century, he claims, women have gained a lot, while men have lost. The data he provides actually contradicts this statement but who cares about a little thing like facts when you need to promote your ideology. Since most families now have two working adults, Zincenko recognizes, men have a sefety-net in the form of their spouses' salaries and benefits in case they find themselved unemployed. That should be a good thing, right? But, somehow, Zincenko sees this as evidence of male decline.

Next, the journalist proceeds to analyze the reasons for generally lower life-spans for men. This is an incredibly important topic that, in my opinion, should be discussed and researched. Unfortunately, Zincenko comes up with a way to spoil his argument yet again. The reason why there isn't enough research into male health issues, he claims, is that now it's the "payback time" for women. Apparently, the implication is that women are preventing this research from being conducted in order to take revenge on men for centuries of exploitation. Of course, it's hard to take any part of Zincenko's analysis seriously after such paranoid (and extremely badly written) statements.

Another annoying feature of this piece is Zincenko's eagerness to manipulate the facts to boost his conclusions. Men live shorter lives than women, we all know that. There is no need, however, to compare an average lifespan of an African-American man to that of a white woman in an attempt to pretend that race doesn't matter. Black men are likely to live 11 years less than white women not just because they are men but because of racial discrimination they are subjected to their entire lives. Let's not pretend that we don't realize this.

Of course, I'd take an open chauvinist like Zincenko over a fake liberal like Douthat any day of the week. It's sad, however, that wherever one goes for information a little dose of fact is garnished with such an amount of ideology that even hard data become impossible to swallow.

Fat-Shaming

Why does it happen that every time I attempt to read the New York Times I immediately encounter some truly outrageous piece that makes me angry? I keep asking myself why on Earth people keep insisting that it is a liberal newspaper?

Today, Maureen Dowd decided to repair her destroyed reputation and came out with a really snarky article that epitomizes fat-shaming. In her op-ed piece "Hold the Fries," she analyzes President Obama's eating habits in order to slip in her tired fat-is-bad message. The main idea of the article: when alone, Obama eats healthy, but when cameras are present he sometimes - oh, the horror, the horror! - consumes hamburgers to cater to the tastes of us, lowly fat people. She writes with reverence about how once "over a three-hour meal, he managed the impossible feat of nibbling only one French fry." The language of the quote is very telling. "Nibbling" is obviously a good thing for this journalist. You can just feel Dowd's admiration flowing. Forget about being elected as a first African-American president in history. The real feat is managing to avoid the fries.

The conclusion of Dowd's article is equally condescending: "Maybe when Charlie Gibson and Diane Sawyer come next week to broadcast a special on health care from inside the White House, the president should forgo the photo-op of the grease-stained bovine bag and take the TV stars out for what he really wants and America really needs: some steamed fish with a side of snap peas." See how this journalist knows exactly what we need to eat? Her disgust with "grease-stained bovine bags" is palpable. Actually, the word "grease" seems to be an important part of Dowd's vocabulary. A fast-food place for her is necessarily a "greasy spoon."

In short, the message is clear: nibbling good, eating bad. When the President "nibbles" he gets approval, when he eats more than one fry he's a self-promoting hypocrite.

Dowd must believe that without her valuable contribution there isn't enough fat-shaming in the media already. Not enough people suffer from anorexia and bulimia, not enough people hate their bodies and spend their lives looking for the next miracle diet. Let's help the dieting industry grow some more by promoting the image of a popular President as someone who "wants to stay skinny." Dowd has no interest in analyzing how and why the word "skinny" has come to be perceived as invariably positive. Obama wants to be skinny (which might not even be true), so we all should.

As we all know, there has been absolutely no proof that being "skinny" is beneficial to anybody's health. There is, however, more than enough data about the physical and psychological damage fat-shaming causes. Under the false pretense of worrying about the nation's health, Dowd's article (among many many others) causes a lot of harm and benefits no one. Except the companies that push diet pills, of course. I wonder if they thought of sending Dowd flowers. She's trying to boost their profits so hard that she definitely deserves some recognition.

Ross Douthat's Hatred of Women

On the pages of the New York Times, a newspaper that some people mysteriously claim is liberal, Ross Douthat continues to regale us with the sputum he produced as a result of his latest anti-women fit of hysteria. This time, Douthat uses the murder of Dr.Tiller, an incredibly tragic event for any decent human being, in order to bring to light his contempt of women. Of course, he tries to hide his chauvinism behind a tide of empty verbiage but this kind of hatred is too noticeable to be concealed.

Unlike reasonable, enlightened, healthy men with satisfying personal lives (such as President Obama obviously is), Douthat can't concede that women are capable of deciding what happens within their bodies for themselves. He feels that, in spite of not being likely to get pregnant any time soon, he needs to have an opinion on pregnancies. He speaks at length of the difference between a healthy and an unhealthy pregnancy in an attempt to convince his readers that he, Douthat, and not the actual pregnant women and their doctors are better qualified to make that distinction.

He also joins the group of those who try to justify Dr. Tiller's assassination by suggesting that Dr. Tiller performed abortions "on healthy mothers and healthy fetuses." Yet again, I highly doubt thaat Douthat saw these women or these fetuses. He does, however, consider himself qualified to diagnose a group of people he has never seen. And all this just in order to suggest that Dr. Tiller has actually deserved being murdered.

The goal of this piece is to suggest that abortion be "returned to the democratic process." What that means for a virulent chauvinist like Douthat is that we should stop the discussion of third-trimester medical exemptions and move on to the attempt to prohibit second-trimester abortions. Can anybody guess what the next step would be?

Of course, a possibility of stopping any discussion of third, second or first term abortions in order to leave this decision to women and their doctors is too painful for Douthat to contemplate. Women, deciding what to do with their bodies??? Never! Mr. Douthat can make that decision so much better.

Why is Douthat incapable of accepting that women can make reasonable, intelligent, well-informed decisions about their own bodies? I can't help suspecting that the reason lies in this individual's personal history with women. If he accepts this, he will also have to accept that all the women who denied access to their bodies to him (many, many women, judging from his level of hatred) did this because they are unreasonable, stupid, and don't know what's best for them.

P.S. Here is a link to an article by the talented Jodi Jacobson exposing Douthat's lies and distorions.

School Reform

What is it with the New York Times and school reform? Every new article they publish on the subject is even more hilarious than the previous one. Yesterday's article by Harold Levy titled "Five Ways to Fix America’s Schools" contains some pretty interesting suggestions. They are, however, undermined by certain statements that cannot possibly be taken seriously.

Consider at the following sentence: "Just as we are moving toward a longer school day (where is it written that learning should end at 3 p.m.?) and a longer school year (does anyone really believe pupils need a three-month summer vacation?), so we should move to a longer school career. " In my opinion, EVERYBODY would absolutely benefit from a 3-month summer vacation. I most certainly do and I'm not a child. Do we aim to make kids hate school by forcing them to spend their entire lives there? Do we want to turn them into little adults, who work 9-5 workdays 50 weeks per year? This regimen, in my view, is even detrimental to grown-ups, let alone children.

But this is far from being the most egregious (or the most entertaining, depending on how you choose to look at it) part of the article. This is how Mr. Levy proposes to fight against truancy: "But truant officers can borrow a page from salesmen, who have developed high-pressure tactics so effective they can overwhelm the consumer’s will. Making repeated home visits and early morning phone calls, securing written commitments and eliciting oral commitments in front of witnesses might be egregious tactics when used by, say, a credit card company. But these could be valuable ways to compel parents to ensure that their children go to school every day. " This is so bizzare on so many levels that I hardly know where to start. What kind of parents would allow a truancy officer to barge into their house early in the morning and bully their child in front of them with the purpose of "overwhelming the child's will"? Also, what is the use of education that is so violently enforced? You can force somebody into the school building but you cannot force them to learn. You just can't. The only way of making anybody learn anything is through making them interested in the subject. There is no other way.

In conclusion, I want to say that when I was younger I practiced truancy as a way of life. I wouldn't show my face in school for months. I would come up with most egregious lies possible to justify my truancy. This did not, however, prove to be in any way detrimental to my life or education. I have 5 scholarly degrees, one of which is a PhD from an Ivy League school. As an educator, I never punish my students for missing class. My goal is to make them want to be in my classroom. If they only come because they are scared of the repercussions, their presence in class is useless both to me and to them.

Money and Relationships: Another Silly Article from New York Times

It seems that as long as the New York Times exists I will never run out of topics for my blog. One would think that their policy of publishing op-ed pieces by college professors is a good thing. Somehow, however, they manage to choose the most ridiculously ininsightful professors in the country. One salient example of this is an article titled "Married With Bankruptcy" by a Johns Hopkins professor of sociology Andrew J. Cherlin. Sociology as a field of knowledge is noted for offering extremely simplistic conclusions about its subjects of research*. This op-ed piece is more proof of how irrelevant sociology has become (and even more proof of the overall irrelevance of the New York Times).

The article starts with a bit of whining about "our sky-high divorce rate." From my point of view, this sounds extremely emotional and completely unscientific. What does the author mean by sky-high? What's wrong with the divorce rate? Why is it necessarily a bad thing? If you pretend to be a scientist, then maybe it would be useful to leave aside this kind of preconcieved views and deal with data.

The author proceeds from an assumption that economic crises have the capacity to "destroy the inner life of many married couples" and "generate a . . . backlog of couples whose relationships have been irreparably ruined." This, I believe, is just plain silly. If a relationship and its "inner life" (whatever this sociological term might mean) can be ruined by money or its absence, then I somehow doubt that it was a relationship worth saving anyways. A financial crisis can bring to light some problems that already exist in a relationship and, in this sense, it sounds like a positive thing.

*I will never forget the following state-of-art definition of identity provided by a group of known sociologists: "Identity is something that somehow binds certain people together." It literally took these researchers years (according to the preface of their book) to come up with an important conclusion that identity is something.