Flashback '08: The Audacity Althousity of Hope.

Originally blogged on May 11, 2008, under the heading "The Althousity of Hope." 

I went back into the archive to find that after reading the comments on the second post of this morning, "Are educated, intelligent adults allowed to complain that they didn't get what Obama's smiling 2008 campaign persona made them feel they could get?" 

Commenter Kelly said:

Seems like it was only yesterday I saw all the cool kids walking around with a copy of Dreams From My Father tucked under their arm. Everything they needed to know about The One was right in there, or so they thought. The book was as shallow as its author.

And I thought, no the book the cool kids were walking around with was "The Audacity of Hope." See? It's right there on the table.

The comments at the May '08 post fascinate me. People say I look lonely — lonely on Mother's Day! — and I have to point out that obviously, I'm not alone, since somebody else is taking the picture, and my book is under my hand, which means the Obama book is the other person's book. But commenters persist, observing that you don't have to be alone to be lonely, and it's figured out that under my hand — my fisheyed hand, which is mocked as a baseball mitt, a man-hand, an alien hand, and a Lisa Simpson hand — is the book "Singled Out: How Singles are Stereotyped, Stigmatized, and Ignored, and Still Live Happily Ever After."

And Meade — the man I hadn't met but married a year later — said: "Like motherhood, marriage is way overrated."

I revealed why I had the book "Singled Out": I was preparing to do a Bloggingheads episode with the author Bella DePaulo. 

Here's a July '08 post about that Bloggingheads. In the comments, Meade quotes something I say in the episode: (referring to my then-unshared health insurance and pension benefits) "I've often thought I should just charitably marry someone... I'd just marry them to be nice..." He says:

Gee, I'm single now, happily single, and thought I'd just remain that way.

But considering all the benefits, I guess I'd really be a fool not to take a close look if Althouse were to, just out of niceness, propose to pity-marry me.

What could I offer in return? Let's see - I could prune those redbuds, take out the garbage, trap squirrels.

I don't respond, and the next morning, Meade persists:

I could fetch her newspaper, scrape snow and ice off her car, shovel the front walk. Draw her bath. Pick her up at the airport. Rinse and dry her wine glasses. Form a circle-of-safety to protect her from Hillary Clinton-type madwomen who randomly come up to innocent people on urban sidewalks and punch them in the back. I make excellent salads, grill superb steaks and vegetables. Play a piano sonata. Pick up dry cleaning. Wait patiently while she shops for shoes.

Again, I ignore it, and hours later, but directly underneath that, I write:

I have very valuable benefits that I'm not using because I'm unmarried. Maybe I should go for a cash transaction.

And Meade says:

Okay. Forget the services. I have cash - very very valuable cash.

So what are the benefits and just how much valuable cash do you suppose they're worth?

I say nothing, but — as Ignorance is Bliss says 2 comments down but a year later — "You know the weird thing is that in 1 year she actually will marry him." And a year after that, there's a comment from my son John:

Wow, Meade, way to come up with a plan and follow through!

The narrative arc is long, in life and in blog posts, like this one which I will end with the revelation that the cool kid with "The Audacity of Hope" who took the non-selfie on Mother's Day '08 was my son John.