Althouse: Slate has hired a youngster with a lip ring to replace Emily Yoffe as its "Dear Prudence" advice columnist.

November 9, 2015

Slate has hired a youngster with a lip ring to replace Emily Yoffe as its "Dear Prudence" advice columnist.

You want advice from a person who on first look you can tell could have used some better advice?!

Okay, on second look, here are 3 articles (listicles) by Mallory Ortberg:

1. "Dogs I Would Like To Own In Art, Even Though They Are Probably Dead Now."

2. "Every Southern Gothic Novel Ever" (a 17-point list, beginning with "The Red, Red Dirt Understands" and including "No One Listens To What Old Pap’s Got To Say, On Account Of This Deformity, But I Say It’s You All What Has The Deformity, In Your Souls, I Knows What I’ve Seen").

3. "Every Comment On Every Article About Bras Ever" (and they're pretty much all you're wearing the wrong size).

42 comments:

Michael K said...: Dear God !; 11/9/15, 9:56 AM
lgv said...: Of course people will still want advice, and it probably won't be good from the youngster, but it's about the entertainment value. The worse the advice, the greater the entertainment value, maybe.

Since most readers aren't invested in the specific issue at hand, I think it will be a huge hit.; 11/9/15, 10:02 AM
Ignorance is Bliss said...: Okay, on second...

I don't know. ( Third base! ); 11/9/15, 10:02 AM
Deirdre Mundy said...: Prudence is out. Wild Abandon is in! Vote Hillary.....; 11/9/15, 10:03 AM
n.n said...: Presumably, the choice reflects market demand. Presumably.; 11/9/15, 10:07 AM
Rick said...: More fallout from Yoffe objecting to false rape accusations? Marcotte's already gone, maybe it was so ugly management need to clean house.; 11/9/15, 10:14 AM
I Have Misplaced My Pants said...: Did EY leave or was she fired?

Personally, I miss Margo Howard in that role, but Yoffe has performed admirably.; 11/9/15, 10:16 AM
jr565 said...: "You want advice from a person who on first look you can tell could have used some better advice?!"
How dare you!?! That's...er... ring in nose shaming. (Is that a thing?)
Why are you assuming that that's a bad choice? You are a something or other!; 11/9/15, 10:16 AM
Ann Althouse said...: "Okay, on second...

I don't know. ( Third base! )"

LOL. I forgot the word "look."; 11/9/15, 10:16 AM
I Have Misplaced My Pants said...: Never mind; I read the article. I don't give Slate a lot of clicks these days.

Lip rings are fairly gross, but hers doesn't seem to be hurting that woman's career any. The best advice to give people is usually to carefully consider the possible consequences of their choices, then to commit. Seems that the youngster in question knows some people wouldn't like her lip ring but decided she could live with that. So I don't see how it disqualifies her from the advising industry.; 11/9/15, 10:21 AM
Ann Althouse said...: I didn't really forget it... it sounded right in my head, but it's confusing encountered as a reader. There should be a word for that distortion, for the disconnect between how things "sound" to you when you've had the thought you're expressing and how they feel to someone who's trying to get to the thought by those same words.

I think it's easier to write if you don't have much of a disconnect, but you've got to at least be able to see that you've got a disconnect... at least if you're writing without an editor. The comments can work as the editor I don't have.; 11/9/15, 10:23 AM
Ann Althouse said...: "Lip rings are fairly gross..."

There's something unwholesome about a sore on the mouth and a lip piercing is like an open wound.; 11/9/15, 10:25 AM
I Have Misplaced My Pants said...: All the kids these days have herpes, so we should get used to seeing lip sores I suppose?; 11/9/15, 10:27 AM
Michael K said...: I just wonder if she brought her mattress with her ?

The political left has lost its collective mind. Sorry about the pun.; 11/9/15, 10:35 AM
MadisonMan said...: I was surprised to read she's been doing it for a decade almost!

That's a long time for any venture.; 11/9/15, 10:37 AM
Stephen Taylor said...: Gonna miss Emily Yoffe. Great answers. Countless evenings of sitting at home discussing the letters and responses with my wife. One that sticks out is the twins in love. (two twin men, in love with each other. lived together. sex and everything. How to tell the family?) I concur with Rick; wonder if she was handed her sword?; 11/9/15, 10:38 AM
tim maguire said...: So, basically, she makes lists. How well does this job pay?; 11/9/15, 10:38 AM
Ignorance is Bliss said...: Another woman? Do they believe that men are not capable of giving advice?

Sounds like sex discrimination to me.; 11/9/15, 10:48 AM
Brando said...: The best advice letters are the ones where the person writes in for vindication and gets shot down hard by the columnist (e.g., "my mother in law's cancer is putting a damper on my birthday celebration! Can you tell me a nice way to tell her that my birthday is about me, and not her problems?"). I would like to read a column that is only those sorts of letters.; 11/9/15, 11:25 AM
YoungHegelian said...: @IiB,

Another woman? Do they believe that men are not capable of giving advice?

Oh, Lordy! Be careful what you wish for! The advice columnist at Salon was a guy, and he was a nasty piece of work. And, then, of course, there's always Dan "Infect the Door Knob" Savage.; 11/9/15, 11:59 AM
Nichevo said...: roadgeek said...
the twins in love. (two twin men, in love with each other. lived together. sex and everything. How to tell the family?)
11/9/15, 10:38 AM

well, in the book, they were serial killers...; 11/9/15, 12:29 PM
Sigivald said...: You want advice from a person who on first look you can tell could have used some better advice?!

"Get off my lawn, incomprehensible young people who don't make exactly the same aesthetic choices we did in the 60s!"

The problem here is not her, it's the idea of the "advice column".; 11/9/15, 12:39 PM
Etienne said...: I liked the dogs article. Cute, bowl of ice-cream in length.

Old people have too much "dwell" and thus young people can't have too much "dwell." I like a writer who doesn't "dwell."

Les yeux s'appesantissent.; 11/9/15, 12:41 PM
MacMacConnell said...: I've done 50 years of research, yes most women wear the wrong size bra.

As long as I'm talking foundation garments, what's up with those hideous "boy pants"? No women looks good in them. Wear briefs or better get some tap pants.; 11/9/15, 1:39 PM
tam said...: I used to regularly read Dear Prudence back when Slate was in its first incarnation. The fun thing about Herbert Stein's responses were that they were written as if, as I recall, they were from a grey-haired woman named Prudence who had seen a lot of life and knew the truths that needed to be said. Now the few times I've bothered recently, the advice seems to be simply repeating the current mass-culture responses. From what we are reading, it seems like the new advice is going to be even further off the deep end.; 11/9/15, 2:36 PM
Clyde said...: A lip ring? To quote Dana Carvey channeling George H. W. Bush, "Wouldn't be prudent!" Or is that "Wouldn't be Prudence"?; 11/9/15, 2:43 PM
Bleach Drinkers Curing Coronavirus Together said...: Thank God. Maybe, just maybe, she'll actually be a little less prude than the puckered tight wrinkled prune vagina that "Prudence" is. One can hope.; 11/9/15, 4:49 PM
Bleach Drinkers Curing Coronavirus Together said...: There's something unwholesome about a sore on the mouth and a lip piercing is like an open wound.

So is a vagina.

How old were you when you first learned to hate yours?

Who taught you to hate it?

Or was it, as is frequently the case among Calvinist wanna-be's, all implied?; 11/9/15, 4:51 PM
Nichevo said...: R&B,

Yeah bro, like you don't like tight pussy...; 11/9/15, 4:52 PM
Bleach Drinkers Curing Coronavirus Together said...: Notice my beef/queef wasn't with "tight".

It was with puckered wrinkled tight. Like a prune.

Like when Sylvester the Cat is tricked into eating alum.

Tight is nice. Puckered is creepy.

And it's probably creepy thinking that makes it that way.; 11/9/15, 4:59 PM
Nichevo said...: C'mon I was just messing. you must admit your 4:49 was a little adjective-rich not to say jam-packed. Oh sure, I coulda let it go, but frankly I thought you'd get a grin too. Puckered sounds more like Call for Mr. Spatula! NTAWWT. Wrinkled, usually.

Ohh now I see. Your hyphen key is sticking. You wanted "the
puckered-tight, wrinkled-prune vagina". IMO, you know, whatev. Nobody likes an editor, but the better sort endure it manfully (Althouse loathes criticism of herself and hers, s'pose that's at least stereotypically maternal) or ladylike being the feminine equivalent,

Frankly I'd say your best move was along the lines of "my dick so big I needs my hos (hoes? Amy Vanderbilt is silent on this) to be double wides" but of course you would not expect such playfulness from me.

You know the No Labels type orgs always turn out to be b******* but wouldn't it be nice to have common interests to unite people across the boundaries that we now recognized as political? Like this fun conversation, fully the equal of the Alabama Guadalcanal book club session. Don't you think?

If so, we could have an interesting colloquy about the state of the war between the sexes...

Mansplain shit n'shit. Yo.; 11/9/15, 6:17 PM
Diamondhead said...: Yoffe was terrific and one of the vanishingly few reasons to visit Slate. Come to think of it, there was one reason to visit Slate, and it just vanished. She's going to The Atlantic...so if she was forced to leave, she got a new and much better gig very quickly.; 11/9/15, 6:31 PM
CatherineM said...: Nooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo!

I hope she does a similar column in the Atlantic. I liked when people disagreed with her advice and suggested a better idea, she would mention it or mention, "the consensus from other participants is that I am wrong." She wasn't a Queen Bee.; 11/9/15, 6:41 PM
Nichevo said...: She was what she was, but she knew what she was, and what does this infant know, I guess we will find out.; 11/9/15, 7:10 PM
Bleach Drinkers Curing Coronavirus Together said...: The Gendar Warz are just people taking the evolutionary strategy of what works for their own gender so far and individualistic that it becomes self-defeating. It's about everyone becoming their own royal monarch and then wondering why there's no one left whose sufficiently beneath them to kiss their butt.

But that's not really Auntie Althouse's problem. Auntie Althouse's problem is that she hates sex and thinks human body parts below the belt are creepy.

Sure, many women share this problem with her. But not all. It's becoming increasingly evident how self-defeating it is.; 11/9/15, 7:57 PM
Nichevo said...: C'mon r&b remember what the poor woman's been through. Passed around like a doobie at parties, then worked her moneymaker all through college law school family and career to get where she is today.

So she used up her love muscle like FloJo and now she's retired. Burnt out. Not to do what she has done. Etc. Don't be like me, I took too much, now you have to give...the world owes her, don't you think?; 11/9/15, 8:37 PM
Bleach Drinkers Curing Coronavirus Together said...: I'm still seeing a third distinction here, though. Not tight. Not flabby.

Puckered.

Fear of use.

Like a spring that's never been stretched, and simply can't uncoil anymore, as it's supposed to.

It's like the way old lady lips (the other kind) get fine wrinkles around them. Even moreso the more pursed those lips have been.

When you see a very stern person, whom through years of lip pursing and brow furrowing, develops ingrained muscles and lines around those lips and brows that seem to make it impossible to open those lips or unfurrow those brows any longer.

Such is the old, prude pussy.

One can get away with it early in life.

And then it all goes to hell.

Not good.; 11/9/15, 9:44 PM
William said...: Her facial piercing is very muted for a facial piercing. She has a mildly frumpy look about her that the piercing helps to subvert. Rap music. Piercings. There's so much about the current world that I don't understand, nor even want to understand.......I do have a vague regret that I will never experience what a tongue stud feels like in moments of intimacy.; 11/9/15, 9:54 PM
Guildofcannonballs said...: A curious mind with a healthy ego would be happy to hear friendly, or at least without hostile-ness such as slurs of racism or stupidity, advice from a spectrum of perspectives when given with respect and lacking didactic formalisms conveying a dull subtext, especially if thinking about other people's advice and comparing the good and bad and why others might label vice versa, or indeed not label at all, can help solidify and advance removing detriments to improvement defined uniquely and changing often.; 11/10/15, 2:07 AM
David said...: Nichevo:

God help me, I have read that book.; 11/10/15, 7:59 AM
Nichevo said...: David, haha, didn't you mention it on another thread? That's where I took it from. Ha, ha, ha.

R&B, don't you think her skin would be better if she swallowed? Her voice too. I'm sure she used to, but quit when she rose far enough.; 11/10/15, 11:13 AM
Carl Pham said...: A pity. Yoffe was a decent woman with genuine depth of character, while Ortberg is a vacuous asswipe. On the other hand, given the evolution of Slate's readership demographics this was certainly a sound business decision.; 11/11/15, 1:18 AM