September 29, 2018

Elena Kagan won't talk about the Kavanaugh controversy, but she will talk about how the Court functions with only 8 Justices.

Kagan was speaking at UCLA law school on Thursday night, and she spoke with experience about the problem of an 8-Justice Court's vulnerability to 4-4 splits, since that is the situation her Court confronted for the year that passed between the death of Antonin Scalia and the swearing-in of Neil Gorsuch.
"None of us wanted to look as if the court couldn’t do its job," she said. "I think we all felt as though the country needed to feel that the court was a functioning institution no matter what was happening outside."...

She said justices engaged in lengthier discussions at the time and even worked on finding agreement on smaller points when they couldn’t settle the larger issues at stake.... Even with a full court, Kagan said consensus-building, “especially perhaps in a time of acrimony and partisanship in the country at large, makes a lot of sense.”

“The court’s strength as an institution in American governance depends on people believe in it having a certain legitimacy ... that it is not simply an extension of politics,” she said.
I read that to mean that it's more important to sustain belief in a myth than to see the actual truth. The myth is that the Supreme Court is "not simply an extension of politics." I note that she phrases the myth at a more easily credible level than what some people would like us to believe — such as the Court is completely above all politics. That is, after all, the myth that prevails at confirmation hearings, where the nominees all say that they will do nothing but decide cases according to the law and no political leanings will come into play and distort their entirely legal reasoning. Kagan only says that the Court decides cases in a way that is "not simply an extension of politics."

Not "simply," but how about complexly? Not merely "an extension" of the politics, but isn't it, as it operates independently, doing something that a sophisticated person will understand to be political?

It's strange to be talking about the importance of useful beliefs over truth in the context of the controversy Kagan ostensibly seeks to avoid. What are the other institutions whose strength depends on our believing that they have a certain legitimacy?

The Senate. Should we believe in its legitimacy to keep it strong? That's not the Kagan idea. To transplant her idea to the Senate: The Senate itself should do what it can to inspire our belief it is performing its advise-and-consent role grounded in good procedure and principle. It is struggling to do that, and the struggle is much easier to see than the inner workings of the Supreme Court.

The patriarchy. Is it good for us to believe that it is legitimate? Just calling it — what is it?! — "the patriarchy" makes it sound illegitimate. I bet you — some of you — want to say it doesn't even exist. But if it does exist in America, it wants us to believe in it as something with a different name — perhaps meritocracy or individual choice. Believe in that, and you'll keep it strong.

The #MeToo movement. Its strength as an institution depends on people believing in it as having quite a lot of legitimacy. It's fragile. Overuse it and it will collapse. Won't it? If not, we should be afraid of its strength. But unlike the Supreme Court, it's not a small group of people who can consult and reach consensus about how far to extend its power and how to perform its power in public. There are millions of people who can tap the power of the movement. There's the relatively careful release of the Christine Blasey Ford allegations, and there's the follow on enthusiasm of Michael Avenatti and who knows who might suddenly speak up on social media?

277 comments:

1 – 200 of 277   Newer›   Newest»
Laslo Spatula said...

"It's strange to be talking about the importance of useful beliefs over truth in the context of the controversy Kagan ostensibly seeks to avoid."

How about we just talk about:

"It's strange to be talking about the importance of useful beliefs over truth."

Because that seems to be the pea under all of the mattresses.*

(*if you would like to make a Mattress Girl clip please go ahead).

However, I'd be happy to keep the Supreme Court justices at an even number.

If they can't work their way to a majority then maybe the issue is not ready to be settled.

And better than nothing is a pretty high standard.

I am Laslo.

FIDO said...

Wow. This is an amazing amount of minimizing.


MeToo has tried to move the goalposts of character assassination to a groping session by a minor TO a minor as worth destroying a person's life, even WITH evidence...of which there is none.

The Senate is not 'struggling to maintain legitimacy' when to at least half the population, it seems to be using character assassination and trial by media to get it's own way, no matter the merits of the case.

I don't know where this 'patriarchy' thing is coming from, but you seem to be disparaging the values and culture which allowed YOU, a woman, to become an important educator who never needs worry about money again.

Yeah...how awful that system was. Let's call it a lie and destroy it.

Yes, faith and hope ARE important to these institutions because, unlike what we've seen from Avenatti, DiFi and others, they have NO call to try to be better people. Instead, they have all the incentives in the world to be WORSE people so they can get their way.

Because the Althouses of the world let them because 'abortion'.

Night Owl said...

You left out marriage.

rhhardin said...

If women's brains worked, they could be part of the patriarchy.

wendybar said...

I'm so sick of all of this. In the real world, we have REAL problems.

Curious George said...

"There's the relatively careful release of the Christine Blasey Ford allegations..."

It was leaked for maximum political effectiveness.

Darrell said...

How does it function with 7?

Oso Negro said...

I would comment now, but I am off to the weekly meeting of Patriarchs Local 207. This week we are discussing whether women should continue to be allowed to vote in light of the hysteria surrounding the Kavanaugh hearing. Early polling of members is running 7-2 against.

Shouting Thomas said...

Fabricating lies is the job description of a feminist woman.

#meToo is total war on individual rights and due process. It's trial by media.

Your Marxist feminism stands revealed, Althouse. You've spent your adult life advocating a totalitarian police state. Oddly, you hold on to this belief that free speech can somehow survive the Marxist feminist purge.

It's time for you to admit you've been wrong, that you've been lying for 50 years, and to make a stand.

Don't denounce your husband. Denounce yourself.

Ray - SoCal said...

Not sure about this.

Twitter Me Too Mobs always seem to have the same people involved and leading the charge.

And many of the targets have been innocent victims of the feminist mob. They are automatically guilty, because they are male. More guilty if they are also White, and even more if heterosexual.

Is that the anti patriarchy?

Where women have more power than men?

>But unlike the Supreme Court, it's not a small group of people who can consult and reach consensus about how far to extend its power
> and how to perform its power in public.

Wince said...

In a tit-for-tat, the Patriarchy is becoming the Deep State's "Deep State".

tim in vermont said...

I guess I used to have some sympathy for the feminist project. Now it’s just clearly a power grab that masquerades as an intellectual movement. I wish we could wave a magic wand and all women would start using the brains God gave men, the ones we used to build this civilization that women now wish to seize.

Islam looks better by the day.

tcrosse said...

At Patriarchs Local 1390 we also discussed that, as well as how to explain it to our wives.

JAORE said...

"Overuse it and it will collapse. Won't it? If not, we should be afraid of its strength."

Yes it will collapse.

So will a hurricane. But, like a hurricane it can leave massive destruction of innocent people behind.

I guess they don't count so long as the general change is minimally negative or generally positive.

Your continued dismissal of damage to individuals is pretty distressing collectivism.

mockturtle said...

The lunacy continues.

rhhardin said...

It's so PC that you can't even make moron jokes anymore.

David Begley said...

I saw a guy on MSNBC this morning whining that Kavanaugh was part of an entitled patriarchy because he went to a prep school and then Yale. This clown left out that Kavanaugh worked and busted his butt to be number one. The top twenty guys in my class were brilliant, The year ahead of us were even smarter. And the classes at a Jesuit high school are very difficult. Math, science, languages, etc. And he played two varsity sports in addition to cutting lawns.

Kavanaugh just didn’t show up as a white male and all this stuff happened to him. These clowns should try writing 300 appellate opinions. If you are white, black, female or Asian, it is a tough job.

Sebastian said...

“The court’s strength as an institution in American governance depends on people believe in it having a certain legitimacy ... that it is not simply an extension of politics"

By contrast, the court's strength as a wrecker of American life depends on its relentless use by progs for prog purposes, legitimacy be damned, "not simply" but dishonestly, nefariously, self-deludingly, coercively, an extension of prog politics.

The K fiasco is Roe's evil spawn.

Fernandinande said...

4-4 splits

It's funny that half (or 5/9ths, etc) of the supposed experts say that the rest of the supposed experts are wrong. I guess they're really not experts at all if so many of them are wrong so often.

Oso Negro said...

@ EDH - it is more “tat for tit” these days

David Begley said...

I had a dream that Kagan, RBG, Breyer and Sonja reached across the aisle and asked that Kavanaugh be confirmed.

Laslo Spatula said...

"There's the relatively careful release of the Christine Blasey Ford allegations..."

Careful, indeed.

Have Feinstein release the letter after sitting on it for two months. Then discover that she wouldn't let an unredacted copy to others on the Committee.

Have the Washington Post put out the information about the therapist notes, let it percolate in the mainstream, then find out later that there is doubt about exactly what the Washington Post received and the legality of how they received it.

Have the story about her passing a lie detector disseminated, then find out later it involved only two questions, neither of which mentioned the name of the accused. Oh, and scribbled corrections are added, with no information of by who and when.

Have the story about her needing extra time because she was afraid to fly, and then find out that she takes long flights on a fairly regular basis. And the extra time allows other stories to come out with no corroborating evidence, which the media willfully spreads.

Have the media neglect to mention that she had hooked up with political lawyers far before the current events, and that her social media presence was scrubbed clean beforehand.

Have the media report that she cannot remember when or where this transpired, and then find out that, well, she cannot remember when or where this transpired, but the media has no interest in trying to answer these questions.

Yeah: careful.

It might even make someone suspicious, or at least cautious before buying into her story on an emotional basis, and then trying to intellectually rationalize this buy-in afterward.

I am Laslo.

Ralph L said...

Overuse won't kill #MeToo, misuse will. Vague or recovered memories of adult abuse by women self-indulging their emotions. How many times can one woman cry over one event?

cacimbo said...

That Kagan was in a lesbian relationship was apparently common knowledge at Harvard.Yet when a few journalists dared speak about it they were condemned and forced into silence. Articles were written denouncing attempts to falsely "out" her. Despite the fact gay marriage was due to become an issue on the court Kagan was not questioned about her own sexual preference and how that might influence her decision.Big media united behind the idea the public did NOT have a right to know Kagan was a member of the lgbtq community. Compare that to the treatment of Kavanaugh, big media united behind the idea the public has the right to know how much he drank in high school and college, about private jokes in his hs yearbook .......

Sebastian said...

"But if it does exist in America, it wants us to believe in it as something with a different name — perhaps meritocracy or individual choice."

At what point, emeritus professor Althouse, will you judge that "the patriarchy" will have ceased to exist? What arguments for "meritocracy" will you consider untainted by patriarchal prejudice? And oh, by the way, do you consider the universal higher ed and corporate pursuit of "inclusion" a clever ploy by the patriarchy?

I supposed the kid-glove treatment of "Dr." Ford was also a patriarchal maneuver.

Michael K said...

Andy McCarthy shows how corrupt this process has become. in a column today.

Observing that the GOP majority is giving Democrats exactly what they want does not adequately convey how incompetently Republicans have performed. In announcing that the floor vote on Kavanaugh’s nomination will be delayed, the Senate Judiciary Committee, under Republican control, issued a press release Friday afternoon, which states (my italics): “The supplemental FBI background investigation would be limited to current credible allegations against the nominee.” But there are no credible allegations against Kavanaugh; there are incredible allegations that stand uncorroborated and convincingly denied.

Unbelievably, Republicans put this statement out right before President Trump agreed to the (purported) one-week delay for the investigation. Thus, the media can now accurately report that the president was convinced to direct an additional FBI probe after Senate Republicans expressly conceded that the sexual-assault allegations against Judge Kavanaugh are credible.


Explain again why we should vote for these assholes .

mockturtle said...

Female liberals I know truly believe that women would do a better job of running the country--and the world--than men. So making any man ineligible for positions of authority by virtue of alleged sexual misconduct is the easiest way to power.

Sebastian said...

""There's the relatively careful release of the Christine Blasey Ford allegations..."

Careful, indeed."

Althouse's bad faith infects everything.

At the outset, I thought it was an unwitting blind spot. Now, not so much.

William said...

In academia there have been several well publicized cases of false accusations by the #metoo movement. In liberal political circles, in Hollywood, and in the news business, just the opposite. There have been many, many cases of sexual offenders getting away with it for years and years and their offenses never being highlighted by the #metoo movement.......Let he who has never cast a stone upon Linda Tripp cast the first stone upon the patriarchy. I would like to hear Tom Brokaw's views on whether or not we should believe Dr. Ford.

David Begley said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
cacimbo said...

I never viewed #metoo as legitimate. It is a corrupt politically motivated media driven campaign originally designed to oust Trump it evolved into a method used to clear old white males out of the way to be replaced by those younger darker and gayer.

Browndog said...

We no longer speak of 'that man' or 'that woman', but of men and women on whole. As a collective.

To further eviscerate any semblance or individuality, you are put into two camps. Feminist, or the patriarchy.

It's marxism all the way down.

rhhardin said...

Don't buy into sexual offenders. Stick with crimes.

Sexual offenders have benefits for women and are traditional.

Qwinn said...

Laslo, great list, but you forgot one.

Have the media refer repeatedly to how her initial accusations were made 6 years ago, before the current nomination, implying that a political motive for the accusation was implausible. Find out later (but with no media coverage) that they were initially made almost immediately after a reporter (Toobin) wrote that Kavanaugh was a likely Supreme pick in a then still potential Romney presidency.

tim in vermont said...

Have Feinstein release the letter after sitting on it for two months. Then discover that she wouldn’t let an unredacted copy to others on the Committee.

If it almost sounds like the same tactic they used to ensure that Roy Moore was the candidate of their choice and then knocked down at the last minute, it’s because it was. “Democracy dies in darkness” somebody said. It’s fine, politics is a bloodsport, but the idea of dressing this up in some kind of intellection version of the Emperor’s New Clothes is a joke.

I think that Trump and the R’s should drop moderate Kavenaugh and ram a more conservative, younger, and female (likely to live longer) Justice through, since this is all about power now.

Laslo Spatula said...

Regarding my 8:17 comment on the "relatively careful release of the Christine Blasey Ford allegations..."

It is probably more accurately described as a form of gaslighting.

Read the following (from Wiki) and compare to the situation over the last week-plus in the context of the public being the 'victim' and the media et all being the 'abuser' (not my choice of words, but used to align with the Wiki terminology as employed):

"It is necessary to understand the warning signs of gaslighting in order to fully start the healing process. Signs of gaslighting include:

Withholding information from victim;
Countering information to fit the abuser’s perspective;
Discounting information;
Verbal abuse, usually in the form of jokes;
Blocking and diverting the victim’s attention from outside sources;
Trivializing the victim’s worth; and,
Undermining victim by gradually weakening them and their thought process."


I believe this has led to Althouse's current intellectual cul-de-sac.

Abortion led her there, but my best guess is that her pride keeps her there. Not quite Hanlon's razor; maybe more like something I'll call 'Laslo's Razor': when intelligent people stay steadfast in questionable beliefs it is more likely that they do so out of pride, rather than reason.

Something like that.

I am Laslo.

tim in vermont said...

As long as Menendez is in the Senate and the Clintons are treated with respect, we know this is a farce.

Darrell said...

Kagan wouldn't let a one-piece bathing suit stop her from eating at the "Y."

William said...

@David Begley: I was watching that same show and turned it off in frustration. Kavanaugh and Ford shared the same privileged academic and social background. He's a product of wealth and privilege and all his accomplishments just demonstrate how wealth and privilege work. She, however, is a plucky underdog and all her (far less) accomplishments demonstrate her courage and the probity of her character.

Ann Althouse said...

"I saw a guy on MSNBC this morning whining that Kavanaugh was part of an entitled patriarchy because he went to a prep school and then Yale. This clown left out that Kavanaugh worked and busted his butt to be number one. The top twenty guys in my class were brilliant, The year ahead of us were even smarter. And the classes at a Jesuit high school are very difficult. Math, science, languages, etc. And he played two varsity sports in addition to cutting lawns."

Yes, it's tough. And he did better with his advantages that 99% of others who had those advantages, because he also worked very hard.

But compare him to the 99% of Americans who had no access to those advantages. What chance did they have? I went to public school and I worked hard (and graduated first in my high school class), but I wasn't even allowed to apply to any private college, so I went to the University of Michigan. And I considered myself relatively advantaged. Our family income was probably somewhat above average, and I lived in a town that had excellent public schools.

But I was dissuaded from taking the advanced courses in math by my own math teacher (though I had the best math grades in her class) and I was prevented from working on the lighting crew in the theater productions (where girls were banned), and I was at an early age molested by one of my teachers. I didn't know how much I could advance in life, and I eventually went to law school, but without believing in my ability to succeed and without a good foundation to begin, and it seemed like a good idea for me, graduating at age 30, to have 2 babies right as I was beginning my law career. And that's me, considering myself relatively advantaged. I was far from well positioned to go as far as I could have if I'd had Kavanaugh's advantages.

And how about the 50+ percent of Americans who had less advantage than me and also worked hard and wanted to achieve? Who is the best of them? How could we possibly know? Trump became President through the votes of the "deplorables." How about someone who arose from a deprived beginning, someone who grew up with "deplorable" parents? Trump goes for his second SCt nominee to the same boys prep school!

Shouting Thomas said...

To fight against Althouse's Marxist feminist police state, you have to attend your local (traditional) Christian or Jewish services.

Get up in the morning and go. Tithe. Get over your annoyance at having to listen to some boring speeches and meet the people on your side.

Evil is easy. As you see, the professor absolutely luxuriates in vicious gossip and backstabbing office politics. She lives for this shit. It is the subject of her blog.

Stop having an intellectual argument with this Marxist feminist. That's a trap she's set for you. This is a religious war between Althouse's Marxist feminist paganism and traditional Christianity and Judaism.

Go to services and find allies.

Otto said...

The empress put some clothing on.
I have a theory about CBF. I don't think she was traumatized by the alleged event. She went on to lead a sterling life. But seeing that this kavanaugh was going to be put in a powerful position , her social justice and feminism vibes coupled with her hatred for the current president got her stirred up enough to start this campaign.

Shouting Thomas said...

I was at an early age molested by one of my teachers.

My guess is that you are lying.

Or if you aren't lying, you've managed to build up a trivial nuisance event into something to complain about.

As we've seen now, women (and particularly feminist women) are compulsive liars.

Darrell said...

Good reason to hate teachers. Ford is a teacher.

Laslo Spatula said...

A paradox: Althouse's belief in her own Cruel Neutrality shows that intellectual women cannot fully possess Cruel Neutrality.

Because women possess the right to abort Cruel Neutrality into the third trimester for reasons of mental health.

I am Laslo.

Matt Sablan said...

"There's the relatively careful release of the Christine Blasey Ford allegations."

-- So careful, Ford can't remember what documents she gave to who, and no one will claim responsibility for putting them out there, and the FBI received only redacted copies while the media got unredacted copies.

Shouting Thomas said...

So, what's all the fucking whining about, Althouse?

You got where you want to go. You think you should have gotten there without people tricking and trying to defeat you?

Where did you get that absurd spoiled brat notion?

rhhardin said...

In spite of Althouse's hard work, she still thinks like a woman. It's in the brain structure.

It shouldn't be hard to be self-aware of this. Abstracting from details feels much different from adding details.

Rob said...

Facing the likelihood of a solid conservative majority on the court, Kagan speaks up for consensus building. But what she means is not that the liberal justices will move toward the center but that the conservatives should try to accommodate the liberals. That self-serving approach will last only as long as the conservative majority lasts. Once liberals attain a majority again—perhaps by the court packing the hope for which may be the real reason Kavanaugh’s legitimacy is under attack— it will be full steam ahead, consensus building be damned.

rhhardin said...

Althouse's strength is a female one, making places. So there's a comment section on a blog that's worth visiting every day, and she allows comments. What's female is finding doing that interesting.

In a typical female-run comment section I'm asked to leave pretty quickly, so this is unusual.

Paco Wové said...

It's always High School. Forever and ever.

Otto said...

Hey fellas take it easy. Some of us may not agree with Ann, especially me but don't curse and be crude towards her.Be gentlemen.

Shouting Thomas said...

I was beat up as a kid, professor. I was tricked by nasty people. I had my nose rubbed in the dirt.

Every athletic team I played on I had to struggle against the nepotism of a coach who was there to promote his son.

My sisters pulled down their panties and showed me their pussies and then ran off to tell my dad that I had conned them into doing it. He believed them and kicked my ass every time. I learned to stay the hell away from them.

Do you want me to continue with my whining story about how unfair life has been to me?

No? I thought so.

Shouting Thomas said...

Hey fellas take it easy. Some of us may not agree with Ann, especially me but don't curse and be crude towards her.Be gentlemen.

No, she's a Marxist feminist. She trying to destroy the patriarchy and has no right to expect defense or chivalry from it.

Nell G said...

David Begley said...
I had a dream that Kagan, RBG, Breyer and Sonja reached across the aisle and asked that Kavanaugh be confirmed.

You know— after reading some of Kagan’s remarks—I’m wondering her intent— does she want her former hire on the court because she knows she can argue with him and reach consensus with him and this is her way of telegraphing: lay-off I can mold this guy?

She won’t have any influence over Amy Coney Barrett

Paco Wové said...

"I wasn't even allowed to apply to any private college"

By whom? The Patriarchy? Did the Patriarchy Commission send a representative to your house or school with a clipboard, which he scanned down and said, "Althouse... Althouse, A.? The patriarchy has chosen public higher education for you, girl."...?

rhhardin said...

I wonder if there are good women literary critics. Bad reading seems to be the current complaint. You want getting at what's going on in a form that you suddenly recognize it. The right words for it.

My favorite woman philosopher, Vicki Hearne, likes the male philosophy but adds slight corrections in a sort of mocking way that improve it, where a guy gets something wrong in a way that guys do.

Darrell said...

My sisters pulled down their panties and showed me their pussies

I'd delete that story from my repertoire.

Shouting Thomas said...

Shit, I wanted to move to NYC and go to Julliard.

My parents couldn't afford it. They couldn't even afford the $250 fees and tuition (in 1968) for me to go to the University of Illinois.

I worked part time during the school term and full time when school was out of session to pay my own bills.

Laslo Spatula said...

"But I was dissuaded from taking the advanced courses in math by my own math teacher (though I had the best math grades in her class) and I was prevented from working on the lighting crew in the theater productions (where girls were banned), and I was at an early age molested by one of my teachers. I didn't know how much I could advance in life, and I eventually went to law school, but without believing in my ability to succeed and without a good foundation to begin, and it seemed like a good idea for me, graduating at age 30, to have 2 babies right as I was beginning my law career. And that's me, considering myself relatively advantaged. I was far from well positioned to go as far as I could have if I'd had Kavanaugh's advantages..."

A week-plus into this and we finally get Althouse's motivation for her take on this shit-show.

A relatively careful release of motivation.

I am Laslo.

Matt Sablan said...

"We no longer speak of 'that man' or 'that woman', but of men and women on whole"

-- I think that's the biggest cause of these sorts of what is claimed vs. what can be proven fights. When people say "women never lie about rape," everyone who is skeptical immediately points to examples where women *did.* When they say, "this man has a stellar reputation," the people who believe the accusations say, "so did all these men."

The over generalizations need to stop. Women aren't scheming harridans out to entrap you with sexual harassment claims, but some of them will lie, forget, or in other ways not be credible. Likewise, some men are assholes, but there also men who really would never harm another person without just cause -- hell, there are some guys I know who are such committed pacifists *they'd let themselves be murdered rather than fight back.*

We shouldn't believe all Xs or disbelieve all Ys. We should weigh each accusation on its merits. Some questions are insensitive. "Why didn't you report" isn't a good question; "since you didn't report then, how else can you validate your claim" is a good question. One is pointless -- we've heard dozens of reasons victims don't report. We need to know how, in a particular case, we can move on with a late accusation to reach the facts.

Likewise, people need to take accusations seriously. That is not helped by Avenatti rape gang theatrics, but it is also not helped by organizations letting guys like Lauer have rape buttons installed in their offices.

rhhardin said...

Women get the best grades in math classes. It's higher level math where they drop out because it's socially cramping. It takes too much time. They can do it but don't want to.

Dave Begley said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
rhhardin said...

Rape buttons don't prevent getting out. It's to keep others from getting in. A private meeting button.

Jeff said...

So Althouse thinks that having two children after graduating law school is a disadvantage. I have 3 children, two of them female, and seven grandchildren. I have seen, up close and personal, the extraordinary close bond that mothers have with their children. My wife and both daughters have told me that being a mother is by far the most rewarding experience of their lives. Fatherhood pales in comparison. But to a feminist like Althouse, it's just another disadvantage forced upon her by the patriarchy, whatever that is.

When are you going to understand that men and women are really different by nature? Yes, we should all be treated equally by law, as we are all human beings, but to insist that each and every difference between the sexes be stamped out by force if necessary is both stupid and cruel.

I'm 60, only a few years younger than you, Ann. I dropped out of a not very good high school in the middle of my junior year and joined the Army. During my time in the military, I got my GED and did some college classes at night. After the Army, used the GI Bill and fellowships to finish college and get a PhD. I had no connections and zero help from my family, and there is absolutely nothing I did that could not have been done by a female or minority. So please take all your victimology and stuff it.

Tommy Duncan said...

"The Senate. Should we believe in its legitimacy to keep it strong? That's not the Kagan idea. To transplant her idea to the Senate: The Senate itself should do what it can to inspire our belief it is performing its advise-and-consent role grounded in good procedure and principle."

I'd gladly swap out "good procedure and principal" for "good faith".

The rules and traditions of the Senate assume good faith on the part of the Senators. That good faith has been abandoned by Democrats seeking advantage.

Shouting Thomas said...

Once I enrolled at the University of Illinois, my liberal professors all ridiculed me for being a redneck boy who grew up in a small town in the middle of the cornfields. They ridiculed me in the most intimate ways about my personal habits and speech.

They not only ridiculed me, they began to accuse me and redneck men like me of being hateful, violent bigots who were out to harm blacks and women.

So, my attitude became: "Nobody but my immediately family gives a shit about me and it's all up to me."

Temujin said...

#metoo is a mob movement. It's already out of control, and frankly, was going off the rails before #metoo became a hashtag. Ask the Duke Lacrosse team.

Blind religious fanaticism comes in many guises. Leftists like to think they're secular. They are among the most fervent true believers. They like to accost apostates. Some even shoot apostates. Me Too has quickly become an excuse to further leftist dogma. It's not about bringing out the sexual abusers any longer. It's about continuing the long walk through our institutions. Destroy the family unit. Separate out the men. Break down the boys. Identify them all as sexual predators and abusers of women.

Good luck to the women of the Western world in the near future. At some point, you're going to wonder where the men went.

But, hey- it's a football Saturday.

rhhardin said...

I had to work for eighty cents an hour to pay for flying lessons as a kid. Talk about poor.

Dave Begley said...

Althouse, "but I wasn't even allowed to apply to any private college, so I went to the University of Michigan."

Who or what stopped you? I'm confident that if you would have applied to Georgetown, Dartmouth, Holy Cross, Vandy and many other private schools not only would you have been accepted but you would have received a major scholarship. And what's wrong with the University of Michigan? A top, top school. Yale doesn't have a corner on all the good students. See, John F. Kerry.

Althouse, "But I was dissuaded from taking the advanced courses in math by my own math teacher (though I had the best math grades in her class)…."

If you would have gone to an all girls school, different story. That's why I favor single-sex high schools.

In college, my former wife's biology teacher told her that she would never get into medical school. Her dad called up the teacher and dean and gave them hell. As a medical doctor, this professor consulted my former wife.

Althouse, "I was at an early age molested by one of my teachers."

I believe you. You have lots of credibility with me. You rose above it. I'm very sorry it happened. The teacher should have been arrested and tried by a jury. Today stuff like that is found and punished.

Althouse, "I eventually went to law school, but without believing in my ability to succeed and without a good foundation to begin..." And graduated first in your class; ahead of David Rubenstein, our Ambassador to Israel. That's an outstanding achievement and you rose above and achieved.

Althouse, "graduating at age 30, to have 2 babies right as I was beginning my law career..." And that's very difficult. You have two wonderful sons and you had a wonderful career in Madison. Your sons should make you proud. A wonderful achievement by you; especially after the divorce.

Altouse, "And how about the 50+ percent of Americans who had less advantage than me and also worked hard and wanted to achieve? Who is the best of them? How could we possibly know?"

I read the biography of Clarence Thomas. You should too. Very interesting. He came from nothing in Pin Point, GA. I don't think he had indoor plumbing. No parents to speak of. His grandfather raised him. Catholic grade school. By pure chance, he got a scholarship to the College of the Holy Cross (Jesuit) after he ran into a nun on the street. He then went on to Yale. There's your answer. And he was slandered. (I went to school with his wife so I am very interested in him.)

I don't know about Georgetown Prep but I know about Creighton Prep and the Omaha Jesuit Academy. They have massive scholarship programs. If any qualified boy wants to attend and achieve, both schools make it work. Boys regardless of race, religion or financial circumstances are admitted and graduate all the time. And the Jesuit Academy is a grade school and 100% black. I know Creighton University has an impressive scholarship program; including special scholarships for Native Americans. I'm sure Georgetown has similar programs.

The Jesuits are in the business of helping souls. That's it.

Brett Kavanaugh is the finest product of a Jesuit high school education. That's not the only reason I believe him, but it is part of it. He believes in God.

Spiros said...

Why should the Republicans waste any more political capital on this bloody confirmation fight? Do they really want Supreme Court justices (five of them) voting because of partisanship? How much legitimacy does the Court lose if it is no longer perceived as independent from partisanship and economic pressures and the inevitable corruption of the politics. And it doesn't help that Kavanaugh has also been credibly accused of rape and other stuff!!!

Big Mike said...

but I wasn't even allowed to apply to any private college, so I went to the University of Michigan. And I considered myself relatively advantaged

So fundamentally you’re just jealous of Brett Kavanaugh? Did I read that right?

tim maguire said...

Regarding #metoo, activists ruin everything and it's inevitable that at some point (happened already?) it will collapse because it's been pushed too far. That said, I think the good parts of what it's done, its legitimate accomplishments, will outlive it.

Ray - SoCal said...

The biological clock does exist, and it’s often a choice to have a career or kids.

Michael K. Posted a story about a family in oc, where the the parents were basically absent from their kids life. It did not end well for the family.

It helps a lot, if you have a parent in your profession, to make the better career choices. Parents can make a huge difference in their kids lives.

Michael K said...


Blogger Shouting Thomas said...
Shit, I wanted to move to NYC and go to Julliard.

My parents couldn't afford it. They couldn't even afford the $250 fees and tuition (in 1968) for me to go to the University of Illinois.


I guess we are learning about Ann's antipathy to Kavanaugh. Poor thing.

I was accepted to Cal Tech and had my dorm room assigned but no money. I had been counting on a National Merit Scholarship but I got a letter saying that since I did not need financial aid, they were congratulating me but no dough.

My mother later told me that my father, who had quit high school at 15, threw away a financial statement he had been sent.

Ann and her middle class parents sure had it tough.

Michael K said...

"I read the biography of Clarence Thomas. You should too. Very interesting."

I bought copies of it for my daughters and asked them to read it.

Ann Althouse said...

"Women get the best grades in math classes. It's higher level math where they drop out because it's socially cramping. It takes too much time. They can do it but don't want to."

I wanted to take 2 languages and art and theater in my senior year. That used up all the periods (no study hall) and had me graduating with more credits than I needed. I was trying to figure out what to do. I'd have to not go on to Calculus. I didn't know what Calculus was and I asked my Trigonometry teacher what it was, what I would be missing from my education if I didn't take it. She told me it's just for engineers. Not: You could be an engineer, so you should try that course and see whether it's something you want to pursue, there's great career potential there and you might do well. No, it was simply understood that engineers are other people and not me. I got the opposite of encouragement.

If you're talking about social pressure, so am I. I was limited by my understandings and desires that were formed within a culture where men were the engineers and women would only limit themselves if they tried to do something that's not in the "for women" category.

This was back in the days when the want ads had separate columns, "help wanted—male" and "help wanted—female."

Sebastian said...

"But I was dissuaded from taking the advanced course"

How were you "dissuaded"?

I mean, in all the years of reading this blog, as best I recall, you haven't shown yourself to be dissuadable on just about anything.

Are you saying you were at one point determined to take advanced courses and someone somehow "dissuaded" you, in what I take you consider to be to your detriment?

If so, the patriarchy did indeed have more magical powers than I thought possible.

rhhardin said...

Calculus is actually the first math that's interesting.

Jeff said...

It's also clear from Ann's post that she does believe that the decisions of the Supreme Court are just an extension of politics. The job of a judge is to interpret and apply law, not politics. Politics has a lot to do with what the law is, as laws are passed by politicians. But judges are supposed to set their political beliefs aside and just apply the law as it was passed by the political types. Conservatives believe that. Liberals like Ann do not.

Dave Begley said...

One addendum. Omaha has Duchesne Academy, Marian and Mercy high schools for girls. Their scholarship programs aren't as big as Creighton Prep's and I can tell you that the schools are not full of rich kids.

Sebastian said...

My question partly answered, I see.

Bill Peschel said...

Althouse, everyone has gone through tough times. Only liberals believe government exists to kiss it and make it all better.

Well, it can't. The law can only go so far. The teacher who molested you should have been charged and tried. But if a teacher tells you not to take math courses and you meekly agree, there's not a damn thing the state can do about it.

And as for this -- "I eventually went to law school, but without believing in my ability to succeed and without a good foundation to begin..." -- you need to read up on Imposter Syndrome. There are highly accomplished people out there who still believe that they're fakes waiting to be exposed. Just like there are highly accomplished actors (Olivier was one) who threw up before appearing live on stage.

They felt their fear, they felt their anxiety, and they did it anyway.

Me? I failed. I fucked up in my life. [Deleted: Long confession with details, including bullying and the death of my father when I was 15 that I self medicated with alcohol for more than a decade.]

But I know I caused what I did to myself. I'm solely responsible. And I don't expect the government to solve my problems.

Fabi said...

I would have guessed it impossible to appreciate Laslo more than I have in the last five years. His analyses these last weeks -- sadly free of large black dildos -- have been epic.

Saint Croix said...

"You hired Brett Kavanaugh to teach at Yale law. Would you hire him again? Or would you shun him?"

That's a question I would ask.

Ann Althouse said...

""I wasn't even allowed to apply to any private college" By whom? The Patriarchy?"

By my parents.

My French teacher wanted me to apply to Middlebury College. That was the only time any teacher ever talked to me about aspiring to a particular school, and I brought that advice home to my parents, they told me they couldn't afford it, and I humbly accepted that.

Francisco D said...

Grow up Althouse.

You sound like the injured child that CBF was trying to portray.

I was dealt a much more difficult hand than you, but I became successful through hard work and sustained effort.

I have no resentment of people who had it easier or became more successful.

That is what being a mature adult is all about, as your commenters have known and experienced.

Seeing Red said...

The court’s strength as an institution in American governance depends on people believe in it having a certain legitimacy ... that it is not simply an extension of politics,” she said.


What’s her voting record? Who does she side with more? Thomas or RBG.

Fabi said...

Quit whining about being poor! I was forced to fly coach to Italy for my junior year abroad. Coach! I deserve a hug.

Michael K said...


Blogger Ann Althouse said...
""I wasn't even allowed to apply to any private college" By whom? The Patriarchy?"

By my parents.


Why is Kavanaugh to blame for your parents sexism ?

My high school girlfriend was the first in her family to go to college. She got a BS in Chemical Engineering from Purdue, probably on a scholarship although I never asked her. She married a guy at Purdue who was a high school classmate of mine in Chicago and they moved to California.

We used to go up to their house to play bridge. She had three kids and , when they were old enough, went back for an MS in Engineering. She sent me a photo of herself in the Gemini spacecraft. I think she worked in environmental systems.

A couple of years ago, she was still getting awards.

That was well before you had your problems and she had a great career and three kids.

Laslo Spatula said...

Speaking of motivation.

I know, and have known, several women that have been sexually abused: it is truly a horrible thing.

Unfortunately, I also knew one women who believed she was sexually abused.

We were together several years; over that period what started as quirky habits developed into debilitating OCD.

She went to a psychiatrist; by the third or forth visit she was prescribed industrial-strength medications, and convinced that her father (divorced from her mother) had sexually abused her as a child.

She could not remember where, or when, but the psychiatrist assured her that this was normal for her situation, and she now believed what she couldn't remember.

It tore the family apart, as one might expect: people had to take sides. After we parted I heard through mutual friends that her father passed away.

Still later, I heard that she no longer believed that her father had molested her, that she was influenced into believing something that her psychiatrist insisted must have happened.

So:

Her mother believed that her daughter had been sexually abused by her husband (at the time), and she had somehow let this happen.

Her father died knowing that his daughter fully believed he sexually molested her.

Her brother lives, knowing he estranged himself from his father because of the story.

And now she lives with knowing that a 'memory' she did not remember blew her family apart.

Yes, anecdote. And I still believe women first, unless circumstances point otherwise.

But the damage of accusations fucking matter. For those hurt by lies, and for the victims that are telling the truth.

I am Laslo.

Bay Area Guy said...

Althouse recounts a nice story about the decisions she made, the obstacles she faced, and some of the goals she achieved. Good on ya!

But I’m willing to bet every commentator on this blog has an interesting story - about the decisions they made, the obstacles they faced and the goals they achieved.

That doesn’t necessarily inform anyone about what to think about this confirmation process for Brett Kavanaugh or, more generally, about “women’s” struggle in general.

This battle is simple:

1. Leftist Women and most Democrats worship Roe v Wade.
2. The above group is fearful that Kavanaugh provides the 5th vote to overturn Roe.
3. Therefore, this group feels justified in stopping Kavanaugh from sitting on the Court, even if it means slandering him, destroying his reputation, and disregarding all rules of due process.

Talking about his “privilege” or his yearbook or his drinking habits in high school are just various tactics by the Left to ding up Kavanaugh.

If Blasey Ford amazingly found a moment of conscious and shame and recanted all her bullshit stories, these Democrat Senators would still vote against Kavanaugh.

Hell, If Merrick Garland came out and offered a mild critique of Roe v Wade, they’d drop him too! Save Roe is the only game in town, Althouse.

Dave Begley said...

Another key idea from St. Ignatius Loyola: Gratitude.

Althouse now has a wonderful and loving husband. Health. Two fine sons. A nice house in Madison. Money in the bank and coming in the door. A famous blog. Things could be worse. Lot's worse.

Tom said...

It's a committee of up to 9 lawyers who decide our nation's most important questions and de facto amend the Constitution in whatever manner they choose. Why would Americans believe in this arrangement?

Seeing Red said...

The 8 should really be incommunicado during the process.

Francisco D said...

The mob of hysterical harpies welcomes Althouse into their sisterhood ranks and appreciates that she has ditched the "cruel neutrality" disguise.

You are invited to attend our next event. After holding Senator Flake hostage and screaming at him for five minutes we achieved success.

We will now kidnap Senator McConnell and threaten to cut his genitals off until he postpones the Kavanaugh vote indefinitely.

Men will be made to feel our pain.

We are the voice of oppressed women.

We will no longer be silent.

mockturtle said...

As long as Menendez is in the Senate and the Clintons are treated with respect, we know this is a farce.

Indeed, tim. But my liberal aunt would say that's all 'water under the bridge'.

Browndog said...

Tom said...

It's a committee of up to 9 lawyers who decide our nation's most important questions and de facto amend the Constitution in whatever manner they choose. Why would Americans believe in this arrangement?


Not sure we ever did. The court seized it's power over the other two "co-equal" branches in Marbury v Madison.

Dave Begley said...

Hey, guys. Lighten up on Ann. Don't be so cruel. She doesn't deserve it.

mockturtle said...

Abe Lincoln was not a preppy.

traditionalguy said...

My opinion of The Professor is that she is a special woman that has the mind and social talents combined which make success at and field easy for her. To restrain her for being a woman is a social injustice, hence Feminist theory applies in full force there. But applying it to every career choice of every person born female is screwing up most social interactions.

tcrosse said...

Hey, guys. Lighten up on Ann. Don't be so cruel. She doesn't deserve it.

Althouse can take care of herself.

Paco Wové said...

When the sort of people who talk seriously about "The Patriarchy!" talk about "The Patriarchy!", what they don't seem to understand is that they're talking about "life, for everyone, everywhere". And that wanting to "smash The Patriarchy!" is an irrational destructive lashing-out against the world as a whole.

Browndog said...

The women that scream the loudest over abortion, birth control, and rape are the least likely to need or experience any of them.

yea, I said it. Since, you know, we're being honest.

JAORE said...

I was encouraged to go to college by my parents. I did so by digging ditches in the summer and for two semesters when I could not afford to pay my own way. My brother did the same. My sister deferred college for years until she'd saved enough by her own work.

Oh no a teacher said calculus was for engineers! The horror.

Wait... you said, "I asked my Trigonometry teacher what it was, what I would be missing from my education if I didn't take it. She told me it's just for engineers."

Geez, sister, it sounds like the trig teacher answered your question. Your own words do not say anything discouraging to me. Could it be he/she did not feel the need to say, "And you'd be a corker of an engineer, Ann. Drop those art aspirations and any other ambitions you may never have told me about. Engineering is the ONLY place for you! Go girl, go. Be all you can be!!!!!"

God the CRAP women say that has held them back. Maybe they are held back.... but by their own hands.

readering said...

Althouse comments, where the patriarchy gathers to kvetch.

wendybar said...

All I can say is read Dr. Ben Carsons life story. All this whining....if Dr. Ben could do it, you could have too. Judge Kavenaugh should not be found guilty by a mob just because he came from an affluent family. This is crazy talk.

mockturtle said...

Hey, guys. Lighten up on Ann. Don't be so cruel. She doesn't deserve it.

Don't be patronizing, Dave. ;-)

Saint Croix said...

I was far from well positioned to go as far as I could have if I'd had Kavanaugh's advantages.

I'm of the opinion that if you asked a bartender, a nurse, or a construction worker: "What is a person?"

They would all answer, "a live human being."

And if you asked an Ivy League best of his class law student, he or she would say…

"A corporation is a person, and a baby is not one."

One thing I notice is that successful and wealthy people focus on money, a lot. It's why a corporation was granted the status of "person." So they would have access to the federal courts, so they could sue and be sued, so our economy could flourish.

And it's also why an unborn baby was defined as a non-person. Because an unplanned pregnancy can cause a lot of economic damage. To upper class people, that's unthinkable. But working class people are more likely to love their children.

This is why Christianity has always been a religion for poor people, by the way. Or, as David Byrne wrote, "Never for money, always for love."

Francisco D said...

“Don’t look away from me! Look at me and tell me that it doesn’t matter what happened to me, that you will let people like that go into the highest court of the land.” — A sexual assault survivor, who confronted Sen. Jeff Flake (R-Ariz.) in an elevator after he announced on Friday he would be voting for Brett Kavanaugh"

Actually the "sexual assault survivors" were organized feminist activists pretending to be sexual assault survivors.

Just like Althouse has been pretending to be cruelly neutral.

By Any Means Necessary, right Ann?

Tim DeRoche said...

Agree with Night Owl re: marriage.

The best marriages (including my own, I would say) have a story/myth at their core...told both by the people in the marriage and those outside it. And it often starts with an improbable account of how the parties met. Which is to say that a good marriage often has a founding myth. (See Althouse & Meade.)

Our country has a founding myth too - that these idealistic men broke away from a despotic regime and created a new government based on ideals of equality and freedom. It's not a full account of the truth, but that idea has been incredibly powerful and has done a tremendous amount of good in the world. It's also been used as cover for all sorts of horrific acts of war and violence.

The myth is necessary. If one falls, then another will rise up to take its place. We are storytelling animals.

I'm Full of Soup said...

America didn't invent male domination in society you obtuse ass or maybe you are just trolling for comments. In any event, it's called biology Althouse. Deal with it.

OldManRick said...

Hey Laslo,

Add this to your list. It appears the second door to the house was added before 2011 not after 2012 when she recalled the "traumatic event". I normally don't trust Gateway pundit on things but in this case they seem to have done the homework.

https://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2018/09/breaking-christine-ford-caught-in-major-lie-photos-prove-house-updates-occurred-much-earlier-than-senate-testimony/

Let's have the FBI investigate the home improvements. If this is true, Falsus in uno, falsus in omnibus, indeed.

Ann, if she lied about this, how do you feel about her now?

Ray - SoCal said...

Laslo’s comments add a lot to the blog, and he’s been in a roll recently.

But, I still miss tales of the ponytailed girl...

Tommy Duncan said...

I'll confess that I thought I was blessed in life until I read Ann's story. I now realize my lower middle class life on the wrong side of the tracks was harsh and that I survived deplorable conditions. Thank you for helping me recover my repressed memories.

Michael K said...

Add this to your list. It appears the second door to the house was added before 2011 not after 2012 when she recalled the "traumatic event".

The permit was pulled in 2008 and it is a rental house, not the residence.

Browndog said...

Over the years, nobody has done a more thorough forensic analysis of Feminism than Robert Stacy McCain.

Here's an archive of his writings/research

Michael K said...


Blogger readering said...
Althouse comments, where the patriarchy gathers to kvetch.


Especially Ann. She had such a tough life.

You too, I guess.

Ray - SoCal said...

And she is not a licensed psychiatrist, even though she labeled herself as one.

And the 2nd door was for an addition she rents out, building permit pulled in 2008, that is often rented out to Google interns.

And her web presence was scrubbed, and she knows people st Google. Hmm...

Eleanor said...

I'm the same age as Ann, I think. Neither of my parents went to college. My high school didn't offer calculus, and I wanted to go to engineering school so I took calculus at the local state college while I was a senior in high school. When the town's school committee found out what I was doing, they reimbursed me for the course, but I had earned the money myself before they did. I was first in my class, too. Then I applied to engineering school and went on a full scholarship. When women our age say their choices were limited by our gender, it's BS. It's about the limitations we put on ourselves. I became a teacher near the end of my career to seek out the kids, both girls and boys, who needed that little kick in the ass to get them looking beyond their own toes. But even after you point some kids in the right direction, and show them the beginning of the road, their own insecurities hold them back.

Ann Althouse said...

"How were you "dissuaded"? I mean, in all the years of reading this blog, as best I recall, you haven't shown yourself to be dissuadable on just about anything."

Explained above, re math class, but I wanted to answer this to explain the energy of my engagement with this blog. I am not so excited and devoted about doing this because I spent my life boldly seeking power and position. It is quite the opposite. I've tended to be expressive, but not to have opinions about things that other people had strong opinions about. And I have never sought the upper hand in social and professional relationships. This blog is a compensation for a lifetime of puniness.

Gk1 said...

Ray, I'm glad someone has finally mentioned what i brought up days ago. Palo Alto is a hop skip in a jump from Mountain View where Google's headquarters are. We know Google likes helping democrats when they can, so its not that big of a stretch for me to believe they helped scrub Ford's internet presence.

William said...

I grew up in a housing project and went to a Jesuit prep school attended by lots of rich kids. There were many different social cross currents that I was never able to figure out and that are, in fact, impossible to figure out. Very few people get to become the optimum versions of themselves or get to be surrounded by people who foster and appreciate that optimum version.......I knew lots of people who appreciated and fostered the de minimis version of me. Despite that, I've never been in jail, rehab, or bankruptcy. I never reached Valhalla, but I dodged the abyss.

readering said...

I have written about similarity between my background and Kavanaugh's.

Darrell said...

The last shall be first. . .etcetera.

Bay Area Guy said...

@Eleanor,

When women our age say their choices were limited by our gender, it's BS. It's about the limitations we put on ourselves.

Well said -- you are my kind of gal!

Yes, I've run across many feminists in my life. They tend to be loud. But I've run across so many more quality, intelligent, insightful, lovely, articulate women, that I do not have a negative view of "women" in general. I have a negative view of leftist women, who sully and diminish the hard work and achievement of the excellent women.


Big Mike said...

@Althouse, I have a lot of sympathy for your parents. You are upset that they wouldn’t spring for private college for a daughter who — by your own admission! — didn’t know what she wanted to major in, nor what she was going to do in life? If you had gotten your BFA from a private college, would it have opened any doors that a BFA from a fine university like Michigan wouldn’t? I am frankly surprised you are so lacking in empathy that you couldn’t then, and still can’t now, see it from their position.

traditionalguy said...

Sincere Thanks Professor. Excellent Teachers are gifts from God.

mockturtle said...

If I didn't reach the heights to which I was capable it was due only to my own stupidity or lack of will. My company offered to foot the bill for my Masters degree in biochemistry and, though my husband urged me to accept, I declined because I just wasn't that ambitious.

mockturtle said...

This is why Christianity has always been a religion for poor people

Her people may be poor but the Vatican isn't.

Paco Wové said...

I think I'm getting it now. In the same way that "systemic racism" can be invoked, ether-like, to explain whatever shortcomings there are in a Person of Non-Whiteness's life, so "Patriarchy" can explain whatever perceived imperfections there are in an unhappy woman's life.

Anonymous said...

AA @8:41:

I don't know where to start with this one.

I didn't know how much I could advance in life, and I eventually went to law school, but without believing in my ability to succeed and without a good foundation to begin, and it seemed like a good idea for me, graduating at age 30, to have 2 babies right as I was beginning my law career. And that's me, considering myself relatively advantaged. I was far from well positioned to go as far as I could have if I'd had Kavanaugh's advantages.

Sorry, but this is bullshit. There is nothing unique to women about being "discouraged", self-doubting, and not having the advantages and encouragement that some of the other kids got.

And I'm skeptical about your claims. I've heard whines like this from my female contemporaries (and you're only, what, 5 years older than I am?) all my life, and I know for a fact that their memories of "patriarchial oppression", teacher and family dissuasion, are just so much moonshine, self-justifying narratives about "what might have been". I know this because I was growing up right next to them in the same schools with the same teachers, and even in the same family.

Oddly, these tales of oppression were sometimes told in the company of far more successful women who also shared those same environments. How'd they manage? Maybe, just maybe, the failures, or perceived shortfalls, were not the result of external factors.

You couldn't work on lighting crew? Your advisor advised you against advanced math courses? Wow, I don't know how anyone overcomes that sort of thing.

So every adult around you wasn't effusively supportive, or didn't evaluate your potential correctly (by your own estimation)? You didn't get as far as you thought you could have in life, as far as you dreamed of getting in your youth? Well, welcome to 99.99999% club. Maybe what you think is "the patriarchy" is just the human condition.

(Btw, how interested were you in those advanced math classes, anyway? Did they ban girls from them, or did you just meekly assent to the advisor's views?)

I'm at a loss to know what you're getting at here re Kavanaugh. Aside from the fact that he's being propagandized against as "privileged" by people just as privileged, what, exactly is being sought (by you and others) in these attacks on Kavanaugh's advantages? Oh, yeah, "equality".

We can strive for a workable level of earthly fairness, but we cannot have equality.

Believing that you didn't get farther than you got, not because of your own choices, your own nature, and native ability, but because of "the patriarchy", or some variant of "stereotype threat", or unequal opportunities/early life environments that can be rectified in ways that do not lead to freedom-destroying social-engineering nightmares, is very likely just more moonshine. (In fact that last one absolutely is moonshine. Highly destructive moonshine.)

You've had a distinguished career. You were gifted with intelligence and valuable character traits at birth. (Things very unequally distributed.) You aimed high, worked hard, and achieved much. You have a family and a materially comfortable situation as you head into your old age. So what's with still nursing these (by objective standards) petty resentments?

When I was young and hot-headed it really pissed me off when anybody older and wiser advised me to "let it go". But Jesus, Althouse, you need to let it go.

readering said...

I have also written that Jesuit prep schools were not that elite. A colleague contemporary of BT persuaded his parents to send him to public school he considered better than GP. In those days many Catholic parents wanted a Catholic education for kids. Jesuit prep more elite than Parish school.

mockturtle said...

Tim DeRoche @9:57: Interesting and very true. One can see this throughout history.

Francisco D said...

And she is not a licensed psychiatrist, even though she labeled herself as one.

Ray,

You need to get your facts straight.

CBF has a doctorate in Educational Psychology. She is an academic psychologist who specializes in research design.

She is not a licensed psychologist nor does she hold herself out to be one.

That seems to be rare honesty from CBF.

mockturtle said...

ADSB: Very well said. Althouse seems to have one foot stuck in a mire and can't seem to free herself.

tim maguire said...

Michael K said...My mother later told me that my father, who had quit high school at 15, threw away a financial statement he had been sent.

I had a similar problem. We weren't poor, but my father was very private about his affairs and his financial situation was none of his children's business. I couldn't get financial aid because I couldn't provide my parents' tax returns. After I had lived on my own a couple years and was freed for suffering for my father's income, I still couldn't get financial aid because I lived on less than what they defined as the minimum possible income. That is, they wouldn't approve my application until I disclosed all my financial sources, but I had disclosed all my financial sources.

30 years later and I still hold a grudge against the financial aid system and college bureaucracy.

Mid-Life Lawyer said...

Let's say that your and Dr. Ford's professional victim status is valid and that it is unfair that some children have had less advantages due primarily to the social class of their parents, and also due to skin color or sex or how they look or whatever. So then the more privileged persons get more breaks and better quality education etc. How does that then make the privileged person less qualified? The whole basis of the complaint is that the victim didn't get better services so doesn't that mean that the privileged person benefited from those services and so is better qualified?

My father had an 8th grade education and my Mother was the only one of 12 children who graduated from high school and she graduated secretly pregnant with my sister, in 1948, and felt immense shame about this her entire life, which, in addition to Daddy's drinking, permeated our family with shame-based issues that continue to plague all of us today. My Mother would not allow us to have a 50th anniversary event for them because she was afraid someone ask my sister her birthday and they would do the math and figure out that she was pregnant before the date she was married. (She had always told people that they got married earlier) I was about as envious and blind with rage toward the country club crowd in our little town as I could possibly have been but at some point I grew up and realized that others who due to their birth station got some benefits that were never available to me got those privileges through absolutely no fault of their own. As a matter of fact, I wanted to have had the same privileges they had and that was the basis of my complaint! Having said all that, I do admit that it's very seductive to assume professional victim status and blame your shortcomings on others, and I employed that as an excuse up to my late twenties when I had a series of enlightening experiences that helped me grow up and reject victimology which naturally led me to reject progressive politics because progressive politics is based entirely on identity politics and victimhood which I from that point forward, entirely rejected.

tim maguire said...

It seems fairly clear to me that Kavanaugh is being made a scapegoat for the culture in which he was raised. A lot of women hate frat culture and want somebody punished for the shitty behaviour engaged in by these entitled kids. Tying Kavanaugh to an actual assault is a detail they will pay lip service to, but the real issue is that he was one of those kids they hate so much.

Has anybody apologized to the Duke Lacrosse team? No? Really? Nobody?

Gahrie said...

Our "Patriarchy" has produced a civilization in which women have achieved the highest status, quality of life, independence and privilege in History.

Oso Negro said...

Holy Cats! I think we have finally reached peak Althouse in this thread! The denouement! The reason for the blog and the feminism is revealed. And as a side note, we learn the source of Shouting Thomas misogyny (though he didn't reveal whether his sisters were pre- or post-pubescent).

I hope that this blog will continue after this. As weird as some of you are, it is one of the communities that I cherish, and I would miss you all if you were gone.

Original Mike said...

I didn’t receive encouragement to go into any particular field. My dad was a plumber and my mother a housewife; they had no advice to give. I didn’t take calculus until I reached college, yet someone I become a physicist. I’m not getting Althouse’s story of being held back.

Ray - SoCal said...

Franscisco,

Agree, she has a PhD, and she is not licensed.
https://www.dangerous.com/49836/records-show-dr-ford-is-not-a-licensed-psychologist-may-have-committed-perjury/

Use of the word psychologist, as was on her school page and in her testimony, is only legal if you are licensed.

Same thing with engineers, even though you have an engineering degree, you can’t call yourself one unless you are licensed (and the required test for electrical types is not very related).

I had the impression prior to finding this, she was some type of therapist.

The lack of information about her background is frustrating.

Supposedly her yearbooks have more on her.



Big Mike said...

@Eleanor, I am going to take issue with you. In the mid-1960s, when I went to the University of Illinois College of Engineering, it was tough for a woman to major in engineering. Out of thousands of engineering students at Illinois, there were precisely four women. Four out of thousands! Many professors were openly skeptical that women could cut it in engineering, and back in the 1980s I had a female manager who was told, as a freshly graduated electrical engineer back in the late 1960s, that engineering was a man’s job and he would only hire her as a secretary. Joke was on him — as a secretary (today we’d say “administrative assistant”) — she was entitled to time and a half after eight hours and double time on weekends, making more than any of the salaried engineers on the project, including the boss. I could write stories about those times all day, like the female colleague who was told software was a man’s domain — she eventually became president of the IEEE Computer Society! Or my own wife overhearing her dissertation advisor tell another professor that if you grant a Ph.D. to a woman she’ll just take a job from a man who needs to feed his family (she changed advisors).

That’s just the tip of the iceberg. I could write for an hour and not cover them all.

But that was then, this is now. Do my hat’s off to you, Eleanor, but no one is going to put women through the same wringer today and when Althouse doesn’t recognize that she lowers herself in my esteem.

Ray - SoCal said...

Raising good kids is not a puny achievement.

>This blog is a compensation for a lifetime of puniness.

It’s sad how many high achieving parents, I have seen, fail their kids.

Michael K said...

30 years later and I still hold a grudge against the financial aid system and college bureaucracy.

I was too dumb to call or write to Cal Tech and ask about financial aid. There probably was some way.

Instead, I got a scholarship to USC funded by Chicago USC alumni. USC had a weak engineering school. I have a story about my calculus professor in my book.

Anyway, I work as a non-degreed engineer for a year and then went back to do pre-med. The financial aid office told me I could not get a student loan (new program that year, National Defense Student Loan) as a pre-med because most premeds did not get into medical school,. It was not considered a useful major. SO, I walked around the block and came back and applied as an English major.

I enjoyed English and did premed as electives. English was easy compared to Engineering and my last semester I got 28 units of A.

Big Mike said...

And now I am going to ask the female commentators on the Althouse blog. Which is the greater impediment to career advancement for talented young women today? “The Patriarchy,” whatever it is, or back-stabbing women in the office?

Oso Negro said...

@Ray - this is NOT true about all engineering disciplines. I have a Chemical Engineering degree from the University of Texas and I have been correctly terming myself an engineer for more than 30 years. Some people take the P.E. exam, but it never mattered to me to have it nor did it seem a plus in engineers I interviewed or hired. Some folks prefer credentials to competence.

Michael K said...

In the mid-1960s, when I went to the University of Illinois College of Engineering, it was tough for a woman to major in engineering.

My high school girlfriend started Purdue in 1956. She got her BS ChemE in 1960,

Saint Croix said...

This blog is a compensation for a lifetime of puniness.

So speaks Iron Horse!

Krumhorn said...

What are the other institutions whose strength depends on our believing that they have a certain legitimacy?

Cruel Neutrality, apparently.

- Krumhorn

Saint Croix said...

That's a Lou Gehrig reference

Althouse has broken his record, yes?

Gahrie said...

My French teacher wanted me to apply to Middlebury College. That was the only time any teacher ever talked to me about aspiring to a particular school, and I brought that advice home to my parents, they told me they couldn't afford it, and I humbly accepted that.

Why didn't you look into scholarships or financial aid? My parents wouldn't pay for me to go to a private school either. My Dad was an enlisted man in the Air Force and there is no way he could afford it. So I found the money elsewhere.

FIDO said...

My French teacher wanted me to apply to Middlebury College. That was the only time any teacher ever talked to me about aspiring to a particular school, and I brought that advice home to my parents, they told me they couldn't afford it, and I humbly accepted that.


You mean you accepted a FACT, not a Patriarchy. This isn't patriarchy, it is economics. Some people have the wherewithal, others do NOT.

And as a 'patriarchal' society, we have given MASSIVE subsidies to that exemplary 'lower 50%' gets a fair shot at those advantages. It is good for society.

But that would be ascribing good to a system you clearly hate.


As far as that engineer thing: the question, sans outrage, was 'do you want to be an engineer, yes or no'. And God forbid that a teacher might make an assessment of the interests of a student. Maybe you did not strike her as an engineer type. But clearly, when told 'that is for engineers' you did not jump into the air, click your saddle shoes together and say 'I want to be an engineer!'.

No. I doubt very much that was in any 'life path' you saw for yourself. But admitting that didn't fit the narrative.

Sebastian said...

"So what's with still nursing these (by objective standards) petty resentments?"

Its just too useful: justifying the interminable whine, the feminist oppression narrative, the I-made-it-in-spite-of-subordination self-regard, the liberal politics of male destruction.

"But Jesus, Althouse, you need to let it go."

Sure, Althouse could be "dissuaded" from taking advanced courses. Dissuading her from wallowing in resentment is another matter.

Fernandinande said...

I didn’t take calculus until I reached college

#MeToo. I dropped out of high-school because my friends were older and had graduated, then worked carpentry and some stuff for about a year until I got bored with that, got a GED and a 36 on the ACT, went to college and majored in nothing for about a year, then some guy said "you oughta take calculus, I bet you'd like it" so I did, without knowing what "sines" and "cosines" were (I thought the names sounded pretty cool 'n' esoteric 'n' alchemist-y), then majored in physics with some EE but changed to math my last semester because there were no labs and I didn't like messing up my manicure in the labs.

The End.

mockturtle said...

Big Mike asks: And now I am going to ask the female commentators on the Althouse blog. Which is the greater impediment to career advancement for talented young women today? “The Patriarchy,” whatever it is, or back-stabbing women in the office?

I'd say neither one. The biggest impediment to career advancement is the woman herself.

The Cracker Emcee Refulgent said...

“The women that scream the loudest over abortion, birth control, and rape are the least likely to need or experience any of them.”

Overwhelming true in my experience. The most strident, blindly ideological, women I know, have lives of self-disciplined, middle-class privilege, utterly bourgeois in everything but their intellectual pretensions. Men built, and continue to maintain, the comfortable material surroundings these women shield their lives in. Those lives positively ooze irony and hypocrisy. They are the embodiment of Laslo’s Razor.

Fernandinande said...

The End.

Then I worked as an electrical engineer and surveyor in underground coal mines then got a masters in physics and now I'm a midget Mexican wrassler!

Anonymous said...

AA: My French teacher wanted me to apply to Middlebury College. That was the only time any teacher ever talked to me about aspiring to a particular school, and I brought that advice home to my parents, they told me they couldn't afford it, and I humbly accepted that.

I had a similar experience at that age. But, while I accepted my parents evaluation of the financial infeasibility of attending the Ivy League school that had accepted me, I wasn't "humbly accepting" of it. I was all butthurt and angry for a few months about not getting what I wanted.

Then I got over it.

Maybe if you'd gotten the disappointment out of your system like a normal teenage asshole then, you wouldn't still be all butthurt about so run-of-the-mill a human disappointment decades and decades later.

(Frankly, I'm glad you didn't get to go to Middlebury. What kind of monster would that den have turned you into, instead of the exasperating liberal product of some wrong-side-of-the-tracks public undergraduate program, that your Hillbillies know and love?)

mockturtle said...

And Hillary blames her loss on men who tell their wives how to vote. LOL!

Not Sure said...

Can't help but wonder who, exactly, Althouse thinks should've been forced to pay her way through Middlebury to spare her the indignity of going to UM. I went to a state u. and am damn grateful to have had my education subsidized by taxpayers.

As for BK making the most of his advantages, good for him. Giving him and his like the Harrison Bergeron treatment does nothing for the rest of us.

BTW, did Althouse harbor similar resentment against Gorsuch, or did CBF's soap opera performance trigger her?

FIDO said...

My God.

My dad pushed me in a particular direction and I have, as a result, after some early resistance, had a pretty frigging spectacular life.

Being Ms. Bossy to a bunch of young minds who have to kiss her ass constantly, with tenure and a munificent retirement.

How horrible. How could you stand it.

As you said before in your own statements, you COULD have gone on to be a Kavanaugh. People were ENCOURAGING you to become a judge...just like Kavanaugh. And as a woman, you'd have easily breezed by many men just by dint of your gender.

AND YOU CHOOSE NOT TO!

Because you wanted fun and authoritarianism over your students vs having to live a strict and moral life with no bad habits...oops!

So much for that narrative that patriarchy held you back. Own your shi...decisions.


Francisco D said...

Use of the word psychologist, as was on her school page and in her testimony, is only legal if you are licensed.

That is not true, Ray.

State laws vary but they do not deny people with PhDs in various psychology disciplines (e.g., cognitive, social, organizational) from calling themselves psychologists.

Psychologists who lack a license cannot bill insurance for clinical treatment, which is why they are commonly found in academic, military and organizational settings.

Anyone can hang out a shingle and offer MH services, but they cannot call themselves a psychologist unless they are licensed.

Sebastian said...

"I think we have finally reached peak Althouse."

I know what you mean. But to me, it's not just about her. It's about the culture. I view her as the most rational liberal woman I know virtually. If even she holds the to my mind absurd and deluded views she expresses with regard to "the patriarchy," and her personal life story, and the position of women in American society, it tells us much about the culture, and therefore the politics downstream.

The resentment coming from someone who enjoys greater privilege and good fortune than anyone else in the history of mankind, privilege and good fortune made possible by the hard work and ingenuity of men, is striking. So is the attribution of it to some patriarchal system--when even the trivial incidents recounted here have perfectly reasonable non-patriarchal explanations (the money for Middlebury, the advice about courses "for engineers" to someone interested in art, and so on and so forth). It puts in perspective the pervasive bad faith in her commentary on Kavanaugh, again not just as evidence of Althousian self-delusion about cruel neutrality, perversely amusing though it may be, but as an indicator of where we stand. It's a dynamic in the culture war I had underestimated.

Not Sure said...

What would Julie London say?

I'm Full of Soup said...

Mockturtle said:

"The biggest impediment to career advancement is the woman herself."


I'd add this: The biggest impediment to career advancement / social justice is the person himself/ herself.

Michael K said...

It's a dynamic in the culture war I had underestimated.

I can remember reading about how European men were all saying they avoided American women. They were too spoiled and expected to be treated as queens.

I know a guy, who used to be a big time CBS reporter. He had Jimmy Carter giving the message on his answering machine from covering him on the 1976 campaign.

He married a Ukranian woman. That was years ago when he lived in Tucson.

Krumhorn said...

This is by far, the most interesting thread in the history of this blog (and I’m pretty sure that I am among the first of Ann’s readers).

My mom, born in 1925, came from a decidedly unprivileged family. Not poor, but her dad, a Russian immigrant, sold cigars. Her mom died she was 12. My mom, the first to go to college in her family, went to Swarthmore and majored in electrical engineering. During WWII, she was on a small team at RCA that developed the tracking capabilities of radar which proved pretty useful. At GE, she was the designer of very high energy insulators.

She had 4 brat kids and taught calculus at a commmunity jr college in western KY. In her 50’s, she went to Case Western Reserve Law School and practiced in juvenile court, mostly on the cuff. She and my dad took in a large number of foster kids she met through her practice.

While she was generally a leftie voter, I’m confident that she would be wretching to see this Kavanaugh shit show if she were still alive. And I doubt that she would find our hostess’s story all that compelling. Don’t get me wrong, she would admire and respect Ann every bit as much as I do, but this squalid political nonsense over Roe would make her crazy about the future of our great country.

As Laslo so aptly put it, the issue here for Ann is pride.

This blog has some very interesting and articulate women. Freeman Hunt and Mockturtle...just to name a couple and not to exclude others....are folks I would be proud and excited to have as friends. Ann should listen up. This whiny bullshit isn’t cutting it.

- Krumhorn

-

Michael K said...

The most strident, blindly ideological, women I know, have lives of self-disciplined, middle-class privilege,

The one in my family, also a professor of Psychology in a small Bay Area college, does nothing in the house. No cooking, housework.

Teaches two classes a week.

FIDO said...

That needs to be said: Althouse, for her many flaws and idiosyncrasies, is USUALLY pretty even handed and sensible. She does not like poking the Feminist side TOO much, but she does. She is sort of a Pseudo Paglia in that respect.

But here, she is flat out wrong, by dint of fairness, law, and culture. She's had to abandon principles she's sworn to uphold, because resentment and abortion.


And the fact that 80-90% of her commenters agree means nothing.


I think someone hit it on the head. Pride and something else.


She refuses to be on any side that someone like myself or rhhardin is on.

Because to do that would force her to question her self image. And she wants her self image to 'not be Conservative'.

Francisco D said...

My parents did not want me to apply to college. They wanted me to work, live at home and help support them. This was the plan of my stepfather who was a truly evil man.

We moved to the suburbs when I was 16. They sat me down and proposed that I drop out of HS rather than transfer to a new school.

I finished HS and spent 7 years working and going to college - not the easiest way to get through. I resented my parents for that, but it wasn't worth the time to fester over it. I simply cut them out of my life.

Others have had it harder than me. Most had it much easier. What is the point of comparing the paths we had to take?

Little Princess Annie had it terribly hard because she could not go to a particular school or take a particular course. Try finding courses to sign up for when you have a factory job for 50 hours a week.

I am starting to understand the many facets of Althouse identifying with the "pain" that rich little white girls suffer. It must be oh so hard on you. You coulda been a contender!

SDaly said...

This post has really shed a lot of light on the inconsistencies I've seen on this blog over the past 14 years.

Cruel neutrality applied to everything except the petty resentments she carries to this day. Then all that Althouse claims to stand for goes out the window.

Hint: it's not the 1960's any more, and hasn't been for a long time. My sister is 5 years younger than you, we were a lower-middle class conservative catholic family, and she managed to go to private college on a scholarship and then medical school. By the time she went, the class was already 30% women. Looking around the US today, and for the past several decades, every advantage has been given to women. There is no patriarchy. There is, if anything, a matriarchy. And, as usual, the women who become leaders are just a shitty, if not shittier, to those under them than men are.

SDaly said...

The hilarious thing is that Althouse makes it sound like "the Patriarchy" wouldn't allow her to go to a private college.

Laslo Spatula said...

" I didn't know what Calculus was and I asked my Trigonometry teacher what it was, what I would be missing from my education if I didn't take it. She told me it's just for engineers. Not: You could be an engineer, so you should try that course and see whether it's something you want to pursue, there's great career potential there and you might do well. No, it was simply understood that engineers are other people and not me."

Hey, this calculus thing: I'm, like, in Trigonometry and I don't know what it is.

Sorry: if you were that far (Trig) and hadn't looked any farther on the subject on your own, you were not interested enough.

'What would I be missing from my education' sounds like rounding the edges, not identifying a passion. As they say in a math class, 'show your work.'

The teacher responded as such.

Or:

A Feminist walks into a bar.

The Bartender asks what she will be having.

"A shot of whiskey."

The bartender nods, impressed. The Feminists sees his look and says:

"What? Just because I'm a woman, you thought I would order something like a daiquiri or a cosmopolitan?"

"Uh... yeah," the bartender says sheepishly. "Sorry."

The bartender pours her a shot of whiskey and sets it in front of her. She looks at it, waiting.

"Is there something wrong?" he asks.

"Yeah," the woman says. "Just because I'm a feminist doesn't mean I don't want the little umbrella."

I am Laslo.

Michael K said...

It is an interesting thread. When I went to medical school, admissions committees did discriminate against women applicants.

In the class behind me there were three women out of 65. One was about 33 and had a 9 year old daughter. She was an honorary guy and member of Nu Sigma Nu, the guy's medical fraternity. She went into Ophthalmology and practiced for years in downtown LA. Sadly she died a few years ago. The other two women I did not know well.

One reason the committee discriminated was an assumption that women would not practice full time and there was a big deal about a doctor shortage at the time. In fact, women doctors work about 27% less hours than male doctors and both work fewer hours than we did. Long story but there was real discrimination. I suspect the homelier the women, the better chance to get in.

Bernice was pretty and about 6 feet tall. She had a great career,

WhoKnew said...

To Michael K: "Explain again why we should vote for these assholes ." Because until there is a viable rational third party, not voting for these assholes means the Dems will run the government. Over the years I have forgiven a lot of hard ball and borderline unethical political maneuvers, by both sides. I justified it as being just how the game is played. No more. The Kavanaugh hearings are the final straw. The character assissination, false charges, abuse of process, and genuine heartlessness of the Democratic senators (along with their political and media allies) have been the most disgusting spectacle I've seen in the 45 years I've been a voter. I will vote with one goal in mind for the rest of my life: keeping the Democrat party out of power.

mockturtle said...

One thing that sets Althouse apart from other lib-fems is that she allows discourse even when it strongly opposed her own ideology. Most do not, will not. Like others, I hold both Althouse and her excellent commenters in high esteem.

Chuck said...

It’s sad that Justice Kagan will never again face a confirmation hearing for anything, and we therefore won’t be able to ask the FBI to investigate whose genitalia she might have ground against while she was in high school and was an undergraduate.

tim maguire said...

Michael K said...The financial aid office told me I could not get a student loan (new program that year, National Defense Student Loan) as a pre-med because most premeds did not get into medical school...SO, I walked around the block and came back and applied as an English major.

Nice one!

forest said...

Thank you to Ann, for the comment about receiving poor information about the importance of calculus from her Trig teacher. It's worth recognizing that Ann did ask about it as a high school student. There are several problems with the teacher's response as described. First, mathematics is a subject of interest and study in its own right and she should have communicated that. Second, it sounds like she was, to herself and to Ann, dismissing the possibility that Ann could be an engineer. Do we know how she would have answered a male classmate of Ann's? No, but I suspect that, as almost all engineers at that time were men (and still are), her mental reference of an engineer was that of a male engineer, and suggesting a break with what she viewed as the norm, in order to communicate the possibility of being an engineer to Ann, would have required an extra step by her. It could also be that the teacher said "just for engineers" partly because she thought they were some kind of non-intellectual technician (which is not at all the case).

An additional problem is that the more abstract, conceptual parts of mathematics, beyond calculus, are not introduced in our educational system until about junior year as a math major. This is different in many European countries. I had a friend in grad school who went to the "language" high school in Italy, had 5 years of studying Euclidean geometry, including proofs, and started university at age 18 with what we would call Advanced Calculus/Graduate Analysis. I often think, as I read this blog, that if we had an equivalent path here, Ann might have found she loved mathematics and pursued it. I base that partly on her interest and ability in the writing of precise statements in English, dissecting the meanings of words. Careful definitions of mathematical objects and probing, pushing them with the imagination is an important part of what many mathematicians do.

I speak as a woman three years younger than Ann, who got my Ph.D. in Mathematics from UW Madison and am now a professor at a Midwestern regional university. My educational path involved some questioning and challenging by me, and I'm sure I was helped by the encouragement of female enterprise that was starting to be in the air when I was 18-20.

Not Sure said...

In an alternate universe, Young Althouse's high school French teacher comes up with the money for Middlebury, thanks to an inheritance from her maiden aunt. AA majors in French, immersing herself in existentialism and Galoises. Soon she is horrified by the stifling environment of Vermont, and decides she absolutely must transfer to the Sorbonne. Sadly, her beneficent high school French teacher has spent the rest of her inheritance funding cat shelters. Althouse drops out after her junior year and hops a tramp steamer to Marseilles, where she meets a charismatic young starving artist. She takes a job teaching English in a local high school to support his art. Little does she realize that her beloved Henri is sleeping with dozens of his models, several of which are Althouse's students. Devastated, she begs her father to buy her a plane ticket home. He does so on the condition that she find a suitable career, so she enrolls in law school.

Eventually she becomes a tenured professor at a decent midwestern university, where she is quite content. Then one day she sees a doctor about the wracking cough she's developed, and receives the dreaded news that her many years of chain-smoking strong French cigarettes have given her lung cancer. If only I'd gone to Michigan, like my parents wanted!, she sobbed.

Fernandinande said...

What would Julie London say?

"Play 'Misty' for me."

OldManRick said...

The permit was pulled in 2008 and it is a rental house, not the residence.

May be true, but read the article. Gateway claims it's her house based on news reports and demonstrations in front. It went from one door to two between 2007 and 2011. If it is the rental, it strangely matches the story. If it's not, it was a lie.

Unlike most of her story, it is an allegation that can be investigated. I am disturbed by the fact that we know so little about her. Aside from her show before the senate, we really know nothing. Her social media was purged. Someone attempted to purge her yearbook but someone else grabbed copies. It seems she did wear a pussy hat in a protest. Wikipedia identifies the protests as 1% of the population - all give them 2% when you exclude the too young and too old. Not all of these were pussy hat wearers. So this does identify her in the TDS end of the spectrum. How far, we don't know. How about this - from 2014 - Heather McGhee: Less than 1% of 1% give $200 or more to campaigns. You can google it. She's in that active .01%.

There is a lot of absolute hysteria coming out about Kavanaugh. USA today says he shouldn't be allowed to coach; leftists are screaming about back alley abortions; comedian are making tasteless jokes about him.

Let the FBI investigate. But let's find out as much about his accuser. Was it a rental in 2011? Does her social media show extreme TDS? What does her high school yearbook say? We know about his. We have a she-said-he-said - (sorry they said) situation here. Don't we deserve to know more about both parties involved. Kavanaugh has be investigated every way from Sunday. We know about his fart jokes! He has lots of character testimonials from people who knew him. She has "I believe's" from people who never met her, who believe because they want to believe. Let's find out.

I am and engineer, I work with facts not feelings. I would love to see a "nail in the coffin" that resolves this one way or the other. The "nails" found in his year book were thumbtacks. The follow-on nails of gang rape and a waving penis are frankly ludicrous. She has several nails sticking up that would close the coffin - the remodel; fear of flying; didn't know the committee would fly out to her; how the story was leaked; how many at the party; Judge was there-wasn't there; to tell the truth the way the democrats have handled this, the continued delays, the way she held off testifying until exculpatory testimony came out so she could avoid contradicting it, and her highly selective memories of just one drink and 100% sure it was him, are other potential nails. Investigate her and find out

Chuck said...

WhoKnew said...
To Michael K: "Explain again why we should vote for these assholes ." Because until there is a viable rational third party, not voting for these assholes means the Dems will run the government. Over the years I have forgiven a lot of hard ball and borderline unethical political maneuvers, by both sides. I justified it as being just how the game is played. No more. The Kavanaugh hearings are the final straw. The character assissination, false charges, abuse of process, and genuine heartlessness of the Democratic senators (along with their political and media allies) have been the most disgusting spectacle I've seen in the 45 years I've been a voter. I will vote with one goal in mind for the rest of my life: keeping the Democrat party out of power.


Take comfort in and he fact that they are doing this to Kavanaugh because the Dem insiders on the Judiciary staff all know what a Kavanaugh tenure of 35 years on the Court would be for them. Their worst nightmare.

Krumhorn said...

Another decidedly unwoke comment. Let’s say that the leftie professor Joan of Arc wanna be (is there another kind??) from California is telling the truth, as unacceptable as that behavior in high school is, it’s not disqualifying in the least given how he has conducted himself in the decades since.

So our hostess maintains that his only choice is to beg humble forgiveness from Ford even if he was too drunk to remember that any such thing happened. But since we must believe the survivor, all that is left is for him to say that he stopped raping women 30 odd years ago and that he cut off his dick shortly after his daughter was born in penance in honor of her rage. He must stand before the Senate committee, open his trousers and let the lady see the colostomy tube exiting an ugly scar where he used to have a dick.

Since even Huggy Lasseter can no longer make Pixar movies, it is unlikely that the amputation will get him to the court.

So he must lie. He must pound the table indignantly and lie like he means it. He must make Christ weep with his lie, because there is no life lived too purely, even as a teen, to pass muster with the abortion crowd. Which is why nobody will ever be nominated to the court these days who went to Fremont Ross, BenHi, or Tilghman High because: unqualified. All that is left are graduates of a Jesuit school who cannot be confirmed because: abortion.

Laslo’s Razor

- Krumhorn

mockturtle said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
Gahrie said...

@Althouse:

1) Did anybody ever specifically tell you not to take Calculus?

2) Did anybody ever tell you not to go to college?

3) Why did you choose to major in Art originally?

4) Did any ever tell you not to go to a private college? (Besides your parents saying they wouldn't pay for it?)

5) Do you think your parents would have been willing to go into debt to send a son to private college?

6) Having spent your career at a public university, do you still feel they are inferior to private schools?

7) How were you able to justify working for decades for an institution where 25% of the women who attended were raped?

mockturtle said...

Thank you, Krumhorn, for the kind words. It is more important than ever before for women to speak up. Not about mostly-mythical sexism but about the fact that many women are individuals with minds independent of the MSM narrative and academic brainwashing.

Laslo Spatula said...

I'd love to see the Venn Diagram of engineers, feminists and Bob Dylan enthusiasts.

I am Laslo.

Bad Lieutenant said...


9/29/18, 9:13 AM
Blogger Big Mike said...
but I wasn't even allowed to apply to any private college, so I went to the University of Michigan. And I considered myself relatively advantaged

So fundamentally you’re just jealous of Brett Kavanaugh? Did I read that right?

9/29/18, 9:15 AM

Max Ehrmann had some advice for her:

https://www.desiderata.com/desiderata.html

If you compare yourself with others, you may become vain or bitter, for always there will be greater and lesser persons than yourself.


"and I was at an early age molested by one of my teachers."

Go on, we're all ears. Show us on the doll...

This isn't feminism. Feminism is Claudia Cardinale in Once Upon A Time In The West:

Jill: If you want to, you can lay me over the table and amuse yourself. And even call in your men. Well. No woman ever died from that. When you're finished, all I'll need will be a tub of boiling water, and I'll be exactly what I was before - with just another filthy memory.
Cheyenne: [sighs] You make good coffee, at least.


And apparently she was actually raped in real life. So that isn't just a script talking.

I'm thinking that it would be better if rapists would be considerate enough of society to finish off their victims, as these broken women are poison to society. Dating them, or rather moving past dating them, is just impossible.

PS Your mother agreed with your father, about the schools.

Francisco D said...

Take comfort in and he fact that they are doing this to Kavanaugh because the Dem insiders on the Judiciary staff all know what a Kavanaugh tenure of 35 years on the Court would be for them. Their worst nightmare.

The Dems are making that nightmare worse by torturing Kavanaugh and his family with their disgusting and cynical political theater. They have to worry that if Kavanaugh is confirmed is whether he will react to this treatment by becoming highly partisan.

I suspect that most people, including myself, would want some measure of revenge. Yet, I suspect that Kavanaugh is a better man than I am.

Bad Lieutenant said...

't pay for it?)

5) Do you think your parents would have been willing to go into debt to send a son to private college?



Surely someone of Althouse's towering high school achievements could have gotten a scholarship somewhere?

Gahrie said...

In my Junior year of high school I decided I wanted to go to Grambling and play football for Coach Robinson. I thought I had a shot at making the team, I knew I could make the grades/test scores. Everyone told me I couldn't go and wouldn't let me apply. Because Grambling is a historically Black college. I'm still pissed about it. But I don't let it rule my life.

wwww said...






The definition of the "Patriarchy" and "#Me Too" are not clear. Hard to have a conversation about a vague & ill-defined word.

Legitimacy:

Do I think the last week hurt the legitimacy of SCOTUS. Yep. Can that be undone? Dunno. What are the implications? Yet to be seen.

"Like it or not, ideas to drastically change the power, makeup of the court are now going to be up for debate. They'll be debated because last week happened, and you can't un-happen it." -Alex Parker, twitter.

"People are so, so misinterpreting this by viewing everything through the binary prism of whether or not Kavanaugh gets confirmed or not. This is a singular event which will change, quite profoundly, how people view a branch of government." -A Parker


Lloyd W. Robertson said...

Somewhere in the Federalist Papers, an author, probably Hamilton, says something like: it won't be a bad thing if Congress actually achieves very little. There was obviously very little expectation of something like today's welfare state, where a congressional system makes it much easier to ratchet spending up than to cut it or rationalize it. Is it too cynical to say that today, it wouldn't be a bad thing if the Court achieved very little?

wwww said...

"They have to worry that if Kavanaugh is confirmed is whether he will react to this treatment by becoming highly partisan."


All Americans should worry if this is the perception of SCOTUS justices. Non-partisanship on the court may be a fiction, but it is a useful fiction. SCOTUS is not elected. The legitimacy of SCOTUS is more fragile then other branches of government.


Otto said...

Ann i give you credit for this post and your comments. As suspected you were a perfect target for the Frankfurt school. A little , smart , scared, maybe not the best looking , girl with a lousy father. Any father who reads playboy and overtly displays it on the family ( only daughters)coffee table , who tells his valedictorian daughter that he cannot afford not so expensive (60s) Middlebury college and who takes his family infrequently to church is not a good father figure.
Also explains your punny idol - Dylan.
Go to church and tell your sons you want grandchildren, it will do you wonders besides blogging. There is one Father that cares.

iowan2 said...

I wouldn't care if SCOTUS met every 3rd year. For the weakest of the 3 branches, they have gained too much sway in our culture. That is by design, and we find our selves here. Only 1 of 500 people could explain federalism and why its important. Micheal K keeps repeating that RoevWade is the evil tearing apart the Nation, and nobody can show otherwise. Abortion was legal in all 50 states. What wasn't legal of post facto birth control. Return this decision back to the people. Why is that bad? Why cant people rule themselves? SCOTUS has abandoned Federalism, and today a person is guilty because its impossible to prove a negative.No on can think this is the right direction.

Democrats have never advanced a single goal. They can only play to unelected judges to do what the voters refuse to do.

People wail, and gnash their teeth because less populated states have undue influence in the Senate. Well if Federalism was honored, people in each of the states would be governing themselves and the Senate would return to the inconsequential body it was designed to be.

mockturtle said...

There is neither Jew nor Gentile, neither slave nor free, nor is there male and female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus. Galatians 3:28. Christ, the great Unifier through faith.

«Oldest ‹Older   1 – 200 of 277   Newer› Newest»