"I did have one couple; they called off their wedding because the mom of the bride was so particular and worried about what people thought..."

"... and how things were going to be perceived. And they started to bicker. And they ended up, they were like, 'We don’t want to do this. This is terrible. We don’t even want to be together anymore.' And they called off the wedding. And I remember running into them, separately, like a year later. You know, they were not together. And like: 'I think it’s probably the best thing that we did. The wedding was just too much.' And then after that, like two years later, they ended up just eloping. They got back together; they eloped. And the desire to have this perfect wedding that represented 'them as a couple' just was too much. Literally, they were like, 'I can’t do it.'"

Said wedding planner Xochitl Gonzalez, quoted in "Why Can’t We Quit Weddings? Marriages aren’t what they used to be. So why are weddings ever more wedding-like and deluxe?" 

This is a conversation — transcript and audio at the link — and the interviewer is Hanna Rosin, who really seems to want to go deeply into the issue expressed in that headline. The headline drew me in, but I couldn't find any serious discussion of that question. There's nothing about the urge to cling to tradition because we are losing tradition and the relative significance of the tradition of marriage and the tradition of weddings.

"Ever since Trump perfected the template (grandiose, manipulative, easily wounded, unable to tolerate even minor scenarios in which he isn’t deemed central or special)..."

"... the label ['narcissist'] has been steadily spreading to celebrities, shitty boyfriends, and sometimes mothers. #narctokadvice is flooded with pictures of terrible exes whose faces are rubbed out and replaced with Johnny Depp’s. Infinite listicles describe life with a narcissist as a psychological war zone and explain how to spot the signs and fight back: 'How to Argue With a Narcissist' or '5 Ways to Weaken a Narcissist' or 'The 7 Lies We Learn From Our Narcissistic Parents.' On #narctok, the final stage of enlightenment is 'no contact,' meaning forever cutting the narcissist out of your life. Elon Musk is a 'narcissist' or sometimes a 'narcissistic sociopath' or a 'toddler.'... When sociologist Jean Twenge wrote in The Narcissism Epidemic about the epidemic of misery among post-millenials [sic], she mostly blamed cell phones, social media, and the 'culture of selfies' for the shift. Fifteen years later, the teens are still drowning in hopelessness. But calling them narcissists is about as helpful as calling them obese."

Writes Hanna Rosin, in "Narcissist and Proud" (NY Magazine).

"Unlike the nastiest Obama hatred — which is typically rooted in a fear of the Other (black, with an Arabic middle name, product of a mixed marriage) — Clinton disdain had a strange kind of intimacy."

"It was like hating a sibling who was more popular, more successful, more beloved by your parents—and always getting away with something. [R. Emmett Tyrrell Jr., the founder and longtime editor of The American Spectator] felt he knew the Clintons, because he’d gone to college with so many Clinton types: draft dodgers, pot smokers, ’60s 'brats.' They were 'the most self-congratulatory generation in the American republic,' he tells me. 'And it was all based on balderdash! They are weak! The weakest generation in American history!'"

So writes Hanna Rosin in "Among the Hillary Haters/Can a new, professionalized generation of scandalmongers uncover more dirt on the Clintons — without triggering a backlash?"

ADDED: Is "more dirt" needed? It seems to me that the new generation of scandalmongers could just dish up the old dirt, which never seems to have been taken seriously enough — notably Hillary's role in suppressing the voices of Bill's women.

"The larger question of whether victims of rape should remain anonymous is a complicated one."

"The initial rationale for anonymity was to afford victims a measure of protection and prevent them from feeling more shame and self-loathing than they already felt. But as Joan Didion explained in 'Sentimental Journeys,' her essay about the Central Park jogger, this anonymity also had an element of the self-fulfilling, 'guiding the victim to define her assault as her protectors do.' In other words, if rape were defined as more shame-inducing than other crimes, then the victims would continue to experience it as more shameful."

Writes Hanna Rosin in "Trolls Are Outing UVA’s 'Jackie.' That’s Rolling Stone’s Fault Too."

"By pulling Cosby’s already completed and widely consumed work, TV Land kicked off an effort to scour Cosby from pop-culture history..."

"... as though, with every re-air, the public would be reminded it had been duped, and was once again guilty of putting too much trust in an individual now thought undeserving of it. It’s the closest thing to retroactively reprobating Cosby, reminiscent of the NCAA vacating Joe Paterno’s wins and Penn State removing his statue after the coach was deemed culpable of covering up Jerry Sandusky’s sex abuse of young boys."

Writes WaPo's Soraya Nadia McDonald at "Cleansing popular culture of all things Cosby."

Interesting application of the word "guilty."

ADDED: "So Netflix, don't air that Cosby post-Thanksgiving special, even though you have already paid for and shot it; NBC, cancel that Cosby sitcom. And if that doesn’t happen, then shame on anyone who watches them."

"The men who are sitting in their offices or in cafes watching this video will... be able to comfortably assure themselves that they don’t have time to sit on hydrants..."

"... in the middle of the day and can’t properly pronounce 'mami.' They might do things to women that are worse than catcalling, but this is not their sin." Says Hanna Rosin, analyzing the racial politics of that woman-walking-down-the-street viral video.

Who defines what is victimhood... when the target of sadistic pranks is somewhere on the autism spectrum?

Hanna Rosin describes a teenage boy and the pretty girls who are being prosecuted, whom he would still like to see as friends.

For a boy like Michael, wooing a girl, winning her trust and then trying to participate in her pranks, even while they made him uncomfortable and put him in some danger, took courage. The girls betrayed that... [b]ut reducing Michael’s responses and feelings to an embarrassing tic of the severely disabled will not lead to justice — or confidence or empowerment — for Michael and people like him. It will only cause a different kind of harm, which is to make him a perfect victim.

"A preoccupation with safety has stripped childhood of independence, risk taking, and discovery—without making it safer."

That's the subhead of a new Atlantic article by Hanna Rosin — head: "The Overprotected Kid" — which is actually mostly about a playground in North Wales that's really not the sort of thing Americans would accept in their towns:

The ground is muddy in spots and, at one end, slopes down steeply to a creek where a big, faded plastic boat that most people would have thrown away is wedged into the bank. The center of the playground is dominated by a high pile of tires....

[S]omeone has already started a fire in the tin drum in the corner, perhaps because it’s late fall and wet-cold, or more likely because the kids here love to start fires.... Nearby... a stack of filthy mattresses... large structures made up of wooden pallets stacked on top of one another... a frayed rope swing that carries you over the creek and deposits you on the other side, if you can make it that far (otherwise it deposits you in the creek).... the kids seem excited by a walker that was donated by one of the elderly neighbors...

It's an eyesore. It's low class. And also kids will get hurt, which I'm sure is the socially acceptable complaint.

"Extinct cowboys. Broncos with no buck left in them. Hairless men. Female entrepreneurs. The evidence is all there. Keep it up, NFL."

"Ten thousand more Super Bowls and we'll be even."

Hanna Rosin does the math in an item titled "Our First Feminist Super Bowl."

"But are men, and the age-old power structures associated with 'maleness,' permanently in decline?"

"Or do men still retain significant control over the workplace, the family and society at large, including women?" A very lively debate on the proposition: "Be it resolved, men are obsolete…"

Pro: Hanna Rosin, Maureen Dowd. Con: Caitlin Moran, Camille Paglia.

Rosin and Dowd pretty much retreat from the strong version of the proposition, and Moran and Paglia kick ass. Rosin and Dowd end up winning because they "persuaded" more people, after beginning with only 16% on their side (and ending with 44%).

Very amusing, or enraging (if you're the type to get steamed over the obvious fact that it would be considered outrageous for a bunch of men to get all hyper and cheeky over a comparable topic about the value of women).

ADDED: You might need to subscribe to watch at that link, but you can listen (which is what I did) here. 

"Look at this Boston bombing. The pictures of those two brothers. Aren’t they cute?"

Said I, as quoted in The New Yorker today in a piece by Paul Bloom called "The Dzhokar Tsarnaev Empathy Problem." I was being sarcastic and criticizing the media for using a strikingly baby-faced picture of Tsarnaev in practically every report.

Bloom concludes:

Relying on the face might be human nature—even babies prefer to look at attractive people. But, of course, judging someone based on the geometry of his features is, from a moral and legal standpoint, no better than judging him based on the color of his skin. Actually, both biases reflect the parochial and irrational nature of empathy—if Tsarnaev were black, would he evoke the same response from the mothers [Hanna Rosin described here]? When someone talks about the warm feelings she has for Tsarnaev because of his sweet face, we should treat this with the same wary understanding that we would give to someone who admits to caring more about those who have the same color skin. It’s an empathetic response, and a natural one, but hardly one to be proud of.

Bloom says nothing about the baby-faced picture of Trayvon Martin that the media tended to use. Sweet faces manipulate us emotionally even when they are black. And an individual's face isn't quite the same as his skin color, because the mind is revealed through the face (albeit incompletely and often deceptively). Bloom displays the media's favorite photo of Jared Loughner and declares that we don't feel much empathy toward that face. But the problem with that face is not inborn ugliness. It's craziness in the expression. We are properly repelled by that.

It is the true sociopath — I would suggest — whose does evil things but keeps a normal-looking face. We need to challenge ourselves to recognize the sociopaths in our midst. And let's not try to overcome our aversion to faces like Loughner's or Adam Lanza's. These people have terrible problems that we ignore at great risk.

ADDED: The post title corrects a typo that appears in The New Yorker ("bothers" for "brothers").

"We have of course gotten used to mommy bloggers embarrassing their children..."

"... saying which child they like best or how much they drink while stuck at home doing art projects."

Louis C.K. regularly embarrasses his kids and surely one day they will get their revenge. These are humiliations that might require a kid to get therapy later, but they are not on the same order as what [Liza] Long did. They are unlikely, for example, to prevent the kids from getting a job. So far the children’s rights movement has focused on protecting children from neglect and abuse, but maybe it’s time to add a subcategory protecting them from libel, by their own parents.

That's Hanna Rosin, writing about the "I Am Adam Lanza's Mother" blogger, whom we talked about here.

"To put it crudely, feminist progress right now largely depends on the existence of the hookup culture."

"And to a surprising degree, it is women — not men — who are perpetuating the culture, especially in school, cannily manipulating it to make space for their success, always keeping their own ends in mind. For college girls these days, an overly serious suitor fills the same role an accidental pregnancy did in the 19th century: a danger to be avoided at all costs, lest it get in the way of a promising future."

Writes Hanna Rosin, looking at what women have lost and gained in the sexual revolution.

The come-on line everyone's talking about, from last Sunday's episode of the new HBO show "Girls."

Hanna Rosin sets up the discussion at Slate:

I don’t quite know what to make of Booth Jonathan’s come-on: “I want you to know, the first time I fuck you, I might scare you a little, because I’m a man, and I know how to do things.” Marnie was touched by it, obviously...

Marnie is the character whose actual boyfriend is so sensitive to her needs she finds him boring and hopeless. "Girls" is like the new "Sex and the City," and Marnie's the closest thing to Miranda — the main character's best friend, the confidante.

The ladies over at Slate go on and on about this line, e.g.:

[L.V.] Anderson: As that scene and others showed, this was the episode I thought Allison Williams' acting chops proved really not up to the task of playing Marnie. She can do annoyed and bitchy just fine, and we've seen that (and almost only that) in the first and second episode. But between the crying scene (when Hannah tells her she has HPV) and the masturbation scene, Williams in this episode was in over her head. I have never seen such bad fake crying in my life, and the bathroom masturbation is the least realistic scene in this show so far. Could I imagine Marnie going home and masturbating later that night? Sure. Can I imagine her SO INFLAMED with lust that she had to alleviate her sexual urges as soon as possible? Not for a second. What did you guys make of that scene?...

Dana Stevens: Not to get too personal, but do any of you know any woman, however hot and bothered by the manly charms of Jorma Taccone, who would masturbate standing up in an art-gallery bathroom while wearing pantyhose?

Allison Williams is the daughter of TV newsman Brian Williams, and what he feels is:

It’s kvelling, pride. It’s incredibly great. Her co-creator and I have known always that she was going to be an actress. So it’s fantastic.

You’re fine with the awkward sex scenes?

Unmitigated joy.

We've been watching this show, by the way. It's actually quite different from "Sex and the City" in that the sex lives of these girls — called "girls," obviously, to highlight their immaturity — is not glamorized. It's actually so sad it conflicts with the humor. One of the 4 girls is a virgin. (She's the Charlotte analogue.) She's our favorite character, played by Zosia Mamet, who is David Mamet's daughter. (I don't know what's with the famous dads angle, but Mamet is a fine comedienne and Williams is... as noted above.)

"I’ve always given books to friends and family for Christmas presents... books are the only gifts in the world that anybody would ever want to receive."

So says poet and novelist Jay Parini, one of the respondents to the NYT questions "What is the best book you have ever received as a gift? What are your favorite books to give to friends?" Parini recommends... oh, who cares? I like Jane Smiley's response:

I learned not to give books as gifts the year I turned 13 and very carefully and with much forethought went to the book section at Stix, Baer and Fuller, in Brentwood, Mo., and purchased a copy of “Six Crises,” by Richard Nixon, for my mother. My mother had been a newspaperwoman for many years, was politically vocal, and definitely was a Republican. When I placed the package under the tree, I was extremely proud of myself.

When she unwrapped it, she turned it over in her hands with a bemused look, and she was only minimally grateful. I noticed that when it got put on a bookshelf, the bookshelf was in my room. I doubt that she ever opened it.

Have I ever received a book? No one would dare. A reader's tastes are peculiar....

Therefore: The gift certificate is a giver's best friend...

Dare I recommend an Amazon gift certificate? Anyway, I told you 2 years ago: Don't give books! I said it back in '09...

"If geezers like me have lots of tests and treatments... there isn’t going to be enough money to spend on the other end. This health-care mess isn’t going to be fixed if we aren’t ready to get out of the way."

Said Hanna Rosin's "new hero."

IN THE COMMENTS: Martha said: "Death Panel of one."

"Men, [Susan] Orlean says, 'are a lot better at putting blinkers on' and focusing on their work."

"[Elizabeth] Gilbert does not have kids but she agrees. Men, she adds, are also 'more entitled to suffer for their work' and let their wife and kids get neglected. Gilbert adds that her form of suffering involves compulsively taking care of 'anyone who comes within' her orbit. 'Do you think Philip Roth ever set aside his novel so he could change the sheets in the guest bedroom for the third time that week?' she asks."

***

If it ever seems that men are greater than women, you must look harder — harder — until you can perceive that women are greater than men.

"I would like [blank] to become more self-aware."

Who would you like to become more self-aware?
	Hanna Rosin
	Hanna Rosin's cat
	Maureen Tkacik
	Sarah Palin
pollcode.com free polls

"If I were Judith Warner writing in the New York Times about my daughter I could write about it."

I don't — I can't — use the raw material of my home life for blog posts. Maybe you think I do, but basically, I follow a rule against it, and I only reveal little things around the edges. I'd love to use lines from breakfast-table conversations and riff on them, and maybe this post is an example of that. It's something I just said. But, really, this post is about how I can't do that, and I've been noticing how much these various female columnists do. They don't research what's happening in other families or even pretend they are writing about some third person. They just go right ahead and talk about whatever is right there in their home and make casual generalizations about what people are like these days.

Like Judith Warner, writing in the NYT this week about her daughter:

... my elder daughter, Julia, is now in 7th grade, which means, of late, that she lives in a world filled with endless girl dramas of the most unfortunate and, alas, ordinary kind.

As I watch her attempt to make sense of all this, I try to keep a respectful distance. There is no greater error, I’ve come to think, than for a mother to get down in the emotional mire of her daughter’s girl stuff. It is undignified. Inappropriate, even. And ultimately, judging from what I’ve seen thus far, it’s deeply toxic.

So I try to sit back and act like an adult.

Ironically, Warner is writing about keeping aloof from her daughter's dramas. But that is her home life. The daughter has "endless girl dramas," and the mother has adopted a "respectful distance" strategy of parenting. But part of that "respectful distance" is blabbing about the dramas in the New York Times. Well, that is a kind of distance.

I won't "get down in the emotional mire" with you. I'll climb up here onto my mainstream media perch where your problems can be summarized as "stuff," and the story will be about me and my distance (and — read the whole thing — what life was like for me when I was young).

Warner gives her daughter some modest cover even as she uses her for a jumping-off point. And, to be nice, I'm going to assume the daughter read the column and approved the revelation. I'm also going to imagine that there were other, more revealing column drafts that touched off one of the daughter's endless dramas and got rewritten.

And here's Hanna Rosin, writing about the nonproblem — supremely non — of having a husband who loves to cook: "The Rise of the Kitchen Bitch — Ladies, it’s time to reclaim cooking." I've already complained about the endless Elizabeth Weil article in the NYT about a husband who cooks too much, and Rosin — an admirer of the Weil piece — is following on with a my-husband-too. You have a man who (somehow) cooks too much? I have a man who cooks too much. It's the way we brag now. Whatever it is, pretend it's a problem. Rosin writes:

My husband is not a tenth [as bad as Weil's husband]. He is a food snob but not obsessive; he is fast and has dinner on the table by 6:45, in time for us all to eat together. The problem is more subtle and at least half my fault. Before we had kids, we both loved to cook and did it prodigiously and with great joy. After we had kids, everything changed. When we got home from work, we had the choice of cooking or hanging out with the kids. I always chose the kids. When I did cook, it was out of a sense of duty and obligation, while he continued to feel the joy.

Ahem. So you have a great husband. You have great kids. You got a choice of cooking or playing with the kids in the pre-dinner time slot and you chose the kids — because you're a great mom as well as a great cook — and this went swimmingly well for both you and your husband and now... now you can even generate a popular column — it's #1 on the DoubleX "most read" list — out of how it's really this resonant modern problem.

This is the style of these relationship columns for women these days. Write openly about your own family. Of course, it's fundamental that you have a lovely, happy family — and that they won't get any less happy and lovely if you make them your material.

It's the "Special Wood-Themed" Edition of Bloggingheads!

With me and Hanna Rosin!



Topics:

The racial angle to the Tiger Woods saga
Will high-status men invariably cheat on their wives?
Is lack of sexual desire in women an illness?
The impossibility of writing a non-awful sex scene
Hanna: Sorry, Tolstoy—happy marriages are fascinating!
Ann: Don’t give books as holiday gifts