"I’ve been saying for a while that the gender-neutral 'they/them' was going to become even more widespread. As a linguist..."

"... who studies the ways language changes, I noted the rise in people resisting the gender binary and got caught up in — and perhaps even biased toward — what I processed as a pronominal revolution. But surveys show that the number of young people identifying as nonbinary has decreased considerably over the past two years. Binary genders are on the rise again, and therefore so are the pronouns most closely associated with them...."

Writes John McWhorter, designating "He and she" as item #7 of the "Words and Phrases" list in his section of "The Year in Lists."

And that happens to be my last gift link of the year from The New York Times, so enjoy reading all the items on all the lists.

Jennifer Weiner has "9 Retrograde Moments for Women." I guess there were only 9, because if you'd had a 10th, wouldn't you go for the cliché of a 10 item list? And yet Weiner made a single item out of Erika Kirk and Usha Vance. Was it "retrograde" to put them together? Yes, but it wasn't Weiner's doing. Some people on the internet did it: they talked about JD Vance divorcing Usha and marrying Erika Kirk. Was that important enough to repeat? Weiner only purports to give us "moments"....

"Seeing Mr. Epstein write that Mr. Trump is 'crazy' or 'truly stupid' and that 'I am the one able to take him down' is certainly more entertaining than..."

"... reading the testimony of Anouska De Georgiou, who told the court... 'loss of innocence, trust and joy is not recoverable.' Or Teala Davies, who testified: 'I’m still a victim because I am fearful for my daughters and everyone’s daughters. I’m fearful for their future in this world where there are predators in power, a world where people can avoid justice if their pockets run deep enough.'... Their pain matters. Their names matter. We should not co-opt their suffering for our own agenda. We should not value our schadenfreude more than their courage."

Writes Jennifer Weiner, in "Endless Gossipy Chatter About Epstein. One Glaring Omission" (NYT).

"In 1973, Ms. Jong published 'Fear of Flying,' a roman-a-clef in which the young, pretty and privileged Isadora Wing leaves her husband and road trips through Europe..."

"... seeking creative and sexual fulfillment. The message was that women didn’t have to stay in unfulfilling marriages. That bigger, richer lives beckoned. That message sold more than 20 million copies and made Ms. Jong a celebrated figure. This year, that book got another kind of sequel, when Molly Jong-Fast, Ms. Jong’s only child, published a memoir called 'How to Lose Your Mother.' The book depicts Erica Jong, now suffering from dementia, as a narcissist, a drunk, a disinterested parent who was either mining Molly’s life for material or ditching her to pursue her own adventures. The memoir, like [the sequel to 'Sex and the City'], serves as a generational rebuke to the women who prioritized careers and sex and fame and fortune over family, and a warning to any mothers foolish enough to follow Ms. Jong’s bad example. For those of us who loved the originals, the rise of the reboots feels chilling...."

Writes Jennifer Weiner, the novelist, in "In ‘And Just Like That…’ a Craven Era Took Its Revenge on Youth and Hope and Fun" (NYT).

"Liam Payne was just 14 when he took his first shot at the big time, trying out for the hit star-making show, 'The X Factor.'"

"He was 17 when the show’s judges teamed him up with Harry Styles, Zayn Malik, Niall Horan and Louis Tomlinson — all young, handsome, telegenic-but-relatable singer/dancers — and created One Direction, one of the biggest boy bands in history. They released five studio albums and 17 hit singles and went on four world tours, traveling with a portable recording studio so they could put together one album while promoting another.... Mr. Payne was 31 years old when, on Wednesday, he died after a three-story fall from the balcony of a Buenos Aires hotel. Fans reacted with an outpouring of grief, along with... revulsion for the fame factory that had shaped him to its dictates, just as it had done to former child stars like Michael Jackson, Britney Spears and Lindsay Lohan, who struggled in adulthood, and Amy Winehouse and the K-pop megastar Moonbin, both of whom died in their 20s... As long as there are fans to be monetized and young people willing to feed themselves, body and soul, to the pop music machine, there will be producer-built girl groups and boy bands, their members thrown into the stratosphere as teenagers, old news by 25, gone before they’ve had a chance to grow up."

Writes Jennifer Weiner, in "There Is No Safe Way to Turn Teenagers Into Megastars" (NYT).

"What I have found is that, as a woman, if you stand in front of your bike and look clueless, a man will come and fix it for you."

"On one hand, I feel bad that I’m playing into sexist tropes, but on the other hand, if you want to change my flat tire for me, I’m going to let you."

Says Jennifer Weiner, quoted in "For Jennifer Weiner, biking is a coping mechanism — and a plot point/On a Saturday in D.C., Weiner shows how committed she is to one of her favorite pastimes while talking about her new book, ‘The Breakaway’" (WaPo).

That might — must? — be intended to represent a greater generality. I'll put some effort into creating the generality, and I'm intentionally intersecting with the recent debate about what it means to "be" a woman/man or to "feel" like a woman/man. 

Men are the people who see when someone needs help and stop and help/Women are the people who trust that when they need help, help will arrive.

Or maybe: Men are the people who donate work to women who don't even ask for help and may not really need it/Women are the people who trust in their power to capture the labor of men.

"Beyond the question of what she’d had done, however, lay the more interesting question of why she had done it."

"Did Madonna get sucked so deep into the vortex of beauty culture that she came out the other side? Had the pressure to appear younger somehow made her think she ought to look like some kind of excessively contoured baby? Perhaps so, but I’d like to think that our era’s greatest chameleon, a woman who has always been intentional about her reinvention, was doing something slyer, more subversive, by serving us both a new — if not necessarily improved — face and a side of critique about the work of beauty, the inevitability of aging, and the impossible bind in which older female celebrities find themselves.... [W]hatever her intentions, the superstar has gotten us talking about how good looks are subjective and how ageism is pervasive. In the end, whether she meant to make a statement or just to look younger, better, 'refreshed,' almost doesn’t matter. If beauty is a construct, Madonna’s the one who put its scaffolding on display."

 
Writes Jennifer Weiner in "Madonna’s New Face Is a Brilliant Provocation" (NYT).

If you don't know what Weiner is talking about, see "Fans 'so confused' by Madonna’s ‘new face’ at Grammys 2023" (with photos).

"Whether or not to take a spouse’s name is a personal decision. But the personal is political — now more than ever, and especially for celebrities."

"Like every star, or every mortal with an Instagram account, Ms. Affleck has constructed a persona for public consumption. She has used her platforms to tell the tale of the upward trajectory of a strong, independent woman, a woman who has gone from backup dancer to global superstar. Her brand is intense competence and hard-core self-sufficiency — 'in control and loving it,' as she sings in 'Jenny From the Block.' Whoever Jennifer Affleck is in her private life, J. Lo is a woman who might love a man but doesn’t need one. Imagine if, in her newsletter, she had said, 'I love my husband. Right now, though, women are under attack, and I won’t participate in a tradition that’s historically rooted in women relinquishing their identities and their legal standing. I’m giving my husband my heart, but I’m keeping my name.' Imagine if Ben Affleck had become Ben Lopez."

I'm reading "Why It Matters That J-Lo Is Now J-Aff" by Jennifer Weiner (NYT). 

"Last year was not normal. There was stress snacking and procrasti-baking. There was no shedding for the wedding..."

"... in a year when most weddings were postponed or drastically downsized; no pre-high-school-reunion crash diet or worrying if Grandma would body-shame you at Thanksgiving.... But research from a company that makes internet-connected scales... found that people actually lost weight in 2020, or were more likely than in other years to hit their weight-loss goals, if they had them.... In any case, the weight-loss industry isn’t going to let a lack of data dull its zeal to convince Americans that yes, we got fat, and that now we need to get up off our couches and get back into shape.... I have one word for you: resist. As we should all know by now, diets don’t work. Studies show that 41 percent of dieters gain back more weight over the next five years than they lost, and that dieters are more likely than nondieters to become obese over the next one to 15 years. For some, the language of diet culture can be downright dangerous, contributing to life-threatening eating disorders. There’s nothing wrong with taking action to improve your health. Want to add more fruits and vegetables to your diet, or get back to regular workouts? Go for it. Get outside, now that we can do that again. But you don’t need to enroll in a program, download an app or buy frozen meals to do any of this...."

Writes Jennifer Weiner in "The Weight-Loss Industry Is Coming for Our Post-Lockdown Bodies" (NYT). 

"Diet" is just a word, and we all have a diet. Whatever you eat is your diet! But we've made it an unpleasant word. Anyway, Weiner is talking about the businesses that sell weight loss. Don't fall for them. But I don't think that should mean don't even try to lose weight. It is hard to overcome the natural urge to load future fuel into your body. We're all here because our ancestors weathered hard times by eating what they could. It doesn't work anymore for us, because even in this time of covid hardship, we've got plenitude. The food supply flow never constricted. 

I feel as though I ought to add some weight-loss advice here, but I'll just say, make your own little plan

"Scroll casually through your platform of choice and you’ll see kids. Kids protesting on Pinterest; kids posing on Instagram..."

"... kids socially distanced proms and graduations on Facebook. Kids of people you know I.R.L. and kids of people you don’t. Kids who most likely haven’t given their permission for you and me to see them or who have simply accepted this exposure as part of modern life. Every time we post a picture, we’re telling a story, crafting the myth of our own life. Images of our children become part of that mythology. A shot of kids frolicking on the beach or posing at Disney World tells a story about prosperity, happiness and ease. A photo of well-scrubbed kids on the first day of school says My children are thriving. I’m a good mom.... When my older daughter and blogs were both in their infancy, I posted pictures of my new baby and wrote about new motherhood. I found community and support from other new mothers. But as my daughter got older, as she went from a sleeping, pooping blob to an actual person, and as the world soured on so-called mommy blogging, the sharing got harder to justify. After all, my daughter had never consented to appearing on my blog. How would she feel when she got old enough to Google and discovered her entire life online?"

Writes Jennifer Weiner in "Should Any Parents Be Instagramming Their Kids?/Sure, those of us who do may not all be Myka Stauffers. But we’re all selling some kind of story about ourselves, and using our children to do so" (NYT).

"Because what if no one picks you for their bubble? And how do you decide who belongs in yours? How do you issue an invitation, or reject one?"

"What if your parents swear they’ve been following the rules and are dying to see their grandchildren, but you’re not ready to risk it because they’re Fox News viewers and who the hell knows what they think 'observant' even means? What if you’re desperate to hang out with your bestie, but she’s already committed to a guy she met three weeks ago on a dating app and wants to get to know in person? And again: What if no one picks you?... If the very thought of being picked last or going completely, utterly unchosen is giving you flashbacks to junior high where Michelle Goldman said that you couldn’t sit at her table in the cafeteria because all the seats were taken when clearly all the seats were not taken, I am right there with you. And would like to remind you that you are a successful, accomplished, beloved adult and also how many novels has Michelle published?"

Writes Jennifer Weiner in "The Quarantine Bubbles Are Coming and I, for One, Am Stressed/How do you decide who belongs in yours? What if you join and find it’s not working out? And what if you aren’t invited to one at all?" (NYT).

1. Jennifer Weiner has published 13 novels.

2. Is "observant" a standard term people are using to mean observing the rules about coronavirus? The most standard meaning of "observant" — used as shorthand — has to do with religion, meaning actually following the rules and not merely identifying with the culture of the religion.

3. There's an obsolete meaning of "observant" — "Deferential, respectful; considerately attentive; assiduous in service; obsequious" (OED). Mary Wollstonecraft used it in "A Vindication of the Rights of Woman" (1791): Would men but generously snap our chains, and be content with rational fellowship, instead of slavish obedience, they would find us more observant daughters, more affectionate sisters, more faithful wives, more reasonable mothers — in a word, better citizens."

4. Imagine extending the separation of grandchildren and grandparents for more months because your parents watch Fox News. It's not the politics, per se, but the Fox News as evidence that they're not fact-based, not connecting with science and the right experts.

5. Are you worried about the coming "bubbles" — these enclosed groups of households that are phasing out of one-household-only lockdowns? Is it obvious which other household you'd take on as part of your bubble or are you beset with other households who'd like to bubble-ize you?

6. What's the bigger bubble problem — being left outside of any good bubble like the high-schooler who can't find a table in the cafeteria or having too many people who want you in their bubble? I think the latter is the bigger problem, because you can always continue to shelter alone, and no one sees how alone you are. It's not like standing there in front of the whole school holding a tray, feeling unwanted, and getting rejections right in your face.

7. If you weren't one of the popular kids in high school, but you've become a pretty successful adult, how do you feel about the popular kids now? Do you think about them at all? Do you still agonize about whether you are popular? Or are you a popular adult?

8. If you are a popular adult, did you learn anything interesting from your time in seclusion? Have you changed what you want out of relationships, or are you just eager to get back to socializing?

9. If the seclusion for you was not that different from the way you were living before the virus, are you wistful seeing other people wonder and worry about their bubbles, or are you ready to see your lifestyle once again reserved for those who come about it only in ways that have nothing to do with the virus?

10. Do you want a bubble but not know how — or not have the nerve — to ask anyone to be in yours? What if all the people who you might ask feel the same way too? What if that's not so different from how you and they were living in non-virus times?

How to defend celebrities who get caught flouting the coronavirus rules we're all expected to take seriously?

The NYT seems to be leading the way here:

• "‘Corona-Shamed’: George Stephanopoulos, J. Lo — Maybe You?/Ivanka Trump, Chris Cuomo and all kinds of private citizens are getting roasted on social media for perceived failures of public hygiene" (by Katherine Rosman).

But now... [t]he web is especially alight with finger-pointers: people who are genuinely concerned about public health but also, perhaps, with pent-up fears, frustrations and extra time on their hands. Call it “corona-shaming.”...

• "The Seductive Appeal of Pandemic Shaming/I can’t control who gets sick or when we might return to something that looks like normal. But judging a random guy on the sidewalk? That I can do" (by Jennifer Weiner).

But with that impulse [to engage in public shaming] comes a different fear — the fear of being that white lady of a certain age who would like to speak to your manager. The fear of being Coronavirus Karen....

As the lockdown continues, are the Karens becoming even more Karen-ish? Has the virus started the Night of the Living Karens? As everyone scrutinizes and side-eyes and embraces the mandate Snitch on Thy Neighbor, are we all Karens now?...

Be the Karen... who uses her power... for good instead of evil; who protects the noncompliant, instead of getting them in trouble; who believes that we’re all in this together....

This is what you can call shame shaming.

It's one thing to blithely opine "Why America Needs a Royal Family/Yes, this is the conclusion I have drawn from Megxit."

I've seen that proposal a thousand times, and here we are again, this time with Jennifer Weiner in the NYT. But it's quite another matter to figure out who would be the royal family.

I'm not interested in reviewing the pro-royalty argument. You know what it is. I'm only interested in the question of how — if we were to restructure America with a royal family akin to Britain's — we would pick the actual hereditary family.

I can't find the old post, but I believe I once blogged about who would be king/queen of the U.S.A. now if George Washington had become king. Wherever that post is, I'm sure it included this video:



My archive search did turn up this video about George Washington (which I just watched twice)(warning: some questionable factual assertions):



Anyway, here's how Jennifer Weiner addresses the question who'd be king/queen of America:

We could keep it simple and give the gig to Miss America, who’s already been chosen and already has a tiara. Or we could have a televised reality contest (a roy-ality contest — see what I did there?) to elect our king and queen. We could recruit the glittering couples we think would be best suited for the job of representing America on the world stage (Beyoncé and Jay-Z! Jennifer Lopez and A-Rod! George and Amal Clooney! Danny DeVito and Rhea Perlman! Ina Garten and Jeffrey!)...

Oh! She's utterly giving up the hereditary angle. No, you have to commit. You have to believe in royal blood. No elections. That would debase. You've got to have magic.

But isn't it funny that Weiner pictures an election, homes in on entertainment couples — all heterosexual, by the way (tsk tsk) — and doesn't think to offer up the most obvious entertainment couple: Donald and Melania Trump? Well, Donald is already President, and the point is to separate the head-of-state functions, but he'll have served his term(s) by the time the election for king/queen happens. And once you recognize that, you ought to see that the final nominees for the position could be Donald and Melania — or should it be Ivanka and Jared? — against Barack and Michelle. I'd watch those debates.

Barack and Michelle would win, of course, if for no other reason that that they're far more successful at getting top-level entertainers to perform in the White House (yes, under, Weiner's plan, the king and queen live in the White House, and the boring President of the United States is relocated "to more modest digs").

"Civility is a wonderful thing, when shared among equals. When people who have power require civility from those with less, or none, though..."

"... that demand is a cudgel, a weapon the haves use to keep the have-nots in line. When you’re confronted with evil, you don’t shake its hand or applaud it. If booing is incivility, bring it on.... The booing is fine. It’s my own reaction to the booing that troubles me — the joy I took from Mr. Trump’s pain and the example it sets for my kids.... We — Democrats, liberals, progressives, the resistance... are supposed to be better than that. We’re supposed to be the party of the downtrodden and the less fortunate... For [the other side], the cruelty is the point. For us, kindness matters. When they go low, we go high. Except, it turns out, going low feels wonderful. More than that, it feels effective and proper and just... But another part of me worries about the price of pragmatism, and the way I felt, watching the ballpark video over and over, thinking not just I hope that works but I hope it hurt. If we’ve got to smear and slime and meme and mock our way to victory, who will we be after we’ve won? When does a necessary evil become just evil?"

From "Why Did It Feel So Good to See Trump Booed? When he goes low, Democrats are supposed to go high. Except, it turns out, going low feels wonderful" by Jennifer Weiner(at the NYT).

I'm giving this my "civility bullshit" tag not because it is civility bullshit — because it's not — but because it's close to my topic and I don't like tag proliferations. Here's why it's not civility bullshit. She is not telling the other side to be civil. She's critical of Trump's (supposed) incivility but isn't trying to get him to cut it out. It's assumed (wisely) that he will not. Nor is she saying everyone ought to be more civil, which is the most common civility bullshit that I've been saying is always about trying to get the other side to unilaterally disarm.

She's considering 2 options: 1. Her side should go ahead with the incivility (because the other side isn't going to stop), and 2. The unilateral disarmament of her own side (for the greater good or because it might work).

She concludes: "Maybe we can take a stand and do what’s necessary without discounting the cost; go low when it’s required without reveling in the other side’s pain, taking care we don’t get stuck down in the dirt." Is that #1 or #2? It's #1! But pay some respect to the virtuous road you're not taking (option #2) by taking care not enjoy the incivility you dish out. Think of yourself as that mythic grim parent spanking a child and asserting "This hurts me more than it hurts you."

Meanwhile, Trump openly enjoys his trash-talking. And I think it's rather obvious that having fun with it is more effective. Or do you think enjoying the evil/"evil" makes you villainous?

What's the solution to Weiner's incivility conundrum? Anti-Trumpsters should respond to his incivility with...

Incivility and go ahead and have fun with it.

Incivility but watch that you don't enjoy it.

Do not engage in incivility. Find another way.

 

pollcode.com free polls

"Reading about [Aziz Ansari], I realize how lucky I am that so much of my sex ed came from Harlequins."

Says chick-lit writer Jennifer Weiner in "We Need Bodice-Ripper Sex Ed" (NYT).

Because these books were written for and consumed by women, female pleasure was an essential part of every story.... Shirley Conran’s “Lace” features a heroine telling her feckless husband that she’d used an egg timer to determine how long it took her to achieve orgasm on her own and that she’d be happy to teach him what to do. At 14, I never looked at hard-boiled eggs the same way again.

The books not only covered blissful sex but also described a whole range of intimate moments, from the awkward to the funny to the very bad, including rape of both the stranger and intimate-partner variety. Beyond the dirty bits, the books I read described the moments before and after the main event, the stuff you don’t see in mainstream movies, where zippers don’t get stuck and teeth don’t bump when you’re kissing; the stuff you don’t see in porn, where almost no time elapses between the repair guy’s arrival and the start of activities that do not involve the clogged kitchen sink....

Porn, necessarily, cuts to the chase: a little less conversation, a little more action.

Talking’s not sexy, people complain.

But when you don’t know how to ask, when you can’t bring yourself to tell, when you don’t possess the language with which to talk about desire, that’s when you can end up with crossed wires, missed signals, mixed messages, a guy who goes to sleep thinking, “That was fun!” and a girl who goes home crying in an Uber.

Talking's not sexy? I'd say, depends on the talking. I think there can be a lot of talking during sex, and not just instructions and continuing updates about the level of consensuality. Who are these people who complain that talking during sex is not sexy? If the thoughts in your head would be unsexy if vocalized, maybe you shouldn't be having sex. If you continually withhold your thoughts during sex out of concern that they're not sexy, why are you having sex? At one end of the bed, the genitals are interlocked, and at the other, you've got 2 heads that are 2 separate planets.

ADDED: I reacted to the subject of talking and not much to the proposal that reading romance novels is helpful. I've never read these things. So let me quote the top-rated comment at the NYT:

No. Just no. Romance novels give women an unrealistic view of sex and romance and are not remotely empowering. The woman is nearly always "saved" by a man in some way. Things always manage to "work out" in the end. Women's bad behavior (playing hard to get, expecting men to read their minds) never has consequences.

Romance novels are fine for adult women that have already experienced the reality of dating, romance and sex, but for teen girls? They should be off-limits. Teenagers should be reading books, fiction or non, that focus on females being independent, of having agency, of discovering things, having careers and thoughts of their own.

This makes me think of Tina Brown's excellent book "The Diana Chronicles," which quotes the romance writer Barbara Cartland: "The only books she read were mine, and they weren't very good for her." And please read page 26 (click to enlarge):

Because of Trump, chick-lit writer Jennifer Weiner can't watch the TV show "The Bachelor" anymore.

This piece (in the NYT) would make a lot more sense if the TV show Weiner used to like to watch obsessively was "The Apprentice." What does Trump have to do with the sudden unwatchability of "The Bachelor"? I mean, you've got to begin by imagining what it would take to like "The Bachelor" in the first place....

And oh, was “The Bachelor” amusing, while being flagrantly problematic. Everyone was young and attractive. Almost everyone was white. There were bad boys and mean girls; studs and sluts. Insults were flung. Grammar was shredded (I still cringe at the memory of every “hers and my’s relationship” I heard over the years). I live-tweeted the whole thing, along with a gleeful community of other hate-watchers who’d call out the show’s icky sexual politics and double standards, then hold our breath at the proposal point, and weep along with the winners.

Oh, so she was hate-watching all along. She never liked the show. She liked hating it. Now, it begins to make sense. She's lost the feeling of superiority, the sense that her people are running the culture, that makes it fun to rag on the show.

[I]n a post-Trump world, it doesn’t feel entertaining. Or maybe it’s that I don’t think I can allow myself the luxury of escape...

I don't want to be too pedantic, but Weiner suggests that pedantry is good fun, so I just want to say that yours and my's world is not yet "post-Trump."

"That being said, there are women out there who just don’t. They don’t wear swimsuits. They don’t go to the beach."

"They basically forgo summer, and the camera, because they hate the way they look. Thus, our excursion to the roof. I put on sunscreen, and lipstick, and a new size 16 swimsuit, black with a ruffled pink trim and a little slip of a skirt. I took a deep breath, pulled my shoulders back, and tried to believe that I looked O.K. and not to flinch as he said, 'Here we go.' Inside, I picked out my favorite shot, skipped the filters, went to my Facebook page, held my breath and hit 'post.' The next time I looked, there were dozens of pictures of women in swimsuits — women who looked more like me, less like the airbrushed, perfected creatures I seem to spend my life looking at."

That's Jennifer Weiner writing on a topic I have seen as long as I've been reading the news for women (i.e., since the 1960s). Body anxieties heightened by the desire to wear a bathing suit. The Facebook part is new, but I don't think that's why the NYT is publishing this piece in late August. Weiner makes no mention of the French "burkini" issue, but I think that's what's pushing this old American topic forward right now.

Here's that Facebook photo showing the suit she picked picked out. It's a lot less silly looking than "ruffled pink trim and a little slip of a skirt" makes it sound. But Jennifer Weiner is 46 years old. Why is she resorting to a skirt with pink ruffles to deal with her body anxieties? I was researching the burkini issue and got to thinking about women who want more coverage for whatever reason — religious or other expression, modesty, sun protection, aversion to shaving — and I discovered these swim capris (and swim tights). I hadn't noticed these before, so I'm thinking there are many women — possibly including Weiner — who are locked into thinking swimwear must expose your legs (if not half or more of your buttocks). It's odd, because Weiner discusses the Olympics, and the Olympic swimmers — female and male — all wore suits that covered their thighs.

I'd like to encourage women to think about wearing swim separates with the longer legwear, capris and tights. 2-piece suits have been around for a long time, so the tops are easily available, both bra tops and tankini tops.I think this is a nice, comfortable option for all kinds of women, and it has the positive side effect of making those who wear covered-up styles for religious reasons feel less conspicuous (which is what covering up is supposed to achieve).

"I usually enjoy Ms. Weiner's contributions to the Times. But this is one of the most blatant 'humble-brags' ever."

"Poor Jennifer: she went to Princeton, published a book (or books?) and writes for the NYT, but she's still learning to feel sufficiently good about herself. Blech!!!"

Top-rated comment at "The Snobs and Me," by Jennifer Weiner.

NYT: "'90s Scandals Threaten to Erode Hillary Clinton’s Strength With Women."

Why headline that now? Is it because anonymous sources say that Lena Dunham — before heading out to stump for Hillary — told some people at a dinner party at the Park Avenue apartment of the chief exec of HBO, that "she was disturbed by how, in the 1990s, the Clintons and their allies discredited women who said they had had sexual encounters with or been sexually assaulted by former President Bill Clinton"?

That's the anecdote that begins the story, but I don't believe having this particularly juicy nugget is what motivated the NYT to move this old issue — always available to hurt Hillary — to the front burner.

Another question is: What motivated "several people" from that exclusive dinner party to rat out Lena? The ratting out doesn't hurt Lena as much as it hurts Hillary so I don't think it's that Lena has enemies. I could see HBO-dinner-party co-guests having something against Lena, but it seems as though it would have to be political opposition to Hillary. That opposition could arise out of genuine, true-to-the-core feminism. Hillary really did get caught up in a sickening web of anti-feminism. That's something I've personally cared about for more than 2 decades.

I hope that's what motivated the dinner party guests to rat out Lena. But I suspect it was that they're feeling the Bern. They want Bernie Sanders.

And that connects to the NYT motivation to run the story. Does the NYT want Bernie Sanders? I doubt it. But I'm sure they want the Democratic nominee to win the election. Bernie's heating up so strongly, Clinton's weakness as a candidate is becoming more obvious, and the NYT is certainly privy to far more oppo-research material on Hillary than I know. Just yesterday, it ran the story "Hillary Clinton Email Said to Include Material Exceeding 'Top Secret.'" The FBI investigation looms. What else is coming? Is it not too late to bring Biden back out?

I suspect there's utter panic behind the scenes as Trump and Cruz dominate the GOP race. It would be one thing to let Hillary do her best, maybe fall short, and let nice Mr. Bush sit in the Oval Office for 4 years while the Democratic Party rebuilds itself. But Trump/Cruz won't be docile seat warmers. It's a dire emergency.

And so, at long last, what Hillary did to women matters. Women aren't Hillary's natural constituency, we're her victims.

Now that the stories...

The stories...

... are resurfacing...

You submerged them! You submerged them for partisan political ends and you're participating in dragging them back up because of — I can't help presuming — partisan political ends.

... they could hamper Mrs. Clinton’s attempts to connect with younger women, who are learning the details of the Clintons’ history for the first time.

Ha. Learning for the first time because you worked to submerge the story. If this had been out in the open all along, it wouldn't be coming as a surprise now. Of course, Clinton herself worked to submerge the story — the story not just of what Bill did sexually but of how Bill's people, including Hillary, discredited the women. This has gone on for more than 20 years, 20 years of distorting the development of women's equality in the workplace. 

Several news organizations have published guides to the Clinton scandals to explain the allegations to a new generation of readers. Alexis Isabel Moncada, the 17-year-old founder of Feminist Culture, a popular blog, was not old enough to remember the 1990s, but lately she and her thousands of young female readers have heard a lot about the scandals.

“I heard he sexually harassed people and she worked to cover it up,” Ms. Moncada said of Mr. and Mrs. Clinton. “A lot of girls in my age group are huge feminists, and we don’t react well to that.”...

“You have to give Trump credit,” said Jennifer Weiner, a best-selling novelist and feminist. “He’s a genius at poking and prodding his competitors until he finds their soft spots.”...

Ugh. The visual. Rape-y. 

Mr. Trump’s attacks make Mrs. Clinton look less like “a strong, self-actualized feminist leader who women can proudly get behind,” Ms. Weiner added, and more “like a craven opportunist, and an apologist for a predator.”

Mr. Trump's attacks! Why would it take a Trump attack to make you see Hillary that way? He can only make her look that way because the factual material is there. But you were looking away, conveniently. That looking away that you did on your own I call anti-feminism.

If you read far enough into the article, you'll get to a quote from Camille Paglia: "It’s not about Bill Clinton’s peccadilloes... It’s about Hillary Clinton’s behavior towards her husband’s accusers for all those years." Exactly.

(By the way, I recorded a Bloggingheads dialogue with Glenn Loury on Monday, and "peccadilloes" was the word he used to minimize the problem. I'll let you know when the diavlog is available.)

ADDED: The Drudge presentation is very funny:

"My guess is that many women my age brokered a series of compromises, shaving our legs (but only when people would see them)..."

"... performing oral sex like porn stars but insisting on reciprocity (because Betty Friedan would have wanted it that way). We’d drink shots in short skirts, but we’d come up with a series of code words and signals so that our girlfriends could steer us safely home; we’d go teetering down the streets in our cutest, highest heels but clutching cellphones and a bristling fistful of keys as we walked; trying to have it all, do it all, be it all, sometimes without even figuring out which parts of it felt good or right or authentically pleasurable."

Just one paragraph from "Longing for the Innocence of Playboy," by Jennifer Weiner.

"Just as I want plus-size women visible, and valued, and loved in my books, so do I want books like mine visible and valued..."

"... if not loved, by a critical establishment that’s still too rooted in sexist double standards, still too swift to dismiss women’s work as small, trivial, unimpressive, and unimportant."

Says "chick lit" author Jennifer Weiner, quoted in a New Yorker profile titled, "WRITTEN OFF/Jennifer Weiner’s quest for literary respect." The profiler, Rebecca Mead, observes:

In this analysis, Weiner’s failure to receive critical recognition is not an implicit judgment of, say, the perfunctory quality of some descriptive passages, or of the brittle mean-spiritedness that colors some character sketches... It is, instead, a product of the larger cultural forces that left Weiner feeling oppressed long before she became a writer. To battle those forces as visibly as Weiner does is not just to tell a fairy-tale story but also to try to live one: to insist on moving from the margin to the center, and to demand a happy ending of one’s own.

What I hear Mead implying is: Weiner has a psychological need for respect and demands it from the literary establishment, but she doesn't deserve literary respect. She's parlayed her emotional needs into commercial success because she meets what are the mundane emotional needs of female readers who want encouragement and support, and that's not the way to get elite folk to regard you as an artist.