Archives for December 2009

Friends don’t let enemies see Up in the Air either. (Robert Fulford’s review is way too kind.) Friends don’t let haphazard acquaintances even mention the possibility of seeing Up in the Air. If you overhear someone on the bus saying they might go see it, stop and talk them out of it. A film so flat, so boring, so nihilistic, so uninspiring, so depressing–it’s the movie Nietzsche would make if he came back from the grave but that is actually giving it too much credit… You would prefer root canal, a tax audit, even divorce proceedings.

You have been warned.

A quick and simple way to be a better government: Don’t go ahead with this silly plan.

Parents face being banned from the school run as part of a controversial attempt to combat childhood obesity.

Health chiefs hope introducing residents-only parking areas near schools will encourage pupils to walk or cycle instead.

A French psychologist says your husband’s infidelity is actually good for your marriage.

Maryse Vaillant claims French men should stop being castigated for being serial womanisers and that keeping a mistress can actually improve their marriage.

In a controversial new book on the effects of infidelity on married life, Men, Love, Fidelity, Miss Vaillant says her aim is to “re-habilitate infidelity”.

According to figures cited in the book, an estimated 39 per cent of French men cheat on their wives at some stage in their life.

“[Most] don’t do it because they no longer love them, on the contrary,” she said. “They simply need breathing space. For such men, who are in fact profoundly monogamous, infidelity is almost unavoidable”.

Well, then, if they can’t stop themselves from cheating, they’re not exactly monogamous, are they?

Barbara Kay on the end of gender warfare and old-school feminism:

Kenedy is convinced, as I am, that we are exiting the gender wars. Feminism is increasingly “out of fashion” and recent years have seen “a crumbling of the [feminist] foundation.” Culturally sanctioned misandry is beginning to cause discomfort. Women today, he says, want equality without stridency, a return to feminism’s first principles.

I hope she’s right.

A nice little piece that I missed earlier this month about how men and women are different.

The author, Marni Soupcoff, describes varying reactions from men and women to rejected articles. As a woman who pitches articles to newspapers I can faithfully report I have a great deal of experience with rejection. And I can honestly say it never occured to me to challenge those rejections. You don’t want my article? OK. Can I do something else to please you? Change it? Make it better? Make you a latté? I’ve actually grieved articles (it was terrible, it will never be published) on the assumption that it will be rejected only to find, nope, it was fine, it’s going in and the editor just didn’t have time to get back to me.

What’s my point? I’m not sure, only that it is empirically true that men and women are different. That men will interact differently with women in the workplace. And that they should, in fact, interact differently with women in the workplace. Because we are different. (And any good editor should reject this blog post for using the word “different” four times in rapid succession. However, what I don’t do on my own web site is reject myself. Nothing but loving, nurturing, “I’m good enough, I’m smart enough and doggone it, people like me” here.)

One of the most contentious things one can say today is that abortion is being used as a form of birth control. With our abortion rates, it’s an obviously true statement, but yet this lives in the domain of the unspeakable.

Now UK Department of Health data shows it to be true.

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Brigitte rolls her eyes: Of course it’s happening. And everybody knows it (except perhaps those who aren’t yet sure quite how babies are made). But if we start admitting it then we’ll start having to debate why it’s a bad idea to use abortion so casually. And if we’re debating why it’s a bad idea to use abortion so casually, someone at some point will start wondering out loud why it’s OK to have one or two abortions but not four or six, leading to all kinds of awkward questions for dedicated pro-abortion types. So much easier just to deny it’s happening and move on right along.

It’s not lost on me that many in today’s papers are waxing poetic not about the past year, but the past DECADE. I personally prefer not to engage in that sort of meditation, lest I find myself taking the sharp, pointy end of my figure skates to my 20th floor office window.  Yet here I find a piece worth linking to, one that sums up my feelings on The Most Historic and Hopeful Moment in All of America’s Great History. It’s about the election of President Obama.

Enjoy.

A column about women taking over the workplace, the world:

Millennia of male dominance in workplaces, governments, companies and countries could come to an end in the next few decades. The resulting changes will reverberate through every aspect of our lives and society. And, as with all revolutions, it may not go smoothly. This revolutionary power shift isn’t due to social programs or social engineering. It’s about economics. Some call it “womenomics” because women already account for 80 per cent of all purchasing decisions. More formidably, women may soon be the primary breadwinners. It’s a trend that began more than 30 years ago as women flooded into colleges, universities and trade schools.

This is a disaster. Not the “death of macho,” which is really only a headline and actually, who needs so-called macho men? The problem is the diminishing of male importance, male leadership and the male presence. The disaster is men, rolling over and taking it. Maybe they’re busy smoking a joint, playing video games, sleeping with their girlfriend before going to Mamma’s house for her to get the laundry done, I don’t know. But men of goodwill should not sit back and let this be. Most disastrous of all is that some men won’t take this lying down. And it won’t be the hardworking, family-supporting men who pipe up. It’s going to be chauvenists who will launch the offensive, blaming women and declaring a resurgence of what they think it means to be manly.

We’re in a mess, is all I’m saying, when it comes to gender, what it means to be a woman, what it means to be a man and how we interact. In the long term I think things will straighten out and get back to something approximating normal decency. But in the short term, I don’t think this is going to be pretty.

Which is what the columnist also says, except that she concludes this way:

It may well be the death of macho. But it is also the liberation of half the world’s people.

I gather she thinks women have been liberated. That’s up for grabs in this here current culture. But even if we accept this, the “liberation” will be short lived. If it comes down to a revolution, and men are fighting women, on sheer brute strength I think we all know who is going to win.

Question: Do I care? I’m not sure I do. Susan Sarandon and Tim Robbins have split. They are not divorcing as they never did marry. Now it seems Susan left Tim for an even younger man?

The takeaway is to not take relationship prompting from Hollywood. And for Susan to think back to her strong and warm character in Little Women, back in the olden days when relationships weren’t dispensable.

[youtube:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MtfEN3TbqxI&feature=related]

Yes, I am hearkening back to the good ole’ days. I also made a pomander as a gift this year.