House of Eratosthenes

Hat tip to Cox & Forkum for bringing this to my attention. All those not yet familiar with their excellent work should do themselves a favor by paying a quick visit.

Since the closing weeks of the year 2000 when we were all watching the chad-counting in Florida with breathless anticipation, I’ve been looking for somebody to admit something. The “somebody” would be the people who wanted Al Gore to win his endless “recounts”, which I think most of us believe is a nearly identical group to the voters who wanted John Kerry to win. Democrats and Democrat sympathizers. Liberals. Nader voters. Leftist kooks. All those strange bedfellows on the left. I’ve noticed they tend to get awfully agitated when people who pay attention to them start to form opinions about what it is they want…yet for a group that gets all that uppity when onlookers form theories about their motives, they are reticent to explain their motives. What are you after when you hope-against-hope that Al Gore wins the recount, or that John Kerry wins Ohio? After all, growing embryonic life at taxpayers’ expense for the sole purpose of destroying it for unproven research, doesn’t have very much to do with guaranteeing a murdering rapist that he won’t be executed so that perhaps someday he can be thrust through the revolving door of our incarceration system back on the streets. Forcing productive people who get by with little tiny television sets — perhaps no television at all — to pay for a 90 inch widescreen rear-projection for a welfare queen who has babies for a living, has very little at all to do with allowing the United Nations to take control of the Internet. Forcing law-abiding gun-owners to register their firearms, or perhaps to turn them in, doesn’t have an awful lot to do with raising taxes on the most productive of our citizens and insisting against the evidence that trickle-down doesn’t work.

So when I ask liberals face-to-face what it is they’re all about, they answer with “patriotism” or “America” or some such derivative. But it’s when they’re being patriotic that they find so many things wrong with America. For a handful of years now I’ve been toiling with the supposition that perhaps they mean something different when they talk about “America”.

Being in California, I have two Senators who each year take an oath that they will protect The Constitution. Then these two liberal females go about trashing the second and tenth amendments like clockwork. So I have been wondering if there are multiple definitions for “The Constitution” as well.

Well it turns out, the New York Times has stepped up and confirmed this for me. Sort of. In the Friday editorial “A Sense of Proportion at Ground Zero” (link requires registration) the Old Gray Lady ‘fesses up that her vision of “America” is different from everybody else’s:

On their Web site, www.takebackthememorial.org, critics of the cultural plan at ground zero offer a resolution called Campaign America. It says that ground zero must contain no facilities “that house controversial debate, dialogue, artistic impressions, or exhibits referring to extraneous historical events.” This, to us, sounds un-American. [emphasis mine]

First things first. Over the last four years there has been a great deal of heated rhetoric about “So-and-so has challenged my patriotism!” or “I’m tired of having my patriotism questioned!” I’ve noticed with interest that several loud-mouthed commentators, offered high-profile and enviable platforms with which they could substantiate their viewpoints and give their reasons for holding them, instead use the opportunity to announce that their patriotism has been questioned, as if this serves the purpose of reinforcing why it is they say the things they say.

So my first remark would be, what would happen if a much less noticeable, but far more right-wing, panel of commentators used those very words on another panel, or body of work, or organized society, universally acknowledged to be progressive? Suppose Air America made a comment that raised the cackles of oh, I don’t know, someone with lots of journalistic clout. Who is conservative. Let’s say Fox News put out an editorial and used those very words. “This thing Air America said, strikes us as un-American.” Oh, my dear Lord. We’d never hear the end of it.

Why does the left get to pronounce things un-American? Why does the right catch so much flak for calling things unpatriotic, when, if you do some research on the comment in question, you find they never even used that word?

My second remark about this would be, a profound thank you to the New York Times for coming out and saying what everybody has been avoiding. There are two Americas now. Because to me and a lot of other people, the target of the Times’ angst is as American as apple pie.

RESOLVED, that the World Trade Center Memorial Foundation should fulfill its mission by ensuring no facilities that house controversial debate, dialogue, artistic impressions, or exhibits referring to extraneous historical events occupy space on the sacred site at Ground Zero; and that the World Trade Center Memorial must honor the mission of creating a dignified and respectful memorial which focuses exclusively on the victims, heroes and events of September 11, 2001, and February 26, 1993.

The “un-American” resolution calls for a finite amount of space to be declared “sacred.” It does not call for Government enforcement efforts to be marshalled to ensure certain things are kept under wraps from sea to shining sea; it defines a “site” that has been placed under the control of the World Trade Center Memorial Foundation, and within that site controversial debate and artistic impressions and “exhibits referring to extraneous historical events” be expunged from that physical space.

America, to the New York Times, is a place where anyone can say anything anywhere. Nothing is sacred.

This is what blue states & red states are all about.

There is an “America” where those who place an exhibit, carry a burden to be considerate of the feelings of those viewing the exhibit. Don’t accept communion in a Catholic ceremony if you’re not Catholic. Don’t bring ham to a Jewish wedding. Don’t display your blackmail photos of the boss in compromising positions with his secretary, at his memorial service where his widow is showing up. Don’t use the “F” word when you’re in the middle of a busy playground at an elementary school or a park. This “America” stays out of the arena of outlawing things, and relies on old-fashioned taboos; restraint; decorum; taste. It only makes hard-and-fast enforceable rules, to its own disappointment, after it has found that nothing short of a rule will work.

The other “America” is the one where the “artist” carries none of this burden whatsover, and the burden is placed on viewers to show “tolerance”. Yes, I will use my exhibit to muddy the waters in the memorial placed in honor of your dead husband, and you will have to learn to tolerate it. Yes, I will carry my canvas handbag boldly emblazoned with letters that say “MEN MAKE ME HARD”, and if you don’t like it you shouldn’t have brought your young children where they can see it. Yes, I will make an expensive movie with little entertainment value at all, solely to piss off Catholics. One, two. You have to tolerate it.

I was born in the mid sixties. I’ve been told since I was very small, that this first America is “oppressive,” that it’s the second America, the blue-state America, that stands up for free speech. But that second America scares the hell out of me. Why? Because it’s not absolute.

People who have dark skin (who aren’t Asian), women, and homosexuals have favored status with this “America”. If you exercise your free speech to say something or to post something that might be construed as offensive to one of those three groups, that “America” will not uphold your right to free speech. In fact, it will criminalize you. We have seen in recent years that your intent to offend, or lack thereof, is irrelevant. In fact, that the people “offended” by your free speech were all white, straight, and male, is likewise irrelevant.

And you know, by itself, that is fine by me I guess. But what scares me is, when some “free speech” is okay even though it offends a lot of people, and other free speech is worth ending a career over because it offends “proxy” people who don’t belong to the group the speech is supposed to offend — what do you have to have? You’ve got to have an authority figure who is responsible for figuring out what’s “offensive but must be tolerated” and what’s “offensive and Something Must Be Done.” You’ve got to have that authority to live in blue-state America, whether it springs forward from an individual, a group of empowered people, a few informal polls, or a tyrannical majority. Red-staters do want to put us on a tighter leash, it’s true. But the red-state vision is so much more “liberating” — no one else will say so, anywhere — than what the New York Times has offered here.

Once you start to think about it, self-censorship-through-good-manners is much more liberating than the blue-state “anything goes” model. Perhaps it wouldn’t be that way, if the blue states really meant what they said when they said anything goes — clearly, they really don’t. But congratulations to the New York Times for articulating what they mean when they talk about “American”. Now we know what country they’re from, and it isn’t America! They boarded a steamship over here from that country, wherever it is, where everyone has to put up with anything at anytime and anyplace. Except for, of course, when the elites in power decide your free speech falls into the “anything but” category, and you must now be prosecuted for a hate crime.

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Wow, They DO Work For Us After All II
Friday, July 29th, 2005

Wow, They DO Work For Us After All II

Thanks to Bill O’Reilly for pointing this out on his radio program. He’s not supposed to be a “conservative”, but like any “conservative” he started going off about “you’re not going to hear about this anywhere else.” That statement was almost completely correct. I did find this article in the Salt Lake Tribune about the Senate telling the American Civil Liberties Union to KSDASTFU (that’s Kindly Sit Down And Shut Up for the uninitiated) by a vote of 98-0. That is ninety-eight to zip.

In a 98-0 vote, the Senate approved the provision continuing the hosting of Boy Scout events as part of massive bill setting Defense Department policy for next year.
:
Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist, R-Tenn., a former Boy Scout who sponsored the Senate provision, said it is necessary to push back on a spate of lawsuits to limit Boy Scout activities on government property.
:
Frist said it ”removes any doubt that federal agencies may welcome Scouts to hold meetings, go camping on federal property or hold scouting events and public forums” on government property.

That Frist has done better things with his life than I have with mine, is probably because Frist was a better Boy Scout than I was. Many Boy Scouts were better than me, but at the same time, if I were not a Boy Scout I probably wouldn’t be as good a man as I am today. Scouting is good for boys, and because it is, it is good for all of us. Things that help the Boy Scouts help us all, and things that hurt the Boy Scouts hurt us all.

I do not have any positive or negative personal experiences with the ACLU, nor do I expect to have any. But they get under my skin for a variety of reasons. The fact that they are liberal, is way, way down on the list.

They’re liars. They present themselves as being anti-authority and therefore working hard to protect our rights in the event the “authority” starts to infringe upon those rights, either maliciously or negligently. To achieve that mission, however, the ACLU would have to be values-neutral. They aren’t. They would have to define their mission very deliberately and very concisely, and continually monitor their performance in adhering to that mission. They don’t.
They generate work for themselves by lowering our national pain threshold. I detest people and organizations that lower the national pain threshold, especially those who do it to drum up business. Being hung from a tree because you had sex with a woman with a different skin color, is different from driving to work, seeing a cross on a hill, and being offended. Anybody who says different just needs to get a grip.
They address intellectually legitimate criticism directed toward their organization, by simply marginalizing it. They’re fond of saying “everyone hates the ACLU, until they need us and then they don’t” or some such thing. So because I’ve never needed the ACLU, I’m not allowed to have an opinion. Last I checked, when firemen get implicated in sex scandals, they aren’t allowed to use that excuse — although they certainly could.
They & their defenders have shown a pattern of defending the Union by presenting it as supported with private donations from individuals concerned about liberty, imposing no burden whatsoever on the taxpayers. This is a sham. The Union has been using 42 USC �1988 “Proceedings in vindication of civil rights” as a siphon into the treasury for decades now. Once again, we find ourselves subsidizing the leftist agenda to an extent well beyond what we would want to do voluntarily. It’s a wolf of coercion in sheeps-clothing of “freedom.”
Last but not least, as the ACLU selectively applies its non-neutral schedule of values it likes & values it doesn’t, we continually observe a pattern of upholding chaos and deteriorating order. Why does NAMBLA get such good treatment? Why do the Boy Scouts get all the abuse? Is there anyone out there who thinks the Scouts are “something akin to a hate group” as the New York Times was quoted? Anyone paying attention, would have to conclude the ACLU simply doesn’t like what the Boy Scouts do. The ACLU will not thrive in a nation of John-Boy Waltons, as well as it will in a nation of Bart Simpsons. Scouting is the enemy of dysfunction — they do good things for a boy’s future, nobody anywhere with any reputation to protect is disputing this! — therefore, as far as the ACLU is concerned scouting must die.

So here’s a big atta-boy to Bill O’Reilly, and the Salt Lake Tribune, for writing this up — O’Reilly is right, you won’t hear about this from too many places. And a huge thank you to the Senate for protecting the Boy Scouts, which have done this country so much good, in their time of need. And, for throwing a big ol’ stinky wet ice bag on the hot horny scrotum that is the ACLU.

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Buffoon
Friday, July 29th, 2005

Buffoon

buf�foon
Pronunciation: (”)b&-’f�n
Function: noun
Etymology: Middle French bouffon, from Old Italian buffone
1 : a ludicrous figure : CLOWN
2 : a gross and usually ill-educated or stupid person
- buf�foon�ish /-’f�-nish/ adjective

I’m going to have to go with Definition #1 in applying this to Jesse Jackson, who is protesting the fact that ESPN’s “50 state tour” does not include the District of Columbia.

Oh, my God. His deflation before the national stage has been getting more & more painful to watch for a long time now. He has been “a ludicrous figure” since, at the very least, 1984 when he ran for President under the “I’m so far left I can’t even walk down the street without getting swimmer’s ear” ticket.

He must know several things that I don’t. From where I sit, he is a very silly man who has managed to stay in the news only because if you run a corporation, and Jackson has you in his sites, you will hand him a large bundle of cash. Take away the inevitable success of those glorified, sensationalized, long-drawn-out liquor store robberies, and Jackson loses his coverage and therefore his livelihood. Would this latest protest not make that happen? I would think so. That is what I would have guessed. But since Jesse Jackson apparently disagrees, I defer to his superior expertise in this matter, and expect his career to keep on humming along.

I do think there is an unemployment line somewhere with a place for him. He’ll be there, just as soon as his supporters start to think “wait a minute…how would I like it if some bozo ‘protested’ any little thing I did? Cream in my coffee, wine instead of beer, elevator instead of stairs…why, I wouldn’t like that at all.” Just a simple thought flickering between a few pairs of ears, and he’s out of a job. I do think it’ll happen. Sucks to be him.

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Imitation is the Sincerest Form III
Thursday, July 21st, 2005

Imitation is the Sincerest Form III

Yesterday morning I had a few words to say about John Roberts, the new Supreme Court nominee about which everybody who’s anybody would like to know a little bit more than they currently do, and I confess to being poorly equipped to add much to that research project. But it’s always interested me how labels like “conservative” and “liberal” mean different things in the court, than they do in other aspects of politics. People who look upon nominees with great excesses of glee or dread, tend to forget that. In summary, anyplace outside of the court, “liberalism” means turning the clock back to the 1960’s — the childhood era for many of the people who are now in powerful positions today, so they can have a nostalgia trip at everybody else’s expense. It is loaded with contradictory positions and doesn’t have a lot of framework or principle anymore like it used to. It has morphed into just a big tootpaste tube full of a giant war-protestin’, baby-killin’, civil-rights-marchin’, scandal-mongerin’, global-warmin’, anti-capitalist mish-mash. “Conservatism” refers to an absence of this mish-mash.

You might say America is like the thirty-something woman who spent her young adulthood doing every kind of drug and screwing every wrong kind of guy, and is ready to take her flock of whelps and her sporadic child support receipts & offer a ready-made family to a Nice Guy. We’ve had our fun and are ready to grow up — bring on the mortgage payments, the tax forms, the yardwork. Conservatives are in favor of the growing up, liberals want a retreat. In that way, conservatives want progress, liberals want to stay the course. Kinda funny.

In the court system, “conservatism” refers to reading the Constitution, or whatever law applies to the appeal, indictment or suit, and using the text of that law as a primary means of handing down a reversal or affirmation. This is pretty simple stuff if the law is written well. The “conservative” branch starts to split up when the law is written poorly. But on the whole, people we label with this word agree on the general concept: If two laws conflict irreconcilably, point it out that they do, and if they don’t, point out that they don’t.

“Liberalism,” otherwise known as “activism,” means to indulge in a calculation about which interest groups would be hurt or helped by an affirmation, and which interest groups would be hurt or helped by a reversal. Once that is known, you figure out how to hand down a ruling that will help the group that possesses the greater political capital, then you have your clerks look up things that will help justify this ruling. Lately, this has evolved to the extent that those clerks can do their poking around overseas, pulling in charters from Europe and South Africa — anything to help the cause. With that in mind, I said the following about what little I know of John Roberts:

If John Roberts is what he appears to be, the effect would be a partial moderation of the Supreme Court. After all, this would have prevented the damage of Grutter v. Bollinger, but not of Kelo v. New London or Atkins v. Virginia. What do you call a successful confirmation here? A good start.

I don’t know if the Wall Street Journal editors read my blog. I would expect hardly anybody does. But how then do you explain this gem which appeared in “Review & Outlook” this morning.

It’s possible that the nominee might not be as willing to overturn precedent as Justices Antonin Scalia or Clarence Thomas, but he seems to be someone with deeper roots in the original Constitution than either Justice Sandra Day O’Connor or Justice Anthony Kennedy. While we won’t agree with every Roberts opinion, it’s impossible to see him making the law up as he goes along. And if confirmed he is thus likely to move the High Court marginally, but importantly, back toward where it was before Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg replaced Byron White in 1993.

I’ve been robbed, but I’m not calling the police. I’m quite flattered.

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Hooray, We’re Thinking About Doing Something
Thursday, July 21st, 2005

Hooray, We’re Thinking About Doing Something

One of the most interesting things to happen this week is that Howard Dean, the crazy uncle in the basement of the Democratic party, has been allowed to actually write the talking points for them. I guess that’s his job now. Soon after President Bush announced his nomination of Judge John G. Roberts for the Supreme Court seat being left by Sandra O’Connor, Dean commented in a press release how suspicious it was that the Karl Rove scandal was being blasted off the front pages by this new hubbub about court appointments. Right Howard, we can’t have a President actually doing what he’s supposed to do, can we. Within mere hours, Democratic leaders in Congress, talk show hosts, bloggers and hotheaded anonymous thread posters were sharing the old-weird-uncle’s musings, often word-for-word. Yeah, that’s right. Democrats were angry with Republicans for not actually helping to bring down their own administration, over a scandal that wasn’t. Maybe this is what starving deer hunters mean when they talk about leaving the rifles at home and talking the deer into committing suicide — today’s Democrats actually think that’s the way to get the job done.

My complaint, in the meantime, was that the Rove scandal was the distraction. I was looking for news on the fence reinforcing our rapidly dissipating “border” with Mexico. Well, lookee here. We have a story. “Construction crews are expected to begin building a reinforced concrete barrier along sections of the U.S.-Mexico border next month.”

This would tend to indicate both my Federal government, and my free press, are doing their jobs. Somewhat. It’s awfully late in the game and this is not very much meat, barely any at all. But I’m like a starving dog here and I’m not going to insist on a T-bone steak.

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Liar of the Week
Wednesday, July 20th, 2005

Liar of the Week

“Liar” is a pretty harsh word, not to be thrown around casually — although you wouldn’t know that, if MoveOn.org and the Kerry campaign of ‘04 and Michael Moore were your models. Before we apply it to anything, let us look it up in Merriam-Webster shall we.

lie
Function: verb
Inflected Form(s): lied; ly�ing /‘lI-i[ng]/
Etymology: Middle English, from Old English lEogan; akin to Old High German liogan to lie, Old Church Slavonic lugati
intransitive senses
1 : to make an untrue statement with intent to deceive
2 : to create a false or misleading impression
transitive senses : to bring about by telling lies lied his way out of trouble>

Democrats should like this definition a lot, because they are big fans of muddying the distinction between fact and opinion, and there is nothing here about distinguishing between fact and opinion when you say someone lied. In other words, it is perfectly valid to have an unprovable opinion, about someone telling a lie. According to Definition 2, you don’t even need to say something untrue, in order to be a liar. The intent to deceive is adequate.

According to that, then, I nominate a certain highly-respected (by someone somewhere) United States Senator for Liar of the Week, who yesterday, discussing the nomination of Judge John Roberts, was caught saying on the Senate floor:

I will not decide whether to support or oppose him based on any single issue…what all Americans deserve to know is whether Judge Roberts respects the core values of the Constitution and falls within the conservative mainstream of America, along the lines of Justice Sandra Day O’Connor.

In order to believe this does not qualify as a lie, you have to believe Senator Edward M. Kennedy is still in the process of making up his mind about the Roberts nomination and as of yesterday remained in a state of uncertainty about his vote.

Granted, that this is not the case, is purely a matter of my own opinion.

But does anybody believe it to be true? Anybody at all?

Then why do we so regularly put up with this B.S.? It is a certainty that Sen. Kennedy has already decided to oppose the nomination, and is simply waiting for some material to roll in so he can make something out of it at the hearings. For forty-three years his modus operandi has been to identify his enemies, and inflict embarrassment upon them at any opportunity. Facts, to Senator Kennedy, have simply been mechanisms used to inflict this embarrassment, not to actually decide an issue. He’ll change now?

I will never be as “great” a public official as Senator Kennedy. I would not have driven drunk, with or without Mary Jo Kopechne, and once the worst somehow befell us, I would have tried to save her. Failing that, I would have immediately tried to get help. But most of all, had that situation gone down the way it did, if someone walked up to me and said “don’t worry Senator Freeberg, we’ll make sure you’ve got another 36 years of building a distinguished political career by embarrassing and yelling at people” I would have said “Are you kidding?? I just killed a woman by being a drunk negligent pussy coward, how in the world could I pull that off?”

You do know yesterday was the anniversary of Mary Jo saving us from a Ted Kennedy presidency, don’t you?

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They Get Way Too Much Attention
Wednesday, July 20th, 2005

They Get Way Too Much Attention

Nobody reads this blog, but if & when someone does trip across it I think it’s only courteous to give such a visitor a good balance between serious issues and silly stuff. I have not done that lately, which stands to reason somewhat because I’m not too funny of a guy. But in the post below, I have a partial list of “groups of people who get way too much attention in directing the subtle movements of our prevailing culture and the not-so-subtle movements of our public policy.” Filling this list out would be productive. Starting a national dialog about what should be added to it, would be even more productive. We seem to be up to our armpits in groups of people who get to direct what we all do, what we all think, who we elect, where things move to, what’s in style — with little to no reason. Which is another way of saying if the following suddenly suffered a Rodney Dangerfield “get no respect” problem, we’d all be better off.

Celebrities with political opinions
American Idol
Politicians and journalists who want to talk about Abu Ghraib
Women giving advice to their husbands
Britney Spears-Federline
John McCain
People calling the sales lady on the phone when you’re standing right in front of her
The “hah hah hah we love to laugh at dopey men” crowd
Joe Wilson
Oprah Winfrey
Football and basketball stars
Jesse Jackson
The “whoosh” sound during Xena Warrior Princess — mostly inappropriate
Television evangelists
Survivor
Katie Couric
Women who wear pant suits
Kids who want to get tattoos
Hillary Clinton
People who like it when the camera shakes around a lot during movie action scenes
Paris Hilton
People who think the Supreme Court’s job is to keep abortion legal
Women with short hair
Tom Cruise and Katie Holmes
People who think a movie or TV show improves when it tells you what to think

One little-known fact about me is that, by choice, I don’t have any television. Because I think it is stupid. I’m sure if someone’s reading this and they have a cable or dish subscription, they could add quite a few other things.

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Frankly My Dear, I Don’t Give a Damn
Wednesday, July 20th, 2005

Frankly My Dear, I Don’t Give a Damn

A few days ago, Laura Bush took a breather from senselessly ridiculing her husband long enough to direct him to pick a woman as the next Supreme Court justice. Link, link, link, link, link. I had a high level of respect for the First Lady before her shameless pandering to the “hah hah hah we love to laugh at dopey men” crowd, and I was hoping for something to restore my esteem to its previous levels. This did not do the trick. Actually, if I had to make a list of groups of people who get way too much attention in directing the subtle movements of our prevailing culture and the not-so-subtle movements of our public policy, I’m sure the top ten would include:

Women giving advice to their husbands
The previously-mentioned “hah hah hah we love to laugh at dopey men” crowd
People who think the Supreme Court’s job is to keep abortion legal

Hell, that would probably be in the top five. Maybe the top three.

Come to think of it, a woman giving advice to her husband, has not preceeded any firestorm of noteworthy, blazing success in human history since, I don’t know, since Eve told Adam to bite the apple. And we all know how that turned out. Seriously, why do we continue to believe, against the evidence, that this is a good thing? He got the gig; she didn’t. You want her opinion to prevail, elect her.

Is anyone prepared to argue that if a woman interprets the constitution poorly, and a man interprets it competently, that the woman should get the nod because of her gentalia? Who are these people who believe this? What pinheads. Why does anyone listen to them?

So President Bush somewhat restored the level of respect he’s earned from me in this whole affair, by telling her to stick it. His wife, on the other hand, did not. Not unless this was all a public-relations stunt to show people the President is his own man, and his wife was in on the show. Which actually is pretty believable.

So what are we to expect from John Roberts? It looks pretty good. I have not been able to find any history of inventing brand-spanking-new rights from the bench for women, unions, tree-huggers, artists who dunk crucifixes in urine, quota queens, welfare queens or terrorists. So I remain optimistic, although I have good reason to be only cautiously so. (That last link should be required reading — VERY good.) The Supreme Court, in our era of rendering things unconstitutional like a monkey with a spinning dart board, has been an endless cornucopia of back-stabbing and treachery — only on the conservative side.

If John Roberts is what he appears to be, the effect would be a partial moderation of the Supreme Court. After all, this would have prevented the damage of Grutter v. Bollinger, but not of Kelo v. New London or Atkins v. Virginia. What do you call a successful confirmation here? A good start.

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How to Be a Good Wife
Tuesday, July 19th, 2005

How to Be a Good Wife

The best knowledge we collectively have at this date falls short of confirming or disproving “How to Be a Good Wife” as a genuine article of dusty literature, but it may as well be real for all the fuss, chuckling, contemptuous snorting, and eyeball-rolling it has caused over the years. For the uninitiated, these are ten “tips” about pleasing your man that were supposed to have appeared in a 1955 issue of aw, who the hell knows what. Sources vary as “Housekeeping Monthly” or “a home economics textbook”. It’s always fun to hand over the tips to a coarse, brittle, man-bashing feminist, and stand back & watch the sparks fly:

Have dinner ready. Plan ahead, even the night before, to have a delicious meal ready, on time for his return. This is a way of letting him know that you have been thinking about him and are concerned about his needs. Most men are hungry when they come home and the prospect of a good meal (especially his favorite dish) is part of the warm welcome needed.
Prepare yourself. Take 15 minutes to rest so you’ll be refreshed when he arrives. Touch up your make-up, put a ribbon in your hair and be fresh-looking. He has just been with a lot of work-weary people.
Your goal: Try to make sure your home is a place of peace, order and tranquillity where your husband can renew himself in body and spirit.

And so on and so on. Available ladies, prepare yourselves for a shocker. A smart man who is anxious for you to sleep with him, will outwardly snicker and guffaw right along with you at these laughable anachronisms. But most men, when you aren’t in the room, agree that about half of these points are pretty good ideas. In fact, if you’re trying to make a good impression on a typical man, you’d better be selective about which lines get a snort and which ones don’t.

As a man, throughout my age of availability, when I was in the market (I no longer am), I used to keep my eyes peeled and ears open for which line got the most derisive chuckle from an object of my affection. As I became older and wiser, with relationship disasters behind me, I observed things like this more and more carefully. And gradually I became aware that all the other wise, careful men, were doing the same thing.

Men just don’t look at these “tips” the same way as women. So ladies, if you’re reviewing this article in the company of your man (who probably brought it to you, right?), do your snorting and eyeball-rolling carefully. Many of you could do with a male perspective, and I’ve probably dated a lot more women than you have. So take note of the following, especially the score on a scale of 0, yeah this one’s a crock, through 10, if you have a problem with this I have a problem with you.

“A good wife always knows her place.” Score: 1. If this is serious at all, it was written by a man. What a dick.
“Prepare the children. Take a few minutes to wash the children’s hands and faces (if they are small), comb their hair, and if necessary, change their clothes. They are little treasures and he would like to see them playing the part. Minimize all noise. At the time of his arrival, eliminate all noise of the washer, dryer or vacuum. Try to encourage the children to be quiet.” Score: 1.5. Children are children. Home is home. If they can’t play there they can’t play anywhere, and if they can’t play anywhere the man ends up spending a lot of money to listen to some egghead tell him about ADD and ADHD, which they didn’t have in 1955. Who the hell needs it?
“Over the cooler months of the year you should prepare and light a fire for him to unwind by. Your husband will feel he has reached a haven of rest and order, and it will give you a lift too. After all, catering for his comfort will provide you with immense personal satisfaction.” Score: 2. What a load of crap. Building fire is a man’s job. Who in the world wants to come home to a wife going on about “Hah, hah, I can build a fire quicker than you can, nyah nyah nyah.” Let’s face it, if a woman builds a fire nowadays and actually gets it going, that’s the first thing she’s gonna do. I just got home from work for Chrissakes.
“Clear away the clutter. Make one last trip through the main part of the house just before your husband arrives.” Score: 3. Make one last trip? What am I supposed to be doing, putting on a white glove and conducting an inspection? I don’t feel like it. Besides, I’m a man. Men don’t see dirt.
“Gather up schoolbooks, toys, paper, etc. and then run a dustcloth over the tables.” Score: 3. Make sure I’m not likely to trip over anything, and I’m happy as a clam. See above. What is this thing you women call “dust”?
“Arrange his pillow and offer to take off his shoes. Speak in a low soothing and pleasant voice.” Score: 3. I’ll settle for “don’t hysterically yell at me”. If your natural voice is soprano, a low soothing voice would probably freak me out.
“Prepare yourself. Take 15 minutes to rest so you’ll be refreshed when he arrives. Touch up your make-up, put a ribbon in your hair and be fresh-looking. He has just been with a lot of work-weary people.” Score: 4. There is something to this. Fifteen minutes is not much, and if I have to come home to a frazzled harridan who’s bitching and kvetching about how tough she has it and how busy she is (which over the years, I have had to do), it tells me this is a woman who likes to start fights. I’m not saying such grievances are unreasonable — us men can avoid work, ingeniously, without knowing we’re doing it. But there are ways to address the unfair labor distribution without blowing up at the poor guy. And hey, if fifteen minutes can put you in a better mood when the poor slob gets home, and you fail to get that done, what does it say about your time management skills for the rest of your day? Any man with a brain is going to have a tough time assuming the lion’s share of the blame, even if he knows he is partially guilty.
“Don’t complain if he’s late home for dinner or even if he stays out all night. Count this as minor compared to what he might have gone through that day.” Score: 4. The “stays out all night” is completely unreasonable. Really, it depends on the prior plans made. But I went and gave it a four because hey, if you know something is keeping him, and you bawl him out anyway, you’re being a bitch. It’s not 1955 anymore. There are microwaves.
“Have dinner ready. Plan ahead, even the night before, to have a delicious meal ready, on time for his return. This is a way of letting him know that you have been thinking about him and are concerned about his needs. Most men are hungry when they come home and the prospect of a good meal (especially his favorite dish) is part of the warm welcome needed.” Score: 5. If the menu, Monday through Friday, as well as the weekend, is “whatever you feel like whipping up or ordering in, because I’m way too tired” then as a woman, you don’t really want to be married or live with a man. Hell yeah, it makes us feel unwelcome. Men who agree with you in guffawing at this, are liars. They are after some poontang.
“Make the evening his. Never complain if he comes home late or goes out to dinner, or other places of entertainment without you. Instead try to understand his world of strain and pressure, and his very real need to be at home and relax.” Score: 5. I’m assuming there was some advance planning involved. Granted, if the ol’ lady is slaving over a hot stove all afternoon and she gets a phone call at six o’clock that he’s decided to get a meal at Black Angus with the guys, then that’s what normal people call an “asshole.”
“Be a little gay and a little more interesting for him. His boring day may need a lift and one of your duties is to provide it.” Score: 6. You’re Goddamn right. Who in his right mind wants to come home to some raging butterface bitch pissing & moaning about the asshole who cut you off on the freeway without signalling, your car is making some funny noise, etc. etc. Ladies, face it. Any man who was weak enough to learn to adapt to that every night without complaint, you wouldn’t want after awhile.
“Make him comfortable. Have him lean back in a comfortable chair or have him lie down in the bedroom. Have a cool or warm drink ready for him.” Score: 6. I can see why if you’ve got your own problems you might be preoccupied from doing this, but what in the hell would be wrong with it every now and then? Like ooh, we’ve really condemned you to indentured servitude, now that we’ve got you bringing us glasses with liquid in them. Get a grip, gals.
“Your goal: Try to make sure your home is a place of peace, order and tranquillity where your husband can renew himself in body and spirit.” Score: 6.5. Sounds like a great goal to me. You have to grant me this much: If you succeed at the goal, the marriage will probably work, and if you don’t, it probably won’t. If you’re unwilling to concede that, but have never actually tried it, it’s pretty tough to take you seriously. Besides, if a woman really does make that her goal and starts to succeed at it on a regular basis, it will be dang nigh impossible to get cross with her, act surly around her, develop any laziness about getting her the things she wants — basically, being a nurturing, supportive husband would become an unavoidable habit.
“Greet him with a warm smile and show sincerity in your desire to please him.” Score: 7. If I was on a first-date with a woman and she snorted or rolled her eyes at that one, there would not be a second date, I guaran-damn-tee it. Women who don’t want to please men, waste perfectly good vital organs, corneas, vaginas and skin that could be used by somebody else.
“Don’t ask him questions about his actions or question his judgment or integrity. Remember, he is the master of the house and as such will always exercise his will with fairness and truthfulness. You have no right to question him.” Score: 7. Of course I am assuming you really have no right to question him. If it’s a money thing under discussion, and the woman is working or has taken over the bill-paying, naturally that goes out the window. But a lot of women like to declare the upkeep of the cars, or the finances, or in some cases even the pets’ veterinary needs “Not My Turf” and let the stud take care of it all. Once that’s relinquished, there’s no getting it back again. Let him exercise the judgment you have chosen to trust. And if there’s anybody else in the room who isn’t in the marriage, even the kids, then save your questions for private one-on-one time. This is just common sense, to everyone except for women who like to get married so they can do a lot of arguing.
“Listen to him. You may have a dozen important things to tell him, but the moment of his arrival is not the time. Let him talk first -remember, his topics of conversation are more important than yours.” Score: 7. I agree, not because he’s the man and she’s the woman, but because, Jesus H. Christ the poor bastard just got home. It’s just like letting people walk out of an elevator before you walk on. A chatterbox putting me in my place as the “shoulder to cry on” when I walk in my own front door, makes me wonder why I’m walking through that door and not some other door. And it’s an appalling lack of common sense.
“Be happy to see him.” Score: 8. Any woman who would object to that, I don’t even want to know.
“Don’t greet him with complaints and problems.” Score: 9. This should be grounds for divorce.

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The Funny Thing About Charity
Tuesday, July 19th, 2005

The Funny Thing About Charity

While we endlessly scrutinize the crime that Karl Rove appears to have not committed, at the expense of figuring out when the California-Mexico wall is going up, and willfully ignore how our diplomatic good intentions may be blinding us to where Osama bin Laden is & how to get him, one of the other things that isn’t getting a lot of press is the Live 8 concert. And why should it? The Live 8 concert came and went, they played on their guilt trip, whoever would fall for it fell for it, whoever wouldn’t, didn’t. Time to tune out, right?

Maybe not. Now is the time when this whole event starts to educate us about charity, how it works, and how it goes wrong. We Americans are very fortunate. Our standard of living is so high, that this is literally part of our everyday lives — we just seldom pay attention to it. That we are wealthy enough to have so much opportunity to destroy people by donating to them, and the fact that we have so much choice in ignoring this, are testaments to how good we really have it. Much is made of the responsibility that America has to the rest of the world. Perhaps among those responsibilities we have, is to educate ourselves on what really happens when we donate.

And I’m a big fan of paying attention to how you go about thinking about things. Toward that end, I’v

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Old Gray Lady Grows a PairSunday, July 31st, 2005

Wow, They DO Work For Us After All IIFriday, July 29th, 2005

BuffoonFriday, July 29th, 2005

Imitation is the Sincerest Form IIIThursday, July 21st, 2005

Hooray, We’re Thinking About Doing SomethingThursday, July 21st, 2005

Liar of the WeekWednesday, July 20th, 2005

They Get Way Too Much AttentionWednesday, July 20th, 2005

Frankly My Dear, I Don’t Give a DamnWednesday, July 20th, 2005

How to Be a Good WifeTuesday, July 19th, 2005

The Funny Thing About CharityTuesday, July 19th, 2005

Old Gray Lady Grows a Pair
Sunday, July 31st, 2005

Wow, They DO Work For Us After All II
Friday, July 29th, 2005

Buffoon
Friday, July 29th, 2005

Imitation is the Sincerest Form III
Thursday, July 21st, 2005

Hooray, We’re Thinking About Doing Something
Thursday, July 21st, 2005

Liar of the Week
Wednesday, July 20th, 2005

They Get Way Too Much Attention
Wednesday, July 20th, 2005

Frankly My Dear, I Don’t Give a Damn
Wednesday, July 20th, 2005

How to Be a Good Wife
Tuesday, July 19th, 2005

The Funny Thing About Charity
Tuesday, July 19th, 2005