On the Subject of Health Care

It is believed that 2 million women are living with fistula in the world today. Sarah Omega Kidangasi was one of them. She was a 19-year-old Kenyan schoolgirl when she became pregnant as the result of rape. Like many fistula victims, she lived in a small village, far away from a hospital with the equipment and personnel to deal with a complicated pregnancy. "Due to the distance, I was late to reaching the health facility," said Sarah, now 31. "I'd been laboring for 18 hours. It was unfortunate, in that village, they were lacking some of the equipment. I was transferred to another facility, a mission hospital, and I gave birth to a stillborn baby boy who weighed 4.8 kilograms [10.6 pounds]. Three days later, I was leaking urine, and I realized that I had developed fistula. I stayed in the hospital for two months, and I was discharged in the same condition."

Sarah's ordeal began in earnest when she returned to her village, where the leaking made her an outcast. This triple punishment of losing a child, living with a hole between her vagina and bladder and being isolated from her community is common, according to Kate Ramsey, global coordinator of the U.N.'s campaign to end fistula, which is now active in 45 countries. "In some countries, there's a misperception that women did something wrong, that she was adulterous," said Ramsey.

Pretty Lady brings this up, not merely to encourage a bit of consciousness and fund-raising on the part of her friends, but to illustrate a general point, which she has been noticing in recent Healthcare Discussions. To wit: that it is a general human tendency to blame others for their problems--nominally in order to disclaim responsibility for helping them, but subconsciously to avoid facing the fear that one day, It Could Be Them.

Now, when we look at a barbaric society in a far-away place, and note honored traditions such as raping young village girls, butchering them in substandard medical facilities, and ostracizing them for the results, we may clearly and comfortably declare, 'The horror!'

But she is here to tell you that we do this in our OWN society. In our OWN culture, we turn away from the ill, the disabled, the odiferous and the unfortunate, and look for reasons to blame them for their conditions. We cannot look suffering in the face, accept it, and accept the sufferer, even though this acceptance is far less difficult and painful than enduring the suffering itself.

We do this because most of us fail to understand one salient point: We don't have to fix it. Accepting the humanity and essential blamelessness of a suffering person does not entail anything other than that. It does not mean we must swoop in, pay their medical bills, build them a house, and wait on them hand and foot; it does not mean that if they continue to suffer, we have failed.

It may be that if we get into the habit of this acceptance, we may see more clearly how certain pervasive systems contribute to the problem, and how, with diligence, clarity and efficiency, they can be made to serve a better purpose. But this comes after the fact. First, we must bear witness.

Pretty Lady Wants to be a Supreme Court Justice

Hey, she'd be better than Hillary.

Why 'Health Insurance' is a Terrible Idea

It's just like a credit card. It Lures You In and Sucks You Down.

With the individual market for health care, the libertarian argument fails on its own terms: Sick people can't get coverage they can afford. It's as though the rafts are reserved for people who already have life preservers. Americans with pre-existing conditions—cancer, asthma, diabetes, and the like—would need to pay even more than they do today. Through no fault of their own, more of them would end up without insurance. Meanwhile, insurers would improve their own profits by offering targeted policies to people with the fewest health expenses. As with the history of credit cards, it's Robin Hood in reverse. Apart from the obvious injustice, this approach could add to spiraling health costs. The sickest 10 percent of Americans are already responsible for 70 percent of the nation's health expenses. When more such Americans go uninsured, skip checkups, and land in the emergency room, they end up costing taxpayers more.

Ask, and ye shall receive.

Here. Here they are. Gasp, choke, sob.

PRINTS. Your choice of paper, mat, frame, all duly overpriced. You COULD have an Original, THE original, yes, but here--HERE--are Prints. For what they are worth.



The horror.

(Greeting cards, too.)

UPDATE: Due to Private Feedback, prices have been adjusted. Desert Cat, you are a very lucky Early Adopter.

Pretty Lady's Extremism Poll

Darlings, Pretty Lady has a favor to ask. Would you kindly take her poll? Never fear, you are entirely anonymous; your answers may well assist Pretty Lady with future grant and book proposals, as well as satisfying her curiosity about all those lurkers out there.

Opinion Polls & Market Research

Inflation

Pretty Lady has just made the perplexing discovery that her photo is now worth L75,607 on Facebook. As long as strangers are flinging virtual money around, why not put some of it in her tip jar?

How to Avoid Being Prosecuted

Pretty Lady simply loathes arguments about Legal Precedents, and Infringement of Liberties, and the Coming Totalitarian World. Portentious columns like this one really get her dander up:

Drew's actions have been called "cyberbullying," "cyberbaiting," and other such techno-neologisms, an indication of their awful novelty. Prosecutors in her state have tried and failed to find any laws that she may have violated, another sign that we're wandering, here, into an unchartered social realm.

If Drew really did what officials say she did, it seems obvious she should be punished for it, somehow. (Drew has repeatedly denied that she created the account, but has acknowledged having access to it.)

It's this impulse that federal prosecutors in Southern California were acting upon when they charged Drew this week with various computer security crimes. The prosecutors are on the side of right -- unfortunately, in their zeal to punish Drew, they've stretched the law too far, and in the process, they've endangered us all.

These people all have hold of the wrong end of the stick. This is not about New Crimes, or New Punishments, or Civil Liberties. This is, very simply, about either having the decency to own up to one's actions, or not.

Because Pretty Lady is quite, quite sure that if this alleged cyberbully had gone to the parents of this unfortunate child and apologized, she would not be in court today.

An apology is not tantamount to a confession of murder. It is merely a recognition of common humanity; that we all make mistakes, we all give in to destructive impulses, and we all undergo tragic losses. If this lady's next-door neighbor's daughter had died in an automobile accident, surely she would have offered her condolences; why then did she withhold them in this case?

Statistics more than suggest that medical doctors who are sued for malpractice are not necessarily the incompetent ones; they are the cold, arrogant ones who will never admit to making a mistake. We do not leverage the power of the court system in order to redress honest errors; we do so because we feel that our basic humanity has been mowed down by an indifferent force.

Health Care, Revisited, Ad Infinitum

Pretty Lady cannot allow dear jSin to continue moping, all the way down at the bottom of that last thread, so she will take advantage of his tantrum to stir up the issue once again:

PL here indicates that she has insurance but might drop it because of the amount it costs. While I obviously cannot speak for the entirety of her finances, she seems to speak of a reasonably active social life. If health insurance is such a priority, where is it prioritized in the budget? If it is not more important than eating out and socializing to her, why should her having it be important to me?

Before Pretty Lady takes serious umbrage at the vast set of assumptions contained in this inflammatory passage, she must hasten to reassure herself that this is merely a Rhetorical Device on jSin's, part, not an actual indictment of her habits. Because jSin is pointing out the very real danger that a society which prioritizes taking care of its own, can very easily morph into one which controls its own.

However, the mere juxtaposition of these two notions may serve to indicate, to every reasonably discriminating mind, that they are not synonymous. Not by a long shot. So simmer down.

First, then, Pretty Lady must deal with the rhetorical smears on her character by stating the following:

1) Her health insurance payment is $300 a month, which is higher by a factor of six than her monthly socializing budget. Pretty Lady was not kidding when she said she was thrifty. Health insurance companies as a whole do not run on the same principles of economy with which she runs her own life, and this is one of the reasons she views the industry with grave circumspection.

2) Before she had health insurance, she invested a substantial portion of her income in yoga class cards, bicycles, bicycle helmets, bicycle repairs, excellent footgear for all types of terrain, arch supports, and the very occasional massage. Additionally, she works a monthly shift at the co-operative grocery store, which insures that she can afford to buy and consume organic produce daily, without bankrupting herself. These investments rendered her, usually, healthy as a French draft horse.

3) Socializing, in New York City, is not merely a frivolous endeavor, but is in fact vital to one's economic viability. Thus, Pretty Lady's stingy socializing budget is not necessarily a long-term savings; she would perhaps be served better in the long run if she partied more than she does now. Because people, by and large, prefer to do business with people they know, particularly if that business is of a highly esoteric variety.

4) Furthermore, socializing has been proven to be vital to one's health, as well. So attempting to separate out the two budgets is a nonsensical exercise, right at the start.

(As an aside, it is a tragic commentary on the state of our society when it is assumed that a person who maintains a healthy social life is assumed to be spending a great deal of money. Whatever happened to good old-fashioned conversation, plus a walk in the park? Round it off with a good cup of coffee or a beer at a dive bar, and life holds few greater pleasures.)

So. Since jSin is relatively new to Pretty Lady's circle, he may not be aware that Pretty Lady has already proposed a Universal Healthcare Plan, which addresses both the economic and social concerns he raises in his comments:

Yes, she proposes that the government freely give its low-income citizens money, to spend upon their own health. Rather like EBT vouchers.

This, of course, violates all established precendents of Condescension, Patronization, and Punitive Reinforcement. It presupposes a dangerous Lack of Control, and irresponsibly opens up the system for instances of Flagrant Abuse by the least deserving among us. It amounts to a Robin Hood philosophy of robbing the rich to reward the poor.

Or does it?

The key of Pretty Lady's plan is that this subsidization will not be unlimited. Persons shopping for health care will be presented with the challenge of frugality; they will be forced to make their own decisions. They will try things and see if they work; if they don't work, and are expensive, they will try something else. Meanwhile, healthcare practitioners who charge exorbitant rates for nothing at all will be forced into another line of work.

Note, furthermore, that the government is not running this system. Note that Pretty Lady has said nothing at all about Medicaid, Medicare, or prescription-drug plans. The only 'insurance' plan which makes sense to her, as she has said in the past, is a universal catastrophic-coverage plan, payments to be subsidized below a certain income level.

The universality of this plan, moreover, is key; this obviates any need for layers and layers of bureaucracy, put into place for the sole purpose of denying coverage to people in need. Once denial is no longer an option, the wit and wisdom of plan-managers will have nowhere to go but toward the efficient managing of resources for absolutely everybody.

As a healer herself, Pretty Lady has long noted that healing is best facilitated by the person in need of it. It cannot be imposed, it may only be accepted. Furthermore, people in general are not particularly motivated by fear of gruesome and painful demise; the Denial aspect of the human mentality kicks in, and the more you show them pictures of diseased lungs, the more they reach for a cigarette to calm themselves down.

Thus, attempting to control people's self-destructive habits is a non-starter; encouraging themselves to take good care of themselves by subsidizing massage therapy, yoga, organic produce and regular checkups might be infinitely more effective.

(Don't worry, Pretty Lady is not so delusional as to actually think that centuries of ingrained Puritanism will be overcome in her lifetime. She can only dream.)

In conclusion, let Pretty Lady remind the hard-core Libertarian contingent of her readership that human beings, as a group, are intimately and integrally connected. This is a fundamental and inescapable truth. One cannot propose a template for Human Liberty while simultaneously disclaiming any interest in the health and well-being of others; this is akin to attempting to launch a foot-powered airplane. Freedom for the individual depends upon consideration of the whole. And as Pretty Lady has demonstrated above, it is eminently possible to consider those less fortunate than oneself, without controlling them.

This Just In--Shopping is a DRUG!!!

Darlings, guess what? Pretty Lady has Arrived! A major retail marketing campaign is now bribing her! With a $25 gift card, an hors d'oeuvre reception and a big block of chocolate shaped like a First Aid kit!

Pretty Lady has never made a secret of being cheap.

However, having sold her journalistic integrity for chocolate and a bargain-basement shopping spree, she must deliver the goods. Within the bag containing her bribe, there was also, most unsubtly, a Press Packet, which she will now proceed to quote.

May 15, 2008--A new study reveals that shopping and discovering an unbelievable fashion find produces a euphoric experience greater than sky diving, kissing or eating chocolate--increasing heart rates to 192 beats per minute, more than triple the normal resting heart rate of 60. While it has long been known that many women enjoy shopping--it is something they do willingly and often--now there is evidence that shopping does actually bring physical happiness.

To hammer home the point, a couple of British Scientists at the reception wired up a number of lady volunteers with brain-electrode caps (they looked like flight helmets covered with blue and green Life Savers) and sent them Shopping for Bargains. Pretty Lady, mindful of her dignity, did not volunteer. She does have some limits.

But there you have it; shopping may be added to the list of potentially addictive activities, designed to anaesthetize our brains from addressing the grim reality of Modern Life. Pretty Lady always suspected it was so.

Happily, she may report that the managers at TJ Maxx are on top of the problem, and have counteracted the potentially dangerous effects of too much shopping by providing a distinctly depressive dressing-room experience. Nothing curbs the euphoria of finding a fetching designer dress, marked down 60%, like having to stand in line for 10 minutes at the door to the fitting room, only to discover upon finally being admitted that fully one-third of the miniscule, fluorescent cubicles within are unoccupied.

(This is why Pretty Lady far prefers, when in need of a fix, to shop in high-end stores that have spacious dressing rooms, with armchairs and cozy halogen lighting. She can try on fabulous costumes for hours, and emerge Calm and Refreshed, without spending a penny! Much more economical.)

Pretty Lady later suggested to one of the charming TJ Maxx PR department girls that the dressing room was shamefully understaffed. She remarked, 'Yes, it's our busiest time of day,' and helped herself to another chocolate.

Pretty Lady now sees clearly; her choice of careers was woefully unwise. If she had gone into PR, she, too, could travel coast to coast, dressed to the nines, hosting glamorous parties and reciting inane copy to everyone she meets. And her salary for doing so would be considerably higher than a $25 gift certificate every year or so.

But since she is who she is, she will grudgingly admit that the likes of TJ Maxx is where she does her practical shopping. She armors her hypersensitive psyche with a Teflon force field, seeks out the natural fiber fabrics in a sea of polyester, and practices Zen meditation while standing in line after loud, tedious, proletarian line. And she manages to dress fairly well.

Pretty Lady's Art: About To Be Really Hot

Really! David says so!

An art writer I know predicted that the art of the future will probably have something to do with abstraction and with the spiritual.

Coincidentally, Pretty Lady has just realized that her abstract, spiritual painting series, 'The Implicate Order' has nearly completed its integral Creative Arc, and is sufficiently voluminous and powerful to fill a decent-sized gallery. Just in time to seize the Crest of the Future!

So, if any of you darlings happen to have Personal Connections with an up-and-coming art dealer that has Taste and Quiet Discrimination, as well as business competence and personal integrity, would you be so kind as to point them in Pretty Lady's direction? Please and thank you. Pretty Lady has been around the Art World long enough to know that unsolicited submissions are gauche in the extreme, and she wouldn't want to move forward without a proper introduction.

And obviously, now would be an excellent time to invest in an original Pretty Lady canvas yourself. Get ahead of the crowd!

Forgiving David Brooks

It isn't easy, but Mr. Brooks has almost redeemed himself in Pretty Lady's eyes, after he championed that ridiculous ABC debate. With one bold move, he has defined the nature of the coming socio-spiritual debate:

First, the self is not a fixed entity but a dynamic process of relationships. Second, underneath the patina of different religions, people around the world have common moral intuitions. Third, people are equipped to experience the sacred, to have moments of elevated experience when they transcend boundaries and overflow with love. Fourth, God can best be conceived as the nature one experiences at those moments, the unknowable total of all there is.

In their arguments with Christopher Hitchens and Richard Dawkins, the faithful have been defending the existence of God. That was the easy debate. The real challenge is going to come from people who feel the existence of the sacred, but who think that particular religions are just cultural artifacts built on top of universal human traits. It’s going to come from scientists whose beliefs overlap a bit with Buddhism.

In unexpected ways, science and mysticism are joining hands and reinforcing each other. That’s bound to lead to new movements that emphasize self-transcendence but put little stock in divine law or revelation. Orthodox believers are going to have to defend particular doctrines and particular biblical teachings. They’re going to have to defend the idea of a personal God, and explain why specific theologies are true guides for behavior day to day.

And what, pray tell, is wrong with a 'cultural artifact,' when culture plays an integral part in how we define 'self'? Hmmmm?

Pretty Lady has come to subscribe, herself, to a sort of relative absolutism. She believes that it is essential to the expansion of human consciousness to subscribe, at one time or other, to a doctrine of absolutes; this is essential to the training of the mind to recognize its unity with God. However, in retrospect, these absolutes will be seen to dissolve utterly, as only being the structural supports of one's spiritual childhood.

So Pretty Lady agrees to respect people's cultural artifacts, with deep reverence, as long as they refrain from bashing others over the head with them. Agreed?

The Definition of Socialism

so·cial·ism
–noun
1. a theory or system of social organization that advocates the vesting of the ownership and control of the means of production and distribution, of capital, land, etc., in the community as a whole.
2. procedure or practice in accordance with this theory.
3. (in Marxist theory) the stage following capitalism in the transition of a society to communism, characterized by the imperfect implementation of collectivist principles.

Pretty Lady posts this definition, merely to remind her readers that there are precious few countries on the face of the earth where the government owns the means of production, and the majority of the citizens are still living relatively comfortable lives. The last time she checked, corporations which produce things are still, in fact, corporations, with CEOs and everything. Many of them may be hand-in-glove with certain government officials, but at the very least, a pretence of separation between state and industry is being maintained.

In fact, as her Gentleman Friend pointed out just yesterday evening, the debate between Pure Socialism and Pure Capitalism no longer exists, in a practical sense. He quoted some theorist or other (Pretty Lady is so bad with names) who stated that 'two seemingly opposing ideas will battle it out for awhile, then they will integrate and move on to the next level.'

Indeed, as dear P.J. O'Rourke discusses in his classic 'Eat the Rich,' Pure Capitalist Freedom is doomed to a collapse into unchecked pyramid schemes and chronic civilian gun battles, without the balancing Rule Of Law. Good government, in other words, tempers the natural human instinct to lie to one's neighbors, steal their savings, and shoot them when you're done.

For the way Pretty Lady sees it, the way the Founding Fathers saw it, and the way more and more countries are seeing it, is that any human system which attempts to adhere to rigid dogma is bound to collapse under a Fatal Flaw. It is not within the capacity of the human consciousness to devise a perfect system, whether this be Capitalist, Communist, Socialist, Libertarian, or Anarchic. To maintain balance, systems must be continuously self-adjusting. They may adopt new elements, under exigency of circumstance, and discard those which no longer serve a purpose.

Additionally, the balance of a system is best served when every individual element of this system is able to provide feedback. It is to the system's advantage to have efficient and sensitive feedback-delivery systems, for when feedback from a particular element is ignored, that feedback becomes ever more dire. In extreme situations, this leads to Violent Revolution.

This is why, contrary to the Dire Prognostications of various of her readers, Pretty Lady remains doggedly optimistic about the future, not only of her beloved America, but of the planet in general. For in case you had not noticed, we are communicating upon the most egalitarian and sensitive feedback-delivery system in human history; the Internet.

As recently as five years ago, Pretty Lady had precious little recourse when brutalized by a Big System, such as an exploitive degree program, a job from hell, or a lousy healthcare system. These days, she simply writes up her case, and it is heard by the Entire World, or at least those with the wherewithal to type their concern into Google.

Big Systems, particularly the exploitive ones, are not particularly thrilled by this fact, as is shown by various attempts by government and industry at Internet regulation, control and censorship. Singularly, however, these attempts have met with limited and temporary success. The network of connectivity, and the commitment of its individual elements to maintaining those connections, is now larger and more extensive than any lumbering, monolithic, dogmatic system can control.

Balance, then, is on its way to becoming ever more precise, rapid, and fine-tuned in its adjustments. If transparency is not official, it is achieved on an ad-hoc basis by courageous individuals.

That is why, when she is the recipient of hyperbolic warnings regarding the Evil Dangers of Socialism, her response is along the lines of, 'Oh, phoo.' Pure Socialism is so nineteen-fifty-five.

Impenetrable Logic

Pretty Lady's Feminist Theory

Doom asks the sixty-thousand-dollar question:

is not what the "gentleman" in question suggested exactly what the advance of feminism has evinced? It is certainly how I have come to understand it and it's objectives. Aren't you, in truth, via socialism, a feminist?

'Via socialism'? Pretty Lady isn't sure she understands what you mean by that. However, she will answer the question, "Are you a feminist?"

Yes.

Pretty Lady's definition of 'feminism': The theory that women are fully people. Each woman counts, in a spiritual, economic, and political context, as one entire person. Not one-half of a person, three-fifths of a person, or an appendage to another person.

Thus, women are equal to men, and to all other women and children, by virtue of the equation 1=1.

You note that Pretty Lady has said nothing at all about any characteristics of people being equal. For it is perfectly obvious that people are different. Any theory which requires that people be the same as one other is obviously not based on empirical reality.

This is why the 'gentleman,' as Doom so egregiously calls him, in the post below is utterly full of shit, from Pretty Lady's feminist perspective. He is conflating existential equality with sameness of biological, emotional and intellectual outlook. His attitude demonstrates the sort of wilful solipsism that feminism, as a social movement, undertook to challenge; the unexamined attitude of 'what is good for me must be good for you.'

Now, this sort of jingoistic asininity may appear risible, juvenile and basically harmless from the perspective of any person who has the ability to direct his own social and economic destiny. But under a socioeconomic system where a female person is, by social consensus, a chattel of such a male, either by biological kinship or marital contract, it ceases to be humorous. Such a woman has no choice but to bear the consequences of whatever asinine, selfish, moronic, destructive action this male chooses to undertake. If he bets the farm on a hand of poker and loses, she is homeless. If he impregnates her by main force, she bears a child. If he drinks to excess and hits her and the children, too bad for that.

Any anti-feminist who points to the legality, or lack thereof, of this hypothetical woman's capacity to abandon an abusive male and take control of her own destiny is missing the entire point of the term social consensus. When the collective attitude of the mileu in which this lady is immersed determines that her existential value is calculated solely upon the basis of her predetermined relationship to a male, and her adherence to a rigid code of conduct established by the whims, desires and ego needs of said male, there need be few other laws to bind her. Individual actions do not occur in a vacuum. They require a minimum amount of buttressing by the surrounding community, or they are practically doomed to failure.

Some of you may object to Pretty Lady's definition of feminism, on the grounds that it bears little resemblance to the draconian theories advanced by various self-styled Public Intellectuals on the subject. To be honest, these Public Feminists rather bore her. They seem to always be upset about something, usually the actions and attitudes of persons over whom they have no control. This strikes Pretty Lady as being an essentially pointless preoccupation, as well as an anti-feminist one; the whole point of her own feminist philosophy is that she is the author of her own destiny, and everyone else is the author of theirs. Preoccupation with controlling others is a dead giveaway that one doubts one's ability to control oneself.

Note, also, that Pretty Lady's feminist theory takes as its basis, a priori, the mere existence of female persons, not anything that they do. One does not need to 'prove' one's equality by performing any amazing feats of strength, intellect, creativity or earning capacity. One's validity as a human being is not revoked by any action taken by self or other. This is crucial; for one of the characteristics of human beings is that we learn by experience. In plain terms, people make mistakes. Reducing a person to the social status of a non-human by virtue of their all-too-human action, then, violates basic logic.

Conversely, a feminist individual need not rely on extortion, manipulation, or coercion to obtain a satisfactory position in society. It should be sufficient to communicate the truth about oneself, directly and honestly, and to expect the same of others.

Thus, Pretty Lady's feminist practice consists of the following:

1) She takes responsibility for determining, understanding, and communicating her own thoughts, emotions, needs, desires, and boundaries, without shame or a sense of personal inferiority.

2) She encourages everyone around her to do the same.

It seems to her that little more can rationally be expected of anyone.

How to Cope with the Modern Dating Debacle

The time has come. Trench warfare has gone on long enough. The Rules have been thrown out the window, the handbook burned, and the rape and pillage is far advanced. And stories like this one are no longer the exception, but the norm.

He sat down and asked what I was reading and did I have a boyfriend because he was asking me out. He smelled like incense and clean linen, and I was overwhelmingly and instantaneously smitten. Among other things, I liked his indifference, confidence and knowledge of foreign film directors. On our first date he explained his theory of exclusive relationships, which was that they shouldn’t exist. We talked about our (and all of our friends’) divorced parents, about how marriage was nothing but a pragmatic financial venture, and about the last time we cheated on someone. He said that his disregard for monogamy wasn’t a chauvinistic throwback, but quite the opposite: the ultimate nod to feminism.

All right, girls. This is how you cope.

First of all, the above 'feminist' speech by the above male is garbage. Garbage, garbage, garbage. It is most important that you all understand, in the core of your being, that it is so. It is crass, manipulative, pseudo-intellectual, selfish bullshit. It is a speech explicitly designed to deny your basic human need for trust, fidelity, and unconditional acceptance. It is intended to keep you disempowered, off-balance, insecure and out of touch with your own emotions. It is a blanket license for a man to behave in a completely selfish, untrustworthy, inconsiderate and irresponsible manner for as long as he knows you. Any man who showers you with this tripe, particularly in a charged 'dating' (Pretty Lady uses the term loosely in this context, for reasons which ought to be clear) scenario, may not ACTUALLY be a jackass, but he is certainly ACTING like one.

It is important that you thoroughly recognize the jackassery of this line of reasoning, because your future happiness and tranquility depend upon it. It does not matter if you are a feminist, progressive, intellectual, agnostic, atheist, or a conservative Christian virgin; it is enough that you are female. And as a female, you will be forced to address predatory tactics advanced by libidinous males, whatever sociocultural ideology you profess. This is a fact of life. You will not be able to form any sort of genuine connection with a male person until you get this clear.

So what do you do? You call him on his bullshit.

It is important that you do not get upset; this gives the male grounds to dismiss you as an insane, irrational, hysterical female. When confronted by crass, manipulative bullshit from a man whom one is dating, or considering dating, or mildly attracted to, or not unattracted to, or absolutely smitten with, your response should always be, "That's bullshit. It's shallow, immature, selfish reasoning. People need commitment and fidelity; it's a fact of life. Get used to it." Then you change the subject to something pleasantly trivial; soon after you make your excuses and depart. You do not contact him again.

One of two things will now happen.

If the fellow is, indeed, a selfish, manipulative loser, you will never hear from him again. It is important for you to understand that THIS IS A GOOD THING. The purpose of the Rules has never been to turn losers into winners by keeping them around; it is to get rid of them as quickly and efficiently as possible, before they do any serious damage. And it is crucial that you understand that losers do very serious damage.

Please trust Pretty Lady on this one.

However. If the fellow is NOT a jackass and a loser, and IF he genuinely likes you, and IF he has a fundamental instinct for decency which has been only temporarily occluded by immersion in modern society, he will be Brought Up Short. He will go into shock; he will be forced to think. It will take him a bit of time to think. This is one of the many reasons that you must not contact him; he needs to understand that you mean it, and that if he's ever going to see you again, he needs to reconsider his philosophy.

If you hear from him again, then, you may proceed to get to know him. You may ultimately decide to date him, sleep with him, marry him, or not; this is entirely up to your discretion. What you do NOT have to do is play a number of tedious, manipulative, exhausting games in order to get him to stick around. You do not have to pretend to agree with his 'progressive' attitude, all the while crossing your fingers that he doesn't go through with it. This is lethal.

Hooray! Hooray! Hooray!

Hooray! Woo hoo!

The Quiet Tragedy of Postmodern Education

Ah, you laugh. Some of you, yes. You do not take the current crisis in our educational system seriously; you do not yet believe that major damage is being done. Amidst your hyperbolic cries of 'censorship!', amidst your cogent and measured analyses of rhetorical excess, it is easy to lose sight of the sordid underbelly of academia. One forgets, all too often, to consider the inevitable--that one day, persons with Ph.D.s in postmodern literary study are bound to encounter someone with a BS detector.

And the results can be tragic.

Ms. Venkatesan lectured in freshman composition, intended to introduce undergraduates to the rigors of expository argument. "My students were very bully-ish, very aggressive, and very disrespectful," she told Tyler Brace of the Dartmouth Review. "They'd argue with your ideas." This caused "subversiveness," a principle English professors usually favor.

Ms. Venkatesan's scholarly specialty is "science studies," which, as she wrote in a journal article last year, "teaches that scientific knowledge has suspect access to truth." She continues: "Scientific facts do not correspond to a natural reality but conform to a social construct."

The agenda of Ms. Venkatesan's seminar, then, was to "problematize" technology and the life sciences. Students told me that most of the "problems" owed to her impenetrable lectures and various eruptions when students indicated skepticism of literary theory. She counters that such skepticism was "intolerant of ideas" and "questioned my knowledge in very inappropriate ways." Ms. Venkatesan, who is of South Asian descent, also alleges that critics were motivated by racism, though it is unclear why.

The horror of the Undergraduate Seminar is vile enough; one can scarce imagine the carnage that results when said Ph.D. attempts to inflict the rigors of her training, in strict accordance with its own principles, upon the practitioners of empirical scientific research.

According to Venkatesan, the entire lab was "hostile to (her) type of academic discourse" (that is, trying to incorporate literary criticism into molecular biology). She alleges that Christine Richardson, a research technician in the lab, treated her with absolute contempt, always responding to Venkatesan's requests for assistance with either dismissive gestures or complete silence.

Yes, it is all to easy to forget that once, postmodernist theorists were children. There was a time when they were capable of normal social relationships; when they communicated in sentences devoid of phrases like 'interrogates the teleological paradigm', and did not resort to paranoid accusations of racial and sexual discrimination when confronted with an interpersonal conflict.

Because, darlings, professors of postmodern theory are not born. They are made. We send our offspring off to university with the best will in the world, expecting that they will be instilled with the tools to navigate empirical reality, not inculcated with the compulsion to undermine it.

We mourn, all too often, for the destruction of the best minds of our generation; we forget to consider the perils of the mediocre ones. But it is fully possible that without her education, this unfortunate woman could have become a productive member of society. And now...

The waste. The tragic, tragic waste.

The Character Issue

Gracious! That last conversation will certainly go down in history as the one which evoked a spontaneous, heartfelt 'Holy Crap!' from Chris! So Pretty Lady will begin anew, at the top of the page.

My reading of your thoughts is that character and emotional stability trumps policy determinations (or how the policy is determined seems to be more important than what it is). This reminds me of those who voted for Bush over what was being presented as a Clinton I continuation through Gore, that Bush had better 'character'.

'Character', in quotation marks, indeed. Hmph.

What passes for 'character', in the case of Shrub, as I am sure you are ALL aware by now, perfectly illustrates the difference between appearances vs. substance, letter vs. spirit, and rigidity vs. fluidity, in our assessment of such. Our disesteemed (disapproval rating at 71% at this writing, as compared to 67% for Nixon at the time of his resignation) leader's 'character' was, it seems, entirely assessed on the basis of his late-life recognition of Jesus Christ as his personal savior, as well as a certain good-ol'-boy ingenuousness of manner. Pretty Lady cannot think of a single other factor in his favor.

Consider:

Obama: Taught constitutional law, effectively, it seems.

Bush: Decimated constitution.

Obama: Worked as a community organizer among the poor in Chicago.

Bush: Destroyed an oil business, without failing to scrape off a significant personal profit first.

Obama: Organized a campaign so efficient that it outperformed the Clinton machine, which is operating upon two decades of loyalties, organization and strong-arming.

Bush: Grossly mismanaged an illegitimate war, bankrupted the American economy, tore up the Geneva conventions, and destroyed America's international standing.

Obama: Surrounds himself with a cadre of advisors known for their expertise and upright character.

Bush: Surrounds himself with evil, incompetent lizard-brains who tell him convenient fictions which support his preconceived notions.

To answer your question, then: YES, genuine character not only trumps policy determinations, but leads to better ones. Because a CRUCIAL ELEMENT OF CHARACTER includes the WILLINGNESS TO ADMIT MISTAKES. Not adherence to dogma in the face of all conflicting factual evidence.

And finally, to address the accusations of Obama messianism which fly so cavalierly about these days, I refer you to an Andrew Sullivan reader:

Your old farts really do miss the point completely, don't they? These younger people were convinced that political involvement was useless because the the system was so broken. They came of age anywhere from the second Clinton term (Lewinsky) through the disaster of the Bush years. They have no reason to believe that politics can work, or that it is possible to effect any large scale change, so they work locally or just opt out.

This is what Obama has tapped into. The reason all those thousands of young Dems registered for the first time and voted in a primary was because he made them believe honorable politics was possible. And if someone like Obama gets chewed up by the system because the forces arrayed against him are too strong -- just look at the sworn enemies who are teaming up to bring him down, united by nothing more than a vested interest in the status quo -- then they will conclude that the system is as broken as they thought it was.

The mistake is reading this as an Obama personality cult, in which case "grow up" would be appropriate. But the Obamaniacs I meet are nothing like that...

they don't sing his praises, they sing their own. They are intoxicated by the idea of a politics where things they thought were not possible become possible, and people talk to each other like adults. They don't think he's going to fix things, they think they are.

What the old farts might want to consider is that these young people who have no particular vested interest in the current system might be seeing the rot much more clearly than the fogeys who have been entangled in it for decades. And the mature folk might want to accept that the burden of proof is on them to show why such a viscerally disgusting political game is worth playing.

Opting out of that is not immaturity, it's intelligence.

To borrow from Mr. Gandhi: Be the change you want to see in the world. This is what Obama asks of us; not that we believe in him, but that we believe in ourselves.