;)
Friday
Nov232012
The Commentariat -- Nov. 24, 2012
Josh Eidelson of the Nation has a rundown of what happened at the Wal-Mart demonstrations around the country. ...
... Pema Levy & Tom Kludt of TPM round up the worst incidences of Black Friday mayhem. ...
... Libby Spencer of No More Mister Nice Blog: "I especially loved the guy in Texas who pulled a gun on a line cutter. He wasn't arrested because he had a concealed carry permit. Assume threatening to kill someone for trying to get between you and your new flat screen teevee is justifiable under the castle doctrine. Or something. Are state's rights great or what?"
If it looks like Grandpa's old gray bathrobe and costs $500, it's in Neiman's Christmas Book:
CLICK ON THE IMAGE TO GO TO THE CATALOG. (Turn the pages of the catalog at the lower corners.)
Charles Blow: "The Internet has been lit up with the incongruity of the party of Lincoln’s becoming the party of secessionists.... We are moving toward two Americas with two contrasting -- and increasingly codified -- concepts of liberty. Can such a nation long endure?"
Kevin Drum: in their efforts to make both parties look like winners (see yesterday's link to a NYT article by Jonathan Weisman), legislators are proposing at least one truly "crazy idea" -- eliminating marginal tax brackets for the rich; i.e., if you earn more than $X, you pay the highest rate on all your earnings. This would work a severe hardship on the upper middle class & have very little effect on the super-rich. CW: I told ya so.
CW: Before the Petraeus Affair hit the fan, I never gave David Petraeus a second glance. But now I'm thinking he looks really sexy. Since he is reportedly an egomaniac, he probably is not actually very sexy. Acknowledging there is no accounting for taste, I welcome second opinions.
Patty Murray -- My Kind of Hero. Rosalind Helderman of the Washington Post: "In a town consumed by talk of the apocalyptic consequences of failing to resolve the budgeting crisis, Murray [D-Washington] has been arguing that missing the [fiscal cliff] deadline for a deal -- going over the cliff -- could actually make getting a deal easier.... As chair of her party's Senate campaign arm, the architect of surprising Democratic gains and the incoming chair of the powerful Senate Budget Committee, Murray now occupies a place of special influence in the Senate."
Manuel Roig-Franzia of the Washington Post: "The biggest scoop of his [reporter Ed Kennedy's] career -- Nazi Germany's unconditional surrender ... ruined his career. And a determined group of prominent journalists wants ... Kennedy to be posthumously awarded a Pulitzer Prize, a recognition of a singular moment of courage when a star correspondent defied political and military censorship to file one of the biggest stories of the century."
Right Wing World
Derangement. Even though President Obama mentioned God in this year's Thanksgiving address, it wasn't good enough for the lunatic leaders of Right Wing World, who ginned up plenty of outrage over "Obama's Godless Thanksgiving." Charles Johnson of Little Green Footballs rounds up the raunch.
Jonathan Chait of New York has a lovely takedown of "right-wing intellectual" and Commentary editor John Podhoretz. Chait doesn't do much work; he just cites Podhoretz's hilariously contradictory Commentary commentary from before & after the election.
Manny Fernandez of the New York Times: "Secession fever has struck parts of Texas, which Mitt Romney won by nearly 1.3 million votes. Sales of bumper stickers reading 'Secede' -- one for $2, or three for $5 -- have increased at TexasSecede.com. In East Texas, a Republican official sent out an e-mail newsletter saying it was time for Texas and Vermont to each 'go her own way in peace' and sign a free-trade agreement among the states. A petition calling for secession that was filed by a Texas man on a White House Web site has received tens of thousands of signatures, and the Obama administration must now issue a response."
News Ledes
Reuters: "President Barack Obama, in a bid to show support for small businesses, took his daughters on an early Christmas shopping trip on Saturday as the U.S. retail sector swings into high gear this holiday season. Promoting 'Small Business Saturday,' the third annual event that encourages consumers to support independently-owned local shops, Obama took his daughters Sasha and Malia to 'One More Page Books' in Arlington, Virginia...."
Politico: "The State Department's Washington D.C. headquarters caught fire Saturday morning, a department spokeswoman announced." A spokesperson said the fire, caused during routine maintenance work, was quickly extinguished.
New York Times: "Hector Camacho, a boxer known for his lightning-quick hands and flamboyant personality who emerged from a delinquent childhood in New York's Spanish Harlem to become a world champion in three weight classes, died on Saturday in San Juan, P.R., after being shot while sitting in a parked car. He was 50."
New York Times: "The official sales numbers [For Black Thursday/Friday] will not be reported for a few days, but analysts are expecting a strong sales day, with results comparable with last year's gain of about 3 percent, according to MasterCard Advisors SpendingPulse, which is a metric for total American retail sales across all payment forms, including cash and check. The earlier hours from a few select chains seem unlikely to increase the size of the spending pie, but they may reapportion it."
Reuters: "Angry youths hurled rocks at security forces and burned a police truck as thousands gathered in central Cairo to protest at Egyptian President Mohamed Mursi's decision to grab sweeping new powers. Police fired tear gas near Tahrir Square, heart of the 2011 uprising that toppled Hosni Mubarak at the height of the Arab Spring. Thousands demanded that Mursi should quit and accused him of launching a 'coup'."
AP: "House Republicans still smarting from their poor showing among Hispanics in the presidential election are planning a vote next week on immigration legislation that would both expand visas for foreign science and technology students and make it easier for those with green cards to bring their immediate families to the U.S."
New York Times: "Larry Hagman, whose portrayal of one of television's most beloved villains, J.R. Ewing, led the CBS series 'Dallas' to enormous world popularity, died Friday in Dallas, where Mr. Hagman had been filming the sequel to his famous show. He was 81."
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Reader Comments (25)
@Sister Mary Elephant — I'm shocked! Shocked, I tell you!
Revealing uncontrollable thoughts on 'sexy' David Petraeus!!
Reader comments from Charles Blow's piece repeat over and over again the obvious. Let em go! No Fed jobs, no SS, no Medicare and on and on. Yet for millions the obvious is anything but obvious.
Let me say it again. The basic problem in America is ignorance. Not caused by genes but by ones upbringing. We teach our children no history or science, just how to hide from the facts. And religion plays a big part in this. The pattern red vs. blue is closely linked to the degree of religiosity. So the problem is the Bible Belt is used to choke our children.
Marie:
Seeing the 2 Bucky Beaver front teeth in the Petraeus photo only makes me think of a gawky high school student who thinks physics is really, really exciting. Dork, nerd, and geek come to mind - not sexy. Definitely not a guy I would want to put the moves on. Imagine black plastic Army issue glasses on him and you'll see what I mean.
@Marvin Schwalb. I agree. Ignorance is the child of incuriosity. My guess is that curiosity is the natural state of being, as any parent of a toddler might attest. It is, however, probably possible to kill curiosity in those tykes of the interminable "Why"'s. Just tell 'em "Because I said so." Surely religion plays a role -- any system that teaches that "faith" answers all questions is a sure curiosity-killer. So almost certainly the ignorance factor begins at home, not at school.
Still, if our educational system fails us -- and it certainly does -- it is in the failure to teach young people to question what they hear and read. It is in the failure to teach them that rules must "make sense." It's true that life -- unlike good fiction -- doesn't always make sense: careful people get hit by buses, too. When I was in the 7th grade, our math teacher tried to explain why the formula for finding a parallelogram works. But his explanation didn't "make sense" to me & I said so. Of course he told me to sit down & shut up. So I went home & asked my mother -- a chemist -- how the teacher's explanation could be. She looked at it for a minute & explained why it was wrong. Naturally, I explained it to the teacher the next day. It took him a while to get it, but he owned that Mom was right. There were kids in that class who were a lot better at math than I, yet they never questioned the explanation. The next year, I had another math teacher & she offered the same wrong-headed "explanation." Some of the same smart kids were in that class, too, but none objected. I did, & got a trip to the dean's office for my trouble. If the dean called my mother -- can't recall -- Mom probably told her to sit down & shut up.
Teachers should encourage students to question the rules. I'm afraid, however, that at least 47 percent of teachers equate curiosity with "acting out"; they see the curious student as a "discipline problem."
And, yeah, I'm still a discipline problem. I got a master's degree when I was in my late 40s. I took one course from a famous professor of English who was a notorious tyrant & an expert on, among others, James Joyce. Several times I observed him driving curious students to tears, even though their questions had been honest & did not specifically challenge him. So once he made a remark about a Joyce novel that I was sure didn't "make sense." I could have been prudent & kept my mouth shut. But I told him why he was misreading the passage & why it was key to the whole novel & to Joyce's worldview in general. Dead silence. The general assumption -- which I shared -- was that he was about to rain a tirade on me. Instead, after some pacing, he said, "You're right. I'm going to have to completely rethink Joyce."
Questioning authority sometimes has a bigger payoff than the questioner anticipates. But, more important, teachers should learn to reward rather than punish polite dissent. If they did, a lot of people would be smarter. And Mitt Romney might have got only 27 percent of the vote, instead of 47.
Marie
Marie. Different strokes for different folks. I'm closer to Victoria on the Petraeus thing. Can't say I'm not somewhat by what I perceive about his personality. I look at the unlikely match between my husband and I. I wonder after 29 years that he stills tries to grab my sagging...well you get the picture.
Ta Nehisi Coates makes what should be an obvious point about the Rice mess. The vitriol directed at her is meant for Obama. Makes the point well in a few paragraphs.
http://www.theatlantic.com/ta-nehisi-coates/#
@ Victoria:
"Imagine black plastic Army issue glasses on him and you'll see what I mean."
We Army vets of the 60s called these black plastic issue frames "BCDs" (Birth Control Devices).
BTW my wife, who is quite discerning in her taste of men, agrees with Victoria!
The discussion of incuriosity, education and their effects on our political culture prompts me to resurrect something I sent off a few years ago. It's long (for which I apologize to those still full of sleep-inducing turkey) and too much ignores what I suspect is the profound influence of natural development patterns that blunt curiosity as one ages, but it does speak to schools' failure to encourage necessary and healthy skepticism. Needless to say, the education publication I submitted it to, tho' a previous submission had been kindly received, was not thrilled by what I said.
In Defense of Sarcasm
I don’t remember what I said to provoke her but I will never forget the response:
“You must be one of those sarcastic public school teachers,” she said.
We were seated together, both audience members at a local TV station’s weekly “Town Hall” that featured the controversial education question of the day. Though our elbows rubbed, our opinions were obviously miles apart.
That was years ago, and while the evening’s intended topic has long since faded in memory, her remark instantly brought years of classroom experience into sharper focus. Clearly my neighbor, who seemed a nice private school parent, did not think sarcasm belonged in schools.
I remember assuring her most teachers I knew were nicer than I was, treating her to a self-effacing grin and letting the matter drop, but I’ve been thinking about it since.
Over the years sarcasm has definitely developed a bad name. I know that as a young teacher I was cautioned against its use, and because I knew barbs directed at fragile egos could hurt learning more than help it along, I applied it carefully.
As a literature teacher, though, I was instinctively unwilling to set aside the entire comic tradition that has provided so much insight into the foibles of human behavior. From Mad magazine to Mark Twain, gifted writers have used their wit to cast ironic light on hypocrisy and cant. Where would literature, let alone the human race, be without Gulliver’s Travels, Babbit or even the caustic humor of many New Yorker cartoons?
I think I know. We would be where we are today, when satire, irony and their ruder cousin, the sarcasm that got me into trouble that evening, have almost disappeared from the national scene. Forty years ago, some newspaper columnists still wrote in the Mencken tradition. On the two coasts, Art Buchwald and Art Hoppe delighted in skewering the pretentious and empty-headed. More gently, Russell Baker did the same, and readers everywhere appreciated their work.
Today, outside of niche markets like the Comedy Channel and The Onion, there is little equivalent. Political discussions are so often repetitions of predictable talking points that those who point out their boring sameness are trapped in a cliché of their own. We seem to have lost the ability or the will to look at ourselves from outside, to view our beliefs and behaviors with the detachment fundamental to humor and self-knowledge.
It is satire’s implicit questioning of what is, I think, that has recently dimmed its reputation and popularity. If satire is the natural enemy of the earnest, an age that joins earnestness with credulity will not welcome anything that might upset it. To make fun of something, one must stand apart from it, a position that automatically places the satirist out of the mainstream. Irony and satire are supposed to disturb the status quo and the people who accept it. No matter that critical thought and creativity rely on an outside vantage. Today’s majority clearly prefers comfort to either.
Maybe it’s the natural consequence of mass democracy. Living as closely as we do to one another, we have left no intellectual space for the outsider. Political correctness cuts a wide swath. In our laudable attempt to eliminate pain from our polity, we have also successfully discouraged any questioning of anyone else’s beliefs, no matter how silly. Our “one opinion is as good as another” age contributes nothing to frank conversation about fundamental issues. Because we don’t want to hurt anyone’s feelings, we so much fear the free play of ideas that we have retreated into residential and academic communities of the like-minded and locked the gates.
Criticism has always carried a burden of elitism, a potent swear word in our modern democracy and a fact of social and political life we’ve never learned to deal with. Intellectually superior students have long felt isolated in our schools, often encountering resentment rather than admiration or acceptance. If their intellects lead them to question common behavior or beliefs too publicly they become pariahs. In a culture where the charge of elitism can sway a national election, the smartest kids in the class often walk a lonely road.
We know that as we develop, we abandon notions as we outgrow them. Geographic sense expands from home to block, from state to nation, just as counting on our fingers merges into algebra, and lighting fires or making bread become instances of chemistry in action. Up to a point, our minds expand with our bodies. Then, for many they stop, and instead arm themselves against new ideas.
Learning at any age, though, requires we allow our beliefs to float free of our egos. As uncomfortable as their operation might be to the True Believer, satire and irony act to pry and hold them apart, opening minds to the previously unconsidered.
I suspect the assumed superiority of my sarcasm prompted the lady’s response to what I said. Though I was not talking to her, I understood that no one likes their ideas put down or made fun of. But because she had not learned that people and ideas are best considered separately, I could not tell her that in these overly earnest times, when questions most need to be posed and balloons pricked, schools should be teaching their students more doubt, not less.
And that time I wouldn’t have been sarcastic.
I enjoyed the Chait take-down of John Podhoretz, son of Norman, one of the fathers of neoconservatism, and Midge Decker, whose strident voice some decades ago told us women to get back in the kitchen, stay at home and take care of our children––not hunger for careers that would only make us miserable while she was out of that kitchen, away from home, out and about giving lectures. John, editor of a conservative magazine, was in the buzz recently for firing his book blogger D.G. Myers for allegedly writing a post in favor of gay marriage and castigating Republicans for rejecting it.
I find that picture above of Petraeus appealing. Not having thought of him as a sexual appeal, though, I'd have to listen to him again with a new set of ears and eyes. Never having been attracted to big, handsome hunks, my taste has always been for those more intellectually inclined, attractive, but not handsome––I like bald heads and glasses––but attuned to the outdoors and able to fix the indoor plumbing.
Yes, question authority at all times. If we want to produce gullible innocents instead of tough minded realists who know what they believe because they have faced the enemies of their beliefs we can go the way of Texas ––I wrote about this yesterday––and fuck up the curriculum and text books in order to protect our young people against scary reality and all those dangerous ideas.
Loved the Joyce story––plucky lass!
Victoria, the Army (and Air Force) issued black glasses are euphemistically referred to as "birth control glasses" for obvious reasons. While he'd never be mistaken for Cary Grant, I thought this picture of Mr. Petraeus was much more attractive than those in his Army dress greens with or without the droopy and unattractive beret. As to sexy, he's a little on the scrawny side for my taste. As all of us over a certain age know, skin (and its incredible ability to sag) is not our friend. I can't help but imagine he'd look like the old guy Samantha Jones, in "Sex and the City," watched trot off to the bathroom bare-assed naked. Some images just never fade away!
My son, who lives in Utah (does it get any redder or more Romney proud?) sent me a link to a story written for the local right-wing rag by a high schooler prior to the election. She surveyed 20 (or maybe it was 30) of her classmates prior to the election and asked for whom they would vote if they were eligible. One-third said Obama and the other two-thirds said Romney. She then read them lists of things the candidates were espousing without telling them which set of platform ideas were Obama's or Romney's and asked which of the different positions they most agreed with. Two-thirds chose Obama's and one-third chose Romney's. It seems obvious to me that when they pretend voted, the kids were parroting positions held by their parents without knowing about the ideals behind those positions. But when given the chance to chose positions over candidates, they chose positions they believed in. I would hope the kids learned that to blindly support a person without knowing what they actually stood for isn't the best logic to use in voting for candidates.
Whenever my children and I talk about politics in front of their teenage children, we stress that while these are things we believe, they should ask questions and research the issues to come to their own conclusions. Listening to their teenage logic on some issues has made me smile on several occasions and proud that they are thinking things through for themselves. Too bad all parents and/or grandparents don't encourage critical thinking in all things--not just politics.
@Jacquelyn: Could you dig out and post the link to the article please. Thanks,
@Ken Winkes: "I understood that no one likes their ideas put down or made fun of."
I think you have to recognize the difference between "putting down" ideas & "making fun" of them. If you challenge an idea, you are not necessarily challenging the person who expressed it. You're just saying, "Well, here's another way to think about that." If you make fun of the person's idea, I think the person would rightly take it "personally." For instance, when I challenged the professor on the Joyce passage, I showed him how his analysis conflicted with his own stated principles on the purpose of lit crit. This implied that he was right -- or defensible -- in the one instance but not in both. I didn't make fun of him; I encouraged him to be consistent.
Similarly, I try not to make fun of the ideas of private citizens -- unless their expressed "ideas" are so outrageous they shock the conscience; e.g., purposely sexist snark. But I think public figures are fair game. As to who is a public figure, even the law must decide on a case-by-case basis. I would call Maureen Dowd & David Brooks public figures, but maybe a court would not. So in the absence of a hard-and-fast rule, I tend to look at the issue on the basis of power structure. Does Maureen Dowd have significantly more "power" than I? Well, yes, she does. So, game on.
Similarly, I usually zap the few comments here that slam other commenters -- or if I'm late to the game, I defend the slamee. However, I don't mind comments that attack me because ultimately if they piss me off too much, I am in a more powerful position -- I can just zap their comments. Given that imbalance, it seems "fair" to give the commenters some rope.
Now, those of you who disagree with me about the sexiness of Bucky Beaver there will never be allowed to comment here again. Actually, I'm really enjoying the discussion. We can't always limit ourselves to stuff that matters.
Marie
One way or the other the too-much ballyhooed "fiscal cliff" will take care of itself. I think the far more important issue facing us now is how to get rid of or at least drastically reduce the toxic Tea Party influence in the House. It's not too early to focus on the strategy for accomplishing that in 2014. Given the rampant gerrymandering in Ohio, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin, it will be an uphill battle. But if we don't take it on, the nation will face continued obstruction and deadlock.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/mike-lux/can-democrats-retake-the_b_2177065.html?utm_hp_ref=politics
@Marie: I can't imagine that any Court would disagree with you, let alone on the subject of whether the Queen of Snark and the King of Blather are public figures: royalty are always public figures.
@CW: Thanks for the comment, but I believe most people, myself included, have trouble distinguishing between their ideas and themselves, which in my deliberately contrarian submission was the point I apparently failed to make. To do so requires training, and as I suggested, sarcasm and satire, which both require distancing oneself from the subject, are too often not employed in our educational armamentarium. One of the great challenges I faced and did not always succeed in meeting was criticizing students' writing without offending them...Ideas, notions and egos are most often inseparable, particularly in the unsophisticated, and to the degree that the more sophisticated can make that distinction, they equally often make the naive, regardless of age, uncomfortable.
By the way, I don't find The General at all attractive. Maybe more to the other, for me more personal point, his paramour doesn't do much for me either. Maybe the pronounced musculature is just too intimidating. As for the twin groupies, for fear of seeming (can a Tom or a Ken be?) catty, I'll withhold comment. Haven't seen a picture of Allen, so I think that covers them all.
@Ken Winkes. I have the "idea" that Gen. Petraeus is sexy & that Denzel Washington is classically handsome. It doesn't offend me, however, that another person doesn't share those "ideas." (I can, BTW, back up my assessment of Washington with, you know, scientific stuff.) However, if you tell me I must be a pervert to harbor those ideas, I'd likely be offended.
Similarly, I often think such-and-such is a fact when it isn't, & I may present it as a "fact" to others. I'm not offended -- rather, I'm grateful -- when someone says, "Actually, no. According to recent research..., blah blah." But if you say, "Keep up, Marie. Nobody has believed that shit in 10 years," again, I'll be hurt or offended.
And if I were a teenager sitting in a classroom & the teacher made a joke of something I said, causing the class to laugh at me, I suppose I'd be humiliated. There are occasions when it's a good idea to humiliate someone making a smart-ass remark, but I doubt it's a good teaching tool to humiliate a kid who is giving a sincere but misguided analysis.
A lot has to do with tone. Two kids can say, "God didn't make us out of monkeys." One can be tossed off with a sarcastic retort; the other worthy of a serious discussion.
As for that woman who long ago told you, "You must be one of those sarcastic public school teachers," she made a mistake. She attacked you, not your idea, whatever it was. Indeed, what you remember is the attack, not the idea that inspired her rude remark.
Marie
@CW: I'll think about our back and forth a little more (but not today). I don't believe there's much space between our notions, tho' I'm a little puzzled about how that little difference has generated so many words. Maybe I was implying but not saying with my first post that in my experience True Believers, which I took that parent to be, have more trouble distinguishing themselves from their beliefs--which they confuse with fact--than do skeptics...and that it is the skeptical, inquiring, curious node that schools ought to encourage by all means at hand, mindful always that when taken as a personal attack, the ill-advised means make that goal too easy to miss or reject.
In any case, thanks as always for helping me think.
Calyban, Here's the link to the student in Utah:
www.standard.net/stories/2012/11/05/vote-issues-not-man
I hope this takes you there--I'm a technophobe and not too sure how to make this stuff work.
Ken Winkes, paramour is a fabulous word and so appropriate to this discussion!
Re: Ugly by any other name; All I know is that guys are always passing judgment on women passing by and from the comments you'd think the commentators could pass for Brad Pitt or whoever is the latest heartthrob is. Sometimes I have to retort by saying, "You, who was hit by the ugly stick while still in the womb can remark on looks?"
If I was in a fox hole and General Dave jumped in I would tell him to find his own fox.
If "don't ask don't tell was the rule of the day"; I don't think I'd ask and I sure as hell wouldn't tell.
Dave is not ugly, he looks like a scout leader. Or a priest. Or that guy that voted for Romney.
I was a very cute baby and have been growing out of it ever since.
It's the miles not the years.
Just for the record, Ken and Marie––liked your back and forthisms and Ken––really liked your long post on defense of sarcasm–-well done. And on the mention of cartoons: I have found, oh, I'd say, maybe ten years or so, the cartoons in the New Yorker wanting. Some I can't even decipher. Truthdig has some very clever ones and the graphics are great. There is indeed an art to exposing the foibles of human behavior and thanks for reminding us of the writers who did that so well.
@CW: The picture of David Petraeus that you posted is very attractive. Where did you find that picture? All the photos of him in military dress I find repugnant. This must correspond to my view of military personnel in general. In some distant way I think this relates to the conversation you and Ken are having.
Attractive yes, sexy NO.
@MAG. Ah, gotcha! Early in the day, you were mocking my (possible) fantasy life as a newly-converted Petraeus groupie. Now you're looking to find out where you can snag a pin-up of the man. I think the photo is probably his official CIA Director photo -- look, Ma, no medals -- & so is certainly touched up.
And I must agree with @JJG that some of you are very tough on Petraeus's physical appearance. I'm not blind -- I can see the buck teeth, the big ears, the comb-over. Maybe it's my years of reading lit-ruh-chure, where the characters all have some physical anomaly to distinguish them in the reader's mind (or, in the case of the protagonist, to symbolize his imperfection), but I can always look past a few physical flaws, & in some cases I find the flaws rather endearing.
When I was young & reckless, I lived in Los Angeles, so dated several movie-star-perfect men -- who likely had come to So-Cal in the hopes of being "discovered." I didn't find them any more or less appealing than more average-looking men, tho it was kind of amusing to be out & about & watch jaws drop at their exquisite handsomeness. Their extreme good looks didn't seem to affect them much, but I had a few women friends who were absolute knockouts, too, and their lives were MISERABLE. Their significant others did not treat them well but couldn't give them up, probably because the men were mesmerized by the women's beauty. I realized then that a fairly unremarkable, if pleasant, appearance is actually a blessing. And I have been blessed!
Marie
@ Constant Weader/Marie/Sister Mary Elephant
Uh uh uh, nope! I didn't write that! That's not me! Someone must be masquerading as moi! I did chide you in an early morning post (#1), which is at the top of today's Comments...but, the one (#20) below PDPepe's ain't me!!!
..for the record, I've always leaned toward the Marcello Mastroianni/Alain Delon types myself!
signed, the REAL MAG
CW Note: my detective work strongly suggests Real MAG is being truthful here. I'm going to leave the Fake MAG comment up because Real MAG & I have both commented on it. But if I catch Fake MAG again, I'll zap the comment.
First time I've ever run across somebody impersonating an essentially anonymous contributor. Pretty strange.
Marie
Petraeus sexy, no. I nominate Wesley Clark for sexy general. Plus, he appears on MSNBC.
Just a word about religion and education. A bit ago, Marie corrected the assumption that Marco Rubio's Catholicism explained his anti-science attitude. There seems to be some agreement here that children cannot get rigorous educations if they are brought up in dogmatic faiths. This contradicts the excellent students (all male, alas) who came to my university courses from the Cathedral Latin Catholic schools in the large Ohio cities. These young men saw no problems believing every word in their catechisms, yet doing very well in their science and math courses.
Regarding BCDs, by 1980 they had become "birth control glasses" (BCGs?). In the Navy, at least. God help me, I wore them.
Possibly, "device" had lost its currency as military slang by the age of computers, since "device" is more a mechanical than electronic concept. As an Electronic Warfare operator, I did my job on something sort of like a PC. It had icons and what could be termed windows.
In the interests of balance, let me note that I find Paula Broadwell as attractive as, oh, a store mannequin. If that. Her crazed, predatory expression doesn't help. Look-wise, Patraeus reminds me of a Marine supe who treated his wife like dirt, berating her for her weight in front of other people, despite the fact she was uncommonly good looking. I felt awful for her. Consequently, I've never liked P.'s looks. And here he turns out to be another jerk husband.