THE THREE CLUELESSTEERS

 

 AM I BECOMING REPUBLICAN?

I'll admit, I am not a fan of these televised debates. Rarely do we see anything to change our already-made-up minds, nor is there much help or enlightenment. 

But a least last night's was hilarious. 

I would say it was a draw. Biden didn't falter the way his opponents hoped. Trump acted like the spoiled bully his supporters love. So, a draw.

But it was hilarious. Wallace could not control Trump, and even laughed at some of his antics. He even ended up doing Biden's job holding Trumps feet to the fire on a few issues such as taxes.

Biden got in a few punches, but in my opinion did not interrupt enough, tho' he did some.

It was funny and fun.

Why does this make me RepuIblican? Because it seems to me Republicans don't expect morality or even consistency. It's just about power and keeping their seats. And this did not start with Trump. May I remind you of states' rights? Admittedly, code for white supremacy, they were not defended when it would have cost Bush II (or Shrub, as Molly Ivins called him) the presidency. As Florida started a recount and it was taken out of the state's hands (State's Right) and given to the Supreme Court (Federal). Off with their heads, states' rights. 

That's to name an issue that may come up again.

The Republicans I allude to--and forgive me if you are a Republican of conscience, we haven't met--don't expect good behavior, respect for law and other institutions of governing, individual or minority rights (ecxcept their own, and then it's not a right by law but by power to make law). 

Consequently, they can enjoy the spectacle that is our trumped-up presidency, while they stay working hard to keep what they have and get more. Or merely aspire. 

And I, too, am beginning to enjoy the show.

COSPIRACY THEORY

In today's ScienceTimes (NYT) there's an article about the psychology of conspiracy theorists by Benedict Carey titled “A Theory About Conspiracy Theories.” Among many intersting things it says that about a third of us think the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention exxaggerated the threat of Covid-19 to undermine Trump. 

Guess who they'll be voting for?

Apparently we like conspiracy theories more now that we are in pandemic. Not that beliefs such as therse are new. In early times, in smaller communities, looking for these theories was a life-saver. But what is new is the widespread belief in THE BIG LIE, ie, that the "official story" is just made up to promote the interests of shadowy powerful groups. This can apply to anything. In THE RABBIT HOLE, the NYT limited-episode podcast about how the Internet, especially YouTube, sucks people deeper into whatever they already seem intersted in. The result is that rather than aerating your thinking with a wide rancge of opinion, it funnels you more and more narrowly into the areas you already selected. It is not neccessary. There could be healthier algorithms, but this is good business for YouTube.A former alforithm-creator who left youTube for this very reason, offers her experience and a good analysis of how it happens and why.

If the promotion of conspiracy theories is good business for YouTube, and we can extrapolate to the rest of social media.

According the the Times article, estimates are that over half of us believe in at least one discredited theory, and that may be understating it. 

There are a few personality types that really go for these theories. The Injustice Collector is, "Impulsive and overconfident, eager to expose naivete in everyone but him or herself."

Another may be an anxious, lonesome, perhaps older and isolated person, likely with a touch of real pathology.

Sudden illness may make us want to blame drug companies, for example, and now with the virus, we have a perfect storm making us want to discredit the purveyors of bad news, scientists and doctors. The fear itself is a distraction, reducing our likelihood of examining the accuracy of what we read online.

All this is very interesting, and I reccommend the article, and the study, "Looking under the Tinfoil Hat." Its posted online in THE JOURNAL OF PERSONALITY. 

A tidbit I found interesting was one question designed to identify a narcissist: "I often have to deal with people who are less important than me."

All that being said, I think these scholarly researchers have overlooked a very big reason that folks like conspiracy theories.  IT'S FUN!

I know several very smart people who believe in conspiracy theories from fluoride to vaccines to Roswell. They are having fun. It’s fun being in the know. Even more when they are among the few who are clued in.

It’s fun plotting out graphs and tables and arguments for things only a few are privy to.

It’s fun to bethe center of attention at a party with a simple conspiracy explanation of various phenomena, especially when most of us are caught flat-footed trying to explain the same things rationally.

It’s fun to blame specific groups with simple ideas, especially when compared to real work—the real work of maintaining our democracy.

Conspiracy theories are fun.

TWO LOBSTERS

 

AS I'M SURE YOU RECALL

I love seafood. Being from New England. lobster is a true fave. Whenever I go back I'll have it every night. When my mother and I rented a little place on the Cape one summer, Falmouth Harbor, I think, we'd go to Sam's Clams and have a lobster roll every day.

Recently, my wonderful friend from college, who still lives in Manhattan, told me one of her pandemic coping mechanisms. She would plan some really nice thing to do each day, a kind of reward to look forward to, and that day it would be lobster. In fact, she was on her way to buy it right then. She was going to cook it and melt the butter and have a private little feast.

Oddly, I had been thinking of lobster myself. Another friend who now lives in Maine told me of a place near her where they boiled the lobsters to order, out on the pier, right where they came off the boat, and then boiled the corn on the cob right in the lobster water. Yum!

My father owned his own business but mainly he was a salesman. He traveled all over the country selling mops until it was the second biggest mop company in the states. Part of his success was based on telling jokes. I am sure many of the jokes he told were not suitable for his five little kids at home, but he did have at least one for us. About a lobster.

"A man was walking out of the fish market with a lobster under his arm. He bumped into his buddy who said, "Hey, what are you doing with that lobster under your arm?" 

"I'm taking it home for dinner," said the first man.

The lobster popped up and said, "I've already had dinner. Take me to a movie."

See? suitable for children.

A few years ago, my two sisters, two husbands and one brother rented a house right on the sand for a week. It rained every day we were there, and only one bedroom was suitable for a couple, so we had to switch off. We still managed to have fun. Brother went to market and bought lobsters, which we prepared to cook by taking two huge pots, and boiling water. When I, oldest, designated lobster killer, put the live lobsters into one roiling pot, one of them leapt right out and landed in the boiling pot right next to it. AS I said, we still had a good time, tho' the lobster scared the shit out of us jumping like that however futilely.

So when my son asked me to host a birthday dinner for his fiance outside on the pool deck of our condo building, where it is easy to social distance for small groups, I thought of lobster. It's festive, rare enough, and by golly, the supermarket was having a sale. Small cooked lobsters for $12 each. Cooked! Perfect and red and festive.

It was amazing. Son and I split the cost. I had fun getting the accoutrements--huge lobster bibs, butter warmers, sharp little pokey things to get the meat of of the claws, and of course the shell crackers. We had corn on the cob and salad and bread.

It turned out that the birthday girl and another friend had never taken a lobster apart (thermidor only?) before, so I gave a demo. I stood, took my lobster in my hands (after donning my bib) and twisted off the tail and the big claws. We had a discussion about the tamale (green, liver, delicious but not for everyone) and I showed how to crack the claws and slice the softer underside of the tail. When I sat down, my lobster was ready, and everyone else was happily attacking their meal. Really yummy to be all having such a luxurious yet kind of DIY meal together.

You are not going to believe this, but there was one lobster left over.

I looked forward to it all the next day. And here is where I finally make sense of the title, TWO LOBSTERS. Because sitting alone, with butter up to my elbows and dripping down my chin, I enjoyed that one even more. Or at least differently.

AS WE MOURN

I JUST RETRIEVED THIS BOOK FROM MY SHELF. A few years ago we did a remodel of our small condo, and did away with a wall of books. The thinking was we had Internet, E-books, Audio books, Library books. Who needs actual books? Especially ones we had already read. So the very few books we have are important to us.

This particular volume was given to me for my birthday by one of my dearest friends. I actually hate getting books as a gift except in certain circumstances, for example, I adore dictionaries of all sorts and in every language. So my brother knows to get them for me when he comes across something in a used book store, like a dictionary of slang, or French curses. I even have the single volume complete OED that comes with its own little, but powerful, magnifier. Still almost impossible to read the tiny type.

The point is I love this book. I read it aloud with Husband, and loaned it out a few times. It is an unusual biography in that it follows her life, with lots of pictures, then her career, with detailed annotation of quotes from her decisions and dissents. In chapter 9, titled I JUST LOVE YOUR FLASHY WAYS, for example, the authors detail aspects of her physical workouts. Her personal trainer for decades was Bryant Johnson, an army reserve sergeant, who took her on after Marty told her she looked like an Auschwitz survivor after her colorectal cancer surgery. When she gave a tour of the court to some Olympians, it included "the highest court in the land," the basketball court upstairs at the Supreme Court. 

RBG went whitewater rafting on the Colorado River with some friends, one of whom told her to sit in the back of the boat because she was so light. "...if they hit a rock, [she] would go flying over."

"I don't sit in the back," she answered.

There is an appendix titled HOW TO BE LIKE RBG which offers 7 pieces of advice: 

-WORK FOR WHAT YOU BELIEVE IN

-BUT PICK YOUR BATTLES

-AND DON'T BURN YOUR BRIDGES

-DON'T BE AFRAID TO TAKE CHARGE

-THINK ABOUT WHAT YOU WANT, THEN DO THE WORK

-BUT THEN ENJOY WHAT MAKES YOU HAPPY

-BRING ALONG YOUR CREW

-HAVE A SENSE OF HUMOR

I think these are helpful ideas for today. 

But back to my point: it's a really good book that's why I have it now, when I only have a few. 

WE all knew RBG's death was imminent. WE all knew it would seem catastrophic. Here it is. Let's follow her good advice.

I also recommend this book for an understanding of the jurist as well as the woman. 

A brief reminder: WHAT ISN'T TRUMP'S FAULT

 JUST A BRIEF REMINDER...

THAT PLENTY OF THINGS WERE GOING WRONG BEFORE HE BECAME PRESIDENT.

I thank Ross Douthat for his great op-ed piece in today's NYTimes for the title and idea.

A short list includes

The insane thinking about science. It began way before--I want to say Reagan era? The idea that science, that is to say, fact is just another opinion.

I'm sure someone knows who started this. Gingrich?  

This insanity includes creationism, pandemic denial, climate-change-by-humans denial, anti-vaccine-ism, and spare-the-rod-spoil-the-child childrearing.

We as a nation have underfunded science education and research, with dollars declining under Clinton and Obama. 

Our fault, not Trump's.

Infrastructure was collapsing and underfunded before him.

Public health funding was nearly non-existent before, with, just as an example, in our schools: used to be one nurse for each school, now each school nurse has to take care of the health of children in, on average, 4 schools.

One of the problems with blaming Trump for everything is that we fail to see, take responsibility for and correct, many of the things that he has become the poster boy for. Unreason was no stranger to American politics before Trump. Partisanship was already insane under Obama--remember his last Supreme Court nominee and that fiasco? 

Lots of the problems related to income inequality, inadequate safety nets for the less-than-affluent, banking perfidy, social security deductions stopping at a crazy low point (causing underfunding of that safety net. Then that underfunding used as proof that social security doesn't work, and calls for eliminating it). 

Our fault, not Trump's.

I could go on, but you can fill in as many as I can, now you're thinking about it. And keeping this in mind, I hope. It is so easy when the avatar of all our woes is so perfect for the job.

While he may do a good job of exemplifying lots of the bad stuff happening now, in a way, that is his job. Why he is supported. He is a side-show who became a star precisely because he is so useful to the anti-democratic agenda. He stands there pontificating unintelligibly in his flying yellow hair, and how can we resist castigating and blaming him.

But that is his job.  

Our job is not to be distracted by his posturing. 

For example, in Sacramento not one single bill that would have reformed the police even came to the floor of the legislature in its last session. This in spite of the fact that, in Los Angeles alone, 6 more black men were killed by police, since George Floyd's death at the end of May.

Was that Trump's fault?

No. it is the fault of our ELECTED representatives, beholden to the police unions who donate so much to their campaigns. 

Not Trump's fault. 

Not Trump's fault. Our fault. As is the Trump presidency itself. 

SHERE HITE

SHERE HITE DIED WEDNESDAY

She was only 77. 

I realize this puts me smack in geezerdom to say that's young, but really!

For you youngsters, she authored the THE HITE REPORT: A NATIONWIDE STUDY OF FEMALE SEXUALITY, published in 1976.

I belonged to the NOW Chapter in Manhattan where the project was hatched, and was among the several thousand women who filled out the questionnaires that were the basis of the report. In fact it may even have been at one of my meetings that she got the idea in the first place. Remember, this was a time of Consciousness Raising Groups, and other forays into an independent sexual understanding for women. Do I need to make a glossary for this post?

THE HITE REPORT was an immediate bestseller, over 48 million sold worldwide. After all, it was the first book that told women that they were all right, and that they ought to have at least a 50% say in how lovemaking was accomplished. This was at a time when scholarly psychological works questioned if women could really consider themselves real women if they didn't have the much-revered vaginal orgasm.

It also exposed the author to hatred, vitriol, death threats, and worse. She fled the US, giving up her citizenship, to live in Europe, where her scholarship was taken more seriously. 

The REPORT was more than revolutionary. It revealed that "Over 70% percent of women responding," as Erica Jong (FEAR OF FLYING, 1973) said in a review of it, "didn't have an orgasm by male penetration alone."  The upended expectations, which liberated women to ask for and get, even outside a heterosexual relationship--shocking!--the clitoral stimulation most find necessary, enraged men.

Think of all the faking. How could that be tolerated? Admitted to? The frail male ego was simply not sturdy enough for the truth.

 She concluded, in part,  "Most of of the respondents to the questionnaires thought that the sexual revolution was a myth. It had left them free to say yes but not to say no." In other words, women of the sixties and beyond could have many partners as men, but the so-called sexual revolution did little to change the male-centric dynamic in bed. 

Her next book, also extensively researched and based on questionaires filled out by over 7000 men between the ages of 19 and 97, was another screaming outrage. THE HITE REPORT ON MALE SEXUALITY, 1981, revealed that repressed anger and infidelity were common in US marriages. That men had fears of their sexual adequacy.

In the #METOO age, that about men is not so surprising, but then the hypocrisy was accepted as truth. By and large, the men who demanded fidelity were thought to owe it too.

Years later, I interviewed Ms. Hite on my radio show, and her husband, (I'm not sure if it was Friedrich Horicke, the German pianist) came along. When the conversation turned to the horrors of the attacks against her, he added, "You can't imagine anything like it. She is getting death threats and accosted in the street just for telling the truth." 

MY NEW ENTERTAINMENT

Do you realize how many shoes Nordstrom has on its website? From every price range and style. So my new pandemic entertainment is:

I go to Nordstom.com

Select Women

Shoes

Sandals Sale

And spend happy hours looking at shoes (I never get to the end)

I pick out one or two...

And it brought me these!!!!!