The Ultimate Indignity

Apparently, it’s the ultimate indignity.

A woman wrote to Carolyn Hax at the Washington Post with this problem:

I was at a wedding recently where family members kept coming up to me and asking me why I wasn’t married and if I had a boyfriend. I’m a 34-year-old single woman and these relatives hadn’t seen me in a few years. I was really uncomfortable with the incessant questioning.

What is a good response when people ask intrusive questions regarding your relationship status? I am really still angry at how rude and insensitive the relatives were and I don’t really plan to go to another family wedding because of this. Am I being too sensitive/overreacting? I see no excuse — I have never gone up to a married couple and asked them why they didn’t have children or something similar, so I don’t see how this behavior is excusable and why I should have to put up with it.

Here, a number of this woman’s relations, people she never sees outside of weddings, ask her why she is attending the event unaccompanied.

The woman in question believes that the questions are intrusive. She is so angry and offended that she plans to boycott all future family weddings.

After suggesting that she might be overreacting, she asks how best to deal with these questions, or better, whether she has to put up with this insulting questioning.

As might be expected, no one has the nerve to tell her that she might be overreacting. Her relatives are not intending to pry. They are expressing concern about her singlehood and would prefer to hear some good news about her. To their minds that means hearing that she has a boyfriend, or a reasonable facsimile.

Within a certain culture a woman’s being single is a sign of independence and autonomy, something to be celebrated. Within most cultures it elicits expressions of concern.

The letter writer believes that these relatives are intruding into her private life, but, alas, marital status is not a private matter. If they were asking about her latest hookups, the question would be intrusive, but, as is, they are well-intentioned. At the least, they see themselves as well-meaning.

One hates to mention it, but these relatives—I suspect that they are female relatives—are asking these questions at a wedding. At a wedding one’s thoughts often fly ahead to the next wedding. It is not abnormal or insulting.

Before the point gets lost, I venture that not a one of the intrusive relatives is a male. If the questioners are invariably female relatives, it tells us that women are intrinsically more worried about a 34 year old woman who is alone.  

Otherwise, it says that men are intrinsically more polite… but you don’t want to go there.

The women who ask the question might be telling their single relative that she is so wonderful that they do not understand why she is not married. They might, for all we know, be giving her a vote of confidence.

It’s not as though everyone is telling her that she needs to lose weight or to get a better haircut.

In any event, Carolyn Hax—and anyone who has an ounce of empathy-- does not believe that she should put up with such questions. Hax adds that the woman should also not avoid future weddings.

One must note in passing that if the letter writer is spending that much time attending weddings, she must belong to a large and very fertile family.

Hax replies:

It isn’t excusable and you shouldn’t put up with it, but I hope you won’t keep yourself from occasions you might otherwise enjoy because of it. These people exist whether you stay home or not; think carefully before you hand them any controls over your life.

Believing as she does that the woman would feel better if she were armed with a witty retort, Hax offers a few:

The truth gives you a range of options when you’re faced with intrusive questions. Take advantage of that from now on whenever people start prying: “You’re the 14th person to ask me that today,” for example, is an important non-answer that gives people a glimpse of the cumulative effect of what they assume is a cute or innocent query. An incredulous, “People still ask that?” gets to the truth of how dated this whole line of questioning is. “I was quizzed so mercilessly on my romantic life at the last wedding that I almost didn’t come to this one” is another truth in need of airing. Then there’s always the Miss Manners staple, “Why do you ask?”

These are all clever quips, but they risk insulting someone who did not intend to be rude, or better, who was offering what passes for polite conversation in her own world.

Keep in mind, these are family members, and family members do have a vested interest in the well-being, to say nothing of the marital status of other family members.

We do better to ask why the letter writer finds herself tongue-tied when faced with these inquiries. She knows, as others do not seem to, that her relations wish the best for her and that, if she offers a clever quip as a comeback, she might offend them.

Clever quips should offer someone who has inadvertently offended a way to see that she is being offensive. If the quip makes the letter writer look offensive, her relatives might come away believing that they now understand why she is single: she has a sharp tongue and is excessively thin-skinned.

Hax’s quips-- even Miss Manners’—risk making the letter writer look churlish.

So, the letter writer finds the questions embarrassing but does not want to offend her relatives.

She needs a comeback that does not make her look bad and that does not make her concerned relatives feel offended for something that they will never believe is offensive.

Here are some slightly more subtle and ironic candidates:

“It’s always a joy to see you.”

“Thank you for your concern.”

“When there’s news, you’ll be the first to know… but it won’t be in the near future.”

“Don’t worry, when I get married, you will definitely be invited… but it won’t be in the near future.”

When You've Lost the New York Times...

As is well known by now, Obamacare is a massive redistribution scheme, taking from the middle class and giving to the poor.

Apparently, many members of the middle class, to say nothing of their Congressional representatives, did not know that they were going to be paying for what they voted for.

Now, across America, many people who had their insurance plans canceled cannot afford the new plans that are being offered on the exchanges.

It depends on where the subsidies end. Those who earn too much to receive a government subsidy face a choice between going broke paying for insurance or going without it. Apparently, the administration wants insurance companies to offer new “catastrophic plans” but the jury is still out about how that is going to happen and what that will do to Obamacare.

Some optimistic commentators have suggested that Obamacare is disintegrating before our very eyes, and that would be a good thing indeed. Yet, each time the administration tries to rejigger the program by intervening yet again in a market (the insurance market) that it does not understand, it makes a bigger mess.

Yesterday, the New York Times ran an excellent—that means, objective and informative—story about the people who did not qualify for subsidies. As noted her before, the Times—to my surprise—has done some great reporting on the Obamcare crash. Credit where credit is due.

We know that the mainstream media has been running interference for Barack Obama from the beginning. Now that his administration’s failure is too big to cover up, the president has found himself adrift. Having lost the New York Times, he is lost.

Here’s an excerpt from yesterday’s story:

The Chapmans acknowledge that they are better off than many people, but they represent a little-understood reality of the Affordable Care Act. While the act clearly benefits those at the low end of the income scale — and rich people can continue to afford even the most generous plans — people like the Chapmans are caught in the uncomfortable middle: not poor enough for help, but not rich enough to be indifferent to cost.

“We are just right over that line,” said Ms. Chapman, who is 54 and does administrative work for a small wealth management firm. Because their plan is being canceled, she is looking for new coverage for her family, which includes Mr. Chapman, 55, a retired fireman who works on a friend’s farm, and her two sons. “That’s an insane amount of money,” she said of their new premium. “How are you supposed to pay that?”

An analysis by The New York Times shows the cost of premiums for people who just miss qualifying for subsidies varies widely across the country and rises rapidly for people in their 50s and 60s. In some places, prices can quickly approach 20 percent of a person’s income.

Experts consider health insurance unaffordable once it exceeds 10 percent of annual income. By that measure, a 50-year-old making $50,000 a year, or just above the qualifying limit for assistance, would find the cheapest available plan to be unaffordable in more than 170 counties around the country, ranging from Anchorage to Jackson, Miss.

A 60-year-old living in Polk County, in northwestern Wisconsin, and earning $50,000 a year, for example, would have to spend more than 19 percent of his income, or $9,801 annually, to buy one of the cheapest plans available there. A person earning $45,000 would qualify for subsidies and would pay about 5 percent of his income, or $2,228, for an inexpensive plan.

In Oklahoma City, a 60-year-old earning $50,000 could buy one of the cheapest plans for about 6.6 percent of his income, or about $3,279 a year with no subsidy. If he earned $45,000, with the benefit of a subsidy, he would spend about $2,425.

The FiscalTimes adds another salient fact. The more people are spending for health insurance the less they will be spending on discretionary items:

If even a fraction of the middle class and upper middle income earners divert some of their discretionary dollars to pay for health care, it will have a significant impact on consumer spending.  What will that mean for the economy? Consumer spending accounts for about 70 percent of the nation’s GDP, although experts say that number is likely to decline.

The top 20 percent of income earners account for about 40 percent of all spending in the U.S.  When you increase the costs of health care and the new taxes associated with Obamacare, you can hear the wallets closing. 

Hating Hate Speech

The controversy—if we may call it that—over Phil Robertson’s views on homosexuality has drawn attention to the workings of the marketplace of ideas.

In particular, everyone is now debating what it is and is not permissible speech, in polite conversation and in public.

Most people agree that the Robertson family does not have a constitutional right to have a television show. The A & E network does have a right to suspend one of the show’s cast members.

And yet, the issue does not really seem to be about whether or not Congress may make a law abridging freedom of speech. It’s not about government intruding in the marketplace but about special interest groups shutting down certain ideas by shunning those who articulate them. Or better, by attacking those who advertise on such shows.

Many gays have no problem with the Duck Dynasty having a television show or with Phil Robertson being on it. Camille Paglia has denounced the effort to repress speech and Andrew Sullivan does not believe that the patriarch of the “dynasty” should be suspended for speaking in character.

For his part Sullivan preferred to engage a debate over what he called “fundamentalist” views of homosexuality. Which is the right way to do it.

His discussion would have been more persuasive if he had not said this:

This is a fascinating glimpse into the fundamentalist mind. You’ll notice that, for the fundamentalist, all sin – when it comes down to it -  starts with sex. This sexual obsession, as the Pope has rightly diagnosed it, is a mark of neurotic fundamentalism in Islam and Judaism as well as Christianity. And if all sin is rooted in sex, then the homosexual becomes the most depraved and evil individual in the cosmos. So you get this classic statement about sin: “Start with homosexual behavior and just morph out from there.”

In truth, the notion that original sin, as theologians call it, has something to do with sexual lust dates to Saint Augustine. You do not get too much more mainstream than Augustine. One is shocked to discover that Sullivan does not know this.

Obviously, the Bishop of Hippo was not referring to homosexuality, per se. He was referring to all non-procreative sexual activities.

It is true that homosexuality is called an “abomination” in the book of Leviticus, but that book also says that adulterers should be stoned to death.

In today's Judeo-Christian  world even those who disapprove of homosexuality do not believe that anyone should be persecuted or punished for it. Many of the same people disapprove of adultery but they do not believe that adulterers should be stoned to death. Yet, in some modern religions that homosexuality is taken to be a capital crime and adulterer are stoned to death. It would be good for an astute observer like Sullivan to make these basic distinctions.

One has serious doubts about whether, for anyone outside of certain not-to-be-named cultures, “the homosexual becomes the most depraved and evil individual in the cosmos.” Flights of rhetorical hyperbole do not an argument make.

Were we to consult with Dante and ask who occupies the lowest circle of Hell—surely such people would be good candidates for being the most depraved and evil individuals in the cosmos—the answer is, as you know, Judas, Brutus and Cassius… those who betrayed God and Caesar.

Clearly, homosexuals have been persecuted and brutalized for their sexual orientation, but the worst eliminationist rhetoric and genocidal manias have been directed against, for example, Jews and Armenians. And let’s not forget the abomination of slavery.

Besides, reason requires that we distinguish between what Phil Robertson said and hanging a gay man in public in downtown Tehran.

One understands that, for Sullivan, not being allowed to marry the person you love is an unspeakable act of persecution, but I cannot bring myself to equate that indignity to crematory ovens or enslavement.

For most of human history the vast majority of human beings were not really allowed to marry the person they loved. It is only recently that marriage became associated with love, but to call the marital institution a universal expression of romantic love is to profess complete ignorance of the practice of marriage.

Unfortunately, those who want to shut down all hate speech do not make the distinction. They believe that some language is so vile, so hurtful and so injurious that the government must regulate it. They believe that the government should regulate the hate speech that involves affixing demeaning labels to groups of people.

One is forced to know that these same people believe that all markets should be strictly regulated.

Peter Berkowitz summarizes Professor Jeremy Waldron's analysis:

A professor at New York University School of Law, and the Chichele Professor of Social and Political Theory at All Souls College, University of Oxford, Waldron believes that American professors of constitutional law often fail to grasp the seriousness of the harms caused by hate speech and the justification, consistent with the requirements of a free society, for barring it. Waldron is at his best in examining the pain, the humiliation, and the obstacles to the full enjoyment of the rights and pleasures of citizenship arising from speech that targets a group and ascribes to all members wicked or monstrous qualities. But typifying much progressive thought, Waldron overlooks the critical question of the competence of legislators, executive branch officials, and judges to police the content of speech while preserving liberty of thought and discussion.

While Waldron understands the harm that hate speech can inflict, he fails to address the question of what does and does not count as hate speech. And, he does not explain who is to decide what does or does not fall within the category.

Berkowitz continues:

Waldron …  is not in favor of restricting speech that merely causes offense. "The issue is publication and the harm done to individuals and groups through the disfiguring of our social environment by visible, public, and semi-permanent announcements to the effect that in the opinion of one group in the community, perhaps the majority, members of another group are not worthy of equal citizenship." It does not seem to occur to Waldron that authorizing the government to determine what counts as the "disfiguring of our social environment" effectively gives the state limitless power to endorse speech it likes and suppress speech it dislikes.

Berkowitz is correct here. I am not sure what Waldren means by “disfiguring our social environment.” I don’t believe that the social environment would have standing to bring a suit or to prosecute anyone. In truth, its about attacking and trying to disfigure certain groups of people. Are the aggrieved parties to decide what has or has not abridged their rights? Does GLAAD speak for all homosexuals? Should the question be decided with class action suits? If so, how much of the determination will be based on personal sensitivity.

One person many might be grievously harmed by words that another might easily laugh off.

The difficulty, as I see it lies, in taking laws that have been written to protect individuals and applying them to groups. In particular, to groups that might not even call themselves groups.

When Phil Robertson lumped together adultery and bestiality, should he have been attacked by an adultery advocacy grouip for having defamed them and prevented them from enjoying their constitutional rights?

If we accept that certain derisive slurs are hurtful, is it also hateful to describe, as Robertson did, certain sexual activities with non-vulgar and non-obscene terms?

If Robertson’s language constitutes a firing offense because it damages the reputations of certain groups of people, should those who have been attacking his reputation be sued for defaming his reputation?

"First, Kill All the Marriage Counselors"

Laura Doyle’s new book will be entitled: First, Kill All the Marriage Counselors.

The title lacks originality, but it makes her point clearly and effectively. Long time readers of this blog know that I too have warned people off of marriage counseling… here, here, here and here.

A relationship coach herself, Doyle learned the hard way why not to go into marriage counseling.

At some point in the distant past Doyle’s marriage was in trouble. By her account, she had gotten into the habit of belittling and criticizing her husband. When he failed to respond properly to her efforts to debase him, she decided that he needed to change. The best way to affect that change, she believed, was to go to marriage counseling.

You might ask yourself where she learned that the right way to treat a husband, or anyone, for that matter, was to belittle and criticize him. Is there something in the culture?

Doyle explained herself in The Daily Mail:

It was six years before John and I opted for marriage guidance. By then we rowed frequently and I was oblivious to the damage my constant belittling was doing. John spent so much time watching telly, he’d rather watch a repeat than make love….

I’d been on at him to ‘change’ — the classic wife’s mistake — and mentioned therapy as a way to do it.

What happened in marriage therapy? Let Doyle describe her experience:

For more than two years we traded weekly insults, with the counsellor often on my side.

She did nothing to disabuse me of my belief it was his job to make me happy, not mine. In front of her, I told John he had ‘no spine’ and that there was something wrong with him.

It was at her behest that I persuaded him to be tested for attention deficiency disorder — thinking there must be some medical reason for his shortcomings. Quite how John didn’t run for the hills I’ll never know.

Rather than encouraging me to see all the brilliant things about my husband — why I fell in love with him in the first place — the counsellor merely highlighted the bad.

Doyle was wrecking her marriage by talking down to her husband. Her credentialed therapist took her side. The therapist agreed that her husband was a sorry excuse for a person and supported Doyle’s attacks. Under the cover of “therapy” Doyle found herself empowered to insult and attack her husband with impunity.

Evidently, marriage counseling did not help her marriage. It inflicted further harm.

Doyle continues:

Even then I failed to recognise the major contributing factor to my marital strife: marriage counselling. But as I spoke to more and more women who’d had similar experiences, there was no hiding from it.

One woman was told by her counsellor: ‘Don’t you see, your marriage is dead?’ Her husband wanted to work at it, but she listened to the ‘advice’ and sought a divorce — which she now deeply regrets.

In another case it was only when her husband accepted the therapist’s proddings and said they should part that the wife realised it wasn’t what she wanted. By then it was too late.

No one should ever call this science. It is ideological indoctrination.

Eventually, Doyle started asking herself how her negative attitude might be contributing to her problems. She saw herself and other women vacillating between demeaning their husbands and acting the victim. When they do not get their husbands to follow their orders, they retreat into the role of martyr. It’s an alternate mode of manipulation.

In Doyle’s words:

Wives mostly swing between disrespecting their husband and playing the martyr. Marriage counselling re-enforces this, but I do the opposite by suggesting women rein in their negativity.

Essentially husbands just want to please their wives, but at times feel it’s hopeless.

Eventually, Doyle quit therapy and decided to seek out some real advice. She decided to listen to voices of experience, not voices of politically correct therapists. She asked women who had been in long, happy marriages for advice. She was so desperate that she took the advice.

She writes:

I was willing to try anything to save my marriage so I started to bite my tongue. The next time John asked: ‘What shall I wear?’ I got a perverse pleasure from his confusion when I replied: ‘Whatever you think, darling, you have good taste.’

Gradually the dynamic began to change; friends said: ‘What’s happened to John? He looks different.’ I noticed that he stood straighter and when I came in from work he got up from the sofa and smiled: he was happy to see me.

OMFG … who knew it was so easy?

The Civil and the Profane

Just what we needed, a history of swear words. The category comprises curses, profanity, obscenity and even blasphemy.

Be that as it may, Melissa Mohr has written a book that, by all accounts is a valuable contribution to the history of swearing.

Among her intriguing conclusions: polite society used to be defined by its rejection of profanity involving bodily functions like fornication and excretion. Being a public person meant keeping your private matters to yourself. Today, polite society is nonchalant about profanity but it is militantly opposed to derogatory references to race, gender, ethnicity and certain kinds of sexual behavior.

Joseph Bottum summarizes this aspect of Mohr’s argument:

In her account, the sex-based swear words so reviled by the Victorians have become almost commonplace: No real stigma attaches to their use these days, although certain classes may still feel a little antiquated frisson when they write or say them. The real swear words of our time, she notes, are race- and gender-based epithets, which polite society has banned—words that, indeed, almost define polite society by their absence.

It isn’t just profane terms that were proscribed, but often more technical references to private matters were also frowned upon. Saying “shit” at the dinner table was vulgar, but people did not sit around talking about fecal matter either.

Obviously, using polite language was a sign of status. When you use the more profane words you are lowering your status. When someone curses you out or insults you profane language, he is trying to diminish you. It seems to be a way to compete for status.

Of course, the difference between public and private reflects the division between the sacred and the profane. 

Since polite society is defined as a place where social harmony prevails, certain rules must be observed. The purpose is not to fight, or even to compete over the dinner table, but to socialize, to get along.

Trying to gain an advantage at someone else’s expense, by injuring him does not contribute to this goal. Using language that shows you to be out of place socially produces general discomfort.

On the other hand, some people prefer not to be part of polite society. They believe it to be phony. They sprinkle obscenities throughout their speech in order to designate themselves as proud members of a different social stratum.

But, what does it mean to swear?

For one, Colin Burrow points out, swearing can also involve taking an oath, giving your word or making a promise.

Importantly, when you swear an oath or give your word you are engaging in an action. Swearing commits you to doing something, or even not doing something. Whatever you meant when you swore the oath, your words bind you to do something.

The same applies to the effort to pin derogatory labels on people. 

Burrow explains:

 Swearing is an action, and one that can hurt, harm, engage and enrage, as Homer and Aristophanes and Chaucer and Shaw knew. When a swear word is used casually as an intensifier it can carry a residuum of the pain and shock that it is capable of inflicting in other circumstances. That transfer of shock is part of what we do when we swear, whether we want to or not.

This makes obscenity a subspecies of what J. L. Austin called doing things with words. If a minister pronounces a couple husband and wife, he is doing something. If the Queen of England christens a ship she is doing something.

When you give your word, it is assumed that you will honor your commitment, that you will be there when you said you would be there. Your oath will cause other people to take certain actions themselves because they know that your words and your actions will coincide

Similarly, when you curse someone you are doing something to him, much as when a witch casts a spell or a god curses a Greek hero.

You might consider witchcraft to be mumbo jumbo, but you certainly believe that certain derogatory terms hurt other people.

Sometimes a curse is intended to inflict pain; at times, people use a word that would be acceptable in some places but not in others. Some people have think enough skin to ignore a curse. Others have such thin skin that they become traumatized.

Philosophically, when you do something with words, the doing supersedes the meaning.

It is easiest to understand in terms of curses, but the true prototype is the proper name. If we are to believe Saul Kripke, proper names designate unique objects. By extension, they do not served to convey a meaning.

The Chinese words Hong Kong mean: fragrant harbor. And yet, once they become the proper name of a place they will continue to be used regardless how fragrant or how rancid the harbor smells. The clearest indication of the way proper names are used is the fact that they are not translated from one language into another. No matter what language you speak, Hong Kong is Hong Kong. No English speaking person ever says that he is travelling to Fragrant Harbor.

In much the same way, many people use a word like “fuck” in a way that removes its normal meaning. When someone says “what the fuck” he is not referring to fornication. And when someone says, “Oh, shit” he is not referring to excrement.

In both cases the use of profane expletives is an attempt to articulate a deeply felt and authentic emotion.

Of course, when you pepper your discourse with “oh, shit” you are also reducing your social status. People who make a  public spectacle of their private emotions lose respect.

The exception lies in certain worlds where using such expletives signal coolness or extreme youth.

Will Julia Marry Pajama Boy?

Did you ever wonder why Julia is alone? Did you ever ponder why the poster girl for the Obama re-election campaign spent her life without a man?

Well, the Obama communications team has the answer. It’s called Pajama Boy. It’s an effort to nudge young people to have a conversation about health care… that means, why they are all refusing to sign up for Obamacare.

If you were Julia and had to choose between going through life without a man and marrying Pajama Boy, what would you do?

Some of us believe that the Democratic Party and the purveyors of political correctness bear a certain animus against men. Just the other day I posted some remarks by Camille Paglia about the topic. Apparently, in the feminist mind men are best when they are infantilized, sitting around their mothers’ houses, sipping cocoa, dressed in flannel jammies.

Of course, no feminist in her right mind would marry such a creature, but his existence will sustain her belief that she is correct not to get married.

By now the internet is overrun with parodies of the Pajama Boy. Here is a link to a few of them.

If, perchance, you want to know more about Julia, columnist J. Pepper Bryars has just brought out a book length treatment: A Forgotten Man(The Life of Julia.)

Did the New Deal Prolong the Great Depression?

Over the decades most people have come to believe that the Great Depression contains a number of lessons. They believe that Franklin Roosevelt’s New Deal saved the nation and saved capitalism. They also believe that, absent government regulation, free enterprise cannot be trusted.

In many precincts these are articles of faith. FDR continues to enjoy a reputation as one of the greatest of American presidents, by Democrats and Republicans alike.

Over the years serious economic historians have disputed the conventional wisdom, but the last time America faced an economic crisis it chose, by electing Barack Obama, to follow New Deal policies.

Two UCLA economists have recently published a report showing not only that the New Deal did not get us out of the Depression. It made the Depression worse.

The UCLA Newsroom summarized the results:

After scrutinizing Roosevelt's record for four years, Harold L. Cole and Lee E. Ohanian conclude in a new study that New Deal policies signed into law 71 years ago thwarted economic recovery for seven long years.

"Why the Great Depression lasted so long has always been a great mystery, and because we never really knew the reason, we have always worried whether we would have another 10- to 15-year economic slump," said Ohanian, vice chair of UCLA's Department of Economics. "We found that a relapse isn't likely unless lawmakers gum up a recovery with ill-conceived stimulus policies."

In an article in the August issue of the Journal of Political Economy, Ohanian and Cole blame specific anti-competition and pro-labor measures that Roosevelt promoted and signed into law June 16, 1933.

"President Roosevelt believed that excessive competition was responsible for the Depression by reducing prices and wages, and by extension reducing employment and demand for goods and services," said Cole, also a UCLA professor of economics. "So he came up with a recovery package that would be unimaginable today, allowing businesses in every industry to collude without the threat of antitrust prosecution and workers to demand salaries about 25 percent above where they ought to have been, given market forces. The economy was poised for a beautiful recovery, but that recovery was stalled by these misguided policies."

Cole concludes:

"The fact that the Depression dragged on for years convinced generations of economists and policy-makers that capitalism could not be trusted to recover from depressions and that significant government intervention was required to achieve good outcomes," Cole said. "Ironically, our work shows that the recovery would have been very rapid had the government not intervened."