Vacation

I was in Florida visiting friends last week. Why, you might ask, would someone who lives in a place where it's 75 degrees and sunny in March go to Florida? I guess the answer is that escaping from bad weather isn't the only reason to get away. The friends in Florida are really good ones, and I love being with them. I even managed to pick up one check while I was there; it was a small one and I have a sneaking suspicion that I might have been allowed to grab it for just that reason, but still...

The trip was replenishing and good for both my ego and my perspective. The temp there was the same as the temp here, but the feeling was utterly different. I don't like humidity one bit, but ocean breezes and the sound of the surf go a long way toward making up for the dampness in the air. It's also fun to be in a place where someone who is 53 years old is routinely considered a kid. While swimming laps in the gorgeous pool at my friends' condo, I found myself easily lapping a man swimming with flippers and a snorkel mask. I felt quite vigorous as I completed three lengths for his every one. (Actually, he was going so slowly that I'm not exactly sure why he didn't sink altogether. I doubt he burned a single calorie per lap. But he was in the pool when I got there, when I finished my laps and when we went back upstairs, so maybe he makes up in time for what he lacks in speed.)

My friends have some relatives nearby whom we visited in their beach house steps from the ocean on a cool, breezy afternoon. The relatives were warm and sharp and funny, and they reminded me of my parents' relatives, whom I rarely see. The visit was an unexpected pleasure and incredibly fun in a wonderfully benevolent and nostalgic familial sort of way.

And in the "there's no place like home" and "this really is now my home" categories, I've discovered that I now feel truly clean only when I'm in the desert. I've noted before that it's always weird to have to actually dry one's legs after a shower when in other climates; in the desert, by the time you've dried the rest of yourself, your legs are already dry. I know the dry air isn't for everyone, but it's most definitely for me. It has a purity that makes me feel as crisp and clean as a freshly laundered white shirt.

Opening Our Eyes

I have written before (here and here, e.g.) about how distressing and shocking I find it that many younger women appear to believe that we live in a postfeminist world. We most certainly do not, and this superb article from last weekend's New York Times Week in Review suggests persuasively that current events might have crystallized this reality for younger women who mistakenly thought otherwise.

It's fascinating to consider that what it's taken to accomplish this revolution in thought - if indeed such a revolution is occurring - was the introduction of the Eliot Spitzer mess, which is about not just sex trafficking but also the deeply sexist and evidently obligatory eyes-downcast stoicism of the betrayed political wife standing by her fallen husband, into the already boiling cauldron of "sulfurous emanations" about Hillary Clinton's candidacy, those being the criticisms that are based entirely on deeply rooted and widely tolerated gender bias.

The article quotes Katha Pollitt, who wrote:

"The hysterical insults flung at Hillary Clinton are just a franker, crazier version of the everyday insults - shrill, strident, angry, ranting, unattractive - that are flung at any vaguely liberal mildly feminist woman who shows a bit of spirit and independence, who puts herself out in the public realm, who doesn't fumble and look up coyly from underneath her hair and give her declarative sentences the cadence of a question."

Well said, Ms. Pollitt - and what a great paragraph!

The article also crystallized for me why, despite my admiration for Barack Obama, I continue to feel a deep pull to support Clinton. All the sexist crap we've seen in connection with this campaign, and - not insignificantly - the media's amused tolerance of that crap, make me certain that this decision is about more than whom one would choose for president on policy grounds in a perfect world. The media is a powerful tool for creating cultural reality, but it also reflects the prevailing winds of that reality. For me, the fact that the media and a sizable chunk of the populace remain either blind to, or willing to tolerate, misogyny and gender stereotyping demands action.

Regardless of which Democrat wins the nomination, I hope with all my heart that the article is right in suggesting that younger women are getting radicalized by the reception to Hillary Clinton's campaign. We will not live in a postfeminist society - let alone one characterized by equal opportunity - until they do.

A Rose is a Rose is a Rose

The flap over Geraldine Ferraro's comments about Barack Obama has me mystified. Why is it inappropriate to say that he wouldn't be in the position he's in were he not a black man? It's actually rather wonderful that his race has offered him this opportunity after the disgraceful history in the United States of people being denied opportunities by virtue of race. Are we now not allowed to state either opinion or fact if the statement will hint that race is an issue? Is there anyone who sincerely thinks race is not an issue relative to opportunity?

This whole business of pretending we're all one happy family where race is concerned is political correctness taken to an absurd and dangerous extreme. Problems don't get solved when we sweep them under the rug and pretend they don't exist. And any disparity between what we say and what we do is at best wishful thinking and at worst a slimy lack of integrity. (Think about this week's other big news story: New York's crusading Mr. Clean toppled by an $80,000 involvement with hookers.)

Geraldine Ferraro included in her comments that she was on the 1984 ticket as VP because she was a woman, and she's right about that, too. Obama's comeback that her comments are "divisive" is ridiculous. There is undeniably a racial divide where opportunity is concerned in this country, and it wasn't created by Geraldine Ferraro. Much as he downplays his race, Obama is indeed benefiting from it - and that's a good thing. I don't know personally what it's like to be black in America, but I do know what it's like to be female, and I loved having Ferraro on the ticket in 1984, just as I love Clinton's run for the presidency this go-round. I think it says an incredibly positive thing about the United States that our two serious Democratic contenders are a black man and a woman. We need to build on that cultural progress, not let it get missed or ignored in a flurry of politically correct silence.

Mini-Blog

I'm fascinated by how differently men and women experience and are shaped by forces like ambition, brains, beauty, work, sex, love, marriage, etc. It's one of the central themes of my novel, and I'm consistently intrigued by how it's both reflected in - and prompted by - the media. There's no shortage of illustrative articles, and I collect and comment on the ones that strike me. If you enjoy reading my blog, check out the collection on my website for more fun, thought-provoking and frequently updated commentary - mine and others. You can get to my Relevant Articles page by clicking here or by clicking on the Commentary button that's on every page of my site.

Enough Already

I have a habit of reading headlines on CNN, Yahoo and AOL, but not clicking on the stories unless I'm really interested, which doesn't happen often. I'm not a news junkie, and most of the stories I do end up reading irritate or infuriate me for one reason or another. Sexism, obvious political bias or social agenda, poor grammar and diction - there are lots of reasons to dislike news stories. And I kind of like the impressions I form of what's going on by reading only headlines. It's like reading a poem; a great deal of what I get out of it has to do with my own personal filters, perspectives and ideas, as opposed to what some spin-meister is trying to shove down my throat.

So when I read a headline along the lines of "Is Angelina Jolie addicted to motherhood?" I marveled as I have before over how determined the media is to define women negatively or, at best, restrictively. And notwithstanding a cultural reverence for motherhood as a concept, newspapers, magazines, TV outlets and the like love to find fault with mothers. Not parents, but mothers. The headline did not read "Is Brad Pitt addicted to fatherhood?" now did it? And I seem to recall that the original Mrs. Pitt got slammed for not wanting to have kids. So I guess the deal is that no kids is not enough, but more than 4 raises questions about possible addiction.

How stupid. It's arbitrary and unwarranted to insist that women have to do any particular thing or make any particular choice. If Angelina Jolie wants to use her personal fortune to take care of a zillion kids, adopted and biological, why shouldn't she? There is no one right way to be a woman or a mother. Just like men, we are who we are. And no apologies or justifications are necessary.

I Don't Get It

OK, get ready for some complaining. I continue to be amazed by the relatively high traffic to my website and the relatively low number of requests for essays (excerpted on the site on pages that get a lot of hits), questions for the Q&A, and book purchases via the site. A marketing friend told me that people like interactivity and suggested I put up a short survey for people to click on and complete. So I did that. The survey has 7 questions; you could easily do it twice in less than 90 seconds. Hundreds of people have visited my site since I posted the survey link on it last week (in 3 places), and 8 people have taken the survey. My sincere thanks to those 8 and a respectful "What's up with you?" to the rest of my site visitors.

I don't consider this most recent attempt to understand my audience a complete waste of my time since I had fun creating the survey (Survey Monkey is great), but what the hell? Am I forced to conclude that I have the most passive website traffic ever? Is every site's traffic this passive? Are my hosting company's Site Hits Per Day and Page Hits counters cooking the books?

I'm feeling rather last-ditch-effort about all of this, so now I'm making a specific request. If you're a reader of my blog and you haven't yet taken the survey, click here and throw me a bone, would you? I'll be eternally grateful.

Paean

I had the kind of great day yesterday that one can only have in Las Vegas - certainly in February and maybe any time of the year. A Chicago friend of mine who is visiting family in San Diego decided to fly in to have lunch and spend the afternoon with me. She, like other Midwesterners, has been enduring an epic winter, so she was pretty happy to get to San Diego where, although rainy, it was 60 degrees. She was overjoyed to get here where it's 67 and brightly sunny.

I picked her up at the airport after her 1-hour flight over the very beautiful scenery between San Diego and Las Vegas. Getting in and out of McCarran Airport is unusually easy and convenient for a busy airport. Long-time locals will tell you it's terrible compared to how it once was, but they say that about the traffic too and, let me tell you, if they think the traffic here is a problem, they would think the traffic on the Kennedy in Chicago was other-worldly.

I had decided on lunch at the Bellagio because it's the most lovely, if not the most spectacular, of the Strip properties. ("Spectacular" is most definitely not a synonym for "lovely" where Las Vegas is concerned.) We had a fabulous lunch at a gorgeous restaurant overlooking the ridiculously named, but dazzling Lake Bellagio (yes, the one with the fountains and the music that you remember from the end of Ocean's Eleven). Eating in Las Vegas is a treat: there are countless superb restaurants. I've been eating here for three years now (and I have a lot of wonderful memories and, unfortunately, a few extra pounds to show for it), and I've barely scratched the surface. Dining in Chicago was great, too, but its restaurant scene lacks two of the best features of the restaurant scene out here. In Chicago, there was not a concentration of magnificent restaurants all located on one boulevard (with easy, free parking everywhere) within 20 minutes of my home, and nothing good is open 24/7. We don't crave great restaurant meals in the wee hours or on Easter very often, but it's a kick to know that, if we do, we're in business.

While my friend and I were waiting to be seated, we sat just outside the Bellagio and enjoyed the balmy weather, the mosaic tile floors, and each other's company. After lunch, we decided she couldn't spend an afternoon on the Strip without gambling a bit. At the Bellagio, high-falutin' establishment that it is, you can't play blackjack for a reasonable minimum bet without playing at a table with one of those monstrous auto-shufflers. I know suckers exist to be exploited, but come on - the game already favors the house without skewing the very mechanics of card delivery to further that advantage. So we retrieved the car from the valet and drove over to the Venetian, my favorite place to gamble on the Strip. There, we sat down with some very nice people and a dealer who remembered me (a phenomenon I'm not sure whether to be pleased or alarmed by), and I taught my friend to play blackjack. We only had half an hour to play before I needed to get her back to the airport and, obligingly, she got a couple blackjacks and drew to 21 a couple times in that short time. As we walked back to the car, she sounded just like a real player and I'm confident I've found (created?) a new gambling buddy.

Even at 4:45, the short drive to the airport was a breeze and so were my car trip back home and her flight back to San Diego. It was a perfect day. The weather here is undeniably a big draw, but it's only the tip of the enjoyment iceberg.

...The Harder They Fall

Why is it that once we've built someone up into a hero, we have to knock him down, preferably as quickly and sleazily as possible? I've written about this before in the context of the once luminous New England Patriots, and the phenomenon is raising its ugly head again in the context of Barack Obama. Even as the press continues to polish his halo, it's also starting to sour on him. I expect to see more and more articles like this one as he inches ever closer to the nomination.

Why does our cult of heroism carry within it the seeds of heroism's destruction? Are we so sure disappointment is inevitable that we seek to create it preemptively, so as to diminish its sting at least a little by asserting some measure of control? That's so perverse. If you believe, as I do, that a tremendous amount of what you get flows from what you give, and that you tend to see and experience what you expect to see and experience, then this assumption that nothing is as good as it seems creates far more disappointment than it forestalls.

Or maybe we're just perverse in general. In sharp contrast to the press turnaround on the once high-flying Pats and senator from Illinois, we have the surprising delicacy of the media coverage of Heath Ledger's death. Leaving aside the sexism inherent in this delicacy - can you imagine similar restraint had it been Britney Spears or Lindsay Lohan who overdosed? (If you can, read this story; it'll set you straight) - I was surprised by the respectful judiciousness. And I'll admit to some possibly perverse cynicism myself: when I read that the medical examiner had declared Ledger's overdose accidental, I wondered if there were now a way to poke around in brain tissue with a scalpel and reveal evidence of intent. Since I'm sure there is not, I'm left wondering why our inclination is to fit out our heroes with feet of clay as quickly as we can, but to erase those feet of clay, equally quickly, when someone beats our assumptions to the punch and falls on his own.

As Good as Fiction

I complain often (including here and here) about the stupidity of the scripts underlying movies and TV. Fabulously intelligent and scintillating writing rarely characterizes popular entertainment. This irritates me because, the success of certain dumb shows to the contrary notwithstanding, I don't think people are as stupid as most programming would indicate and it's offensive to be treated as if we are. I also think the more you expect of people, the more you get, and that it is not necessary to pander to some demeaning notion of the lowest common denominator.

The Wire is, in my opinion, in an extraordinary class by itself on TV, and for every snappy moment on an old Frasier or Will & Grace episode, there are hours of lame, idiotic and often sexist garbage. Or at least I assume there are, by virtue of the bad shows I've seen and the ads for others I TiVo through, which purport, I presume, horrible as they are, to be the best parts of the shows they're peddling. Similarly, movies are too often characterized more by explosions, scantily-clad women and unpleasant vocabulary choices than by scintillating writing.

Imagine my surprise, then, when I came across Stranger than Fiction, a beautifully and perfectly written movie. Who would have imagined that a movie starring Will Ferrell would be intelligent, poignant, gripping, thought-provoking and still vividly occupying my mind two days later? (It also stars Emma Thompson and Maggie Gyllenhaal, so there you go, but still...Will Ferrell??) The movie is about writing, which of course appeals to me, but it's also about what life should be compared to what it often is. And I challenge you to watch it without needing to bake cookies as soon as possible after you finish. It's a glorious movie, with amazing performances (including by the aforementioned WF), striking visuals, and a script that absolutely crackles with brains, humor, charm, and depth. See it immediately, if not sooner.

"Necessary to the Security of a Free State"

As I read about the horrific shooting at Northern Illinois University yesterday, which, I learned, was the fourth school shooting in the last two weeks, I wondered what it will take to prompt local, state and federal governments to disarm people in the U.S. How can anyone argue that school shootings are merely a tragic byproduct of any legitimate right when someone opens fire in a college lecture hall or a 14-year-old shoots a 15-year-old to death in a California school? The ready availability of guns to any adult or child who wants one is terrifying - for the obvious reasons and also because it creates a detachment between killer and victim that I suspect makes killing easier. Knives, fists, blunt instruments, ropes and the like require a close proximity and a strength (intentional as well as physical) that must make it more difficult for even the murderous to kill.

I'm all for personal freedom, but in a society personal freedom has to be balanced with public policy concerns. We already tolerate lots of fetters on our personal freedoms. Many of them - like laws prohibiting suicide or those requiring the use of seat belts or motorcycle helmets - offer relatively attenuated benefits to society as a whole. Gun control seems far more important as a public policy matter and it would offer far more direct societal benefits. Conversely, it's impossible to articulate any benefit stemming from the right to bear arms that is compelling enough to outweigh that right's tragic and escalating consequences.