EVER SINCE SHE was 18 years old and a freshman at Yale, Joyce Maynard has made a career out of writing about herself, earning both applause and intense derision. Jonathan Yardley of The Washington Post once stated that, encountering Maynard’s work, “you may . . . find yourself struggling to comprehend self-infatuation so vast and reckless that the victim cannot imagine a detail of her life so minute or trivial as to be of no interest to everyone else on this planet.”

In 1972, Maynard debuted as an autobiographical writer with her essay, “An Eighteen-Year-Old Looks Back on Life,” which appeared in The New York Times Sunday magazine and was instantly hailed as an important statement from the baby boomer generation. The piece did contain witty and perceptive insights, and was indeed reflective of its generation, especially in its probing of the personal for larger meaning. Many were charmed by her precocity, a mirror image of the girlishness Maynard possesses as she now approaches old age.

After dropping out of Yale, Maynard wrote her first memoir and had an affair with the writer, J.D. Salinger, a subject she would later publicly explore to more applause and derision. (more…)

THE CATARACT OF LODORE

                            — Robert Southey

“How does the water
Come down at Lodore?”
My little boy asked me
Thus, once on a time;
And moreover he tasked me
To tell him in rhyme.
Anon, at the word,
There first came one daughter,
And then came another,
To second and third
The request of their brother,
And to hear how the water
Comes down at Lodore,
With its rush and its roar,
As many a time
They had seen it before.
(more…)

DAN writes:

In Iran, a Christian pastor, Yousef Nadarkhani, is awaiting execution for the crime of leaving Islam and embracing Christianity (though the Iranians are trying to cover their backs by backing away from the apostasy charges, and instead fabricating charges that Yousef Nadarkhani committed rape, extortion, and spied for Israel). (more…)

SEX DISCRIMINATION suits are never filed against small companies. Employees and the government target companies with deep pockets that can pay substantial awards. Walmart was not the object of one of the largest class-action sex discrimination suits for no reason.

This is important to bear in mind when looking at a recent suit, filed by the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC), against New Prime Trucking, Inc. New Prime, headquartered in Springfield, Mo., is one of the nation’s largest refrigerated, flatbed and tanker carriers. It employs over 2,000 people and, due to this success, was almost certain to come under intense scrutiny. (more…)

  AT VFR, Lawrence Auster writes in response to the idea that Amanda Knox deserves no sympathy because of her decadent life before the murder of Meredith Kercher: It's amazing. We live in a sexually liberated Western society, where sexual promiscuity is common, ubiquitous, and taken for granted, and then we suddenly believe that a girl must be guilty of murder, or at least that she deserves no sympathy as a murder defendant, because she is promiscuous. This is a classic example of projection and scapegoating, of society, or at least the society of Italy and the society of Britain, projecting all its sins upon one individual ("Foxy Knoxy," the "She-devil") who conveniently seems to embody those sins, and so falsely imagining itself innocent of those very sins.

TEXANNE writes:

While parents trying to protect the innocence of children are rebuked for “manipulative use” of a photo in an ad that claims sexual teaching “corrupts” children, homosexual organizations deploy this sort of advertising for entirely different purposes.

The ad that, according to the National Post, “exceeded the bounds of civil discourse” by “manipulative use of a picture of a young girl” could easily have been created by using the templates provided by Marshall Kirk and Hunter Madsen in their book After the Ball, How America Will Conquer its Fear and Hatred of Gays in the 90s:  (more…)

  AT Tradition in Action, Hugh O'Reilly writes about medieval dress in "A World of Brilliant Colors." He writes: It is hard to imagine such a riot of color in the modern world, unless it is in processions - still seen in England - on the occasion of the marriage of a prince or the coronation of a king, or in certain religious ceremonies that take place in the Vatican. But in the Middle Ages it was not only ceremonial robes that were richly colored. Simple peasants also dressed in bright colors, reds, yellows and blues. The Middle Ages seem to have had a horror of dark shades and everything that has come down to us - frescoes, miniatures, tapestries and stained glass windows - bear witness to this richness of color, which was so characteristic of the period.

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ZACH COCHRAN writes:

Your post about the drive through Camden, New Jersey brought back a flood of memories.

I was a missionary for the Latter Day Saints church in Camden in 1996. My emotions about that city run deep. I only lived there for four months, but the depth of that experience made the memories indelible. The tragedy of the place is that no amount of welfare or support can relieve people from the consequences of their own choices. We would work in the shadow of the city hall, which has on its south side the proverb “Where there is no vision, the people perish.”

I couldn’t invent stories more bizarre and terrible than the truth of that place. On July 3rd, 1996, while we were eating lunch in our apartment, a man was shot and killed almost on our front steps. While one of the other missionaries called 911, I was the first to reach him. All I could think to do was ask him: “Do you believe in God?” I don’t think the men who killed him were ever caught; I only saw their backs as they ran away. (more…)

  JANE writes: The New York magazine piece, "Parents of a Certain Age? Is there anything wrong with being 53 and pregnant?" is over the top. I don't care if a 53-year-old has a baby, it's not like it hasn't happened before, but to ask me to glorify this in someway is wrong. The cover is disturbing and misleading, given the topic is women in their 50s, not whatever age this woman is! I was momentarily aghast to realize I left the article with the photo up on my screen. I quickly shut it down. Whew, I didn't want to assail the senses of a family member.

THE NATIONAL POST  of Canada apologized last week for running an advertisement objecting to sex education curriculum that teaches children in kindergarten through third grade about homosexuality. The ad (see it in full here) was funded by the Institute for Canadian Values, which claims that mandatory Ontario curriculum confuses children. The newspaper will not be running the ad again and will be giving proceeds already earned to a homosexual rights organization.  

In their apology, the newspaper’s editors stated that they were not violating norms of free speech because the ad, which depicts a young girl under the words “Please don’t confuse me,” was so offensive and “manipulative” that it “exceeded the bounds of civil discourse.” The editors do not explain why, if it was so offensive, the ad ever ran at all. The apology states, in part: (more…)

IN RESPONSE TO my fundraising drive, Dean Ericson writes:

The Thinking Housewife is always a pleasure to read; warm, bright, witty, bold, courageous, well-written, interesting, important, and excellent. The dishes it serves up are always tasty and hot and the drinks cool and refreshing. Three cheers for The Thinking Housewife! (more…)

GIVEN THAT Hillary Clinton has ordered State Department employees to protect homosexuals around the world, it is no surprise that Mary Warlick, Ambassador to Serbia, has urged authorities there to provide security for a “gay pride” parade.

(more…)

SPENGLER, a.k.a. David Goldman, has an interesting piece at Asia Times about the proliferation of horror films. He writes:  

[W]hat accounts for the six-fold increase in the total number of horror films released since 1999? Subgenres such as erotic horror (mainly centered on vampires) and torture (the Saw series, for example) dig deep into the vulnerabilities of the adolescent psyche. Given the success of these films over the past 10 years, the number of Americans traumatizing themselves voluntarily is larger by an order of magnitude than it has ever been before.

There are any number of possible explanations for this phenomenon. What the bare facts show, however, is that moviegoers are now evincing a susceptibility to horror. People watch something in the theater because it resonates with something outside the theater. To see the cinematic representation of horrible things may be frightening, but the viewer knows that it is safe.

His point that this has to do with 9-11 and violence in the Muslim world does not seem plausible, but he also writes: (more…)

YEARS AGO, when I was in my twenties, I was driving one winter night along a four-lane highway near the city of Camden, New Jersey. It was bitter cold, windy and it had snowed the day before. The city of Camden, for those who are not familiar with it, is one of the most dangerous cities in America. I had spent time there. As a newspaper reporter, I had walked its streets during the daytime, visited its courtrooms and talked to its police officers. I had been in schools, I had interviewed teenage mothers and I had gone to the wretched home of the relatives of a murder victim. I spent time in the rectory of a group of priests who worked with the poor. I knew the area where several prostitutes had had their throats slit and were dumped in a ditch. (more…)

THOMAS F. BERTONNEAU writes:

Sweden illustrates better than any country I know the parasitic character of liberalism-socialism. In the mid-twentieth century, Sweden built itself up into a regional industrial power with a robust export-economy in goods ranging from grain and dairy products to heavy machinery and ships. Sweden’s role as a “neutral” in World War II was somewhat morally ambiguous (neutral now in favor of the Axis and neutral now in favor of the Allies), but it enabled the nation to survive the conflict without going to war. Because of that, Sweden entered the postwar period with intact industries and one of the most educated and disciplined populations in Europe. The decision not to import armaments after the war but to draw on domestic industry for defense needs was sound and had positive effects for the nation. (more…)

  THE Center for Work-Life Policy is a "think tank" based in New York City that devotes its considerable efforts to the ongoing transformation of society. The Center advocates, among other things, the replacement of the male corporate worker, particularly the white male professional, with the female corporate worker. Even though the income of working women has risen by about 30 percent since 1975, while the income of male workers has stagnated or declined slightly, the CWLP promotes continuing favoritism for women workers and feminist corporate policies. Given the extent to which women rely on male income, the case for female affirmative action is, and always has been, an intellectual hoax of the highest magnitude. Nevertheless, the CWLP receives sponsorship for its work from more than 60 corporations and federal agencies. They include Alcoa, PepsiCo, Pfizer, Time Warner, Siemens, General Mills, General Electric, GlaxoSmithKline, Google, the Central Intelligence Agency, the Federal Reserve Bank, the International Monetary Fund, Credit Suisse, Johnson & Johnson, the World Bank, and Vanguard. These corporations do not give to CWLP out of ideological committment. They are much less likely to suffer heavily from discrimination suits on behalf of female workers, suits often initiated by our own government, by supporting CWLP initiatives. At a CWLP press conference earlier this year to announce its report on subtle forms of discrimination keeping women from top corporate positions, Kenneth Chenault, CEO of American Express, was among those present to provide their endorsement. Why do I bring all this up? To remind you that those of use who oppose institutionalized feminism are up against massive commercial and…

JESSE POWELL writes:

I have heard Sweden referred to as a paradise many times. In Sweden, which is famous for its generous parental leave policies, everything is supposedly wonderful and the Swedish have no problems. In fact, Sweden has many of the same social problems found in the rest of Europe.

For instance, there was a radical decline in the proportion of women of reproductive age who were married from 1970 to the year 2000; even the 40-to-44 year old age group declined greatly in the proportion who were married. In addition, there is evidence of a remarkable growth in psychological and cognitive problems among the nation’s young, a phenomenon which cannot be attributed solely to the influx of foreign immigrants. Swedish parents now seem to lack normal parental skills, such as the ability to discipline their children.

The below table gives the proportion of women in Sweden who were married for each age group from 15 to 44 years old from 1970 to 2010.  (more…)