LEE SIEGEL writes in The New York Times that Mitt Romney telegraphs coded signals to voters – “tossing off phrases like ‘oh gosh'” –   to assure them of his whiteness. This discreet come on is working its magic. According to Siegel, millions of white Americans, even whites who voted for Obama, are so hostile toward non-whites that they are willing to vote for Romney because of his racial purity alone. 

Siegel gives not a single example of anything Romney might do, or proposes to do, to advance the interests of whites. He does not explain Herman Cain’s recent popularity. On the eve of a national holiday dedicated to a black American, he simply asserts that a culture of white picket fences and stay-at-home moms is seething with racial animus.

One reader observes in the comments section after the editorial:

I am not white, but this is possibly the most racist opinion piece I’ve ever read in a major newspaper. Try replacing “white” with “black,” and “Romney,” with “Obama.” Would a comparable column [have] been published? 

(more…)

APROPOS of the recent discussion at VFR about women pilots, I highly recommend the 1957 British movie Man in the Sky, produced by Ealing Studios, which churned out so many outstanding films in the 1940s and 50s. This is one of the best. Man in the Sky stars Jack Hawkins as John Mitchell, a test pilot working for a small aviation company and struggling to support his family in the middle class town of Wolverhampton.

The film, released as Decision Against Time in America and directed by Charles Crichton,  is interesting for its portrayal of the almost entirely male world of commercial aviation and for its aerial cinematography, but also for its sensitive exploration of the psychology of the male provider. Though made less than 60 years ago, this is a world in which a female commercial pilot is unimaginable.

At the beginning of the story, Mitchell realizes he is unable to afford a better house for his family and that his company faces bankruptcy if its newest freight plane doesn’t sell. Mitchell takes the plane for a test flight with a potential buyer and virtually everything goes wrong. A fire breaks out in one of the engines. The passengers bail out of the plane. Mitchell refuses to ditch the aircraft in the Irish Sea at the radioed instructions of the company president.

In a brilliant scene, Mitchell later reacts to his wife Mary’s charge that he has thoughtlessly risked his life. Mary has witnessed her husband’s harrowing flight and becomes upset and angry. She accuses him of caring for his job, not his family. The wife is played magnificently by Elizabeth Sellars. Mitchell’s response to his wife, as played by Hawkins and written by the screenwriter William Rose, is breathtaking and utterly true to life. Watch its prelude and the actual scene starting at minute 1:05 here. The actor said it was one of the best performances of his career:

“I then had a six-minute speech, which was really the justification why a man does a job – any job – which was brilliantly written by Bill Rose, one of the finest screenwriters, and a man who wrote perfectly for me. This speech attracted a lot of attention, and for an actor no feeling exceeds the satisfaction when people come up afterwards and say that the character you played was splendid, and you were the right person to play it.”

This movie echoes so many themes that have been discussed here, it could be said to be a Thinking Housewife movie.

  (more…)

DIANA writes:

The chief institutional muscle behind the destruction of traditional values in the world today, as we know it, is the United States of America. See this piece in The Economist about IBM’s explicit favoritism for homosexual job applicants in South Korea, a country with an ingrained aversion to open homosexuality.  Lady Liberty’s face has been replaced by the unlovely visage of Holly Graf.  The Economist reports: (more…)

LEANNE writes:

Today, when I showed up for work as a nanny after leaving our daughter with my husband, I felt terribly for the younger of the two children whom I care for. Clearly, this child was not feeling well. Her eyes were red and drooping, she was obviously physically exhausted (from fighting a mild illness) and she just wanted to go back to sleep (she gets up extremely early on the days her mother works.) Her mother (my employer who is a physician) was in a terrible rush; this is one of her urgent days as far as getting to work at a certain time (she does often have flexibility in this area), and she said she had to go immediately, that a patient was waiting on her. (more…)

DUE to the sudden failure of my Internet router, I am not able to respond to or post comments quickly today.

ACCORDING TO The Washington Post, attitudes toward traditional sex roles remain strong among Mormons. In a Pew Forum poll of Mormons,

●Seventy-nine percent said sex between unmarried adults is wrong, compared with 35 percent of the general population.

● Fifty-eight percent of Mormons say the best kind of marriage is one with a husband as provider and a wife to care for the house and children; in the general population, 62 percent say it’s preferable for both partners to have jobs and take care of the home.

I would have assumed this last number for Mormons would be higher. Nevertheless, it is still relatively high, especially since Mormons live in the same economic climate as the rest of the country.
(more…)

MAHLER’S Ninth Symphony is one of the most intense and spellbinding of musical compositions. During a performance Tuesday by the New York Philharmonic, the ring of an iphone interrupted the final movement. What is fascinating about the incident is that, according to the Wall Street Journal, the man who owned the phone became paralyzed in his seat. (more…)

REGINA HESS writes:

I printed off a copy of a craft project (a paper cut-out of Paris which my children love to play with!) from this gentleman’s website. Browsing his blog I found a seven-minute clip from his appearance on the Martha Stewart Show. (more…)

THE NAVY ruled Friday that Holly Graf, the captain relieved of command of a guided missile cruiser in 2010 for cruelty toward her crew, will be permitted to retire with an honorable discharge. A panel of three admirals, after reviewing evidence against her, had recommended she receive the lower grade general discharge. Graf has served for 26 years and is the sister of Rear Admiral Robin Graf.

Juan Garcia, secretary for manpower and reserve affairs, said that a general discharge was not warranted given the “totality of her service.” A commenter at Navy Times wrote:

If her name had been Harry instead of Holly, I wonder what the outcome would have been?

The military blogger Glenn McDonald last summer compared disciplinary actions against Graf with those against a male petty officer, attributing the relative leniency against her to both rank and the feminist “sisterhood.” He wrote: (more…)

.

A Grateful Reader, who is female, writes:

Having spent fifteen years in physics departments surrounded by physics and engineering students, I never met a single female student who was motivated to work with machinery and who was as mechanically competent as the average male student. (more…)

  N.W. writes: I appreciate the continued commentary and debate at your site concerning the queerification and feminisation of the military. When I enlisted in the U.S. Marine Corps Reserves about two years ago, my long term goal was to apply for Officer Candidate School and earn an active duty commission as an Officer of Marines. I have since decided to serve out my enlistment and get the hell out.

AT Oz Conservative, Mark Richardson writes about a Norwegian documentary in which the filmaker, Harald Eia, tries to discover why sex differences in occupational choices remain despite Norway’s progressive “gender equality.” Eia does his own research and confronts Norwegian academics with scientific evidence that sex differences are innate. The idea strikes them as outlandish. Richardson writes:

He asks Cathrine Egeland (who looks a bit like Ellen deGeneres) “What is your scientific basis to say that biology plays no part in the two genders’ choice of work?” She replies, (more…)

PATRICK writes:

I found this article in the Washington Post very interesting. It recounts the story of a middle-aged couple. The husband at age 46 had a stroke, which left his mental functioning at an extremely low level. His memory was deeply impaired. The wife took care of the husband for a while. She eventually met a man and fell in love with him. Yet she felt guilty and wanted to include her disabled husband in her new life. So she did. “Allan felt uneasy at first, guilty about befriending a man with limited cognition while starting up a romance with his wife.” (more…)

FEW PAINTERS have conveyed the muted beauty of a winter day as powerfully as Pieter Bruegel. In his Winter Landscape with Skaters and Bird Trap, painted in 1565, at a time when landscape paintings were rare, the frolicsome skaters are dwarfed by the whitened sky, trees and snowy bank, and yet it is as if nature is made for them. For Bruegel, winter is humane. It contains a muted holiness and joy.

Some of the Flemish painter’s scenes, such as Hunters in the Snow, are so often reproduced they are now difficult to see fresh. In 1949, Kenneth Clark wrote of Bruegel’s paintings:

Few works of art are less in need of commentary. They are like Handel’s Messiah and the Pilgrim’s Progress, amongst those very rare works of the first order which have a widespread, immediate appeal. His Hunters in the Snow has come to hold almost the same place in the popular imagination as was held by the madonnas of Guido Reni and Sassoferrato a hundred and fifty years ago, and in wintry weather people may be heard muttering the name of Breughel [sic] much as, in the eighteenth century, travelers invoked the name of Salvatore Rosa, and with a good deal more justice.

(more…)

AT Intellectual Conservative, Alan Roebuck has an essay titled “What to Say to the Leftist Gestapo.” Roebuck recommends defending the right to think politically unacceptable thoughts whenever facing censure for expressing improper thoughts. Beliefs cannot be controlled and liberalism has always defended the right of people to think whatever they want in private. Someone charged with saying the wrong thing could respond:

They say that we must all celebrate diversity and be tolerant and nonjudgmental. OK, I celebrate and tolerate, as ordered.

Also know that I do not apologize for the beliefs I hold in the privacy of my mind. There is no rule in America that you have to think a certain way. I’m not telling you what those beliefs are, because they’re none of your business, but I do not apologize for them. Thank you, and have a nice day.

(more…)

IN a discussion at VFR about women as commercial pilots, I wrote:

Let’s say you had a load of cargo that needed to be driven across country. Who would you prefer to do it, a man or a woman? I think most people, knowing the differences between male and female drivers and that men handle machinery and navigation much better than women, would answer that they would prefer a man. The vast majority of people, if they were honest with themselves, would probably say they prefer male pilots too, and for good reason.

It is well established that men have superior mechanical ability and spatial skills. Are these not still involved in flying a plane? Men also handle stress better and are less distracted by interpersonal concerns. Finally, a woman pilot is much more likely to have an exhausting work life if she has a family and that could affect her job performance.

(more…)