I WAS SITTING in the front row of Sister Frances Michael’s second grade class when I had my first public attack of … internal chaos. It came without forewarning. I didn’t know I had a virus until it was too late. I felt the same uneasiness yesterday when I viewed this clip of Oprah and Bill Gates mulling over the education of millions of children. Whatever Bill and Oprah have in mind you can rest assured it does not involve freedom of choice for the ordinary citizen. We are the playthings of educational masterminds. It is not a question of whether they will control us, but how. They take delight not in the outcome of education, but in the process. The opportunities for managerial adventure are almost limitless. Public education is an extreme sport for the bored and wealthy. It is like Mount Everest: something to be scaled so that one can say one did it, a summit on which to stand and look down upon the rest of the world. (more…)

JOHN E. writes:

I’m looking forward to showing my daughter The Princess and the Pea as you have shown here. My wife or I at one time conveyed to our two-year-old daughter that there is such a story called The Princess and the Pea. A few months ago she wanted to hear this story every night before going to bed. Since I didn’t have the story available in print, I tried to indulge her by telling it from memory. I am a terrible story-teller, but apparently I got the basic idea across. A couple of nights ago, after I bid her hop into her bed for the night, she grabbed a baseball lying on the floor, lifted her little toddler mattress, and stuffed the ball underneath, exclaiming “It’s a pea!” Considering the relative size of the baseball, and the thickness of her single mattress, I guess she was leaving no room for doubt as to her princess-ly sensitivies!

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   THE WEBSITE Art Passions is a trove of works by some of the best 19th and 20th century illustrators of fairy tales and myths. You may have noticed the images I occasionally post from there. The site is the work of an anonymous woman artist devoted to these old story books. The artists featured include N.C. Wyeth, Gustav Doré, Adrienne Segur, Arthur Rackham, Edmund Dulac, Kay Nielsen and others. If you read fairy tales and myths to your children, I highly recommend this site, which is a labor of love. It is strange and wonderful that this form of technology can convey the pleasures of these antique illustrations. See Doré's dark and foreboding illustrations of Paradise Lost and The Divine Comedy and Wyeth's images of the immortal Crusoe. Thank you, Art Passions!  

ROBIN writes:

Laura wrote: 

The egalitarian life the writers envision is a marriage breaker. It leads to continual domestic strife or domination of the man by the woman. 

This brings to mind a tragic story of marital dissolution in our dear friend, a man who wanted family, but sits alone today in a rented apartment in the ashes of feminist indoctrination.  (more…)

Reader N. writes:

It is good and wise of you to both call attention to the latest feminist tirade in Newsweek and to point out how the idea is wrong. Many women do not bother to criticize openly such ideas, and that is a grave error.

Why? Because while silence is not assent, it is not necessarily dissent, either. Men who see such articles even glancingly on the newsstand, and who hear no dissent or disagreement from women in their lives, are going to naturally assume that said women agree with it. And given that, more than a few will decide that “If that’s what women think of me, then I don’t need to be around them.” (more…)

IN ITS latest issue, Newsweek, as if in a burst of originality, calls on American men to buck up and be more like girls: more housework, more nurturing, and more of the jobs traditional associated with women. Now, it’s one thing to say that men must do feminine work out of dire necessity, but it’s quite another to say this represents something good, as Newsweek does.

The egalitarian life the writers envision is a marriage breaker. It leads to continual domestic strife or domination of the man by the woman. Women are inherently better at childcare and household management, and so the typical man will remain forever under a wife’s tutelage in these areas. Therefore, when men do these things at home, it is often as if he is doing them for the woman. In short, the idea of equality is a myth. (more…)

  THE LATEST development in the ongoing campaign to present Woman as victim is a digital clock in Times Square ticking off the deaths of women by childbirth (roughly 1,000 women a day worldwide.) The implication of the clock is that these maternal deaths are preventable. Risk-free childbirth is apparently a realistic goal. According to the Times, obesity is involved in half of the very small number of maternal deaths in New York City. You can safely bet there will never be a clock in Times Square counting the lives of children lost from abortion or inadequate care.

THE AUSTRALIAN intellectual magazine Quadrant features a two-part piece this month by Edwin Dyga on the political significance of the conservative blogosphere. It can be read online here and here. The Thinking Housewife, which saw its 1,000-post mark yesterday, is mentioned in the footnotes. Mr. Dyga says today’s conservative blogs may be tomorrow’s mainstream media:  

“With the right commitment and experience, today’s dissenters on the right could become part of tomorrow’s establishment; this can only have a positive influence on the next generation of journalists and politicians. Those who value popular democracy and free political expression have nothing to fear.” (more…)

AS I SAID earlier, it doesn’t matter whether same-sex marriage is approved by legislatures or courts, it is already gaining de facto recognition. Obituaries in The New York Times now refer to the “spouses” of same sex couples. Here’s today’s admiring obituary of Jill Johnston, author of Lesbian Nation, a book which touted female separatism in the 1970s.

Johnston, who died Saturday at the age of 81, was candid about the motives of feminism in an interview with The Gay and Lesbian Review four years ago:

“Once I understood the feminist doctrines, a lesbian separatist position seemed the commonsensical position, especially since, conveniently, I was an L-person… Women wanted to remove their support from men, the ‘enemy’ in a movement for reform, power and self-determination.” 

Now turn these words around and imagine The New York Times quoting a man who said he was part of a movement that viewed women as the “enemy” and sought power on behalf of men. (more…)

  THE SELF-IMPORTANCE of today's pop stars never ceases to amaze. One minute they appear on stage dressed in rags or cellophane and the next minute they stand before voters instructing them on defense policy. Some say the slick, over-produced Lady Gaga represents the exhausted finale to the sexual revolution. But she sees herself in the forefront of change. Yesterday, she made silly remarks in Maine in favor of repealing the military's "don't ask, don't tell" policy. Gaga gags and the world listens.

JESSE POWELL writes:

The data I gave in the previous entry about older women being fired, and the analysis I provided explaining my tables, does not address the issue of women getting fired after they pass their reproductive years. It addresses the issue of whether they work after their reproductive years, whether they are valued as workers after their reproductive years, but it doesn’t look at whether a woman is likely to be fired when she hits the end of her fertile period. Data other than the tables I provide above is needed to answer that question. 

Thinking over the issue a bit more, however, I think it is likely Jean-Paul is onto something in his observations. Also, Laura’s observation, “Imagine allowing one’s emotional life to revolve so completely around a job that one has nothing left when it is over and shoots oneself as if betrayed by a lover,” may be more on point than she knows. Now, one may imagine, it doesn’t make sense to fire a woman after she hits 40 or 43 if she is a good worker and is valuable to a company because of her work experience. Why should her employer care whether she is still fertile or not?  (more…)

JEAN-PAUL writes:

I would be interested in reading your thoughts about something I have been noticing for several years. 

Put simply and brutally, almost all of the women whom my wife and I know as friends or acquaintances and who hold mid- to upper-level jobs, usually in public government organizations get fired under one pretense or other (e.g. their position is “eliminated”; not them, the position. etc.) when they pass childbearing age. I could name a dozen of them. They were thrown away when they reached their “use before” sexual expiry dates. Some were fired by other younger women hired as head choppers and who were themselves later fired. It’s unreal and vicious.  (more…)

    IF YOU believe states or municipalities will wait until legislatures or courts approve same-sex marriage before they institutionalize it, think again. The Manhattan Marriage Bureau now offers "commitment ceremonies" to same-sex couples.

                              Lord, thou hast proved me, and known me: Thou hast known my sitting down, and my rising up. Thou hast understood my thoughts afar off: my path and my line thou hast searched out. And thou hast foreseen all my ways: for there is no speech in my tongue.  Behold, O Lord, thou hast known all things, the last and those of old: thou hast formed me, and hast laid thy hand upon me. Thy knowledge is become wonderful to me: it is high, and I cannot reach to it. Whither shall I go from thy spirit? or whither shall I flee from thy face?  If I ascend into heaven, thou art there: if I descend into hell, thou art present. If I take my wings early in the morning, and dwell in the uttermost parts of the sea:  Even there also shall thy hand lead me: and thy right hand shall hold me.                           (Psalm 138, 1-10, Douay-Rheims Bible)

DURING HIS VISIT TO Great Britain this week, Pope Benedict issued statements on the clerical sex abuse scandal, including comments to reporters during his plane trip, and met with victims. This meeting and his statements, while filled with compassion and understanding, were deeply troubling. The Pope’s emphasis was on healing for victims. There was no forceful statement by the pontiff on disciplining bishops and Church officials who overlooked or covered up sex crimes. Until those who aided and abetted offenders are removed from positions of power, the Church’s efforts at repentence are inadequate. The reckoning is stalled. It is not enough to express sorrow. (more…)

  IN THIS ENTRY on home economics, I wrote: The ideal domestic worker is an artist and her creation is her home. The artist takes what materials he has and manipulates them, but the goal is not just to create something interesting, but to express a vision of love and beauty. Even Michaelangelo worked with the most banal of materials and ordinary techniques. All was imbued with imagination and vision. It may seem ridiculous to compare a humble home filled with love and simple beauty to the Sistine Chapel. But, they are the same in that they are both works of artistry and express first and foremost the human soul.  

IF  THIS WOMAN had been wearing pants, would she be the same? (more…)