WHEN ASKED if he was bothered by a booing crowd during a game, Bill Russell, the Celtics basketball legend, said, “I never heard the boos because I never heard the cheers.” It’s a mistake to live for compliments. It may mean you live too much for the opinion of others. One should possess conviction of what is right and wrong, of what one wants to achieve, and live by it.

But no one can entirely live that way except maybe the greatest saints. Life without compliments is like life without some essential vitamin. One can survive, but not live well.

We live in a narcissistic culture and some people are stuffed with praise – the praise of their parents or teachers or themselves. A narcissist wears a particular bland and unvarying glow. He doesn’t hear or see others; he emanates light.

But even in this climate, many individuals are malnourished, or only given a sugary version of approval.

A compliment can be a disarming experience, particularly if you have lived a relatively cold existence. A person who is not used to compliments may actually be suspicious when one is given. He searches for ulterior motives because the experience is new. If the compliment concerns something trivial, like an article of clothing, it may simply provide a moment of pleasure or, for some of us, a moment of confusion. Sometimes the praise can be trivial and yet said with so much warmth it carries greater meaning.

The rarest and most valuable compliments are those in which a person has seen into another and found something real that others cannot see or do not value. This sort of compliment can be redefining or redeeming. One or two in an entire lifetime is enough. They are never forgotten, held in the inner chambers, like an heirloom ring in a box. (more…)

    KIDIST PAULOS ASRAT, reviewing the new Kitty Kelley book on Oprah, peers into the emptiness behind the legend. She writes: This is a woman who thinks (and who everyone thinks) wields more power than she does. In fact, when her show did influence the election of G.W. Bush, it was the adroit Bush who got the better of her and sent a positive message to her audience. The forces do not revolve around Oprah. Oprah leaves her daytime show for her new network the Oprah Winfrey Network (OWN – Oprah is always ready to focus on her "girl power") next year. I think she’ll simply be relegated to a respected, but somewhat obscure, chapter of American cultural history. I honestly don’t think people will remember her into the next century (or generation) other than the apparent sensation she caused: "What did she do?" people will ask. Well, she hosted a paradoxically big but inconsequential "first black woman's" talk show.

LYDIA SHERMAN WRITES:

I think women should not expect compliments from men and if they happened to get any, should consider it an enormous privilege. Although I never get compliments from young men, every so often an elderly man will say, “Nice dress” or “Like your hair.” That does not bother me. I know what they are saying deep down: “I wish we had something nice to look at in this old world.” It used to be heart-lifting to see a woman in a pretty dress with an innocent smile. Today women are either drab or trying to show their wares. When we do see something pretty, our compliments are taken as harassment. I say it’s time to go on a compliment strike. Just give out compliments to those who really deserve it. We should be more reserved in our compliments, our smiles. “A few smiles, a few compliments of the navy,” said Jane Austen in Persuasion, and (Captain Wentworth) he’s a lost man! These things were always preludes to something serious. They were also measuring sticks or grades that told people how well they were doing. If women are not doing well, I don’t think they should be complimented. The Proverbs 31 writer said, “her husband praises her in the gates.” These were well-earned praises after a long list of character qualities and accomplishments brought on by those higher qualities of diligence and faithfulness to the home.

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David writes:

As a young man growing up in a culture saturated with the sort of misandry Youngfogey describes — a culture where it is taken for granted that women are superior to men, to the extent that men are sometimes simply considered useless and risible — I want to express my wholehearted support for the things Youngfogey and Samson have stated in response to Randy’s post. Youngfogey, you in particular have done a phenomenal job challenging Randy’s post. Way to go! Since you are obviously intelligent and articulate I hope you continue to speak up whenever the misandrist mentality rises to the surface. (more…)

IN THIS PREVIOUS POST, a reader argued that women mature more quickly. But is this true today? The evidence is overwhelmingly against it. Here is an excellent 2008 piece by Thomas F. Bertonneau, looking at the mature girl of yesterday and the creature of vanity and mindlessness of today.

He includes this vignette:

In the crush of students we find ourselves walking next to a female undergraduate engaged, like eighty percent of other students, in a peripatetic cell phone conversation. The young lady is well dressed—in the female equivalent of “junior executive.” She walks briskly, oblivious of anyone’s co-presence in the public space. Her dialogue grows excited. She is complaining to a sympathetic listener about one of her instructors, who has apparently assigned what she believes to be too much reading and who grades, as she sees it, harshly. “He f—ing thinks nobody’s got other things to do,” she says loudly. “Well, I’m f—ing not going to let him push me around. I’m f—ing going to report this f—er to the dean.” In three sentences, she has inserted sailor-talk into her speech four times. At the second usage of the Anglo-Saxonism, I give her a disapproving glance. At the fourth I say loudly, “Thank you for sharing that with my twelve-year-old.” She drops back, looking more irritated than ashamed, avoiding my eyes. (more…)

IN A SMALL STORE in New England today, I saw a basket of freshly harvested fiddlehead ferns. This is a delicacy of spring that one can never find in a mainstream market, the unfurled fronds of ostrich ferns gathered from local woods, suggestive of a tightly-curled marine animal, just removed from its shell, fished from the forest tides. They reminded me of the Ted Hughes poem Fern:

Here is the fern’s frond, unfurling a gesture,
Like a conductor whose music will now be pause
And the one note of silence
To which the whole earth dances gravely. (more…)

THE FOLLOWING statement by a reader will land me in trouble with my critics from the men’s advocacy blogosphere. I post it anyway. [See the comments by a reader who says the sort of praise Randy expresses for women is rarely, if ever, publicly expressed by women for men.]

Randy B. writes:

Granted, most if not all of the points and topics brought up on your site are valid, and largely self-supporting to the logical mind. But I want to take a minute and say thank you, not only to my wife and daughters, to you for this site and quest, but to most women in general. (more…)

IN A RECENT ENTRY, Michael S. drew attention to the improper and profligate use of the word “literally.” Its abuse appears to be prevalent among women. (Just the other day, I said, “This sandwich is literally tasteless.”) Literally must always be the pulsing center of a sentence. It expresses a lack of confidence in the simple declaration of fact and indicates an impoverished descriptive vocabulary.

T.G., a reader who is an English teacher, sent this link. The author of the blog has devoted part of his life to “literally.” He writes, “Misuse of the word “literally” gets my blood boiling (no, not literally). It started as a nit-picking distraction, grew to a frustrating obsession, and finally resulted in the creation of this blog…. If I can stop one person from using literally inappropriately I have done my job.”

A noble mission, but the writer may go insane in a non-metaphorical way before he is done. (more…)

  DEAR READER, I was out of town for a couple of days and unexpectedly could not access my blog account or reply to e-mails. I will be replying and posting comments I received while I was away.

KRISTOR WRITES:

This thread reminded me of an experience I had in Gambier, Ohio, where my eldest son went to Kenyon College. Gambier is out in the middle of nowhere, a tiny village at the top of a wooded hill surrounded by verdant and beautiful farms rolling away for many miles on every side. The town is so small that the tiny campus of Kenyon surrounds it. If you ever have a chance to visit the place, I highly recommend it; driving up into the hills is like driving into another and better world, more beautiful and merciful, and somehow true. We were back there a lot for parent weekends and that sort of thing, and I love the place. The campus is all Gothic; the town is traditional American Middle West.   (more…)

JIM WETZEL WRITES:

That’s an interesting passage from Stevenson, and I had to read it all before my confusion cleared up. What he called “idleness” differs from what I think of by that term: 

It is no good speaking to such folk: they cannot be idle, their nature is not generous enough; and they pass those hours in a sort of coma, which are not dedicated to furious moiling in the gold-mill. 

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BRITAIN’S ILLEGITIMACY RATE is expected to exceed 50 percent within the next five years. In some towns, two out of three births are out of wedlock, as reported in The Daily Mail.The overall figure for native-born whites exceeds 50 percent. In Knowsley, near Liverpool, 68 percent of births were out of wedlock in 2007. The figure in Knowsley is expected to reach 75 percent by 2014. So great is public alarm that a former Home  Minister expressed her dismay. She called the high illegitimacy rate “tremendously worrying,” the sort of descriptive phrase one might apply to an excess of ivy in the rose beds.

For a glimpse into Britain’s post-marital culture, see the comments after the Daily Mail article, in which some readers acknowledge the role of government welfare in encouraging single motherhood. Others aggressively assert that marriage isn’t necessary for children and anybody who thinks so is a bigot. Marriage is something posh people do. Here are the first ten comments: (more…)

IN RESPONSE to my post on Josef Pieper and the “distracted society,” a reader sent this link to Robert Louis Stevenson’s much-loved essay on idleness. To Stevenson, ceaseless activity is not a sign of despair, but of “deficient vitality.” That seems close to the same thing. Stevenson’s words are a perfect description of Betty Friedan-esque feminists who fled their homes because they themselves didn’t have “two thoughts to rub together.” Their snuff boxes were empty.

Stevenson writes: (more…)

KRIS WRITES:

Jesse’s excellent response here has provided me with the motivation to finally put my personal thoughts and feelings into a reply. I believe my husband and I are prime examples of the destructive pattern he describes.

My husband grew up in a “Christian” home, in so much as the family attended church on a regular basis. His mother was involved in the music ministry, taught Sunday School; his father was a deacon, elder, and committee member. His parents were (are) well-respected in their church and community. Although his mother and father held mostly to traditional role models in the home, his father worked very long hours and spent very little time with his children. His mother did all of the child-rearing herself, which often left her tired, angry, and bitter. (more…)

A READER WRITES:

I’ve been going through much thinking about myself and my role in my marriage. I truly believe that I am meant to be the best housewife and homemaker for my family through being submissive, as it describes in the Bible. I already consider myself a bit controlling (not mean though), but unmasking my ultra-feminine self and doing everything to make my husband and home happy and memorable is what I feel is my life’s purpose. (more…)

TWO stories in this week’s news illustrate the vanity of the contemporary mother. Single mothers are preying on younger men in front of their daughters. And celebrity fitness trainer Jillian Michaels says she will be opting for adoption (at the advanced age of 36) because of pregnancy’s effects on her figure. Adoption has become, in some cases, an elevated form of shopping.

Selfish, materialistic, consumed by image, and so sugary it makes your teeth hurt: that’s motherhood today.

Many women reject these low standards but that does not alter the fact of their constant glorification in our culture.

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