Ann Althouse explains why she didn’t read a Jeffrey Rosen, er, Jeffrey Toobin piece in the New Yorker:

I have an interestingness standard, not an it-was-in-The-New-Yorker standard.

Diva.

“Boys,” Anne Moir and David Jessel in Brain Sex: The Real Difference Between Men and Women, “tend to seek out dares or challenges to flex their adolescent muscles in obedience to the dictates of their adolescent hormones.”  They seem particularly unruly in all male environments without the tempering influence of girls.

So Mitt Romney’s adolescent antics seem par for the course.  He was, after all, a student at an all boys school.  Whether or not it is true that he bullied a classmate, cruelly cutting his hair, he doesn’t seem to have kept up with his antics in the past 47 years, particularly in the past 43, that is, since March 21, 1969, a few days after celebrating his 22nd birthday, when he married his high school sweetheart, Ann Lois Davies.

Maybe it was dating her in 1965 that caused him to clean up his act.  Women do have that effect on men.

The prankster Mitt knew he needed to become a better person in order to merit the fetching Miss Davies.  And given that Ann had broken up with Mitt after they had “informally agreed to marriage after his senior prom in June 1965“, he knew he’d have to be on his best behavior to win her back.

Mitt very much seems devoted to Ann.  Just watch him when they’re on stage together and she’s introducing him; he’s got this goofy affectionate look, as if he can’t believe this woman would, of all the men in the world, choose him — and stick with him for more than four decades:

So perhaps Romney bullied a classmate.  The story, if true, paints a picture of a callous, insensitive young man.  But, things have changed for that young man in the intervening forty-odd years.  The adolescent Mitt Romney, however, is not running for president.  The former Ann Davies’s husband is.

At 0:49 below, Audrey Hepburn demonstrates how gay Americans should have responded to President Obama’s statement on gay marriage yesterday:

Like everything with Obama, all we get is “words, words, words.”

This is not just a gay conservative talking.  Several voices on the left have found that there’s not much there there in the president’s sudden shift on same-sex marriage.  At the Gawker, John Cook calls the statement a “cowardly cop-out”:  ”it seems fairly clear from the network’s coverage that his announcement amounts to much less than meets the eye. He now believes that gay couples should be able to marry.”

At the far left magazine Mother Jones, Adam Serwer reports that his colleague . . .

. . . David Corn spoke with an administration source and asked whether the president recognized gay marriage as a right. The official replied, “He has always said that it is a state issue, and he’s not suggesting changing that. He did not support the North Carolina amendment, but he’s not saying he will bring up a piece of federal legislation on gay marriage. This is how he feels himself about the issue, and he leaves it to the states.”

Emphasis added.  He’s not bringing up legislation?!?  And all my left-leaning gay friends on Facebook are so giddy about the statement; Obama’s just leaving it to the states.

Shouldn’t they be insisting that he show us he loves us by putting some political capital on the line and backing legislation to make federal recognition of gay relationships a reality?

He’s like the guy who tells his beloved how much he loves her, tells her wants to get married, but refuses to buy a ring or set a date.

May build on this post later.  Was just at a brunch where a very intelligent man refused to accept that Sarah Palin had a record of accomplishment as Governor of Alaska.  Why is it that some Democrats (and a few Republicans) refuse to acknowledge — or even familiarize themselves with this woman’s record?

Is it because she is a woman?

I mean, when John McCain tapped her as his running mate, she enjoyed a 75% approval rating . . . among Alaska Democrats.  When Katie Couric interviewed the then-Republican Vice-Presidential nominee, the CBS News anchor didn’t once ask her interlocutor about her record.  Or what she had done to win support among Democrats as well as Republicans.

Do these folks just assume that a woman can’t stand up to a corrupt political establishment and effect real reforms?

I am not entirely comfortable with the term, “catfight” in describing the confrontation between these two Titanesses of the silver screen–but best screen confrontation between women on screen was not as catchy — and quite clunky a title. Well, I found a better; it may lack the punch of the original, but at least I’m comfortable with it.

Here, we see Irene Papas, one of few actresses to actually get the woman whose face launched a thousand ships.  Helen of Argos, later of Troy, finally of Argos is a far more complex woman than the screen beauty portrayed in most screen versions of the Trojan War.  In a man’s world, she knows how to use her feminine charms to win her way, even if it means defying her patron deity, Aphrodite.  I do not say this lightly:  Papas is the greatest living actress.

And when the divine Miss Kate plays Helen’s erstwhile mother-in-law, Hecuba, in The Trojan Women their confrontation just sizzles.

In a war fought over Helen, Hecuba lost her husband and her sons, all that was dear to her. And in the clip above, we believe that when Hepburn, er, Hecuba, asks Menelaus to kill Helen, she really wants to see Papas dead.

The face launched a thousand ships, carrying warriors which would kill thousands of Trojan men.

As per my previous post, won’t have much time to weigh in on Hilary Rosen’s attack on Mrs. Romney, but some quick thoughts, largely through links to other bloggers.  Seems she received a warmer welcome than her husband at the NRA Convention:  ”Via Supplyboys News, it’s hard to tell from the audio but ABC says Ann Romney got a ‘hero’s welcome’ and a ‘rock-star reception’ from the crowd.”

Hilary Rosen has made it a lot easier for conservatives, particularly social conservatives to rally to Mitt Romney.  When they see a liberal pundit take on his wife, they rush to defend the individual attacked, hence Mrs. Romney’s rock-star reception. And if people learn her story how she raised five boys, battled breast cancer and suffers from MS, this charming woman will a far more sympathetic figure than she already is.

This kerfuffle allowed one revere conservative woman to challenge the hypocrisy of those who attacked her in 2008 for the choices she made, choices a bit different from those Mrs. Romney made in her life.  Tina Korbe writes about Sarah Palin’s reaction to this kerfuffle:

When she ran for vice president, some on the left actually criticized her for not staying home with her five children. Clearly, it’s not a “mommy” thing, Palin pointed out. It’s a conservative thing.

True. When was the last time you heard Nancy Pelosi criticized for anything at all related to her five children? Why is it conservative families are fair game, but liberal families are off-limits? Thank goodness President Barack Obama at least made that point: He has no patience, he said, for attacks on politicians’ spouses. Neither should we.

Palin also specifically says she thinks Rosen’s comments awakened “apolitical” moms.

Seems Hilary Rosen’s commentary is going to make it a lot easier for Sarah Palin to back Mitt Romney.  Or at least very publicly defend his wife.

Didn’t we have a conservative reader who said that he media attacks on Mitt Romney make the former Massachusetts governor more sympathetic to him?  This guy, as I recall, had not previously been favorably disposed to the presumptive Republican nominee.

FROM THE COMMENTS:  sonicfrog finds that “what Rosen did, in order to score some political points, was akin to throwing fellow woman Ann Romney under the bus. And here it’s worse, because Mrs Romney wasn’t even in the road, but was a pedestrian on the sidewalk, and Rosen had to swerve to nail her!”

The media narrative notwithstanding, many conservatives would be willing to support a gay or lesbian candidate for public office if he or she advocated sensible policies.  Note for example the California Republican Party’s recent endorsement of Brad Torgan.  You can join me in supporting his bid to represent the citizens of California’s 50th Assembly district by donating to his campaign.

Scanning the blogs before bed last night, I chanced upon Seth Mandel’s piece in Commentary Contentions about the upcoming (next year) contest for Mayor of New York.  He reported that frontrunner City Council Speaker Christine Quinn whom he described as “openly gay, and planning to marry her partner this year” supports a police policy (controversial in some liberal circles) that has helped reduce crime in the Big Apple.

With identity politics often placing “New York’s Finest, the NYPD, at the center of attention”. Mandel writes, the “police department’s stop-and-frisk policy has come under fire from minority advocates claiming racial profiling”.  As other candidates favor firing the popular police commissioner, Raymond W. Kelly, Quinn offers a different approach:

While [former city comptroller Bill] Thompson [also running for Mayor] responded to the stop-and-frisk policy by threatening to fire Kelly, and Manhattan Borough President Scott Stringer, who is also likely running for the Democratic nomination, lashed out at both the possible profiling element and the efficacy of the policy, Quinn took a more thoughtful tack. She suggested some changes to the policy in a letter to Kelly, but did not advocate scrapping it. She also included some praise for the policy: “We understand the vast majority of the lives saved were men of color and that part of the NYPD’s policing strategy that led to this decline is based on stop, question and frisk.”

Mandel believes that Quinn’s respect for the city’s police force has put her at the “front of the pack” in the race for Rudy Giuiliani’s old job.  Sounds like the kind of gal around whom his supporters could rally.

Readers of this blog are well aware of the high regard in which I hold Peggy Noonan, having dubbed her the Athena of punditry in 2005.  She lost a lot of favor with conservatives at the tail-end of the 2008 presidential campaign when she commented favorably on the Democratic nominee for president and his campaign.

Her hope for ability to unite the nation and transform its politics has changed.  She has long since soured on the Democrat, having castigated him earlier this year for (and again on Friday) for his policies mandating “that agencies of the Catholic Church would have to provide birth-control services the church finds morally repugnant.”

In that same piece, she questioned whether the president has a relationship with the American people:

A president only gets a year or two to forge real bonds with the American people. In that time a crucial thing he must establish is that what is on his mind is what is on their mind. This is especially true during a crisis.

From the day Mr. Obama was sworn in, what was on the mind of the American people was financial calamity—unemployment, declining home values, foreclosures.

As the American people were thinking about such things, the Democrat’s mind was elsewhere:  ”on health care.”

Read the whole thing and note especially the “entirely abstract sense of America” held by what she dubs the incumbent’s “hermetically sealed inner circle”.

And she offers the defining irony (perhaps) the president’s most intense reelection campaign:  Obama “is said by all who know him to be deeply competitive, but . . . doesn’t seem to like his job that much.”  He wants to win for the sake of winning — and not for the job that comes with the laurels*.  No wonder he’s been holding so many fundraisers.  (And still has “has less cash on hand in his re-election bid than [did] his predecessor.)

* (more…)

A number of my conservative friends have been wringing their hands about the GOP’s possible nomination of Mitt Romney as its presidential contender.  They fear that, like past mealy-mouthed nominees, he will flounder when facing the fierce power of the Democratic attack machine as did such recent nominees as Bob Dole in 1996 and John McCain in 2008.

In recent days, two smart conservative women have addressed this concern, one, Jennifer Rubin, by quoting one of her blog readers:

A sharp reader, William from Delaware, e-mails me: “The GOP should never nominate a senator for president. In post WW II America, whenever the GOP nominates a senator (Goldwater, Dole, McCain), they lose. Whenever the GOP nominates a governor (Reagan, Bush 43) or a vice president (Nixon, Bush 41), they win the presidency. Why? First, the American people are looking for executive leadership from a governor or VP – not a DC insider from Capitol Hill. Second, each of these GOP senators carries the burden of a congressional voting record that is distorted and picked to death. Where David Axelrod leaves off, the MSM will continue the assault.”

The problem with Dole and McCain was not their moderation, but their legislative background.  When Dole secured the Republican presidential nomination in 1996, he had been serving in the Senate for nearly 28 years, having spent the previous eight years in the U.S. House.  At the time of McCain’s nomination, he had served nearly 22 years in the Senate, having spent the previous four years in the House.

By the time each man had become the GOP standard bearer, he had served well over a quarter century in the federal legislature.

In a more detailed piece, Noemie Emery challenges “the myth of a powerful Republican establishment“: (more…)

Before I drove cross country in 2010, I had never heard of Southern cooking diva Paula Deen, but I credit her for the harmony of our readers’ dinner in Atlanta that spring.  You see, when we gathered in that august town, I was concerned; one of our critics (with whom I have corresponded at least since 2006) would be joining us — along with two of our most outspoken conservative readers, one who, two years after the 2008 election, still sported a McCain-Palin sticker (with the Arizona Senator’s name removed) on his truck.

I had feared I might have to play peacemaker.  Well, I didn’t have to.  I don’t know how Paula Deen came up, but as soon as she did, all my Atlanta readers found something to talk about — how they delighted in this diva, enjoying her books, TV show and recipes.  They discussed which ones they had tried and home and celebrated her appreciation for butter.  Paula Deen, in short, bridged the political divide.

Aware of this woman’s capacity to foster harmony, my ears naturally perked up when my correspondent James Richardson alerted me this weekend to an article he wrote, taking to task “Northern” food critics who would bring this Southern diva down:

“Thinking of getting into the leg-breaking business, so I can profitably sell crutches later,” [New York-based foodie Anthony] Bourdain said Tuesday. He has also previously called Deen the “worst, most dangerous person to America” for her country cooking indulgence. Even 2011 James Beard winner Jose Andres said that Dean should “endorse a vegetable or fruit” instead of a diabetes drug.

But the Bronx cheer for apparent chef-turned-rebel terrorist Deen, a prototypical Southern mother with a lifetime’s recipes of irredeemably deep-fried dishes, is less a reflection of the culinary elitism that runs through Bourdain’s vice-ridden travelogues than the regionalist snobbery that fuels its appeal.

. . . .

From food to faith, the mythic Dixie–soulful and abundant, passionate and insubmissive–has always clashed with the rigidly cosmopolitan north, which keeps an ever watchful eye on we, her unlearned, drawling wards. (more…)

Just got back from seeing an early show of The Iron Lady with a conservative friend.  Both of us agreed that the film lacked a political agenda and indeed largely put Margaret Thatcher’s conservatism in a positive light.

The problem of the film was not its politics, but its storytelling.  It seemed more an exercise in acting than a appreciation for a strong woman.  The filmmakers didn’t put that most successful prime minister into the context of her times nor seem to have any notion of narrative structure.  Indeed, the story of this great Briton’s life was lost in the framing device, that of an old woman experiencing mild dementia.

The frame overwhelmed the picture.  Director Phyllida Lloyd just spent too much time on two or three days in the life of a declining octogenarian–more than half the movie (or so it seemed).  The details of Mrs. Thatcher’s biography, played as if mere episodes from her memory, with few placed into a context which helped explain her times, her rise and her accomplishments.

All that said, Meryl Streep was brilliant in the title role.  At times, it seemed we were watching vintage clips of the Iron Lady herself.  And you did believe she was a doddering old woman.  Good acting, certainly, but true to Mrs. Thatcher’s actual state?  Unlikely.

The rest of the cast was uneven.  Jim Broadbent was fine for the aged Denis Thatcher who appeared in hallucinations of a befuddled old lady, but he didn’t appear any younger in the scenes set during his wife’s turn as Prime Minster.  That said, Harry Lloyd who played Denis in his younger years was first rate — and indeed looked a lot like a silent star with a similar name–Harold Lloyd (but imdb has him as a descendant of Charles Dickens and not the acrobatic thespian).

The movie is well worth your time if you want to see the full range of Streep’s talent, but will provide little help in understanding the greatness of the most successful post-war British Prime Minister.

No one knows for certain yet whether the decision of Newt Gingrich to attack Mitt Romney for his work at Bain will end up hurting or helping Romney’s campaign.  Most conservatives believe the attack now gives the GOP frontrunner the chance to prepare a response.  In her column today, Peggy Noonan understands what’s at stake:

A full-throated, detailed defense of Bain that is also a defense of economic freedom and free markets might not only benefit Mr. Romney. It just might help valorize, or rather revalorize, the reputation of capitalism, which has taken a beating the past few years and not recovered. That, actually, might be a public service.

The Obama campaign wanted to launch its Bain attack in the fall. Mr. Romney can face the attack now, head on, and begin not inoculating himself from the issue but exhausting it.

Read the whole thing.

Laura Bush wanted Jeb to run in 2012:

Sarasota H-T: Former first lady Laura Bush wishes there were one more candidate in the Republican presidential primary: Jeb Bush.

Speaking to a sold-out Sarasota audience on Wednesday, Bush said she had hoped that her brother-in-law and former Florida governor would have jumped into the race this year.

H/t:  HotAir

In her column yesterday, Peggy Noonan demonstrated the qualities that have caused me to dub her the Athena of punditry:  she offers a particular feminine insight into recent cultural moments, a woman’s wisdom.

Just read her reflection on the death of Steve Jobs and wonder.

Although she is slightly critical of the soon-to-be-released movie about the greatest Western European politician in the past fifty years, contending it never grants the Iron Lady’s political views “any sympathetic legitimacy,” it does suggest “Mrs. Thatcher’s defiance of the snobs while depicting her defeat of the snobs.”

Noonan goes on to wonder why as “The left in America has largely thrown in the towel on Ronald Reagan, but in Britain Thatcher-hatred remains fresh”, contending it is because Mrs. Thatcher is a woman.  Is that it?

I don’t know.  Near all of my male conservative friends hold the Iron Lady in high regard, honoring her as we do the Gipper.  This applies to my straight male friends as well as my gay male friends.  But, maybe it’s different across the pond.

Finally, Peggy laments the decline in movies where “David Lean wouldn’t be allowed to make movies today, John Ford would be forced to turn John Wayne into a 30-something failure-to-launch hipster whose big moment is missing the toilet in the vomit scene in Hangover Ten.”  She ends with a quote from an Iraqi military officer whom she had asked to identify the big thing he’d come to believe about Americans in the years they’d been there:  ”You are a better people than your movies say.”

We are.  If only filmmakers today believed what their counterparts of a previous generation knew in their hearts to be true.  Americans are a good people.

It’s Peggy.  Read the whole thing.

As she closes out her first year in office, Susana Martinez, the first female governor of the Land of Enchantment enjoys sky-high approval ratings, earning “a 65 percent job approval rating from the people of” her state, up from an initial rating just nine months ago.

This according to a Public Opinion Strategies poll which had Martinez leading Diane Denish 50% to 42% justt before the November 2010 election — within one point of the final result. Independents approve of this free-market loving woman by an over 2-to-1 margin (62/39).

She’s even above water among Democrats 49/44. Oh yea, Governor Martinez is a Republican.

UPDATE:   Forget to mention that the Democratic Whip in the state’s House of Representatives called this proud American woman “the Mexican.“

As you know, we here at GayPatriot define a diva as a strong woman who commands the respect of men.  And once again, it’s time to pick that blogress who best defines that quality.  In past years, I’ve linked previous nominees and diva-esque blogresses.  This year, I’ll link those past posts when I get a moment, but for now will leave it up to you to nominate those most deserving of this coveted honor.

We’ll keep nominations open for one week, through December 15 at which point Bruce and I will pick those lucky ladies to appear on the ballot.

As diligent readers of this blog know, I have changed my opinion of Ann Coulter in recent years.  I used to think that she was a right-wing bomb thrower, saying outrageous things merely to get a name for herself.  But, when I met her, I put her “outrageousness” into context.

What Ann does, I wrote last April, “is just throw the left’s broadsides on conservatives back at them, returning with a playful smile what lefties send out with a self-righteous scowl.  She mocks in good fun and to make a point.”  Read the whole post for an insight into my shifting views of this conservative diva.

In short, I began to appreciate this particular diva by putting her comments into a cultural context.  Today, Mickey Kaus also takes a broader view of this conservative, finding “More evidence for [his] contention that Ann Coulter is really quite sensible if you don’t provoke her with liberal BS.: Here is a passage from her recent column on taxes and spending:”

As Reagan explains a little farther in his autobiography: He did accept tax hikes “in return for [the Democrats'] agreement to cut spending by $280 billion,” but, Reagan continues, “the Democrats reneged on their pledge and we never got those cuts.” Maybe that’s why Republicans won’t agree to raise taxes in exchange for Democratic promises to cut spending.

For Americans who are unaware of the Democrats’ history of repeatedly reneging on their promises to cut spending in return for tax hikes, the Republicans’ opposition to tax increases does seem crazy. That’s why Republicans need to remind them. [E.A]

Read the whole thing.  H/t Instapundit.

On this the 192nd anniversary of the birth of the greatest English novelist, let me offer, in slightly modified form, the tribute I have offered in years past.  It is also the 115th anniversary of the birth of my late, beloved Aunt Ruth.  In her life, that great lady embodied the qualities of a heroine of an Eliot novels.

A few years back in anticipation of Eliot’s birthday, I watched the BBC version of Silas Marner, perhaps her most accessible novel.  The story got to me as the book always does.  It’s odd I who love books so much and am moved cry so little when I read (yet tear up frequently when watching movies).  Wwhenever I hear the story of the lonely weaver of Raveloe, however, whether in print, via the spoken word (i.e., book on tape/CD) or on screen, I am always touched, always lose it, so to speak it.

Ben Kingsley’s Silas plea to keep an apparently orphaned child who had strayed into his home, “It’s a lone thing; I’m a lone thing. . . . It’s come to me,” is the plea of every human being who has ever felt cut off from his fellows.  Indeed, that line in quintessetially George Eliot who so understood human loneliness and recognized our need for the companionship of our fellows.

And how meaningful that companionship can we find it.  Or how powerful the presence of someone who listens to our concerns and manifests sympathy for our plight.

George Eliot so delighted in the effect of a child on an adult with an open heart:

She [that child] was perfectly quiet now, but not asleep–only soothed by sweet porridge and warmth into that wide-gazing calm which makes us older human beings, with our inward turmoil, feel a certain awe in the presence of a little child, such as we feel before some quiet majesty or beauty in the earth or sky–before a steady glowing planet, or a full-flowered eglantine, or the bending trees over a silent pathway.

I rediscovered those words when I re-read Silas Marner a few years ago. When I opened the book I had just purchased containing the novel and some of Eliot’s short fiction, I did not quite arrive at the short story I had just begun.  I plunged instead right back into the novel, starting this time in medias res, reading well over two chapters before sleep overtook me.

Such is the power of George Eliot’s prose, the images she invokes, the ideas she presents, the emotions she expresses. She helps us find words for our deepest thoughts and shows compassion for our everyday weaknesses. She seems to see into the troubles of all our lives and finds the balm in tender relations with our fellows.

And that was how I introduced my George Eliot birthday post: (more…)

Given reports I have read on how the soon-to-be released biopic on perhaps the greatest woman of the Twentieth Century, I doubt I will see Meryl Streep’s The Iron Lady, but that great actress did make a good point about that great lady:

I still don’t agree with a lot of [Margaret Thatcher's] policies. But I feel she believed in them and that they came from an honest conviction, and that she wasn’t a cosmetic politician just changing make-up to suit the times.

Via Powerline.  It would be nice if the president could say as much about his conservative critics, instead of dispatching his minions to scold them for sabotaging the economy* in order to doom the Democrat’s electoral prospects.  Or hinting that the “very core of what this country stands for is on the line” in the coming presidential election as he hints that his Republican adversaries don’t believe in opportunity for individuals of different backgrounds.

—-

*UPDATE:  the argument Democrats and their media minions make about Republican obstruction of the president’s jobs bill is really just an example of partisan demagoguery and/or intellectual laziness.  They can’t (or refuse to) accept that we might oppose the bill for legitimate reasons.  In saying that Mrs. Thatcher’s beliefs came from “honest conviction,” Streep acknowledges the sincerity of that great Briton’s opposition to big government policies.  Would it that Obama Democrats could do the same.

FROM THE COMMENTS:  Sometimes our defenders dispatch our critics in such a thorough manner that we don’t even need respond.  So does Naamloos address the first criticism to this post:

Levi, I think Dan’s point is that Obama attacks Republicans in an unpresidential manner and doesn’t address the substance of their opposition to his policies. In other words, rather than attempt to logically demonstrate why enacting his policies would solve problems, he simply dismisses the Republicans’ opposition to his policies as threatening the “very core of what this country stands for” (which is behaviour that should be below that of the president).

Furthermore, I don’t construe Dan’s post necessarily as a complaint, but rather as simply pointing out Obama’s actions. And that is warranted whenever one of Obama’s actions is worth pointing out, especially if it demonstrates a pattern (and particularly if that pattern is hypocritical, such as Obama’s tendency to impugn the motives of Republicans after his promise to be “post-partisan”).

Well said, very well said.

Athena likes me: