More on those political mixed marriages
Here’s a postcard a thoughtful friend sent me. This friend is one of the few Republicans I know:
The New Neo
A blog about political change, among other things
Here’s a postcard a thoughtful friend sent me. This friend is one of the few Republicans I know:
Thank God you didn’t say, “Some of my best friends are Republicans.”
HOW such an enlightened creature [as the chemical blonde with curled lip portrayed] could fall so low?
HOW did she allow the Enemy to enter her chaste bedroom and her pristine dining room?
HOW the monster managed to endear himself to the point of complete surrender?
It must be love.
For money.
I can’t think of any other explanation.
Tatyana’s theory is the theory to beat.
I hope that the shallow boring stupid greedy male monster had the prudence to get a prenup, and to reside where a divorce court won’t tear it up.
er?
gs, there is no such place in these United States. Every divorced guy thinks his state is the worst, but they’re all the same. I just wonder about gay marrage, what will they do? If two guys get divorced, will they wait for a pair of lesbians to divorce so they can give the lesbians all the guys stuff? They can call it whatever they like, but it isn’t marrage unless they can have an affair and then take your kids and all your stuff.
Tatyana Says:
Care to elaborate?
ck, my divorce was a long time ago so I don’t know today’s lay of the land. It sounds like you’re talking from painful experience in which case you have my sympathy.
Why is a divorce so expensive?
Because it’s worth it!!!
Ba dump bump
I’ll be here all week; don’t forget to tip your waiter.
gs:
I am puzzled by “theory to beat”. And – yes, “care to elaborate” on that?
English is my 3rd language.
Caption:
Give me some sugar, baby!
It’s funny enough.
I wonder what the divorce statistics for Republican men look like versus those for Democrat men (or socialist men, if you want another variable). Maybe the real test would be to crosstab whether a man is married to the mother of his children with his vote in the 2008 presidential election. I wonder whether anyone has ever done such a study, and what it showed.
But I suspect that no one ever would try to gather those statistics.
Distinction without a difference.
Why bother? We probably know the answer already.
Tatyana, in a sports league, the ‘team to beat’ is the team you will probably have to defeat in order to win the championship, or to be viewed as playing at an elite level.
So ‘Tatyana’s theory is the theory to beat’ means that Tatyana’s idea is so convincing that anybody who proposes an alternative should explain why the new idea is better than (or adds value to) hers.
I’d never have thought it means that.
thank you, *gs
Ladies, beware. Liberal men more often than not can be bushwhackers. And the more left-leaning, the more treacherous and hollow they can be. These men appear to be paragons of sensitivity, caring and support, until circumstances call for responses from the core personality. Here there is nothing but chaos, deceit, indecision, cowardliness and reversals. You will be thrown under the bus at a critical moment. Count on it. I have experienced this twice in my life, I’m embarrassed to say, and have witnessed it numerous times among other such couples. In one extreme example, a university colleague of mine jumped into an “exciting” liaison with a revolutionary type who avidly supported Castro’s regime. Within months, his emotional game-playing drove her to the brink of suicide.
Jenna
You and Robin of Berkely seem to have come to the same conclusion.
OB, for the sake of the study, I would be willing to let them self-identify as either Democrat or Socialist. It would be interesting to see whether there are any differences. I suspect that most (but not all) American socialists would self-identify as Democrats; and most (but not all) Democrats are actually socialists, but for reasons of sustaining their historical narrative, they won’t admit it.
The correlation between being married to the mother of your children and how you voted is cleaner from the point of view of methodology and might shed some light on the social forces that cause people to claim ideological affinity with one party or the other.
In the mid-Nineties, I went to a fraternity reunion for the classes of, roughly, 63-69.
I was astonished at the number who had served, maybe 80%, and at the number who were still married to their first wives, in many cases women I’d known when the two were dating more than a quarter century before. Way better than the national average. Not many libs in the house back then, and some of those had learned better in the interim.
Some (2) of my best friends are Democrats recently disguised as Independents. These approaching elections take the fun out of friendship. I’m about to remark to them that their lives could have taken a much worse turn: they could have married me…..
Liberals marry later, and so may actually do better on the divorce statistics. It would be tough to tease out. I’m not sure it much matters, other than bragging rights, unless we actually see numbers and try to break them down to see if there is a meaning.
As to the girl in the photo, she’s a little off-putting as well, even without the facial expression. What financial idiom is the equivalent of “mutton dressed up as lamb?” (I’m betting that idiom works across cultures Tatyana.)
I conjecture that many of those who marry early (in haste) and repent at leisure would style themselves “Independents.”
AVI – in her(?) case it’s rather “a ram dressed as a sheep”. Look at that jawline!
A few theories about liberals going on here.
You know I don’t think they are significantly sociologically or psychologically different from conservatives. Most I know value fidelity, family and community just like I do.
Those on the far left are just ideologically wrong. But, some on the moderate left actually have a few very good ideas.
I think there are some general statements to be made about liberalism – it’s more urban, reflects the extremes of the middle class: those on top dictate; those on the bottom allow themselves to be dictated to. And, they sure are more whiney than conservatives. But, that doesn’t make them really different.
It is a fallacy that liberals are more socially or culturally open than conservatives – ask any gay or black conservative.
But, the majority aren’t the hedonists many on the right make them out to be.
And the fact is liberal chicks dig conservative guys.
Ah, the duplicity of the left. We all know when the pendulum swings all the way to the left it crosses into the domain of the Soviet state. Democrats won’t admit it – not to you. The realities of “pure” liberalism is their dirty little secret.
Ask a liberal what Bernie Sanders believes. They’ll tell you he’s a liberal, but they’ll tell each other he’s a socialist. If you call him a socialist they’ll attack you with everything they’ve got – even though Sanders admits it himself.
I think “socialism” … it’s kind of like the “n-word”.
Liberal chicks might dig a lot of guys. They did when I was in college. That’s part of the problem, according to Harry Stein, and part of the attraction of liberalism to a certain kind of young man.
That would be a perfect anniversary card for my wife. Except maybe not so perfect, since an anniversary card typically shouldn’t prompt second thoughts… 😉
*sigh* I live a complicated life.
unrepentant kulak: the postcard is from this book.
Thanks, Neo! As noted above though, I
don’t think it’d be a wise purchase on my part. 🙂
I know two couples in a mixed political marriage. In one they don’t talk about their politics much. In the other one she (the liberal) has been so phenomenally attractive and they both hint that the sex has been so good that he just laughs at her political opinions and basically congratulates himself on his intellectual superiority. They deserve one another. I am glad that my spouse has had a political conversion along with me, because the way I feel about Democrats now, it would be really hard to be married to one who wasn’t a DINO.
# neo-neocon Says:
The publication date is May 26, 1990.
Vieux Charles Says:
“You know I don’t think they are significantly sociologically or psychologically different from conservatives.”
There was a study a few years back that did notice a difference… and it had a little overlap with ‘being open’ (which it did not claim meant intellectually open minded).
It concluded that lefty types often lack a cousin to impulse control. They lacked visceral revulsion to things that caused that in response in the general population.
Example, they were open to eating the family dog after a disaster. Whereas non lefties were disturbed by the notion (they might still do it, but it bothered them to think about it).
>>And the fact is liberal chicks dig conservative guys.>>
Sure…loyal, dedicated, protective – next best thing to a dog. The problem is that the conservative guys seem to think that reciprocity is in order…that’s something liberal chicks don’t seem to get.
Tatyana
>>…in her(?) case it’s rather “a ram dressed as a sheep”.>>
Correcting you only because you say you have a language problem… that should be “as a ewe”. They’re _all_ sheep. A ram is a male sheep with all his equipment intact. A wether (pronounced “weather” and heh! spell check doesn’t know that either!) is a male sheep that has had his testicles surgically removed. A ewe is a female sheep.
Thanks, *suek. Yes, that’s what I meant – a nale sheep dressed as female.
..just a small note aside: I wouldn’t say I have a language problem. I can express myself in 3 languages – even if sometimes my vocabulary lacks certain terms, along with Google.
You just have a stupid keyboard: “a nale sheep dressed as female”. That’s after it heard about “ewe”!
Tatyana. Idioms are always harder. They are something different from vocabulary, per se. I was looking for something along the lines of “cheap dressed up as elegant.” But your vivid image may be more useful.
Thomass – You are referring to Jonathan Haidt’s research, which neo has also mentioned here. I blogged on him twice: http://assistantvillageidiot.blogspot.com/search?q=haidt
I have had thoughts since then as well. The “disgust” measures were slanted so that they would capture more conservatives than liberals. If the questions were changed, such as “if you were out of toilet paper and all you had was a newspaper with pictures of MLK (or other liberal icon)…” you would get just as many liberals suddenly finding that those extra axes of morality that ignorant conservatives add in might have some value after all.
Tatyana…
I hesitated with the word “problem”… but frankly, I didn’t have another to substitute! If you have a word that you’d prefer…just say the word! _Any_ word! I understand – I’m fairly bilingual … German and English. Being in Southern Calif, I get some Spanish thrown in, but I too have a “problem”… sometimes I actually know the Spanish word for something, but the German word keeps coming into my head. Sort of like my brain says ” need foreign word for xxx”….and gives me German. I haven’t gotten the Spanish to register as “foreign word” in my brain, I guess.
But I don’t know what to call that – other than a language “problem”!
Thomass: it’s all those little green people that sit inside!
AVI: the idiom you were looking for (or, rather, an image from the great De La Fontaine)- “a Jay dressed in Peacock plumes”
In Russian it has become an idiom (many mistake it for original folklore), “A Crow in Peacock Feathers”
Are you sure that post card wasn’t a retouch of an “I married a nice guy!” ad?
Tatyana – that sums it up beautifully. It has an additional associtaion for me, as The Crow was a notorious Bucuresti prostitute decades ago who figured prominently in political folklore.
suek – Read up on Broca’s Area of the brain – the wiki will do – and you will get some explanation for the “need foreign word for…” phenomenon. Your intuition was quite good on that.
Will it answer this one for me?
I studied German in HS and College. We moved to Germany and lived there – on the local economy – for 3 years. My German was very halting, and although I could understand most of what Germans were saying to me (except for the butcher shop lady who spouted her German like an AK47!), I struggled to respond. We moved back to the states, and after some 5-7 years, during which I spoke _no_ German, we returned to Germany and lived on the economy once again. Second time around, the German flowed, and I had no trouble with communication – I could even crack a few puns in German every now and then. Germans I spoke to knew I wasn’t German, but thought that either I was a native German who had married an American and had been out of country for a long time, or perhaps that I was Dutch (as opposed to Deutch). How did that happen? I still don’t understand it…
suek: were you more relaxed the second time around?
Heh. I have no idea…it’s been some 35 years or so. I don’t think so, but anything’s possible!