Wrinkles

The New Neo Posted on by

Here’s how to retard the growth of wrinkles, for all of you folks of a certain age, or those of you who plan someday to be of a certain age and want to prepare yourselves.

Strangely enough, I already do most of those things (except cocoa—can’t eat anything chocolate because of the migraines) including the “sleep on your back” one, although it never occurred to me it would have any effect on wrinkles at all. It does, however, forestall those temporary creases one sometimes gets from contact with a crumpled pillowcase—although that’s not the reason I do it.

Romney, the non-Newt

The New Neo Posted on by

Is Newt’s star of the mere shooting variety, like the short-lived ascendancies of Bachmann and Perry and Cain before him? One would think so, from today’s editorials in the Washington Examiner and the National Review. The first comes right out and endorses Romney, the second stops just short of that officially, but effectively does it just the same.

Ah, who cares about editorials? That’s just the Washington establishment, right? They hate Newt and have been in Romney’s pocket from the start.

Actually, I don’t care about editorials. Arguments from authority mean nothing to me—except when what they make sense, and to me these do. I’ll tell you why—and it’s certainly not because I’m a Washington insider.

I long ago faced the fact that while I’m not enthusiastic about any of the Republican candidates, I like candidate Obama a great deal less. So this was always going to be an election in which my usual nose-holding was going to have to be performed in a firmer fashion than ever. So be it.

I am a pragmatist, and my humble evaluation of Newt Gingrich’s chances for election is that they are non-existent—for two reasons, neither of them being his conservatism, which is not the problem.

Newt’s first flaw is character, and the second is personality. These may sound alike, but they are not. Clinton, for example, was a good example of a candidate who lacked the first but had the second in spades. Obama is an example of a person who might lack both but was very very good at pretending to have both, enough to fool enough of the people enough of the time. Romney is an example of a candidate who has the first (at least, in the personal sense if not the political, if you think political character involves steadfastness) but lacks the second.

Unfortunately, Gingrich has neither. And he has neither in a rather spectacular way. He has a history of ethics violations, trumped up and exaggerated or no. More troubling (at least to me) is the enormous amount of money he received from Fannie and Freddie. Think that won’t be a huge problem for voters when Democrats sink their teeth into it? And that’s just his political character; I don’t think I need to reiterate the problems with his personal character vis a vis wives and other women.

Then there’s personality. If Romney is slick and robotic, Newt is downright unpleasant. Republicans and conservatives may see him as feisty and combative enough to handle Obama, but the visuals of a scowling Newt vs. Obama will not win over many independents, and whether you like it or not (or admit it or not) that’s a good part of the general election game.

Romney’s a flip-flopper? Newt, likewise. Romney’s a career politician? He spent far more time in the private sector than Newt, and knows a great deal more about business. And they both have a history of supporting individual mandates for health care, if that’s what upsets you most about Romney.

At this point there is no viable Republican candidate who is conservative and who has both character and personality. I wish it were otherwise, but it’s not. So at the moment and until further notice—these things are always subject to change right up until the moment of nomination—I reluctantly support Romney as the Republican candidate for president.

This non-earth-shattering news will affect far fewer people than the Examiner and NR endorsements, and those affect precious few already. But hey, this is a blog, and I’ve got opinions—opinions with which many, many, many of you will no doubt disagree.

As a well-known Republican figure once said, bring it on.

Foods people hate

The New Neo Posted on by

Here’s an article about certain foods many people hate, and why.

Among them are some of my favorites: cilantro, for example, which I fell in love with the first time I ever tasted it, some time in my twenties (“where have you been all my life, cilantro?”). I’ve often been puzzled by some people’s hatred of it, as well as of raw tomatoes and raisins. I know plenty of people who can eat cooked tomatoes (as in sauce) but can’t abide raw, and/or who love grapes but carefully pick raisins out of any pastry in which they might find them.

I can’t say the article really explains all this; do people really dislike raisins because they resemble feces, for example? And whose feces do they resemble, pray tell? Perhaps, if you stretch it a bit, those of mice. But I can’t say that’s anything that ever occurred to me before.

And fennel? Who doesn’t like fennel? Especially roasted or braised.

Now licorice: that’s another story. It’s one of the few foods I detest.

At least Barack and Michelle are consistent about this

The New Neo Posted on by

I wonder what important things Obama thinks he’s doing for the people at this point, and what important things he plans to do for them/us in a second term:

I also wonder why he and Michelle are so down on their quality of life as First Couple. But at least they are consistent. Here’s Michelle Obama during the 2008 campaign:

There’s an inconvenience factor [in running for and becoming president], and if we’re going to uproot our lives, then let’s hopefully make a real big dent in what it means to be president of the United States.”

And what it means to Mrs. Obama is sacrificing many of the things she holds most dear, in favor of a larger goal. Although she has concluded that this mission is worth what it takes, achieving such acceptance has been difficult, and the adjustments are ongoing.

I feel terribly sorrow for their sacrifices. But maybe we can relieve them of the burden by not re-electing them.

Speaking of re-election, Newt Gingrich isn’t polling well against Obama. If Gingrich becomes the nominee, and people become more familiar with him, I’m not sure whether that will change for the better or the worse.

Tolstoi on Chekhov

The New Neo Posted on by

[Hat tip: Ann Althouse.]

Excerpt by Peter Gnedich, “Memories,” from The Book of Life (1922):

Lev Tolstoy sincerely loved Chekhov, but did not like his plays. He told Chekhov once, “A playwright should take the theater-goer by the hand, and lead him in the direction he wants him to go. And where can I follow your character? To the couch in the living-room and back””because your character has no other place to go.” They both””Tolstoy and Chekhov””laughed at these words.

Chekhov told me later, “When I am writing a new play, and I want my character to exit the stage, I remember those words of Lev Nikolaevich, and I think ”˜Where will my character go?’ I feel both funny and angry.” Chekhov’s only consolation was that Tolstoy also did not like the plays of Shakespeare.

I never liked Chekhov’s plays, and I find myself agreeing with Tolstoy about them, although most certainly not about Shakespeare’s works. When I was younger, I was annoyed by the way Chekhov’s plays circle lazily around themselves, featuring boring people doing mostly boring things. I’d had enough of that in real life! It was only later that I realized his plays were about ennui and boredom, and had something to say about depression and loss, missed opportunities and lives of regret.

But I still don’t like them. And they are almost impossible to act (unless, perhaps, you’re Russian), especially for high school or college students.

Question about that drone

The New Neo Posted on by

In the thread about the drone captured by Iran, “Mr. Frank” made the following comment:

The military wanted to destroy the drone on the ground. Obama turned down their request. Why?

I was curious to see whether this was the case. Because the comment contained no link, I Googled it and found quite a few comments of the same type on various discussion boards. But all I could find as the source of the information was this statement by Dick Cheney:

“The right response to that would have been to go in immediately after it had gone down and destroy it,” Cheney said told Erin Burnett of CNN’s’ “OutFront”

Cheney said the president had three options on his desk but rejected all of them. “They involved sending somebody in to try to recover it or, if you can’t do that, and admittedly that would be a difficult operation, he certainly could have gone in and destroyed it on the ground with an air strike,” he said.

“But he didn’t take any of the options. He asked nicely for them to return it. And they aren’t going to do that,” Cheney said.

Interesting. Cheney doesn’t say where he got his information, but I assume it was from military sources annoyed at Obama.

Of course, there’s no way to tell whether it’s true or not, or what the risks of such an air strike would have been in comparison to the risks of letting the Iranians examine the drone and learn from it. I read somewhere (unfortunately, can’t find the source at the moment) that the design of the drone makes it resistant to the reverse-engineering Iran claims it’s undergoing. It’s almost impossible to know whether that’s true, either, but if it is then the capture of the drone would be most valuable to the Iranians for propaganda.

But here’s my question: why don’t drones feature a mechanism by which they can be destroyed remotely if they fall into enemy hands? That would seem to be a rather obvious plus to incorporate into the design, but this is hardly my field of expertise.

Rescue 911

The New Neo Posted on by

When my son was little in the 80s and early 90s, the whole family used to love the TV show “Rescue 911.”

It was one of my guilty pleasures. A reality show that featured staged reenactments of actual 911 calls and their aftermath, it was something I watched often although I learned that people would make fun of me when I’d talk about it so enthusiastically. It was on TV in reruns for a while, and although even those ended a long time ago I still recall many of the most dramatic and/or touching tales.

Did I say “touching”? Yes. Rare was the show (most of them featuring three or four vignettes) when at least one of its tales didn’t make me cry.

Was I a softie? Maybe. But part of the reason the show engendered such emotional responses was that the episodes were believably done, and part of the reason for that was that the actors were frequently the original participants, who often seemed to experience a sort of psychodrama effect during the reenactments. Another reason was that you never knew how it would end (unless you saw the original participant narrating at the outset; then at least you knew that that person had survived). Most had happy outcomes, but not all by any means.

Last night it occurred to me that I might be able to go to YouTube and watch some of the shows. Sure enough, that turned out to be the case. In fact, one could spend many many MANY hours doing so. Therefore I warn you that if you’re of a certain cast of mind, this activity could be addictive.

YouTube doesn’t feature all the episodes, but an awful lot of them are there. I chose to watch the following one first, almost at random. I didn’t remember seeing it originally and still don’t remember whether I did, but it didn’t disappoint this time. Something about these little girls (who now would be grown women) touched my heart—their sweetness and kindness, and then the surprising twist at the end when…well, I won’t tell you. Watch for yourself:

It struck me as I watched this episode and then several others that, even though it was only 20 years ago, it seems longer ago than that because the people seem quite different from now—more innocent, more loving, more old-fashioned in some basic way. Maybe it was just these particular people, of course. But maybe there have been more changes in the culture since then than I realize.

Boys won’t be boys, and men…

The New Neo Posted on by

…aren’t being rewarded for being men:

If women have adapted well to the new economy, the same cannot be said for many men. Why not? It easy to paint the rise of working women as the reason why working men are losing ground, but that’s an oversimplification. In Boys Adrift (2007), psychologist Leonard Sax argues that men aren’t getting the training they need and blames the education system. The school curriculum is all wrong for boys. They’re taught reading and writing at too young an age. Competitive activities and hands-on learning are discouraged. Boys are reprimanded when they show an interest in war and violence. Taken together, these changes lead to the “widespread belief among the children themselves that school isn’t welcoming to real boys.” Restless and bored, boys are diagnosed as ADHD and medicated accordingly. If Tom Sawyer were a boy today, says Sax, he would be on Adderall.

Sax makes his case well, but I don’t believe the challenges facing men can be pinned solely on a female-centric education. Schools by themselves can’t affect a child’s life trajectory as much as we sometimes imagine. Overlapping political, economic and cultural factors are far more significant.

Government social programs are the culprit for the libertarian scholar Charles Murray. In a 2010 address to the American Enterprise Institute Murray relates the story of the janitor:

“When the government takes the trouble out of being a spouse and parent (through a range of government social programs like welfare, healthcare and daycare), it doesn’t affect the sources of deep satisfaction for the CEO. Rather, it makes life difficult for the janitor. A man who is holding down a menial job and thereby supporting a wife and children is doing something authentically important with his life. He should take deep satisfaction from that, and be praised by his community for doing so. Think of all the phrases we used to have for it: “He is a man who pulls his own weight.” “He’s a good provider.” If that same man lives under a system that says that the children of the woman he sleeps with will be taken care of whether or not he contributes, then that status goes away. I am not describing some theoretical outcome. I am describing American neighborhoods where, once, working at a menial job to provide for his family made a man proud and gave him status in his community, and where now it doesn’t.”

Murray’s poignant description of the impact of welfare state programs is on the mark; it has been played out to devastating effect in many inner-city communities. However, the moral hazard created by government overreach is overstated for those men in working class and middle income communities whose lives have been dislocated by the recession and long-term economic changes.

Journalist Hanna Rosin describes a group of men in Kansas City who could be Murray’s janitors. In her essay “The End of Men” (Atlantic, June 2010) she calls them “casualties of the end of the manufacturing era.”

“The 30 men sitting in the classroom aren’t there by choice: Having failed to pay their child support, they were given the choice by a judge to go to jail or attend a weekly class on fathering, which to them seemed the better deal. Like them, he [the social worker running the class] explains, he grew up watching Bill Cosby living behind his metaphorical ‘white picket fence’ — one man, one woman, and a bunch of happy kids. ‘Well, that check bounced a long time ago,’ he says…’All you are is a paycheck, and now you ain’t even that…What is our role? Everyone’s telling us we’re supposed to be the head of a nuclear family, so you feel like you got robbed. It’s toxic, and poisonous, and it’s setting us up for failure.’ He writes on the board: $85,000. ‘This is her salary.’ Then: $12,000. ‘This is your salary. Who’s the damn man? Who’s the man now?’ A murmur rises. ‘That’s right. She’s the man.'”

It’s a case of unintended consequences—or, if you believe this is all part of the left’s plan, it would be a case of intended consequences.

Obama: all the Republican candidates are the same because…

The New Neo Posted on by

…they’re all Republicans.

Somehow I don’t think that’s a good approach for Obama to take in his re-election campaign. After all, most polls indicate that a generic Republican does better against Obama than any of the individual candidates we actually have. Emphasizing their generic Republicanism is more likely to enhance their chances of being elected than reduce them. Emphasizing their individual and personal failings and crochets seems much more likely to do the trick.

But why am I giving Obama advice, anyway?