The Invisible Counterpoint

I didn't want the world to define her; I wanted her to define her world. I didn't understand then just how challenging this would be, not only vis-à-vis my daughter, but vis-à-vis me. Like many other women, when I got pregnant I was determined to establish a reasonable balance between my work life and my family. My goal while Julia was small was to take care of her as well as write my first book. This equilibrium sounded good in theory — and in e-mails to my friends — but in truth I had a hard time actually doing it, actually ensuring that I had both a child and my own life. I believed in balance on paper but never felt truly entitled to it. [. . .] We had been together 10 years before we had children, and they had been lived as equals. Suddenly, this was no longer the case. Suddenly, we had very little time together, and most of it was spent talking about his work and life. My future, my career plans and goals, felt sidelined by fatigue and logistics. The "flexibi...

Frankly, as a YouPorn masturbator, I was pretty offended by this. (By the way, you can also hit me up on Chatroulette.) What's more, the last part kind of makes him sound like serial killer: "My local life is clean. I am more focused than they are. Stronger and better suited to what is near me -- my family, my wife, my job." It almost feels like his next sentence could easily be, "No one would ever dream of looking in my shed." But the other weird part about this is that he says, "you don't fight men over stuff like this" -- yet he goes and does just that. He fights with men (with me) about it, he just does so in flaccid anonymity. [. . .] First of all, I would never, never describe making love to my wife as "sweet." There is actually a lot of grunting, if you must know. [. . .] This is not a cheating piece, this is a revenge piece; society isn't nice with all its fancy expectations for little Prince Anonymous, so I will t...

Kucinich knows as well as anyone that the president is far from a socialist; he's a centrist corporatist Democrat, and that was clear back when Kucinich stood well to his left during the 2008 primaries. And even though the Cleveland progressive normally avoids partisan calculations about power and opportunity, and votes his conscience and ideology, Kucinich decided to support Obama's healthcare reform plan because right now, partisan calculations about power and opportunity actually serve his left-wing conscience and ideology. Kucinich understands that there will be no healthcare reform for another generation if this bill doesn't pass. There will be no second Obama term either (and don't dream about lefty primary challenges -- there won't be a Democrat in the White House in 2013 if his name isn't Obama). The only thing worse than being an alleged socialist in American politics is being a weak, ineffectual socialist, and if the president and his party can't g...

Think of it as the effect of a grinding recession crossed with the epicurean tastes of young people as obsessed with food as previous generations were with music and sex. Faced with lingering unemployment, 20- and 30-somethings with college degrees and foodie standards are shaking off old taboos about who should get government assistance and discovering that government benefits can indeed be used for just about anything edible, including wild-caught fish, organic asparagus and triple-crème cheese. (Jennifer Bleyer, “Hipsters on food stamps,” Salon, 15 March 2010) The more spirited always look sick to the more beaten-over: sex, drugs, and rock and roll As someone who believes depressions are self-willed phenomena that arise owing to mass discomfort with prosperity, I think the author here is playing with fire in her baiting us into considering students'/recent graduates' foodie-habits as akin to a previous generations' "self-indulgent" immersion in sex and music...