Well Done Madame

No, this isn’t a roast of you. :) The title of this was the first thought that came to mind upon re-reading your one-year anniversary address/post.

On to Déjà vu and succeeding posts:

This Prof does not grade on a curve (nearly always considered it a watering-down effect on standards, unless I was the one who had blown the test/assignment construction), and even if I did, as you are the only one in the running, it would statistically fizzle, lol.

Mark Twain (and you) seems mostly insightfully correct in the observations on travel. However (comma? lol) there are those whose own egocentricity or zealotry or selfish arrogance is so great that travel does not affect either their internal or external views. As Salman Rushdie alluded so well in one of his famous books, there are those who can close themselves off to outside influences to stay focused on what they believe. There are more than a few who do not let reality interfere with their set beliefs!

As for the Duke of Windsor, I do not know if he was sorry. The intricacies and complexities inside a close relationship are often impossible to accurately view from what the world sees from the outside. As for the well-known affairs of his “wild American wife,” that too could be covered in complexity. It is not unknown for the rich and famous (and perhaps the semi-bored rich and famous) to indulge sexual and even romantic flings by their spouses, and of course, the Windsors might have even been swingers/free-lovers of a sort. Whatever the case, there certainly appeared to be affection in the later years, and whether this was ever-present, or the result of senility bringing relief from painful memories, or some other reason entirely, well, a biographer might have a lot more accurate appraisal (I must confess to not having read enough on this subject), but some secrets do go to the grave.

For the Weiner and Anthony momentary “news,” the American public’s inability to focus (even assuming understanding) and instead to gravitate toward spectacle that is meaningless in comparison (let alone semi-invented), leans toward some weighty material we will pick up as the summer gets on toward its second half (can you feel me resisting the urge? Lol). Suffice to say at this point that, while some feel Weiner was targeted for reasons other than listed, the social standard fixation, detailed by now multiple authors, not only claims another victim, but keeps us diverted from our real interests. And as I say time and again, who does that serve?

I agree with you about the female reporters (and others). I have also said for a while now that “the sorority” (the mass of like minded women—let’s say for argument 60% of femaledom) sets the social standard, and also the punishment for violating it. Certain things are “acceptable,” or at least being able to be overlooked, but others are not, and the punishments, a sort of collective hive-mind among the sisters of the sorority, dished out in odd proportion. The sorority often assumes one hundred percent innocence on the part of their sister in anything concerning males, and one hundred percent (and unredeemable) guilt of the offending significant other. The punishments are harsh, strictly enforced, and often devastating to the man. And even when clear error is revealed, no apologies are forthcoming. A friend of mine a few years ago was accused of all sorts of things (and condemned in the most vicious terms) by the friends and co-workers of his soon to be ex-wife. Yet when it was not only revealed that most of those things were untrue, but furthermore, the soon to be ex-wife was guilty of the very things he had been viciously attacked for, no remorse from the attackers was seen. For the sorority, truth appears not very relevant—the paradigm is that a man once accused by the sorority is condemned in perpetuity (until one of them goes hypocrite and maybe ends up with him).

Well, that certainly sounded one-sided in the other direction, didn’t it? :) Ah, we are not even beginning to scratch the surface of all these complexities—indeed, I am at great risk of oversimplifying. Not to mention that I tread on the domain of someone far more qualified to speak on the matters female—you! :)