Winston Churchill, British Prime Minister, on not being cowardly before evil.

4 June 1940

“I have, myself, full confidence that if all do their duty, if nothing is neglected, and if the best arrangements are made, as they are being made, we shall prove ourselves once again able to defend our Island home, to ride out the storm of war, and to outlive the menace of tyranny, if necessary for years, if necessary alone.

At any rate, that is what we are going to try to do. That is the resolve of His Majesty’s Government-every man of them. That is the will of Parliament and the nation.

The British Empire and the French Republic, linked together in their cause and in their need, will defend to the death their native soil, aiding each other like good comrades to the utmost of their strength.

Even though large tracts of Europe and many old and famous States have fallen or may fall into the grip of the Gestapo and all the odious apparatus of Nazi rule, we shall not flag or fail.

We shall go on to the end, we shall fight in France,
we shall fight on the seas and oceans,
we shall fight with growing confidence and growing strength in the air, we shall defend our Island, whatever the cost may be,
we shall fight on the beaches,
we shall fight on the landing grounds,
we shall fight in the fields and in the streets,
we shall fight in the hills;
we shall never surrender, and even if, which I do not for a moment believe, this Island or a large part of it were subjugated and starving, then our Empire beyond the seas, armed and guarded by the British Fleet, would carry on the struggle, until, in God’s good time, the New World, with all its power and might, steps forth to the rescue and the liberation of the old.”

The Gulf Spill and the Hidden Vice of Capitalism

Here is one aspect of the Gulf spill no one seems to be talking about. It concerns the same thing that conservatives commentators, libertarian journals, and economists seldom take into consideration: Persons in the upper management of large corporations are not necessarily very intelligent and few are well-educated. That is the hidden vice of capitalism. For once, I am speaking as an expert. (Go ahead, check my vita linked to this blog and then, re-check the facts on Google. Make my day!)

The BP-caused oil spill – going on for more of a month as I write – is also a public relations disaster for the corporation. As I said earlier ( “The Louisiana Oil Disaster? Posted 5/21/10), we are still missing the moving photographs of thousands of dead, soiled aquatic birds. There is in and around Plaquemines parish a group of stake-holders that is becoming increasingly vocal: The fishermen. I heard some on NPR on 5/25/10 complaining that BP has mostly ignored their wishes to “volunteer” to help. It sounded true and it sounded incredible to me.

Whatever happens, BP is going to be on the hook for hundreds of millions of dollars, possibly for more than a billion dollars. The fishermen whose livelihood and whose future appears to be threatened by BP’s negligence number in the hundreds. I doubt that there are a thousand of them altogether. At the risk of sounding cynical, I will say that they are the only easily identifiable group of human victims who tug at ordinary Americans’ hearts. It’s easy to imagine that most Louisiana fishermen don’t have a doctorate in solar energy science, for instance; it’s easy to recognize that few can readily switch to another occupation. That they may want to transmit their legacy to their children is also understandable from an emotional standpoint. Finally, the tens of millions of American who fish recreationally will have no trouble grasping that the Louisiana fishermen may love their occupation and the lifestyle that goes with it. I am skeptical myself about the extensiveness of the damage. I don’t hope it will become Obama’s Katrina. Yet my heart goes out to those unknown fishermen deprived of both livelihood and, it seems right now, of a future.

That’s why I find it incomprehensible that BP has not taken the following simple measures: Gather everyone who claims to be a fisherman and is in a boat that moves under its own power. Give $100 a day to very crewman, $150 to every captain, and another $200 for the boat. I think the total cost would be under $200,000 a day or six million dollars for a month. And yes, there would be graft and cheating.

BP could simply tell the fishermen that they are “on call,” to be deployed at four hours’ notice as needed. Almost all would cooperate because the urge to do something in a crisis is irresistible. The shirkers would not be missed and they would be shunned by their neighbors. Tempers would subside. The locals would be turned from louder and louder claimants enjoying the world’s sympathy into allies of BP.

Why does not BP do anything so simple, you wonder? Back to my opening comments. The upper levels of big corporations are replete with people with mediocre minds. That this is not well-known is the fault of ignorant journalists and of devious business schools. (Disclosure: I taught in a business school for more than twenty years.) In fact, the evidence that CEOs of big corporations, for example, do anything that is both useful and important is slim and ill-founded. I mean by the latter that the empirical evidence in support does not begin to reach the level of rigor expected in the social sciences in general. The quality of the evidence does not even come close to what one expect routinely in the social sciences that concern themselves with business specifically. I know this because I refereed for such journals and submitted my own research to them for thirty years. ( There is a column on the technical topic of scholarly refereeing somewhere on this blog.) Warning: I stopped taking interest in that kind of research about three years ago. If some great, well-executed study has appeared on the topic since then, I might not know of it. If you know of one such, please, let me know that I may correct my ignorance. In summary” The myth of the god-like captain of industry prevails. It prevails without much successful challenge because it’s a myth, precisely, the founding myth of capitalism.

How can such a disturbing, dismal view of corporate governance be correct? There are two, explanations; they are not mutually exclusive; in fact, they overlap. First, academics in general don’t receive well innovations that may undermine scholarly reputations built over a life-time. There is some good in this because many innovations are, in fact, frivolous, the products of passing fads. Yet, scholarly innovations with impeccable credentials, the very credentials the fortress defenders claim to respect, also have difficulty gaining a foothold. Frequently, when they do gain a foothold, they are restricted to a ghetto for a generation or more. Evidence in favor of the idea that CEOs are omniscient and omnipotent need not exist. Any evidence that they are not is guilty until it proves itself innocent, over and over again.

The second explanation is crass: Most or all business schools derive a significant fraction of their revenue from private donations and endowments. Donations, other than bequeaths by the dead, are always decided on or reviewed by CEOs or by their creatures. The unspoken consensus in business schools is that there is no need to bite the hand that feeds you, even if it feeds you only dessert. Why antagonize the people with wallets in hand with research and publications that minimize their importance and suggest they may not be all that bright? This state of mind does not result from any conspiracy. It needs not be expressed. It’s part of the culture of business schools. In support of this thesis is the well-known fact that the richest business schools turn out the most iconoclastic research Stanford University comes to mind where the mindset goes like this: You want to bequeath us what? Thank you, we are busy right now. If you can call tomorrow, we will try to find you a spot in the line of donors.

Its’ chic nowadays to downplay the relevance of academia and academia has done much to earn this contempt. The fact however is that business schools teach vast numbers of undergraduates, and only slightly smaller numbers of MBA students. They instruct ordinary people, journalists, teachers and teaches of teachers. Almost anything anyone in America knows about business come from or is heavily influenced by this teaching. What business schools teach matters in the long run although in diffuse ways.

While it might be used that way, this short essay is not an argument for government intervention or supervision. The perception that government bureaucrats know anything at all is even more questionable. After all, they have been running the US Post Office for 230 years!

Dr D. on Sex, Homosexuality, Language Usage

A reader, MM, sent a comment criticizing an off-hand, snide remark I had made in my micro-essay, “Sex Advice,” on this blog. I welcome the opportunity MM gives me to take him into the alley and beat him to a pulp. His full comment:

Though usually considered much of a stick-in-the-mud regarding language, and especially neologisms, I must offer a cordial disagreement regarding the word “gender” when used instead of “sex.”

Ordinarily I despise changing the language (you should see, for example, my battles with the ignorami who say “healthy” when they mean “healthful”), but when a change improves and clarifies, then I can not only accept but embrace it.

You are right that “gender” was originally intended for language references — more important in French and other furrin tongues — but since “sex” has become such an important, or at least such an ever-present, part of everyday life, having a separate word, such as “gender,” keeps the meaning clear.

I mean, I have compromised my formerly inviolate principles so that now I even use the word “gay” rather than “homosexual,” after swearing I would never degrade the language in that fashion.

But, after all, “gay” is the polite term, the one preferred by the people to whom it applies.

So, if I can change, linguistically, so can you.

MM’s justification for the widespread substitution of “gender” for “sex”makes sense. I agree that it clarifies. However, it ignores the fact that such a change rarely occurs as a result of a technical-rational process. Such changes, this one in particular, are loaded with sociological and, with political importance. To ignore them is to assent. Winning the substitution of one word for another is like winning an election forever, an election in which the winning party never even ran and the opposition never campaigned. What I am going to say about “gender” applies even better to “gay.”

For the six- hundred years-plus that something like modern English has been in existence, the word sex expressed the distinction between male and female. That would be as in the “male sex,” “the weaker sex,” and “keeping the sexes divided.” It worked well. Hardly anyone got confused between having sex and the above usage. I admit it may have been partly because hardly anyone said, “I am having sex,” but rather, “ I am….(Anglo-Saxonism).”

Before I proceed, don’t get into a naively condescending mode about my assertion that modern English has been in existence for only six-hundred hundred years; consider the following: The English nobility only began speaking English toward the end of the fourteenth century. Before that, England was a bi-lingual country. I know it will make some of you die a little inside but Richard the Lion-Hearted was a French speaker. But I digress.

For all that period, hardly anyone used the word “gender” except grammarians: “he, she,” and sometimes: “mare is the feminine gender of horse.” Rather suddenly, in the late sixties or early seventies, academic feminists, riding shamelessly on the success of the black civil rights movement, decided they wanted a piece of the pie too. In academia, this usually means one’s own department, with a budget, loose travel money, and the right to pretend to be autonomous without too much oversight. They reasoned, that since “Black Studies” departments were cropping up right and left, there could also be…. And there the problem arose that they perceived quickly. They couldn’t very well claim that they wanted their own “Sex Studies Department.” For one thing, all the courses offered by such a department would quickly become over-subscribed. For another thing, most hated sex, the sport, and they had a horror of being mistaken for, say, some sort of sex therapists. So, one of them, more ingenuous than the others, or perhaps more cultured, hit on the idea of demanding “Gender Studies” departments. As the overall level of general culture in academia is mediocre, few noticed the violation of usage. Since it’s poorly a guarded secret that academia does not recruit in the same ponds as the SEALs, for example, those who noticed kept their mouths shut. Here is the rule of thumb: If you oppose anything with a progressive label, in nine out of ten universities, you are labeled a fascist, or worse. Then, your career suffers, you lose your financial ability to send your kids to private school and worse, few will sit with you in the faculty club.

To use the word “gender” when “sex” would be appropriate constitutes a supine acceptance of the massive and successful intellectual fraud that is feminism since the 1970s. It’s so even though such a substitution may clarify matters where little clarification is needed.

The word “gay” is even more loaded, of course. MM states that after all, it’s the “polite term.” In general, I am all for politeness, but not at any price. I don’t always call people what they want to be called. I don’t especially, if I sniff a covert intent to market evil ideas or evil acts. Thus, if violent jihadists I met at an all-soda cocktail party requested that I call them “saints” I would not comply. I don’t even use the conventional title “Reverend” when I refer to Catholic priests, these days. Finally, there is the touchy and immensely interesting empirical question of whether homosexuals want to be known as “gay” at all. The last question is not rhetorical, as we shall see.

First, MM’s linguistic insolence forces me through a detour on etymology, the origin of words. (I hate it when others force me to act like a pedantic little professor.) “Homosexual” is formed after the Greek root “homo” and the Latin suffix for sex (the activity or the proclivity. See above.) “Homo” means “same,” as in “homogeneous,” made of the same substance. A homosexual is someone who is attracted to his or her own sex, man to men, woman to women. (Thus, to call someone “homophobe,” is to accuse him of hating his own kind, say, cops who hate cops, a bus driver who hates other bus drivers, even a man who hates men, even homosexual men who hate heterosexual men.  Wrap your mind around this one, MM! But, I digress again.)

The word “homosexual” is new. It appeared in European languages around the turn of the 19^th century. Before that, male homosexuals were called “sodomites,” which is presumptuous and nastily over-informed about their actual practices, as well as vague. Besides, it assigns to male homosexuals an unearned monopoly. Females homosexuals did not exist back then, I guess, because there was no name for them except perhaps “Lesbian,” inhabitants of the charming island of Lesbos, in Greece. (To this day, heterosexual male inhabitants of the island insist on calling themselves “Lesbians,” a practice some American tourists find disorienting. But I digress again.)

It seems to me, following MM’s comment, that “gay” is only the “polite term” if “homosexual” is impolite. But it’s a neutral word with the immense merit of being precise and descriptive. Only the prejudiced, the narrow-minded, the repressive can find it insulting. That would be, of course the large number of Americans who think homosexuality is religiously prohibited or against nature.

I, for one am neither disgusted nor shocked by the practice. I don’t want to enter here into a theological argument but it is suspect you could not find any clear condemnation of homosexuality in the Old Testament. You would find several in Saint Paul, that successful cult founder and pillager of the Christic message. As for the un-naturalness of homosexuality, follow me: Widespread homosexuality in the Animal Kingdom tells us again that Mother Nature is one playful bitch! It’s the same Mother Nature that put teats on bulls and paints threatening eye shapes on the wings of slight butterflies. Mother Nature was thinking: You never know; it might turn out to be useful sometime. There is even a tentative but attractive evolutionary explanation for the commonness of homosexuality among humans. (Another time, if you ask.)

Throughout the fifties and the sixties, homosexual organizations such as the Matachine Society of San Francisco, were making good progress in reducing the routine, often violent police persecution of homosexuals. (In case you suspect I am a homosexual myself because I am so well informed: No, I am not; at least I don’t think so. I could be a late bloomer; you never know.)

I don’t know exactly when the word “gay” appeared. It was in common usage in the late sixties. It looked then like an innocent and even charming, whimsical piece of public relations: Homosexuals had a good life, they partied a lot; they were merry (gay); nothing to hate there. Then, the AIDS epidemic happened, and male homosexuals started dying and the whimsy became a swindle. One’s friend’s, one’s lover’s funeral is not a party. It’s not merry, it’s not gay.

After that, the word became a defiant banner in the hands of homosexual activists whose sins against basic intellectual honesty are numerous, the most grievous, sins by omission. Here is an incomplete list:

Gay activists have not spoken clearly to condemn the specific sexual practices that entail a high risk of death. They have acted as if they were more interested in theoretical sexual freedom than in life itself. Instead, they have pursued diligently the fallacious line that “anyone can get AIDS.” Really? What do you think is the probability of catching the HIV virus for a promiscuous American man who has intercourse with many promiscuous American women and who never, never shoots foreign substances into his veins, and who has not had a blood transfusion? Read this again, break it into parts if you have to. Then, try to answer.

Gay activist organization have stayed carefully aloof from the revulsion engendered by the revelation that thousands of priests worldwide have sexually abused tens of thousands of boys, and boys only. As if the pedophile priests with a total predilection for children of the male sex were not homosexual. They never sound off either about the national scandal of homosexual rape in prisons. The rapists are not gay, they are somehow heterosexual men who like to do it to other men. Gay organizations have not even spoken up about serial rapist-killers of young men who, I some years, account for the bulk of the violent deaths of homosexuals. The serial murderers are not gay either.

And of course, recently, gay organizations have been the latest of a long series of activists gangs to try and use the powers of coercion of the government to impose a change in our language, with gay “marriage.” (I believe in equal protection so that I am in favor of civil contracts giving homosexuals the same rights as married heterosexuals.)

Now back to MM’s issue of politeness, that I take seriously. As is always the case when someone tries to impose political correctness on the general population, gay activists imply that they represent the whole sizable homosexual minority. No counting allowed. We have to go by other indices. Here is one: There is an organization of brave homosexuals called the Log Cabin. It’s a Republican organization. Here is another: A short time ago, I had an animated substantive discussion with a man for whom I have great intellectual respect. At one point, he referred to himself as “proudly homosexual.” There goes the activists’ linguistic monopoly!

To use the word “gay” in lieu of the neutral “homosexual” is to condone a gay agenda based on the quiet intellectual terrorism of political correctness. It’s a way to cooperate with one’s own oppression and with that of others.

I would admit if pressed that the danger presented by ideologically loaded neologisms as “gender” for “sex” and “gay” for “homosexual” does not measure up to that of Hitler’s panzer divisions for example. Yet, yet, few of us will ever have a chance to lob a Molotov cocktail at a panzer. Occasions for resistance to Goebbels however are everywhere. (Goebbels was the gifted Nazi propaganda Minister who asserted that if you tell a lie often enough, it becomes the truth.)

So, here we go, MM: There are homosexuals of both sexes.

Le fisc féderal annonce hier que 63% des Américains

qui ont fait leur déclaration d’impôts en 2009 ne sont redevables d’aucun (0) impôt féderal sur le revenu. En comptant ceux qui esquivent la déclaration, je pense que 70% des ménages ne paient rien.

Est-ce que cette faible participation pose un danger pour la démocratie? Je me demande si quiconque se pose même ce genre de question en France et dans les autres pays francophones. De vraies questions. J’éspère des réponses.

Announcing:

Soon on this Screen: Dr D. on Sex, Homosexuality

Sex Advice

Every so often, I tap my considerable experience to proffer sex advice; no, not on how to do it but on the nature of the sexes (currently called “genders” in breathtaking ignorance of the English language).

I reproach my wife of thirty years-plus mildly about some narrow offense of hers. She replies with a torrent of criticisms, most of which are centered on how “mean” I am, and on how mean I have always been. The torrent of accusations is so deep and so broad that a lesser man would drown in seconds.

I, instead, remark calmly that if half of the horrible things she recites about me are half-true, she must have very bad taste for still liking me most of the time.

No, she says; you don’t understand, being an ass-hole is not bad!

I refer you to my scientific essay on this blog” Why Young Women Are Stupid.”

And, as always, I pay attention to what does not happen. Number of negative comments I have received from the 80+ readers who opened this particular posting, negative comments from females, one would presume: 0!

My radio show is tomorrow Sunday from 11 am to 1 pm. It’s on KSCO Santa Cruz, 1080 AM. It’s also easy to catch on-line, I am told.

I keep hoping feminists will call the program to tell me off. They sound so sexy when their high-pitched voices quiver with rage!

The Louisiana Oil Disaster?

As I have said, I have trouble becoming much worried about the oil spill off Louisiana. Have I suddenly become an expert oceanographer (like every other airhead television anchor)? No, not really, not much, not at all. As usual, I interpret signals from sources that I understand well to evaluate a reality that I cannot assess directly myself. Here is what I know about the current mass media, most of it at any rate:

1 It loves catastrophes. Nothing new here but worth repeating,

2 It’s sentimentally “green” in a silly, reflexive sub-Walt Disney fashion. Those who write for it and those who speak there mostly think polar bears are cuddly. They will not admit to themselves that polar bears will eat them at the first opportunity and that they shit on the pure white snow;

3 It’s imbecilically horrified by the national corporate world that feeds it and of which it is a part. It hates big corporations without a thought.

Given the three features above, I am sure that the media stay reasonably on top of an eco-catastrophe committed by a large multinational corporation. So, I look for what the media would show me if they could. If they don’t I assume it does not exist. Hence my peace of mind.

I have been in Southern Louisiana in precisely this season. It’s full of sea birds and other aquatic birds, tens of thousands, possibly millions of them. I would expect many good pictures in the press, on television, of masses of horribly soiled dead birds. I would expect long, thorough, doleful reports of the carnage on NPR. There is none. The material must not be there I conclude. The worst I have read is that about 150 sea turtles died this year instead of 50 last year. I have no idea how abnormal that it is or even if it’s abnormal. No one else can tell with those figures.

Yet, I think there will be some ugly scenes, sooner or later, at sea and on the edge of the continent, in the wetland especially that form the southern boundary of the state. I am a reformed but long-term diver (40 years) so, I will hate it. And, yes, it’s likely that hundreds, or dozens of fishermen will suffer losses. It’s squarely BP’s obligation to compensate them if it has not already done so. This oil spill is a mess but not a biggie, it seems to me. Missing info: How long does it take for Mother Nature to re-absorb, or to dissipate the petroleum goods it produced in its own bosom.

In the meantime, if we stopped drilling offshore, our standard of living would drop drastically, not by 2 or 3 %, by 20 or 30 %, at least. And “standard of living” does not only mean beer and fancy clothes. It also involves life expectancy, infant mortality, medical relief of chronic pain, education, etc.

That the BP oil leak should happen so close to New Orleans is a godsend for the Obama administration. It should allow it to contrast its energetic, intelligent, and above all, compassionate response with the Katrina response for which Pres. Bush was vilified. Accordingly, I suspect some in the White House are disappointed that the crisis is not of greater magnitude and that it creates so few human victims. Similarly, it would be a great opportunity for the Administration to undermine the whole huge enterprise of offshore drilling if the disaster were one. Yet, it’s only making weak noises so far.

There was a Federal agency in charge of making sure this kind of accident does not happen. It was the same agency that was in charge of collecting federal government royalties (income) from oil companies, including BP. Oops! Based on this particular, spectacular success of government regulation, we need more regulation, obviously. When I brush my teeth with a bristle-free brush and my mouth remains repulsive, I just brush harder!

Obama: la claque

Plusieurs élections primaires et partielles (pour remplir un siège vacant, ces dernières) ont eu lieu avant-hier. Les candidats, tant Républicains que Démocrates, qui semblaient proches de la politique budgétaire dispendieuse du Président ont perdu. Ceux qu’il a soutenu ouvertement ont perdu le plus gros. C’est le signe annonciateur de la tempête qui risque for de balayer les majorités Démocrates aux deux chambres en Novembre prochain.

La presse, aux 9/10 Obamiste, nie contre toute évidence que les élections d’hier constituent un referendum sur la politique de l’administration. Le Président vient de recevoir une grosse claque; c’est tout simple. A mon avis, seuls un attentat contre sa vie, ou un grosse attaque terroriste pourraient encore sauver cette présidence qui chavire. Je prie pour la sécurité du Président, bien sur.

The Obamas’ Fried Chicken Dinner

I keep hearing on conservative talk-show radio that Barack Obama is evil or, at least, a habitual liar. I think this is wrong. He is neither. Conservative commentators are missing what seems obvious to me: He is abysmally ignorant. By the way, that may be the simple explanation to a fact that has been perplexing me for a while: Why his undergraduates grade are still under seal, thirty years latter. I always argue that whatever you did at 20 is automatically forgiven. But the aged bad student may not be able to forgive himself if he is still operating with a chip on his shoulder about his lack of understanding of the world.

If he was such a bad student, you ask, how could he attend first-rate universities? You guess. He was a good-looking young man with a neat appearance, and a black face but no trace of Negro dialect. (Not my words, those of the Democrat leader of the Senate.)

You can tell a lot about a long-married man from what his wife is entitled to do. Successful men don’t stay married forever to women who embarrass them by their actions. In the long run, and even in the middle-run, husbands and wives tend to deserve each other, including intellectually. Here is what Michele Obama has ordered for lunch (or dinner) for the visit of President Calderón of Mexico and of his wife: pollo (or pavo) en mole.

There are two kinds of mole. The mole I am referring to here is a quintessentially Mexican preparation centering on cocoa. No one else in the world does this; perhaps no one else had the nerve. What the First Lady is doing is like serving boeuf bourguignon to a visiting French President, or a Peking duck to a Chinese dignitary. It betrays extraordinary parochialism.

It’s unnecessarily risky in terms of the simple rules of hospitality: The chance that an American chef will prepare a mediocre mole is high. (I am sensitive to this aspect of things because I used to be French. Peruse excerpts from my memoirs of the same title on this blog.)

It’s also an unconsciously condescending act, like much that comes out of the White House. It treats an upper-class Mexican couple as children who could not cope with unfamiliar food away from home. Think of the reaction if anyone give the presidential couple of dinner of fried chicken and grits, with water-melon for dessert, just to make sure they don’t feel ill-at-ease.

Mrs Obama: Nearly every foreign visitor to this country, except a few pious Hindus, expects that same treat: A thick slice of medium-rare excellent American beef.

Don’t go out of your way to appear sensitive. You are falling on your face and undermining your husband’s much damaged credibility.

PS Dear President Calderon: You are right to dislike the new Arizona law. It’s not good for your citizens’ dignity. Just police your border better and the problem will disappear.

Good Husband Abuse

Once, more, I am getting tired of commenting on the bad policies of our government. They are not all very bad, only the vast preponderance of them. So, here is a story while I catch my breath. It’s about Greece, sort of!

My wife says that women are stingy; nothing you can do about it, and nothing they can do. Anyone who has ever worked for tips, anywhere in the world, will recognize the boulder of truth in that blanket assertion. Oh, the precious minutes wasted while six women co-workers search for the exact penny change at the bottom of their purses! Oh, their collective awkwardness in computing 15%; their total inability to compute 20%! And smart, taste-maker millionaire Martha Steward went to the Big House for the equivalent of fifty of my dollars!

One summer, we took a trip to Turkey. In the weeks before our departure, my wife spent many happy hours buying elegant summer clothing, appropriate for a hot climate, on sale and at a discount outlet. Her declared intention was to “kick ass” with her appearance, among the thousands of probably haughty and possibly malevolent European women we were sure to bump into on the way and within Turkey itself. When we reached Athens, at four in the morning, a catastrophe awaited us: Her suitcase could not be found. As an experienced male, I immediately knew I was in trouble. I seriously asked myself what the perfect husband would do under these threatening circumstances and I made sure I did not let myself off easily. I devised a prudent plan.

As soon as we were in the hotel room, I laid out on the bed all my still-impeccable laundered shirts and offered her any and however many she wanted. She practically spat at me with contempt, a strange reaction, given that my wife routinely confiscates any shirt I buy for myself that she likes.

After a few hours of sleep, and knowing it was Saturday in the European Union, where ordinary business is treated as a criminal activity, I got up, ordered coffee and woke up my wife. I convinced her that it was better to go out and shop than to wait for her suitcase (because any action is better than inaction in times of grave crisis). I informed myself about likely shopping locations with a lady hotel receptionist I judged elegant. (I am pretty proud of my discernment in that respect.)

We took a cab, my wife beginning to steam redolent in the hundred-degree humid heat. Within minutes, we were in the middle of what was evidently a shopping district, but one that was in the process of closing for the weekend. Once more, I had underestimated, Old Europe’s resistance to the idea of earning a living: In a major city and a capital then preparing for the next Olympics, shops close at three or before, on Saturday.

Although I knew better, I humored my wife in her desire to shop around to compare prices. After four of five futile attempts in shops whose names she could not even read (in Greek characters), she was rebutted by the poor quality and high prices of everything she saw. In my mind, this was all to be expected, in the European Union. Yet, I had the wisdom to keep my mouth shut. My wife’s annoyance became like a thick fog enveloping both of us. I am proud to say that in that moment of peril, I acted like a real man and decided to do the obvious and to throw money at the problem.

I grabbed my wife by the wrist and dragged her to a branch of Marks and Spencer’s, the hoity-toity London clothier I had spotted two blocks away. I pushed and forced her to the second floor, Ladies Garments. There, quickly, with my own eyes, I spotted a superb Irish linen blouse for less than one hundred Euros, a little more than a hundred dollars then. I knew there was nothing she could say about the elegance of the item. It was chic itself made fabric! But she was bitter about the price, arguing that it would cost no more than twenty dollars at Ross-Dress-for-Less, at least on a good day. I prevailed, nevertheless. Then, I used nearly ungentlemanly arguments to force her to the third floor to buy underwear.

The bill came to something under two hundred dollars, total. Not bad, given the nature of the European social-democratic state, its protected market, its high taxes, and the six weeks vacations it awards everyone. Amex Platinum had solved the problem, as it so often does. Having averted complete horror through my virile decisiveness, I allowed myself to be pleased with myself; I let down my guard.

I drew my wife to a bench, half expecting thanks. Instead, she was as somber as ever, with the closed, tight face of really bad days.

“You still don’t understand,” she blurted heinously, “Losing her wardrobe is the worst thing that can happen to a woman.”

“Worse than losing a child?” I asked.

“Yes,” she retorted without hesitation.

The next morning, her suitcase arrived, intact.

Then, we moved on to Turkey. Throughout our otherwise enjoyable vacation in Turkey, that linen blouse stood between us, as if it were a kind of silent but tangible evidence of adultery (mine, naturally). She wore it only once more, and reluctantly. When we returned home to California, she put it away it in her deepest closet.

One day, a month later, one of her female friends, a world traveler, remarked to her that she could probably get reimbursement from the airline. My wife dropped everything, listened like she had never listened in her life and took notes. The next day, she had contacted the airline. A week later, she received a check for full reimbursement. At last, she forgave me for giving her the elegant Irish linen blouse. Alleluia!

© Jacques Delacroix 2005, 2008, 2010