Ethnography of Liberalism : I

There used to be an academic discipline called “Ethnography.” It was an inherently humble endeavor, the description of others, of usually exotic, far away, little-known groups. I mean head-hunters of Borneo, and Pygmies from central Africa. Ethnography had little pretension to “explain” as does modern Anthropology for example. I am engaged in a continuous study of the Left. I am doing daily, indefatigable ethnography of that quaint but interesting tribe.

In spite of my public identity as a conservative (listen to my radio show: Facts Matter on KSCO Santa Cruz 1080AM, every Sunday from 1am to 1pm, also available on-line), I am proud to say I have good entries into the liberal world of my small ultra-liberal and “progressive” town. I don’t know the liberal establishment and I think it does not know me, or it ignores me. I am in daily touch with the rank-and-file though. (I will not blow my cover by telling you how. You will have to take my word for it.) Because of my previous life in academia, I also know liberals. and even progressives, outside of my immediate area. I am talking of people with whom I have personal contacts at will, not National Public Radio.

Old-fashioned ethnographers used to exploit “native informants.” Those were local indigenous people who were willing to talk, trustworthy and who, the ethnographer had reasons to believe, were well informed. Lately, I have been having short and long-distance conversations with a younger man, a very moderate liberal, a liberal-leaning centrist, you might say. I have known the man for along time. He is intelligent, very hard-working and resourceful. He has even demonstrated an entrepreneurial bent. More importantly, I know him well enough to be sure that he prizes his personal credibility. My liberal friend is a valid native informant. I am not building a straw-man to burn later in triumph.

I asked him to give me the real reasons why he voted for Obama. He gave me many. We had several longish email exchanges. At first, he had trouble understanding “reasons,” confusing them with “motivations.” Then his reasons did not stand up to superficial examination. It turns out, he voted as he did because he wanted to believe in “change we can believe in.” He also spoke a great deal of President Bush’s “idiocy.” Upon closer examination, there was no “idiotic” act or pronouncements he could think of. There were only several statements of moral distaste for war and hesitant confessions of run-of-the-mill snobbery (See my essay on this blog: “Are Liberals Just Snobs?” posted 02/1610.) My friend did not say so himself but I got the feeling that he allowed the late-night shows, with their squeaky, creaky humor, to summarize his political positions. (I am not sneering; remember that I described him as hard-working person. He has a lot on his plate) Hence the non-sequitur regarding Pres. Bush’s alleged “idiocy.”

My native informant – who may have voted for Bush earlier – seemed to have voted as much against the non-running Bush as for Obama. He is quite capable intellectually to parse the difference between Bush Republicanism and the McCain brand. I am certain he did not do it. When the chips were doing, he chose to not think things through.

Then, the conversation drifts to health care, of course. He tells me point-blank that he is for the public option. That’s because his younger brother cannot afford health insurance. My native informant is a self-made man, I know this for a fact. I am obviously a self-made man, I know for a fact that he knows it. He should know that his reasoning has no moral currency. I tell him I think he should buy insurance for his brother. I ask him what reason he could possibly have to ask me to pay for his brother’s insurance. The conversation stops. I think I know why but I am just guessing: He does not want to take the giant step that consists in recognizing that the government has no money except what it takes from us, from me, among others, and from the coffee-shop waitress who earns nine dollars an hour.

In the end, I think it all boils down to feeling good irrespective of consequences. My friend is not short of intelligence; he is educated well above average; he is well informed about the way business works. He just insists on listening to his inner child more than to his reason.

I know what it’s like although I am conservative and a libertarian. I have an inner child too. It’s just that, every so often, I take the little wimp out and beat his ass.

Watch for more Ethnography of Liberalism on this blog soon.

Going Out on Four Limbs on the Health Debate

Following the open-house health care debate (2/26/10)  “moderated” by the person with the greatest vested interest, I am going to make four hazardous predictions:

1 The President’s popularity is going to surge for a while because Americans like fairness and the debate was a demonstration of fairness as compared to the back-room dealings that preceded it.

2 For the next week or so, the media, including the liberal media, are going to analyze what really happened. It’s going to become increasingly clear that the President did not know what he was talking about, did not understand the 4500 pages of the two bills, did not understand the cost of his proposal, did not understand the mood of the public.

3 The Democrat leadership is going to make a half-hearted attempt at passing the President’s bill with a simple majority through reconciliation, also known as the “nuclear option.” It will fail in almost all respects. Nevertheless, the Democrat leadership will declare victory.

4  Around June, July, we are going to see the launching of a  new health care reform initiative. It will have bi-partisan sponsorship, the real thing, led by Senator McCain. The new bill will comprise less than one hundred pages total. It will include the obvious: option to buy insurance across state lines, tort reform, limited portability of health care benefits, possibly an end to the exemption of health insurance companies from anti-trust laws . (Read the last again; you won’t believe it.) Moderate Democrats will get something to, I don’t know what, but not a public option. Democrats will get something suitable to take to the November election

Then, we will all go to the beach,

If any of these predictions fail, or all, you will have to forgive me. Although I had the time, I wasn’t able to force myself to listen to the whole seven hours. I am just tired of the whole thing. We need health care reform. The Democrat approach is almost entirely wrong-headed. Our institutions are working. The rest follows.

Whining Instead of Sex and the Better Use of Health Insurance: A Testimony

I know how detestable it is for older men to speak about their health. First, the odds that they are going to come out alive are not good. Second, it’s true that many old geezers replace sexual pleasure with the joys of whining. I am not one of those. I have a legitimate, didactic reason to speak about my health, at least, briefly. It has to do indirectly with the underpinning of the on-going debate on and disgust with health care reform.

About five months ago, I started suffering from carpal tunnel syndrome. In a way, CTS is a happy illness. It’s the illness of writers who actually write. It come from spending too much time intensively using the keyboard. Yet, the pain was intense enough to wake me up at night. The neurologist prescribed Aleve. Then, at my insistence, he described the appropriate surgical intervention. It’s a routine operation; it does not require anesthesia; it works almost all the time. Having little patience, in my mind, I was immediately sold on the procedure.

Then, I started looking at cost. I am on one of the Bush-era, smart versions of Medicare. It’s designed to give me all that I need but not much more. I knew this in an abstract way but I had not thought it through because, frankly, who does not have something more exciting to do than reading insurance companies fine print and wooden language? So, I was shocked that my share of the cost for this simple, small operation would come to almost $2,000. I put off the decision because putting off the decision rather than making lemonade, is often the most rational thing you can do when life serves you lemons.

On my next doctor visit, I listened for the first time to the issues of how much Aleve I can afford to take daily and also of how to use the brace, I had purchased distractedly. He said not to wear it only at night, as I had done, but as often as I could, day or night. Fast-forward three months. I still have not had the operation. I take three Aleve a day of the four the doctor allowed. (Because, after all, it’s my liver, not his. Plus, he doesn’t know all the things I did to the self-same liver years ago.) I wear a brace fifteen hours a day on the average. I purchased for $38 the snazzy black variety that makes me look vaguely dangerous instead of the most common flesh-pink old-lady kind. The black looks good against my tanned, muscular, hairy forearm. (If I say so myself.)  I think of the brace as the brachyal equivalent of a pirate’s eye-patch. The pain has not waken me for weeks. Most of the time, there is barely any pain although a tingle in the fingers remains. What pain there is is on the decline. Right now, I wouldn’t dream of having anyone cut deep into my hand to get to the offending nerve. I saved myself something like $2,000 and the nation several times this amount.

What’s important about this fairly boring story is what it does not say. I have not become a wiser person in the past few months. My propensity to think things through has not improved. My innate rationalism is pretty much where it was last year. I insist: I am not a better person. Instead, the structuring of my particular kind of health insurance gave me a good incentive to do nothing. While I was doing nothing, less obvious solutions than surgery had a chance to show their effectiveness. The problem solved itself to a sufficient extent. Resources were saved. Additional risks to my health were avoided.

Here is a fallacy you have to avoid when reading this story: Yes, in some other case, an operation might have proved necessary, or simply been the better option. But we are not reasoning on averages here. Evey dollar saved is a dollar saved, forever. Buying health services should obey the same rules as buying a suit, or a car. Ordinary prudence works well if you have reasons to use it. Most health insurance interposes itself between you and your good judgment. Government health insurance is the worst of all in this respect. It rewards you for not thinking things through. It rewards the worst version of you (and me).

A Real Town Meeting in the People’s Green Republic of Santa Cruz.

Tuesday night, I took in, in person, two and a half hours of town hall meeting with the same congressman, Sam Farr, in my own town of Santa Cruz, this time. Now, it’s important to understand that Santa Cruz is, overall, a seventies throwback, left-liberal to communist anti-American. To give you an idea, on my long street, downtown, there are only three American flags, two of which belong to me. When I make conservative noises in public, in spite of my considerable expressive talents, people think I am kidding.

I went to the meeting with my wife, under my own power. The only prompt I got is that one local radio station gave the time and place of the meeting on the air. It did so several times. It’s seen as a conservative station. (Full disclosure: I have a talk-show program on that station, KSCO 1080 AM, every Sunday 11AM-1PM.) Rush Limbaugh did not send me. The local Republican Party was pathetically absent in every respect. If there was any conservative or right-wing organization present, it escaped my attention and I was looking for one. There were no right-wing thugs in sight, with the possible exception of myself, and especially, my wife, Krishna. My wife is in very good shape indeed but, she is slight of built. She has never really divulged her age too me but her hair is all white. The only humans she has ever physically threatened were our children, when they were teen-agers, and me, of course. I can’t tell you why she threatened my because I don’t like to brag.

I insist on the unorganized nature of the event in a spirit of helpfulness. The main problem most Democrats, including Congressman Farr and including the President face, is that they cannot conceive of a genuine grass-root movement of revulsion. George Beck, the Fox News-appointed liberal, of all things, said on television that he does not believe that the opposition to Obamacare is “spontaneous.” He is not a dumb man. He is associated in some fashion with George Washington University. I have heard him before and never caught him even in a white lie. Those people can’t conceive of spontaneous political action because it seldom happens on their side. Instead, they rely on tax-subsidized ACORN, and on a variety of radical front organizations.

The Obama supporters seemed only a little more organized than the opponents. They had better signs and many seemed to know each other. They occupied most of the first three rows but I suspect there was no ploy involved. I could have sat in the second row if I had wanted to. One woman standing at the door was handing out three-page leaflets in support. She was careful to say she was not representing anything, that the document only expressed her own views. She tried to scrutinize my face before handing me a leaflet, no doubt to figure which side I am on. I gave her a big marble smile providing no information at all. I had also been careful to dress in a non-revelatory way. I don’t mean revelatory of my enviable physique, but of my political leanings. I was attempting stealth, the better to observe.

Naturally, I didn’t wear my brown shirt and I left my swastika at home. I did it to confuse Nancy Pelosi , a woman who becomes easily confused, it’s true.

The woman’s brochure had a lot of facts and it seemed carefully referenced. However, a number of the websites to which she referred the reader were clearly partisan. Overall, her argumentation was coherent. Yet it stood zero chance of persuading anyone not already in support of Obamacare. She made no effort to address the abundantly expressed concerns of opponents. (More on this later.) I think she was trying, ineffectually, to hand out ammunition to the weaklings on her side before the meeting. There were a variety of signs in the audience, fewer than fifty in all. The anti (conservative) signs were all hand-made. The pro signs were a mixture of hand-made and carefully printed slogans.

I estimated there were 500 people at the beginning of the meeting plus 200 in an overflow space. 700 is a large number in Santa Cruz for anything other than a movie. (There might be as many people at a religious service. I wouldn’t know. ) The main venue, in a church, was half-full an hour before the announced beginning of the meeting. It was packed when the Congressman arrived, pretty much on time.

He was introduced by one of the pastors, a woman with politically signaletic short hair. Then, the Mayor of Santa Cruz briefly took over. She is a leftie, of course, but rather well-liked by all. I felt that we were in mildly inimical territory. The Congressman is a jovial man with a sense of humor. He is also brave and hard-working.

Representative Farr began in Santa Cruz with the same rehearsed speech he had given the night before in Monterey. I felt he was on the wrong track from the beginning: not helpful to his side, the pro-Obamacare side, and startlingly incapable of addressing the views of the people opposed to Obama care.

Then people, about one hundred of them, lined up to deliver their two minute- speech and/or question. There is not much reason to repeat any of the audience’s addresses but I want to report on the tenor of the meeting. Only about 4/5 got to the mike. The queuing process was orderly and fair.

There was no intimidation on either side. There were catcalls and loud boos, from conservatives mostly. One, who was sitting next to me, was very loud indeed. I believe though not one sound was an attempt to drown out the Congressman, as we see regularly on college campuses, for example. It never even came close to that. There were also many rather effeminate hisses coming from pro partisans and directed at conservative speakers.

Conservatives, the con camp, and liberal/progressives, the pro Obamacare crowd, differ significantly both in appearance and in the content of their speech. Liberals are more flashy and they look better overall. The only speaker with a hat (a white straw hat) over his long hair, gave a little pro-Obamacare address and concluded that the overall solution to any health care crisis was to legalize and tax marijuana. (Disclosure: I agree that it’s a good idea. I don’t think it would make a dent, nationally.) Conservatives dress in a less interesting manner. Many are energetic sharp-spoken middle-aged women. The young among them tend to dress simply and soberly. More of the conservatives are seniors than are on the other side. This is interesting because you would assume Medicare beneficiaries did not have much of a dog in that fight. There were two black men in the audience. One did not get to speak; the other gave one of the best, most coherent anti-Obamacare arguments.

As usual, what did not happen matters most. Contrary to stupid, lazy press reports, the meeting did not look at all like a battle between well-dressed conservatives on the one side and the hard-working poor in work boots on the other side. Although Santa Cruz County is probably one third Hispanic, with Hispanics doing most of the ill-paid work, I observed no Hispanic presence at all. There were several large, white-on-white families I would classify, with my unusual sociological acumen, as “Oakies” here (“hillbillies” elsewhere in America). They were obviously there to a protest against Obama care. The town hall meeting in Santa Cruz was a solidly middle-class affair. All the people present could have mixed, matched, and possibly mated, at a neighborhood barbecue.

The spectacle rejoiced my heart because it was in the very best tradition of American democracy in action. Yet, I think the meeting was useless for its announced purpose. The two sides spent two hours speaking past each other. I don’t attribute the responsibility for this equally to both sides. (The truth is never in the middle.) The Congressman and supporters of Obamacare came wholly unprepared to address either the economic arguments of their opponents, nor even less, their constitutional concerns. The conservatives gave better speeches because they actually gave speeches while the liberals wasted a lot of time whining, as usual.

Striking ignorance of basic facts was evident on both sides. Ignorance has multiple causes. Mistrust is one of them. Congress could dissipate 90% of the mistrust on the conservative side with a single sentence: Members of Congress will have exactly the same access to health care as every other American.

The disjunction between the two discourses became clear within the first half-hour. The pro camp argued for the human necessity of government-directed, and in some case of single-payer, health care, shored up by horror stories. Many liberal speakers only gave horror stories, often about their own needs and the injustice of their destiny. The old stereotype was confirmed to an astounding degree: Liberals think of Government as an infinitely wise milch cow with teats that never dry up. They resist discussing the cost of good things, of any good things. Many have a singular talent for irrelevancy: By the end of the meeting, there were catcalls offering “no war” as the best solution to the alleged health care crisis health. Liberals are overwhelmingly childish.

Liberals and progressives came ready to counter only the crudest conservative slogans, such as the accusation of “socialism.” They painted their opponents in primitive colors, again, like children. I think they only know slogans and their slogans are mostly boring.

Obamacare opponents included only a small number of anti-abortion speakers. There was no hysteria about government-ordered euthanasia though concerns were expressed about the possibility government rationing might lead there. Conservative arguments were comparatively sophisticated and free of heart-wrenching personal narratives. They focused on disbelief regarding the announced costs of Obamacare. (They were thus joining he Congressional Budget Office, currently directed by a Democrat), and on constitutionality. Libertarian sentiment dominated. The financial consequences of Obama care were the tying principle as you would expect from people worried about economics and equally from people who dislike government growth.

Congressman Farr – a man easy to like, as I said – inspired pity. He came equipped with simplistic bullet-points and was confronted by a barrage of sophisticated questions and arguments. I believe he did not honestly understand most of them. I think he is out of his depth defending health care reform Obama-style. In part it’s because he is ill-informed, superficial, and living in a liberal intellectual ghetto. In part it’s because he, his party, and the President, did not come close to expecting the strong opposition that emerged quickly. They seem to believe their own gross propaganda describing opponents of Obamacare as a handful of ignorant thugs paid by insurance companies and teleguided by Rush Limbaugh.

Missing in the congressman’s handling of his opposition:

The crucial distinction between health insurance and health care. (He pointed out repeatedly that obligatory health insurance would be just like obligatory car insurance. Of course, I am unlikely to have a car accident and I am a hundred per cent likely to become sick.)

A grasp on the real nature of the “40 million uninsured” he kept using a a final argument that should close the matter for good. (They are largely a myth, though the figure is real, in a superficial sense.)

Any mature comprehension at all of the constitutional and historical fears expressed by opponents of Obamacare. (Listening to him was like listening to a French politician who would not know who Thomas Jefferson was and who would have never read the Declaration of Independence.)

Practical, personal familiarity with conservative rank-and-file, with conservatives who are not politicians or figments of left-wing journalists imagination. (I suspect he would be astounded, in full disbelief, if I talked to him freely over a beer.)

Elementary comprehension of economic objections to Obamacare. (After the meeting, I would have bet he did not understand even the summary of the Congressional Budget Office’s report on the topic.)

The defining moment of the town meeting occurred when a conservative asked him a pointed but simple question about the projected final cost of the proposed national health program. Congressman Farr, always the honest man, replied:

“I don’t know.”

The local newspaper, the Santa Cruz Sentinel, gave a fair report of the event the next morning with a breath-takingly dishonest heading. Perhaps it was torn between fair and factual reporting and trying to align itself on the rest of the liberal press representation of such town meetings as being taking over by thugs.

For the record: I believe we need health care reform. This, for several reasons. Our costs are twice higher than those of the French and we don’t live as long. It’s intolerable that Americans should be forced to keep a job they hate because they cannot afford to lose the health care that’s tied to it. The propensity of insurance companies to turn down people with pre-existing conditions is a real problem so long as we are in an insurance regime.

I also think health insurance is a terrible idea. I place less confidence in our government to administer any complicated, national-level plan than I would in most West-European governments. I fear creeping, soft fascism, using nationalized health care as its main vehicle.

PS  Mr President: If you didn’t plant the alarming story about white extremist militia, don’t worry about them. They include only 37 middle-age guys spread over ten states. They have trouble finding their size in camouflage fatigues. They have to walk up hills in the forest because they smoke two packs a day.

Incidentally, tell your whiny Democrat Congressmen who complain about imaginary militias that its’ “supremacist,” no “supremist.”

Mr President: Worry instead about a massive tax revolt that will peacefully paralyze government. That’s the American way, didn’t you know?

Shiite Islamo-Fascism; Beloved in Argentina; French Health Care; Abominable Stripping; Profits Good for the Poor and, Diane Sawyer is a Dope.

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Shiite Islamo-fascism, the end. One more time, I hate to be right. Ahmad the Camel won for the time being. Again, he did not have to unleash his shock troops of Revolutionary Guards. He arrested dozens of university professors who had talked to Musavi. This will probably work: Prison is a good place to explain to people what you can do to them, and to their families, if they don’t stay down.

What did anyone expect? The Islamic Republic of Iran has been a hard fascist country from day one or two. Religious fanaticism makes it morally impervious to the damage it does to its flock.

I saw a heart-breaking BBC documentary on Iranian trans-sexuals. It turns out many are forced to submit to horrendous surgical mutilation for fear of being imprisoned as homosexuals. It turns out trans-sexualism is legal but homosexuality merits death under Shiite version of Islamic law. As I remarked earlier, we are dealing here with people who have no notion of the Enlightenment. They are not worse than my ancestors in the 17the Century. They are not better either.

There is no reason to treat the Iranian theocratic fascists as our moral equals. My great-great- great- grandfather, who enjoyed seeing thieves’ bones broken on the public square with an iron bar, was not my equal. I am completely sure I would not like that kind of show. (I could make an exception for repeat child molesters though.)

Don’t act surprised when murderous beasts act according to their nature. Don’t encourage silly young people to waste their lives. Make geopolitical plans according to their beastliness, not as if they were somewhat outrageous but still-loved cousins. The Iranian government will attempt to nuke Israel if it has half a chance and if Israel remains passive.

The only bright light is that Musavi acted more firmly than anyone expected. If they don’t kill him, he might yet emerge as a more rational leader of Iranian fascism. With all this, I don’t lose track of the fact that the cafés of small towns in Iran are probably full of old guys to whom I would enjoy losing at dominoes.

Adolescent crush. Everyone in the Republican party breathes a sigh of relief at the same time as he is appalled because of the Governor of South Carolina. He disappeared for a week from his job; didn’t tell anyone where he was. When he came back, he confessed tearfully that he was in Argentina getting some contraband nookie. Or, maybe, he did not even get any. Either way, it’s another sex scandal. That’s not the worst of it though. (More below.) At least, it seems that a woman is involved, not a young boy. Plus, it probably did not happen in a restroom, as far as anyone knows.

The worst of it is that, it seems to me, neither much lust nor arrogance may have been involved. He ran away impulsively, like a teen-age boy with a crush. He did not bother to cover his tracks like real men do. (Whenever an American politician gets caught with his zipper stuck half- way down, I feel the former Frenchman in me rearing his wise but cynical head.) The Governor sacrificed the elective responsibilities for which he fought and that the voters gave him for an illusion of puppy love. If he spent a single dollar of public money in the venture, he is gone.

It could have been worse. He might have gotten caught in flagrante of immaturity during a Republican presidential campaign or primary, as a high-level candidate. Even the astonishingly vicious Palin-haters on both sides would have to agree that Sarah is a better human being, and more trustworthy, in every conceivable way.

With all this, no, my little Europeans, the Governor is not one tenth as bad as Pres. Clinton. You never did understand what the big deal was, did you? Clinton lied in a sworn testimony thereby denying justice to an ordinary woman. If I did that when giving testimony, I would rightly fear being sent to jail. I have been present when powerful people did not feel they had to tell the truth in judicial proceedings. But that’s another story.

Health care and health. After the free television commercial, the once-proud ABC television network gave the President two nights ago, I am forced to address my fellow conservatives on health care. Here is food for thought. This is a repeat. I talked about this at length in a previous posting. Pay attention:

The French spend about half as much for health care as we do. Despite all the horror stories we keep hearing from our side, they don’t seem to pay any price in terms of actual health. (Remember, the ultimate product is not health care, even less health insurance, it’s health.) The current life expectancy of French men is about two and a half years longer than that of American men. I know, I know their superior life expectancy could be in spite of inferior health care. What do you really think? (If I hit a tree with my car and I am drunk, alcohol is not necessarily responsible but….)

And no, French life is not less stressful than American life. This has to be a subjective judgment, of course, but I think it’s more stressful where most French people actually live. That would be in big cities, rather than in an plane tree-shaded smartly renovated old farm house in Provence. For one thing parking is so bad, it might just as well be illegal in those same big cities.

And, no, it’s not all that red wine. Most French men drink little and French women even less. If wine could gain us an extra two-plus years of good life, the American medical establishment would quickly write us Pinot Noir prescriptions.

Fellow conservatives: There is something wrong with our health system although it’s not what Obamamamma tells us. We never offered a solution. We missed that big boat. We are going to pay for it, and our children, every which way.

Stripping girls not for fun. The Supreme Court defended individual rights for once. School officials strip-searched a teen-age girl suspected of carrying Bufferin. (That’s just like aspirin.) The Court said that was unconstitutional. Good start but not good enough for me. Neither would a civil suit. The school officials involved should be fired with loss of benefits. A little jail time would be fine with me also. There are shop-lifters of yogurt in jail right now. Let Mr Principal take their place and reflect on our constitutional tradition. Six months would be about right.

Media stars lazy and ignorant. I keep telling you our journalists are lazy. I am beginning to think some of our biggest media stars are also uneducated and a little dumb. During the ABC-presidential show on health care before a supine press, television star Diane Sawyer crammed a question down an insurance executive’s throat. President Obama was the one who was supposed to be interviewed, but, let’s pass on this. Sawyer’s question was full of commentaries, not a straight question. The commentaries were hyper-loaded with evident contempt for “profits” and the profit-making of insurance companies.

Ms. Sawyer is not smart enough or observant enough to have noticed that in social systems were profit is considered legitimate, the poor are much richer than are the poor where profit is looked down upon.

Let me say this again for those of you with a degree in Environmental Science from University of California at Santa Cruz:

Where profit is blessed, even the poor are rich. The reverse is also true.

If I sense demand, I will explain why that is in a forthcoming “Facts Matter” essay.

Update on 6/29/09.

Great little column in today’s Wall Street Journal by Dorothy Rabinowitz. She tells us concisely what Governor Sanford of South Carolina should have said and not said about his Argentinean tryst. Like all real men with a brain, in this time and place (the place is California), I am a male chauvinist pig. It means that  I believe that women should absolutely receive equal pay for equal work but not for “equivalent” work. My sexism does not prevent me from considering Dorothy Rabinowitz my intellectual master and my style master. I wonder if Ms Rabinowitz would prefer I called her my intellectual “mistress.” She is a lady with a sense of humor so, she would probably like it.