The Great Books Series
A highly promising scientific study of the male armpit
undoubtedly funded by the National Science Foundation is brought to
hopeless foozle by Miss Naomi Wolf’s horny excogitations in Vagina:
A New Biography. When will she get serious?
Chen and her team asked 20 heterosexual men to stop wearing
deodorant and other scented grooming products for several days. The
researchers then put pads under the men’s armpits, and wired the
men to electrodes, as the men watched pornographic videos. The
researchers analyzed the “aroused” male sweat and also analyzed
pads collected from under the arms of the same men when they are
not sexually aroused.
Then, 19 heterosexual women smelled the men’s “aroused” and
“unaroused” sweat pads, while they themselves underwent brain
scans. The women’s brains reacted very differently in response to
the “aroused” male sweat.
The “sexual sweat” activated the women’s right orbitofrontal
cortex and the right fusiform cortex, but the “unaroused” sweat did
nothing for them.…
Chen concluded that her findings bolster the idea that humans do
communicate via subconscious chemical signals. To me this finding
also suggests that women’s bodies know categorically and
uncompromisingly when a man is or is not sexually interested in
them, even if everyone in the couple is saying the “right” things.
This may have been what my friend, who has a strong sex drive, and
whose partner did not “perfume her days,” may have been
experiencing: his sexual interest in her was not strong enough for
her.…She couldn’t smell enough of his arousal.…
[From:
Vagina: A New Biography, by Naomi Wolf. Ecco, 381 pages,
$27.99]
New York Times
Professor Maureen Dowd applies her cross-disciplinary
learning to modern politics and come up with, alas, a completely
incomprehensible judgment. Possibly she was squiffed:
[Paul Ryan puts] a fresh face on a Taliban creed—the evermore
antediluvian, anti-immigrant, anti-gay conservative core. Amiable
in khakis and polo shirts, Ryan is the perfect modern leader to
rally medieval Republicans who believe that Adam and Eve cavorted
with dinosaurs….But, for all the Republican cant about how they
want to keep government out of the lives of others, the
ultraconservatives are panting to meddle in the lives of others.
Contrary to President Obama’s re-fresh-ing assertion Monday that a
bunch of male politicians shouldn’t be making the health care
decisions for women, this troglodyte tribe of men and
Bachmann-esque women craves that responsibility.
(August 12, 2012)
The Progressive
Finally, after traversing page after page of the dreary
Liberal-wing press for the enlightenment of our readers, the editor
of this revered AmSpec department is given something to hoist a
flute of champagne over and to let out a celebratory yell:
Until there is a strong progressive message and a renewed drive
for solidarity that speaks to that disaffected group of voters,
they will continue to be seduced by a clever rightwing campaign
that urges them to vote for tax breaks for the wealthy and the
dismantling of the public sphere.
(August 2012)
New York Review of Books
In the event that you might have been wondering about the
sudden disappearance of the Public Bowel Movement Brigade, the
Masturbators for Peace, the Degenerates Now, and the other assorted
mental defectives who comprised the Occupy movement, Michael
Greenberg, an unemployed writer, avers a hardheaded
analysis:
In the space of seven months a galvanizing national protest
movement had dwindled to the status of a policing problem before
disappearing almost entirely from the public view. Part of the
blame can be attributed to Occupy itself; its inviolable purity of
principle (“We don’t talk to people with power, because to do so
would be to acknowledge the legitimacy of their power”) eventually
became its own form of corruption.
(October 11, 2012)
New York Times
Miss Alice Waters, owner of Chez Panisse, where you can eat
chocolate- covered bugs, divulges to fellow left-wing insomniacs
the soporific tome at her bedside quietly awaiting the eyes of an
aspiring Pol Pot or V.I. Lenin:
On my bedside table at the moment is Hope in the Dark,
by Rebecca Solnit. She talks about how one movement can inspire
another. If you want to make change, you have the impression you
have to do it on your own. But you don’t understand that
demonstrations have already been launched and they are feeding into
what you’re doing. You feel so supported by history reading this
book and so encouraged.
(September 2, 2012)
Time
The decrepitude into which Time magazine columnist
Joe Klein has fallen, still apparently suffering from delusions
that it is 1964 and Barry Goldwater is the Republican presidential
candidate. Mr. Klein’s column appears in the magazine’s Antique
Section, and he writes with a fountain pen:
Romney has dumbed himself down to fit a Republican Party that
has become anachronistic, hateful and foolish. He has never once
stood up to the party’s extremist base in this campaign—not even
when asked whether he would accept a deficit deal with $10 in
spending cuts for every $1 in new revenues, not even on immigration
and contraception, issues that sent women and Latinos scurrying
toward the exits. His has been a shameful, shameless campaign.
(September 24, 2012)
Seattle Times
The trials and tribulations of an apparent teetotaling
public servant in good old Snohomish County:
A Snohomish County judge who presides over drunken-driving cases
may be facing DUI charges
The Herald of Everett reports the State Patrol stopped
Snohomish County District Court Judge Timothy Ryan on the
Bothell-Everett Highway on Wednesday night. Patrol Sergeant Kirk
Rudeen said Ryan’s car was drifting outside its lane and he was
going 53 mph in a 45-mph zone.
Rudeen said Ryan was cooperative and polite, but he smelled of
alcohol.
The arresting trooper reported that Ryan’s eyes were bloodshot
and watery and that his face was flushed. A second trooper called
to the scene said the Lynnwood judge’s speech was slurred and he
smelled of alcohol.
(September 4, 2012)
The Herald-Mail
In the incomparable “Mail Call” section of the Maryland Free
State’s equivalent of the New York Times, a semi-literate cri de
coeur from a stalwart of the Moron Vote:
I would like to thank the caller from Brightwood Acres East for
saying that if you’re not smart enough or motivated enough to get a
ID, you shouldn’t be smart or motivated enough to vote. I guess
people that are handicapped aren’t motivated enough to get out and
get an ID, when it’s very burdensome for them, but yet they gotta
struggle to vote, but that’s OK with this caller. Or the military
guy in Pennsylvania whose ID is turned down because it don’t have
an expiration date on it. I guess he’s not smart enough. These ID
laws are just strictly to keep out the Democrat vote. These people,
that’s the trouble with the Republican party, they think
everybody’s healthy just like they are, white, not poor, and
they’re not.
Hagerstown
(September 5, 2012)
