Friday, April 11, 2008 - Posts
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Sorry to be so late to the party on Slate V's Bonking, but oh my, what's next on Slate After Hours? (Or our spinoff site, Slate Blue?) OK, maybe aspirations of primness run in my family; my dad took that Kinsey class at Indiana University where they were assigned to do field work asking couples about their sex lives, and he swears that a lot of them made up stuff up to avoid the embarrassment of doing the interviews. (Never was clear on why a history major had to take this class, however, hmm...) But while we're on such XXX-y topics as grandma hookers having career-enhancing plastic surgery, can you think of anything more embarrassing than death by liposuction? And re: Emily B.'s story about the prisoner with untreated penile cancer, I once saw a guy interviewed on Oprah who had had his penis removed by accident. Talk about cruel and unusual punishment; why oh why would this poor man have put himself through the humiliation of chatting about this on national television? From Roseanne talking about her vaginal rejuvenation surgery to the furious national conversation over whether kids need any sex ed beyond "Just Say No,' this moment in our culture is one strange combo of exhibitionism and Puritanism, which I guess are two sides of the same coin. What ever happened to the happy medium?
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Two items today that should go to the top of the "Clinton fatigue" greatest hits. First is Hillary laughing at a reporter's question about Bill getting paid $800,000 to speak at a group that supports the Colombia free-trade agreement (that the Democrats have taken a ridiculous anti-free-trade stand is another issue). The reporter asks if there is a conflict since Hillary has made a personal loan to her campaign, money that might be tainted by Bill's pro-free trade payments. She hoots at the question as if she's never heard anything more ludicrous. What's so funny? This is an issue at the heart of a potential third Clinton administration. It's vital to find out both where Bill's personal and presidential library money is from, and to have Hillary explain how her administration would keep him from going around the world getting paid for speeches (or even raising money for his charities) from groups or governments whose policies are in opposition to hers. That's not about perception of conflict of interest, that's about actual conflict of interest.
The second item is Bill's defense (now that the issue is finally dying down) of Hillary's description of the landing in Tuzla. He says her characterization of it was essentially correct—which is odd since she was forced to say she "misspoke." Then he says she may not have been completely accurate because she spoke late at night (wrong) and she's 60 years old and was exhausted. That's the way to get your wife elected president! (His behavior is consistent with my view that he doesn't want there to be another President Clinton.) The "she's old and tired" argument is perhaps not the strongest one to make especially since she's released two recent ads showing that a President Hillary Clinton will constantly be up at 3 a.m. taking calls about national security and home foreclosures.
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Emily, I agree with you that Mark Gimein's "eligible bachelor" theory, while intriguing to contemplate, doesn't quite explain the end result of who ends up with whom—and who ends up alone. It just seems too pat. I switched from my intended economics major way too early to feign any sort of an expertise in game theory, so I'll stick with the supply and demand I remember from Econ 101.
Gimein's theory might completely hold water if dating actually were a pure auction, like eBay—where you can have your purchase shipped anywhere. But in real life, people plunk themselves down in certain cities for lots of different reasons and aren't always ready to ship their goods elsewhere. To Gimein, a "New York-based writer," the scarcity of eligible men is a "a truth universally acknowledged." That's because, for whatever combination of reasons, more women than men find New York an appealing place to live. But over in, say, Portland, Ore., there are more men than women who choose to call it home, and it might not be such a universally acknowledged truth (and maybe even less so in the broad nonurban swaths of the country that very seldom get addressed in debates like this). So if you've picked New York for certain cultural reasons, you're probably also looking for someone who values those same things. Leisure preferences are a shallow but convenient illustration of preferences that probably run a lot deeper.
The issue of what's considered "eligible" is a much more complicated one than Gimein's article lets on, full of value judgments and innate prejudices. It's also probably informed by the same values that helped you pick a city. So, maybe it's simply that there are fewer men who choose the sort of lifestyle that might make them seem eligible in the eyes of Gimien and others who inhabit his very particular social mien. Those who are constitutionally or circumstantially inclined to get married earlier do so, leaving behind a proportionately smaller pool in estrogen-heavy cities. So, even if the "8's marry 8's," however you happened to count to 8, there are more of them left over on the women's side in certain areas, including Gimein's hometown. Supply and demand.
This, of course, is before you factor in studies that show men consistently prefer women who make less money and wield less power than they do (and it's not imprudent to assume that a 35-year-old woman has moved up the career ladder ). Add the fact that it's frowned upon for women to date younger men. So, the male dating pool widens as the female one narrows, ensuring that those "eligible" bachelors get more hands to play even as women get less. Hardly news, but it also turns the "women choose" assumption on its head and makes it even harder for me to go along with the premise Gimein sets up.
I'm not sure it's fair to apply a quantitative model to such a complicated qualitative search, even though it's great fun to do so. Yes, Gimien is probably right about decisiveness being a key factor if you want to get married—but only to a point, and hopefully that point doesn't bring you to Lori Gottleib levels.
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