Making Up Again!

Palin By Comparison
I can’t vote for Obama, who’s a socialist and all “nukes are mean!” For me, it’s McCain…most grudgingly. Then again, I figured he’d play it conservative, or at least mildly sensible, in picking a VP.

And now, what if McCain, a cancer survivor who’d be the oldest guy ever inaugurated as president, keels over in office or gets seriously ill? We” have a woman in the presidency who basically has, for a short time, run a state with the population of Massachusetts fishing village. Okay, okay…to be fair, with a state population of 670,000, Alaska’s actually just a little smaller than San Francisco.

But, now, it’s not just Sarah Palin, from hockey mom to governor, it’s Sarah Palin, from hockey mom maybe to leader of the free world. And whoops, she has five children: “Hold on, Mr. Putin. Dolly’s got a booboo!”

Yet, here we go, with people on the right falling all over themselves to find this choice acceptable (“Love the one you’re with,” I believe it’s called). Stephanie Simon writes for the WSJ:

Ms. Palin’s decision to accept the nomination for vice president just four months after the birth of her disabled son gave pause to a few conservatives. But just for a moment.

“If I were her pastor, I’d be very concerned for her and her family,” Mr. Mohler said. “But it looks as though she’s found a way to integrate it all in a way that works.”

“It’s a mixed blessing, because she has a young child,” said Mark Liederbach, a Christian ethicist and strong supporter of traditional family roles. “There’s a little bit of concern… but she has older children who can help out.”

Others on the right say it’s sexist to suggest a woman can’t raise a family and work — or seek high political office, or serve as commander in chief, if the need arises. “She’s more the example of the modern woman than the Gloria Steinems of days past,” said Jill Stanek, a conservative blogger popular with the pro-life community. “She can handle it.”

Meanwhile, during press event she had to change the baby’s diaper. Here, from People, by Sandra Sobieraj Westfall, on “Shattering The Glass Ceiling”:

Sarah Palin, in ruby red peep-toe platform heels that showed off a pink French-style pedicure, first ducked into a holding room to change the diaper of her just-up-from-a-nap 4 1/2-month-old son, Trig.

SARAH PALIN: Morning person. Yup. We don’t sleep much. Too much to do. What I’ve had to do, though, is in the middle of the night, put down the BlackBerries and pick up the breast pump. Do a couple of things different and still get it all done.

As a new mom, how are you going to juggle all this?
SARAH: I am thankful to be married to a man who loves being a dad as much as I love being a mom, so he is my strength. And practically speaking, we have a great network of help with lots of grandparents and aunties and uncles all around us. We have a lot of help.

Oh, goody. Sorry to disappoint all you righties looking for a rubberstamp for Mrs. Palin (like all the sickening examples of this all over the damn place), but in a V.P. candidate, if we had a female, I was looking for something a little more…barren. Battle-ax-ish. Thatcheresque. At least somebody with high-functioning 20-somethings who are off smoking pot in college somewhere.

Meanwhile, there’s this, from Sean Cockerham and Wesley Loy in the Anchorage Daily News:

(Alaska) State Senate President Lyda Green said she thought it was a joke when someone called her at 6 a.m. to give her the news.

“She’s not prepared to be governor. How can she be prepared to be vice president or president?” said Green, a Republican from Palin’s hometown of Wasilla. “Look at what she’s done to this state. What would she do to the nation?”

Now, maybe that’s just mean-spirited sniping. Any Alaskans like to weigh in?

I’m guessing it was a huge deal that she’s pro-life — and perhaps the fact that she’s a woman was a desperate shot to snare those Hillary-supporting vote-your-vagina ladies. Yeah, I’m sure they’ll all be right over. Or might’ve if McCain had picked Kay Bailey Hutchison, or somebody pro-choice. And come on, with KBH, do you think the ladies and gents on the right would really break for Obama?

And hey, a pro-life V.P. — that’s what’s really important to Putin and Ahmadinejad. Yes, if McCain drops and she becomes president, Ahmadinejad’ll surely be thinking, “Ooh, yeah. Now we’re scared. Now we’ll stop our naughty behavior, listen to mommy, and all sing kumbayah.”

Meanwhile, McCain has, in one fell V.P.-picking swoop, managed to make the issue of the inexperienced Obama a non-issue: “Come aboard, voters! I hired a woman! And besides the pro-life bone I’m throwing to all you religious nutters, she’s a hottie, and shoots moose…and that’s all you need to know! (MILF, anyone?!)”

McCain, most disturbingly, played the gambler. Or he’s just an old fool. Or he’s exhibiting yet another rash McCain decision. Or believes his own P.R. — McCain, the maverick — and is trying to live up to it. Or all of the above. This, remember, is a lady he met once before he brought her down to Sedona.

Of course, it helps to remember that McCain, as Matt Welch wrote in his excellent book, McCain: The Myth of a Maverick, is at his personal best when he feels like the underdog. Is this what this is?

On a side note, I know the V.P. isn’t in charge of science education in this country, but all we need is another nutter at the top. Here, from Tom Kizzia, in the Anchorage Daily News:

The volatile issue of teaching creation science in public schools popped up in the Alaska governor’s race this week when Republican Sarah Palin said she thinks creationism should be taught alongside evolution in the state’s public classrooms.

A comment left below the story:

Palin is bimbo babe
God help this country if Palin is elected. Science will go out the window. Before long we’ll be making knock-offs of China’s technology instead of the other way around.

Reason’s Mike Rigg found this list on Yahoo:

45: number of months Sarah Palin has been pregnant
20: number of months Sarah Palin has been governor

9,000: population of Wasilla, AK the town of which Palin was mayor
15,000: the number of people at the rally announcing her nomination as VP

7: number of people in the Palin family
7: number of houses John and Cindy McCain own

72: years that John McCain has been alive
49: years that Alaska has been a state

1: number of times McCain and Palin had met before today
20 million: the number of dollars that the city of Wasilla was left in debt when Palin’s term as mayor ended

When John McCain started his campaign, Sarah Palin was not yet governor of Alaska.

John McCain left both his first wife and Mitt Romney for beauty queens.

One of the few “real” ones, Brookhiser at NRO, writes:

The Palin pick shows a low opinion of the vice presidency, and it shows conservatives in a bad light.

1. The Vice Presidency. Either McCain thinks the war on terror isn’t serious, or he thinks the vice-presidency isn’t. Since the former is obviously untrue, it must be the latter. McCain is certainly following a very old conception of the job. One nineteenth century veep was reputedly so underutilized that he kept a tavern in his home state. But that is not our conception. Vice Presidents have grown in clout and responsibility. In the last fifty years, four former vice presidents have run for president (Nixon, Mondale, elder Bush, Gore), two of them successfully, while since Carter/Mondale, veeps have been given more and more to do. McCain, bless him, intends to do everything himself. Good luck! Perhaps the Palin pick is a sly diss both of Obama/Biden and Bush/Cheney. Palin will go to funerals.

2. Conservatives. Palin will also be assigned to pacify conservatives. On the evidence of the numerous emails reprinted here, that will be easily done. Reader after reader said that the base was now energized. You would have thought the base was energized by being in a war. If not, perhaps we need a new base. We have shown the same color-by-numbers mindset that liberals did when they rallied to Obama. Liberals love Obama because he is a Numinous Negro. Conservatives love Palin because she has a Downs baby and an M-16. For both sides, that is all on earth ye know and all ye need to know. You might call it mystical and childish.

May I be so wrong that a hundred harpies will pluck my eyeballs.

Now who do I vote for…Bob Barr? (Sigh…no Barr fan, either.) Anybody got a write-in?
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The Magic Of Making Up 

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i was going to get marry in july and I cancelled everything becuase i wasnt sure about getting marry and my boyfriend is always blaming me, he said that I hurted him alot. what should i do? i met my boyfriend by myspace we got engangage by the internet, iknow sounds weird, bu
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Mommy And Daddy As Rent-A-Clowns
X percent of parents believe this! X percent of parents believe that!

I just love it when some company gins up parental guilt and stress based on…the opinions of other parents!

Kelly V. Lobanov, of “The Hodges Partnership,” which sounds like a think tank but is actually a P.R. firm, sent me an e-mail asking me to publish an article:

Hi Amy,
Please consider publishing the article below which highlights the importance of active play and how parents struggle to find time for it.

A national online survey of 1,000 parents of children 12 years and younger found:
– that while 99 percent of parents agree that playtime is important
– 62 percent play with their children less than one hour a day, on average.

My name is Kelly Lobanov and I represent HearthSong (www.hearthsong.com) the national toy catalog that commissioned the survey.

This made me angry, because I know some people — editors and parents — may take this seriously, not noticing that these are simply opinions of the least valid sort: those of a bunch of people with no special background or qualifications in child development.

By the way, even if parents beyond the 1,000 do play with their children “less than one hour a day,” that doesn’t mean it’s a problem.

Now, I don’t have special qualifications in child development, but I do my homework — to a degree I suspect Kelly does not. I wrote about kids and play and parental guilt in my column, Look Before You Sleep. Here’s an excerpt:

The parental “no” has officially joined the ranks of chronically missing items like The Holy Grail, Atlantis, and Britney Spears’ underpants.

You’re supposed to be your kids’ mom, not their full-time birthday clown. This means meeting their needs, as opposed to falling prey to their ransom demands; i.e., “Send in the chopper and the cupcakes or I’ll scream my lungs out until spring!” If you’re keeling over from reading “Hand, Hand, Fingers, Thumb” 40 times, it’s because you didn’t say no 39 times. “No” is also the correct response when besieged with requests for a chunky peanut butter sandwich with all the chunkies removed. But, children can be such finicky eaters! Correction: American children can be such finicky eaters, because their parents tend to confuse parenting with working room service at a five-star hotel. In France, on the other hand, the kids’ meal is whatever the parents are eating; brains, livers, kidneys and all. And while the kids can pick out bits they don’t like, their choice is clear: eat or starve.

Saying no to your kids will not turn them into meth-smoking, liquor store-robbing carjackers. Actually, throwing up a few boundaries might even serve to prevent this — and less dire but extremely annoying outcomes (just what society needs, another 35-year-old snot who was denied nothing during childhood). Kids need to feel loved and secure — and that doesn’t take hours of mommy-and-me Lego. In fact, psychologist Judith Rich Harris writes that “anthropological data suggest…there may be something a little unnatural about adults playing with children.” Anthropologist David F. Lancy notes that, beyond Western society, one “rarely” sees it. Regarding this apparent lack of a parental instinct for parent-child play, Harris writes, “This implies that children do not require play with an adult in order to develop normally.” . . .

I dashed a quick e-mail off to Kelly:

Parents shouldn’t be playing with their kids. They haven’t throughout history. Not much, anyway. I just heard a whole talk at an evolutionary psych conference on how the important thing is for kids of various ages to play together, and I’ve written about this as well. My question is why are you putting pressure on parents? (I know — to sell products.) Yes, play is important. Kids can do it just fine without mommy and daddy’s help.

Here’s Kelly’s article:

THANKS FOR THE BALL, DAD, C’MON, LET’S PLAY
Unfortunately, Most Parents Have Little Time to Play with Kids, Survey Finds
(Big fucking deal, Amy adds)
by Kelly V. Lobanov

Angie Schuler, an advertising account representative and mother of two, has heard it all about maintaining a healthy work-life balance. But between her 60-hour work week and making sure Isabelle, age 6, has done her homework and Gavin, 3, has not hidden his vegetables in the sofa cushions, there’s not much time for fun and games.

Like most parents, Angie knows all about the importance of play time. Finding the hours – or even minutes – in a hectic day, however, is not always possible. She is not alone. Despite near universal acknowledgment that playtime is a vital component of a child’s development, 62 percent of parents engage in “active play” with their children for six hours or less per week. That translates to under an hour a day on average. If that’s not bad enough, 16 percent of moms and dads admit that playtime with their kids averages less than one hour each week.

According to a new survey commissioned by HearthSong, a national toy catalog, and conducted by IPSOS Public Affairs, 99 percent of parents with a child aged 12 and under believe that children’s play is important for a variety of reasons, but in a world in which the demands on parents’ time are considerable, only 38 percent of parents say they spend at least six hours per week in active play with their kids. One in six parents doesn’t even spend an hour a week, averaging fewer than 10 minutes per day in playtime with their sons and daughters.

“Everyone recognizes that for children to be children, they need time to play,” said Beverly Fries, an educational play expert at HearthSong, one of the nation’s leading catalog toy companies. “Play at any stage of a child’s development helps instill a sense of accomplishment, delight and both intellectual and social growth. What is equally important to understand is the opportunities that play provides parents to engage with their children, to praise and encourage them in ways that instill strong and enduring bonds.”

The survey also found that parents who do play with their kids, over one third (36%) say they most often play with games or toys, another quarter (27%) most often participate in unstructured play and a like number (27%) play outside, in either unstructured or structured activities such as sports.

Parents were fairly evenly split on the value of structured play. Forty-four percent of respondents said that structured play such as play groups, school and sports leagues satisfy their child’s play requirements, while 56 percent disagreed.

When asked what they believed was the most important aspect of play in contributing to their child’s development, more than one in four parents (27%) said “learning to interact with others,” while fewer mentioned developing “motor skills” (18%), “problem solving” (17%), “creative thinking” (17%), “imagination” (12%) or a “sense of accomplishment” (9%).

And lastly, despite the growing popularity of electronic toys, such as computer and video games, only 38 percent of respondents indicated that their child spends more time with electronic toys than with other types of play.

“Laughter and engagement in active play is essential to the well being of your child,” said Fries. From newborns to pre-teens, active play enhances a child’s mental, physical, emotional and social development throughout their life.”

Boston College psychologist Dr. Peter Gray, who studies mixed-age play, actually gave the plenary address on this subject at NEEPS, the NorthEastern Evolutionary Psychology Society conference I attended this May in New Hampshire. Here’s an excerpt from a paper he wrote on it, Nature’s Powerful Tutors; The Educative Functions of Free Play:

Age-mixed play is less competitive and more nurturing than same-age play. When players differ widely in age, experience, and ability, there is no point in trying to prove oneself better than others. Rather than focus on winning, players find ways to make games fun and challenging for all concerned. Age mixing is valuable both to the younger and the older children involved.

Younger children benefit by being exposed to the more sophisticated activities and abilities of older children, among whom they find role models. A useful idea here is Lev Vygotsky’s concept of a zone of proximal development: defined as the realm of endeavors that a child can do in collaboration with more skilled others, but cannot do by himself or herself or with others at his or her same level (Vygotsky, 1978). For example, two 4-year-olds cannot play a simple game of catch. Neither can throw or catch well enough to make the game fun. However, a 4-year-old and an 8-year-old can play catch and enjoy it. The 8-year-old can toss the ball gently into the hands of the 4- year-old so the latter can catch it, and the 8- year-old can run and leap and catch the wild throws of the 4-year-old. So, catch is in the zone of proximal development for 4-year-olds. We have made analogous observations for many intellectual and social skills, not just physical skills.

Older children also benefit in many ways from their interactions with younger ones. In age-mixed play, older children have opportunities to practice leadership and nurturance and to consolidate their own knowledge through teaching. Also, the creative activities of younger children inspire older children and adolescents to continue to play at such activities as painting and modeling with clay, and to develop artistic skills.

As a culture we are affording children continuously less opportunity for free play, unguided by adults, and continuously less opportunity to interact with children who differ from themselves in age. The observations I have described here suggest that, in letting these trends continue, we are depriving children of the most enjoyable routes to education.

Guilting parents who don’t find it fascinating to read the same book to a kid 40 times is unproductive and maybe even damaging. Psssst! Parents! 3-year-olds can be cute, but they’re BORING. And it’s just fine to admit that.

You do your parental duty by breaking your kids out of the nuclear family bind so they can be socialized with other kids of all ages. Set it up so your kids play with other kids — of all ages. Your job, as a parent, is to sit there with other parents and talk about adult things, adjudicate any fights, and say “That’s wonderful!” when your kid occasional points out that they’ve manage to climb a tree without cracking their head open. (Yeah, okay, how they’ll get down is anyone’s guess — but maybe the other kids can help your kid work that out, like kids have pretty successfully for generations and generations.)

Those are my two friends in the photo: Dinosaur Boy, who’s 7, and In-Charge Girl, who just turned 4, and who knows who’s the boss and will be quick to show you if you forget it!
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Libel Tourism
Historian Deborah Lipstadt, author of Denying the Holocaust: The Growing Assault on Truth and Memory, was sued for libel in a British court in 2000 — and, surprisingly, won — after she pointed to statements by David Irving that she deemed holocaust denial.

Next stop in the British courts? Muslims seeking to make free western societies a little less free and western — on the way to making them a whole lot less free and western.

Clifford May, president of the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies, a policy institute focusing on terrorism, writes for Scripps News of a new trick for silencing criticism of Islam and terrorists that’s sure to be used more and more — taking advantage of ridiculous British libel laws in British courts against writers in other countries. Here’s how it works:

A book published in the United States names an individual abroad who supports terrorist groups. That individual — for the sake of discussion, let’s say he’s a Saudi petro-billionaire with a home in London — goes online and orders a few copies, which arrive in the mail. He takes those books to a British attorney who files a lawsuit complaining that his client has been libeled.

The billionaire knows it will be much easier to prevail in the U.K. than it would be in an American court, where the First Amendment and decades of case law provide free speech protections. (Under English law, by contrast, the burden in a libel case is on the defendant to prove his innocence — which can be impossible if he’s been using confidential sources or even just sources who don’t want to cross an ocean and take part in a courtroom battle.)

The legal costs are chump change for the billionaire, while few nonfiction writers command similar resources. If the writer chooses not to spend months living in a hotel and fighting it out in court, the case will be forfeited and he will be hit with a “default judgment.” If he doesn’t pay, he’ll never again be able to set foot in the U.K. and other countries that enforce British court judgments.

But more important is this: The message gets sent, loud and clear, to journalists, scholars and publishers, that researching and writing about terrorists and those who enable them is verboten — even in America.

May writes that Congressmen Peter King (R-N.Y.) and Anthony Weiner (D-N.Y.) are behind the Free Speech Protection Act of 2008, which would allow Americans sucked into one of these bullshit cases a “federal cause of action to sue back” — and to recover legal fees and damages if a U.S court decides the foreign suit was a specious scheme to squash First Amendment rights.

The problems, as May sees them:

First, although there is bipartisan support for this approach, not enough backers — so far at least — are from the majority party: Of ten sponsors on the House side, only one is a Democrat. Second, we’re deep into the presidential campaign season, a time when very little moves on Capitol Hill. Third, never underestimate the ability of the Saudis, their lobbyists, their allies and their courtiers, to kill that which interferes with their interests.

Write your senator here.

Write your congressperson.
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