"There is no going back to this other person, this other place. This thing, this stranger, she is what you are now."-- Jodie Foster, The Brave One
French society has a way of sublimating disingenuity which is particular to itself, and cuts across its authorial class, reaching back before Victor Hugo, but certainly linking him in a flowering genus: Balzac, Flaubert, Maupassant, the genius of Stendhal, the superb Stendhal, Moliere, Proust. Yet it is linked, too, to Spanish sleepiness, the lassitude of the Spaniard's daydream themes, coupled with fervor, and the crafty shrewd Italian. Even Simenon's sparse discipline is not unaffected by it, and somehow, Bruno Cremer makes Maigret greater than the sum of gossip, realism, sliding the calculus in a great hunter's mind. No one is ever discomfited by the deception of gas, slowly bursting as a stool moves in transit. Bloating is just bloating, until it becomes the biological eruption of death, the thing which kills. Bowl blockage, cervical cancer.
For Simenon, this substitute for wasted, withered flesh is the morphine needle, and in Maigret On Trial, Maigret's Patience, the 20th century is perfected to tradition. The stories tell the battle of Maigret and Manuel Palmeri, who may be Italian, what the fuck do I know about borders being porous, and Manuel's mistress, Aline, and the novels hearken straight back to Hugo's genius in Gringiore's adventures with the Circus of Miracles. Dangerous people fake blindness and amputation to steal, to beg, and Simenon's brilliance is entirely aware of this conceit, while the Belgian production and Cremer's near perfect realization, for a bit actor, makes the novels themselves nearly unnecessary to read. Criminality and the law both exploit disability, create it, and ruthless avarice destroys and eliminates it. I am finally penetrating the coda, finally. I can begin to see, despite the alarming length of fecal discharge, my anger with overages I should be perfectly capable of avoiding.
Violence as an argument, this will always be with us, and I'm a rare woman, like Jennifer Lopez donning Harlee like an overcoat, entranced by her own abuse, who believes in its cathartic consequences, and that's all I've ever really feared, justifiable homicide, even with its anti-climatic dissonance, and so what. Murder, the stuff of the kitchen table, humanity reverting with age to simple, reptilian responses: fight, flight, bite, tear, before the snake asphyxiates your ability to breathe.
Tuesday, November 27, 2012
Subjunctive Sinews
Writing is not a profession but a vocation of unhappiness. I don’t think an artist can ever be happy. Georges Simenon
I am not an expert in the revival of American minimalism, but Georges Simenon is much more interesting precursor than a man like Cormac McCarthy. Cormac is exceedingly aware of his craft, but that craft, much like Lionel Shriver's, has flaws that illuminate flags for me, flags that do not allow my applause without reservation. Simenon pares it down to the bone, but his stature has been on the rise in recent years, perhaps because his sparse diction leaves room for intrigue and ambiguity.
I examined, as opposed to truly studied, Dirty Snow with Jay Gertzman (second reviewer) and it was worth the entire participation in the live book club, and aside from Maigret, I hope to pursue more of Simenon's oeuvre. It is his contribution to The Brothers Rico that makes this more than just your sanitized Hollywood mafia staple, and also why it is an interesting adjunct to later films like Brazil and Arlington Road. My wheels have been spinning on this through the last week and a half, through my last three posts of equally minimal political sentiments, through the fact that I still mourn mio bambino and apparently cannot be kind to my internal loss and allow things to take their course. Like most pet owners who disagree with science, I am convinced that Vinne misses his brother still, and that dear kimmy does her best to take charge of both of us (which reminds me I need to get on and use my wonderfully sardonic verbal skills to help my shelter friends, about whom I have never uttered so much as a barb, and why is that? Because I snivel in torrents for my Joey? mio bambino, mio bambino, weeps the soul I no longer have; had I only died with my boy, this throbbing wound for a feline, six months going, is this why?) The little girl sticks her ass in my face, as if to say I am here now, get over it. And oh, grief shall fade, but I'll never have another bond such as that.
Let us examine Rico a bit, and although I rarely put the plot under a microscope, what analytical skills that remain tell me this is the best way to continue my pursuit of this thesis.
I am not an expert in the revival of American minimalism, but Georges Simenon is much more interesting precursor than a man like Cormac McCarthy. Cormac is exceedingly aware of his craft, but that craft, much like Lionel Shriver's, has flaws that illuminate flags for me, flags that do not allow my applause without reservation. Simenon pares it down to the bone, but his stature has been on the rise in recent years, perhaps because his sparse diction leaves room for intrigue and ambiguity.
I examined, as opposed to truly studied, Dirty Snow with Jay Gertzman (second reviewer) and it was worth the entire participation in the live book club, and aside from Maigret, I hope to pursue more of Simenon's oeuvre. It is his contribution to The Brothers Rico that makes this more than just your sanitized Hollywood mafia staple, and also why it is an interesting adjunct to later films like Brazil and Arlington Road. My wheels have been spinning on this through the last week and a half, through my last three posts of equally minimal political sentiments, through the fact that I still mourn mio bambino and apparently cannot be kind to my internal loss and allow things to take their course. Like most pet owners who disagree with science, I am convinced that Vinne misses his brother still, and that dear kimmy does her best to take charge of both of us (which reminds me I need to get on and use my wonderfully sardonic verbal skills to help my shelter friends, about whom I have never uttered so much as a barb, and why is that? Because I snivel in torrents for my Joey? mio bambino, mio bambino, weeps the soul I no longer have; had I only died with my boy, this throbbing wound for a feline, six months going, is this why?) The little girl sticks her ass in my face, as if to say I am here now, get over it. And oh, grief shall fade, but I'll never have another bond such as that.
Let us examine Rico a bit, and although I rarely put the plot under a microscope, what analytical skills that remain tell me this is the best way to continue my pursuit of this thesis.
Révolte
I lay the mind's contents
Bare, as upon a table,
And ask, in a time of war,
Whether there is still
To a mind frivolously dull
Anything worth living for
--Allen Tate
Stendhal lived during a time of uneasy transition between the Enlightenment, which, in a rare moment of personal exasperation, a fifty year old McGuire exclaimed, "I refuse to teach it!", but in all fairness, Pope has that effect on me as well, with his trilling mock heroic verse, and the burgeoning dawn of global superpower which the Victorian age would bequeath to the 20th century. The world that Stendhal presents to readers is delightfully manicured, much more so than in the Balzac who purportedly supersedes him (and for those of you not familiar with how the dowager handles majority consensus by now, she exclaims "fuck that," and would be stranded on a desert island with Stendhal over Balzac any day) but it is still a pre-industrial world with a vain and petty aristocracy, wallowing in Napoleon's tragic grandeur, a world where men controlled women, selecting and discarding them like a deck of cards, as long as the female in question was desirable, regretting not studying this nearly unparalleled author with my French professor.
Though I am not sure how France 2 works, in comparison to RAI in Italy, I am now writing in rare protest. to my cultured aesthetes across the pond: Some classical authors cannot be faithfully adapted on screen. Stendhal is one such author, even if curiosity overcame me to see what was done with The Charterhouse of Parma, to realize it is a more superficial variation of Julien's story in Le Rouge et Le Noir. Certainly, Stendhal's world of backstabbing principalities can influence screenplays, but some canonical material should remain just that, canonical, not bootstrapped by the props department to offer sensibilities of the baroque slowly crumbling to egalitarian lies. Not that I do not appreciate the derivative, and in the case of pop culture like Star Trek, even prefer it, but more often than not, adaptations detract from the engagement with literary imagination, with the exception of Dickens and his Christmas Carol, which is probably known by heart even by Boko Haram. While we may meet our doom enhancing our bodies out of species sustainability, enhancing our cultural historical memory through the ascendancy of video as the supreme medium can have its drawbacks. As opposed to being enacted, great narratives need to be read. And if some of you are going to object with a question like "What about Victor Hugo?" Hugo's flaws are tightened when they become musicals, movies.
Bare, as upon a table,
And ask, in a time of war,
Whether there is still
To a mind frivolously dull
Anything worth living for
--Allen Tate
Stendhal lived during a time of uneasy transition between the Enlightenment, which, in a rare moment of personal exasperation, a fifty year old McGuire exclaimed, "I refuse to teach it!", but in all fairness, Pope has that effect on me as well, with his trilling mock heroic verse, and the burgeoning dawn of global superpower which the Victorian age would bequeath to the 20th century. The world that Stendhal presents to readers is delightfully manicured, much more so than in the Balzac who purportedly supersedes him (and for those of you not familiar with how the dowager handles majority consensus by now, she exclaims "fuck that," and would be stranded on a desert island with Stendhal over Balzac any day) but it is still a pre-industrial world with a vain and petty aristocracy, wallowing in Napoleon's tragic grandeur, a world where men controlled women, selecting and discarding them like a deck of cards, as long as the female in question was desirable, regretting not studying this nearly unparalleled author with my French professor.
Though I am not sure how France 2 works, in comparison to RAI in Italy, I am now writing in rare protest. to my cultured aesthetes across the pond: Some classical authors cannot be faithfully adapted on screen. Stendhal is one such author, even if curiosity overcame me to see what was done with The Charterhouse of Parma, to realize it is a more superficial variation of Julien's story in Le Rouge et Le Noir. Certainly, Stendhal's world of backstabbing principalities can influence screenplays, but some canonical material should remain just that, canonical, not bootstrapped by the props department to offer sensibilities of the baroque slowly crumbling to egalitarian lies. Not that I do not appreciate the derivative, and in the case of pop culture like Star Trek, even prefer it, but more often than not, adaptations detract from the engagement with literary imagination, with the exception of Dickens and his Christmas Carol, which is probably known by heart even by Boko Haram. While we may meet our doom enhancing our bodies out of species sustainability, enhancing our cultural historical memory through the ascendancy of video as the supreme medium can have its drawbacks. As opposed to being enacted, great narratives need to be read. And if some of you are going to object with a question like "What about Victor Hugo?" Hugo's flaws are tightened when they become musicals, movies.
Monday, November 26, 2012
Walks Like A Duck
Before the sea and lands began to be,
before the sky had mantled every thing,
then all of nature's face was featureless--
what men call chaos: undigested mass.
Ovid's prologue, The Metamorphoses
A day of florid insouciance, nasal drip with the cloying and likely unhealthy radiator heat that is so beneficial to the discarded of public housing, Tammy Duckworth's election to the House might have been interesting if she was not a minority potted plant, but if I had once a seat at the table with President Clinton's Social Security advisory committee, there is no reason why I cannot do it again to dismantle independent living centers. If I could just interest a few investigative journalists with experience in tracking bureaucratic waste, the thousands of state dollars that go into CILs and go out into the pockets of litigators and former IL staff who file with the EEOC, even Nicholas Kristof might concede my myopia for revenge is not without foundation, but my day was long, cooking in between feline what is in my food bowl investigation committee, Vinnie throwing precisely two tantrums, I have to quit and come back again. When I really want to make dinner and it takes three hours of urinal dashing and arguments with proto-linguistic mews, of which the surviving brother does not have dead Joey's talent--Joey talked, evidence indicating my ex was right, and my deceased child thought he was human, like the way he propped his back against the table support, his fore paw leaning on the foot, as if to imitate me and Frank in our chairs-- I tire, especially in this heat, too cold out for fresh air via open window, I opened what virtual windows I needed at least for preliminary penetration, but find the flesh bowled and discomfited, beyond toleration.
(I did not tweet this yet and already have one view count, mmm. The anti-defamation league? Google monitoring? No David versus Goliath here, trust me, she says, smirking, as if one bitterly angry quadriplegic is really worth that much cause for concern; I haven't quite tested that with the fury bottled in Ellison's paint factory now, have I?) Not that I care about what those in charge of running Blogger think, or even what you do, the trail of abandon in my digital life reflecting my lack of affirmative structure in real work terms, but getting flagged after putting my heart into this, well, that is the paranoia of my online experience. Everytime I let me be me I get burned. I am, however, in the process of writing, and will slowly critique with more detail, my opening chapters of my book calling for the elimination of the IL federal mandate. This is currently a tap dance.
Before my id took over from the temperamental digestive system, diverting me, my sensibility was aiming at Tammy's profile being a good thing, depending on how she manages to deploy. Not everyone can come back from having 1/3 of their flesh transformed into beef stew, to then turn around and become a federal legislator, giving Petraeus even more reason to blush for shame. He led these troops for which Ms. Duckworth paid with her extensive amputations, and his lamented downfall gobbles the coverage much more so than the major's sacrifice. The EPVA achieved some stunning victories against the federal government, when you look at DC's accessible subway system. One reason I wanted to move to the capital when I had the more stable strength of my thirties.
Still, let me make one distinction for the ablest majority: the Jon Voight, representative of disabled veteran culture in Coming Home, is a distinct subset within the disabled community, from those birthed into chronic conditions. The groups intersect, but by and large, the wounded soldier has far more support toward successful matriculation than does someone like me, who has to be labeled *nursing home eligible,* to tap into even a modicum of the safety net that disabled veterans have, and hell will freeze over before the mainstream press even looks at this as an intramural competition, a pecking order that has valid reasons, but none the less creates a glass ceiling: I cannot supersede veterans preference in the byzantine labyrinth of the civil service aspirant, and it is growing long in the tooth to keep playing that wager.
before the sky had mantled every thing,
then all of nature's face was featureless--
what men call chaos: undigested mass.
Ovid's prologue, The Metamorphoses
A day of florid insouciance, nasal drip with the cloying and likely unhealthy radiator heat that is so beneficial to the discarded of public housing, Tammy Duckworth's election to the House might have been interesting if she was not a minority potted plant, but if I had once a seat at the table with President Clinton's Social Security advisory committee, there is no reason why I cannot do it again to dismantle independent living centers. If I could just interest a few investigative journalists with experience in tracking bureaucratic waste, the thousands of state dollars that go into CILs and go out into the pockets of litigators and former IL staff who file with the EEOC, even Nicholas Kristof might concede my myopia for revenge is not without foundation, but my day was long, cooking in between feline what is in my food bowl investigation committee, Vinnie throwing precisely two tantrums, I have to quit and come back again. When I really want to make dinner and it takes three hours of urinal dashing and arguments with proto-linguistic mews, of which the surviving brother does not have dead Joey's talent--Joey talked, evidence indicating my ex was right, and my deceased child thought he was human, like the way he propped his back against the table support, his fore paw leaning on the foot, as if to imitate me and Frank in our chairs-- I tire, especially in this heat, too cold out for fresh air via open window, I opened what virtual windows I needed at least for preliminary penetration, but find the flesh bowled and discomfited, beyond toleration.
(I did not tweet this yet and already have one view count, mmm. The anti-defamation league? Google monitoring? No David versus Goliath here, trust me, she says, smirking, as if one bitterly angry quadriplegic is really worth that much cause for concern; I haven't quite tested that with the fury bottled in Ellison's paint factory now, have I?) Not that I care about what those in charge of running Blogger think, or even what you do, the trail of abandon in my digital life reflecting my lack of affirmative structure in real work terms, but getting flagged after putting my heart into this, well, that is the paranoia of my online experience. Everytime I let me be me I get burned. I am, however, in the process of writing, and will slowly critique with more detail, my opening chapters of my book calling for the elimination of the IL federal mandate. This is currently a tap dance.
Before my id took over from the temperamental digestive system, diverting me, my sensibility was aiming at Tammy's profile being a good thing, depending on how she manages to deploy. Not everyone can come back from having 1/3 of their flesh transformed into beef stew, to then turn around and become a federal legislator, giving Petraeus even more reason to blush for shame. He led these troops for which Ms. Duckworth paid with her extensive amputations, and his lamented downfall gobbles the coverage much more so than the major's sacrifice. The EPVA achieved some stunning victories against the federal government, when you look at DC's accessible subway system. One reason I wanted to move to the capital when I had the more stable strength of my thirties.
Still, let me make one distinction for the ablest majority: the Jon Voight, representative of disabled veteran culture in Coming Home, is a distinct subset within the disabled community, from those birthed into chronic conditions. The groups intersect, but by and large, the wounded soldier has far more support toward successful matriculation than does someone like me, who has to be labeled *nursing home eligible,* to tap into even a modicum of the safety net that disabled veterans have, and hell will freeze over before the mainstream press even looks at this as an intramural competition, a pecking order that has valid reasons, but none the less creates a glass ceiling: I cannot supersede veterans preference in the byzantine labyrinth of the civil service aspirant, and it is growing long in the tooth to keep playing that wager.
Saturday, November 24, 2012
Petite Sentiments
Before I return to my futuristic medical catastrophe of poverty induced stroke, barring poverty induced subcutaneous embolism, a few spare thoughts on the kindle paperwhite, spare, because I wish to cash in with a digital angle, though I never can write as fast as Yoffe, which may be just as well.
I am more comfortable carrying the paperwhite around, as the older kindle keyboard model has taken a beating, though it has stood the test of time, remains functional, and I am not ready to trade it in yet. Still manually easier to subvert the location issue through bookmarks and highlights on the older and technically more spacious device. Touchpad is still frustrating, though divining menu operation did not take me too long. With a little effort, I can read the paperwhite in dim light, and as long as I do not buy a text accidentally, Amazon's special offers, though no friend to the over-educated, do not trouble me, as this giant retail monopoly represents the best and the worst of Friedman's holy grail. Amazon's claims about battery life are so so, but since I am normally near a power outlet, this is not much of an issue. Relaxing into a text itself might be, but this may also be the residual effects of my bloody and asinine bid to becoming a patron of local color, and expending money I shall never recoup, much like the drain from felines dead and alive, and sibling rifts and expenditure, on the conquest, semi-lucid at this point, of Ulysses. (Lance, dear fellow, I take back what I said about "not deciphering," bloody fool spastic is!) Still cannot distinguish the period from the comma, but in terms of modern alienation and agony, figuring out which is which is a minor affair in Sebold's flickering window candle. Certain classes of least functional cripples may not benefit from all this that is derivative of the cell phone.
One thing I have not done is transfer my periodical content, not yet. Less pressure. I am also entirely ignorant of comparisons to other models, but I am not seduced by the Apple device fetish as the rest of you, so you may deem that mild generational resistance. How much I can still absorb and maintain my dignity? The fact remains, this technology would have made me a better student; for that, a great deal of regret. This may seem like opaque reasoning, but the physical act of researching is a touch harder for wheelchair users, however much larger universities pride themselves on access, library architecture seems welded to the Victorian age, not that this was a conscious issue in youth, but in contemporary terms, it does begin to matter, and academic electronic fair use issues might include disabled access exemptions.
I am more comfortable carrying the paperwhite around, as the older kindle keyboard model has taken a beating, though it has stood the test of time, remains functional, and I am not ready to trade it in yet. Still manually easier to subvert the location issue through bookmarks and highlights on the older and technically more spacious device. Touchpad is still frustrating, though divining menu operation did not take me too long. With a little effort, I can read the paperwhite in dim light, and as long as I do not buy a text accidentally, Amazon's special offers, though no friend to the over-educated, do not trouble me, as this giant retail monopoly represents the best and the worst of Friedman's holy grail. Amazon's claims about battery life are so so, but since I am normally near a power outlet, this is not much of an issue. Relaxing into a text itself might be, but this may also be the residual effects of my bloody and asinine bid to becoming a patron of local color, and expending money I shall never recoup, much like the drain from felines dead and alive, and sibling rifts and expenditure, on the conquest, semi-lucid at this point, of Ulysses. (Lance, dear fellow, I take back what I said about "not deciphering," bloody fool spastic is!) Still cannot distinguish the period from the comma, but in terms of modern alienation and agony, figuring out which is which is a minor affair in Sebold's flickering window candle. Certain classes of least functional cripples may not benefit from all this that is derivative of the cell phone.
One thing I have not done is transfer my periodical content, not yet. Less pressure. I am also entirely ignorant of comparisons to other models, but I am not seduced by the Apple device fetish as the rest of you, so you may deem that mild generational resistance. How much I can still absorb and maintain my dignity? The fact remains, this technology would have made me a better student; for that, a great deal of regret. This may seem like opaque reasoning, but the physical act of researching is a touch harder for wheelchair users, however much larger universities pride themselves on access, library architecture seems welded to the Victorian age, not that this was a conscious issue in youth, but in contemporary terms, it does begin to matter, and academic electronic fair use issues might include disabled access exemptions.
Bauble Feet
Martian colonists become preoccupied with Perky Pat Layouts, small sets
representing penthouse apartments inhabited by a Barbie-Doll like figure and her
Ken-like mate. --Behrens and Ruch analyzing Palmer Eldritch
Senator Kerry approximates a human being remarkably well. Surely he is flesh, blood, cartilage and orifice like the rest of us. This was my impression of the man during my obligatory 30 seconds of interaction with him after his 2004 consolation tour, and yes, it says something about this country that a failed piece of tripe like myself could discuss the wrong Treasury Secretary with a New England blue blood, but the yawning gulf between this failed presidential nominee and the urban herd who purchased his global warming book (I am selling my copy back, eventually, and I'm sure you'll snap it up like ginger grahams), says something else about American caste. The wall between the Senator and myself was more impenetrable than any bulletproof vest. Susan Rice is closer to the ground, a slightly better maintained version of Debra Horne, local dementia calculator, and in that vein of competence, the ambassador has done little to impress me. Unlike Lindsey, I do not consider her intelligence feed on Benghazi fatal. Kerry is simply a more recognized national figure, and has earned the soon to be open Principal slot at State.
If I had the ability to take McCain and the Congressional Black Caucus by the scruff and bust their heads for them, the pharmaceutical industry would begin to worry about its Prozac profit margins. Can I discern the policy differences between Madeline Albright and Condoleezza Rice, or the departing Hillary? Only in the most cursory fashion, but neither Ambassador Rice's ethnicity nor her intelligence is at issue; the question is one of her temperament. The three women who were Secretary had it, but I have my doubts about Rice. That Kerry is rich white and old school does not discount the fact that he has earned this post. He served his country, (this is me not examining the Swift Boat tactic very closely) and he has been loyal to his party, and to Obama. Be glad I do not have real power, because we'd revert to the original thirteen states within no more than a bling.
Question for the Harvard elite: If I do not have the right to tape Ms.Horne's mouth shut and cut off her thumb that hits the intercom switch to announce coffee hour or the budget grocer, or bible study, simply because I do not have your economic resources to keep my living space private, why in the world would I worry about Facebook or Google? Seems to me, cerebral palsy precludes the implied rights under western constitutional norms that you feel sacred as an ambulatory individual.
Senator Kerry approximates a human being remarkably well. Surely he is flesh, blood, cartilage and orifice like the rest of us. This was my impression of the man during my obligatory 30 seconds of interaction with him after his 2004 consolation tour, and yes, it says something about this country that a failed piece of tripe like myself could discuss the wrong Treasury Secretary with a New England blue blood, but the yawning gulf between this failed presidential nominee and the urban herd who purchased his global warming book (I am selling my copy back, eventually, and I'm sure you'll snap it up like ginger grahams), says something else about American caste. The wall between the Senator and myself was more impenetrable than any bulletproof vest. Susan Rice is closer to the ground, a slightly better maintained version of Debra Horne, local dementia calculator, and in that vein of competence, the ambassador has done little to impress me. Unlike Lindsey, I do not consider her intelligence feed on Benghazi fatal. Kerry is simply a more recognized national figure, and has earned the soon to be open Principal slot at State.
If I had the ability to take McCain and the Congressional Black Caucus by the scruff and bust their heads for them, the pharmaceutical industry would begin to worry about its Prozac profit margins. Can I discern the policy differences between Madeline Albright and Condoleezza Rice, or the departing Hillary? Only in the most cursory fashion, but neither Ambassador Rice's ethnicity nor her intelligence is at issue; the question is one of her temperament. The three women who were Secretary had it, but I have my doubts about Rice. That Kerry is rich white and old school does not discount the fact that he has earned this post. He served his country, (this is me not examining the Swift Boat tactic very closely) and he has been loyal to his party, and to Obama. Be glad I do not have real power, because we'd revert to the original thirteen states within no more than a bling.
Question for the Harvard elite: If I do not have the right to tape Ms.Horne's mouth shut and cut off her thumb that hits the intercom switch to announce coffee hour or the budget grocer, or bible study, simply because I do not have your economic resources to keep my living space private, why in the world would I worry about Facebook or Google? Seems to me, cerebral palsy precludes the implied rights under western constitutional norms that you feel sacred as an ambulatory individual.
Friday, November 23, 2012
Emily Yoffe: White House Procopius
Now David Plotz will never accept a future piece from me, though this does not deter my brain from its Slate bracket file (and much as anything, my Slate byline aspirations need fieldwork), but I shall raise my voice, gently, on the moderate left rollback of the Petraeus imbroglio: If the neo-Eisenhower moderates, a species with no political home to call their own, exhibit character flaws, journalists like Yoffe roll out the tape measure and say let's be adults. Eh. Not so simple. People get hurt, and even if sex that violates commitments to monogamy is no longer criminalized, the state still has an interest in containing adultery. My fling was inconsequential. All of them were, but that does not mean I could not have gotten killed, and I did immerse myself in a pathological marriage between a draft dodger and his wife, unwittingly. Young and stupid, I wanted the thrill of romance, and married men, I discovered, were not afraid of me, and if I was not florid, cranky, and breast fallen, I'd do it all again, but more coolly, smarter. There is a huge difference between the thrill of forbidden pleasure, however, and illicit affairs that damage employment and productivity. And my former supervisor traumatized me, even if she did not mean to do so, by throwing me off my guard, in an email, about her orgasm intensity, and this in spite of the fact that I sought her confidence. I concede that. I enjoyed her company and was lonely and needed work again, but putting all that together became combustible. I did ask her things I feared asking my mother, and that was my mistake, because Linda is an alpha, and like any alpha, her dominance took over, and I became anxious, and the rest is history. That damage will never go away, and I doubt it will for Holly Petraeus either, and her grief is more salient than mine.
Men with power seem to need that urgency inherent in the impetus to spread their seed. We get that, but Petraeus and Broadwell were military officers. The Bush Administration did a great deal of damage creating Homeland Security, adding additional layers to a security apparatus that may not have made us any safer. Obama will not roll it back, but he is more visionary, and as president he should care that intelligence vital to the nation is well managed; it damages his legacy otherwise, carrying over bad ideas from a corrupt and inefficient administration, like Holder being out to lunch with Fast and Furious. Petraeus and Broadwell are human, and Paula was not nuts. She was enamored, and intense, but neither she nor the general are children, and Emily, perhaps Milbank as well, in a more nuanced fashion, treat them as if they were. We joke about the CIA, but we sober up real fast if, say, China takes North Korea off the leash and Seoul finds itself hit with a warhead, si? To serve within the top echelons of power is a privilege, and that should come with certain restrictions on indulgence. Unlike my former boss, Petraeus did take responsibility for his behavior, and then hired a lawyer, which is seemingly at odds with the idea that there are no extraneous legality issues remaining.
Rehabilitating his reputation is one thing, but whisking him back into executive authority is foolhardy, especially if he could not see the implications of having something necessary to conceal before he and Broadwell became lovers.
We tend to believe our republic does a bit more than mirror that Politburo in the east, but what Petraeus and Broadwell did is equivalent to the Communist Party corruption that makes the west feel so superior.
Men with power seem to need that urgency inherent in the impetus to spread their seed. We get that, but Petraeus and Broadwell were military officers. The Bush Administration did a great deal of damage creating Homeland Security, adding additional layers to a security apparatus that may not have made us any safer. Obama will not roll it back, but he is more visionary, and as president he should care that intelligence vital to the nation is well managed; it damages his legacy otherwise, carrying over bad ideas from a corrupt and inefficient administration, like Holder being out to lunch with Fast and Furious. Petraeus and Broadwell are human, and Paula was not nuts. She was enamored, and intense, but neither she nor the general are children, and Emily, perhaps Milbank as well, in a more nuanced fashion, treat them as if they were. We joke about the CIA, but we sober up real fast if, say, China takes North Korea off the leash and Seoul finds itself hit with a warhead, si? To serve within the top echelons of power is a privilege, and that should come with certain restrictions on indulgence. Unlike my former boss, Petraeus did take responsibility for his behavior, and then hired a lawyer, which is seemingly at odds with the idea that there are no extraneous legality issues remaining.
Rehabilitating his reputation is one thing, but whisking him back into executive authority is foolhardy, especially if he could not see the implications of having something necessary to conceal before he and Broadwell became lovers.
We tend to believe our republic does a bit more than mirror that Politburo in the east, but what Petraeus and Broadwell did is equivalent to the Communist Party corruption that makes the west feel so superior.
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