Sadly, we live in the age of unleashed toxic-femininity of which Liz Gilbert is fine example.
As I recall the actual real-life story here is much more enlightening and entertaining. The sad sack Brazilian she ended up with after her year of eating and praying was quite a bit older and less attractive then her boring old husband. And while she wanted romantic adventure, he really, really wanted them to settle in the US so he could get a green card. Of course, she dumps him after a few years to go lesbian--presumably the Brazilian got to stay in the US.
And the real winner in all this was ... her ex-husband, who--again this is just what I read somewhere (probably when Steve did his piece)--who post-divorce met and married a younger woman and has some children with her. (Something "it's all about me!" Liz Gilbert could never quite get around to.)
Congrats to Gilbert's ex-husband! Whether through luck or good fortune your managed to get out from under the Gilbert trains wreck and have an actual life. Well done!
One thing going on here is that in the old (European) order selection on the female side would be mostly for general health--disease resistance, beauty, fertility, etc. A bit for temperament--women could head to the convent, or just end up an old maid. And a bit for household management. But otherwise, if healthy, babies "just come". Most of the particular trait selection happened on the male side.
But with the Pill, and then feminism and now especially with smart phones and woke, there is much more selection going on on the female side. Traits that work against women *choosing* to be wives and mothers are being selected against.
I think this is overall to the good. Selecting against BPD, hysteria, all-about-me-ness. Evolving the population toward more normal, steadfast, "family" orientation and away from Liz Gilbertness. Normie uprising!
The problem, of course, is that this positive selection is being completely swamped by the immigration deluge.
"2010, one of the least woke years of recent times"
It seems like Wokeness would have to be more of a decade-to-decade thing, at the least, and only in extraordinary circumstances could it really shift noticeable year-to-year like is being suggested.
For argument's sake, let's say Wokeness was at a weak point in calendar-year 2010. (Surely the best supporting-evidence is not that the movie "The Expendables" came out that year.) Here we'd have to point to the Great Recession (2008-2013?). The year 2010 was probably a more-generally pessimistic year, on average, than it's probably remembered. That'd be from aggregate effects of the long recession, then in its third year. But the effects on the White-West's socio-cultural DNA from that recession will have been of the "phenotype" variety and NOT of the "genotype" variety.
Wokeness, as we know it, is no fad. Granted that many of its exuberant excesses are faddish. (Remember the "Stop Asian Hate" campaign? It's good to know they solved that thing so totally that there's been no need to mention it again in several years.) The larger structure is not, or has not been faddish.
Wokeness is something better defined as the defacto US civic-ideology or ruling-ideology. While its (shifting) tenets have never been particularly popular, it has been enforced by US political-commissars and by those who control the means of cultural production; by money-people, by the Israel Lobby and sundry other influencers and agenda-setters, propagandists, and agitators. A high-low coalition enforcing Wokeness.
These things don't get switched on and off, year to year, so lightly. (The entire theory of the Great Awokening as emerging in the early-mid 2010s from a zero-state has always been on shaky ground. It is to show that Wokeness-associated 2010s developments followed logically from trends ongoing in the 2000s and 1990s. Irrespective of that one guy's New York Times word-use graphs.)
The contention that 2010 would be a good candidate for "least-Woke year in the two-decade span 2003-2023" would have to be the 2010 midterm elections: the "Tea Party" wave. In retrospect the central figures associated with that political-history blip were not anti-Wokeness crusaders.
In early 2011, within a few weeks of the new Congress being sworn in, out came a buffoonish reality-tv demagogue. The man entered politics quasi-formally in April 2011 with a claim to have secret proof in hand that Barack H. Obama Jr. was born in Kenya and had been using a fake social security number, and that someone had faked the Hawaii birth-certificate.
The birth-certificate controversy, which was still flourishing ca.2010 (dying out, however, soon after 2011), could also be interpreted as a low-point for Wokeness. But context is always needed: The birth-certificate controversy meant people didn't feel Obama was a real American and projected that psychic energy onto the supposed invalid birth certificate. But these energies pale in comparison to the Wokeness tidal-wave that had then-recently promoted a no-name nobody from a position ranking somewhere near "nothing" all the way up to the U.S. presidency within a couple of years just because he was Black. The Post-Racial Messiah's victory in 2008 was clearly evidence of Wokeness in action. The same people swept up in the Post-Racial Messianic spirit in 2008 turning against Wokeness by 2010? It doesn't quite seem to fit.
"These things don't get switched on and off, year to year, so lightly."
True, but I suspect that Obama was personally tamping down his supporters' wokeness in 2009-2011 so he could run for re-election on more broadly popular grounds like "Obama killed Osama."
Wokeness started to leak out in 2012 with stuff like Trayvon Martin and the "Life of Julia" ad, which struck me at the time as weirdly feminist, since Obama obviously didn't have much respect for feminist theory (e.g., he made the proto-cancelled Larry Summers into his top economic adviser).
You weren't supposed to notice that the Obama White House was a fairly macho boy's club: people on the left couldn't criticize Obama because he was black; and chuds on the right stupidly assumed that Obama's skinny East African frame meant he was gay, while Michelle's height and big shoulders, which she shares with her power forward brother Craig Robinson, meant she was really a man.
In reality, Barack is above average masculine (he watched SportsCenter every night and played golf 333 times while in the White House), and Michelle is above average feminine (especially because people expect her to be athletic, which she is not). And their fairly traditional marriage (compared to the Clintons') affected Barack's view of feminist issues (i.e., he didn't take them seriously from an intellectual perspective).
Once Obama was re-elected, he put less effort into keeping his staff from indulging themselves and they ran wild.
If you want a visual of how pale and male Obama's White House staff were, look up the famous photo of them from after the 2016 election. All the 'diversity' is in a single row at the front (of course)
Wasn’t “Obama killed Osama” actually quite popular? I mean, I wasn’t a big fan of Obama, and as an old school Reaganite free market guy who grew up reading Ayn Rand and Milton Friedman, I pretty much hated most of his policies. But killing Osama struck me as a worthwhile thing to do, something that President W should have focused on a bit more. Rather than, you know, spending trillions on turning the military into Armed Peace Corps to remake the Muslim world.
> Agreed and the burial at sea was brilliant. No site to visit for his admirers. <
I'd have preferred "fed to pigs", and then some packer could have marketed "Osama fed bacon".
In general, the West needed/needs to stop coddling Muslim sensitivities and take a more--polite but firm--f.u. attitude, though that of course pales to the simple basic hygiene of keeping them out of Western nations.
That would be unnecessarily provocatory and religiously offensive. It’s like the stories of greasing bullets with pig or beef fat. Obama’s killing of Bin Laden was awesome and seamlessly executed. Almost a miracle.
> Once Obama was re-elected, he put less effort into keeping his staff from indulging themselves and they ran wild.
A trendsetting pattern that has been followed by every Democratic president since.
At least with Obama, legacy media's Laptop Class reporters would connect policies with their executive branch champions. From 2020 on, Who's-Responsible-For-What became too tiresome of a topic to discuss.
Steve, I've been happily reading your stuff for 25 years. In that time, you've written a lot of shocking and/or thought-provoking things. But today may be the ultimate: "...Michelle is above average feminine..." What?!? Never thought I'd be the one pointing-and-sputtering, but here I am.
Maybe it makes more sense if you read it as "above average for a black woman from an athletic family average".
In other words, given the the situation she was born into, her aspirations and interests are relatively feminine. But for anyone used to a more global vista (basically everyone except blacks and Steve), she doesn't jump out as the most feminine woman in town.
> While its (shifting) tenets have never been particularly popular, it has been enforced by US political-commissars and by those who control the means of cultural production; by money-people, by the Israel Lobby and sundry other influencers and agenda-setters, propagandists, and agitators. <
Hail, overall an excellent comment, but I do not get this jamming :"Israel Lobby" in here.
If that is supposed to mean "American Jews" pushing minoritarianism--evil whitey, virtuous "oppressed" minorities, anti-nationalism--and "must have immigration!"ism, then sure. American Jews have been the ideological authors and drivers of much of this toxic nonsense.
But that is separate ideologically from the "Israel lobby". Israel is in fact anti-"woke". The American Jewish establishment's ideology is an openly hypocritical "ethno-nationalism for me, but not for thee!" But most all of the non-Jewish woke adherents take minoritarian ideology seriously--ergo do not have a special Israel carve out--and hence are against Israel's explicit ethno-national character and the 2nd class status, oppression, occupation of the local Arabs. Israel is "white" people oppressing "brown" people--"settler colonialism". Bad!
~
Not that anyone cares, but my personal take is that while the founding of Israel and continual wars/occupation are ugly, having a Jewish state is a good thing. People belong--do best, thrive--in their own nations. I wish that American Jews who are incapable of being loyal to their fellow Americans and their interests would have the decency to simply move to Israel.
- born July 1969, Waterbury, Connecticut; raised in central Connecticut in a relatively rural area.
- ca. late 1980s, early 1990s: at New York University; marries in 1994 and active as a journalist in later 1990s;
- 2003?: leaves husband to find herself;
- 2006: Publishes book "Eat, Pray, Love" based on her 2003-04 life-events;
- 2007: marries a Jose Nunes, whom she met while traveling;
- 2010: Movie version of "Eat, Pray, Love" released;
- July 2014: Elizabeth Gilbert turns 45. No children, a failing second marriage to someone with whom she has no real organic ethnocultural connection (ill-advised).
- 2016: divorces Jose Nunes; apparently becomes lesbian about this time; becomes involved in illegal drugs; 2018: Lesbian girlfriend dies; 2019: Enters relationship with a British man said to have been a friend of the lesbian girlfriend;
- By early 2020: no longer in any relationship. Little was hear from her during the Covid-Panic lockdowns and ever since.
- July 2024: Elizabeth Gilbert turned 55.
.
---> SUMMARY: Lots of money. No family. By some time in the 2010s slips into "definitely no longer young" status. No longer really able to frolic about in a live-action romantic-comedy version of reality, as she could have ca. 2003 still in her mid-thirties.
.
The woman's decisions of the 2000s "did not age well." (Nor did she herself, from the looks of things.) That is the point of Steve's post here. That it's all well and good to leave a good husband and run off, for a while, at age 34 (I mean, "some may like to think"; or a post-1970 feminist consensus would tend to point towards). But --- time stops for no one. The age-old wisdom: Don't be stupid.
Is Elizabeth Gilbert really happy to have the life she's had in her 40s and 50s? Is anyone better off for it? Her culture?
I did hear something about her about three years ago. She was about to publish some sort of historical novel set in Siberia of all places, but then it (and almost she) got cancelled because how dare she publish a book set in Russia in the past when Russia is invading Ukraine in the present. It was such a stupid Cancel Culture example that it made me feel sorry even for Elizabeth Gilbert.
On a train in India I met an EPL type lady travelling solo. Our tour guide spent a fruitless few hours chatting her up, as he did the more bonkable ladies on the tour.
> Goodbye stranger. It's been nice. Hope you find your paradise
RIP Rick Davies (81), the only member of Supertramp during its entire existence. While he didn't write most of their songs, he did write the lyric quoted above
I heard a good song from the late 1970s at the drug store tonight. Was it Supertramp or Genesis?
The older guys at Rice U. when I got there in 1976 idolized Supertramp for their great 1974 progressive album Crime of the Century. Then, like Genesis, they got more catchy in the late 1970s.
Political reporter Dave Wiegel wrote a book a few years ago making the case for 1970s progressive rock bands who usually play the bad guys in narratives in which punks like the Ramones and Sex Pistols are the heroes.
Their biggest mainstream success came with Breakfast in America which was released in March 1979 and had four monster hits, but in your schoolmates' minds they probably didn't measure up to Bloody Well Right (Dec 74), although Give a Little Bit (Oct 77) is probably their most enduring hit
In 1983, I remember being in my dorm room on a warm September day and the dude in the next room over did what every college student did in the early 80s: he positioned his speakers out the window so he could assault everyone with his music taste. He turned the volume up to 11, then played "Hide in your shell" for an hour straight. Just that one song.
This line appeared at the start of a flashback sequence in the 1991 episode I Married Marge (312). Showing that it's indeed a small world, this episode was written by Steve's friend Jeff Martin. Yes, really
Thank you for reminding me how annoyed I was at finding ten years after "Eat" was published that her "journey" was funded by her publisher. It wasn't some "magical" reflective moment guided by a personal quest. All involved did a great job keeping that tidbit under wraps.
Wasn't it part of a publishing wave of authors "living in the moment" and writing about it? They would decide to live a certain way for a year... and jot it all down. I did find entertaining a book from that time, "A Year Without Made in China". The author and her family decided to forego buying anything from China... and learned how brutally hard it was. I think her kids only got Legos as birthday and Christmas presents that year.
Anyway, thanks for the reminder of how annoying Gilbert was. And still is, it seems.
A 50-odd new junior colleague, obviously very attractive in her youth, turned out to have spent the last 15 years since her divorce in Thailand, on her share of the house proceeds.
But it's not such fun doing a junior office job at 50, and living in a rough council estate where your neighbours watch the unloading of your worldly goods with predatory interest.
But judging by this essay, she writes well, has a fascinatingly weird life, it seems that she may have been a bad match for motherhood so it is not an outcome to be lamented that she does not have children, and she may get read a lot not by women wishing they were her but by women with normie lives thinking “there but for the grace of God go I”, not in a mean spirited way but sort of: the road less traveled looks pretty rock strewn, despite occasional charming Brazilians?
That seems to be an important genre in women’s writing. The Daily Mail has a columnist, Liz Jones, who apparently has such a comically catastrophic life you wonder how she even manages to write it down. (Or is it just people called Elizabeth?)
Yeah the “I am a polyamorous cannibal and yet somehow Brady Brunch reruns fill me with confused longing” genre of Modern Love columns. These are gare on teed to make the entire reading audience feel cheered up about their own life choices.
An important aspect of the genre is that the subject must have a more materially desirable life than the average reader but be just as much if not more of an emotional screwup. This seems to satisfy two related vicarious desires.
"I was on a certain path back then. Husband, nice house, good job, about to start a family. Except there was a problem with my hair, which was a frizzy mess."
R.I.P. Davey Johnson (82) who won two World Series playing for the Orioles and another managing the Mets. As he went to Texas A&M and received a degree in mathematics, he may be the smartest manager to win a World Series, but he was too smart for Earl Weaver who traded him to the Braves where he batted two spots behind Hank Aaron when he hit 715; Downing walked both Dusty Baker and Johnson before being removed.
Steve may not think too highly of Johnson as a manager as he came in the middle of a string of four managers (Bill Russell, Johnson, Jim Tracy, Grady Little) who did not advance the Dodgers in the playoffs during their combined 12 seasons. It took Joe Torre to break that 19-year stretch of futility in 2008, a year where fans were rooting for the potential Yankees/Dodgers matchup that finally came last year
Davey Johnson always seemed like a smart guy: he went off to Japan to manage and was really good at the job despite the language barrier. He came back and managed the New York Mets to the famous 1986 World Championship, although, admittedly, they had tons of talent like Darryl Strawberry, Keith Hernandez, and Gary Carter.
He went from 5 homers in 1972 to 43 in 1973, which seems a little dubious.
You are conflating Davey Johnson with Bobby Valentine in that the latter went to manage in Japan before managing the New York Mets to the NL pennant; he later won the Japan Series as a manager. However, Davey did play two years (75-76) in Japan with the Giants before returning to play MLB with the Phillies.
I neglected to mention earlier that I am convinced that Davey put a curse on the Reds when he was fired after the 95 season in which he led them to the NLCS; the Reds have literally not advanced in the playoffs since then with the near-30-year futility unmatched in any of the major-league professional sports
> He went from 5 homers in 1972 to 43 in 1973
It is not for nothing that Atlanta Stadium was known as The Launching Pad; in his first season playing there he hit 26 home runs!
I feel sorry for her cats when they get old. She's literally written off any additional close human relationships.
Almost 50 years ago, I was told pancreatic cancer is seldom properly diagnosed until you've got about 6 months left. That doesn't seem to have changed.
A perfect review to read after a weekend in LA where I have heard countless tales of cashed up, fit 50 and 60 something divorcées / widows going on semi-public sexual rampages / swapping campaigns with any men, and / or women they can get their hands (or whatever) around.
"Sexually transmitted infections (STIs) for adults 65 or older have more than doubled in the U.S. in the last decade, a product of multiple factors including heightened sexual activity in senior-living facilities, low condom use and lack of knowledge about STIs. "
I mean, just the photo of her ought to set of massive alarm bells that this is a hugely toxic person, but unfortunately she probably resonates with a non-negligible share of the female population these days. Much has been made of how boys/men are neglected by modern institutions and how that fuels their disaffection, but much less has been made of how wildly divergent white lefty women are from the rest of the country politically and culturally, and this archetype exists in disproportionate numbers in academia and media, as well as some other employment fields. Their presence has really distorted our culture and politics over the last 25 years, perhaps more than anyone else.
My girlfriend and I were in the yoga retreat group with Liz back in the summer of 2002. It was her first trip to Bali, she was commissioned by a magazine to write an article about her experience and I think the magazine paid for her trip. With our group leader she met the Balinese shaman for the first time.
She had recently gotten divorced from her husband and was in a relationship with another man with whom she was pursuing her interest in Siddha Yoga, which led her to India later as described in EPL. SY was a problematic organization to say the least, the descriptor "cult" is accurate. The guru Swami Muktananda was boinking disciples and when he died in 1982 was succeeded by a brother-sister pair. The sister, known as Gurumayi, ousted her brother as co-guru in a coup circa 1985 and has been credibly accused of all kinds of abusive, unethical behavior.
She was nice enough and had that waspy poise with a bit of aloofness. But she was not overtly narcissistic, not flashy or attention-seeking, actually rather low-key. We knew that she was a noted author of the book The Last American Man but never would have guessed she would become so massively successful and famous.
Thanks: If EG was in Bali in mid-2002, it'd be around her 33rd birthday (born July 1969). The Eat-Pray-Love book promotional-material said age 34. But the Eating-Praying-Loving process may have begun at age 32 already.
(I wonder if an editor deliberately left that obscure fact wrong for marketing purposes, 34 > 32 somehow more appealing.)
About the time of the movie release in mid-2010, she was celebrating her 41st birthday and nominally married to the Brazilian.
"[Elizabeth Gilbert in the early 2000s] had that waspy poise with a bit of aloofness. But she was not overtly narcissistic, not flashy or attention-seeking, actually rather low-key"
By "waspy poise" there do you mean White Anglo-Saxon Protestant? Or the earlier word 'waspish' (prone to irritable petulance)?
Now that you mention it, I remember running into an Elizabeth, one of the best-looking members of my '75 high school class, in downtown SF in 1980. When I greeted her by name she said, "I'm Trish now."
You didn't clarify the details about whether this was an intended mercy killing or what, but I guess I don't care enough about having an opinion on the subject to check it out.
I'll only share my personal experience that I met her and she seemed genuinely inspirational, in a brave male sort of way.
Her awakening that we don't have to "play by the rules" is something I think most readers, yourself included, would admire in a person and be inspired by.
Sadly, we live in the age of unleashed toxic-femininity of which Liz Gilbert is fine example.
As I recall the actual real-life story here is much more enlightening and entertaining. The sad sack Brazilian she ended up with after her year of eating and praying was quite a bit older and less attractive then her boring old husband. And while she wanted romantic adventure, he really, really wanted them to settle in the US so he could get a green card. Of course, she dumps him after a few years to go lesbian--presumably the Brazilian got to stay in the US.
And the real winner in all this was ... her ex-husband, who--again this is just what I read somewhere (probably when Steve did his piece)--who post-divorce met and married a younger woman and has some children with her. (Something "it's all about me!" Liz Gilbert could never quite get around to.)
Congrats to Gilbert's ex-husband! Whether through luck or good fortune your managed to get out from under the Gilbert trains wreck and have an actual life. Well done!
I hope she offered her ex a cut of EPL hush money.
One thing going on here is that in the old (European) order selection on the female side would be mostly for general health--disease resistance, beauty, fertility, etc. A bit for temperament--women could head to the convent, or just end up an old maid. And a bit for household management. But otherwise, if healthy, babies "just come". Most of the particular trait selection happened on the male side.
But with the Pill, and then feminism and now especially with smart phones and woke, there is much more selection going on on the female side. Traits that work against women *choosing* to be wives and mothers are being selected against.
I think this is overall to the good. Selecting against BPD, hysteria, all-about-me-ness. Evolving the population toward more normal, steadfast, "family" orientation and away from Liz Gilbertness. Normie uprising!
The problem, of course, is that this positive selection is being completely swamped by the immigration deluge.
"2010, one of the least woke years of recent times"
It seems like Wokeness would have to be more of a decade-to-decade thing, at the least, and only in extraordinary circumstances could it really shift noticeable year-to-year like is being suggested.
For argument's sake, let's say Wokeness was at a weak point in calendar-year 2010. (Surely the best supporting-evidence is not that the movie "The Expendables" came out that year.) Here we'd have to point to the Great Recession (2008-2013?). The year 2010 was probably a more-generally pessimistic year, on average, than it's probably remembered. That'd be from aggregate effects of the long recession, then in its third year. But the effects on the White-West's socio-cultural DNA from that recession will have been of the "phenotype" variety and NOT of the "genotype" variety.
Wokeness, as we know it, is no fad. Granted that many of its exuberant excesses are faddish. (Remember the "Stop Asian Hate" campaign? It's good to know they solved that thing so totally that there's been no need to mention it again in several years.) The larger structure is not, or has not been faddish.
Wokeness is something better defined as the defacto US civic-ideology or ruling-ideology. While its (shifting) tenets have never been particularly popular, it has been enforced by US political-commissars and by those who control the means of cultural production; by money-people, by the Israel Lobby and sundry other influencers and agenda-setters, propagandists, and agitators. A high-low coalition enforcing Wokeness.
These things don't get switched on and off, year to year, so lightly. (The entire theory of the Great Awokening as emerging in the early-mid 2010s from a zero-state has always been on shaky ground. It is to show that Wokeness-associated 2010s developments followed logically from trends ongoing in the 2000s and 1990s. Irrespective of that one guy's New York Times word-use graphs.)
The contention that 2010 would be a good candidate for "least-Woke year in the two-decade span 2003-2023" would have to be the 2010 midterm elections: the "Tea Party" wave. In retrospect the central figures associated with that political-history blip were not anti-Wokeness crusaders.
In early 2011, within a few weeks of the new Congress being sworn in, out came a buffoonish reality-tv demagogue. The man entered politics quasi-formally in April 2011 with a claim to have secret proof in hand that Barack H. Obama Jr. was born in Kenya and had been using a fake social security number, and that someone had faked the Hawaii birth-certificate.
The birth-certificate controversy, which was still flourishing ca.2010 (dying out, however, soon after 2011), could also be interpreted as a low-point for Wokeness. But context is always needed: The birth-certificate controversy meant people didn't feel Obama was a real American and projected that psychic energy onto the supposed invalid birth certificate. But these energies pale in comparison to the Wokeness tidal-wave that had then-recently promoted a no-name nobody from a position ranking somewhere near "nothing" all the way up to the U.S. presidency within a couple of years just because he was Black. The Post-Racial Messiah's victory in 2008 was clearly evidence of Wokeness in action. The same people swept up in the Post-Racial Messianic spirit in 2008 turning against Wokeness by 2010? It doesn't quite seem to fit.
David Rozado's research on the media's use of terms like "racism" bottoming out typically in 2011.
"These things don't get switched on and off, year to year, so lightly."
True, but I suspect that Obama was personally tamping down his supporters' wokeness in 2009-2011 so he could run for re-election on more broadly popular grounds like "Obama killed Osama."
Wokeness started to leak out in 2012 with stuff like Trayvon Martin and the "Life of Julia" ad, which struck me at the time as weirdly feminist, since Obama obviously didn't have much respect for feminist theory (e.g., he made the proto-cancelled Larry Summers into his top economic adviser).
You weren't supposed to notice that the Obama White House was a fairly macho boy's club: people on the left couldn't criticize Obama because he was black; and chuds on the right stupidly assumed that Obama's skinny East African frame meant he was gay, while Michelle's height and big shoulders, which she shares with her power forward brother Craig Robinson, meant she was really a man.
In reality, Barack is above average masculine (he watched SportsCenter every night and played golf 333 times while in the White House), and Michelle is above average feminine (especially because people expect her to be athletic, which she is not). And their fairly traditional marriage (compared to the Clintons') affected Barack's view of feminist issues (i.e., he didn't take them seriously from an intellectual perspective).
Once Obama was re-elected, he put less effort into keeping his staff from indulging themselves and they ran wild.
If you want a visual of how pale and male Obama's White House staff were, look up the famous photo of them from after the 2016 election. All the 'diversity' is in a single row at the front (of course)
Wasn’t “Obama killed Osama” actually quite popular? I mean, I wasn’t a big fan of Obama, and as an old school Reaganite free market guy who grew up reading Ayn Rand and Milton Friedman, I pretty much hated most of his policies. But killing Osama struck me as a worthwhile thing to do, something that President W should have focused on a bit more. Rather than, you know, spending trillions on turning the military into Armed Peace Corps to remake the Muslim world.
Agreed and the burial at sea was brilliant. No site to visit for his admirers.
> Agreed and the burial at sea was brilliant. No site to visit for his admirers. <
I'd have preferred "fed to pigs", and then some packer could have marketed "Osama fed bacon".
In general, the West needed/needs to stop coddling Muslim sensitivities and take a more--polite but firm--f.u. attitude, though that of course pales to the simple basic hygiene of keeping them out of Western nations.
That would be unnecessarily provocatory and religiously offensive. It’s like the stories of greasing bullets with pig or beef fat. Obama’s killing of Bin Laden was awesome and seamlessly executed. Almost a miracle.
> Once Obama was re-elected, he put less effort into keeping his staff from indulging themselves and they ran wild.
A trendsetting pattern that has been followed by every Democratic president since.
At least with Obama, legacy media's Laptop Class reporters would connect policies with their executive branch champions. From 2020 on, Who's-Responsible-For-What became too tiresome of a topic to discuss.
Steve, I've been happily reading your stuff for 25 years. In that time, you've written a lot of shocking and/or thought-provoking things. But today may be the ultimate: "...Michelle is above average feminine..." What?!? Never thought I'd be the one pointing-and-sputtering, but here I am.
Maybe not “above average feminine” but still definitely not a man.
That clanged on my ears too.
Maybe it makes more sense if you read it as "above average for a black woman from an athletic family average".
In other words, given the the situation she was born into, her aspirations and interests are relatively feminine. But for anyone used to a more global vista (basically everyone except blacks and Steve), she doesn't jump out as the most feminine woman in town.
Not her appearance, but her interests and actions. Failed lawyer to SAHM. Food, gardening, children, definitely not politics or sports.
Judging from the Obama residences, I'd say Michelle is very much into shopping and decorating like a typical stay-at-home, high status female.
Wokeness is a luxury good. It's popular when we feel no genuine threats to our money and national security.
> While its (shifting) tenets have never been particularly popular, it has been enforced by US political-commissars and by those who control the means of cultural production; by money-people, by the Israel Lobby and sundry other influencers and agenda-setters, propagandists, and agitators. <
Hail, overall an excellent comment, but I do not get this jamming :"Israel Lobby" in here.
If that is supposed to mean "American Jews" pushing minoritarianism--evil whitey, virtuous "oppressed" minorities, anti-nationalism--and "must have immigration!"ism, then sure. American Jews have been the ideological authors and drivers of much of this toxic nonsense.
But that is separate ideologically from the "Israel lobby". Israel is in fact anti-"woke". The American Jewish establishment's ideology is an openly hypocritical "ethno-nationalism for me, but not for thee!" But most all of the non-Jewish woke adherents take minoritarian ideology seriously--ergo do not have a special Israel carve out--and hence are against Israel's explicit ethno-national character and the 2nd class status, oppression, occupation of the local Arabs. Israel is "white" people oppressing "brown" people--"settler colonialism". Bad!
~
Not that anyone cares, but my personal take is that while the founding of Israel and continual wars/occupation are ugly, having a Jewish state is a good thing. People belong--do best, thrive--in their own nations. I wish that American Jews who are incapable of being loyal to their fellow Americans and their interests would have the decency to simply move to Israel.
ELIZABETH GILBERT
- born July 1969, Waterbury, Connecticut; raised in central Connecticut in a relatively rural area.
- ca. late 1980s, early 1990s: at New York University; marries in 1994 and active as a journalist in later 1990s;
- 2003?: leaves husband to find herself;
- 2006: Publishes book "Eat, Pray, Love" based on her 2003-04 life-events;
- 2007: marries a Jose Nunes, whom she met while traveling;
- 2010: Movie version of "Eat, Pray, Love" released;
- July 2014: Elizabeth Gilbert turns 45. No children, a failing second marriage to someone with whom she has no real organic ethnocultural connection (ill-advised).
- 2016: divorces Jose Nunes; apparently becomes lesbian about this time; becomes involved in illegal drugs; 2018: Lesbian girlfriend dies; 2019: Enters relationship with a British man said to have been a friend of the lesbian girlfriend;
- By early 2020: no longer in any relationship. Little was hear from her during the Covid-Panic lockdowns and ever since.
- July 2024: Elizabeth Gilbert turned 55.
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---> SUMMARY: Lots of money. No family. By some time in the 2010s slips into "definitely no longer young" status. No longer really able to frolic about in a live-action romantic-comedy version of reality, as she could have ca. 2003 still in her mid-thirties.
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The woman's decisions of the 2000s "did not age well." (Nor did she herself, from the looks of things.) That is the point of Steve's post here. That it's all well and good to leave a good husband and run off, for a while, at age 34 (I mean, "some may like to think"; or a post-1970 feminist consensus would tend to point towards). But --- time stops for no one. The age-old wisdom: Don't be stupid.
Is Elizabeth Gilbert really happy to have the life she's had in her 40s and 50s? Is anyone better off for it? Her culture?
I did hear something about her about three years ago. She was about to publish some sort of historical novel set in Siberia of all places, but then it (and almost she) got cancelled because how dare she publish a book set in Russia in the past when Russia is invading Ukraine in the present. It was such a stupid Cancel Culture example that it made me feel sorry even for Elizabeth Gilbert.
But it’s also hilarious.
Well she's still writing about it
https://www.theguardian.com/books/2025/aug/30/eat-pray-love-author-elizabeth-gilbert-leaving-marriage-dying-friend
On a train in India I met an EPL type lady travelling solo. Our tour guide spent a fruitless few hours chatting her up, as he did the more bonkable ladies on the tour.
A like just for “bonkable.”
"Are people who make a fortune giving advice mostly crazy?"
Does seem to be the case at times.
O/T
> Goodbye stranger. It's been nice. Hope you find your paradise
RIP Rick Davies (81), the only member of Supertramp during its entire existence. While he didn't write most of their songs, he did write the lyric quoted above
I heard a good song from the late 1970s at the drug store tonight. Was it Supertramp or Genesis?
The older guys at Rice U. when I got there in 1976 idolized Supertramp for their great 1974 progressive album Crime of the Century. Then, like Genesis, they got more catchy in the late 1970s.
Political reporter Dave Wiegel wrote a book a few years ago making the case for 1970s progressive rock bands who usually play the bad guys in narratives in which punks like the Ramones and Sex Pistols are the heroes.
It made sense to me.
Their biggest mainstream success came with Breakfast in America which was released in March 1979 and had four monster hits, but in your schoolmates' minds they probably didn't measure up to Bloody Well Right (Dec 74), although Give a Little Bit (Oct 77) is probably their most enduring hit
Give a Little Bit is great.
I think "Hide in Your Shell" is by far their best song; listening to the lyrics, I would say it is quintessentially British from that timefarme.
In 1983, I remember being in my dorm room on a warm September day and the dude in the next room over did what every college student did in the early 80s: he positioned his speakers out the window so he could assault everyone with his music taste. He turned the volume up to 11, then played "Hide in your shell" for an hour straight. Just that one song.
In an early Simpsons episode Homer is telling the kids about the 1980s. Those were heady times, the candidacy of John Anderson, the rise of Supertramp
This line appeared at the start of a flashback sequence in the 1991 episode I Married Marge (312). Showing that it's indeed a small world, this episode was written by Steve's friend Jeff Martin. Yes, really
That's one of my favorite Simpsons episodes.
Thank you for reminding me how annoyed I was at finding ten years after "Eat" was published that her "journey" was funded by her publisher. It wasn't some "magical" reflective moment guided by a personal quest. All involved did a great job keeping that tidbit under wraps.
Wasn't it part of a publishing wave of authors "living in the moment" and writing about it? They would decide to live a certain way for a year... and jot it all down. I did find entertaining a book from that time, "A Year Without Made in China". The author and her family decided to forego buying anything from China... and learned how brutally hard it was. I think her kids only got Legos as birthday and Christmas presents that year.
Anyway, thanks for the reminder of how annoying Gilbert was. And still is, it seems.
A 50-odd new junior colleague, obviously very attractive in her youth, turned out to have spent the last 15 years since her divorce in Thailand, on her share of the house proceeds.
But it's not such fun doing a junior office job at 50, and living in a rough council estate where your neighbours watch the unloading of your worldly goods with predatory interest.
I have not read her memoir nor seen the movie.
But judging by this essay, she writes well, has a fascinatingly weird life, it seems that she may have been a bad match for motherhood so it is not an outcome to be lamented that she does not have children, and she may get read a lot not by women wishing they were her but by women with normie lives thinking “there but for the grace of God go I”, not in a mean spirited way but sort of: the road less traveled looks pretty rock strewn, despite occasional charming Brazilians?
https://www.theguardian.com/books/2025/aug/30/eat-pray-love-author-elizabeth-gilbert-leaving-marriage-dying-friend
That seems to be an important genre in women’s writing. The Daily Mail has a columnist, Liz Jones, who apparently has such a comically catastrophic life you wonder how she even manages to write it down. (Or is it just people called Elizabeth?)
Yeah the “I am a polyamorous cannibal and yet somehow Brady Brunch reruns fill me with confused longing” genre of Modern Love columns. These are gare on teed to make the entire reading audience feel cheered up about their own life choices.
An important aspect of the genre is that the subject must have a more materially desirable life than the average reader but be just as much if not more of an emotional screwup. This seems to satisfy two related vicarious desires.
The Bridget Jones novels are a fictional version of that.
Ah yes, that genre :)
"I was on a certain path back then. Husband, nice house, good job, about to start a family. Except there was a problem with my hair, which was a frizzy mess."
Maybe not that great of a writer.
This is exactly the same bit Dave Barry does about his hair. I am pretty sure he also sells well.
At least Barry is self-deprecating and not self-appreciating.
But he’s a humour writer.
That's not bad
Not envying her a bit.
O/T
R.I.P. Davey Johnson (82) who won two World Series playing for the Orioles and another managing the Mets. As he went to Texas A&M and received a degree in mathematics, he may be the smartest manager to win a World Series, but he was too smart for Earl Weaver who traded him to the Braves where he batted two spots behind Hank Aaron when he hit 715; Downing walked both Dusty Baker and Johnson before being removed.
Steve may not think too highly of Johnson as a manager as he came in the middle of a string of four managers (Bill Russell, Johnson, Jim Tracy, Grady Little) who did not advance the Dodgers in the playoffs during their combined 12 seasons. It took Joe Torre to break that 19-year stretch of futility in 2008, a year where fans were rooting for the potential Yankees/Dodgers matchup that finally came last year
Davey Johnson always seemed like a smart guy: he went off to Japan to manage and was really good at the job despite the language barrier. He came back and managed the New York Mets to the famous 1986 World Championship, although, admittedly, they had tons of talent like Darryl Strawberry, Keith Hernandez, and Gary Carter.
He went from 5 homers in 1972 to 43 in 1973, which seems a little dubious.
You are conflating Davey Johnson with Bobby Valentine in that the latter went to manage in Japan before managing the New York Mets to the NL pennant; he later won the Japan Series as a manager. However, Davey did play two years (75-76) in Japan with the Giants before returning to play MLB with the Phillies.
I neglected to mention earlier that I am convinced that Davey put a curse on the Reds when he was fired after the 95 season in which he led them to the NLCS; the Reds have literally not advanced in the playoffs since then with the near-30-year futility unmatched in any of the major-league professional sports
> He went from 5 homers in 1972 to 43 in 1973
It is not for nothing that Atlanta Stadium was known as The Launching Pad; in his first season playing there he hit 26 home runs!
I feel sorry for her cats when they get old. She's literally written off any additional close human relationships.
Almost 50 years ago, I was told pancreatic cancer is seldom properly diagnosed until you've got about 6 months left. That doesn't seem to have changed.
A perfect review to read after a weekend in LA where I have heard countless tales of cashed up, fit 50 and 60 something divorcées / widows going on semi-public sexual rampages / swapping campaigns with any men, and / or women they can get their hands (or whatever) around.
"Sexually transmitted infections (STIs) for adults 65 or older have more than doubled in the U.S. in the last decade, a product of multiple factors including heightened sexual activity in senior-living facilities, low condom use and lack of knowledge about STIs. "
https://www.ama-assn.org/delivering-care/population-care/stis-rise-among-older-adults-here-s-what-doctors-can-do
I mean, just the photo of her ought to set of massive alarm bells that this is a hugely toxic person, but unfortunately she probably resonates with a non-negligible share of the female population these days. Much has been made of how boys/men are neglected by modern institutions and how that fuels their disaffection, but much less has been made of how wildly divergent white lefty women are from the rest of the country politically and culturally, and this archetype exists in disproportionate numbers in academia and media, as well as some other employment fields. Their presence has really distorted our culture and politics over the last 25 years, perhaps more than anyone else.
What’s more important than a middle-aged lesbian’s twat tingles?
"Around the time she posted the video of Elias singing, things had gotten so bad that Gilbert decided the only way to save herself was murder."
Jeez, lady, maybe try Autotune first?
If I got that diagnosis I think I too would indulge my addictions for as long as I could. I might even give heroin a try.
I would honestly just be fine with beer and cigarettes.
My addiction is food. It would be carbs for me until the cachecxia sets in
If you have chemo or radiation, you won't want to eat or even smell food.
I won't have either but also that's what the cachexia is
My girlfriend and I were in the yoga retreat group with Liz back in the summer of 2002. It was her first trip to Bali, she was commissioned by a magazine to write an article about her experience and I think the magazine paid for her trip. With our group leader she met the Balinese shaman for the first time.
She had recently gotten divorced from her husband and was in a relationship with another man with whom she was pursuing her interest in Siddha Yoga, which led her to India later as described in EPL. SY was a problematic organization to say the least, the descriptor "cult" is accurate. The guru Swami Muktananda was boinking disciples and when he died in 1982 was succeeded by a brother-sister pair. The sister, known as Gurumayi, ousted her brother as co-guru in a coup circa 1985 and has been credibly accused of all kinds of abusive, unethical behavior.
She was nice enough and had that waspy poise with a bit of aloofness. But she was not overtly narcissistic, not flashy or attention-seeking, actually rather low-key. We knew that she was a noted author of the book The Last American Man but never would have guessed she would become so massively successful and famous.
Are you sure it was 2002?
100% positive.
Thanks: If EG was in Bali in mid-2002, it'd be around her 33rd birthday (born July 1969). The Eat-Pray-Love book promotional-material said age 34. But the Eating-Praying-Loving process may have begun at age 32 already.
(I wonder if an editor deliberately left that obscure fact wrong for marketing purposes, 34 > 32 somehow more appealing.)
About the time of the movie release in mid-2010, she was celebrating her 41st birthday and nominally married to the Brazilian.
She took a second trip to Bali which was written about in the book. That's when she met her second husband Jose Nunes, called Felipe in the book.
"[Elizabeth Gilbert in the early 2000s] had that waspy poise with a bit of aloofness. But she was not overtly narcissistic, not flashy or attention-seeking, actually rather low-key"
By "waspy poise" there do you mean White Anglo-Saxon Protestant? Or the earlier word 'waspish' (prone to irritable petulance)?
I mean White Anglo-Saxon Protestant. She was not petulant at all.
Now that you mention it, I remember running into an Elizabeth, one of the best-looking members of my '75 high school class, in downtown SF in 1980. When I greeted her by name she said, "I'm Trish now."
You didn't clarify the details about whether this was an intended mercy killing or what, but I guess I don't care enough about having an opinion on the subject to check it out.
I'll only share my personal experience that I met her and she seemed genuinely inspirational, in a brave male sort of way.
Her awakening that we don't have to "play by the rules" is something I think most readers, yourself included, would admire in a person and be inspired by.