As If Life Weren’t Hard Enough

Now the recession is hurting the romantic lives of Washington D.C.’s resident douchebags:

“It’s been incredibly stressful for me,” said Neil Welsh, 27, the guy in the suit, who until last year was marketing director for a booming real estate company. “I was so used to using my financial situation to leverage my dating.”

I demand to know why our President did not see fit to address this harsh reality in his speech last night.  It’s not enough that families are being forced out of their homes, now there are more men wandering around having to rely on their personalities to win the ladies:

Alexandria native Niko Papademitriou, 27, became an investment banker with a Cleveland firm soon after he graduated from college. The money was steady enough for him to fly regularly to Manhattan to see his girlfriend and take her to upscale restaurants such as Bond Street and Cafe Gray.

“A large aspect of my life — three out of the first five conversations that we had — I told her, ‘You’re not going to see much of me in the next 15 years if we start dating, because I’m going to be making a lot of money.’ ” He thinks that worked in his favor, “not so much for the money, but for the drive. It’s one of those things in men that women find attractive.”

It may be tough now, Niko, but I’m rooting for you crazy kids!  Because if there’s anything the hot women of America should be able to count on through thick and thin, it’s that their men will be able to spend 15 years ignoring them in order to earn a ton of money.  In fact, I blame my single status on the fact that too many of the men I meet – be they interns, grad students, physicists or computer geeks – are too willing to spend time with me when they should be out getting rich enough to buy me sparkly things and steak dinners!

In other words, this isn’t just hurting men – it’s hurting the women who would otherwise date them:

For Natalie Huddleston, 27, a marketer at a law firm, dating itself is on hold. Standing with her girlfriends on an outdoor deck of the Eighteenth Street Lounge, nursing a Manhattan, the Arlington resident said men ask her out much less since the market crash.

“They’re spending more time at networking events, happy hours, with their guy friends — trying to get leads on jobs, rather than spending it on women,” she said. “I feel bad for the guys who don’t have jobs.”

Bad enough to date them? She smiled and shook her head. “I guess I’m kind of traditional. So if a guy can’t really take you out or doesn’t have the money or the state of mind to take girls out, then it’s not going to go anywhere.”

We can’t go on like this. That’s why I’m urging you to call your senators and representatives, and demand that they include a bailout for formerly wealthy single men in their next stimulus package.

 

The Wrong Kind of Equality

Apparently, high-heeled booties for men are made a runway appearance last week:

The most buzzed about look on the runway? Men in heels. The male models wore the very same black high-heel ankle booties as the women. Hourani created the boots with himself in mind– he’d been looking for a modern pair of man-friendly heels for years that weren’t cowboy boots. What do you think of the idea of unisex fashion?

I’m torn.  On the one hand: gross.  But on the other hand, because I only date men taller than me, this could dramatically increase my dating pool if it catches on.

 

Save LadyBlog!

So, Culture11 has folded because their investors pulled out.  But, depending on how the next week goes, LadyBlog may live on in another home.  Which means that you should go visit right now.

Read my musings on becoming a football fan here.

Read Jillian’s perspective on the Feminism 2.0 conference here.

Read about the opportunities available to women who want to write professionally here (Hint: They may end up in fashion, not politics).

Read about the psychology of the sale sign here.

Read what The Bachelor has to teach us about love here.

And there will be even more exciting content tomorrow!

 

Idiot of the Day: Dennis Prager

Dear Dennis,

Please stop giving conservative men a bad name with your bullshit marital advice.  The very best part of his column (emphasis mine):

Compared to most womens sexual nature, mens sexual nature is far closer to that of animals. So what? That is the way he is made. Blame God and nature. Telling your husband to control it is a fine idea. But he already does. Every man who is sexually faithful to his wife already engages in daily heroic self-control. He has married knowing he will have to deny his sexual natures desire for variety for the rest of his life. To ask that he also regularly deny himself sex with the one woman in the world with whom he is permitted sex is asking far too much. Deny him enough times and he may try to fill this need with another woman.

That’s right, ladies.  Men are such barely-tamed beasts that every time they don’t bone another woman, they are practicing “heroic” self-control.

I’m pretty sure that this entire column constitutes an argument against marriage (or at least marriage to Dennis Prager).  That a healthy marriage requires both men and women to compromise sometimes on frequency of sex is not news.  But the key here is that both need to compromise, and that men are just as capable of controlling their baser desires as women are.  Can we please stop setting the bar for male behavior so low with inane comments like “that’s just how men are made”?

But because it’s Christmas Eve and I have presents to wrap, I will refer you over to Jezebel to read the full take-down.

 

Isn’t that what we’ve been saying?

Much hilarity from the Washington Post:

“He came up woefully short,” said Hilary O. Shelton, director of the NAACP Washington bureau, referring to Bush’s record with African Americans and other minorities. “Even though he appointed a number of people from certain minority groups, they didn’t seem to focus on the real challenges faced by those groups. If everyone looks different but has the same ideology, that’s not really diversity.”

That’s what conservatives have been saying for years about college faculties! Does this mean that the liberals have finally come around to seeing that intellectual diversity is more important that diversity of skin color?  Does this mean that when Barack Obama fills his White House with liberals like Rahm Emanuel, Hilary Shelton will be speaking up for conservatives who are excluded?

I don’t know about you, but I’m not getting my hopes up.

 

A Bright Spot in Dark Times

Looks like the American people aren’t totally insane: CNN Money reports that Saks is closing its unprofitable Club Libby Lu chain.  If you’ve frequented a mall recently, you may have seen one of these stores, and if you’re me, been aghast at the absurdity.  Basically, the stores exist to offer make-over parties to the middle-school-and-younger set, which include your typical glittery face crap and Britney-esque back-up dancer costumes, and culminate in a booty-shaking dance routine.

In other words, it reinforces exactly the messages I wouldn’t want my own daughters exposed to.  So I’m glad to see that not enough people were buying to keep the place open.

 

Here’s Hoping

I am, obviously, disappointed in the results of the election.  I don’t foresee the collapse of the country as we know it, but I worry that we’re headed in an ever-leftward direction.  I do have some assorted hopes for the next four years.

1. I hope that Republicans will be classier in defeat than Democrats have been.  Strong opposition to policies that are bad for this country? Yes.  Bumper stickers that say “Obama: Not My President”?  Not so much.
2. I hope that Republicans take this time to figure out exactly what it is we stand for.  Not just tax cuts willy-nilly, but serious cuts in the size and scope of government.  Lower taxes should be the extra benefit of less government, not the be-all and end-all of Republican economic policy.  This means that we can’t be afraid to let taxes increase across the board when government gets bigger, because when people don’t have to pay for a good, their demand is pretty much limitless.
3. I hope that Obama lives up to Christopher Buckley’s expectations, because stale liberal ideas (let’s tax the rich some more!) won’t get us anywhere in any of the current crises we face.
4. I hope that the media bias of the election will fade, and we will get accurate reporting on Obama’s tenure in the White House.
5. I hope that Obama doesn’t fill his administration with people like Rahm Emanuel.
6. I hope that the Republicans manage a new Contract with America in 2010. That would be the kind of change I can believe in.

 

In Case You’d Forgotten

Here’s what the Democratic party stands for:

That’s right, people keeping their own wealth is just a “simplistic notion.

In other news, I actually enjoyed reading David Brooks’ column, A Date With Scarcity, today.  At first, I thought the title read “A Date Scarcity,” which left me hoping that those damn elitist pundits were finally tackling issues that matter to me.  But even though it didn’t turn out the way I hoped, he made some good points:

Raised in prosperity, favored by genetics, these young meritocrats will have to govern in a period when the demands on the nation’s wealth outstrip the supply. They will grapple with the growing burdens of an aging society, rising health care costs and high energy prices. They will have to make up for the trillion-plus dollars the government will spend to avoid a deep recession. They will have to struggle to keep their promises to cut taxes, create an energy revolution, pass an expensive health care plan and all the rest.

As Robert J. Samuelson writes in his forthcoming book, “The Great Inflation and Its Aftermath,” “Already, Americans face far more claims on their incomes than can be easily met.”

I get the feeling the Obama presidency is not going to be the one to actually tackle these tough choices, much to the detriment of my generation’s future.

 

Friday Funny

A hilarious send-up of Chris Buckley’s Obama Endorsement from IowaHawk.  A taste:

But it’s not just American conservatives who are appalled. Just last week conservative New York Times columnist David Brooks and I were enjoying an apres-badminton apertif at the family weekend house in Montauk with my good friend Viscount Klaus-Maria Von Wallensheim, the conservative EU Agricultural Pricing Minister with whom I shared an Alpine chalet and manservant during our years as classmates at a Swiss boarding school. “Kloonkie” (my old school appellation for the Viscount) reported the growing dismay of the Continental Right over Palin’s embarrassing enthusiasm for childbirth and Israel.

“Coddsie, old chap, ” he warned, “You know I’ve always been been America’s biggest defender in Monaco. But if you elect this ill-bred charwoman, I will be be forced to move anchor to St. Tropez out of pure shame.”

 

Breaking News…

Turns out the fellows really do prefer women in red:

Men rated a woman shown in photographs as more sexually attractive if she was wearing red clothing or if she was shown in an image framed by a red border rather than some other color, U.S. researchers said on Tuesday.

Like I really need an excuse to add more red to my wardrobe.