I Hope You All Feel Terrible Now
How the internet—and Stephen Colbert—hounded Kate Middleton into revealing her diagnosis
By Helen Lewis
Updated at 4:04 p.m ET on March 22, 2024

For many years, the most-complained-about cover of the British satirical magazine Private Eye was the one it published in the week after the death of Diana, Princess of Wales, in 1997. At the time, many people in Britain were loudly revolted by the tabloid newspapers that had hounded Diana after her divorce from Charles, and by the paparazzi whose quest for profitable pictures of the princess ended in an underpass in Paris.

Under the headline “Media to Blame,” the Eye cover carried a photograph of a crowd outside Buckingham Palace, with three speech bubbles. The first was: “The papers are a disgrace.” The next two said: “Yeah, I couldn’t get one anywhere” and “Borrow mine, it’s got a picture of the car.” People were furious. Sacks of angry, defensive mail arrived for days afterward, and several outlets withdrew the magazine from sale. (I am an Eye contributor, and these events have passed into office legend.) But with the benefit of hindsight, the implication was accurate: Intruding on the private lives of the royals is close to a British tradition. We Britons might have the occasional fit of remorse, but that doesn’t stop us. And now, because of the internet, everyone else can join in too.

That cover instantly sprang to mind when, earlier today, the current Princess of Wales announced that she has cancer. In a video recorded on Wednesday in Windsor, the former Kate Middleton outlined her diagnosis in order to put an end to weeks of speculation, largely incubated online but amplified and echoed by mainstream media outlets, about the state of her health and marriage.

Kate has effectively been bullied into this statement, because the alternative—a wildfire of gossip and conspiracy theories—was worse. So please, let’s not immediately switch into maudlin recriminations about how this happened. It happened because people felt they had the right to know Kate’s private medical information. The culprits may include three staff members at the London hospital that treated her, who have been accused of accessing her medical records, perhaps driven by the same curiosity that has lit up my WhatsApp inbox for weeks. Everyone hates the tabloid papers, until they become them.

In her statement, Kate said that after her abdominal surgery earlier in the year, which the press was told at the time was “planned”—a word designed to minimize its seriousness—later tests revealed an unspecified cancer. She is now undergoing “preventative chemotherapy,” but has not revealed the progression of the disease, or her exact prognosis. “I am well,” she said, promising that she is getting stronger every day. “I hope you will understand that as a family, we now need some time, space and privacy while I complete my treatment.”

This news will surely make many people feel bad. The massive online guessing game about the reasons for Kate’s invisibility seems far less fun now. Stephen Colbert’s “spilling the tea” monologue, which declared open season on the princess’s marriage, should probably be quietly interred somewhere. The sad simplicity of today’s statement, filmed on a bench with Kate in casual jeans and a striped sweater, certainly gave me pause. She mentioned the difficulty of having to “process” the news, as well as explaining her condition to her three young children in terms they could understand. The reference to the importance of “having William by my side” was pointed, given how much of the speculation has gleefully dwelt on the possibility that she was leaving him or vice versa.

However, the statement also reveals that the online commentators who suggested that the royal household was keeping something from the public weren’t entirely wrong. Kate’s condition was described as noncancerous when her break from public life was announced in late January. The updated diagnosis appears to have been delivered in February, around the time her husband, Prince William, abruptly pulled out of speaking at a memorial service for the former king of Greece. Today’s statement represents a failure of Kensington Palace to control the narrative: first, by publishing a photograph of Kate and her children that was so obviously edited that photo agencies retracted it, and second, by giving its implicit permission for the publication of a grainy video of the couple shopping in Windsor over the weekend. Neither of those decisions quenched the inferno raging online—in fact, they fed it.

Some will say that Kate has finally done what she should have done much earlier: directly address the rumors in an official video, rather than drip-feed images that raised more questions than they answered. King Charles III has taken a different approach to his own (also unspecified) cancer, allowing footage to be filmed of him working from home. But then again, Kate has cancer at 42, is having chemo, and has three young children. Do you really have it in you to grade her media strategy and find it wanting?

Ironically, Britain’s tabloid papers have shown remarkable restraint; as I wrote earlier this month, they declined to publish the first paparazzi pictures of Kate taken after her withdrawal from public life. They have weighted their decisions toward respect and dignity—more so than the Meghan stans, royal tea-spillers, and KateGate theorists, who have generated such an unstoppable wave of interest in this story that its final destination was a woman with cancer being forced to reveal her diagnosis. If you ever wanted proof that the “mainstream media” are less powerful than ever before, this video of Kate Middleton sitting on a bench is it.

Helen Lewis is a staff writer at The Atlantic.
https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2024/03/kate-middleton-cancer-announcement/677863/?utm_campaign=atlantic-daily-newsletter&utm_source=newsletter&utm_medium=email&utm_content=20240322&lctg=64fb1c614b8a1a62e9054cdb&utm_term=The%20Atlantic%20Daily

The Soul of America ,,,,sounds like a good book

Thanks

Great article by Umair Haque


Don’t Tear Yourself Down Just Because the World’s Falling Apart

"None of us should do that. The place that we must begin, as ever, is with not tearing ourselves down — because that radiates outwards, from us to others. First, we accept our own shortcomings and limitations. I am lazy sometimes, I am greedy sometimes, I spend too much money, and I care too much what people think of me — I’m a “flawed human being.” We make a big deal of this these days, too, don’t we?

But after we do that, we must accept the world’s flaws and shortcomings, too. “Hey, even though I’m greedy and lazy sometimes, I can do selfish and impulsive things — that doesn’t mean I deserve to be treated like this, without respect or dignity or belonging. That’s not my fault — that’s a shortcoming in society, culture, the world around me. And if it is — maybe I have to work to help fix it, if I can.”

Don’t Tear Yourself Down Just Because the World’s Falling Apart
The Subtle Art of Self-Worth in a Time of Collapse
umair haque
Eudaimonia and Co
umair haque

Published in
Eudaimonia and Co

·
9 min read
·
Feb 18

https://medium.com/eudaimonia-co/dont-tear-yourself-down-just-because-the-world-s-falling-apart-d4bb0b0db880

Having a Hard Christmas? Jesus Did, Too
Dec. 25, 2022
By Tish Harrison Warren

Opinion Writer

Among my most treasured memories is one Christmas Day when I was around 6 or 7 years old. Christmases in my childhood were fairly magical, with good food, lots of family, presents and fun. But that Christmas I was miserable. I lay in bed at my grandmother’s house, where we went for our Christmas feast, with a stomach bug, separated from the rest of the family so as not to spread my Yuletide germs. Alone and unable to eat, I listened sadly to the laughter and glee down the hall. Then my dad popped his head in the door. He brought me a ginger ale with a straw and sat at the end of the bed. He touched my forehead with the back of his hand to check my fever and joked with me gently and kindly.

My father was a complicated man who kept to himself at home and was often distant. We knew he loved us but he showed that more through mowing the lawn and filling up the gas tank rather than giving us hugs or telling us so. But that morning my father left the healthy people, the party and the food and came to spend time with me, just me. I don’t remember what gifts I got that year. I don’t remember what the decorations looked like or what food I missed out on, but I remember my father’s face, his voice, his hands, his smile.

This story comes back to me this time of year because the holidays are often a lonely time for many of us. And in some ways for all of us. No matter how many family members or friends we have, no matter how delicious the food on the table, in quiet moments, many of us still feel a lack, a pang in our hearts, the recurrent ache of longing. We long for peace that we cannot conjure on our own. We long for justice and truth to win out. We long for a joy that isn’t quite so elusive. We long for relationships that last. No matter one’s political affiliation, race, income or education level, we share a common human yearning for a wholeness and flourishing that we do not yet know on this convulsed and suffering planet.

It was my father’s presence that transformed that childhood Christmas, giving it meaning beyond just misery, making it burn bright in my memory. This little moment was a tiny, imperfect picture to me as a kid of what Christians celebrate this morning in nearly every language around the globe: God, like my father, entered our room. The radical claim that Christians make is that God has not remained aloof, transcendent, resplendent in majesty and glory, but became one of us, to be with us in the finitude, the bewilderment, the loneliness and longing of being human.

The analogy falls short. Christians believe that, unlike my father, Jesus was not simply a human messenger visiting us in our suffering. He was God-made flesh, “infinity dwindled to infancy,” as the 19th-century poet Gerard Manley Hopkins wrote. The Christmas story tells us that therefore Emmanuel — which means “God with us” in Hebrew — is in fact with us in the whole of our actual lives, in our celebration and merrymaking, in our mundane days, and in sickness, sorrows, doubts, failures and disappointments.

Christians believe that because God himself entered humanity, humanity is being transformed even as we speak. Because God took on a human body, all human bodies are holy and worthy of respect. Because God worked, sweating under our sun with difficulty and toil, all human labor can be hallowed. Because God had a human family and friends, our relationships too are eternal and sacred. If God became a human who spent most of his life in quotidian ways, then all of our lives, in all of their granularity, are transformed into the site of God’s surprising presence.

Yet what astounds me most about the Christmas story is not merely the notion that God became a baby or that God got calluses and cavities, had fingernails and friends and enjoyed good naps and good parties. Christians proclaim today that God actually took on or assumed our sickness, loneliness and misery. God knows the depths of human pain not in theory but because he has felt it himself. From his earliest moments, Jesus would have been considered a nobody, a loser, another overlooked child born into poverty, an ethnic minority in a vast, oppressive and seemingly all-powerful empire. We have tamed the Christmas story with overfamiliarity and sentimentality — little lambs and shepherds, tinsel and stockings — so we fail to notice the depth of pain, chaos and danger into which Jesus was born.

God identifies himself most with the hungry and the vulnerable, with those in chronic pain, with victims of violence, with the outcasts and the despised. In “The Message,” a poetic paraphrase of the scriptures, the pastor and theologian Eugene Peterson translates John 1 by saying, “The Word became flesh and blood and moved into the neighborhood.” When Jesus, the Word, “moved into the neighborhood,” it was not into a posh home in a cozy Christmas movie but instead into a place of hardship and sorrow.

The hope of Christmas is that God did not — and therefore will not — leave us alone. In the midst of our doubts and suffering comes a baby. This child, Christians claim, is God’s embodied response to all of our human aching. In his book “Unapologetic,” Francis Spufford writes that Christians “don’t have an argument that solves the problem of the cruel world, but we have a story.” This story is one of God moving into the neighborhood.

Christianity hasn’t answered all my questions. It has not made me perfectly happy. It has not satisfied my sense of longing. If anything, my (often feeble) attempts to live as a Christian have heightened it. But the Christian story tells me that my deepest longings are not just farce, that they point to something true and therefore should be listened to. This Christmas I long not just for love, but for eternal love. I long for a deeper purity and righteousness than I can muster by good behavior. I long for a justice more profound than Congress can ever deliver. I long for “peace on earth and good will toward men” that is more complete and all-encompassing than we’ve ever known. I long for meaning that is more lasting than I can create. I believe that this baby born in Bethlehem is the mystery our hearts keep chasing, the end of our all quests and the longing we cannot shake.

So, friends, I hope you know longing this Christmas, and even more so, I hope you know hope.

Merry Christmas!

https://www.nytimes.com/2022/12/25/opinion/hard-christmas-jesus.html

https://twitter.com/BullNBear52/status/1599806190686416904

So I took the summer off to catch up on life. Retiring, turning 70 and having a major health scare will make someone pause and think.

For Ihub I got tired of having to defend myself with people I really didn't know and posting to some people who were blithering idiots. For the latter why did I bother to begin with. And I came to realize it is OK to like republicans as Biden pointed out two weeks ago on a Thursday. You may disagree with them but that is no reason to dislike them entirely. I actually like Liz Cheney and Kinzinger. Liz has spunk! And Kinzinger deserves better.

And because of the big 3 above I got depressed and adding to that was the state of this country and exactly how polarized it has become. I keep coming back to a book by Jon Meacham,

The Soul of America: The Battle for Our Better Angels
by Jon Meacham
https://www.thriftbooks.com/w/the-soul-of-america-the-battle-for-our-better-angels_jon-meacham/18863104/item/28711511/?gclid=Cj0KCQjwjvaYBhDlARIsAO8PkE2iE2aw_7CfOIDEY3Q_AIXWK8puXBlD-nIzp2DtI8ZOAHk1bRhkLmEaAinoEALw_wcB#idiq=28711511&edition=20066410

The madness needs to stop. Donald Trump was always an idiot and for his followers I wish them luck following him to hell. (And yes I do think there is an afterlife but that is strictly my opinion based on my religion and if you don't like it too bad.)

On a more positive note after I recovered from my health scare I decided to start doing things I had long overlooked while I was working. The list is endless with everything I've gotten done. But my pride and joy my pickup truck is good to go for another 100K.

Are there any perfect brackets left in 2021?
After the first day of NCAA action, there are still 192 perfect brackets remaining among the top bracket sites. Here's how they break down:

ESPN
There are still 161 perfect ESPN brackets.

Yahoo
There are still 14 perfect Yahoo brackets.

CBS
There are still nine perfect CBS brackets

NCAA
There are still eight perfect NCAA Bracket Challenge brackets.
https://www.sportingnews.com/us/ncaa-basketball/news/perfect-brackets-2022-march-madness/ogbygqlcknpsmz1rzdadsjha

March Madness Tourney Pickems

The Cellar Dwellers Group

https://tournament.fantasysports.yahoo.com/t1/group/37863/invitation?key=d2f22c5ab1e5a3b7

Hot off the wire the latest standings,

Me 5 losses
The kid 4 losses
You 6 losses


Joe Cool is too cool!

Morning recap,

Me 4 losses
The kid 4 losses
You 5 losses

We almost rolled the table. NFL needs to fix the OT rule.




Ok the latest standings,

Me 3 losses
The kid 3 losses
You 4 losses

I realize the 49ers was a WAG but what the hell, Rodgers is a jerk.





Me 2 losses
The kid 1 loss
You 2 losses

That is plural for both of us.

Bills fans set up a GoFundMe page to raise money for 'Bills Elvis' stolen tailgate
Adria R. Walker
Rochester Democrat and Chronicle

The Buffalo Bills fanbase is perhaps best known for two things: 1. Its enthusiastic breaking of tables and other unique tailgating traditions and 2. Its charitable donations.
https://www.usatoday.com/story/sports/nfl/bills/2022/01/21/buffalo-bills-mafia-fans-gofundme-bills-elvis-replace-stolen-tailgate/6609488001/?gnt-cfr=1

They'll pick a charity from an opposing team and donate to it.

Chiefs fans did the same thing donating to a charity that Josh Allen had started.

Kansas City Chiefs fans donate over $300,000 to Buffalo children’s hospital following playoff win over Bills
PUBLISHED THU, JAN 27 20221:03 PM ESTUPDATED THU, JAN 27 20221:46 PM EST
https://www.cnbc.com/2022/01/27/kansas-city-chiefs-fans-donate-to-buffalo-childrens-hospital-after-win-over-bills.html
KEY POINTS

Oishei Children’s Hospital in Buffalo began receiving donations in increments of $13 from Chiefs fans to mark the 13 seconds it took for the Chiefs offense to tie Sunday’s game against the Bills.
Donations topped $300,000 by Thursday, according to a Facebook post from the hospital.

The Chiefs will face the Cincinnati Bengals on Sunday for the AFC title game and the chance to play in the Super Bowl.

After watching their team eliminate the Buffalo Bills from the playoffs in an instant classic, Kansas City Chiefs fans decided to turn their win into a boon for their vanquished rival’s hometown.

Oishei Children’s Hospital in Buffalo began receiving donations in increments of $13 from Chiefs fans on Tuesday. Donations topped $300,000 by Thursday, according to a Facebook post from the hospital.

The $13 donations represent the 13 seconds it took for the Chiefs offense to tie Sunday’s stunning playoff game at the end of the fourth quarter. Kansas City won 42-36 in overtime.

ESPN first reported news of the charitable donations on Wednesday.

Bills fans have a tradition of donating to charities associated with other NFL teams. Feeling inspired by them, a Facebook group called Chiefs Kingdom Memes sparked a push to give back by directing money to the Buffalo-based children’s hospital.

“I was hoping maybe 100 others would join,” Brett Fitzgerald, who runs the Facebook page, told CNBC. “This is unprecedented and every single person who donated any amount should be very proud of themselves.”

The hospital became associated with Bills quarterback Josh Allen after fans donated $1.1 million in honor of Allen’s grandmother, who died last year, ESPN wrote. Fans donated in increments of $17, Allen’s jersey number.

An instance of Bills fans’ generosity to a rival team came after Buffalo beat the Baltimore Ravens to eliminate them from the playoffs last year. Bills fans donated more than $500,000 to Ravens quarterback Lamar Jackson’s foundation, according to a Fox News report.

The Bills’ season ended on Sunday following the loss to the Chiefs. They finished the season 11-6.

The Chiefs will face the Cincinnati Bengals on Sunday for the AFC title game and the chance to play in the Super Bowl for the third straight year.

The Chiefs and the Bills did not immediately respond to CNBC’s requests for comment. Oishei Children’s Hospital’s donation office did not immediately reply to a message requesting comment.

Our picks,

I'm going with

The Bengals and the 49ers.

The kid is going with

The Bengals and the Rams.

Last day for post ability here!

FINAL PICKS

Rams
Chiefs

CHIEFS

Morning recap,

Me 4 losses
The kid 4 losses
You 5 losses

We almost rolled the table. NFL needs to fix the OT rule.




Ok the latest standings,

Me 3 losses
The kid 3 losses
You 4 losses

I realize the 49ers was a WAG but what the hell, Rodgers is a jerk.





Me 2 losses
The kid 1 loss
You 2 losses

That is plural for both of us.

TG my CHIEFS hold serve !!!

Well it over yet. Bucs down by 7.

I’m taking a mulligan!!

Bengals
Niners
Rams
Bills

Home field advantage my ass !!

And, time to turn over the reins Tom Terrific ~~~ it was a great run, I think never to be undone !!

Dick Butkus fires hilarious shot at Aaron Rodgers after getting verified on Twitter
https://clutchpoints.com/packers-news-dick-butkus-fires-hilarious-shot-at-aaron-rodgers-after-getting-verified-on-twitter/

Titans play calling on the second to last series of downs was horrendous.

2nd and short they pass incomplete.
3rd and short instead of handing off to Henry a QB keeper for no gain. Henry had the 1st down if he had had the ball.

4th and short Henry had to run 5 yards just to get to the handoff and gets tackled for a loss.

Fire the OC today.

Be it ever so humble…. No place like HOME!! ~~~~~ Not !!!!!

I actually think SF could be last team standing!

To go into GB in weather like that and eke out a W is huge ! Their defense is very underrated! And special teams one of the best in league!

Ok the latest standings,

Me 3 losses
The kid 3 losses
You 4 losses

I realize the 49ers was a WAG but what the hell, Rodgers is a jerk.





Me 2 losses
The kid 1 loss
You 2 losses

That is plural for both of us.

As I stated…. Could go either way…. And they did !

I’m toast !!

The kids picks,

Titans
Packers
Rams
Bills

My picks

Titans
49ers
Rams
Buffalo

Next guesses:

TITANS
PACKERS
BUCS
CHIEFS

and a lot of luck!

EZily could have gone: Bengals, Niners(weather), Rams and NYBills!!!!

GL!!

Wow, did I get RAMMED !!!

So happy for MS though ~~~ such a deserved win for a guy who got STUCK In Detroit!

Some tough matchups now ~~~ I don’t consider the Pack a lock !

GL !!

Ok the latest standings,

Me 2 losses
The kid 1 loss
You 2 losses

That is plural for both of us.

LOL. I just had it vinyl sided to match the house. 2 stories with 10 foot high ceilings.

THAT is not a barn,,,,,, that is a CASTLE !!!

That's the barn I need wired.

WOW ~~~ that looks like MICHIGAN !!

Enjoy !!!!

Ok the latest standings,

Me 2 losses
The kid 1 loss
You 1 loss

I was thinking the 49ers since I can't stand Jerry Jones. That said the definition of a mental lapse is Dak (what was I thinking) Prescott.

Please send bird seed. I had to refill the bird feeders late yesterday afternoon.

Took this just now.



It;s a winter wonderland.

I was going to pick the NINERS after watching them teach the RAMS a lesson last week. I believe they MAY be the real sleeper team in the entire playoffs ! Next game will be the real challenge ----- but, don't count them out.....yet !

Go CARDS !!!!

Got Snow !!!

No way I was picking Tom Brady.

Bucs
Boys
Cheeps

And, Arizona Cardinals !

The Kids picks for Sunday and Monday.

Tampa Bay
Dallas
KC

Monday the Rams.

My picks for Sunday and Monday.


Eagles
Dallas
KC

Monday Rams

I Couldn’t Say ‘My Mother’ Without Crying
Losing a family member at a young age has lasting impacts, well into adulthood. There’s no quick fix for childhood grief.
By Hope Edelman
Ms. Edelman is the author of “Motherless Daughters.”
Aug. 25, 2019

This month on CNN, Anderson Cooper and Stephen Colbert engaged in a candid conversation about the long-term effects of childhood grief. Mr. Cooper was 10 years old when his father died from a heart attack. Mr. Colbert also was 10 when his father died in a plane crash that also took two of his brothers’ lives. Their early losses, both men agreed, shaped their priorities, their worldviews and the adults they ultimately became.

“I was personally shattered,” Mr. Colbert recalled. “And then you kind of re-form yourself in this quiet, grieving world that was created in the house.”

This story I know well. My mother died of breast cancer in 1981, when she was 42 and I was 17. At the time, I thought grieving was a five-stage process that could be rushed through and aced, like an easy pop quiz. When I still painfully missed my mother three and five and even 10 years later, my conclusion was that I must have gotten grieving wrong.

It took me quite a few years of therapy, interviews with hundreds of other motherless daughters, and several books written on the subject to finally let go of the cultural message that grief is something to be “gotten over” in the service of “moving on.” I’m hoping the Cooper-Colbert interview will help save others that kind of time.

What their conversation brings to light is how tenacious and recurrent childhood grief can be. It often flares up around anniversary events, such as birthdays and holidays; makes appearances at life milestones, like graduations and weddings; and sneaks up at age-correspondence events, such as reaching the age a parent was when he or she died. That’s a big one.

It also appears in regular, everyday moments. Mr. Colbert spoke about still being undone by the song “Band on the Run,” which was playing in heavy rotation the month his father and brothers died. Similarly, every time I hear “Love Will Keep Us Together” by Captain and Tennille I’m transported back into a wood-paneled basement circa 1978 where I’m teaching my mother how to dance the Continental, and missing her feels raw and fresh again. Then it passes.

To lose a parent in the 1980s was to do so in the Dark Ages of grief support. Stoicism, silence and suppression were still the ethos of the day. It would take me five years to be able to say “my mother” without crying. I wish I could say I was an anomaly, but I’ve met so many others with this story that at some point I began wondering if we were the norm.

Yet despite all the progress made in organized bereavement support over the past 40 years, very few services exist today for adults bereaved during childhood and adolescence. And this is a puzzling omission, because millions of Americans fall into this category. A New York Life Foundation nationwide survey of 1,006 adults age 25 and over revealed that 14 percent of those surveyed lost a parent or sibling before the age of 20. If we apply that percentage to the United States adult population as a whole, even conservatively, nearly 30 million people in America experienced the death of an immediate family member during childhood or adolescence.

Why is this important? Because we know that mismanaged and unexpressed grief can surface later as unregulated anger, take root as depression or disease and fuel a desire to self-medicate. Imagine a population of 30 million people with stories of major, early loss, many of them unspoken and suppressed. Then look around. Unmourned losses from the past could be a public health crisis.

A child’s response to major loss depends on several factors, including the cause of death, the closeness of the relationship and the child’s developmental stage. Very young children may not yet understand what death means. They’ll come to that awareness later, as their intellect matures. Tweenagers may grasp the concept cognitively but don’t yet have the emotional maturity to manage the feelings that arise. They’ll have to attend to those later. Teenagers have to balance the typical tasks of adolescence with the extraordinary demands of mourning. If overwhelmed by both, they may push one aside for a while, only to revisit it 10 years down the road. Or 20. Or more. This is how childhood grief becomes protracted over a lifetime.

Most of all, early, major loss can derail a life narrative and shatter a child’s sense of safety and assumptions about the future. As Anderson Cooper shared, his father’s death “changed the trajectory of my life. I am a different person than I feel like I was meant to be.”

Western culture has been labeled “death-denying,” but really, death-dodging is just as accurate. We skid away from discomfort and vulnerability around grief. We like prescriptions, easy instructions and a sense of mastery and control. Given a choice, we’ll opt for the quick fix. Every time.

Two Thursday nights ago on national television, Anderson Cooper and Stephen Colbert said the quiet part out loud: There is no quick fix here. The effects of early parent loss reverberate throughout a lifetime.

Continuing this conversation is more than a dialogical exercise. It’s a social responsibility. No adult left behind. We need to keep educating one another about the long arc of childhood grief and offering support to everyone along its route.

https://www.nytimes.com/2019/08/25/opinion/mothers-childhood-grief.html?module=inline

Test

What Sincerity Looks Like
David Brooks SEPT. 29, 2017

Sometimes pop culture seems completely prepackaged and professionalized, so when somebody steps out and puts on a display of vulnerability, trust and humility, it takes your breath away.

That’s what Chance the Rapper did on Monday on “The Late Show With Stephen Colbert.” He debuted a new, untitled song, but which is about the perils of stardom — which is what you’d sing about if you were 24 and you’d blown up so big.

He begins, not completely originally, by implying a contrast between pop stardom and the actual stars spread across the universe, between celebrity success and the vastness of God.

Then he compares his own first-world problems with actual problems (“stone mattresses, thin blankets, really long winters spent in a windbreaker”). But his problems are still real and they have to do with the strains on his intimate life. (“I’m a rich excuse for a father. You just can’t tour a toddler. She’s turning 2. She don’t need diapers, she just need a papa. … My daughter barely recognizes me when I lose the hat.”)

The first part of the song is about how success is threatening his relationships (“I think my little cousins want their cousin back. The automatic quarterback who doesn’t rap.”). Then it changes mood with each verse. There’s his love-hate relationship with his own ambition, his ambivalence about his own complacent fans. The chorus is: “The day is on its way, it couldn’t wait no more. Here it comes, here it comes, ready or not.”

Sometimes that sounds like a hopeful Martin Luther King dream. Sometimes it sounds like an angry warning about final judgment.

If you watch the video from the show, you see Chance just sitting on a stool, with his friend Daniel Caesar on guitar and some ordinary-looking backup singers behind him. There’s no superiority here, just an artist humbly baring himself before his audience, trusting them to understand, sympathize and receive his bid for intimacy. There’s always something multilayered when people tell you a story about the ground that they have honestly walked.

It’s interesting to compare Chance’s song with Taylor Swift’s new song, “Look What You Made Me Do,” which is also about a young star coping with celebrity. The former stands out from the current cultural moment; the latter embodies it. Swift is a phenomenally talented and beautiful songwriter who has lost touch with herself and seems to have been swallowed by the ethos of the Trump era.

The video to that song, which has been watched 478 million times on YouTube so far, contains a string of references to Swift’s various public beefs — with Kanye West, Kim Kardashian, Katy Perry, and so on. If Donald Trump or his political enemies made a video about their Twitter wars, it would look like this.

The crucial lyric is “I don’t trust nobody and nobody trusts me.” The world is full of snakes. The only way to survive is through combat. (“I got smarter. I got harder in the nick of time.”)

This is a song for a society without social trust. Everybody is vying for fame and dominance. Swift was a former innocent who was perpetually being turned into a victim, but she’s learned her lesson. The only way not to be a victim is to be venomous. “Look what you made me do!” she barks over and over.

It’s interesting how corporate the video looks and the song sounds. It’s been a long time since the Sex Pistols burst on the scene. The music business has become pretty good at feeding its audience’s teenage angst with fantasy anger.

Swift had defied the normal ingénue-to-sex-temptress career trajectory of Britney Spears and Miley Cyrus, but now she’s fitting right in. Spears released a similar song a decade ago called “Piece of Me,” which didn’t take itself so seriously.

The first thing you notice in comparing the Chance and Swift songs is the difference between a person and a brand. A lot of young people I know talk about “working on their brand,” and sometimes I wish that word had never been invented.

A person has a soul, which is what Chance is worrying about. A brand has a reputation, which is the title of Swift’s next album. A person has private dignity. A brand is a creation for an audience. “I’ll be the actress starring in your bad dreams,” is how Swift puts it.

The second thing you notice is the difference between sincerity and authenticity. In Lionel Trilling’s old distinction, sincerity is what you shoot for in a trusting society. You try to live honestly and straightforwardly into your social roles and relationships. Authenticity is what you shoot for in a distrustful society. You try to liberate your own personality by rebelling against the world around you, by aggressively fighting against the society you find so vicious and corrupt.

Back in the 1950s, sincerity seemed treacly and boring, and authenticity, in the form of, say, Johnny Cash, seemed daring and new. But now rebellious authenticity is the familiar corporate success formula, and sincerity, like Chance the Rapper’s, is practically revolutionary.

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/09/29/opinion/what-sincerity-looks-like.html?rref=collection%2Fsectioncollection%2Fopinion-columnists

Immigrating to Trump’s America? Philosophers Need Not Apply
The Stone
Carol Hay
THE STONE AUG. 8, 2017

Nine years ago, I’d just received my Ph.D. from a department ranked in the top 25 in the United States. I was in my early 30s and had a year of teaching experience at a prestigious liberal arts college under my belt. I had a promising research program and a publication in a top journal in the discipline. And to my delight, I had just received a job offer for a tenure-track job at an up-and-coming state university in the Northeast. Given the cutthroat nature of the market for academic jobs, with its well-known oversupply of Ph.D.s and undersupply of permanent positions, this outcome had been far from guaranteed.

Since then, things have gone well. I’m now a tenured associate professor at the same institution. But had I received this job offer under the newly proposed plan for immigration reform endorsed by President Trump, I’d have been deported back to Canada.

The bill, known as the Reforming American Immigration for Strong Employment Act, or RAISE Act, was introduced by two Republican senators, Tom Cotton of Arkansas and David Perdue of Georgia. It is being called “merit-based and uses a point system to determine who does and does not qualify, weighing factors like education, fluency in English, job-offer salary and investment portfolio. It gives you extra points if you’ve won an Olympic medal or a Nobel Prize. It prioritizes applicants who are between the ages of 26 and 30, who are well educated and fluent in English, who have a job offer with a high starting salary and who are already financially well-off. When I plug in my credentials from the time of my job offer (I used a simplified calculator posted by Time magazine recently), I end up with a score of 25. The minimum score needed to apply for legal immigration is 30.

I wouldn’t have passed muster. My main problem? I’m a philosopher.

Receiving an Olympic medal is enough to bump you to the front of the line, but receiving a Ph.D. from a top-ranked American university isn’t — unless it happens to be in a STEM field. Because I work in a discipline in the humanities, my American doctorate is worthless. The highest level of education I’d get credit for is my Canadian undergraduate degree.

I’m assuming I’d receive full marks on the test for English fluency, but my age would also be a problem. Given that the median time to degree for doctorates in the humanities is nine years, I was, at 31, actually on the young end to be starting my tenure-track career. But not young enough to receive those precious two extra points. Another big problem is my starting salary. Even after adjusting for inflation, my starting salary was below the $77,900 necessary to receive points. I felt like I’d just won the lottery — I was actually getting paid significantly more than the national average for philosophers’ starting salaries — but salaries in the humanities are notoriously meager.

The upshot? The RAISE Act would be devastating to the arts and humanities in this country. To be clear, this is far from the biggest concern we should have about the proposal. (The act’s removal of family-based green cards and the fact that it is far more restrictive than other countries’ merit-based immigration systems are both contenders here.) But it’s a concern we shouldn’t lose sight of. The anti-intellectualism of the Trump regime is well established. The RAISE Act might masquerade as something that’s friendly to those concerned about having a skilled and educated populace in this country, but we mustn’t be fooled.

Almost 60 years ago, C. P. Snow wrote “The Two Cultures and the Scientific Revolution,” bemoaning that the troubles of Western intellectual life resulted from its over-rewarding of the arts and humanities at the expense of science and engineering. It’s safe to say the pendulum swing in the opposite direction is nearly complete.

Carol Hay is an associate professor of philosophy at the University of Massachusetts, Lowell.

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/08/08/opinion/trump-legal-immigration-raise.html?ref=opinion

Philosopher Who Praised Risk Died Trying to Save Children From Drowning
By BENOÎT MORENNE and MEGAN SPECIAJULY 25, 2017

PARIS — A French philosopher and psychoanalyst, known for her work that praised living a life that embraced risk, died last week as a result of following her own bold philosophy.

The philosopher, Anne Dufourmantelle, 53, drowned on Friday as she tried to save two children who were struggling to swim off the coast of Pampelonne beach, near St.-Tropez, France, according to a report from French public television.

Ms. Dufourmantelle was on the beach when the weather began to change and the previously safe swimming area became treacherous. She saw two children who were in danger and leapt into the sea to help, according to France 3, before being caught in the rough surf.

She was pulled unresponsive from the water by two other swimmers, and attempts to resuscitate her failed.

Both children survived.

Ms. Dufourmantelle’s action harkened back to her own words.

“When there really is a danger that must be faced in order to survive...there is a strong incentive for action, dedication and surpassing oneself,” she said in a 2015 interview.

Friends remembered Ms. Dufourmantelle as a profound philosopher and psychoanalyst whose work was widely admired.

“What to me characterized Anne was her gentleness and her strength,” said Hélène Fresnel, a journalist at Psychologies Magazine and a friend of Ms. Dufourmantelle’s. “She managed to tie the two together.”

Ms. Dufourmantelle had been a prominent voice of a new generation of female French intellectuals, Ms. Fresnel said, and her “gentleness and goodness” garnered widespread support from her peers.

“There are schools in the psychoanalytic field, and she transcended those schools,” Ms. Fresnel said.

Raphaël Enthoven, another French philosopher, posted a message on Twitter on Monday that paid tribute to Ms. Dufourmantelle’s work.

“Sadness and stupor to learn at the moment the death of the philosopher and psychoanalyst, who spoke so well of dreams,” Mr. Enthoven wrote.

Raphaël Enthoven ? @Enthoven_R
Tristesse et stupeur d'apprendre à l'instant la mort de la philosophe et psychanalyste Anne Dufourmantelle, qui parlait si bien des rêves.
5:34 AM - 23 Jul 2017
402 402 Retweets 619 619 likes
Twitter Ads info and privacy

France’s culture minister, Françoise Nyssen, also used Twitter to express her grief at the news of Ms. Dufourmantelle’s death.

“She helped us to live, to think about the world of today,” Ms. Nyssen wrote.

Follow
Francoise Nyssen ? @FrancoiseNyssen
Émotions suite au décès d'Anne Dufourmantelle. Grande philosophe, psychanalyste, elle nous aidait à vivre, à penser le monde d'aujourd'hui.
1:40 PM - 23 Jul 2017
456 456 Retweets 779 779 likes
Twitter Ads info and privacy

Ms. Dufourmantelle had two children from her first marriage and a daughter from her later relationship with the writer Frédéric Boyer. That daughter was on the beach with her on the day she died, according to a friend.

Ms. Dufourmantelle went to Brown University and was awarded a doctoral degree in philosophy from Paris-Sorbonne University. She wrote several books, including “Éloge du Risque” (“In Praise of Risk”), published in 2011, that embrace risk as a necessary part of the human experience.

“She was a singular human being,” said Guy Dana, a fellow psychoanalyst and friend. “She was both a philosopher, a psychoanalyst, a novelist. People like that are rare.”

Much of Ms. Dufourmantelle’s work delved into the nature of human fear and the freedom of risk taking.

“The idea of absolute security — like ‘zero risk’ — is a fantasy,” Ms. Dufourmantelle said in a 2015 interview with the French newspaper Libération when asked about new security measures in light of an uptick in terrorist attacks in Europe.

She spoke of fear being wielded as a political weapon and as a means to control a population, warning that “the price of protection soon becomes very expensive.”

Instead, she encouraged people to embrace that fear in order to truly live.

“When one admits his fear, his finitude, a confidence can be reborn from this vulnerability,” Ms. Dufourmantelle said. “Being alive is a risk. Few beings are.”

Benoît Morenne reported from Paris, and Megan Specia from New York.

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/07/25/world/europe/risk-philosopher-anne-dufourmantelle-dies.html?

Read the Letter Aaron Sorkin Wrote His Daughter After Donald Trump Was Elected President

The Oscar-winning screenwriter of The Social Network and mastermind behind The West Wing reacts to Donald Trump being elected the 45th president of the United States in a moving letter written to his 15-year-old daughter Roxy and her mother Julia Sorkin.

by AARON SORKIN
NOVEMBER 9, 2016 8:52 PM

Sorkin Girls,

Well the world changed late last night in a way I couldn’t protect us from. That’s a terrible feeling for a father. I won’t sugarcoat it—this is truly horrible. It’s hardly the first time my candidate didn’t win (in fact it’s the sixth time) but it is the first time that a thoroughly incompetent pig with dangerous ideas, a serious psychiatric disorder, no knowledge of the world and no curiosity to learn has.

And it wasn’t just Donald Trump who won last night—it was his supporters too. The Klan won last night. White nationalists. Sexists, racists and buffoons. Angry young white men who think rap music and Cinco de Mayo are a threat to their way of life (or are the reason for their way of life) have been given cause to celebrate. Men who have no right to call themselves that and who think that women who aspire to more than looking hot are shrill, ugly, and otherwise worthy of our scorn rather than our admiration struck a blow for misogynistic shitheads everywhere. Hate was given hope. Abject dumbness was glamorized as being “the fresh voice of an outsider” who’s going to “shake things up.” (Did anyone bother to ask how? Is he going to re-arrange the chairs in the Roosevelt Room?) For the next four years, the President of the United States, the same office held by Washington and Jefferson, Lincoln and Teddy Roosevelt, F.D.R., J.F.K. and Barack Obama, will be held by a man-boy who’ll spend his hours exacting Twitter vengeance against all who criticize him (and those numbers will be legion). We’ve embarrassed ourselves in front of our children and the world.

And the world took no time to react. The Dow futures dropped 700 points overnight. Economists are predicting a deep and prolonged recession. Our NATO allies are in a state of legitimate fear. And speaking of fear, Muslim-Americans, Mexican-Americans and African-Americans are shaking in their shoes. And we’d be right to note that many of Donald Trump’s fans are not fans of Jews. On the other hand, there is a party going on at ISIS headquarters. What wouldn’t we give to trade this small fraction of a man for Richard Nixon right now?

So what do we do?

First of all, we remember that we’re not alone. A hundred million people in America and a billion more around the world feel exactly the same way we do.

Second, we get out of bed. The Trumpsters want to see people like us (Jewish, “coastal elites,” educated, socially progressive, Hollywood…) sobbing and wailing and talking about moving to Canada. I won’t give them that and neither will you. Here’s what we’ll do…

…we’ll fucking fight. (Roxy, there’s a time for this kind of language and it’s now.) We’re not powerless and we’re not voiceless. We don’t have majorities in the House or Senate but we do have representatives there. It’s also good to remember that most members of Trump’s own party feel exactly the same way about him that we do. We make sure that the people we sent to Washington—including Kamala Harris—take our strength with them and never take a day off.

We get involved. We do what we can to fight injustice anywhere we see it—whether it’s writing a check or rolling up our sleeves. Our family is fairly insulated from the effects of a Trump presidency so we fight for the families that aren’t. We fight for a woman to keep her right to choose. We fight for the First Amendment and we fight mostly for equality—not for a guarantee of equal outcomes but for equal opportunities. We stand up.

America didn’t stop being America last night and we didn’t stop being Americans and here’s the thing about Americans: Our darkest days have always—always—been followed by our finest hours.

Roxy, I know my predictions have let you down in the past, but personally, I don’t think this guy can make it a year without committing an impeachable crime. If he does manage to be a douche nozzle without breaking the law for four years, we’ll make it through those four years. And three years from now we’ll fight like hell for our candidate and we’ll win and they’ll lose and this time they’ll lose for good. Honey, it’ll be your first vote.

The battle isn’t over, it’s just begun. Grandpa fought in World War II and when he came home this country handed him an opportunity to make a great life for his family. I will not hand his granddaughter a country shaped by hateful and stupid men. Your tears last night woke me up, and I’ll never go to sleep on you again.

Love,

Dad

http://www.vanityfair.com/hollywood/2016/11/aaron-sorkin-donald-trump-president-letter-daughter

Do Not Go Gentle
Roger Cohen DEC. 2, 2016

A friend once told me about going to see her father shortly before he died. He had advanced Alzheimer’s and peered at her blankly. Then he said: “You are home.”

“Yes, Dad,” she said. “I’m your daughter.”

He said, “I had you too much under my thumb.”

Home, and what constitutes it, is the most potent of memories. It’s not excess of love we regret at death’s door, it’s excess of severity. If we lived every day as the last day of our lives, the only quandary would be how to find the time to shower love on enough people. We live distracted and die with too much knowledge to bear.

December has come, the last month of an awful year, and I am sure I am not alone in saying good riddance to 2016. It’s been the worst of years, one of those periodic reminders that the raging beast in humankind always lurks.

For me, the menacing political storms of America and Europe have been accompanied by family illness; and I’ve found myself in recent days cocooned in thoughts of those I love, the fragility of life, and its delicate beauty.

I listened this week to an inventor, a brilliant man convinced of the proximity of human immortality, which he believes to be just a couple of medical bridges away. He’s taking dozens of pills to ensure that he reaches the first of those bridges, perhaps around 2030. I confess immortality, whose attainment is a hot theme in Silicon Valley, does not interest me.

When I think of it the image that comes to my mind is of a blazing hot day with the noonday sun beating down in perpetuity. The light is blinding. There is no escape from it, no perspective, no release.

The most beautiful times of day are dawn and dusk when shadows are long, offering contrast, refuge and form. Death is the shadow that gives shape to existence, urgency to love, brilliance to life. Limitless life is tedium without resolution.

As Ecclesiastes has it, there is a time to be born, and a time to die; a time to plant, and a time to pluck up what is planted. I find it hard to imagine what inner peace can exist without acceptance of this cycle — the bright green of the first spring leaf, the brittle brown leaves of fall skittering down an alley in a gust of wind.

None of which is to urge mere acquiescence to death, whether physical or political, in this season when death merchants are on the march. On the contrary, this is a time to rage, a time to heed Dylan Thomas: “Rage, rage against the dying of the light.”

Another friend, who has battled and vanquished cancer, told me the other day of going to lunch with his 98-year-old father a couple of months before his death. My friend fought back tears as he recalled how his father leaned over to him toward the end of the meal and said: “You know, I did not want to die before I knew you were well.” It is for sons to bury their fathers, not fathers their sons.

Ah, fathers, they wait so long before they let down their guard with their sons. When they do the power and poignancy of it is overwhelming.

My own father, now 95 and withdrawn, wrote to me on the death 17 years ago of my manic-depressive mother: “I know that my spirit will not soon be released from those cruel demons that tore so relentlessly at the entwining fabric of love between Mom and me. I did strive within the feeble limits of my human fallibility to preserve and cherish and sustain her. But alas — for Mama ultimately, death was the only angel that could shield her from despair.”

The most vulnerable parts of our nature are often those closest to our greatest gifts. I will always be grateful for the moments I was able to see my gifted father unguarded.

And his brother, my uncle Bert, who died three years ago at 95, having fought for this suddenly fragile free world, battling across Italy in the 6th South African Armored Division, 19th Field Ambulance. He would have been disgusted by 2016.

But for one thing: the World Series victory of the Chicago Cubs. After World War II he studied dentistry at Northwestern University and retained a passion for the city’s baseball. He was at the opening game of the White Sox (losing) 1959 World Series and would recall to me the bedlam created by Ted Kluszewski’s first home run as it crashed into the bleachers at what was Comiskey Park. He felt the crescendo “would lift us off our feet.”

I’ve been having imaginary conversations with Bert about the Cubs and Chicago. I hear his voice. The dead whisper to us, they console us, they admonish us. Love more, love better. Do not — Dylan Thomas again — go gentle into that good night.


http://www.nytimes.com/2016/12/02/opinion/do-not-go-gentle.html?

Three Excellent Books on Long-Term Investing
Off the Shelf
By PAUL B. BROWN OCT. 14, 2016

http://www.nytimes.com/2016/10/16/business/mutfund/three-excellent-books-on-long-term-investing.html?contentCollection=smarter-living&hp&action=click&pgtype=Homepage&clickSource=story-heading&module=second-column-region®ion=top-news&WT.nav=top-news

$EMYSF Showing a lot of interest .

$GRCU Looking for the green opening bell

Julia Louis-Dreyfus Gives an Emotional (and Funny) Speech


Striking: when a moment of genuine emotion turns up during something as choreographed and formulaic as an awards show. More striking: when that moment comes from a perennial winner who you’d think would be blasé by now. Even more striking: when she gets in a pretty good joke first.
Julia Louis-Dreyfus of “Veep,” accepting her fifth straight award for outstanding lead actress in a comedy, began with a gag. “Our show started out as a political satire, but now it feels more like a documentary,” she said. “So I certainly do promise to rebuild that wall and make Mexico pay for it.”
It was a funny bit, but she was trembling the whole time she was delivering it. We saw why when she got to what was really on her mind: dedicating the award to her father, William, who had died just two days earlier.

“His opinion was the one that really mattered,” she said.

http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2016/09/19/arts/television/emmy-awards.html?rref=collection%2Fsectioncollection%2Farts&action=click&contentCollection=arts®ion=rank&module=package&version=highlights&contentPlacement=1&pgtype=sectionfront