“I got hit with a strap. Bam! Bam! Bam! And I’ve never been to a shrink…” That was what Sean Hannity had to say about corporal punishment. It isn’t surprising that he would be a big advocate of beating children into submission. Most people who are brutalized as children hold this kind of opinion. And among conservatives, this kind of thing just makes sense in the same way that constant warfare and torture makes sense.

Now I won’t psychoanalyze Hannity, because I don’t think it is necessary. The 16 words above speak for themselves. And his additional comment that he’s never been to a shrink is just brilliant. Imagine a guy with a tumor the size of a grapefruit on the side of his head who insists nothing is wrong with him because he’s never been to a doctor. He’s fine. Really. Never felt the need. That must mean there is nothing wrong with him.

In the case of Sean Hannity, the tumor is pretty obvious. It’s pretty obvious on Bill O’Reilly too. Joe Scarborough is a conservative hack who rarely has anything interesting to say, but at least he isn’t out there cheer-leading for child abuse.

Check out the following segment from The Young Turks, because it provides a number of different times that Sean Hannity has fought the good fight in favor of brutalizing children:

The fundamental argument here seems to be that the way children were raised in the past is the the right way. Norms never change! Of course, by this logic, we would still be burning heretics. So what is it that we are afraid might happen? That little boys won’t grow up to be brutes like their fathers? This sounds a lot like what Hitler thought about the rearing of children:

He goes on to talk about how knowledge is the ruin of his young men. If Sean Hannity is not a full-fledged fascist, he is a proto-fascist. And this is the thinking that he disseminates to millions on his radio and television shows. This is what the power elite want Americans to hear.

“I got hit with a strap. Bam! Bam! Bam! And I’ve never been to a shrink…”

Meet Vivian Boyack and Alice Dubes. According to Metro yesterday, Lesbian Couple in Their Nineties Finally Marry After 72 Years Together. The service took place at the First Christian Church in Davenport, Iowa by Reverend Linda Hunsaker. She is quoted saying, “This is a celebration of something that should have happened a very long time ago.” I think that’s safe to say, although they clearly didn’t the marriage. And their marriage at this point is more a blessing that they bestow upon our society. They bless us.

It’s amazing to look at them. Are these the women we have heard so much about — the ones that want to destroy marriage by engaging in it? Are these the women who anger God?! Because if these things are true, it means we have a pathetic excuse for marriage and God. One thing is for certain: we have had a very limited culture for a very long time. It’s only been two years since our supposedly liberal President has been willing to say publicly that Boyack and Dubes have a right to this civic sacrament.

The newlyweds met when they were teenagers — in 1942 — in their hometown, Yale, Iowa. They have been together ever since. Boyack was a teacher and Dubes was an accountant. They say that they’ve visited every state in the union and every province in Canada. According to Dubes, “We’ve had a good time.”

Unfortunately, that’s all I know about them. I’ve checked out a dozen different article and they are all short with pretty much the same information. But I doubt it much matters. It is a wonderful story and a wonderful event. And it is a bit of positive news for a change. As a society, I guess we do slowly crawl forward. Regardless, congratulations to the happy couple!

I found this image in an article, How Women Transform With Makeup. To me, this is horrific. The article contains a total of ten women who transform into dolls. I really don’t get it. The women are all attractive without makeup. And in the process of “improving” themselves, they lose their humanity.

It’s the imperfections that make us interesting. And the point here seems to be about massaging the imperfections away. It is also, of course, about losing “ten pounds instantly with contouring!” The whole thing makes me think that the reason only women wear makeup in our society is because we want to minimize women. Makeup not only turns them into objects of adoration, but it takes from them their individuality. I’m bad at recognizing faces, but it is still the intention of the process to make the young woman in slide six look nothing like the young woman in slide one. I find it deeply disturbing.

I also wonder who the makeup is meant for. Is it for men or what women think men want to see? Or is it for themselves? I hope it is the latter. And I can see that. It shows a great deal of skill and it really does transform the face. On the other hand, if it is for the former, I tend to think it is for nothing. Most guys aren’t that picky. That’s kind of redundant: most guys are, well, guys. And in my experience, they like most women who are just willing to talk to them. Major attraction occurs when they meet a woman who laughs at their stupid jokes. And though men generally take makeup on women for granted, I’m not sure there would be much complaint if they stopped.

The final image above reminds me of what Roland Barthes said about Greta Garbo:

To me, there is something anti-feminist about makeup. This is what Barthes is getting at about Garbo and the platonic ideal. Ideals are not real and to ask women to pursue such a thing is to dehumanize them. But at the same time, there is something anti-masculine about it. Heterosexual men should love women as they are. There should be no need to dress them up as though they were somehow wanting.

I would never claim that women should or should not use makeup. That is up to every individual to decide. But the fact that so many women feel the need to wear makeup and men expect it, does not speak well of our culture.

Last week, I wrote, Republicans Don’t Want Better Schools. It was based upon an insight from Digby that Republicans don’t really care about having better public school teachers because these are the same people who most pushed homeschooling, where the parent-teachers are totally unaccountable. I made one of my standard arguments that the problem was that most people homeschool for the purpose of keeping their children away from dangerous ideas from science that would conflict with their religious dogma.

In the article, I specifically mentioned my sister Kim as an exception, writing that she was “well educated and provides the kind of learning and social environment that all but the richest of parents would envy.” In this regard, I offer the following slightly edited article, Why We Homeschool, which she originally published on her blog Adventures With ADD. —FM

There are lots of things we think we would never do, until…

Before having a child, and even when my son was young, I believed I would never homeschool. In fact, I used to be critical about parents who did. But then my son went to school, and the dread of sending him to school every day greatly overpowered any fear I had of homeschooling.

Looking back on it now, it makes me sad about how wrong it went, because my son was so excited to start school. I have a couple of photos of my adorable, bespectacled, and smiling son, standing outside the school where he’d be attending kindergarten. On that first day, we had orientation to learn about the school and the teacher to which my son was assigned. It turned out this teacher used a discipline technique that included a poster that looked like a big traffic light and clothespins with each child’s name on one of the clothespins.

In the beginning of the day, the clothespin would be in the green portion of the traffic light. If a child behaved perfectly, his or her clothespin stayed in the green zone all day, a full school day, by the way. If not, it moved into the yellow zone. After a couple of warnings, it moved to the red zone where it stayed the rest of the day without any hope of returning to the green zone.

About 70% of the time, my son would come out of the classroom at the end of the day, hunched over, with a very sad face and his knuckles practically scraping the ground, and he would say to me, “I got another red today!” He also told me the teacher said his behavior was “ridiculous.” This was because he wanted to explore the room during the first couple of days in class and wasn’t able to sit in circle time. Also, he used to be very social and wanted to chat and play with the kids in his math group instead of actually doing the developmentally-inappropriate math they were requiring him to do. My son wanted to have fun in kindergarten. Go figure!

In addition to the traffic light discipline technique, my son was forced to sit on a bench during the short recess because of his difficulty paying attention in class. Obviously this was counterproductive. After finding out about this, I went into research mode. I found information about learning styles. You know, the idea that different kids learn in different ways, kinesthetic, auditory, and visual. Keep in mind my son didn’t have a diagnosis, yet. Though I knew my son was different from most kids, I denied that my son had ADHD, despite my husband’s having taken stimulants as a child.

I tried discussing what I’d discovered with my son’s teacher. Instead of her being open-minded, she became kind of defensive. Granted, the packet of information I presented her with might have been a bit overwhelming. In any case, her response was extreme, in my opinion. She said in an unnecessarily stern voice, “I’ve been teaching for a long time. I know what I’m doing. Your son just needs to learn to sit still, be quiet, pay attention, and follow directions.”

Because I had no luck improving the situation by way of the teacher, I decided to meet with the principal and vice-principle. I told them what our experiences had been so far. Rather than trying to support my son in his education, they defended the teacher’s draconian methods. They told me that other parents would “love” for their child to have my son’s teacher. Okay, so that wasn’t helpful.

The next stop was the school psychologist. Though she was kind and sympathetic, there was no support from the teacher or the administration. In the short, two-and-a-half weeks my son was at the school, he became extremely defiant. Admittedly, he already had a stubborn personality, but it became several times worse. Not only this, he was beginning to have violent outbursts, both at home and at school. Clearly, things were getting out of control.

One day my son awoke with a mild fever and was ill for a few days. Though my son was not feeling well, physically, he actually seemed happier. As for me, I didn’t have that feeling of dread that came with taking him to school every day, wondering what would happen there. It started to occur to me that maybe the people who homeschool weren’t wrong. I knew I could look for an alternative, but we couldn’t afford a private school, and what if the next public school was just as bad, or worse? I couldn’t take that chance.

Since my son was already a good reader, and since school is not a requirement until a child turns six in our state, I figured I could homeschool him through kindergarten, at least. We also found a local charter school that had an independent study program. My son began participating in that, and we also began attending a couple of park days with different homeschool groups. It’s really amazing all the resources that are actually available to homeschoolers, now. Mostly, the academics for that year consisted of reading lots of story books, playing age-appropriate math games, and going on field trips and visits to the library.

It is surprising how quickly so much damage can happen to child in such a short period of time, but it did. After leaving school, it took many months before the violent outbursts stopped. Then it took much longer for the extreme defiance to diminish. We’re still working on the little bit of defiance here and there, but it’s pretty close to that of a typical kid. I’m good with that, for now. I find he tends to show me more respect when I show him respect and speak with him like the person he is.

—Kim

Buzz Feed put out the following video, What Men Are Really Saying When Catcalling Women. Given the material, it’s actually pretty bad. The actors are all quite good, but the writing is weak. It does, however, get to the what catcalling is all about, even if it isn’t aware of it. And it misses an opportunity for an effective ending by giving men a pass I think they don’t deserve.

After showing various somewhat true statements, it ends with an 18 second riff on, “I do this ’cause I’m lonely.” If that were true, it would still be a pathetic ending. But in fact, it is not true. Catcalling is all about signaling that the catcaller is a virile and heterosexual man. And who is he signaling it to? Mostly to himself.

It is a sad truth that male culture as I have found it in America is primarily about convincing everyone that you aren’t gay. This isn’t to say men are a bunch of closeted homosexuals. But there is such a taboo about male homosexuality that you would think that every football party was on the verge of breaking into an all mall orgy. You may remember last year I wrote, These Are Victims: Matthew Shepard and Emmett Till. In it, I noted Phil Robertson of Duck Dynasty and his “creepy obsession” with anal sex. He is not an exception but very much the rule in the “real man” culture.

I don’t know how the objects of catcalling respond to it. I suspect there is a wide range. Introverted women probably find it very upsetting. But I’m sure there are women who do take a certain pleasure in the public confirmation that they are nubile. Still, even for such women, I’m sure men sneaking glances does the job as well. We men are not nearly as subtle as we think we are. And certainly, as Dan Arel noted at Patheos, “I joked about never meeting a couple who had the story about meeting when, ‘I was walking down the street and he yelled to me from his car about my ass and we have been together ever since.'”

There is, of course, a reason that you never hear a story like that. I don’t think it matters who you are, what is most attractive is self-confidence. It is hard to get too worked up about people who seem adrift. And catcalling does not say, “I’m virile and heterosexual!” It says, “I’m afraid I’m not virile and that you might think I’m homosexual!” And that isn’t attractive. Much better is to act the way that Mike Birbiglia and I act when confronted with an attractive woman: stare at your feet uncomfortably and avoid looking at her. Because it communicates the same information without nearly as much noise.

Now that’s how it’s done!