Is it really a surprise that someone who is shocked that a place he apparently only knew about from tourist brochures should be a real place with problems instead of some sort of paradise should also have unrealistic expectations of what a woman should look like in order to be considered completely viable? People with sexist notions, I have observed, don't tend to have very original ideas about anything else. This cuts across the political board, by the way -- the liberals playing the woman-as-perpetual-victim are just another variation of the age-old women-are-the-weaker-sex game. At least conservatives bloviating about those wicked feminazis are paying those women the compliment of considering them dangerous adversaries. I'd prefer that to the "you poor thing, you've been oppressed!" pat on the head too many "feminist" liberals give to women.

I'm also afraid I have to say that yes, I'd rather live in a country where someone like John Derbyshire is an opinion monger. As opposed to a country where he'd be locked up or otherwise forbidden to spout off. This doesn't mean I'm a fan -- I've agreed with a few of his views, disagreed with more, and dismissed even more as just plain weird. But I don't have to fuck him or read him, so he can let his freak flag fly whenever and wherever he wants as far as I am concerned.

How can someone who disdains ZPG quote with approval an anti-development lament? Consistency in the hobgoblin of small minds, I guess. Ilyka is large, and she contains multitudes.

I'm a fan. Sorry to come off as a critic.

Well, the only picture of the BF I can recall has him stretched out over the couch...

I am tired, depressed, and confused. What'm I quoting with approval here? I thought I was picking on one throwaway remark in Vanderleun's anti-Florida thing. I literally didn't read beyond that, though, because I'm a spaz and a hothead. If the rest of it's anti-development (and I'll gladly take your word for it that it is), then it seems to me Vanderleun has the inconsistency problem, because I've always understood him to be a pro-growth conservative.

But keep in mind I read American Digest maybe twice a year and, as hinted above, not real thoroughly even then. Gerald's a little too on the stuffy side to engage my ever-drifting attent--OH LOOK, BEER!

Aw, quit kicking yourself. That's such a woman thing! ;-)

(ducking)

I must say I puzzled over Malcolm's comment too. I didn't see anyone quoting anyone with approval.

As for Venderleun's surprising anti-growth attitude towards Florida, I've seen that come from so-called pro-growth people before when it comes to my state. They usually seem to live in gray, industrialized burgs up north, or (like Vanderleun) places that are overrun by hippy freaks where it rains all the time. They come to Florida and the combo of "tropical" (actually subtropical to temperate) weather and paved roads strikes them as somehow incongruous. People still think of Florida as a vacation state where you go to "get away" from the rest of humanity. The fact that there are people who live here year round -- and so many of them! -- is some sort of shock.

Aloha,

Ilyka's main point is sound: the once-beautiful-woman metaphor is shop-worn, like a once beau...uh, well. She leads into it with "Maybe not"...and proceeds to quote someone to the effect that Florida might not be the paradise refugees from Chicago or where ever envision. That's the "quote with approval" part.

On anti-development conservatives: some people accept that you can't conserve everything. If you see the world headed toward a precipice, you cannot simultaneously maintain speed, direction, and the shape of your world.

God's Grandeur (G. M. Hopkins)

The world is charged with the grandeur of God.
It will flame out, like shining from shook foil;
It gathers to a greatness, like the ooze of oil
Crushed. Why do men then now not reck his rod?
Generations have trod, have trod, have trod;
And all is seared with trade; bleared, smeared with toil;
And wears man's smudge and shares man's smell: the soil
Is bare now, nor can foot feel, being shod.
And for all this, nature is never spent;
There lives the dearest freshness deep down things;
And though the last lights off the black West went
Oh, morning, at the brown brink eastward, springs--
Because the Holy Ghost over the bent
World broods with warm breast and with ah! bright wings.

You still aren't making yourself clear. Both I and Vanderleun, in our own way, stated that Florida was not a paradise. The difference between our posts is he seems to have expected one, and I pointed out that this is his folly, not Florida's. I do believe that Ilyka was quoting me with approval, and I am neither anti-development nor "ZPG" which I guess means "zero population growth." People are welcome to come to my state all they like; what I really object to is the hypocrisy of complaining about the fact that Florida is a real place not a plastic Disneyland, as well as exaggerating the problems we do have and making omniscient pronouncements of our doom.

Perhaps the metaphor is a bit shop worn but only because the reality from which it is drawn continues to be true. Sexist or not it is something drawn from direct observation of the world dimensional and I make no apologies for it. I would suggest, however, as Ilyka herself indicates in the thread, that allowing mental constructs like "sexism" to jerk the knee is usually a sign that one's collection of mental constructs needs to be taken out for a spring cleaning.

I'd like to promise to be a good and sensitive male and to think twice, thrice, many, many times before committing a potentially sexist, racist, homophobic metaphor felony, but I find it just tends to angry up the blood. It is also a tendency that leads to extensive self-censorship which is the enemy of thought, writing and discourse.

Should you wish to see its' monument you need only look about the vast and shabby cathedral of our national discourse today.

Still I am flattered that an off hand but accurate metaphor, however tatterdemalion it may be, initiated such an interesting discussion. I'll only say that I have a greater experience with Florida than my post may have indicated and draw some of my observations from friends and associates that have lived there for decades.

Perhaps I should have been clearer but since my method on my page is "First Draft Final Draft" it would be hard to do that.

Finally, I wish somebody would invite me to these conversations so I don't have to find out about them third-link.

BTW Ilyka -- it is G E R A R D and not (shudder) "Gerald." And I'm really going to have to do something about this conservative and stuffy impression. I am, like you and Whitman whose portrait graces my front porch, large and contain multitudes.