The Bishop and the Butterfly: Murder, Politics, and the End of the Jazz Age

Blog Posts

Planned Parenthood

By arc400 on Thu, 10/01/2015 - 8:18pm |

Okay, here's what I want to know.

In all the kerfuffle over Planned Parenthood, the grilling of Cecile Richards, the shout your abortion hashtag, why doesn't anyone EVER talk about the guys ffs?

Speaking as a white, middle-class, professional female, I would like to address the innocence/experience divide. Innocence is when you believe the guy when he tells you he'll pull out before orgasm, experience is when you know he's lying.

Sanctorum 2012

By arc400 on Mon, 03/05/2012 - 2:24pm |

“President Obama once said that he wants everybody in America to go to college.  What a snob.” -- Rick Santorum - Troy, Michigan, Feb 25 2012

"The Latin phrase sanctum sanctorum is a Latin translation of the biblical term: "Holy of Holies" . -- Wikipedia

Johnny Hacktotum, 1955-2011

By arc400 on Thu, 10/13/2011 - 12:44pm |

"[Steve's] dad, Paul -- a machinist who had never completed high school -- had set aside a section of his workbench for Steve, and taught him how to build things, disassemble them, and put them together. From neighbors who worked in the electronics firm in the Valley, he learned about that field -- and also understood that things like television sets were not magical things that just showed up in one's house, but designed objects that human beings had painstakingly created." (http://www.wired.com/epicenter/2011/10/jobs/all/1)

The anecdote above is my favorite from the recent gush of biographical material regarding Steve Jobs. It gives us a picture of the young Jobs, encouraged by his adoptive dad to take gizmos apart and put them together again. (It even raises the question: If Jobs had grown up with his biological parents, would he have become a hacker?)

Take off your bedroom slippers, put on your marching heels!

By arc400 on Tue, 09/27/2011 - 10:27am |

My generation came of age during Second-Wave Feminism.  By the time we reached 18, the country was already entering its 'post-feminist' phase.

In these final years before the discovery of the AIDS virus, we were the direct heirs of the most recent Sexual Revolution.  We enjoyed easy access to birth control and the knowledge that, if we did get pregnant, abortions were legal and affordable.  Our spiritual forebears were slightly older women who still looked and acted like hippies, who went bra-less, who hitchhiked and camped alone, who didn't give a rat's ass about makeup (unless it was body paint), who lived in communal homes, and slept with anyone they wanted to.

One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest: A Liberal Anthem for our Time

By arc400 on Wed, 04/27/2011 - 5:44pm |

One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest: A Liberal Anthem for Our Time

President John F. Kennedy defined the American Liberal as  "... someone who looks ahead and not behind, someone who welcomes new ideas without rigid reactions, someone who cares about the welfare of the people -- their health, their housing, their schools, their jobs, their civil rights, and their civil liberties" [cited by Eric Alterman, Why we're Liberals: a political handbook for post-Bush America, 2008]

History

Member for
13 years 10 months