Calling the Enlightenment French, leaving out the influence "the founders" and Tom Paine had on the French is typical of a high schooler, but why does Bill Maher's stuff reach so many people? I just do not understand how he has so much confidence, when he clearly understands so little. It just seems so unhealthy-- the willingness to put forward (clearly) second hand information to a such a large audience.

This is such helpful analysis. This season has prompted me to actually take notes (I am not kidding), because the didactic nature of the dialogue is so obvious. I was surprised by it, at first, thinking that the characters would not come right out and say all that they were, making grand summations left and right. But I have gotten used to Chase's straightforwardness this season. And it seems to me Havrilesky is right-- Chase is revealling his true feelings about these characters. In "Philosophy and the Sopranos", the chapter on Tony and Happiness makes the case that Chase holds to the same account of moral psychology as Plato. Chase is giving us the inevitable results of living a life of immorality-- writ large. Even Plato was not this detailed when it came to his description of the psychological devolution that comes from crimes, lies, and the wrong aspirations.

(A smaller point, but finally, with Tony in the previous episode, manhandling Carmela, my insistance that the one liberty Chase took with realism, for the sake of the audience's like for Tony -- Tony's gentleness with women-- finally this has been redressed.)

Gossip is discussing someone else's situation for the vicarious thrill in it. That means any sympathy is phony, and the topic is not one meant to edify those participating. What shouldn't count as gossip is when you share a story, even a very embarrassing one, that a friend happily cops to. This is the great benefit of friends, we can trade our embarrassments around. But there is no superiority or asymmetry. It's either his turn or your turn, and anyone who shares (with glee) their embarrassments has got a good sense of self anyway.

But the mean kind of gossip, like all bad behavior, is bad for participants. What happens, I'd argue, to people who enjoy putting down others, is that they get bound up in a impossible to maintain image of themselves-- as someone who could not be gossiped about. And life does not work that way, yet people spend lifetimes trying to live up to the impression they've given themselves.

And there is another tension created-- the little thrill from feeling superior, or from releasing the information someone would expect you to keep-- it leaves a hangover, doesn't it? And that is your adjustment to the image you'd like to have of yourself (fair and kind) and what the behavior implies.

It's easy to notice that the happier the person, the less gossip they engage in. You could put it the way Plato enables us to-- it can be addicted to focus on just the foibles of other people, and the way you can compare these people to you-- but if you are focussed on the foibles of people, you are limiting your perspective and will never develop properly or understand the point of being here.

There little you can do, with words, more hurtful than to tell a person of color who has achieved that it was merely a matter of special preference. It's not just patently untrue, in the case of Obama and others. It's to dismiss all the difficulties involved in making it past the racism that is still so obvious effective. This more than doubles the offense. And if the author is hoping that this is not what Ferraro meant to do, he gives no evidence for that.

He must also be incredibly dismissive of people's common sense assessments of racist views, which I have always found quite apt. (The stakes are high, when it comes to detecting racism.) So this is an attempt to argue against what is clear to almost everyone (but an biased advocate of the Clinton campaign). Ferraro's comment and subsequent comments are racist on their face.

Just noting that, once again, in this review (and perhaps the book) there is a sign of the weird Puritanism that I now associated with Dr. Phil. Teenage girls better not have sex! It is so degrading, and you will (they guarantee) end up on the bathroom wall. I can't figure it out, really, why this faux worry keeps cropping up. I think it is jealousy or something else completely personal. But it is interesting that the reviewer seems to have no problems with the (cue Halloween music) terrible consequences of female sexuality. Mha ha ha ha.

I am frequently amazed at the strange perceptions about childbirth that are out there. I should know, I teach college students, and they have a full set of serious opinions on a process they know nothing about. I was worried when I thought I read your suggestion that traumatic births come from merely psychological causes (prior trauma or sex abuse.) But you wrote especially. I would like to underscore this point: traumatic birth is a medical designation, and to keep in mind that it is not just something a previously traumatized person experiences: it can be a result of severe tearing (and please imagine how severe this gets) and all sorts of other complications, many of which are not just psychologically dangerous.

And I always think it is helpful to remind people that the "natural" rate of death in pregnancy was upwards of 10% for the mother. So to act (as Jezebel and Babble did) as if modern medicine has introduced the trauma of birth is-- insane. To think women were not terrified of their odds in previous eras is-- ignorant and inexcusable.