A Quick Survey

     I don’t have it in me to produce an essay today. However, I have something developing that will probably be of interest to a great many people. To get a sense for its impact, I’d appreciate it greatly if my Gentle Readers, and anyone else they can rope in, would answer a few questions about “the oldest funny subject:” sex.

     I’ve written many pieces concerned with sex. Thirty-six of them adorn this site. Though I’m a Catholic, my views on sex differ rather sharply from the teachings of my Church. I’ve been called a “cafeteria Catholic” for that reason. But I maintain that there are good reasons to dispute Church doctrine on this subject.

     So, if you’re willing to help me with my project, please read and answer the following questions, preferably in an email:

1. Are you male or female?
2. Are you currently married?
3. Have you had sex outside of marriage?
4. Do you regard sex outside of marriage as sinful?
5. Do you regard parasexual conduct (e.g., “oral sex,” “heavy petting,” etc.) as morally equivalent to sex?

     That’s all. It’s just a survey, conditioned by gender and marital status. I’d like it to be answered widely enough to be statistically significant, though given the sensitivity of the subject, I’m not hopeful that it will be. I don’t need to know your name, your age, your religious affiliation, or any other details about you. So please don’t include any such details.

     Thank you for considering responding to this request. This post will be at the top of the blog for the rest of the week. Look below it for new material.

All my best,
Fran

Sophie

     Her life started in circumstances unknown to me. All I know of her first two years is that she was neglected. Her humans sent her out to forage for her meals. They left the back door to their house open at all times, so that they didn’t have to be bothered walking her or taking her out to eliminate.

     That family was pure trash. Why they wanted a dog in the house is unclear, considering how little attention they paid her. They had to haul stakes and leave town quickly when their 14-year-old daughter got knocked up by a member of MS-13. They drove off in a big hurry and left Sophie behind them. I’m told she chased their rented truck for a couple of miles before giving up on them.

     A friend of ours who’s involved in rescue work found her and took her in. She told us almost offhandedly about the two-year-old German Shepherd / Husky mix she’d just taken in. I immediately told her we’d take Sophie. My wife Beth gave me one of those looks; I shut her down on the spot.

     Sophie was ours a few days later. She had a little trouble settling in: learning not to pee or poop in the house; adjusting to Rufus, our Newf; learning not to eat the cats’ food; and so forth. But from the start she was as affectionate as if she’d been with us from birth.

     That was the late summer of 2012. Sophie hung on through a lot of changes. We lost Rufus in 2017, to lymphoma. We lost Precious, our Pit Bull Terrier, in 2023, to an untreatable abdominal tumor. We lost several cats. Sophie took that hard. She loved the cats.

     Sophie was my dog. Beth has always been more partial to Newfs. That didn’t bother Sophie. It certainly didn’t bother me.

     Dogs do get old. They do deteriorate and die. But their humans are never really ready for it. I certainly wasn’t.

     For nearly fourteen years I had her companionship and affection. She’d sit in my home office while I worked. I’d take her on walks around the neighborhood, or out in the back yard, where she’d romp around with our other dogs, and sometimes with a neighbor dog. I had her on the sofa beside me, her head in my lap, while I read or watched some sporting event on the idiot box.

     These past few months, Sophie’s joints and nervous system started to degenerate. She lost control of her back legs and her sphincters. As of early in March, she could no longer deal with stairs, even the two steps from our deck to the back yard grass. I told myself she could still get over it. Even if it was against the odds, she still might recover. I knew better, of course.

     Sophie died today, at 12:35 PM New York time. Her breathing stopped and didn’t resume, and that was that. We can’t be sure of her exact age, but our best guess is that she was sixteen years old.

     I’m 74 years old. My age and heritage suggest that I shouldn’t adopt another dog. I don’t suppose I will. I’ll be in mourning for Sophie for quite a while.

Automata And Idiomata

     On occasion I receive compliments for my facility with the English language. It’s a heartwarming thing, as the use and manipulation of symbols of all kinds has been my greatest asset lifelong. At such times I try to exhibit a modicum of modesty by reminding my admirer(s) that English is by far the world’s largest and most complex language. Its vocabulary is well over 2,000,000 words in size. I doubt I have the use of even five percent of that total. Then there’s English grammar and syntax, which we who speak it seldom reflect on, but which are as complex as any rule-based system ever devised.

     But all that, as overwhelming as it can seem, pales in importance before the extent to which communication in English depends upon the mastery of idioms.

     Idiom is a thing generally if vaguely understood. As idioms fly freely in our discourse, we must have both a sense for them and adequate skill at using them. Yet the sheer volume of idioms in even formal communications eludes most ordinary English speakers… until someone like your humble Curmudgeon comes along and points each of them out.

     No, this isn’t a dithyramb to the idiom or the services idioms render to us. It’s a reflection on peace and its requirements.

* * *

     Among the things that have kept peoples apart over the centuries, unintelligibility ranks high. Different countries have different languages. Within those languages they have different idioms. Until very recently, a traveler in a land where his native tongue isn’t spoken had to proceed with great caution. He could trip and fall over an idiom that a technical knowledge of the local tongue could not translate accurately.

     However, owing to the Anglo-American dominance of three key activities – finance, aviation, and computing – English, approximately of the American variety, has become the de facto international language. This is especially fortunate for Americans, who are well known to be unlikely to master a foreign language well enough to speak it fluently. It’s also fortunate for visitors to America from other lands, though they are often surprised at some of our abuses of our own tongue.

     But today, we have access to programs of remarkable power that can translate between any two of the world’s major languages. Google’s free Translate website, in particular, has been a great help to me, and no doubt to others as well. And of course pioneers in artificial intelligence have made great strides in programming their Large Language Models to do much the same.

     Yet beyond all that lies a problem domain that no one had dared to tackle until very recently: the real-time, multi-person, multi-language exchange. Imagine two hundred persons, each of whom speaks a language shared by none of the others, sitting together in a room and trying to converse. Imagine the complexity involved in arranging for mutual comprehensibility. Every utterance by any member of the group would need to be translated 199 times, immediately. Imagine the computing power it would consume.

     That is X, formerly known as Twitter. Persons from every currently spoken language make use of it. Time was, they’d have had no chance of communicating fluidly and comprehensibly with persons of other lands. No longer.

* * *

     AI translation services have matured greatly these past few years. However, AI programs are computing-power gluttons. Massive arrays of CPUs, memory, and storage devices are required for use by a single powerful AI. That’s one of the stiffest limitations on the application of AI programs at this time. Another, infrequently discussed, is the burden the idiomatic nature of human communication puts on such a program, for as I noted earlier, idioms defy straightforward translation.

     Enter Elon Musk. On his own initiative, Musk has dedicated a large fraction of the capabilities of his pet AI, Grok, to providing for the translation of tweets from any known language to any other – idioms and all. Thus, X users can talk to other X users without concern for language barriers. Considering the volume of traffic that flows through X, the processing power required by that application is mind-boggling. Yet Musk has made that translation service free to all X users.

     The enormity of this development defies description. People of widely separated lands are talking to one another, understanding one another, and discovering that they have little or nothing to fear from one another. They’re making friends with persons of nations whose governments are at war with their own. And they’re drawing the implications… no doubt much to their rulers’ dismay.

     It’s not peoples that fight wars. It’s governments – States. Those entities must induce their subjects to fight, for rulers don’t fight in the armies they dispatch. That requires propaganda to make “the enemy” appear evil, even inhuman.

     But fluid communication among the common peoples of nations defeats such propaganda. The State cannot “other the Other” if “the Other” is too plainly just like oneself. That vitiates the war effort at home. States resolved upon enmity toward others will have to deny their people access to X, lest they lose their grip.

     Elon Musk has been hailed for his enterprises SpaceX, Tesla, The Boring Company, and Neuralink, and deservedly so. But his greatest contribution to Mankind may lie in his use of his xAI firm to provide real-time translation services to X’s users. This is the route to peace… and possibly, if I may fantasize for a moment, to the end of that ravenous and wholly destructive institution we call the State.

     Thank you, Elon.

Dominance Displays

     Societies are held together principally by their customs. Laws are far inferior to customs in providing social cohesion. When a nation’s laws are being openly flouted, it’s in the end stage of collapse, not an early one. The degeneration begins with disregard for the customs of public order and social dealing.

     Surely none of my Gentle Readers are unaware of what Islamic immigrants have done to the nations of Europe. Whatever bizarre chain of irrationalities led to their admission, today they’re asserting dominance over the European societies that host them. Their displays mostly defy important customs of public order. The following, cribbed from a Frenchman commenting at X, is a case of note:

     Tonight, I'm really angry and I need to let it out.
     Downstairs from my place, there's a little playground where I like to sit after work.
     There's a gentle cool breeze, I know people in the neighborhood, we chat peacefully.
     But regularly, a group of kids shows up and starts playing soccer.
     At first it was harmless, but the shots got more and more violent, until they nearly hit the little ones who were playing there.
     I took it upon myself to grab the ball and politely asked them to be careful and not shoot toward the younger kids.
     Immediately, a veiled mother (of course) got worked up and told me they weren't moving.
     Yet, just 100 meters away, there's a proper little soccer field perfect for them.
     The exchange turned heated. Then her friends showed up and, all in one voice, they threw at me:
     This is our home here, we're not leaving.
     If a kid gets hit by a ball, that's not our problem
     They won't go to the field they'll stay here and do whatever they want
     It's up to you to leave, not us.

     Here's a sampling of the phrases I had to endure.
     I preferred to leave rather than make the situation worse.

     So is this the France of today?
     Letting people with zero respect dictate their law in our country?
     People who have no business being here acting like everything belongs to them?

     Tonight, my desire for remigration has never been stronger.
     This is my country, not theirs. And I'll do everything to make them understand: they have no right to impose their law on our soil.
     The worst part? I'm almost scared now to go out and run into their husbands, who might be way more violent than they are.

     What country has my France become?
     How did we get here?

     Sorry for the length and the vehemence, but I really needed to vent tonight.

     The commenter never said “Muslims.” It wasn’t necessary; it was clear from the context. Only Muslims in Europe do such things.

     The phenomenon of traffic-blocking street prayers is an aspect of this. Muslims, aware that their host countries are reluctant to do anything about it, are disregarding customs, convention, and courtesy to assert their dominance over the countries to which they’ve immigrated. That makes them the outriders of an invasion: the spearhead of a much larger force that will soon arrive to Islamicize the whole country, sharia law and all.

     Someone must have read them Lenin’s famous maxim: "Probe with the bayonet: if you meet steel, stop; if you meet mush, push." For decades, Europe has been mushy. Muslims are taking advantage – taking over.

     Yes, they’ve been trying it here in America, too. Principally in cities where they’ve concentrated their numbers. Has America turned mushy? Has the “world policeman” ceased to police its own lands? Unclear.

     What’s perfectly clear is that this cannot continue. But it seems that everyone is waiting for someone else to act.

     Were private citizens with guns to gather and forcibly disperse such a group, shooting a few pour encourager les autres, it would probably be deemed excessive. But municipal authorities appear unwilling to act. And indeed, were they to marshal their courage, what would follow? Water cannons? Bulldozers? Tear gas? The bien-pensants would pee their panties. Can’t have that.

     First-World civilizations cannot abide an influx of savages determined to flout all the customs that make our nations orderly and peaceful. Yet Europe has done so, and America isn’t far behind.

     When, then, must we do?

A Pleasant Departure From The Usual Run Of Things

     There’s nothing newsworthy or opinion-worthy for me to blather about this morning, so I’ll refrain from that. But something notable did occur the day before yesterday. I was cheered by it, and knowing that many people need a little cheer in their lives, I thought I might tell my Gentle Readers about it.

     Insurance is a strange sort of good. It’s not a capital good; you can’t use it to produce other goods. And it’s not a consumption good; no one actually “consumes” it, nor wants to do so. It occupies a third category: overhead goods, which we purchase because not to do so would entail unacceptable risk. Insurance shares that category with several other goods we pay for grudgingly, such as the national armed forces.

     Now, it’s uncommon that a vendor of an overhead good should take a personal interest in a customer. Uncommon? Practically unknown. But such vendors are aware that their products and services aren’t actually desired by anyone. They know they need to work to keep public opinion about them positive. That’s a singular challenge for an insurance company, many of whose customers buy their products under coercion.

     Well, on Tuesday I received a thank-you card from my insurance company. My scanner isn’t working just now, so I’ll transcribe the message on it:

We are so thankful for you!

Dear Francis:

     We’re honored that you’ve trusted us to protect you over these many years. It’s our mission to empower you with protection so you can achieve your hopes and dreams.

     A lot has changed in the world since you got your first Allstate policy, but one thing remains the same: You can count on us every day.

     Thank you for being a loyal customer. We look forward to serving you for decades to come.

Sincerely,
Tom Wilson
Chair, President and CEO
Allstate Insurance Company

     I was rather surprised to receive that card. Yes, it’s a little overly earnest, but that’s often how these things go. But it made me think about that first Allstate policy. I took it out in 1975: auto insurance, of course. In 1980 I added homeowner’s insurance. Though those two policies have endured a little alteration, I’ve stuck with them ever since.

     As I said above, no one buys insurance for positive reasons, but rather to avert potential negative consequences. A lot of people “shop” their insurance needs every year or two. I’ve never been inclined to do that. Allstate may not be the cheapest insurer in America, but it’s reliable. When I’ve had to make a claim, I’ve had no problem with the company; their representatives and adjusters are pleasant and fair. Indeed, Allstate has gone to some lengths to make necessary repairs convenient, more so than a lot of other insurers. So I’ve had sound reasons for staying with them.

     But the years do pass quickly. 1975 is fifty-one years ago. That’s two-thirds of my life on Earth. I hadn’t been looking for a thank-you card from Allstate, but I’m pleased that the company’s data-processing systems flagged my longevity and had such a card sent to me. They noticed, though I hadn’t.

     That’s good PR. Really good PR. I don’t think I’ll be switching insurers. Actually, I hadn’t been thinking about doing so before that card arrived, but this is a little extra reason.

     Just a small positive note for anyone who might want or need one. Life isn’t all bills, doctor visits, and dietary restrictions. Sometimes there are refunds, declarations that one is healthy and sound, and literal doctor’s recommendations to eat more chocolate. Yes, really.

     Have a nice day.

Envy And Enmity

     Now and then, there’s a hard but necessary deed to be done. Since World War II, the doer has been the United States of America.

     At such times the U.S. has repeatedly “stepped up.” Have we always done exactly what should have been done? No, not always. But in the great majority of cases, we’ve done what was necessary. We’ve relieved lesser nations of the need to bestir themselves.

     WHOA! Did I just call all the other nations of the world “lesser nations?” Why yes, I did. They are lesser. They cannot do what the U.S. has done repeatedly. And the realization chafes some of them badly:

Dear Donald Trump & America

You are not cool. You are not the good guys. You live in a fucked up Top Gun movie. You believe the self-hype that America is somehow highly revered across the globe.

You are not.

Like any bully, you are despised.

Sincerely,

The Rest of the World.

— The Lucky Heron (@LuckyHeronSay) April 6, 2026

     I feel a certain pity for persons such as the one above. They know they’re inferior: personally, socially, and nationally. That can’t feel good. But rather than strive to match American power and prowess, they prefer to make snide comments. For that I have only contempt.

     Tom Kratman backhanded the above in his trademarked style:

No, moron, we are fully aware that you pussies have bad cases of American penis envy. What you idiots are unaware of is that we're tired of it. We don't care about you anymore. You are not worth the blood of a single redneck private.

So long, sucker.

— Tom Kratman (@TKratman) April 7, 2026

     That had to be said, Tom. Bravo. But I’m sad about it all, for the U.S. bears part of the responsibility for the inferiority “The Lucky Heron” suffers.

     American power has protected Europe and much of the rest of the world for eight decades. In effect, we’ve made it possible for those nations to neglect their own militaries. When a need for intervention arises, they habitually “let the Americans handle it.” It saves money.

     And the rest of the world, observing how tireless we are in dealing with crises abroad, has come to think of us as “saviors in waiting:”

     "There's no food anywhere," said Fanny, a Liberian refugee who had trudged for two days to reach the stadium. "People are dying. The Americans must come. We want peace."

     “The Americans must come.” Why us? Because we always do. That Liberian refugee knew it. We come to the rescue even of peoples that despise us and seek to conquer us. The Christmas Tsunami that ravaged Indonesia was a case in point. Indonesia is a heavily Muslim nation that greatly resented that it owed its relief to a nation of “infidels.”

     We shrug it off. We do what needs doing. We go home with or without the thanks of those we’ve helped.

* * *

     Today at Fox News, we have this striking opinion piece:

     The strategy of the United States toward the Islamic Republic has crossed a threshold that marks the definitive end of a half-century of Western hesitation.
     In a landmark White House news conference, the President — flanked by CIA Director John Ratcliffe and Secretary of War Pete Hegseth — dismantled the long-standing policy of "managed stability" in favor of a strategy aimed at the regime’s structural collapse. By confirming the systematic dismantling of the clerical security apparatus, highlighted by the death of IRGC Intelligence Chief Majid Khademi in a joint U.S.-Israeli strike, and signaling an end to the regime’s unhindered control over strategic corridors like the Strait of Hormuz, the administration has moved past the failed diplomatic cycles of 1979 and 2009.
     While mediators may continue to offer the 'off-ramp' of short-term ceasefires, history warns us that for the mullahs, such deals are never a bridge to peace. They are a tactical survival mechanism designed to shield a nuclear breakout. As this new era of clarity unfolds, the lesson remains: leaving any part of this clerical structure in power, even in a state of 'negotiated' weakness, is not a resolution — it is merely a stay of execution."

     Commentator Goli Ameri has grasped the core of the thing: Iran’s rulers were determined to have nuclear weapons, no matter what taqiyya they presented to the rest of the world. Moreover, they didn’t want nukes just to fondle them and preen over having become a nuclear power; they intended to use them. Their first target would be Israel. That’s been well known for decades.

     Donald Trump is unlike any of his predecessors in the Oval Office. He sees clearly; he does not allow anyone to tell him that things are not how they appear. Moreover, he is unaffected by political considerations. What he feels must be done, he will do. And so it is in our conflict with Iran.

     “The Lucky Heron” and others of his sort see American forces dealing with a threat that’s been allowed to loom for too long, and it infuriates them. They know that their pusillanimous governments lack both the will and the ability to do what the U.S. is doing. They know that they personally would never volunteer for such an effort. Indeed, were their statesmen to tell them that their “social benefits” must be reduced slightly to fund such an intervention, their cries of dismay would deafen the world.

     They know that we are not as they are, and they hate us for it.

     The Iranian conflict will take a while to play out. Brace for more sniveling from “The Lucky Heron” and his friends. America will do what must be done.

     May God forever guard and guide these United States of America.

The Dearest Currency

     If you’ve been wondering why I bothered to repost this 18-year-old piece, it’s because of this superior essay, posted today:

     “Men still don’t do enough housework!” The headlines shout it every few months like clockwork. Another viral study, another think piece, another round of finger-wagging at husbands who supposedly leave too many socks on the floor. I’m sorry, but it’s getting harder and harder for me to muster outrage over laundry when things like the Selective Service System is still at play, registering only men for a potential draft.
     We live in a culture that demands “gender equality now!”—but only in the arenas where it benefits women. The moment real danger knocks, the script flips. Suddenly, biology, history, and cold necessity remind us that men and women are not interchangeable. And nowhere is that truth starker than when war arrives.
     Look at Ukraine in 2022. A nation that had been marching toward progressive gender policies slammed the brakes the second Russian tanks rolled in. Every man aged 18 to 60 was barred from leaving the country. Wives, mothers, and daughters could flee to safety across the border; fathers, sons, and husbands had to stay behind to fight, die, or wait for the call-up. I tweeted that day in raw frustration: “I never want to hear anyone complaining about ‘manspreading’ ever again!” The replies were predictable—some cheered, some seethed—but the point landed. When the gender war meets real war, the gender war loses.

     Please read it all.

     War has a clarifying effect. It compels us to ponder our priorities against a scale whose poles are life and death. That doesn’t make war desirable, nor the appropriate yardstick for all comparisons. But as regards the badly strained relations between the sexes, it makes plain how trivial are feminist whines about men.

     Yes, there are women in America’s armed services. One of them is a young friend whom I’ll call Jane. Jane has been a soldier for barely six months, yet she’s already overseas and functioning in a dangerous, high-stress environment. Her courage and sangfroid are remarkable, the more so as her detachment was hit just yesterday, with multiple casualties and extensive destruction. Her reaction? “I'm a soldier. I signed up for this.”

     So I’m not denigrating our female warriors. Nevertheless, Lisa Britton’s point stands: When war is in prospect, it’s the men that governments round up to be thrown into the furnace. We expect our men to “step up” – and they do:

     If World War III ever breaks out—and the way the world is trending, with proxy conflicts, great-power rivalries, and crumbling alliances, it no longer feels impossible—it will be our sons, brothers, husbands, and boyfriends who receive the call first. They will leave our homes, our beds, our futures, and step into the elite’s power battle. And when they do, the same voices that spent years calling masculinity problematic will suddenly post heartfelt memes about our “real men.”
     We can’t keep doing this. We can’t keep devaluing, blaming and shaming men for everything. It doesn’t look like the expectation of male sacrifice is ending anytime soon, so we must honor, love, and respect our men in peacetime, not just when the sirens wail. That means rejecting the cheap shots—the endless articles blaming men for every social ill, the cultural sneers at “toxic masculinity,” the refusal to acknowledge that male sacrifice still underpins our safety. It means teaching our daughters that a good man’s desire to protect is not oppression but a gift. It means telling our sons that their strength is needed, valued, and worthy of gratitude.

     God bless and keep you, Lisa. What you’ve said has needed to be said for some time now. But don’t expect the promulgators of militant feminism to agree. They’ve made the war between the sexes into an occupation, an income. We can’t expect them to overturn their rice bowls for the sake of honesty.

     Peace is purchased with men’s blood. No other currency will serve. Decent Americans of both sexes – yes, there are two and only two – should keep that firmly in mind, after the conflicts in progress today are a receding memory.

"Moderately Bad Men"

     [This piece first appeared at Eternity Road on August 28, 2008 – FWP]

* * *

     This extraordinary bit of whining by Ellen Tien has been getting a fair amount of play in Blogdom:

     I contemplate divorce every day. It tugs on my sleeve each morning when my husband, Will, greets me in his chipper, smug morning-person voice, because after 16 years of waking up together, he still hasn't quite pieced out that I'm not viable before 10 a.m.

     It puts two hands on my forehead and mercilessly presses when he blurts out the exact wrong thing ("Are you excited for your surprise party next Tuesday?"); when he lies to avoid the fight ("What do you mean I left our apartment door open? I never even knew our apartment had a door!"); when he buttons his shirt and jacket into the wrong buttonholes, collars and seams unaligned like a vertical game of dominoes, with possibly a scrap of shirttail zippered into his fly.

     It flicks me, hard, just under the eye when, during a parent-teacher conference, he raises his arm high in the air, scratches his armpit, and then --then! -- absently smells his fingers.

     It slammed into me like a 4,000-pound Volvo station wagon one spring evening four years ago, although I remember it as if it were last year.

     He had dropped me off in front of a restaurant, prior to finding a parking spot. As I crossed in front of the car, he pulled forward, happily smiling back over his left shoulder at some random fascinating bit (a sign with an interesting font, a new scaffolding, a diner that he may or may not have eaten at the week after he graduated from college), and plowed into me. The impact, while not wondrous enough to break bodies 12 ways, was sufficient to bounce me sidewise onto the hood, legs waving in the air like antennae, skirt flung somewhere up around my ears.

     For one whole second, New York City stood stock-still and looked at my underwear.

     As I pounded the windshield with my fist and shouted -- "Will, Will, stop the car!" -- he finally faced forward, blink, blink, blink, trying, yes, truly trying to take it all in. And I heard him ask with mild astonishment, very faintly because windshield glass is surprisingly thick, "What are you doing here?"

     In retrospect, it was an excellent question, a question that I've asked myself from altar to present, both incessantly and occasionally. What am I doing here?

     Don't misunderstand: I would not, could not disparage my marriage (not on a train, not in the rain, not in a house, not with a mouse). After 192 months, Will and I remain if not happily married, then steadily so. Our marital state is Indiana, say, or Connecticut -- some red areas, more blue. Less than bliss, better than disaster. We are arguably, to my wide-ish range of reference, Everycouple.

     Nor is Will the Very Bad Man that I've made him out to be. Rather, like every other male I know, he is merely a Moderately Bad Man, the kind of man who will leave his longboat-sized shoes directly in the flow of our home's traffic so that one day I'll trip over them, break my neck, and die, after which he'll walk home from the morgue, grief-stricken, take off his shoes with a heavy heart, and leave them in the center of the room until they kill the housekeeper. Everyman.

     Still, beneath the thumpingly ordinary nature of our marriage -- Everymarriage --runs the silent chyron of divorce. It's the scarlet concept, the closely held contemplation of nearly every woman I know who has children who have been out of diapers for at least two years and a husband who won't be in them for another 30. It's the secret reverie of a demographic that freely discusses postpartum depression, eating disorders, and Ambien dependence (often all in the same sentence) with the plain candor of golden brown toast. In a let-it-all-hang-out culture, this is the given that stays tucked in.

     There's lots more, but this is about all your Curmudgeon can stand. It's your turn, Gentle Reader:

• Do you think it likely that Miss Tien is a stunningly perfect woman, sterling of character and exquisite of manner, who would never upset her husband Will with a poor choice of words or a poorly timed remark?
• Do you envision Will as a neglectful, abusive cad, who confines her to their home, deprives her of all but the bare necessities of life, and barks menacingly at her slightest hint of displeasure? Would you find plausible the suggestion that Will has even worse character flaws and behaviors than the ones Miss Tien has described here, or do you think it likely that she's "shot her wad?"
• Might it be possible that Will has a few criticisms to make of Ellen, but is too much the gentleman and dutiful husband to voice them in public?
• Were Will the writer of this article, and Ellen its subject, would it be received as readily by the Oprahfied audience to whom it was first presented?
• If Will were to sue Ellen for divorce, presenting her rant as evidence of spousal abuse, do you think the court would free him of all obligations to her, or is it more likely that he'd be tied to her by bonds of alimony for years to come?

     But enough about poor Will. Will, by the Gospel According To Ellen Tien, isn't a Very Bad Man, just a Moderately Bad Man: "like every other male I know." Your Curmudgeon doesn't go in for a lot of self-disclosure, but he will say this: if Will's worst faults are on record in the column above, the C.S.O. would trade your Curmudgeon for Will in a heartbeat. She'd probably throw in some cash, a couple of draft picks, and a player to be named later, at that.

     But enough about that benighted woman. It's her shrieky column that matters -- and not because it's particularly unusual of its kind. It's standard fare in Oprahfied Women's America. That's the truly disturbing thing about it.

     Oprahfied Women have been taught, mostly by innuendo and implication, that men are low creatures by nature, that the very best of them barely deserves a woman's attention, much less her respect, and that anything and everything men do for their women, or for women in general, is either a move in an exploitative game or a stroke in a campaign to "keep them oppressed." A fair percentage of American women have internalized that message. Because the sexes need one another, it puts a lot of men in a quandary about how to deal with the women in their lives, and renders a lot of women so badly conflicted that they cannot be happy no matter what they do.

     Whatever happened to the old motto, "To his virtues, be kind; to his faults, a little blind" -- ? Like most good advice, it doesn't really matter whether the advisee is male or female; the "his" pronouns could as easily be "her." We are none of us perfect, at least not in one another's eyes. No, not even your humble Curmudgeon; he snores, procrastinates about the yard work, and is provoked to profanity by the perversity of inanimate objects. (Customer-assembled furniture, anyone?) No marriage can be tolerable if one spouse insists that the other must conform to his standards at every waking moment.

     Yet American women have been fed large doses of Utopianism about romance and the married state. Many have come to believe that it's possible to find a "perfect" man. More, they believe a "perfect" man is their due...that if they don't get their due, they've been cheated and have a right to redress.

     Now and then, a commenter here or elsewhere will extol the superior femininity and agreeability of Asian women. Your Curmudgeon knows a few, and they do impress him. Given the porous state of the borders, American women had better look to their levees; the "coyotes" could as easily import Asian brides as unskilled Mexican laborers.