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I just saw this. Let’s break it down by assuming that you, dear reader, write for DoubleX and found some juicy little studies that might appeal to your oh-so-educated audience of liberal arts-educated secular women, who are the only readers who might matter, because they (like you!) are smart. Please note that this post could also be acceptable at Jezebel. Here’s how you write it:
- Cherry pick your study. Preferably, it should introduce some difference in the brains of believers and non-believers that is genetic in nature. (Feel sorry for the faithful! Bless their hearts, they were born with broken brains.) Do not worry if this study is limited, poorly-done, or contradicted by other research:
“Even when men and women had the same response in the brain, women were more apt to attribute it to something divine, “out of body.” Other scientists have found these limbic tendencies particularly pronounced in adolescent girls, concurrent with the final stages of brain development. As Barry Kosmin, a coauthor of the new Trinity College study says, “That’s why when anybody sees the Virgin Mary, it’s a couple of young girls on a mountainside in Southern Europe.” (Nota bene: This week, Sam Harris—who gained fame by authoring The End of Faith but is by training a neuroscientist—released his new findings on the neural correlates of belief. He told me in this case he found no difference between the workings of the female and male brain.)”
- Remember that every behavior can be explained by the behaviors of prehistoric humans who haven’t left us a whole lot of pesky evidence that might broaden your thesis and make your job harder. For example: back then, women liked bright and shiny things that looked like berries, which is why we like lipstick now, and made every decision on the basis of reproductive success! Men liked to hit things with sticks, which hasn’t changed much (har har)! Evolutionary psychology, when properly reduced, solves all your toothy little writing snaggles:
“Some researchers hypothesize that women are hardwired to believe because of evolutionary imperatives. Belief in God— or the Mount Olympus ensemble cast, or a phalanx of wood spirits, and so on— has long been connected with tribal ritual, and formed the center of communities. Women relied on these communities for the survival of their children, while men were off spearing buffalo, pillaging neighboring settlements— or whatever the caveman business trip furnished.”
- Insert the patriarchy. Never mind those matriarchal societies, they are aberrations and not worth considering. They couldn’t possibly be taken seriously as evidence against your thesis that everything is men’s fault, including religion:
“Not a single major faith is led by members of its female flock, and the more deeply adherent a religious group becomes, the less freedom it offers its women, not to mention power. It’s hard not to compare women sticking with faith to wives confined to bad marriages: They’re so committed to the institution that they’ll willingly shrink under mistreatment just to maintain their own status quo.”
- Assume the contention that science and religion must be opposed in all things is already well-proven, and don’t bring it up.
- Don’t take any of this (interesting, possibly illuminating) research seriously. Make dated jokes:
“atheism is from Mars, Wicca is from Venus.”
- Don’t mention or consider the many, many intelligent men and women who have found that belief is not a way to make one’s life easier, but a life-long struggle from which much of our great literature, art, music, philosophy, film and even *gasp* science are derived.
- End by dismissing women who have the audacity to struggle with said belief as victims, since you have made them so, and put them on the proverbial couch for therapy from the woman who endorsed The Secret. Oprah solves everything.
It is getting so ugly out there for us media types that people are literally spending their own money just to be employed. At something. Anything. Seriously, anything. The Huffington Post!
Abused by editorialists, particularly those at the WSJ. Also known as a “tool” for “writers” who find “empirical evidence” to be “misleading”.
Heh.
I could not have defined snark better than Adam Sternbergh just did:
Where exactly did all this snark come from? Did we simply transform overnight into a nation of venal assholes? I’d argue that slackers adopted irony not as a pose of hipster cynicism but as a defense against inheriting a two-faced world. When no one—from politicians to pundits—says what he actually means, irony becomes a logical self-inoculation. Similarly, snark, irony’s brat, flourishes in an age of doublespeak and idiocy that’s too rarely called out elsewhere. Snark is not a honk of blasé detachment; it’s a clarion call of frustrated outrage…
Consider how much of our public speech—in politics, celebrity, sports—is composed of spin, prevarications, and barefaced lies. If you’re looking for a telltale moment from the last election as to the state of our political discourse, don’t look toward Sarah Palin’s mean-girl snark attacks at the Republican Convention (as Denby does) or to the columns of Maureen Dowd. Look instead at that unguarded moment when commentator Peggy Noonan let slip her true feelings about Palin’s nomination into a hot mike—in contradiction to what she’d just said live on-air. Or consider the oft-made but pertinent point that postdebate commentators reside in “Spin Alley.” When we live in a world where professional analysts on TV can be trusted to simply say what they actually believe, then I think we’ll find that snark will start to turn its own volume down.
He even mentions TWOP: “Any visitor to Television Without Pity (tagline: Spare the Snark, Spoil the Networks), or similar snarky fan sites, can see that its acid-tongued readers are the best fans a culture could hope to produce— informed, demanding, passionate.”
Guys, I am going to MARRY him because he UNDERSTANDS me.
As the Rich Get Poorer, Teenagers Feel the Crunch
C’mon, NYT. COME. ON.
Apparently, by cutting back in a financial crisis, the American consumer is to blame for the collapse of liquidity and the crisis of the American banks. Well, Mr. Bernanke, don’t blame me, I spent my stimulus check! Well, I spent it in Barbados, which totally counts, right? RIGHT?
Maybe not. But I did just order a truckload of winter tights and skirts with money I probably should’ve put into savings, so I’m totally not culpable for any of this.
Funnily enough, plenty of enviros and ‘moral minimalists’ are super-excited: “People are consuming less! Recycling! Taking the bus! Using things until they wear out! COMPOSTING!!” (I speak only from love, my friends. Rah-rah canvas bags!)
Others believe that many Americans could benefit from the recession because it will make us more gracious, politically thoughtful, and appreciative of small pleasures — authorial goddess Heather Havrilesky is one of those.
However, this may be very bad news for consumers and the environment, since the current administration has decided the best response is to joyride the deregulation train at the expense of such unecessary luxuries as clean air and water:
“The new rules” sought by the president, the Post writes, “would be among the most controversial deregulatory steps of the Bush era and could be difficult for his successor to undo. Some would ease or lift constraints on private industry, including power plants, mines and farms.” The new regulations, up to 90 in total, would ease commercial ocean-fishing activities and reduce limits on carbon dioxide-increasing emissions from power plants and pollution near national parks. Environmentalists say the rules “will force Americans to choke on dirtier air for years to come,” while an electricity lobby group said they would bring “common sense to the Clean Air Act.”
I’m so confused. If this whole mess is the consumer’s fault for not spending enough (after spending too much), then why is the better response to give more power to those corporations who have so thoroughly proven that their profits are superior to the preservation of OUR HOME? That’s a weird kind of punishment: “You ate too much candy, little boy, so even though you’ve very sensibly moved on to apple slices because the candy gave you a tummyache, I’m giving Snickers the go-ahead to put some arsenic in the Fun Size candy bars. That’ll teach you to stop eating them!”
Mr President, I am (once again) displeased with your lack of ingenuity, intelligence, and general concern for the people you ostensibly serve. Please don’t let the door smack you on your way out — I know a few people who would volunteer for the privelege.
This is why I don’t admit to reading the NYT Sunday Styles section. (Although I do spend a fair bit of time on other parts of the paper!)
How to write a bogus trend story: Start with something you wish were on the rise. State that rise as a fact. Allow that there are no facts, surveys, or test results to support such a fact. Use and reuse the word seems. (As a writer, I can attest: The word seems is magical, like unicorns! -Ed.) Collect anecdotes and sprinkle liberally. Drift from your original point as far as you can to collect other data points. Add liberally. Finish with an upbeat quotation like “My cat takes priority over the new relationship. Realistically, unless there’s something absolutely amazing about [the woman I'm dating], he wins.”
Maybe Shafer shouldn’t get this indignant. It’s all just shoveling coal for Satan, right?
Well, I could, but I can’t trademark it, ‘cuz this girl already did.
She thinks grammar is hot. So do I. Congressmen, on the other hand…
The differences in usage between the semicolon and the emdash have always confused me; a difficult admission from an English major. But today I got a whole new insecurity — it’s apparently a gender thing as well.
I’ve always been equal opportunity, rolling around in paragraphs with whichever mark suits a particular sentence best, but clearly, I took this decision far too lightly. I know there are softwares which will try to predict your gender if you input a block of text that you’ve written (I’m male, by the way, if my work articles are any indication), but apparently we have evolved so fully that we can do the job with a couple lines of pixels.
Use the comments section to weigh in: is the semicolon too nuanced and “sissified” to be used by men writers? Or would Emily Dickinson’s meandering emdash be the feminine option when punctuating a particularly complicated thought?
Also, would the short, definitive period be considered masculine? The period?
Kate, I’m with you. Not least because Stephenie Meyer is a fellow English major from BYU, and she sort of makes us all look bad.
But I’m curious enough that I have to know what everyone’s talking about, so I’ll admit that I read the first book. And I had such high expectations. After, the premise of emo-teen girl falling in love with a dazzling vampire– no, literally, he has glittery skin– just seemed ripe for hilarity. And in one sense, it was. But it also left me deeply, deeply afraid for the state of the world, and I’ve sort of forced myself to read recaps of the rest of them. It’s been said better by Laura Miller over at Salon, but in a way these books are a handbook for how to be an obsessed tragic heroine sans personality who abandons her friends and family; gives up all senses of self, ambition, and social responsibility; and who is seemingly never happier than when being ignored and/or adored (there’s really no distinction here) by the superior, aristocratic, uber-strong, literally-sparkling hero.
Further browsing turned up Cleolinda’s fantastic snarkfest recap of the series, saving me the trouble of slogging through it. This way, I’m prepared when my mom, bless her and her awful taste in teen-pseudo-goth-romance-fiction, asks me how I liked it. (LOVE YOU, MOM!) Sample phrase:
And then [Bella's] best friend falls in love with her and turns out to be a werewolf, but Bella runs away to save Edward from committing suicide by public sparkling in Italy.”
If that doesn’t tell you why these books are ridiculous, nothing will. There are treasures galore throughout the recap, so you may need popcorn. And if you actually read the books and *liked* them, you will probably be offended.
Anyways, the idea of the most recent (and last) book is that the insecure girl marries the vampire at 19, she gets pregnant, bad things happen, other vampires show up, there are werewolves, I don’t know. Supposedly the baby bit is the worst. I mean, there’s always some level in which a creature growing inside you, even something so coochy-coo as a baby, is a parasite. But in Twiland, normal childbirth PALES IN COMPARISON to what a half-vampire child will apparently do to you. It’s gross, and violent (which are both true of normal human birth), and involves drinking blood and the baby breaking your spine and vampires cutting you open with their teeth (most definitely NOT typical or okay), and AGH I am never having children ever.
It’s a strange turn of events, because isn’t this book for teenage girls and their 35-year-old suburban moms? I would assume it’s a cautionary tale against teen pregnancy (SEXWILLKILLYOUZOMG) if there weren’t a whole bunch of vampires around to turn the Bella’s bloody postpartum corpse immortal. Moral of the story: don’t have sex with vampires, unless you’re married, but even then the mutant child will try to destroy you from the inside, which is ok, because then there’s an excuse to kill you and you want to be a vampire too so you can have crazy supernatural furniture-busting vampire sex foreverandeveramen? Righty-o.
So that’s my take on the book I never read. I guess you can just think of it as treacly harmless fluff, but when there are so many better books out there to read, it’s really tragic that this is the one that gets the attention. Oh, and in case you didn’t hear, they’re making a movie. So, you know, it may be time to reconsider that move to Papua New Guinea. I’m just saying.
