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The fantasy of dating a Republican Voting habits aren't a proxy for character

A political red flag? (Credit: Jason Whitman/NurPhoto/ Getty)

A political red flag? (Credit: Jason Whitman/NurPhoto/ Getty)


June 20, 2023   7 mins

More than 20 years before the advent of Tinder, an MTV show called Singled Out offered an unwittingly prescient insight into the dangers of algorithmic dating. The premise was simple: a dating pool of 50 potential suitors milled around in a sort of human holding pen, while an eligible bachelor (or bachelorette) sat behind a velvet curtain that blocked the candidates from view. The featured contestant would then make a series of binary choices — older or younger? tall or short? commitment or nah? — narrowing the dating pool by process of elimination.

This is where things got hairy: with each selection, the rejected partners would exit past the person doing the picking, who would see their faces for the first time. The point was torment, obviously: behold the sea of beautiful people you just canned for totally arbitrary reasons. The potential for regret in this moment was so powerful that the show eventually introduced a new gimmick, whereby the featured contestant had one “golden lifesaver” that could be used to save a passing reject.

In the era of dating apps, users are of course spared the anguish of a physical confrontation with all the people they’ve categorically rejected; the algorithm is the man behind the curtain, mercilessly dismissing everyone who doesn’t fit your preferences, out of sight, out of mind. We tell ourselves it is more efficient this way, ordering a human being via the same box-checking exercise we use to build a burrito bowl at Chipotle. We tell ourselves, more importantly, that not doing this is a risky proposition, maybe even a dangerous one. Without the algorithm, who knows what you might end up with? He could be short. Or a Nickelback fan. Or, gulp, a Republican.

Everything’s Fine, a new novel by Cecilia Rabess, seems like a cautionary tale about the dangers of too-indiscriminate, non-algorithmic dating. The relationship in this story is between two people who would never have matched on Tinder: Jess, a progressive and professionally ambitious black woman who works as a Wall Street trader, and Josh, a pragmatic fellow trader who describes himself as a moderate, but who Jess insists (sometimes to his face) is the personification of conservative cishet white male privilege. As a complicating factor, clues littered throughout the book suggest Josh might actually be Jewish — or rather, this would complicate things, if Jess had an iota of curiosity about it, but she doesn’t. Her obliviousness seems to be shared by Rabess herself: the only definitely Jewish character in this book, the main antagonist, happens to be a grasping, greedy, tax-dodging hedge fund manager.

Where other people see humans, Jess sees stereotypes. She is obsessed with voting habits as a proxy for character. If she had a dating app profile, she would emblazon it with one of those “Republicans swipe left” warnings. In this, of course, she would only be doing what the media has lately identified as the sole sensible strategy for selecting a romantic partner: in our obsession with “red flags”, political beliefs have become the ultimate dating dealbreaker. Everything’s Fine has already been cancelled on Goodreads by people arguing that a progressive black character dating a conservative white one is a way to “excuse racists”.

A recent piece in the Atlantic reads out the writing on the wall, straightforwardly advising that politically heterogamous partnerships are a bad idea — “because research suggests that marriages across political or religious lines (when those things matter significantly to each partner) can be less happy, more conflicted, and more likely to end in divorce than marriages where spouses agree on religion and politics”. Note that the caveat appears only parenthetically, as if the eventuality that these things might not matter significantly to each partner is barely worth mentioning.

Indeed, to believe that politics is a mere drop in the bucket of multitudes that each human being contains is not only outré in elite circles, but often cited, contemptuously, as evidence in and of itself of a certain political affiliation. Jill Filipovic, in an essay responding to the Atlantic article, writes:

“There’s an impulse, especially among those on the moderate right, to talk about politics as simply a set of preferences, like what kind of shows you might select on Netflix. But politics, especially in the post-Trump era … reflect entirely different goals and certainly different values, as well as very different ideas about what our country and our world should be, and — perhaps most crucially for a marriage — very different ideas about the rights, rules, and opportunities for women, men, and children.”

It’s a bit of a Kafka trap: push back against the defining importance of politics, and ugh, that’s just what a Right-winger would say. Among progressives, it is increasingly an article of faith that the personal is, and always will be, political; if you don’t think so, well, you’re not one of us.

I suspect, though, that this extremism is less Trump’s fault than Tinder’s. Algorithmic dating is all about finding reasons to write off entire categories of people as undateable — and to be savage about it. If a certain type of human being doesn’t spark joy, then into the bin they go. For women, particularly, to be as discriminating as possible in one’s romantic life is positioned as an act of self-care: you are holding out for what you deserve, and what you deserve is a person who checks every box, meets every criteria. To give an unqualified man a chance represents a failure to respect yourself.

And yet, I’m not sure that intentionally ensconcing oneself in a silo of perfect-on-paper people — and, by extension, seeing the values of everyone who thinks differently as an existential threat — is the best thing for any of us. Filipovic’s essay unwittingly demonstrates the hazards of entrenching oneself in this mindset: how intolerance gives rise to caricature, how stereotypes creep in to fill the empty spaces left by ignorance. Conservative men, in this view, are not just unsuitable partners but actual monsters: “With the demise of Roe v. Wade,” she writes, “a vote for a Republican politician is a vote to criminalise abortion, which is a vote to force women to risk their lives in pregnancy … If a man is willing to vote for that, why would you trust him with your body and your medical decisions? … Is he the man you want making medical decisions for your daughter, or teaching your son what masculinity looks like?

As visions of romance go, this one is absurdly catastrophic, not to mention dehumanising to everyone involved — the conservative men, obviously, but also the women who are depicted as brainwashed traitors to the sisterhood for even considering marrying one. (What of the fact that many of the most fervently pro-life voters are, themselves, women?) Its proponents might want to imagine how they’d feel if the tables were turned — if liberal women were being similarly caricatured and dismissed as amoral, unmarriageable ogres based on their voting patterns alone. In fact, this has happened within living memory: in 1992, the recently-deceased Pat Robertson decreed that feminism was “a socialist, anti-family political movement that encourages women to leave their husbands, kill their children, practice witchcraft, destroy capitalism and become lesbians”. This was news to the happily married non-witchcraft-practising feminists of the world, who rightly roasted Robertson for his ridiculous pronouncement. Had the man ever even met a feminist?

At the risk of stating the obvious, even couples who vote the same way still have differences, political or otherwise; they still disagree, fight, and get divorced. The Atlantic article frets that “fewer than half (47%) of politically mixed married couples report they are ‘completely satisfied with their family life,’ compared with ‘61% of couples in which both spouses are Republicans and 55% where both are Democrats’.” That’s one way to put it; the other way, of course, would be to note that your chances of marital satisfaction are roughly 50/50 whether you pair off within your own political tribe or not, making it a pretty impractical criterion for deciding who to marry.

Of course, this is the type of pragmatic take that Josh is always offering in Everything’s Fine, which inevitably infuriates Jess. “It’s just a hat,” he says, when she discovers a red MAGA baseball cap, a gag gift from a fishing trip, stuffed in a storage bin in the home they share. “It can’t hurt you.”

“But it’s not just a hat,” the book sombrely intones. “It makes Jess think of racism and hatred and systemic inequality, and the Ku Klux Klan, and plantation wedding Pinterest boards, and lynchings … and decades of propaganda and Fox News and conservative radio, and rabid evangelicals, and rape and pillage and plunder and plutocracy and money in politics and the dumbing down of civil discourse and domestic terrorism and white nationalists and school shootings—”

That paragraph continues for practically a full page — there is apparently no malady in the world for which the hat is not an avatar — but you get the idea. It’s all about going to extremes: your Republican vote is literally killing women, your feminist book club is full of lesbian witches, your little red hat might as well be a KKK hood. Josh, of course, is the bad guy for thinking that none of this makes any sense: he’s the oblivious toxic white male who not only brought the hat into the house, but is so blinded by his own privilege that he cannot sense its evil.

Because this is how Jess sees Josh, she treats him terribly, not that she treats herself much better. Her perpetual sense of victimhood, her certainty that she is at a permanent disadvantage owing to her race and sex and middle-class background, leads her to both take advantage of others and to sabotage herself. And while the book ends on an ambiguous note, her relationship with Josh is almost certainly doomed — not because she’s black and he’s white, or because she’s a liberal and he’s a conservative, but because he views her as a person while she views him as a collection of labels. Jess sometimes says she loves Josh, but she doesn’t. She doesn’t even see him.

That inability to look past someone’s labels has always been with us, embodied by the concept of the dating dealbreaker. Sometimes it’s political (“I could never be with someone who votes Republican”), sometimes it’s practical (“I could never be with someone who hates dogs”), sometimes it’s utterly arbitrary (“I could never love a man who wears pants tighter than I do.”) But really, we have no idea who we could or couldn’t love. For all our attempts to plan and predict and control our romantic destinies, human beings have never been good at knowing what — or who — will make them happy. And god, isn’t that terrifying?

In a world where love makes fools of us all, red flags, political or otherwise, operate as a sort of fantasy: a story you tell yourself about what kind of person you are, or perhaps what kind of person you’d like to be, dressed up as a declaration about what kind of person you could never be with. The dealbreaker is a way of imposing order: I know where the line is. I’m in charge. These stories can be comforting. They can be exciting. But that doesn’t make them true.


Kat Rosenfield is an UnHerd columnist and co-host of the Feminine Chaos podcast. Her latest novel is You Must Remember This.

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Bronwen Saunders
Bronwen Saunders
1 year ago

A long time ago, back in the (pre-Tinder) days when Prospect had a problem page, it once published a letter from a distraught reader who had just met the man of her dreams. She went into raptures over how wonderful he was, how handsome, how charming, what a great cook, what a great sense of humour and how much they enjoyed each other’s company. So what was her problem? Apparently he was also “right wing” and “might even vote Tory”. 
The agony aunt, amazingly, agreed that this was a stain on his character that the letter-writer would have to correct or work around if their relationship was to survive. I was so appalled by this that I read the letter to some of my friends and was shocked all over again to discover that some of them actually seemed to empathise with the woman’s predicament: What was she to do? They all seemed blind to the arrogance on display here: the blithe – and blind – assumption by both the letter-writer and the agony aunt that they, of course, held all the right views and had nothing to learn from anybody else, least of all a Tory. What hubris! My brief flirt with Prospect had ended. And my disenchantment with the left had begun. 

RM Parker
RM Parker
1 year ago

Yes, my break with the political left was similar in many ways. It really came down to my inability to keep swallowing two things: the lack of forgiveness for mistakes (or daring to voice nuanced disagreement) and the rebarbative but persistent trait of caricaturing anyone with whom one disagreed.
Political disagreement becomes a mark of deep moral turpitude for that crowd and I finally couldn’t take any more doublethink and witch hunting.

Last edited 1 year ago by RM Parker
RM Parker
RM Parker
1 year ago

Yes, my break with the political left was similar in many ways. It really came down to my inability to keep swallowing two things: the lack of forgiveness for mistakes (or daring to voice nuanced disagreement) and the rebarbative but persistent trait of caricaturing anyone with whom one disagreed.
Political disagreement becomes a mark of deep moral turpitude for that crowd and I finally couldn’t take any more doublethink and witch hunting.

Last edited 1 year ago by RM Parker
Bronwen Saunders
Bronwen Saunders
1 year ago

A long time ago, back in the (pre-Tinder) days when Prospect had a problem page, it once published a letter from a distraught reader who had just met the man of her dreams. She went into raptures over how wonderful he was, how handsome, how charming, what a great cook, what a great sense of humour and how much they enjoyed each other’s company. So what was her problem? Apparently he was also “right wing” and “might even vote Tory”. 
The agony aunt, amazingly, agreed that this was a stain on his character that the letter-writer would have to correct or work around if their relationship was to survive. I was so appalled by this that I read the letter to some of my friends and was shocked all over again to discover that some of them actually seemed to empathise with the woman’s predicament: What was she to do? They all seemed blind to the arrogance on display here: the blithe – and blind – assumption by both the letter-writer and the agony aunt that they, of course, held all the right views and had nothing to learn from anybody else, least of all a Tory. What hubris! My brief flirt with Prospect had ended. And my disenchantment with the left had begun. 

Mark Phillips
Mark Phillips
1 year ago

I am so glad that I am old now. I was a soldier when I met my wife and she was a dyed in the wool hippy. We argued like cat and dog, became friends and argued some more. Eventually we found that the things that united us were of greater importance than the ones that separated us. I had fourteen years of very great happiness until she died aged 47 of cancer. There has never been anyone else. Had we been young today then we would have missed a wonderful life. I feel very sorry for the poor fools who swipe (I can’t remember if it’s right or left; and don’t care) because they don’t like red hair or something equally idiotic and closed minded. They could be missing out on the ride of a lifetime. Pure euphoria (after the arguing).

Charles Stanhope
Charles Stanhope
1 year ago
Reply to  Mark Phillips

What an absolutely splendid eulogy, I thank you.

Hardee Hodges
Hardee Hodges
1 year ago
Reply to  Mark Phillips

Memories of my late wife after some 25 years, she quite a bit younger, 20 years or so. She was a resurrected hippie, me another old troop, now at 83. She was an executive when I met her but becoming fully burned out on that treadmill; I an engineer working in her business area. But we enjoyed the pleasures of life; she became a teacher of special needs kids. We rarely debated politics agreeing to disagree. Our framework was how can we support each other in whatever we chose to do. She went too soon, alas but I still value her counsel.
A chance meeting resulted in a enduring story. Impossible to pre-judge life. I was struck by her love of others. And lucky to have been able to share with her.

Charles Stanhope
Charles Stanhope
1 year ago
Reply to  Mark Phillips

What an absolutely splendid eulogy, I thank you.

Hardee Hodges
Hardee Hodges
1 year ago
Reply to  Mark Phillips

Memories of my late wife after some 25 years, she quite a bit younger, 20 years or so. She was a resurrected hippie, me another old troop, now at 83. She was an executive when I met her but becoming fully burned out on that treadmill; I an engineer working in her business area. But we enjoyed the pleasures of life; she became a teacher of special needs kids. We rarely debated politics agreeing to disagree. Our framework was how can we support each other in whatever we chose to do. She went too soon, alas but I still value her counsel.
A chance meeting resulted in a enduring story. Impossible to pre-judge life. I was struck by her love of others. And lucky to have been able to share with her.

Mark Phillips
Mark Phillips
1 year ago

I am so glad that I am old now. I was a soldier when I met my wife and she was a dyed in the wool hippy. We argued like cat and dog, became friends and argued some more. Eventually we found that the things that united us were of greater importance than the ones that separated us. I had fourteen years of very great happiness until she died aged 47 of cancer. There has never been anyone else. Had we been young today then we would have missed a wonderful life. I feel very sorry for the poor fools who swipe (I can’t remember if it’s right or left; and don’t care) because they don’t like red hair or something equally idiotic and closed minded. They could be missing out on the ride of a lifetime. Pure euphoria (after the arguing).

Brendan O'Leary
Brendan O'Leary
1 year ago

My late wife and I were together for 42 years and disagreed about almost everything. We would never have even met through a tickbox exercise.
We did share an irritation with political obsessives.
Then, as the author notes, the mere fact that you’re not obsessed with politics in minute detail is a red flag to some folk these days – almost always leftists.

Brendan O'Leary
Brendan O'Leary
1 year ago

My late wife and I were together for 42 years and disagreed about almost everything. We would never have even met through a tickbox exercise.
We did share an irritation with political obsessives.
Then, as the author notes, the mere fact that you’re not obsessed with politics in minute detail is a red flag to some folk these days – almost always leftists.

Allison Barrows
Allison Barrows
1 year ago

Apparently, but unsurprisingly, the character Jess is unaware that the KKK, lynchings, segregation, were Democrat criminality. The Republican Party was formed to put a stop to it. What a revolting book. I feel bad for Josh that he has to suffer being in it.

Allison Barrows
Allison Barrows
1 year ago

Apparently, but unsurprisingly, the character Jess is unaware that the KKK, lynchings, segregation, were Democrat criminality. The Republican Party was formed to put a stop to it. What a revolting book. I feel bad for Josh that he has to suffer being in it.

Matt M
Matt M
1 year ago

I’m a hang’em, flog ‘em John Bull Tory of the Old School but Mrs M’s opinions make me look like a mincing metropolitan! Whether it is the secret of a happy marriage, I don’t know but it certainly gives you something to talk to each other about: “have you seen what Meghan and Harry have done now?”

Matt M
Matt M
1 year ago

I’m a hang’em, flog ‘em John Bull Tory of the Old School but Mrs M’s opinions make me look like a mincing metropolitan! Whether it is the secret of a happy marriage, I don’t know but it certainly gives you something to talk to each other about: “have you seen what Meghan and Harry have done now?”

Albert McGloan
Albert McGloan
1 year ago

Claim:”a socialist, anti-family political movement that encourages women to leave their husbands, kill their children, practice witchcraft, destroy capitalism and become lesbians”.
Fact check by PolitiFact : No lies detected.

laurence scaduto
laurence scaduto
1 year ago
Reply to  Albert McGloan

Question: They say they “train” AI programs using the internet as a data base. So doesn’t that include quotes like this?
Answer: We’re in a mess of trouble.

Last edited 1 year ago by laurence scaduto
Thomas Wagner
Thomas Wagner
1 year ago

Apparently, if no appropriate quotes are available, AI makes them up. Then, if you ask where AI got it, it makes up a source. It’s turtles all the way down.

B Davis
B Davis
1 year ago
Reply to  Thomas Wagner

Turtles, indeed, all the way down.
But what difference does it really make? We all do it, of course. We all appreciate the pithy quote to end-mark a small rant or cogent observation, as though, by quoting, we somehow validate the truth of what we just said (especially if the quote is from some acknowledged ‘cogent’ source).
But really…aren’t we all turtles, in that sense? My ‘proclamation’ no better, no worse, no more or less validating than, say, a C.S. Lewis quote…or a bit of Wordsworth….or Dylan Thomas….or Trent Reznor, for that matter?
So why not an AI generated fake quote? (“a rose by any other name!”)
As ‘Stanley Edwards’ put it in his book, “Important Eternal Truths’, “Quotes are like you know what — everyone has one!”

B Davis
B Davis
1 year ago
Reply to  Thomas Wagner

Turtles, indeed, all the way down.
But what difference does it really make? We all do it, of course. We all appreciate the pithy quote to end-mark a small rant or cogent observation, as though, by quoting, we somehow validate the truth of what we just said (especially if the quote is from some acknowledged ‘cogent’ source).
But really…aren’t we all turtles, in that sense? My ‘proclamation’ no better, no worse, no more or less validating than, say, a C.S. Lewis quote…or a bit of Wordsworth….or Dylan Thomas….or Trent Reznor, for that matter?
So why not an AI generated fake quote? (“a rose by any other name!”)
As ‘Stanley Edwards’ put it in his book, “Important Eternal Truths’, “Quotes are like you know what — everyone has one!”

Thomas Wagner
Thomas Wagner
1 year ago

Apparently, if no appropriate quotes are available, AI makes them up. Then, if you ask where AI got it, it makes up a source. It’s turtles all the way down.

laurence scaduto
laurence scaduto
1 year ago
Reply to  Albert McGloan

Question: They say they “train” AI programs using the internet as a data base. So doesn’t that include quotes like this?
Answer: We’re in a mess of trouble.

Last edited 1 year ago by laurence scaduto
Albert McGloan
Albert McGloan
1 year ago

Claim:”a socialist, anti-family political movement that encourages women to leave their husbands, kill their children, practice witchcraft, destroy capitalism and become lesbians”.
Fact check by PolitiFact : No lies detected.

Thomas Wagner
Thomas Wagner
1 year ago

I am a rock-ribbed Republican. My wife is a flag-carrying Democrat. We will celebrate our 50th wedding anniversary in August. Res ipsa loquitur.

Thomas Wagner
Thomas Wagner
1 year ago

I am a rock-ribbed Republican. My wife is a flag-carrying Democrat. We will celebrate our 50th wedding anniversary in August. Res ipsa loquitur.

harry storm
harry storm
1 year ago

Kat you have a gift for writing. Love your columns.

harry storm
harry storm
1 year ago

Kat you have a gift for writing. Love your columns.

Steve Murray
Steve Murray
1 year ago

The human gene pool must be suffering some kind of diminishment by the current idiocies surrounding dating apps. Us guys might like to think otherwise, but in the main it’s the females of the species that do the deciding when it comes to potential mates, and a lot of the most vital clues (such as natural body odour, which plays a role in the mixing of genes determining the future susceptibility of offspring to disease) don’t get picked up until very close encounters.

Mark Phillips
Mark Phillips
1 year ago
Reply to  Steve Murray

Old saying; A man chases a woman until she catches him.

Mark Phillips
Mark Phillips
1 year ago
Reply to  Steve Murray

Old saying; A man chases a woman until she catches him.

Steve Murray
Steve Murray
1 year ago

The human gene pool must be suffering some kind of diminishment by the current idiocies surrounding dating apps. Us guys might like to think otherwise, but in the main it’s the females of the species that do the deciding when it comes to potential mates, and a lot of the most vital clues (such as natural body odour, which plays a role in the mixing of genes determining the future susceptibility of offspring to disease) don’t get picked up until very close encounters.

polidori redux
polidori redux
1 year ago

Humane essay.
“In a world where love makes fools of us all” Says it all really.

Ben Shipley
Ben Shipley
1 year ago
Reply to  polidori redux

And thank god that it does.

Charles Stanhope
Charles Stanhope
1 year ago
Reply to  polidori redux

Not sadly for the author of that quote.

Ben Shipley
Ben Shipley
1 year ago
Reply to  polidori redux

And thank god that it does.

Charles Stanhope
Charles Stanhope
1 year ago
Reply to  polidori redux

Not sadly for the author of that quote.

polidori redux
polidori redux
1 year ago

Humane essay.
“In a world where love makes fools of us all” Says it all really.

Ben Shipley
Ben Shipley
1 year ago

In 32 years, my wife and I have never agreed on anything, much less politics (she’s the rabid right winger), but we’ve also never run out of things to talk about. She never fails to remind that she married me strictly for the sex. Compared to that, the rest is all clutter.

Ben Shipley
Ben Shipley
1 year ago

In 32 years, my wife and I have never agreed on anything, much less politics (she’s the rabid right winger), but we’ve also never run out of things to talk about. She never fails to remind that she married me strictly for the sex. Compared to that, the rest is all clutter.

T Bone
T Bone
1 year ago

I fully support Progressives segregating themselves from Conservatives. In fact, the more they segregate on political lines, the more clear the distinction becomes.

It really presents an opportunity for progressives to showcase Corporate Communalism as the New Enlightenment.

Just look at the beautiful city of Portland, Oregon which has been blessed with the value-added advantages of the Progressive Enlightenment.

Hardee Hodges
Hardee Hodges
1 year ago
Reply to  T Bone

As a consolation, the trend is self-destructing by lack of reproduction. Perhaps why the young must become infected early. But it seems the Gen-Z are learning the hard way and are now questioning things.

Hardee Hodges
Hardee Hodges
1 year ago
Reply to  T Bone

As a consolation, the trend is self-destructing by lack of reproduction. Perhaps why the young must become infected early. But it seems the Gen-Z are learning the hard way and are now questioning things.

T Bone
T Bone
1 year ago

I fully support Progressives segregating themselves from Conservatives. In fact, the more they segregate on political lines, the more clear the distinction becomes.

It really presents an opportunity for progressives to showcase Corporate Communalism as the New Enlightenment.

Just look at the beautiful city of Portland, Oregon which has been blessed with the value-added advantages of the Progressive Enlightenment.

harry storm
harry storm
1 year ago

I guess the author of that idiotic book never heard of Mary Matalin (Republican strategist) and James Carville (Democratic strategist). They’ve been married now for 30 years (just like my wife and me, and we have entirely different interests).

Cathy Carron
Cathy Carron
1 year ago
Reply to  harry storm

Hat’s off to Matalin. Carville is such a snake – he’d be hard to take. There has to be another angle to him to make it worth it : )

Last edited 1 year ago by Cathy Carron
Cathy Carron
Cathy Carron
1 year ago
Reply to  harry storm

Hat’s off to Matalin. Carville is such a snake – he’d be hard to take. There has to be another angle to him to make it worth it : )

Last edited 1 year ago by Cathy Carron
harry storm
harry storm
1 year ago

I guess the author of that idiotic book never heard of Mary Matalin (Republican strategist) and James Carville (Democratic strategist). They’ve been married now for 30 years (just like my wife and me, and we have entirely different interests).

SIMON WOLF
SIMON WOLF
1 year ago

Heard a sycophantic interview last week on Radio 4 with Cecilia where none of the interesting points in the article were raised and the BBC interviewee could barely disguise her identification with Jess

SIMON WOLF
SIMON WOLF
1 year ago

Heard a sycophantic interview last week on Radio 4 with Cecilia where none of the interesting points in the article were raised and the BBC interviewee could barely disguise her identification with Jess

B Davis
B Davis
1 year ago

You sit there in your heartache….Waiting on some beautiful boy to… To save you from your old ways….You play forgiveness…Watch it now, here he comes…He doesn’t look a thing like Jesus…But he talks like a gentlemen…Like you imagined when you were young…
When we were young…
And when we were young we wanted to date a cheerleader…or the HS Quarterback….or maybe the point guard on the BBall Team (everybody loves Billy!)….or maybe Suzie, with her shoulder-length blonde hair and sparkling blue eyes? And when we were young, we wanted to be with the girl with the windblown, red cape who always had a book….or the one with the purple hair who always struck a pose…or maybe the long, cool woman in a black dress….or or or.
And when we were young we thought in little boxes (on the hillside). That’s really all we saw: those boxes, those checkmarks, and the allure of the safely known & popularly categorized: did she look like Candace Bergen in Carnal Knowledge….as fine as Faye Dunaway as Bonnie…as hot as Hot Lips…as elegant as Bisset in The Deep (does she wear wet t-shirts?)… Did anyone look as cool as Steve McQueen (does he at least have a motorcycle??)
But hopefully we grow-up, at least a bit. And we stop seeing boxes…and we look past the stereotypes…and we throw-away those childish ‘red flags’ and ‘showstoppers’ and ‘never-ever-would-I’ sorting algorithms and begin to see the person beneath the mask, behind the pose…and maybe we even throw away our own mask.
Or…maybe we never grow-up. And we’re always looking to the algorithm to make our perfect life that much more perfect with a perfect partner who does perfect things and thinks JUST LIKE ME in exceedingly perfect ways: he’s passionate about the planet; he thinks dogs are just like people; we both want quartz on our kitchen countertops and an accent wall in our primary (not master!) bedroom; and we both always eat organic and gluten free….we love to binge watch Netflix TV!
God save us.
God save us from the life-sorting programs which promise sparks of joy; God save us from the Experts who always know best what’s best for us. And God give us the unexpected…the heart’s surge…the palm’s sweat….the secret smile…the softest kiss. God give us the ability to love..and to be loved…not for the algorithm checked for for who we truly are.

B Davis
B Davis
1 year ago

You sit there in your heartache….Waiting on some beautiful boy to… To save you from your old ways….You play forgiveness…Watch it now, here he comes…He doesn’t look a thing like Jesus…But he talks like a gentlemen…Like you imagined when you were young…
When we were young…
And when we were young we wanted to date a cheerleader…or the HS Quarterback….or maybe the point guard on the BBall Team (everybody loves Billy!)….or maybe Suzie, with her shoulder-length blonde hair and sparkling blue eyes? And when we were young, we wanted to be with the girl with the windblown, red cape who always had a book….or the one with the purple hair who always struck a pose…or maybe the long, cool woman in a black dress….or or or.
And when we were young we thought in little boxes (on the hillside). That’s really all we saw: those boxes, those checkmarks, and the allure of the safely known & popularly categorized: did she look like Candace Bergen in Carnal Knowledge….as fine as Faye Dunaway as Bonnie…as hot as Hot Lips…as elegant as Bisset in The Deep (does she wear wet t-shirts?)… Did anyone look as cool as Steve McQueen (does he at least have a motorcycle??)
But hopefully we grow-up, at least a bit. And we stop seeing boxes…and we look past the stereotypes…and we throw-away those childish ‘red flags’ and ‘showstoppers’ and ‘never-ever-would-I’ sorting algorithms and begin to see the person beneath the mask, behind the pose…and maybe we even throw away our own mask.
Or…maybe we never grow-up. And we’re always looking to the algorithm to make our perfect life that much more perfect with a perfect partner who does perfect things and thinks JUST LIKE ME in exceedingly perfect ways: he’s passionate about the planet; he thinks dogs are just like people; we both want quartz on our kitchen countertops and an accent wall in our primary (not master!) bedroom; and we both always eat organic and gluten free….we love to binge watch Netflix TV!
God save us.
God save us from the life-sorting programs which promise sparks of joy; God save us from the Experts who always know best what’s best for us. And God give us the unexpected…the heart’s surge…the palm’s sweat….the secret smile…the softest kiss. God give us the ability to love..and to be loved…not for the algorithm checked for for who we truly are.

Christopher Chantrill
Christopher Chantrill
1 year ago

Hmm. Goodreads says that Josh is “preppy.” But is he “fratty?”

Christopher Chantrill
Christopher Chantrill
1 year ago

Hmm. Goodreads says that Josh is “preppy.” But is he “fratty?”

Ralph Faris
Ralph Faris
1 year ago

I do enjoy reading Kat Rosenfield’s writing. In this she rightly criticizes those angry progressives for their carte blanche condemnation of the “other”— those who don’t accept the political gospel of the authoritarian left. But isn’t the reality of the lives of those who condemn men and women for their political views quite different from what they claim. Women say they would never date anyone who voted for Trump or who applauded the Supreme Court’s decision about abortion, but isn’t it the case based on the study that Kat cited that the number of those who are happy in hetero-political relationships and marriages rises to the level of 47 percent? Apparently some progressives virtue signal when with their allies but act to invite relations with those who aside from what they view as repugnant political views are otherwise very fine partners, husbands and wives. Say one thing do another. No?

Last edited 1 year ago by Ralph Faris