On Buttocks
In some religions, lusting after a woman
is as much of a sin as actually committing an act of adultery. The act committed in one’s mind is little
different from the act itself. Fortunately, I do not follow that line of reasoning.
The other day I was standing in a checkout
line in a Target store behind a trim woman probably in her thirties. She might have attended some sort of
gymnastics, yoga or aerobics group earlier in the day because she was wearing skin
tight work-out pants, accenting a pair of shapely buttocks, which I could not avoid but noticing. Can you blame me for that? With all the news
these days about men taking advantage of women, butt-grasping seems to be a common type of such harassment. But
there is nothing new about it. Read on. The ancient Greeks probably indulged in it.
Years ago, I was chased to the dictionary
when a review of a Broadway show concluded that “the only appealing thing about
the show were its 'callipygian' chorus girls.”
Whoa! Never saw that word before.
And there it was, defined in the Merriam-Webster as coming from the Greek and
meaning “having shapely buttocks.” The Greeks had a word for it! Stop
and think about that for a second.
Buttocks are still just buttocks, the fleshy area behind one’s hips, regardless
of what they look like. There's no functional difference between ugly buttocks and pretty ones. Either kind provide nice cushions when one sits down. But, as soon as some kind of value judgement is applied to them, however, it’s an entirely different
story.
Calling them “shapely” (running back
to the dictionary again), means among other things, being “pleasing.” Pleasing to whom, I ask? Well, the pleasure derived from seeing
callipygian buttocks (I guess that's a redundancy) would seem to be derived from one’s sexual drive, and the
follow up action to being pleased by them, if that drive were not well
controlled, would be to attempt to grasp them.
I have even seen woman’s shorts with hand prints covering their portions
fitting over the buttocks, inviting their being grasped. It may be
intended humorously by the wearer, but others might view it differently.
Among us are some people whose sexual
drive is not well controlled, and who are in a position to get away with doing
whatever they want. None other than Donald J. Trump, on
live TV, famously said “And when you're a star, they let you do it. You can do anything. Grab them by the p... "
And this, my friends, is the core of the problems we are
having with men making unwanted, harassing, sexual advances toward women. They are unable to control their sexual drive
and sometimes are in a position to get away with it, that is until now, when finally most men have come to realize that the women they violate are no longer afraid
to speak up.
The woman in front of me in the Target
check-out line is fortunate that it was well-controlled me standing behind her and not Donald Trump or any
of the other miscreants in the headlines lately.
JL
Is a Puzzlement
I
am puzzled. Though they both have (sort
of) retracted it, Secretary of State Tillerson called the President a moron and
National Security Adviser Masterson called him an idiot. We know what Senators Flake and Corker think
of him and recognize that many, if not most, other Republicans are of like
mind, and are only loyal to him because of his appeal to the gullible
Republican base, necessary for their re-election. There is other evidence that
Donald Trump, while a great pitchman and putter-together of deals, isn’t very
bright. Ask the ghost writer who penned
“The Art of the Deal” for him. Listen to Trump when he speaks “off the cuff” or
when he sends out his early morning “tweets.”
Last week, he chastised Roy Moore’s opponent as a liberal, soft on
crime, weak on the military and not committed to the Second Amendment. None of this was true, but it was what our
nation’s pitchman thought it best to say at the moment, ignoring the fact that his words were lies. Does anyone really believe he really
understands world trade, how our economy works and the art of governance,
despite the words he mouths? Listen to
how repetitive his words often are, and how he depends on embellishing them
with grand-sounding adjectives, attempting to compensate for their lack of
substance.
Looking
back six decades, I recall that teenagers who went off to military academies
did so because they had problems in the regular public schools. Those who could afford it who left the public
schools usually chose one of the many fine private “prep” schools around, but
not the military academies. These “prep” schools (Phillips Exeter, Groton, Pingry, etc.) were available to him and the public
high schools in Queens, where Trump lived, were excellent too, but instead, he was
sent off to a military academy for his secondary education. I wonder why.
Many military academy graduates go on to regular military careers and
some even enter West Point or Annapolis. Not Donald. He never even served in the
military, repeatedly getting medical deferments. Trump went on to Fordham University and the
University of Pennsylvania for his undergraduate work. The business courses he took as his major at
Pennsylvania were offered by their Wharton School, something in which he takes
great pride, since it associates him with one of the nation’s finest Business schools. But I doubt that he has a Wharton degree.
And
here is the puzzle. With this not
particularly distinguished background, Trump entered the real estate
development field, working with his millionaire father. That wasn’t too difficult, and when he went
out on his own, it was with a sizable amount of money provided by Fred
Trump. And he succeeded.
The
real estate development business, especially in New York City (Fred Trump’s
fortune was made in the outer boroughs; Donald chose to operate in Manhattan)
is highly competitive and is populated by some of the shrewdest, most clever,
and occasionally the most dishonest, businessmen in the world. This is the arena Donald Trump entered with
the stake his father had given him. By
all rights, judging by what we have seen from his performance as President, he
should have been an immediate failure.
It would be like a little league team attempting to play against the
World Series champs. But he
succeeded. That is the puzzle.
The
way I see it, Trump made sure to connect himself with advisers and politicians
far smarter than he was, people like Roy Cohn and others who might operate on
the fringes of legitimacy. His venture
into the casino business, in which underworld connections existed until only
recently, should have failed sooner than it did. Depending on the advice and assistance of
others, despite repeated corporate bankruptcies, he managed to build a name for
himself, which turned out to be the primary product he has spent the last
twenty years selling. And this has
proven to be profitable, except that it left his name attached to some less
than savory enterprises in terms of domestic and international financing as well
as in regard to the people with whom he did business.
Usually, when one's success is hinged to others, there usually is a "quid pro quo" involved. Trump provided a name for others to use, and got paid for it. If he developed a project on his own, he shortly sold it, but left his name on it, of course, for a price. But early in the game, how much was his name worth? Perhaps his earliest advisers dealt with him on the strength of his father's wealth and reputation. Certainly, I doubt if Trump, totally on his own, would have been a success. But he never was, I suspect, totally on his own. There were always "others," either advising him or using his name on their ventures. This is part of the puzzle.
Usually, when one's success is hinged to others, there usually is a "quid pro quo" involved. Trump provided a name for others to use, and got paid for it. If he developed a project on his own, he shortly sold it, but left his name on it, of course, for a price. But early in the game, how much was his name worth? Perhaps his earliest advisers dealt with him on the strength of his father's wealth and reputation. Certainly, I doubt if Trump, totally on his own, would have been a success. But he never was, I suspect, totally on his own. There were always "others," either advising him or using his name on their ventures. This is part of the puzzle.
His
latest sale was his lending his name to the Republican Party. Not a Republican, nor even really
understanding the difference between Republicans and Democrats, he became their
Presidential candidate, dragging Republicans into office behind him all over
the country. Looking past his time in
office, I am sure he figured it would be good for his family’s business. After all, his children really don’t know very
much about real estate development, and really, he never did either, but he
can’t be surpassed as a pitchman, a snake oil salesman and someone to make the
gullible believe. And so long as there
are gullible people out there, the will be Donald Trumps to take advantage of
them. Just wait and see the response to
whatever pitches he makes once the forty-fifth President is out of office. They will be huge! Unbelievably, unimaginably HUUUUGE! Or at least, I suspect, he anticipates they will be.
But
as for me, I am still puzzled about how this has happened in the United States
of America. Are you?
Jack Lippman
Knocking Florida
I
enjoy living in Florida. It is a
wonderful place for retirement. But one
should not expect it to be like any of the more civilized states elsewhere it
the county. Because most of the majority of its intelligent
residents are concentrated in a few South Florida counties (Dade, Monroe,
Broward, Palm Beach) and along the I-4 corridor (Tampa and Orlando), they have
little impact on what goes on in the State Legislataure, which is dominated by
conservative country-bumpkins and dim-witted Republicans, making Florida a
third-world kind of place on a level with Mississippi or Alabama.
Case
in point: A few years back the legislature
enacted a law saying that anyone could lodge a protest regarding textbooks used
in Florida’s public schools. If someone felt
that a book was objectionable, their complaint was sent to the School District
involved where a decision as to its propriety was made by the School
Board. Usually the complaints were about
evolution, science, climate change, sexual innuendo, foul language or what
might be taken to be pornographic.
But
that wasn’t good enough for the current version of Florida’s country-bumpkin
legislature! The law was changed so
that instead of the complaint being heard by School Boards, they went into
mediation, where the elected Board has far less influence and the complainer, however "far-out," is given the status of legitimacy. And mind you, one need not have a student in
the public schools to lodge a complaint.
Anyone can do it. And they are
doing it.
They're going after authors with whom they disagree in the same manner the Church, back in 1633, went after Galileo who believed the earth revolved around the sun and not vice versa (along with many of the "real" scientists of his day). Incidentally, and it is a sign of progress, only a small percentage of Floridians still believe the sun revolves around the earth because they see it come up every morning and go down every night. Some are in the State Legislature.
The latest schoolbook complaint is about Ray
Bradbury’s “Farenheit 451” which appeared on a high school reading list and
which deals with the danger of the state getting involved with censorship of
books. My, what a coincidence.
But this is Florida, which looks good on the outside but is internally rotten.
JL
Jack Lippman
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