In which I feel sorry for Ross Douhat

Ross Douthat wrote what I consider the best response to the latest mini-spate of books and articles bemoaning the death of romance as people become too sensible. In case you have been living in a mayonnaise jar, some lady named Cristina Nehring wrote a book called "A Vindication of Love" calling modern love a "poor and shrunken thing," you know, since feminism and stuff. In a somewhat similar vein, Sandra Tsing-loh got a piece for the Atlantic out of her divorce that is dripping with contempt for "the companionate marriage" and "male kitchen bitches."

Douthat points out that the Nehring and Tsing-loh's narratives obnoxiously projected the neurosis particular to their social background and personal situations onto society in general. And to illustrate his point, he mentioned a few spectacular example of romantic abandon in the news.

Maybe this reversal could start with some creative matchmaking across lines of class and politics. The dutiful, somewhat-boring husbands from Sandra Tsing Loh’s Los Angeles, for instance, sound like ideal soulmates for Kate Gosselin, the soon-to-be-single mother of eight.

And as for Cristina Nehring, who can’t live without being “derailed by love, hospitalized by love, flung around five continents, shaken, overjoyed, inspired and unsettled by love” — well, maybe someone should introduce her to Mark Sanford.

Now why am I feeling sorry for Ross Douhat for writing a funny and smart article I agreed with? Because so many of the comments in response his column were full of hostility and attacks that were all but non-sequitors. Ross is a conservative. His column made fun of Tsing-loh and Nehring as members of the liberal elite. The knee-jerk reaction is to fight back, it seems.

39. Ross misses a fundamental truth on the way to his weekly bashing of the Liberal Elite.

40. Conservative contortionism has reached new heights.

46. Those poor 'post-feminist' husbands. Because once again, it's feminism's fault. Are we feminists also to blame for turmoil in Iran, the coup in Honduras and the economic crisis to boot?

Do you know who is really dissing you, you liberal elite readers of the NY Times? Not Douthat, Nehring and Tsing-loh. Perhaps we just fail to perceive how grievous and misquided the insults are because it's coming from someone we perceive to be culturally 'one of us.' Women, listen to what Nehring is essentially saying...feminism killed romance and therefore is bad for women because we live for luuuuurve. Men...not only did Tsing-loh dismiss you as "kitchen bitches" for doing too much to help around the house, she dissed Cooks Illustrated. Which we all know is the bible of any self-respecting kitchen bitch of any gender or marital status.

What they are saying is not just a distortion of reality, but a reactionary's wet dream. People like Nehring and Tsing-loh are slapping us in the face with anti-feminist claptrap and because they call themselves feminists and are published in the Atlantic and the NY Times, we shrug.

Whoever calls them on their bullshit, conservative or liberal, is alright by me.

We really are different

Liberals kick ass at the most boring computer game in the world. WooT!:

Participants were college students whose politics ranged from "very liberal" to "very conservative." They were instructed to tap a keyboard when an M appeared on a computer monitor and to refrain from tapping when they saw a W.

M appeared four times more frequently than W, conditioning participants to press a key in knee-jerk fashion whenever they saw a letter.

Each participant was wired to an electroencephalograph that recorded activity in the anterior cingulate cortex, the part of the brain that detects conflicts between a habitual tendency (pressing a key) and a more appropriate response (not pressing the key). Liberals had more brain activity and made fewer mistakes than conservatives when they saw a W, researchers said. Liberals and conservatives were equally accurate in recognizing M.

How to interpret results like this?

First of all, it's fascinating because it's just so unexpected. We like to think that the way we arrive at our political orientations is a complex journey. "I read so-and-so, and suddenly the scales fell from my eyes"; "it was then I realized that x value was the most important to me" etc etc. It's rather startling to find that, in the aggregate at least, a factor as simple as "how likely are you to incorporate new information versus acting upon established patterns?" can predict where we are on the left-right spectrum. Since I'm very fond of clever-clever psych experiments that cut through complexity despite simple parameters, I say kudos, UCLA team.

Secondly, tempting as it may be, liberals shouldn't be smug about the results. The important thing this study showed is that liberals and conservatives have different thinking styles, not that one is superior to the other. I'm sure there can be other games where the conservative style trumps. Maybe it will be interesting to rig the same game to see under what conditions conservatives start to win (perhaps increase the frequency of the flashing letters to the point where thinking too much about it decreases performance?).

Thirdly, even though I just said liberals shouldn't be smug, I think there is one instance where it is totally legitimate to use this study to beat the conservatives with like a stick. Next time I hear any variant to that old "Conservatives are from Mars and Liberals are from Venus" trope, I'm going to say "You know there's another way to explain why conservatives and liberals think the way they do..."

(Via the Drumstir)