Reheated (76)

It scarcely needs saying that allowing one’s children to be exposed to the unhappy mental contortions of Professor Barrett would not be the wisest way to spend tens of thousands of dollars. Though conceivably one might use him as an illustration of how minds can come undone.

It’s worth pondering, for instance, what kind of adult might feel a need to signal their virtue, or what they imagine as virtue, habitually, and in such ostentatious ways. I mean, if you’re about as virtuous as you think you ought to be, given whatever circumstances, why would you spend time and effort putting on a show? What kind of person feels compelled to seem virtuous – to pretend to be more pious than they actually are – and to a degree that involves contortions like those above? At risk of sounding ungenerous, I think it’s a telling activity. A warning of sorts.

Needless to say, Ms Jones has dozens of blue-tick Twitter followers, many of whom are her peers in ‘progressive’ institutions of one kind or another, merrily gushing about her “courage” and capacity for introspection, her glorious humanity, her “brilliant soul.” Her tale, we’re told, is “beautiful and moving.” And none of those applauding apparently raised an eyebrow at a self-involved woman shattering the lives of her three small children, and her husband, in order to concentrate on herself even more than before.

It turns out that nothing says blurring gender lines – and being totally cool with whatever your child chooses – like pre-emptively hiding away anything with footballs on it. Mr Deitcher did, however, ensure that his young son had access to dolls: “Once my son could walk, I paraded him through the park while he rolled his baby doll down the sidewalk in its stroller. I felt accomplished because he mirrored being a caretaker.”

At which point, it’s perhaps worth mentioning that readers’ comments are not welcome at the Today site; and Yahoo News, where the item above is also published, is “temporarily suspending article commenting.” This, we’re told, is in order to “create a safe and engaging place for users to connect over interests and passions.” Yes, we will engage and connect by not talking about things.

It does often seem that people writing on certain topics, and with certain political leanings, are to be spared the indignity of discussion or disagreement. Say, people who use their own small children as a political experiment. Or whose list of things deemed “too masculine” includes a shirt with a tractor on it, owning a Ford car, and, obviously, manual labour.