On the morning of 9/11, I was living in Washington, D.C. with my husband, David Frum, then a speechwriter for President George W. Bush. I was six months pregnant with our third child, Beatrice (now nine), and at home with my son, Nathaniel, then seven, who had feigned a stomach ache.

The blog below was written two days after 9/11 and originally appeared in the National Post. It captures very much the emotion and drama those of us felt “on the ground” during that horrific time. In the weeks and months to follow, Washingtonians would experience being stalked by a random sniper; then the threat of anthrax arriving by mail (my children still remembering me warning them away from inspecting the daily delivery, and watching me don rubber gloves to sort through our letters and parcels — with a husband in the White House, this did not seem like an excessive precaution).

A great pall fell over the otherwise gorgeous fall days. Everything during that season seemed at once excessively beautiful and excessively sad. I remember the incredible, fiery display of leaves in (then) Solicitor General Ted Olson’s Virginia backyard — the view which I had from his kitchen as I helped him to answer the literally hundreds of cards and letters he received offering consolation on the death of his wife, Barbara.

In November, still pregnant, I travelled to New York City with our kids to meet up with my mother to hear Bobby Short play at the Cafe Carlysle. I’d never heard Short live, and both my children loved his songs and with David working around the clock in the White House, we felt we needed some sort of happy escape. But lower Manhattan was still smoking: the air was acrid and stung your eyes. We joined the throngs silently passing by and paying respects to Ground Zero, now blocked off by construction fencing.

You emerged from the subway at Chambers Street and then walked south toward the misty gray spirals. It felt spooky: all the once densely populated office buildings were emptied out; some had smashed-in windows and scorch marks. Scaffolding created impediments on the sidewalks. People wore cheap, pharmacy-purchased medical masks over their mouths, as if those would keep out the carcinogens and taste of death. Meanwhile, uptown, Short played his marvelous tunes, and the nascent life in my stomach began bouncing about to his jazzy rhythms.

Weeks later I gave birth with the hospital room’s TV tuned to the bombings of Afghanistan on CNN; months later still, I would be awakening in the night to feed this little life’s urgent, sucking lips and hungry whimpers. As I rocked her and sung quietly to her, I’d be aware of the afterburn of F-16s still patrolling the skies of the capital city. They were regular: I got to know them. I began to say hi to them in my mind: “There you are, Capt. 4 a.m. I was wondering if you would show up. Little late today aren’t we?” Then it all stopped — or not stopped, but began being smoothed away over time.

I’m republishing this article with the hope that those too young to remember that day — or like my own daughter Beatrice, were not even yet born — have some sense what it was like, so they might better understand why this sad anniversary is so important, and why so many still mourn.

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We are all trying to return to normal here in Washington, but it is a state of normality that won’t return. My children are willing it to return, and almost defiantly resuming their games, their playdates, their cartoon-watching. We wish, as my 10-year-old daughter asked Wednesday morning, after waking up in a sleeping bag on the floor of our bedroom, “Today is just going to be like a regular day, right? It’s over, right?”

“Yes,” I said. But it’s not over and it’s not regular.

As I write this Thursday morning, the skies are still quiet except for the occasional roar of a military jet. On Tuesday night we spotted a black stealth bomber overhead; it resembled a hawk protectively circling a kill. The body count rises every hour on the news: the death ticker has replaced the stock ticker. Outside my house there are weird silences punctuated alternately by worrisome sirens and the reassuring noises of a city neighborhood: lawn mowers, jack hammers, garbage trucks. Traffic is tied up on my street because of a reported bomb scare at nearby American University. National guardsmen in combat gear guard the public school two blocks away. Police are stationed at busy intersections. Parents had to show photo ID to enter our Jewish school today, and for the first time the kindly security guard who sits by the door packed a pistol.

Life goes on, and it does not go on.

The heartbreaking stories of those for whom life does not go on are emerging from the rubble. In New York and Washington, we have been exchanging them for the past two days. I suspect there is no one in either of these two cities who has not been personally touched by loss, or is only one removed from such loss. For me the face of that loss is Barbara Olson. Barbara, the vivacious author, television pundit, and beloved wife of Solicitor General Ted Olson, was also a dear friend. Even now, more than 48-hours after her death inside the hijacked plane that crashed into the Pentagon, I find it difficult to accept that she is gone. This is not due to some ordinary refusal to accept death. Barbara’s personality was so large, so generous, so far-reaching that, together with her husband, she was to her circle of friends in Washington what the twin towers of the World Trade Center were to the New York skyline. We are left with this smoking, gaping hole that we simply can’t begin to fathom.

A memorial service for Barbara will be held on Saturday, at which Ken Starr and Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas will give eulogies. Their voices will join thousands of others who will be memorialized on that day, the next day, the day after that…. Perhaps by then the deaths we experienced on Tuesday will feel more real. There will be more faces, more stories, more holes that can’t be filled.

Right now, Washington feels like it is still emerging from shell-shock. There is no other term for it. We lived, quite literally, through a battle on Tuesday. I imagine what we experienced compares to what other generations who have lived through a siege have experienced. You wake up and it seems like any other day. I remember drinking my first cup of coffee and reading the newspapers. Then word came in that there had been a terrible attack. Like millions, I turned on CNN and, with my seven-year-old son — home sick from school — watched as the two turrets of the World Trade Center went up in flames. For those first few minutes, I managed to persuade myself that this was a horrendous — but isolated — incident. It is on television. It doesn’t affect you. But within a quarter hour, the news had broken that another plane had hit the Pentagon; that there was a fire on the mall; that a suspected truck bomb was poised outside the State Department; that the White House was being evacuated.

I immediately phoned my husband, who works as a speechwriter for the president. His office is in the White House compound, inside the Old Executive Office Building.

“Are you getting out?” I asked him, frantic.

“No,” he replied staunchly. “I’m not going anywhere.”

“You must get out!”

“I’m not leaving.”

Five minutes later he called me back, somewhat sheepish. “Um, I’m leaving now. They’re evacuating us, too.”

The news reported that Palestinians were suspected to be behind the attack. My daughter was at her Jewish school. Many of her classmates are the sons and daughters of Israeli diplomats. I had not yet showered. I had not yet brushed my teeth. I threw on some clothes and called my neighbor, whose children also attend the school, and within 10 minutes we were in his minivan, navigating our way northward to the Washington suburb of Rockville, about 10 miles away. My son asked from the backseat, “Is this a war? Is Daddy safe?” Yes, to both counts. So far as we could tell.

The long drive to and from the school will remain, for me, one of the more vivid scenes of the day. We did not know whether or not there would be further attacks on the city. We did not know whether we would arrive at the school and find it damaged; I half-expected to find it surrounded by paratroopers from the embassy. The minivan took on the feeling of a humvee crawling through streets that, two hours ago were utterly familiar and unremarkable, and now were potentially a war zone.

When we reached the school a calm, but serious, evacuation was taking place. Parents were leading their children out of the building. I ran through the halls clutching the hand of my son, hunting for my daughter. Her classrooms were empty. I returned to the main hall where the grade five children had just been led into a chapel to pray. I anxiously scanned the faces. There she was: She turned and — this ordinarily brave little girl, who cries at nothing! — saw me and instantly burst into tears.

Everyone was collected: We returned to the city, going against the cars that were now fleeing in droves from downtown. I could not reach my husband on the cell phone. I had no idea where he was or whether there had been any further incidents in the capital. The radio news focused on the World Trade center and the Pentagon crash, with pauses only for traffic reports, calls for blood donors and the national guard. The city was declared a state of emergency.

When we got home, I immediately turned around and raced to the nearby supermarket. It was closed. I drove a few blocks more to find one that was open. It was packed with people who, like me, had decided to stock up on jugs of water and milk. Lines to the cashiers went halfway down the aisles.

I realized that, at some point that morning, at some point during that drive, I had passed into a mental state I had never before been in: having panicked at the outset, my nerves were now steeled and my senses numbed to whatever else could happen. Here I am in a Safeway, I thought, shopping for supplies in the event of war, and I am strangely serene. At the meat counter a woman asked the shoppers around her as she scanned the selections, “Do you think people buy more expensive meats when they think it’s Armageddon? You know — what the hell?”

“I just got some ribeyes,” I told her. We smiled. Yes, we’re shopping for Armageddon.

But it was when I got home, and had just finished putting the food away in the freezer, that the personal blow of the battle struck. The telephone rang. The voice of a friend, hysterical and sobbing, was trying to tell me something.

“Speak slowly,” I said.

The words finally pushed their way through. “Barbara Olson was on that plane.”

“Dear God. Which one?”

“The one that crashed into the Pentagon.”

We were both quiet.

“Are–are you sure?”

“She spoke to Ted [her husband] from the plane. She called him on her cell phone.”

The numbing that had been seeping through my body, like a slow drip of anaesthesia, overtook me entirely. There was nothing to say, only the ghastly feeling of a pit opening beneath my feet. “Where is Ted?” Not, “How is Ted?” My friend murmured that arrangements were being made to gather at Ted’s house that evening. We hung up. I wondered how many more friends I would lose this day.

The phone rang again — it was ringing every few minutes with everyone checking in with everyone else. This time it was my husband calling to tell me he was with the other speechwriters in a secure building downtown. The White House had set up temporary email and phone lines. He was not sure when he would see me again that night. The news of Barbara left him gasping — and silent.

The children and I said a prayer together. Then we made cookies — I bought the mix on a whim, and it turned out to be a comforting and occupying activity. My son and daughter decided that the cookies would accompany me to Mr. Olson’s house that night. My daughter wrote a note expressing her grief. We listened to the fighter jets passing overhead — “good planes,” I said to them, “planes that are protecting us” — and when my son said he wished he was in Canada with his grandparents “where it is safe,” I told them both gently that they must never be anything but proud to be Americans, and Americans don’t run away.

Later that evening, with the children tucked in safely at a neighbor’s house, I drove to the Olsons’. The 20 or so friends who gathered there were in similar states of denial and numbness. Her death, like all the events of the day, had almost a cinematic quality to it. Who could believe it? It was as if she hadn’t died but an actress playing Barbara Olson had; we half-expected her to come bursting through her front door at any moment, exclaiming, in her wonderful, excited, Texan twang, “My gawd, you should have seen it!”

And, oh, what would Barbara have told us if she could? She would have regaled us with every detail, not sparing sharp observations of those whom she felt “wimped out” when confronted with box-cutter-wielding terrorists, nor failing to praise generously those who acted with courage. She would then have proceeded to give us her assessment of what the president should do and say (and this assessment would be bang-on: morally robust, but also politically shrewd). Most of this she would repeat the next night when she appeared on Larry King.

But of course, Barbara didn’t come bursting through the door. Instead a frozen photograph of her face flashed periodically on CNN with the dates of her life below it. We mingled and wept and prayed for her, surrounded by the collected artifacts of a life that was not just in progress but going full-steam: photographs of her and Ted in silver frames strewn on sidetables and haphazardly pinned to the kitchen bulletin board; beautiful objects — hand-painted plates, Californian pottery — that had caught her eye on some journey and now mutely expressed her lost personality; her two funny, sheep-like dogs foraging amongst the guests, unaware that their mistress would not be coming back. And this, we realized (belatedly, dreadfully), was all we were to be left of Barbara. This, our memories, and the horrific yet noble image of her that we will keep with us always, of Barbara pacing the aisle of the doomed plane, frantically punching Ted’s number on her cell phone, trying, desperately, to do something when others had apparently given up.

Here is what we know, from what Barbara told Ted: The passengers and crew were herded to the back of the plane. Two of the (female) flight attendants had been stabbed. Her haunting, desperate words to her husband were: “Ted, I have the pilot here. Tell him what to do.” Tell him what to do! The line conveys Barbara’s enormous faith in her husband — a faith shared by the president, who chose Ted Olson to argue his case to the Supreme Court last January. And it conveys, too, Barbara’s faith that something, always, can be done — should be done. She was as fearless and determined in the face of death as she was in life; that is not a trait many of us can claim to possess, nor is it one that we are often called upon, if ever, to test. For this reason I couldn’t, can’t, think of Barbara as a “victim”: the very term was something she rejected emphatically in her political beliefs, and I’m certain she would reject it as a description of her death. No, she was a casualty. A casualty of war. And one who died with honour.

We streamed back into the night, aware of how close death had fallen to every one of us. Had one of those planes hit the White House, as the terrorists intended, it might have been my husband I would be mourning that evening. For others, it is their husbands — or their wives, sisters, brothers, mothers, fathers, sons, daughters, and on and on. In the meantime, we console our children and ourselves the best we can. We look to the skies, watch the sun set on a city struggling to be normal again, and know it can’t be so.

Originally published on Huffington Post Canada.

I am a keen consumer of gossip magazines, the trashier and more lurid the better, but I don’t usually bother with celebrity memoirs. Too many of them fall into over-familiar categories: “I Rose, I Flamed Out, Now I’m Back”; “Dropping Names Nobody Remembers”; or the most worthless of them all, “So-and-So’s Guide to Losing Weight/Getting Ahead/Boosting Self-Esteem/Toning Your Ass.”

Rare is the tell-all that tells you anything you actually want to know.

Too often, the celebrity is engaged in image-burnishing. More often, the celebrity ego consumes unending shovelfuls of external validation – and produces too little of the introspection or humility necessary to an honest account of one’s life.

So when I began playing the audio version of Rob Lowe’s recently published autobiography, Stories I Only Tell My Friends, over my car speakers, I wasn’t expecting much. I was driving from Washington, D.C. up to Canada, where my family spends most of every summer. The ride takes some nine hours, and I was on my own.  I’d already finished another, more politically minded audio book. Now, overcome by mid-afternoon sleepiness and facing many more hours of changeless road, I pulled over for coffee, gas, and–what-the-hell–chapter one of Lowe.

I’d bought Lowe’s book based on a weird chance encounter with the actor some months before. My eldest daughter had been cast in a pilot episode of a reality show produced by Lowe about ambitious young people in Washington DC.

The casting represented a very mixed blessing from a parental point of view, reality television not being the future we envisioned for our daughter. My husband and I thought it prudent to spend an evening watching the shooting of one of the pilot scenes, to see what our daughter might be getting herself into.

The shooting took place at Cafe Milano, a restaurant popular with visitors to D.C. In fact, that night the restaurant was thronged with tourists. They all recognized Lowe. Many approached to ask for a photograph or autograph. Lowe repeatedly stopped whatever he was doing or broke off from whomever he was speaking with to grip, smile and pose. He was unfailingly polite, genuinely good-humored.  He seemed to take his role as the public Rob Lowe very seriously and professionally: Let other celebrity “bad boys” trash hotel rooms or tell their fans to eff off. Not him.

And from what I could glean of the private Rob Lowe, based on just a few short conversations, it was clear that he took ideas and politics seriously as well.  That meant, from a D.C. perspective, that he was not inclined to go off on a self-righteous, Academy Awards style celebrity rant— “I am famous, therefore any view I hold is smart and the correct one.” Instead he asked intelligent, curious questions about current inside-the-Beltway issues or how Washington really worked—and then listened intently to the answers.

Now, as I eased back into the highway traffic, with Lowe’s smooth voice embarking upon his life story, my sole interest in the book was still based on my brief brush with his celebrity. I’d listen to a few chapters until I got to the border and he began to recount his rehab experiences and…

Instead I was completely hooked: Lowe has written not a celebrity autobiography of the usual kind, but an autobiography of a generation.  Late Boomers/Early Generation Xers, call it what you will—it is my generation, and this was the first time I’d heard a contemporary give an honest, entertaining and eyewitness account of the times we’ve lived through.

Of course, Lowe is more than a contemporary: for better or worse, he became iconic of our generation at every step. First, as the break-out Brat Packer who embodied the so-who-the-hell-are-we-anyway-post-Boomer-teenager-without-a-cause. Then he famously went on to turn the ’80s-boom, cocaine-infused fictional world of Bright Lights, Big City into his own personal reality show. When he finally spun out of that, he—not Bill Clinton– launched the era of politics without pants by being caught on the then-new medium of videotape romping naked in a hotel with young women on the eve of the 1988 Democratic convention.

Lowe discovered rehab about the same time as his other red-nosed, sniffling cohorts, in the early 1990s. From there, and now sober, he rediscovered the joy and satisfaction of marriage and children—a joy and satisfaction, as we who grew up in the family-busting 1970s remember, that many of us were led to believe couldn’t exist.  (And Lowe in particular had good reason not to believe it: his parents divorced when he was four; his mother—who seems to have suffered from undiagnosed manic depression—then drove her young boys west to Malibu, under the sway of a quack “doctor” –whom she eventually married–and who was typical of the other quacks of his time, insisting environmental toxins were to blame for her mental illness. Lowe’s descriptions of her assorted “treatments” make for painful reading/listening.) Lowe would go on to renew his all-star acting status as Sam Seaborn, the presidential speechwriter in the acclaimed West Wing series—and later discover that he could play a brilliant comic straightman when his good friend, Mike Myers, cast him as “No. 2” opposite Myers’ Dr. Evil character in the Austin Powers movies. Currently he stars in three hit television series, Brothers and Sisters, Parks and Recreation, and Californication—each one different, and each one capturing its own aspect of the zeitgeist.

Yet, as Lowe’s memoir reveals, even when he was not being officially iconic he was having his own Zelig brushes with fame and history: from the time, as a young boy in Dayton, Ohio, that he snuck under a barricade to meet George McGovern; to when he discovered that the stepfather of one of his high school girlfriends was Cary Grant (he answered the door); to growing up down the street from Martin Sheen, with whom he had a father-son relationship alongside the Sheen boys, Charlie and Emilio; to having his first major audition before Frances Ford Coppola; to a hilarious summer fling with Princess Stephanie of Monaco; to having one of the last phone conversations with John F. Kennedy Jr., just before the latter left to pilot his wife, sister-in-law and himself on the doomed flight that ended in the Atlantic;  to hanging out with Bill Clinton at the White House; to learning that he was on the dry-run flight of American Airlines Flight 77 eleven days before terrorists crashed the same flight (and crew) into the Pentagon on 9/11 (Lowe found this out in 2005 after the U.S. Attorney General’s office informed him that he’d been deposed in the trial of Zacarias Moussaoui).

In the hands of any other celebrity, such anecdotes could be checked off with name-dropping numbness—and usually are. Lowe obviously has the storyteller’s gift (and it’s no wonder that buddy Mike Myers urged him to write this book).  It’s like having drinks with a really entertaining person: the hours pass and you realize you are still sitting there, howling at their stories.  Such as this one—one of my favorites in the book about Hollywood.  Lowe is still a young actor, who has broken out somewhat but not yet in the big way he eventually will. He’s up for a starring role in a movie called “Class,” and has arrived in Chicago for his last screen test for the part:

My competition is an actor who is one of those guys who gets white-hot overnight and is in the mix on a number of big films.  He has everyone in Hollywood talking, and I just hope he doesn’t get this one.  His name is Raphael Sbarge.  We will go head to head in the ballroom of the Chicago Sheraton tomorrow  at 9:30 sharp.

But there is a catch.

My agents want me to fly home to work out some details in my deal before I screen-test, so I go to the production office and ask the secretary to book my flight back to L.A.

‘Hey! Hey!’ a giant bald man is yelling at me through an open door of an office. ‘Get the fuck in here, kid,’ he says waving.

I realize this is Martin Ransohoff, the producer of the movie and a big-time player with hits like Silver Streak … He is the embodiment of old-school Hollywood, from the days before bloodless MBAs and comic-book nerds took the place of the men with big vision and bigger appetites, men who understood and appreciated the lost art of the Grand Gesture. Yeah, sure, Marty might let his nut sack dangle out of his robe as he takes a meeting outside by his pool, but at least he takes his meetings outside by his pool!

‘What the fuck do you think you’re doing, kid?’

‘Um, my agents say I should come home while…’ I manage to get out before being cut-off.

‘Fuck your agents!’

‘Well, sir…’

“Your agents are going to agent you right out of this fucking movie. Close the door and sit down.’

I do as I’m told.

Ransohoff has what looks to be about fifteen strands of hair on his otherwise totally bald head. These strands are swirled together on his crown, but now he is so agitated that he is pulling at the tuft, jerking it straight out in a jabbing motion, revealing it to be at least two and a half feet long.

‘Your agents are idiots. Let me tell you how this goes. Tomorrow morning at nine thirty, unless a fucking 747 hits you on the head, you are going to get this part.’

This is news to me; I thought I was in a real horse race and that the screen test was a huge deal. ‘But what about the screen test?  What about Raphael Sbarge?’

‘Fuck Raphael Sbarge.  There is only one way in this entire fucking universe that fucking Raphael Sbarge will ever play this part.  And that is if you are so fucking stupid that you blow it all at the very last second by flying back to L.A. ’cause your ignorant asshole agents can’t close your deal over a lousy couple of grand a week!  You gonna give this part to Raphael Sbarge over a couple of grand a week?’

‘No.’

‘I didn’t think so! You are a smart kid. I’ll see you tomorrow. Now get out of my fucking office.’

It was sound advice. I got the part, as he promised, and I don’t even remember the screen test.

In my favorite political anecdote, Lowe tells this story about visiting the actual West Wing (during the Clinton administration), now as a full-fledged star in his Sam Seaborn role.  Washingtonians will appreciate how even those at the height of world power can get a little star-struck by, even envious of, their Hollywood counterparts:

…[W]e have taken a break from shooting to receive a special West Wing tour.  We enter through the door at the top of the driveway, just past ‘Pebble Beach,’ where the TV reporters do their live shots. It looks no different from the door I enter at Warner Bros. We pass through hallways that are much smaller and much less crowded than those on our show. And not one person in the building is walking and talking as fast as we do. (I’m told that when staffers catch themselves doing this today in the Obama administration, they high-five and say, ‘We just “West Winged.”’)

So I find myself standing with Aaron [Sorkin] in an extraordinarily well-appointed office, as Sorkin is pitched potential new story lines.

‘You know what you should do, lemme tell you what you should do, you oughtta write a story about how these young kids come here to serve and then just get shit-boxed by the press when they don’t expect it,’ says the forty-second president of the United States, leaning against the “Resolute” desk. ‘I mean some of ’em just have no clue about how tough it can get.’

It is by now a terrific cliché to say that President Clinton is the most charismatic man you will ever meet, but it doesn’t make it any less true.  He is warm, funny, down-to-earth, interested in people of all stripes, and can speak chapter and verse on the minutiae of policy as well as any character Aaron Sorkin ever dreamed of.  He could probably have been a television staff writer as well, had things played out differently.

Lowe is then called out of the Oval Office by a marine in full dress:

‘The national security advisor would like to see you in his office,’ he whispers, with import.

Before I know it, I’m hustled out of the Oval.

‘Why don’t you come by and watch my State of the Union here in the East Room,’ offers the president.

‘Thank you, sir. That would be amazing,’ I answer as I’m shown the door.

Sandy Berger, the national security advisor, is standing in his giant corner office, waiting for me.  And he doesn’t look happy.

‘Why is there no national security advisor on The West Wing?’ growls Berger.

‘Um. Well, sir, I don’t really know. I’m sure at some point there will be one,” I manage, hoping this guy can’t have me audited.

‘I’m just kiddin’ ya,’ he says, breaking into a wide smile. ‘I love the show. We all watch it around here.  Everyone says, “I’m Leo, I’m C.J., I’m Sam” and it pisses me off ’cause I’m nobody!’ We talk for a while as if we are killing time on the golf course instead of eating up clock on a business day in the world’s most important office complex.

And yet it’s not just the stories that make Stories I Only Tell My Friends the remarkable memoir it turns out to be. In a rare turn, Lowe has managed to recount his ups and downs with candor, humor, humility and real insight—and without the familiar vices of malice, self-pity, or self-excuse.  Long after the book had run out (on my return trip, just past Scranton; thanks, RL—you don’t think you could have eked it out a little further? Say all the way to Breezewood?), I found myself chewing over Lowe’s reflections on fame, failure, and the peculiar traits and vices of our shared generation. These reflections humanize the celebrity and, in the end, celebrate the human.

Who would have thought Lowe would have ended up as happy and successful in his middle age as he purports to be?  Certainly not Lowe. As Lowe writes in his conclusion:

My plane is descending into Los Angeles, bringing me back again to the city I wanted so badly to conquer as a child, arriving with my mother in our old Volvo. Los Angeles looks huge from the air, particularly in the setting sun’s magic hour. I can’t even comprehend how many close-ups I’ve shot, standing in that incredible amber light. I see the Hollywood sign now and it, too, is bathed in an almost purple hue. I’ve looked at the emblem of so many people’s dreams so many times that I often don’t even notice it.  But today I do and I realize: It still means something to me.  And I’m glad.

One Virginia teenager enlisted the help of his guidance counselor.  Another recruited Rep. Gerry Connolly (D-VA) to pop the question in an address to his senior class.  However, this new practice does not come without controversy.  Some argue that new expectations put undue pressure on boys who may not want to broadcast their intentions so publicly.  Others have contended that such over-the-top behavior actually takes the fangs out of prom, and allows adolescents to more easily brush off any awkwardness. FF’s Manager-of-the-Editor, Danielle Crittenden, decided to take this question to the professionals:  Tessa Berenson [18] and Fred Messner [18], FF summer interns who only very recently ceased having to worry about the whole business.

I read those Washington Post stories, and I have to admit I was shocked. Since when do prom proposals require more planning and displays of affection than wedding proposals?

It’s definitely a recent phenomenon.  When I was a freshman in high school, there were only a few peacocks who wanted to impress the whole school as much as their date. Now, it’s almost ubiquitous.  Unless both parties are planning on going “just as friends,” a subpar proposal is embarrassing for the boy and disappointing (and possibly offensive) to the girl.

I actually found that elaborate prom asks were far less common than the newspaper purports them to be. While some people went all out to impress (or embarrass) their dates, most people opted for an old fashioned phone call.  Also, at least at my school, crazy proposals occurred more often when a girl asked a guy than vice versa.

Ah, Tessa raises as interesting modern twist: Is this a girl-instigated thing?  And in your experience, how often on average did girls ask boys to prom, rather than vice versa?

I went to an all-girls high school, so we all had to ask the boys! And, as I mentioned before, we tended to be more creative with our asks than they did with theirs.

I am inclined to pin most of the blame on the fairer sex. But as much as we love to impress them, I think guys are more interested in topping each other.  Prom night itself belongs to the girls, but the ask is more for ourselves and our friends.  I can remember quite a bit of friendly rivalry over gaudy prom proposals.  Of course, it was only friendly if we were shooting for different girls.

What were your most over-the-top proposals?  And/or among your friends?

I asked a boy to prom by making him a huge, hot pink poster covered in pom poms and princess stickers that popped the question. I posted it on the doors to our (girls’) school so he would see it when he walked from his adjoining boys’ school for class one morning. (Though, admittedly, I was worried that someone else would ask him so I had texted my boy a few days earlier to ‘reserve’ him for the night. Some of the effect of my grand gesture may have been lost).  A lot of proposals involved using window markers to write on cars or spelling out “PROM?” in icing on baked goods. Other than that, I don’t remember anything particularly elaborate.

My senior year prom date had a class on the 4th floor of our school. I tied about 50 balloons to a sign, stood outside on our athletic field and floated the balloons in the general direction of her classroom.  The only control I had over them was one 60 foot long, half-inch thick ribbon.  It really was a miracle that the sign made it to her window and the string didn’t break.  Balloons are not easy to steer. I’d like to think that made the top 5 that year.  The window markers and baked goods were definitely popular at my high school, but there’s a hands-down winner for the most elaborate.  A friend of mine interrupted a school assembly with an entire a cappella chorus behind him and serenaded her.  That took guts.

Fred, you are lucky you didn’t fly away yourself.  But given the stress associated with asking a date in the traditional way, don’t these over-the-top proposals increase that stress?  I mean, what if the girl/boy says no?

I wouldn’t say that they do increase the pressure.  I know I and most of my friends had a lot of fun with it. Also, you probably wouldn’t go all out for a risky date. If you weren’t positive that the person was going to say yes, then a low-key proposal would probably be your best bet.  Most of the people I know who went with noticeable asks were taking either a platonic friend or someone they were dating.

I think it depends.  I think Tessa would agree that the vast majority of girls would have a tough time rejecting a truly well-done proposal, even if they had to back out of it later.  From the guy’s perspective, that’s best.  By the time prom night actually rolls around, the school has long since forgotten about most prom proposals.  As long as the girl allows the boy to save face in public, there’s no problem with her backing out of it later.  In any case, a prom date really isn’t the best starting point for a girl you’re genuinely interested in.  If a boy is so enamored with a girl that he would be terrified to ask her to prom, he’d probably be better off taking a less risky date and asking the girl out for something less public, and with less pageantry.

It’s true. I know very few girls who would ever actually reject a guy whether the proposal was elaborate or not (I certainly wouldn’t), and even for those girls who would break a poor guy’s heart over a school dance, an elaborate ask makes it very hard to say no.

I’m wondering if this style of prom proposal isn’t a product of our reality-television influenced culture.  Like teenagers feeling they need over-the-top Super Sweet Sixteen parties or Bar/Bat Mitzvahs. Tasteful etiquette just doesn’t cut it anymore?

It’s definitely possible.  In the age of Hummer limos and Snooki, understated elegance has lost some allure.  Obviously, privacy is not a high priority for my generation.  There is undoubtedly a school of thought that says, “If it’s worth doing, it’s worth doing ostentatiously.”

I would attribute the phenomenon more to the fact that prom is such a cliché part of high school, and that all the buzz about ‘prom night’ (dinners, pictures, limos, after-parties, etc) is actually quite silly.  These elaborate proposals seem to me to be a way of exaggerating the already over-the-top qualities of prom and making the whole thing a little bit more of a joke. So, in a way, you could argue that this trend toward elaborate asks takes some of the stress off rather than adding more.

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SOFITEL NEW YORK

45 West 44^th Street, New York City, NY 10036

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“Shocking decline in service since last visit…”

Date of review: May 14, 2011 – New

R. Polanski found this review helpful.

I have stayed in the past many times at this hotel. My occupation is in the world of international finance and it has been my pleasure to enjoy the hotel’s Imperial Suite and all its amenities. In previous visits these amenities have included separate marble shower and bath, high speed internet access, Bose radio, flat-screen television, minibar, l’Occitane shower and hair products, blow dryer, and blow jobs.

On my most recent stay however I was distressed to discover that some important services were no longer available. For example, my room service orders were repeatedly delivered by male and not female staff, despite my specific requests to the contrary. After my first night, turndown service to me was discontinued for some reason, even while I saw evidence that other guests on the floor continued to receive it. When I complained to the manager on duty about this, the gentleman insisted he would look into the problem and offered me a pillow chocolate in compensation but this was not what I wished to be compensated for. Further inquiries into the matter went unanswered. Sadly, the decline in the standards of the Sofitel’s housekeeping was in evidence again on a second occasion during this same visit. In my occupation, I travel frequently and to hotels all over the world. And while English is not my first language, I have found it very easy to communicate my wishes to the maid staff regardless of their local native tongue. Rarely have I been disappointed—and never so much as I was at the Sofitel.

When turndown service finally arrived, it was shortly after noon the next day (!!). Fortunately I had not yet dressed and indeed was just emerging from the separate marble shower. The maid exhibited her professionalism—or so I thought—by knocking hard twice on the door and shouting “Housekeeping.” As frequent travelers –and les hommes du monde in general –know, this is the international practice of alerting a guest to the imminent entry of a maid, and that the guest, if he is male, should immediately remove his pants.

Evidently, I was not quick enough to respond, as the maid in question knocked a second time, exhibiting her eagerness to gain access. Thus I hastened out of the bathroom without pausing even to dry myself, so pleased was I to think well again of the Sofitel and overlook a seemingly temporary lapse in service. Maybe the hotel was busy, maybe it was understaffed on the weekend, we live in times of economic distress, after all… Or so I told myself.

Before I could even reach the door, however, this saucy little maid had already forced her way in to my room!!! It is true that she was less attractive than I had expected–and also experienced during past stays (see above: we live in times of economic distress, after all…). But as a distinguished leader in the world of international affairs, I knew better than to express my disappointment–or to discourage such keen interest and initiative in one so young. Her obvious enthusiasm for her metier indeed touched my heart, and other deep parts of me. The Sofitel housekeeping uniform is one of my favorites of all the chains—and she wore it so smartly. The pale gray of the high collar—so teasingly hiding the decolletage!—offset her tawny flush, no doubt caused by her first encounter with a man of such an immense, and enlarging, reputation. Her pressed white skirt, cinched tightly at the waist, cunningly hid, like Eve’s fig leaf, her free basket of fruits.

I instructed her as to how I wished for her to perform her tasks. I saw instantly that we had a communication issue, so I instructed her again more slowly, this time using gestures and—when she failed to understand those—I attempted to demonstrate to her physically what I wanted. Instead of providing the services requested, however, she became quite rude, pushed me away, and attempted to leave. I had no choice but to grab her again and threaten to report her poor attitude to her superiors. When she appeared again not to understand me (I had begun to think this may be an “act” of hers, like the dead stares of bureaucrats who know perfectly well what you want them to do), I showed her physically again, and again—and once more in the bathroom—what I expected of her. This was, I explained patiently, how the Sofitel turndown service was to be performed. I further suggested that maybe her own linguistic shortcomings had confused her into thinking the phrase meant, quite literally, to “turn down” a guest.

Immediately after this incident, I was called suddenly and unexpectedly away to an important meeting in Europe, and so I did not have the chance to relay any further complaints to the manager before I used the Express Check Out. But I am so shocked and distressed by the decline in the New York Sofitel’s service, I feel compelled to write this review right away in the Air France departure lounge lest any other unwary traveling businessman experience what I did. The poor service—along with the inexplicable unavailability of the chicken sausage on the breakfast menu—would cause me never to return to the Sofitel New York again.

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It’s quite amazing: At one moment the brick stoop is empty. In the next, a rustic white-painted wooden box with a black lid sits waiting for me to bring it in to the kitchen.

I open it with an unfailing sense of awe and wonder.  During the previous week, the elves have been traveling all over the countryside, seeking out the freshest and most delicious things to eat. This night’s offering: some fantastically colored carrots, purple and yellow along with the more familiar orange; filets of local wild flounder, packed in ice; two young chickens, frozen. Under these lie a paper sack of all-purpose flour tied with twine; two tubs of hand-churned butter; a brown bag containing handsome-looking green beans; a scattering of full broccoli heads; and a carton of eggs.

My excitement amuses my children.  Jeez mom it’s just a box of groceries. I examine the carrots.  Compared to their ordinary supermarket cousins, they look truly odd: Aside from the strange colors, they are gnarly and thin—or wait, here’s one that is bulgy and fat.  I rinse and taste it over the sink—sweet, earthy, crunchy–the flavor you think a carrot ought to have but never does.  I offer a sample to our small carrot expert:  she agrees and eagerly asks for another.

There’s less enthusiasm for the fish. No matter: When I cook the filets the next day for their Dad and me—dusting the filets with flour, salt and pepper, and doing not much else to them except sautéing them in some butter—they will taste meltingly fresh and tender.   And as I put the two chickens away in the freezer—weekend supper—I explain to the kids that these chickens actually walked in a farmyard amongst other farm animals in real daylight. (When I get around to roasting them, my husband will be impressed that the muscles attaching their legs to their body require vigorous carving to remove.  They don’t just fall apart. “Maybe they were doing walking lunges around the yard…?” he wonders.)  The flour is unbleached and has been freshly ground in a mill, not a factory using a logo of a mill.  And the eggs have come from the same kind of aforementioned chickens.  I’m especially excited about the eggs. I’d tried my first fresh farm egg last summer, bought on vacation at a rural roadside stand:  It was lighter in texture and color than a store-bought egg, and had much more flavor.  Before then, I hadn’t ever thought much about the taste of eggs or their degrees of egginess. I’d immediately scrambled another for my mother, with whom we were staying, and who was raised in small-town Australia. Her family had kept chickens in the backyard and…

“Oh my gosh, this tastes of my childhood!” she exclaimed before gobbling down the rest of the egg.

As I finish unpacking the box, I realize that I have actually stepped back into my mother’s stories of a pre-refrigerated, pre-factory-farm world of food. She was born in 1935. Australia may have been a bit behind the modern curve by urban American standards of the time, but not by much. She remembers waking up from nightmares to the reassuring, early morning clip clop of the milkman’s horse. Like my little farm box, the fresh bottles were left by the side door and the empties removed (or what we now call “recycled”).  You had an “icebox” not a fridge or freezer—something like the ancestor of the Coleman cooler. If a fruit or vegetable wasn’t in season you didn’t eat it unless it came in a can.  Chickens were—as my mother learned—like house pets you put down less sentimentally than the family dog, and then ate. Beef was universally grass-fed and free-range; agricultural scientists hadn’t yet figured out that it would be more efficient and cost-effective to pen thousands of them together, stuff them full of corn and hormones, and let them marinate in their own manure for a few months before grinding them up into mass-produced hamburgers.

I don’t want to sentimentalize this period, obviously.  And nor would my mother.  In a time when cheap cuts of meat were less plentiful than they are today, she and her siblings were never allowed to leave the table until they had choked down their last piece of heart/kidney/liver or worse, rubbery tripe.  There are vegetables to this day I can’t persuade her to eat—squash, for example—because it was served to her as a canned watery mush when she was a child.

And yet–as I wash and put the box’s contents away–I’m struck by how much of what we are calling today the “farm-to-table” movement is really just a modern re-imagining, or re-invention, of a less industrialized time.  The elves (okay full-disclosure: they are not really elves) who deliver my weekly container work for a nascent web-based company, Arganica Food Club.   Like dozens of similar companies now popping up around the country, Arganica organizes food from regional farms for city-dweller consumption.   Every Sunday I am sent an email with a spreadsheet attachment that lists the coming week’s offerings.  Most of it is seasonal produce and locally raised meat, but amongst the suppliers are also artisanal dip- and cracker- makers, bakers, pasta impressarios, and even pre-fab homecooked meals for the time-pressed.  I check off what I want, email it back, and then the order appears on my doorstep a few days later.

These companies are a natural progression from the now ubiquitous urban Farmer’s Market: instead of waiting for the weekend—or whatever day of the week is officially declared Market Day—I can have the farmer’s market brought to me.  Not that I don’t like going to the Farmer’s Market—there are still some products I can get only there that I can’t get online (a local guy makes pastas and sauces that are to die for; ditto another stall that sells delicious cured meats).  But essentially Arganica and others are doing what even Whole Foods is now too big to do: deliver truly fresh, truly local, truly organic foods that still taste of the place they were grown in.

In that sense we have reached maybe the perfect juncture of old and new: We have the technological abilities (read: modern refrigeration, appliances and online shopping) to achieve the maximum benefit—and enjoyment—from locally grown, fresh food.  And the increasing awareness of this type of food’s health benefits have led to a growing consumer demand, one that small companies such as Arganica are scrambling to meet.

But maybe the biggest remaining hurdle fresh food advocates face is the pervasive perception that to eat locally and healthily is somehow “elitist”—not to mention more costly and time-consuming than buying fast or processed meals.   The minute you purchase an organic apple, you are suddenly lumped among NPR-listening, NYT’s crossword-puzzle-doing, out-of-touch-with-the-common-man liberals. As a conservative—in the robust, Teddy Roosevelt tradition—I am perpetually gobsmacked to find myself on the side of the political fence with people who are enraged that Michelle Obama is trying to introduce healthy foods into public schools—or insist that the right to be obese and eat junk food can be found somewhere in the Constitution. When you think about it, these arguments against preparing meals from scratch are nonsense.

Often an example given is the McDonald’s $1 meal, which we are assured is essential to low-income budgets: Imagine a single mother hauling her children in for breakfast before school drop-off, on her way to work.  No food prep needed during the morning madness when she’s trying to get the kids dressed and ready to leave.  If she has two kids, she spends only $3 (plus tax) on breakfast for the whole family.

Now compare the price of the $1 meal—along with its zero-nutritional value and the future health problems it’s going to create—to a box of Cheerios (“Honey Nut” if you prefer the sweet version). An 18-oz box costs approximately $3.00 at a chain supermarket.  One box contains approximately 17 servings–which works out to about 18-cents per serving, not including milk.  So add in a 1/2 cup of milk—priced at an average of $4 per gallon—and that comes to an additional 12-cents per serving, or 30-cents total per breakfast.  The “prep time” to pour cereal and milk (presuming the kids can’t do it themselves?) surely amounts to less time than it takes to go to a restaurant, stand in line, and pay for the meal.  And less money as well when you factor in gas or transportation costs to the restaurant. I could do the same exercise with lunch or dinner.

Then there’s the “time and convenience” excuse.  We are told that working parents these days are too busy to cook.  And even if they have a spare moment or two, they are certainly too exhausted to prepare a meal

But this argument too doesn’t hold up after a few minutes thought: Maybe never in the course of human history has a society had “more time” than ours to prepare and eat food. And yes, I’m including working single mothers and “dual-income earning” families here.  It wasn’t so long ago that you couldn’t eat a meal without lighting a stove—with firewood or coal.  And back then, it was common for everyone in the household to work and do chores, including children.  There were no microwaves, no electric stoves, no refrigerators, no food processors, no convenience stores or supermarkets. Every single item of food had to be cleaned and prepped from scratch using manual tools. The day ended with lightfall, so you’d better have it all done by then.  And even with the advent of better technology and lighting,  I don’t think an Edwardian or Depression-era household—or a 1950s housewife for that matter—enjoyed  “more time” than we do today. The sheer easiness and convenience of modern life has simply allowed us to busy ourselves in different ways, liberated from the once all-consuming daily tasks of domesticity. And thus we have drifted away from learning very basic, useful household skills.

So while it may seem easier to order in a pizza, or zap a pre-fab mini-meal in the microwave, it’s not really so.  How much extra effort does it really take to get together a bowl of salad (especially given that lettuces now come pre-mixed and pre-washed)?  Or boil fresh beans and toss them with some salt, oil and lemon? Or, as I noted with the fish filet, dust it with some flour and seasoning and fry it or broil it for a minute or two?  You can do the same with simple cuts of chicken and beef. Or put on a pot of pasta and in the space of time it’s cooking whip up very simple homemade sauce.  There’s an app for that.

Then do the economics for dividing the costs of the fresh ingredients among three or four people—for most dishes I doubt it will come out to much more than a large take-out Domino’s pizza.

The problem is that we’ve persuaded ourselves—as we surf the internet, download movies, check our email and play games on our phones—that preparing food from scratch is as awesome and time-consuming as knitting our own sweaters.  Who would even bother to do that?  It’s true that planning fresh meals does take a certain amount of ingenuity and creativity to avoid repetition—moreso than cruising the prepared food aisle or ordering the number 4 with Diet Coke, thanks.  And yet, that’s what makes the emerging farm-to-doorstep market so exciting—and in the end, so easy.

By putting the farm order forms online, you can order your groceries at your convenience—and also have the time to brood over the choices as you check your email or quickly google search a recipe. Arganica, like other sites, even posts fast recipes for that week’s seasonal harvest.  When the food arrives, you’ve already thought the meals through.  And now you don’t need to go to the supermarket for several days. What’s more, everything you make will taste delicious.  Anyone who has grown even so little as a cherry tomato on their patio knows the difference between the fresh-plucked juicy version versus the red cannonballs that fill supermarket bins in January.

I’m wondering, then, if farm marketers haven’t made a mistake by focusing on the homey, nostalgic aesthetic of another era.  At a certain level it makes sense: that customers receive their weekly deliveries hand-packed in wooden crates and paper sacks is a powerful psychological sales tool against the shiny, shrink-wrapped products of mass-produced food.

But I wonder if a better economic strategy wouldn’t be to package fresh farm products in a more contemporary way.  Americans are innately forward-looking.  They want the next good thing, not the good thing of 30 years ago. I’m sure there’s a way to box the food in a “green” container that looks hip and urban—a hint of retro, but not too much. Like the funkily patterned, reusable shopping bags now on sale everywhere—or even something in a smartphone aesthetic: What would an app for a farm-to-table delivery service look like?  Go from there.

Now excuse me while I go trim that broccoli for tonight’s dinner.

Follow Danielle on twitter @DCrittenden1

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But now his bossy wife and her government minions want to tell you what to eat. Just like your mother when she said you couldn’t have dessert until you’d finished your peas.  Except more sinister.  Way more sinister.

This is the latest paranoid fantasy being hatched by my compadres on the right: that, in an effort to fight rising and dangerous levels of obesity amongst Americans, Big Mother is going to come into your homes, snatch that breakfast soda out of your pudgy hands, and force feed you a fresh carrot from the White House garden.

Rush Limbaugh warned his listeners on Nov. 9:

Anyway, Michelle Obama’s on this big obesity kick, right?  Gotta eat healthy stuff, gotta eat the garbage that she grows in the garden, nothing but fruits and vegetables…Michelle Obama wants to spend $400 million to combat food deserts.  She’s all upset that the only food available to poor urban people are convenience stores, the 7-Elevens.  What did Biden say, you can’t go in one without finding an Indian?  Yeah, that’s what Joe Bite Me said.  So she’s complaining about food deserts, and Michelle Obama wants to punish Big Food and Big Retail for not putting quality food stores in poor neighborhoods, right?  And that’s why there’s an obesity epidemic, right?

And Big Mother ain’t stopping there. She’s going after your children, too.  She wants to undermine your parental authority and tell them what to eat:  no more greasy pizza slices, deep-fried processed chicken parts, transfat-injected “cake” substances, and high-fructose soft drinks in their school cafeterias.

Sarah Palin recently boasted on her Twitter feed that she would defy a supposed Pennsylvania state cookie ban:

“I’ll intro kids 2 beauty of laissez-faire via serving them cookies amidst school cookie ban debate; Nanny state run amok!”

That tweet publicized a Palin speech at Plumstead Christian Academy on Nov. 9. “I look at Pennsylvania and I think of sweets – I think of Hershey. Then I think, how dare they ban sweets from school here.”

In a surprising departure from her reputation for strictest truth, Palin mischaracterized Pennsylvania’s proposed nutrition guidelines. Sweets are not banned from Pennsylvania public schools. The state’s department of education will however recommend that schools consolidate in-class birthday parties to one per month – and that parents sponsoring the parties be asked to ensure that healthier eating options are made available to children.

What’s also surprising is that Palin described her cookie giveaway as an introduction to laissez-faire. Palin did not charge for her cookies. (To be precise: she did not charge an additional price, above her reputed $75,000 speaking fee.) Handouts are okay, so long as they come from Mama Grizzly.

Interviewed on Laura Ingraham’s radio program before Thanksgiving, Palin expanded on her thesis that junk food = freedom:

Take her [Michelle Obama’s] anti-obesity thing that she is on. She is on this kick, right. What she is telling us is she cannot trust parents to make decisions for their own children, for their own families in what we should eat. And I know I’m going to be again criticized for bringing this up, but instead of a government thinking that they need to take over and make decisions for us according to some politician or politician’s wife priorities, just leave us alone, get off our back, and allow us as individuals to exercise our own God-given rights to make our own decisions and then our country gets back on the right track.

Currently, more than 72 million American adults face serious medical consequences because of their weight. Nearly 17% of children aged 2-19 face the same risks because they are clinically obese. Obesity and being overweight are most likely to afflict the poor and racial minorities.

Palin might not have noticed much adolescent obesity during her visit to Plumstead Academy. Plumstead is located in Bucks County, Pennsylvania, the nation’s 76th wealthiest county, and is 90% white. Besides, her visit occurred after school hours, at 7:30 in the evening.

But the spiraling obesity rates Palin mocks are increasingly having an impact on health care costs, which in turn affects the way we must approach and debate reforms to the health care system.  Those least able to afford health care disproportionately need it in large part because of the unhealthy food they eat – and that is served to their children in government-run schools. We’ve arrived at a point where inner-city children can’t identify common fresh vegetables and fruits, such as cauliflower, tomatoes, and potatoes.

Perhaps you regard it as an intolerable violation of personal liberty for government to campaign for nutritional awareness? What then do we call the federal agricultural subsidies that have helped to lower the price of super-abundant junk food? Can you explain why it’s okay for government to campaign against smoking and in favor of seatbelts? Or do you also oppose those life-saving public safety campaigns? Or is it perhaps that you have decided that everything the Obamas do is so intrinsically wrong that criticism of the Twinkie now makes you un-American?

That last sentence seems to describe Rush Limbaugh’s point of view. Rush recently argued to his listeners that Americans should  be eating more Twinkies and exercising less.

What have I told you about diet and exercise?  Exercise is irrelevant.  What matters in losing weight is what you eat, pure and simple, and how much, nothing more than that.  And everybody tries to tell me I’m wrong, that I don’t know what I’m talking about.  And every time a story comes out on this I am validated, and nobody has ever said, “Rush, you know, you were right about this.”  This is CNN, their Web page:  “For 10 weeks, Mark Haub, a professor of human nutrition at Kansas State University, ate one of these sugary cakelets [Twinkies] every three hours, instead of meals. To add variety in his steady stream of Hostess and Little Debbie snacks, Haub munched on Doritos chips, sugary cereals and Oreos, too.” This is a nutrition professor.  “His premise: That in weight loss, pure calorie counting is what matters most — not the nutritional value of the food.”

Never mind that Limbaugh inaccurately describes Haub’s study (Haub ate fresh fruit and vegetables along with the sugary cakelets).  The headline conclusion Limbaugh draws from Haub’s work may well be, and most probably is, correct. A steady reduction in daily calorie intake results in a steady reduction of weight. Cocaine-taking, chain-smoking models also famously keep the pounds off. Perhaps Limbaugh’s next monologue could promote a cigarettes-and-cocaine diet?

Here we come to the heart of the destructive craziness of what begs to be called, Junk Food Conservatism. Palin, Limbaugh and the others may sincerely believe that “Big Government” is taking advantage of the increase in child and adult diabetes, heart disease and all-manners of obese-related illnesses to trample on our God-given freedom to guzzle soda and eat candy. But in the end, here’s the political message they are sending from their own wealthy, option-filled, Subzero-equipped enclaves to this country’s poorest:

Let them eat Twinkies.

However, if it is possible for a tabloid gossip site to lower itself any further than Gawker habitually does, it scored big today.

Here we have a completely anonymous story, posted less than a week before the mid-terms, by a man who claims he hooked up with Christine O’Donnell on Halloween a few years ago.

Nice timing, bud!  You even managed to get the Halloween news hook in!

I obviously have no idea whether any part of this story is true.  But if it or any part of it IS true, given its explosive effects not only on the election but upon O’Donnell’s career and reputation, Gawker has a duty to come clean (sorry—that may be impossible) or at least verify every sordid fact in it.

It’s a sorry moment in political journalism when we must look towards the National Enquirer as a standard-bearer in reporting ethics.

A thought to consider as you read the story:

Let’s say every detail in it is true. O’Donnell was (and is) a single woman at the time this alleged incident happened.  She did not commit adultery.  She did not become pregnant out of wedlock.  She did not even masturbate. Indeed by the guy’s own telling, she didn’t even violate her views on abstinence — not with him, and not subsequently in the alleged year-long relationship with his roommate.  Yes it’s true she might have violated her own self-professed sexual ethics — getting drunk and giggly and naked, like some 1950s sorority girl — but really!  Is this the standard we are now going to hold public figures to?  Are we really going to get into a public debate about private dating behavior, and whether  or not one sticks to a standard on a consistent basis?

Either way this whole story reeks as a pre-election plant, a completely made-up fiction, and Gawker should own up to the identity of this cowardly sexual creep. If only so that Christine O’Donnell’s older brother can find him and give him a well-deserved punch in the face.

Although I wouldn’t put it past O’Donnell to be able to level that punch herself.

It was, after all, this kind of fear of being branded discriminatory that led a Portland airline agent to clear two 9/11 bombers — including Mohammed Atta — through to their fateful destination in Boston: Four years after the attacks, former US Airlines employee Michael Tuohey said he was still haunted by guilt that he did not act on his suspicions.

“I said to myself, ‘If this guy doesn’t look like an Arab terrorist, then nothing does.’ Then I gave myself a mental slap, because in this day and age, it’s not nice to say things like this,” Tuohey told the Maine Sunday Telegram. “You’ve checked in hundreds of Arabs and Hindus and Sikhs, and you’ve never done that. I felt kind of embarrassed.”

And yet it was exactly that kind of instinct by fellow passengers that initially kept shoebomber Richard Reid off his first attempt to board a Paris-Miami flight on December 21, 2001.  The world was still jittery in the months following 9/11, and travelers were more concerned about their safety than political correctness.  Reid’s disheveled appearance attracted notice; ditto the fact he did not check any luggage for the transatlantic flight.

Reid was cleared to fly, by French security, however, the next day—on American Airlines flight 63—and were he more competent,  and the passengers less alert to his appearance, that flight number would also go down into the annals of successful Islamic terrorist attacks against passenger aircraft.

Three years after the shoe-bombing incident, I experienced my own episode of terrorist profiling (and maybe that’s what we should call it: not “racial” profiling but “terrorist” profiling, because the two are completely different.  The latter does not arise out of irrational prejudice).

Here’s what happened:  In January and February, 2004, there was a flurry of terrorist threats against international flights between London and Paris and Washington; some flights were cancelled; aircraft were grounded and searched; in one instance, F-16 fighter jets escorted a British Airways flight from Heathrow to Dulles.

In March, my husband and I took our three children on a holiday in Europe: our return flight, aboard Air France, connected through Paris’ Charles de Gaulle airport.  We had a three-hour layover before we could board our homebound jet to Washington-Dulles.  After clearing international security and poking around the terminal for a bit, the five of us settled into benches in the empty departure lounge—empty, that was, except for two suspicious-looking men in a bench opposite ours.

I say suspicious because they matched every profile of a terrorist I’d ever read: Both looked to be about 25 or 26, of Arab descent, beards, dressed in the modern Atta traveling fashion of jeans and t-shirts.  Neither had any carry-on bags for an eight-hour flight. One of the men was reading an Arabic newspaper while the other seemed twitchy—he kept looking around, and repeatedly kept pulling out his documents from a small bag to check them over again.  I became fixated on them for the next two hours: I had books and magazines but my eyes kept straying to watch what they were up to.  After a little bit, both men took to pacing nervously—when they weren’t looking over their documents again. I was trying to think of what purpose they would have to travel to Washington:  They were not with family members.  They were obviously not businessmen—and yet they were too old to be students.

I leaned over to my husband, who was absorbed in a book: “Have you been watching these guys?” I asked my husband quietly, keen that the children not overhear me.

“No why?”

I explained what I’d been seeing, and he took to occasionally glancing up from his reading to keep an eye on them as well.  Gradually more passengers began filtering into the lounge as the flight departure grew closer.  Then, promptly at three o’clock, the two men went over to a large window, fell to their knees and began elaborately praying to Mecca.

“That’s it,” I told him. “I’m not getting on this plane.”

“I’m sure it’s okay,” he murmured back. “They would have been pretty thoroughly checked by security.”

“The shoebomber was checked by security.”

“Let me go speak to the people at the Air France desk.”

There was a very French-looking security man: white bushy hair, a big white moustache, and a girth that suggested he enjoyed his duck confit and lunchtime Bordeaux as much as his other fellow citizens of the Republic.

He listened to my husband, nodded, glanced over at the two men, then came over to speak to me.  I stepped away from the children, who were all pre-occupied with their electronic playthings. I reported everything I’d watched and he listened gravely—I could not tell whether he thought he was dealing with a hysterical mother or not.

“Madame, I can assure you that no aspect of security has been overlooked on this flight.”

“Why are you so certain.”

He smiled slightly.  “Because I am privy to security measures that I cannot discuss with you.  French security is not so—ahh—let me say it is different from American security. Let me repeat: this is a very safe flight.”

Over his shoulder I watched the two men join the boarding queue: they looked actively jumpy by this point.

“And what happens if we don’t want to get on.  Can we change to another flight?”

The security guard excused himself for a moment, spoke briefly with the gate crew, and returned to us.  “There is a flight tomorrow morning.  It would be our pleasure to change you to that flight if that is your preference.  No charge of course.  But you will have to wait for us to remove your bags from the plane.”

My husband and I discussed it between us.  He was prepared to go ahead but equally okay to cancel out of the flight if I was that nervous; I felt a little embarrassed by my fears.  Then I looked at the bent line of the heads of my children, fighting imaginary enemies on their toys.  Was I going to trust their fates to the assurances of an airline security guard?

“If we stayed, we could get a room at one of the airport hotels, take the train in to Paris for dinner, and return here tomorrow morning,” I proposed.  “That wouldn’t be so bad—”

“No.”

“The alternative,” I continued, “would be for you to have me digging my nails into your forearm for eight hours…”

We waited for our bags to be removed from the plane.  The children were delighted at this turn of events.  They had never seen Paris.

The next day we had a pleasant flight home.  And the flight we had rejected landed without incident. So, did we do the right thing?

Certainly every one of us acts self-protectively, weighing the risks of any given situation. I have never since refused to get on a plane for fears of another passenger—but then, I’ve never been confronted again with such suspiciously acting travelers on a flight that had recently been under terrorist threat.

Now, nearly seven years later, and in the wake of the Juan Williams incident, I ask myself: Would I make that same decision again?

Without question. And I hope I would still have the guts to report a troubling passenger to an airline clerk without fear that I might be branded racist.

MyEvite

You Are Invited to Bristol & Levi’s Wedding!

Saturday, October 30, 2010
5 p.m.
Church on the Rock, Wasilla
Reception to follow
7 p.m. to “whenever!”
Tailgaters Sports Bar and Grill

You’re invited! Please click on the invitation to see more details and to RSVP (no sign-up required).

View invitation

http://www.myevite.com/partypage/bristol-levi-wedding

Sarahpalin,

Will you attend Bristol & Levi’s wedding?

• Yes
• No
• Decide Later

Will you attend Bristol & Levi’s reception? (Note $25 pp surcharge)

• Yes
• No
• Decide Later

Did you know you can now send a wedding gift with MyEvite?

• See registered gifts
• I do not want to send a gift.
• Ask me later.

From: Bristol Palin
Subject: Bristol sent you a message
Date: July 30, 2010 11:33:27 AM AKDT
To: Sarah Palin
Reply-To: Bristol Palin

MyEvite

Bristol Palin sent you a message:

Mom, Dad:

I kno u guys r still ttlly pissed but Levi and I rllyrlly hope u will come to r wedding. The date sux I knocuzurdoin a lot of travel 4 the midterms but that was the only day we cd get the church & bar together. We luv u ok?xoxoxoxb

From: Bristol Palin
Subject: Bristol sent you a friendly reminder
Date: July 30, 2010 9:52:48 AM AKDT
To: Sarah Palin
Reply-To: Bristol Palin

MyEvite

Sarahpalin,

You have not replied yet to Bristol & Levi’s Wedding Invitation. Please click on link below to reply.

View invitation

From: Bristol Palin
Subject: Bristol sent you a message
Date: August 7, 2010 3:18:55 PM AKDT
To: Sarah Palin
Reply-To: Bristol Palin

MyEvite

mom this is getting SUPER AWKWARD!!!!! the only time u talk 2 me is like thru the frikkin today show. u and dad HAVE to attend ok??? like we’re not even asking for a gift. Just b there OK?!or we r gna b all over the frikkin enquirer again.

From: Bristol Palin
Subject: It’s not too late to send a wedding gift to Bristol & Levi!
Date: September 12, 2010 7:22:36 AM AKDT
To: Sarah Palin
Reply-To: Bristol Palin

MyEvite

Did you know you can now send a wedding gift with MyEvite?

• See registered gifts
• I do not want to send a gift.
• Ask me later.

From: Bristol Palin
Subject: Bristol sent you a friendly reminder
Date: October 1, 2010 12:34:47 PM AKDT
To: Sarah Palin
Reply-To: Bristol Palin

MyEvite

Sarahpalin,

You have not replied yet to Bristol & Levi’s Wedding Invitation. Please click on link below to reply.

View invitation

From: Bristol Palin
Subject: Bristol sent you a message
Date: October 2, 2010 7:51:13 PM AKDT
To: Sarah Palin
Reply-To: Bristol Palin

MyEvite

Ok mom I kno u have been busy &traveling&watnot but thats no excuse not 2 reply 2 r wedding invitation. for all I kno its going into urfrikkin spam file cuz I dont have ur blackberry address anymore and u blocked me on facebook. I dont want 2 threaten u or go public again but if u dont reply like in 24 hours im calling oprah.

From: Sarah Palin
Subject: Sarahpalin will not attend your event
Date: October 3, 2010 5:42:36 AM AKDT
To: Bristol Palin
Reply-To: Sarah Palin

MyEvite

Sarahpalin will not attend Bristol & Levi’s Wedding.

Skip the lines. Buy all of your party supplies and decorations with the click of a mouse »

“Purpose of your trip today to the United States?” he asked dully, glancing over my documents.

“To become an American citizen!”

My answer, uttered with such obvious enthusiasm, caught him off guard. He fingered my card, and then, with genuine puzzlement, asked me why I would want to become an American citizen.

It was my turn to be puzzled. I pointed to his American badge. “That’s the question the guys in the Canadian booths are supposed to ask me,” I replied. “But you of all people should know why I would want to become a citizen.”

“No, seriously—why?”

For a moment, I wondered if he was asking me the question for immigration purposes—was he trying to catch me in some border-crossing lie?—but when I looked at his face, he seemed honestly incredulous, and his incredulity bothered me.

“Because, like, it’s the greatest country on earth?”

He shrugged and stamped my card. “Have a nice flight.”

I thought of this man when, less than twenty-four hours later, I stood amongst fifty other people from all over the world, raising my right hand and reciting the Oath of Allegiance. We had been summoned to a ceremonial court room in the grand federal court house in downtown, Washington D.C., on the Monday after the July 4^th weekend, 2003.

My husband, kids and I usually escape Washington’s tropical summer heat by traveling to the breezy north shore of Lake Ontario, where my parents have a vacation house. But just before we all packed into the car for that year’s journey, my notice from the INS arrived, informing me that I was due to become a citizen on July 8. It meant I’d have to fly back down to D.C. by myself a few days later —at full fare!—and stay overnight in order to keep the appointment. As I booked my ticket online, wincing at the price of the air ticket, I consoled myself by thinking of the much higher price so many had paid to become Americans.

And standing in that ceremonial court room, surrounded by unbelievably cheesy portraits of past U.S. District Court Judges staring down at us from the high walls (note to art critics: they didn’t paint much better a hundred years ago), I was vividly aware of how many extraordinary prices were being paid at that very moment. Changing one’s identity from Canadian to American hardly feels exotic. Superficially, it’s like flipping channels from Canadian television to American: the faces are the same; the outfits are the same; the hair-dos are the same; the baseball and hockey teams are the same! Just the local weather report is different.

But behind me were Ethiopians and Eritreans. On my left was a man from El Salvador, and down the row, two women from Nigeria. What hellish situations they had left—what family they had achingly left behind, and in what circumstances—was not discernable in their expressions. Their eyes were fixed beamingly on the judge who, looking back upon all of us, said, “You often hear of a party or an organization trying to look like America. Well let me tell you, from where I sit, YOU look like America.” And the room erupted in applause.

I had not known what to expect at the swearing-in ceremony. I half-expected it to be something of a cattle-call, followed by a bureaucratic rubber-stamping of our citizenship papers. But I was completely wrong—and, for all my patriotism, had underestimated my newly adopted country.

Just the night before, at dinner, a friend of mine told me about her experience taking out British citizenship. She had gone to a government office in London, been interviewed by a bureaucrat, who then informed her that her citizenship papers would arrive in the mail. None of that legendary British pomp and ceremony. No judge in wig and ermine. The authorities couldn’t have cared less that she held citizenship elsewhere.

But in the D.C. court room, a full morning’s ceremony had been planned. There were two court staff to greet us and take care of the final bureaucratic forms—they did so cheerfully, and were almost apologetic about having to go over the last bits of paperwork, understanding our impatience to get on with the more momentous swearing-in. Relatives and friends accompanied many of those becoming citizens, and everyone, with few exceptions, had dressed for this special occasion. Most of the men wore jackets and ties, and those who did not were clearly in their best shirt and pants. The women, by and large, wore dresses and skirts. A couple were in jeans but it was possible these were the best garments they owned, and they paired them with blouses—not t-shirts. I was struck by the solemn mood: collectively, we were like brides and grooms before a wedding ceremony. And weirdly, in some way, it was like a wedding ceremony. Until the very moment when the judge entered the court room, this act of changing citizenship could be seen as a mere formality, “a piece of paper.”

But all of us standing there felt and knew it to be much, much more—and if any were left in doubt, there were several speakers to remind us exactly what we were signing up for. A representative from the League of Woman Voters gave us a full account of our new rights—and responsibility—to vote. An official from the Daughters of the American Revolution gave us a historical perspective of what an honor—and also a challenge—it was to be an American citizen. This was followed by an inspirational chat by the then new Asian-American president of the District of Columbia Bar, Shirley Highuchi, about the distance the children of immigrants are able to travel, no matter how humble their origins.

In any other context, these speeches might have seemed anodyne, sentimental, cliché even—but as at a wedding, the hearts and minds of the participants were throbbing ; every word fell upon eager, receptive ears. By the time we were ready to recite the Oath, the room was brimming with emotion. It was like being inside a glass full of water, about to tip over. The words came out, yet unspoken was the full import of what reciting these words means in a post-September 11 world. The judge hinted at this when he spoke of the difficulty many of us might have in becoming an American at this time. Of course, his words only pushed the emotion in the room more fully to the tipping point: we all knew exactly what they meant, and that’s why we were there:

I hereby declare, on oath, that I absolutely and entirely renounce and abjure all allegiance and fidelity to any foreign prince, potentate, state, or sovereignty of whom or which I have heretofore been a subject or citizen; that I will support and defend the Constitution and laws of the United States of America against all enemies, foreign and domestic; that I will bear true faith and allegiance to the same; that I will bear arms on behalf of the United States when required by the law; that I will perform noncombatant service in the Armed Forces of the United States when required by the law; that I will perform work of national importance under civilian direction when required by the law; and that I take this obligation freely without any mental reservation or purpose of evasion; so help me God.

Another Canadian in the row ahead of me wiped a tear from her eye. My head and jaw felt locked in their position—if I were to move them slightly, I felt the whole dam inside would burst. I focused on the sheet of paper with the words of the Oath helpfully typed out in capital letters; I followed the judge’s steady, leading voice; I kept my right hand firmly up; I made sure I pronounced every single word. And at the end of it–“So help me God”–my breath escaped, and tears began to pour from my eyes.

When I returned to Canada that very afternoon, to rejoin my family at the lake, I handed the Canadian immigration official my certificate of US citizenship along with my Canadian passport (the U.S. passport would arrive in a few weeks).

“So you’re dual now?” the official observed.

“Oh no. I’m an American.

“I’ve had to renounce all foreign potentates and sovereigns,” I added.

She smiled and shrugged.

And that’s about all I had to declare.