I experienced yet another burst of joy on behalf of Iranians today as I read this dispatch about the meaning—and more importantly, the feeling—of the post-election demonstrations. The piece, by an Iranian student named Shane M., is very good until the last four paragraphs, when it becomes astonishing. The writer paints an image of a country surprised by itself—by its own spirit and audacity and modernity and intellectualism—and by the dramatic pace of change that was supposed to unfold slowly, almost imperceptibly, until it snowballed. The demonstrations and their attendant forced mixing are described as impromptu street parties, with boys dancing in the headlights of parked cars and a girl hanging out a window like Daisy in the Dukes of Hazzard. “Everyone watched everyone else and we wondered how all of this could be happening. Who were all of these people? Where did they come from?” Shane asks. “These were the same people we pass by unknowingly every day. We saw one another, it feels, for the first time.”

I haven’t been to Iran, though I have tried, and will keep trying, to get there. But in my conversations with Iranians in the U.S. and Afghanistan, I’m always struck by the immense, coiled power that the country—and Persian culture more broadly—seems to hold at its center. There’s that big intelligence, a profound spiritual and aesthetic awareness and a worldview that feels seasoned by centuries of experience, as if the Iranian people were truly the inheritors of their ancestors’ memories. This is why, especially in the case of Iran, I’m against U.S. intervention (and by that I do mainly mean military intervention, Anne, but I mean other things as well, of which more in a minute). It’s not that I’m a pacifist. It’s that I think real change takes time, and that if any country contains within its borders the ingredients of democratic revolution—and if any country understands the merits of a slow burn—Iran does. I don’t think Obama should take up the cause of the protesters more forcefully because I don’t think that will help them. It will weaken their argument, giving cover to the old guard, as others have said, to write them off as Western puppets, which is profoundly not the case. This is an indigenous upwelling of political and social feeling whose strength and longevity have surprised even Iranians, as Shane tells us.

I completely agree, Anne, that there is room for softer forms of U.S. intervention in Iran and places like it. I appreciate the work of Radio Farda and other outlets and groups, including those funded by the U.S. and other Western governments. But like you, I think we’ve lost our touch at this, and I think that ham-handed attempts at StratCom, like some the Bush administration rolled out in Iraq, hurt more than they help. (It should be said that paying Iraqi journalists for positive stories was a Pentagon initiative, and part of the problem here is, of course, the total Pentagon-ization of our foreign policy, which I think is part of what you're driving at when you say we've gotten worse at this kind of thing of late.) That’s not to say that there shouldn’t be more funding, effort and energy devoted to these efforts—I think there should be.

But we’re not there yet. We’re not even where we were during the Cold War. Although you can now follow the activities of U.S. Forces in Afghanistan on Twitter, YouTube, and Facebook (so they say, though I can’t locate their page), we are just beginning to learn how to use the newest forms of new media, and we still don’t know what story to tell about ourselves when we start tweeting. As for democracy at the point of a gun, I would never suggest that Afghans and Iraqis were anything but overjoyed to vote. But the fact remains that in both those places, we didn’t let political change happen at its own pace, and when a political system doesn’t evolve organically, the forces opposing change get a boost. You could argue that we couldn’t afford to wait for organic democracy to emerge in Afghanistan or Iraq. But that unfortunately doesn’t bring those countries closer to what I hope Iran will achieve at some point: an internal democratic revolution that can be claimed and celebrated as authentic and indigenous to the core.

Tags: democracy, iran, iranian elections

Dayo, I disagree that mothers—even single mothers—should be honored on Father’s Day. Moms just got their shout-out a month ago; do they really need another one? Yes, some women serve double duty as both mother and father, and surely their kids should give them extra love on Sunday. But if we systematically turn Father’s Day into yet another celebration of all of the child-rearing and housekeeping that female heads of household take care of, I worry that will inadvertently suggest that there isn’t enough child-rearing and housekeeping to celebrate among dads. To borrow a sentiment from an essay that hardly needs another link since it got so much damn attention the first time, perhaps the way to mold the man you want is to “reward behavior [you] like and ignore behavior [you] don't. After all, you don't get a sea lion to balance a ball on the end of its nose by nagging.” Father’s Day is a great chance to reward the men who do their share of bringing up baby. Let’s not ruin it by giving them their praise with a wink, then turning the conversation back to the “real” parents.

Anyway, mothers aren’t the only single parents out there doing double-duty. And no one’s suggesting we should do something special on mother’s day for widowers or custodial fathers who are raising their kids alone.

Tags: mothers

A friend urges me to tell you that you might want to check out this weekend's call to stand with the people of Iran. Groups are gathering on Sunday at 3 p.m. in select cities to show support for protesters in Tehran. From the Facebook page:

There will be no speakers, no signs, no slogans that might appeal to some and offend others. Just a mass of people, wearing green, and in doing so letting our brothers and sisters in Iran know that though they stand against a powerful regime, they do not stand alone.

Tags: iran, protest

In the past few days, on my own website, my life has been reduced to vanilla pudding. I am dull, devoid of passion, pedestrian, the human equivalent of a “yawning chubby house cat,” says Meghan, summarizing Cristina Nehring’s new book Vindication of Love, the caged bird who forgot how to sing. This is because I am trapped in something that goes by the clinical name of “companionate marriage,” and worse, I like it.

Unlike Sandra Tsing Loh, I can not load my possessions into a trailer and head for the open road. I can not even easily spend an evening giggling with my girlfriends without a lot of complicated pre-arrangements. Unlike Nehring, I can not swoon for the mustachioed stranger without a whole lot of baggage coming down on my head. All I can do, apparently, is bark at my husband to pack the lunches and shove him out of my bed to make room for the whimpering children. In the feminist choice between security and passion, they all say, I have picked the wrong side.

I protest. This “choice” is less something that plagues the whole of womankind than an affliction of artists, and it reappears in various forms. It strikes me as a subtle variation on the equally false choice between madness/creativity and sanity/dullness. For every great suffering artists she names (Emily Dickinson, Sylvia Plath), I can name you a happily married one (Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Joan Didion).

Nehring writes that in shying away from any power difference, women give up the erotic and the mysterious. There is something to that. But the fact is, for women the power difference came with too much pain: a chador, suicide, or in the case of David Pogue’s wife, a lifetime of acting as his social secretary with the small reward of being publicly declared “sainted.”

When we, the “smug marrieds,” as Bridget Jones called us, accept the term “companionate,” we have already lost the fight. It sounds like a Japanese rent-a-friend, a new brand of artificial sweetener or at best, a highly technical term. If some people choose to think of their marriage as “work” and child-rearing as a “profession” that’s their loss. There is a great amount of mystery that flows through a lifetime of love, both for your husband and your children. There is, believe it or not, also terror, and passion, and all the ecstasies Nehring describes. I too have been derailed by love and hospitalized by love, as Nehring has, but I am happy to leave that behind. She can keep her hospital room. I’ll take the lifetime of bliss.

Tags: companionate marriage, cristina nehring, sandra tsing loh, vindication of love

It would have been so much easier for me to find the time to write this post if I had voice-recognition software, a sophisticated self-built database with all my contacts including my Double X blog posting instructions, which I keep losing, and most of all if I had an administrative-assistant-type of husband who handled all the household bills and dental appointments and child-care challenges and playdates and grocery shopping and left me free to spend more time at the keyboard.

But I don't have these things. I mean, I do have a husband, and he does what he can, but he leaves for work earlier than I do, so this morning I was the one who took the cat to the vet. Despite the resulting time crunch, I am posting anyway to say that I was fascinated by David Pogue's column in the New York Times revealing his work efficiency secrets. In addition to high-tech solutions like software that completes the typing of certain words, enabling him to get to the next word faster (what if Jack Kerouac had had that? Would it have been possible for him to write On the Road even more rapidly than he did? Is it possible to write so fast that your words spontaneously combust?) and a cellular laptop modem stick that enables him to keep working in the X-ray line at the airport, he also has another, rather more low-tech productivity secret weapon: his wife.

"I’m lucky enough that I don’t spend time on bills, taxes, travel arrangements, kid-activity scheduling, and so on; my sainted wife takes care of all that administrative overhead," he allows at the end of his column. I read that sentence and wondered what that sort of life would be like. It's so hard to imagine, being a wife myself. Like reading about a distant country, or Antarctica, or a very, very expensive restaurant, or any place that sounds exotic and sort of wonderful but that you are pretty sure you will never visit. It must be pleasant living there, though risky; though I'm sure they both have strong and extremely functional marriages it does strike me that both Pogue and Dan Baum (whose wife helps him plan and edit his reported pieces) have a lot to lose in the event of divorce, so I hope they are very nice to these wives who assist them so readily. I am sure they are. Flowers, guys, tonight! It's a good thing neither of them married Sandra Tsing Loh—they would be so up a creek, right about now.

Reading the column, I was moved, as I periodically am, to reflect on the lasting brilliance of "Why I Want a Wife," the 1971 essay by Judy Syfers that ran in Ms. almost 40 years ago. Go back and read it. Feminism never gave us that one thing Syfers put her finger on, the spouse who smoothly takes care of your personal life and enables you to maximize your professional potential, did it? The wife? I know, I know—lots of men don't have that level of assistance, either. But so many of the women I know literally run from the office to the bus stop to take up the second shift of driving to hockey practice and preparing dinner; while driving home, they conduct business discussions using hands-free cellphones. I was also interested by the fact that Pogue works at home, but unlike women I know who work at home because it enables them to more easily dash out and take the kids to doctor's appointments, etc., he works at home because that way he can work more.

But how beguiling is this foreign country? What if feminism had given us full-time domestic and logistical helpmeets? Would we react well? I sent the link to Pogue's column to a colleague who knows all too well the experience of juggling child care and work assignments. Her first comment was that she had no idea what most of the technology he was talking about even was. Just the other day she could not figure out why her Internet was not working, and discovered that her modem had been unplugged so her son could plug in something or other.

That's the way I live, too. But thinking about it she also felt a life devoid of domestic distractions had little appeal. "Chained to a home office, to all that technology ... and no breaks to schedule a vacation or think about a kid's activity? Much as I'd like to jettison some logistical responsibilities, I'd go nuts without those interruptions." Me too. The column raises that hard to answer question: If I had somebody to free me from filling out school forms and planning the kids summer activities, would I want that? If I could write more words each day, would they be better words? Are there any women who get that level of support from their husbands, and if so, can you name them?

Tags: husbands, marriage, productivity, technology, wives

When word broke that Barack Obama is pausing his busy schedule of revamping health care and heeding climate science and not intervening in the electoral process of a sovereign nation in order to spend three hours preaching "responsible fatherhood"—why, I nearly did a jig. The celebrity-stuffed event in the East Room sheds light on a little-reported obsession of the president whose own father abandoned him when he was barely 2 years old.

And, if the White House release is any evidence, this will be no From Gs to Gents tomfoolery; rather, Obama will make a substantive policy speech and then take questions from regular Joes just trying to parent in an age of Twilight, sexting, and a global recession.

No doubt the address will hit on the troubling statistics for fatherless households and the need for dads to behave—but what I would really hope to see is acknowledgement of all the women in these households doing double duty, who also should get a special tip of the cap on Father's Day.

Obama, who was of course raised by a single, working mother, hasn't invited any women to the East Room chat, but seemed to get the importance of shouting-out in his speech in Chicago last Father's Day:

We need fathers to realize that responsibility does not end at conception. We need them to realize that what makes you a man is not the ability to have a child—it's the courage to raise one. We need to help all the mothers out there who are raising these kids by themselves; the mothers who drop them off at school, go to work, pick up them up in the afternoon, work another shift, get dinner, make lunches, pay the bills, fix the house, and all the other things it takes both parents to do. So many of these women are doing a heroic job, but they need support. They need another parent. Their children need another parent. That's what keeps their foundation strong. It's what keeps the foundation of our country strong.

I was fortunate enough to be raised in a two-parent household (woo Dad); but it's always worth remembering that there are women fathers, too! Is there an appropriate way to honor them this weekend?

Tags: Barack Obama, father's day, mothers, working families

Coming from a family of writers, I am all too familiar with the delicate issue you raise, Bonnie, of whether and how to write about one’s family. But I don’t think it’s fair to assume that just because Anna aired her problems with her mother’s marriage to a con man on the web, she hasn’t also had the “heart-to-heart talk” you wish for her with her mother. Nor do I think her piece came across as entirely “disapproving,” as you called it. There’s an interesting power dynamic between this suddenly giddy and irrational mother and her skeptical, now-protective daughter, and it’s one that Anna, as one half of the duo, has the right to hash out in print; provided, at least according to my family’s rules, that her mother get a chance to approve, veto, or tweak the final draft before it’s published. (As Anna wrote in a comment on Bonnie’s post, her mother did read and make corrections to the piece.)

For me, the most uncomfortable part of having a writer for a mother isn’t when she writes about me. She always shows me those articles first, and they’re usually not surprising—I knew her thoughts on our mother-daughter book club or my sister’s and my visible bra straps before reading the drafts. The unsettling part is when she writes about herself. With those personal essays, I feel like a bunch of strangers are learning things about my mother right along with me—her struggle over whether to get tested for polycystic kidney disease; her feelings of vulnerability when she lost her sense of smell. I had a particularly bizarre experience the other day when I e-mailed my mom to check in on how my grandmother’s doctor’s appointment had gone, and she wrote back with a draft of her piece describing not just the cardiologist’s advice (open-heart surgery) but her difficulty coming to terms with her mother’s mortality.

As hard as it may have been for Anna’s mother to read a piece about her own love life, it might be even more unnerving for her to read one about Anna’s love life.

Tags: mother daughter relationships

Looking for a dad-themed movie to rent this Father’s Day? Most movies about dads portray them in one of two ways: as an incompetent boob (National Lampoon’s Vacation, Daddy Day Camp, Three Men and a Baby) or as a problem-of-a-father (The Great Santini, Life With Father, Father of the Bride). Recently, however, I saw two movies (both out on DVD now) that I think exemplify another kind of movie about fathers: the über-daddy movie.

One such movie is Taken, starring Liam Neeson as an overprotective father who is some sort of unexplained highly skilled former government agent and whose teenage daughter is kidnapped by a circle of white-slavers while vacationing with a friend in Paris.

With absolutely nothing to go on except a final phone call from his daughter and the address she was staying at, he uses his super-agent skills to (I don’t think I’m giving anything away here—I’m pretty sure you all could guess how it ends) save her. He is powerful, unafraid, invincible. Who wouldn’t want a daddy like that?

The other movie is Gran Torino, starring Clint Eastwood as an old-codger widower who refuses to leave his home even though the neighborhood is being taken over by Asian gangs. Not being too fond of Asians since serving in the Korean War, Clint is none too happy when a fatherless family of Hmongs moves in next door. But after they are threatened by a local gang, Clint steps in to kick some butt.

Yes, both movies have lots of violence and sensationalism, but they make a nice change from the daddy-as-loser genres.

Tags: Clint Eastwood, daddies, dads, father's, father's day, gran torino, Liam Neeson, Taken

Susannah, you're right that the appeal of the Real Housewives of New Jersey lies in their outsize cattiness. But in today's XXtra Small, Torie writes about the anti-Housewife: The Hills' Lauren Conrad and her new, semi-autobiographical book L.A. Candy. Conrad's appeal has always been as the bland, nice girl.

As Torie notes, "Jane," the heroine of Conrad's thinly-veiled autobiography, is far more edgy than the palid Conrad:

Maybe it’s the influence of her “collaborator,” Nancy Ohlin, but Jane is a lot more interesting than Conrad was on The Hills—funnier, smarter, not nearly as dull. And she would never sign a contract without letting her dad’s lawyer OK it.

Salon's Thomas Rogers weighs in on the Conrad phenomenon today as well:

Much of the appeal of Lauren Conrad, like the Bella Swan character in the “Twilight” novels, is that she’s a near-perfect cipher for young women. It’s her very blankness that made her so well-suited for “The Hills”—and a much better choice of star than the woman who will replace her on the show, Kristin Cavallari—because she doesn’t create drama. Drama happens to her. It’s a feeling that many junior-high-age girls (and some grown-ups) can easily identify with: I'm just trying to be nice—so why is everybody being so mean to me?

I disagree with Rogers that Conrad is a better choice for a star than the spunky Cavallari. Interest in Conrad's mind-numbing exploits is already on the wane: Viewership for this season's finale—Conrad's last show—was down 15 percent from last year's finale. Lauren Conrad's appeal never seemed to be that she was the everygirl, it was that she was the ubergirl: blonde, rich, lucky. Sure, she was marginally relatable because she had "drama," but she was never really a personality-free blank slate. She has a personality, it's just boring.

In general, people don't watch reality TV because they want to project themselves onto the main characters; they watch reality TV to be entertained by base ridiculousness. Or, at least that's why Susannah and I seem to watch reality TV.

Tags: l.a. candy, lauren conrad, Real Housewives of New Jersey, Reality TV, the hills

Why is The Real Housewives of New Jersey a smash-hit? The season finale's 4.6 million viewers in the 18-to-49-year-old demographic testify to its broad appeal, but why are we so enamored with these table-tossing housewives? Is it the big hair? The brash talk? The back stabbing? One thing's for sure. It's not their manners.

Out of all the Real Housewives series—from Orange County to Atlanta to New York City—"New Jersey" is the breakaway hit. Because I have deeply bad taste in TV, I've watched every installment of the Bravo franchise. Sometimes, I watch them twice. But the Jersey wives are far and away the most fascinating. Sometimes, I quote lines from the show. "Prostitution whore!" I shout, pointing accusingly. "I don't like you before I like you," I inform strangers.

I think the Real Housewives are popular for one reason: They're mean. I mean, they're really mean. They render Mean Girls pranks child's play. They don't sit around talking the talk, like the well-tanned, blond-highlighted, high-heeled 'bots of The Hills. These bitches will cut you. They actually walk the walk, which is why tables have a tendency to get overturned.

I hope they don't tone it down next season.

These molls are my heroes.

Tags: real housewives, Real Housewives of New Jersey, TV