Ye Ladies of Easy Leisure

Most young women strike me as sad, lonely, and confused…

I don’t wonder. If I had to sit through a lecture like this, I’d be sad and confused, and I’m an old fat man.

Prof. Kass is getting the “lonely” vibe, I believe, because the friends of the young women he talks to tend to flee when they see him approaching.

What about male sexual virtue? What’s happened to that in the last 60 years? Why is it all about the women?

I demand equal attention.

The girls I know in and out of college don’t seem any more depressed than anyone else. They’re just regular people.

Maybe the dating scene is a tad different than in Mr. Kass’ day, but that’s just because he is a tired, old man.

As to marriage, Now that we’ve all graduated there seems to have begun a storm of weddings. The whole business took everybody by surpise.

Maybe it was all those serious (and sexual) relationships they were involved in during school.

Sad, lonely, confused, and not dating? At the University of Chicago? Who’da thunk it?

On the other hand, Kass seems to be attributing this sad condition to hedonistic indulgence in the “pleasures of the present”…whoah, dude, are you an ethnographer? Just what sort of methodology is it you guys are practicing these days on campus anyway? (And just what the hell is Social Thought? I’ve never been able to figure that out.)

That excerpt is from an old (1997) article in The Public Interest.

http://www.thepublicinterest.com/notable/article7.html

Kass ends the essay with these words: “Men, as Rousseau put it, will always do what is pleasing to women, but only if women suitably control and channel their own considerable sexual power. Is there perhaps some nascent young feminist out there who would like to make her name great and who will seize the golden opportunity for advancing the truest interest of women (and men and children) by raising (again) the radical banner, “Not until you marry me”? And, while I’m dreaming, why not also, “Not without my parents’ blessings”?”

Ah, but there is! And her name is Wendy Shalit. She is all the rage in conservative circles, and wrote a book called “A Return to Modesty.”

I’ll give anyone here ten to one odds Kass has some deeply repressed and freaky sexual urges. I bet he watches hentai.

I’ll no longer be able to think about Kass without thinking about his views on ice cream, which I had the odd experience of learning about for the first time in our comments section.

Worst of all from this point of view are those more uncivilized forms of eating, like licking an ice cream cone—a catlike activity that has been made acceptable in informal America but that still offends those who know eating in public is offensive. I fear I may by this remark lose the sympathy of many reader, people who will condescendingly regard as quaint or even priggish the view that eating in the street is for dogs.

Eating is a fundamental act, something you should take seriously and devote your full attention to, something that needs to be cultivated to appreciate and do well. Isn’t there some truth to that?

Um, no. How does it follow from the fact that eating is in some sense fundamental that we should devote our full attention to it and do it well? Compare breathing, or digestion.

I wasn’t making an argument, I was describing a reaction. Either it resonates with you or it doesn’t.

Okay, I see that. It almost resonates with me. Kass has a characteristic move, which is to appeal to this kind of response. But if that’s all he has to offer, then he has nothing, since it is also easy to come up with gut reactions that oppose the ones he wants to invoke.

and fun! Kass forgot to mention the negative effects that fun has had on civilisation since it has been liberalised by such dangerous movements as the Fun Revolution and the widespread sale of Fun Pills.

I first suspected that the ice-cream quote had to be made-up but no, there it is right there on page 148 of Kass’ The Hungry Soul. Goodness gracious, it must be difficult for someone of such rarefied and exquisietly attenuated sensibilities to be an inhabitant of this planet. His elucidation of the ars amatoria is a case in point:

For it is a woman’s refusal of sexual importunings, coupled with hints or promises of later gratification, that is generally a necessary condition of transforming a man’s lust into love.

Does this seem a plausible accounting of love? Perhaps it’s what P.G. Wodehouse would call “the gruesome early Victorianness” of it’s diction or perhaps it’s the way this quote gives one the sense that Mr. Kass has only experienced human amatory interaction as an impartial observer, (perhaps from an unpopulated mountain or through an inexpensive telescope) but I would say no, it does not convince. The word sociopathic is perhaps too strong a term, but it captures the flavor of the passage. For, as other commenters have implied, a creepy, lascivious undercurrent is running all through this viper’s nest of weirdness.
Seriously though, Mr. Healy may be inclied to mock pedants like Kass but I prefer my bigots like him, which is to say loud, proud and out of the crankcase closet. Fly your freak-flag proudly Mr. Kass, it’s that much easier for me to cross the street should I see you coming towards me on the sidewalk.

Much more troublesome are those who are the like of Maggie Gallagher and who insist that,

For many people this [homophobia] is the main issue. It’s just not my issue.

The odd “…cf. the Roman Empire…” moments aside, she seems to want to arrive at her destination (anti-gay-marriage) without ever having traveled through anti-gay to get there. It’s a circuitous route indeed and I think that goes a long way to explain the tortuous quality of her reasoning. But the fact that one has to strike such poses bodes well for gay marriage in some ways. There was a time not so long ago when it wasn’t the least bit necessary to represent your argument against gay marriage as being motivated by anything other than a dislike of gays. It’s funny that what Gallagher so genteely characterizes as this “overlapping and parallel moral debate” seems to be pushed further and further towards the fringe with each passing season. It takes a certain amount of clumsiness to make Maggie Gallagher’s arguments seem sophisticated. Mr. Kass, though, has managed it.

It’s not even the opinions that get me – it’s the bloated, farting, tumescent pomposity. Point, and jeer.

on the other hand, kass has finally proven that south park republicans do exist. for his essay is surely influenced by cartman:

“You get your bitch ass back in the kitchen, and make me some pie!”

This guy is the Chair of the Presidents’ committee on bioethics?

Geez, I think I can see where that’s going:

“Mr Pasteurs’ theory of very small animals as disease carriers, and his experiment thereof will only lead to men in our society being more confused and depressed about the wooing of sheep than they already are, for if sheep are seen as throwaway animals simply to be “experimented on” who knows where it may lead?”

Sounds like not very well researched shouting. Going on assumptions about what is thought to be common knowledge of an earlier time. No body had pre-marital sex before the sexual revolution? Some statistics I have read have said that nearly have of the births in Victorian England were out of wedlock. Besides, look at the liberal Europeans and their relaxed concepts of sex. They seem to be able to do that and have a stable society. Go figure.

THe exerpt had a lot of talk about the good old days and how it used to be. It is also true that in America it was common in the old days that people would have sex before marriage, in fact waiting to see if the woman could get pregnant to determine her suitability for marriage. Also true was the pervaisiveness of prostitution, the wife as property and beatings. Woo woo! Let’s go back in time.

What’s really wrong with America (among other things, of course) is the fact that an irrational nincompoop like Kass can actually be taken seriously as a bioethicist. It’s like taking advice from George W. Bush on how to succeed in the oil bidness, or in foreign policy.

This is an argument against tenure, and against the U. of C. What a pervert Kass is. Sounds like Limbaugh talking about blow jobs.

Let’s not forget all the young men who seek the solace of other young men because they’re not getting the goods from the virtuous young ladies.

Sigh. Those were the days.

Did you steal this from my craigslist want ad?

Apparently, as mine had “discreet, bisexual” in it.

Man, so what exactly do blue balls secrete that, given sufficient time, alters the brain to change “lust” to “love”???? That’s a new one on me, for sure. Howcome I love my kids? I’m not a pervert (at least in that manner), so it isn’t sexual unavailability. Does Kass want to bone his mother?

This guy is really, really messed up.

PS: Ice cream cones are over 100 years old at this point, FWIW.

God, what an incredible, spectacular, overbearing asshole. I was about to say, “fuck Leon Kass to the power of 10,000”, but then I realized I mean “don’t anybody, ever, fuck Leon Kass, to the power of 100,000,000,000.”
Signed,
a pill-popping, body-piercing, career-oriented, degree-granted, sexually confident, frequent-flyer, atheistic slut.

So Ignatius J. Reilly finally got his PhD, did he? How nice for him. Now if only people would read more Boethius…

Where is the love?

I will probably be skewered for saying this, but instead of discounting Mr. Kaas because he offends our post sexual revolution sensibilities, we should listen.

I believe he is making a valid point. He believes that something important to the relationship between men and women and to our own happiness has been lost.

I disagree in the way he is trying to make his point. Mr Kaas’ return to modesty and virtue, as they were acted out in his day, is no more pleasant to my mind than today’s drivel about “negotiating relationships”.

Mr. Kaas’ talk about modesty and virtue is really about finding protecting and fostering love. To my mind, his world is closer to the mark of what we should be talking about, than our talk of today about “having a heathly realtionship”.

Its about love dammit! We don’t discuss love in America. We talk about being healthy. Of being in a healthy relationship. Of negotiating with our partners. I want what I want and you want what you want, so we will negotiate a compromise.

Love is secondary in our world, it was of primary importance in Mr. Kaas’ world. In my mind, Mr Kaas is at least pointing in the right direction.

I do not love thee, Dr. Kass.
The reason is, that you’re an ass.
And this I know, and hold it fast,
I do not love thee, Dr. Kass.

Ah, he’s just jealous he didn’t get any when he was a kid.

And don’t even get him STARTED on HOT DOGS… and GIRLS EATING hot dogs…
in PUBLIC!

And corndogs. Don’t forget the corndogs, redolent of race-mixing owing to the difference in color and … er, size. And the copious use of mustard. Clearly meant to acclimate us all to the notion of alternative modes of penetration and to ensure that it’s seen as “just as good as” normal modes, by which I mean “mode,” of course. (It’s a subtle argument. You may see it from time to time.)

Oh, they’re tricky, those liberals.

I believe he is making a valid point.

About what? His fantasy world? Does he see these unhappy women, those who have “lost the capacity to discover their own genuine longings and best interests” all the time, or just when they’re not bobbing for extra credit in his lap?
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Having been in several of his classes at the University of Chicago, I’ll put forward that Leon Kass is a truly gifted teacher, a graceful and talented writer, and a moral philosopher whose premises are all based on ideas that were really last “current” a thousand years ago. To Professor Kass, St. Thomas Aquinas is a modern philosopher.

I love and completely agree with ed’s comments from above:

“Trampling Mr Kass is a bit like trampling Henry James. He shouldn’t, clearly, be in a position to make decisions on bioethics or influence policy in our time. But he is quaint, and I kinda like him.”

Kass is a great man to have an argument with, and a nice counterpoint to us relativist humanists, but the thought of him being Surgeon General is terrifying.

Please remember that one of Mr. Kass’ goals is to ‘offend’ and turn off the ‘unserious.’ He is a Straussian-extrordinaire, therefore he is writing esoterically. His over-the-top crabby old man statements are meant to get people all riled up on the surface, but he expects the serious reader to look past all that.

Let’s pretend he deserves a serious reading and what he’s trying to get at: I think it is that he believes true friendship can only exist between men, and that having women running around pretending to be equal just makes society too hard to control. Since he believes (like Strauss) that there really is no ‘natural’ order to things besides the strong doing what’s to their advantage, he thinks men should get back in control (by persuading the women that it’s in their best interest).

I also think he really believes that men cannot control their sexual desires without the help of ‘virtuous women,’ or at least that they have no reason to. In this, he is not so different from the orthodox Muslims who believe every piece of skin must be hidden.

In any case, try not to be distracted by what he means to distract you with: the liberals’ reaction to the ice cream comment is exactly the sort of thing Straussians laugh about behind closed doors.

Let me guess, in part two he starts in on those uppity Negroes?

Kaas fails, somehow, to condemn the live-for-today ethos of ecclesiastes.
I know that there is no good in them, but for a man to rejoice, and to do good in his life. And also that every man should eat and drink, and enjoy the good of all his labor, it is the gift of God. And also eating ice cream and doing the wild thing is not so bad. So be not a cramped U of C loser or the pit awaits you, dumbass.

I think the mail-order bride industry is a fairly recent phenomenon

In the 1800s, there was a market for brides in the thinly populated west. I can’t remember exactly who advertised or what the terms tended to be (and I’m about to be late for a meeting) but, basically, once a deal was struck, a lady from the east would embark on a grueling weeks-long trip to meet and marry the man she would spend the rest of her life with.

Let’s play word association! Name the first three words that come to mind when you think of Leon Kass. I’ll start: doddering, impotent, bughouse crazy. Okay, four words.

On preview: Oh, Dave. That’s so very thoughtful, and so very wrong. I’d reckon that love, as you describe it, has wrecked more lives than it’s enriched.

Now I am late.

For it is a woman’s refusal of sexual importunings, coupled with hints or promises of later gratification, that is generally a necessary condition of transforming a man’s lust into love.

Shorter Leon Kass: “Being a pricktease pays off.”

Hasten to add: of course, once alternative modes of penetration, not to mention corndogs with lots of mustard, are seen by society as being “just as good as” normal modes, including hot dogs, the normal mode will no longer be enjoyable.

Just ask this woman.
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I wonder if the good professor is familiar with the life of Émilie du Châtelet.

Regardless, there appears to be, for accurate description’s sake, one too many letters in the gentleman’s surname.

I should start by saying that I know Leon Kass and his family. I have been a guest at his house and he at mine. His wife, Amy, also a professor at the U of C, is the finest teacher I have ever known. So, discount what I have to say as you see fit. I am certain that Leon fully expected to catch flak for his comments. Whenever you enter into public discourse, you have to expect some pie-in-the-face (or should I say, ice cream?) reaction. He doesn’t need me to defend him. But I’d like to defend him nonetheless, at least against the personal, ad hominem attacks that he’s caught, here and on other sites.

What you might want to understand is that his stated concerns for young people generally, and young women particularly, are sincere and carefully considered, not code for a desire to demean and subordinate women. His relationship with his wife and daughters is respectful, loving and equal and I suspect that, if you knew them, you would like and approve of their family. Naturally, my assertion that Leon is a good man with a good family doesn’t provide a shred of support for his argument, but I don’t want the attacks on his character to go unrebutted.

See, what happened with Amy and Leon was they saw all their favorite students spending tremendous effort and thought on how to advance their careers or get into grad school or improve their minds but hardly any on who to marry. They believe (as I do) that the decision as to whether and who to marry is the most important choice a person can make and that the smart, talented young people they saw on a daily basis were messing it up. Being from the U of C, they naturally concluded that what everyone needed was a 636 page tome of assigned reading in the classics. So they assembled a book, “Wing To Wing, Oar To Oar: Readings on Courting and Marrying.” It is about what you’d expect from two lifelong U of C scholars tackling the subject of marriage. Lots of different authors with different, interesting takes on the topic. In their own words, the book was offered “in wisdom-seeking rather than wisdom-delivering-spirit, as writings that make us think, that challenge our unexamined opinions, expand our sympathies, elevate our gaze, and introduce us to possibilities open to human beings in everyday life that may be undreamt of in our philosophizing.” pg.19. If you are honestly interested in the subject or what they think, I recommend the book to you.

So disagree with his fundamental points all you like. Tell him you think that, for all the problems that he elegantly identifies in today’s young people, his diagnosis is flawed and his prescription is wrong. I have, to his face. But, before you impugn his motives or attack his character, consider that you really do not know what you are talking about.

Might be kind of fun to see him up for Surgeon General. Well, as long as I see that ice cream quote plastered everywhere, and as long as he slinks back to Chicago in defeat.

The first step to self-knowledge is knowing that you are ignorant.

You folks, with all your snarky comments, have any of you read a book on love? Studied the nature of love? If you had, then you would understand where Mr Kaas was coming from. Notice, I did not say that you would have to agree.

But, at least you’d be able to make an argument that wasn’t just an attack on Mr. Kaas.

Pathetic. You wear your ignorance like a shield and sustain it with you outrage that someone dares to question the nature of things.

K. Hannigan—to my mind, saying that people should spend time thinking about whether and who to marry is completely unobjectionable. I’d like to know though what you think about Kass’ motivations in the “women one fooled around with and women one married” crack—does he consider his daughters the type of women one marries or one fools around with? Do you not see just how objectionable it is to say that dichotomy is a good thing? Or how disrespectful of women? To say he is a good husband and father seems kind of pointless to me—a good father doesn’t spend his time fretting about his daughters (or other people’s daughters) remaining virgins until they marry.

Chapter 1 you tell her, you love her with all your heart
Chapter 2 you tell her, you’re never never never never never gonna part
Chapter 3 remember, the meaning of romance
Chapter 4 you break up, but you give her just one more chance

At the risk of debasing this eloquent discourse, to paraphrase the words of Paulie from “The Pope of Greenwich Village”, “Leon, you sound like half a fag.” Why are the most repressed the most deviant? Is it not more important that our society glorifies violence and abhors sexuality? I can not go to Blockbuster and rent a video where a partially clad woman is filmed engaging in a real, consenual sex act, but I can go to Blockbuster and rent a movie where a partially clad woman is engaged in a simulated sex act, and then subsequently has her head “non-consenually” removed by a sharp instrument. Go figure. Europeans, discounting the Germans, of which I am not far removed, and who seem to have a similar fascination with nationalistic violence and perverted sex as we do, seem to have a much more healthy view of sexuality and violence. Alternately, to pander to Leon…..

Charlie: I didn’t do anything, Paulie. I didn’t hit her. I didn’t do nothin’.

Paulie: You can’t do that man. I mean you don’t abuse ‘em once in a while they’ll shit all over you. I don’t mean you walk around morning to night whackin’ ‘em upside the head like someone from the other side but you terrorize ‘em once in a while just to keep ‘em in line. Know what I mean?

What would it take to change the mores of our society, where violence is bad and sex is good? If I beat up that ice cream cone in public would that be acceptable?

“But, before you impugn his motives or attack his character, consider that you really do not know what you are talking about.”

This is certainly correct, as regards my knowledge of Leon Kass’s personal character. Surely it is equally correct as regards Leon Kass’s knowledge of the “necessary conditions” for men to truly love their wives, or the nature of women’s “genuine longing”, let alone whether “most” young women are in fact “sad, lonely, and confused?”

I’m assuming Part II of Mr. Kass’s tripartite essay will be titled something like, “Honor Killings: Really So Bad?”

Assuming that he counts as well as he reasons, parts four and five of same will be “The Other Side of Bigotry,” and “Human Rights: Why Bother?”

[with apologies to the residents of Tuna, Texas]
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Funny, jeremy osner.

But I would start with Allan Bloom’s “On Love and Friendship” It’s not an easy read, but it does have a lot of humor, so you might like it. It also gives a good overview on the nature of love and how it has been discussed and thought of over the centuries.

Just remember for 6in of sausage you don’t need to buy the whole pig.

Realistically, this betrays a very low opinion of men suggesting that the only reason they have for committed relationship is sex. Sad.

And to you grand moff texan, I’d suggest Bloom’s ” The Closing Of The American Mind”

Dave,

You say “The first step to self-knowledge is knowing that you are ignorant.

You folks, with all your snarky comments, have any of you read a book on love? Studied the nature of love? If you had, then you would understand where Mr Kaas was coming from.”

Isn’t it ignornat to assume we haven’t? Maybe we’re just “snarky” because we have.

(And I wonder wonder, mm-bop a doo-wah, who, wah, who wrote the book of neo-conservatism?)

Male sexual modesty prevents me from describing the vast number of sad, lonely, and confused unmarried women I have sexually enjoyed, and regularly too. But to be fair, I was sad, lonely, and confused when it was their turn to enjoy me.

According to Stephanie Koontz’ book, Marriage: a history, Kass has it pretty much wrong all the way around. The first wave of discontent with marriage, in the teens of the twentieth century, was associated with feminism—the second wave, in the twenties, came at a time when the suffrage movement was exhausted—the third wave, in the late sixties, was centered not among the hippie dippy teens, but among the marrieds of the fifties. In fact, the fifties acually was the peak period for marriage, and since then marriage among the adult population has reached the same levels as it did in the forties. As for the premise that women’s control of their sexuality would be matched by male loyalty, that didn’t pan out—those fifties marriages were broken up by the male part as much or more than by the female party. In fact, the wiser move by women is not to expect a constant male partner, and to hone her skills accordingly. Love—if love is defined as defining one’s life around another person’s emotional response to oneself—is certainly not the best basis to build one’s emotional, sexual and economic life around. However, as long as you prepare yourself for the consequences of having your love life interrupted, it is eminently affordable.
Mr. Kass needs to meet that other U.of C. conservative prof, Gary Becker.

Love is secondary in our world, it was of primary importance in Mr. Kaas’ world. In my mind, Mr Kaas is at least pointing in the right direction. – dave

I agree that love is more important and is given short shrift in relationships today (btw—why does it have to be a man wooing a woman? why can’t a woman woo a man?) … but the relationship described as ideal by Kass doesn’t sound like love to me … it sounds like as much of a business transaction as prostitution with an added dash of manipulation on the part of the woman guaranteed to turn the man into a blithering misogynist: a man gets sex in exchange for a woman getting whatever she wants from her husband. And should the woman be dissatisfied, she withholds sex until she gets what she wants from the man.

That doesn’t sound like love or anything that would turn a man’s lust into love (and what of the woman … what turns her lust into love?) to me … it sounds like a recipe for exploitation and bitterness.

Do you want the cow for the milk, or because you like the cow? Isn’t that the real difference between lust and love?

Dude, you gotta get off the farm. Conversely, I could hook you up with some websites. Or some rich creamery butter.

Well Locutor, you are right. I do not know what everyone has studied and mastered. Perhaps if folks wrote more thoughtful responses, instead of just attacking Mr. Kaas, I would.

Real relationships really are about meeting each other’s needs, and part of that is being aware of each other’s needs, and being aware of which of them each is willing and able to fill, and which must be taken care of outside the relationship. It’s very messy, compared to fiction. But instead of being a letdown, I think it’s much more beautiful than your idea of what love is. – pdf23ds

Bingo.

Part of the reason why college kids are having difficulties in the relationship world is that too many people don’t realize what a relationship is actually about. Too many college kids conceptualize relationships in terms of romantic comedies, etc. … in fictional terms. They do not understand that the beauty of a relationship is not some guy wooing some gal and sweeping her off her feet, but two people who care deeply for each other, who are responsive to each other’s needs and who are comfortable enough with each other to communicate their needs to each other.

From my experience, the “traditional” view of dating and marriage espoused by Kass is far from dead on college campuses but rather is what is doing damage to dating and marriage … if only because people, stuck in their traditional views of what a relationship should be like, are missing what really would be the best relationships for them. Just because a guy sweeps a girl off her feet doesn’t make him the best guy for her … it may be her best friend, whom she has mentally desexualized, because he’s approached her as a friend rather than as a suitor, and enframed as someone akin to her “brother” who would really give her what she needs, both sexually and emotionally, in a relationship, while the guy who has sweeped her off her feet even as she played “hard to get” might not really respect her needs (after all, he pursued her even as she was ostensibly communicating she wasn’t to be gotten) or might just be interested in playing games (e.g. she was playing “hard to get”, so maybe he was merely playing “suitor” … all without realizing it).

The sexual revolution has still not lived up to its promise of liberating relationships. In part because some people do think “why buy the pig when the sausage is free” or “why buy the cow when the milk is free” … but really a large part of the problem I saw on my college campus was that too many people, even in an age where sexual mores are in some sense looser, were still stuck in stifling sex roles which inhibited their ability to search for and find truly loving and mutually respectful relationships.

Is now the same as whenever mr. kass grew up (the 1930s?)

if the answer is no, his observations are worthless without acknowledging that fact. if he states that “women are in the workforce” that is not a neutral fact in the context of his argument, it is part of a greater societal change that, were he to discuss it, might color the rest of his train of thought. but that’s inconvient to his argument. now, he a brilliant guy i assume, so therefore such an elementary mistake strikes me as willfull, or to put another way, he’s a another asshat republican putting his conclusion before his facts or logic.

let’s take it further. all his chivalry shit is very modern indeed. for most women for most of history, marriage meant very simply—how many sheep could you family afford to give away to get rid of you to whomever was interested. oh, and by the way, if you were known to be a woman of “loose virtue” (read, raped) then it was going to take more sheep.

again, i’m sure mr. kass knows this. he’s such a fucking lying sack of shit it makes me want to vomit. trying to defend this tripe makes YOU a lying sack of shit as well. come up with a better argument grounded in reality or piss off, sez me.

Pdf23,

I have been in love. The sweetest love of my life. While in the midst of it I realized what bunk all this talk about needs fullment was.

I knew, with all my heart, that he would never ask me for anything that I wouldn’t give, nor I of him.

Knowing that he existed and loved me calmed my heart and made everyhting else in life easier.

Yes it ended, badly and messy. Perhaps it was all just a fiction inside my head, but what a grand fiction it was.

I like where this thread is going… somewhere deeply bizarre and surrealistic.

Dang, here I am, married for 22 years, and it turns out I’m just an anachronism. And I’m morally reprehensibile and everything.

Where I did go wrong?

I’ve got to see this Book of Love
Find out why it’s true.

Thanks jeremy. Hadn’t thought of that one for ages.

Brackdurf: chortle!

jeremy, you’re a pervert.

I have to point out that Kass brings out the best in all of us: a few of these comments almost made me spew Coke on my monitor.

Ooh, flirting now too! Shouldn’t you be at work?

Dave, why on earth would you—or Kass—assume any of us had no knowledge or understanding of love?

Unfortunately, (w/r/t Kass, at least) it’s what we’ve come to expect from conservatives—the just-too-precious-for-words belief that they alone possess any finer or nobler feelings. Aside from making them feel oh-so-special, it also helps to rationalize all that racism and cultural insularity.

Did anyone notice the small print in the upper right corner of Leon Kass’ website? It’s a link that says “A Website of Focus on Family”. Yup, this is more Dobson propaganda.