After seeing the international community go crazy over the horror in Qana—blaming Israel exclusively for it, of course—it seems clear to me that the IDF’s only hope for winning the battle for global public opinion is to start strapping Israeli infants to the front of their tanks.

And then, when the inevitable happens, Israelis need to riot in the streets.

(Against their enemies’ barbarity of course…what, you thought they’d blame the IDF for intentionally putting innocents in the line of fire? Of course not. The 82% of Lebanese who now support Hezbollah have shown us that that’s just not how people think in the Middle East.)

Israelis also need to keep in mind that they always need to do just that little bit extra to prove that they’re every bit as civilized as their enemies. So coming up with some snappy slogans for the riots—something along the lines of “Death to the Arabs! And death to Iran!” would be usual and customary, I believe—and then knocking over a U.N. outpost or ransacking a random foreign embassy while they were at it…well, that’d surely impress the BBC and get Kofi Annan on their side.

John Derbyshire, like most people involved in this discussion, can cite many cases of women who wound up with husbands who were rotten, awful, abusive, or just plain no good. Not infrequently, such women will go on to marry a second husband who is no better.

(I wonder, are we producing so many more men with defective character these days? So many more women with defective judgment? Or perhaps, are their heads so full of modern romantic myths that they don’t even try to bring judgment to bear on matters of the heart?…instead shrugging their shoulders, and sighing, and repeating the received wisdom: “You can’t choose who you love.”)

I’ve certainly run across such situations myself, too many times. Yet I tend to be even better at collecting wronged-husband stories. Some of the tales involving full-on divorce feature spectacular, arresting twists and turns; but I think what haunts me more are the many men I know who are not exactly abused, not discarded by their wives or even cheated on; yet I see them age in front of me, getting worn down by life faster than anyone should. And the main reason for this—or so concerned family and friends often conclude—is that almost everything about such a man’s life is made more difficult on account of his wife being in it.

Now it is true that even the best marriages place great demands and strains on persons; and a man who shrinks from the challenge inherent in marriage, or whines about it constantly, is not much of a man at all. But in a good marriage, there should be reciprocity and a sense of shared struggle, sacrifice for the sake of the other and for the whole; and in the end some achievement, some comfort, some reward.

The marriages I have in mind are not this way. In them, if there is sacrifice, it is usually unnecessary; if there are demands, they run overwhelmingly one way; if there is struggle, it is often the result of one egocentric party’s neediness and grasping and inability to ever find contentment or leave well enough alone.

Perhaps I can best illustrate by means of a well-known counter-example. Those who have known George W. Bush well over the years seem to all agree that he would never have become Governor, much less President—might never, in fact, have been anything more than a mediocre businessman who liked to drink and skated by on family connections—if it weren’t for Laura.

That story flabbergasts me. I’m pretty sure it’s true; and many of the details correlate with those of friends and family members who also have healthy, positive marriages. Yet still I am flabbergasted. The pain of personal experience, reinforced by the similar experience of other men close to me, looms just too large. I am too used to seeing things the opposite way: “Oh, what more could he have achieved, how much happier could he have been, how serene his life could have been, were it not for her !”

And surely the lament is just the same among those most closely touched by the travails of wronged wives: “…oh, were it not for him !”

How much ruin there is in a bad marriage! Such pain and heartache! Such twisted wreckage it can leave behind, so deep in our souls! Why do we risk it?

And why do we allow our children to risk it? Anyone who thinks I’m going to ever let my daughter or son, once they hit puberty, near any member of the opposite sex anywhere near their ages, has got another thing coming…

Well, okay: I’ll take that back. I am a big softie, after all; and I am still a romantic deep down there somewhere. I will allow my children to date, with my wholehearted blessing.

Just as soon as the youngest turns thirty.

As the father of a beautiful young girl, I am in passionate agreement with John Derbyshire about the imperative of keeping daughters away from losers, bad boys, and other undesirables.

A key part of that process, I think, is persuading her that it is perfectly okay—beneficial, even—to spend significant amounts of time completely unattached. Too many young women will go to great lengths to always have somebody. They’ll hold onto a boyfriend they no longer care for until they’ve found a new one; take up a placeholder boyfriend, whom they never had a passion for in the first place, to avoid being alone for more than a few weeks; and so forth. This behavior not only increases the odds that they will slip into long-term involvement with an unsuitable man, but also keeps some of the good men at bay: the sort of men who, out of some combination of chivalry, caution, and shyness, would not dare pursue a woman who is already involved with someone else.

All agreement with Derb aside, however, there was something that didn’t quite sit right with me as I followed the ensuing discussion; and I think I’ve put my finger on what it is. Isn’t the sort of young woman who is most apt to label young men as “losers” and shun them—to delight in the taunt, even—also the most likely to hitch herself to some shallow-souled striver in the end? I don’t know how the folks in The Corner would feel, but I’m far too crunchy to stand seeing my daughter take the married name of Gradgrind-Snopes.

Also, while being a wise judge of men’s characters is an unalloyed good, being a harsh judge of men is a key trait of the contemporary, girl-power-intoxicated, egotistical shrew. And such females are real and plentiful and corrosive of marital harmony, just as much as the losers and abusers on the male side of the ledger. I’d venture that for every woman of Derb’s acquaintance who’s been driven to despair by a loser, there is a man of my acquaintance who’s been driven to despair by a shrew; and literature can provide us many more examples of each, who are no less real for being fictional.

Literature thus informs us that these sorts of problems are not new in our day; but it leaves the question, have they gotten worse? As a divorced person, I am naturally preoccupied with questions of the war between the sexes, the fraught and broken nature of too many of our inimate relationships, and suchlike; but at the same time, I am naturally distrustful of my own judgment as to the frequency and severity of these problems in the wider world. What, I wonder, does the reader think?

Yes, your humble Blog Goliard is finally back in town. I had a great time away, but at the same time I am happy to be back; and taken together, that’s a great feeling.

While travelling, I filed away a few tidbits for later blogging. One such item was an article from the Business section of Monday’s New York Times, “Couric Listens, but Who Will Watch?”, by David Carr. (I hadn’t imagined that an NFL quarterback would need a summer job these days; but at least he’s gotten one that doesn’t tax that poor body of his which was sacked 68 times last season.)

Obviously I’ve gotten out of touch with the curious world of the Timesies, because I was not prepared to run across the following flabbergasting grafs:

Fortunately Ms. Couric, I was in Minneapolis for the week, so I was able to help CBS out with a listening tour of my own in the local self-serve laundries, restaurants and bars. Give or take the dozens of people who declined to talk to me — Minnesotans are famously proud of their humility — I found some very encouraging news for Ms. Couric.

It turns out that people here, all kinds — black, white, young, old, liberal and, well, liberal — adore her. And why not? She is, by all accounts and evidence, funny, smart, nice and pretty.

Wha…but…the…mmm…how…er…what?!?

“By all accounts and evidence” Katie Couric is all of those things? Hmm. Maybe all the contrary accounts and evidence happened to surface in the middle of football season, when Mr. Carr wouldn’t have noticed. Bad luck, that; but such accounts and evidence exist nonetheless.

Let’s start with “nice”. Has everyone at the Times already forgotten the Alessandra Stanley piece from last year which famously alleged that

America’s girl next door has morphed into the mercurial diva down the hall. At the first sound of her peremptory voice and clickety stiletto heels, people dart behind doors and douse the lights. Or, at least, change the channel.

And “smart”? Er, maybe. Somewhat. But surely even Katie’s fans would hesitate to claim brainyness as her calling card, as one of the four traits you’d mention when describing her to strangers. Besides, how smart can a woman really be if she is capable of, say, gushing over Fidel Castro and how his “revolution delivered”?

(Yes, it is a very bad temptation to ascribe political differences to lack of intelligence…and as a conservative who works at a university, I know how it feels to be on the receiving end. But really—Castro?)

“Pretty”? Your Blog Goliard will err on the side of gentlemanliness here, and simply note that Katie Couric is definitely not his type.

Finally we come to “funny”. I’ll grant that Couric displays at least the minimum amount of amiable goofiness required of a morning-show personality. Yet, as was the case with “smart”, I demur at the suggestion that this is one of her defining characteristics; and I refer you to gossipy pieces like Stanley’s for a look at Couric’s apparent capacity to slip into the profoundly humorless role of Scary Diva when the cameras are off.

For his sake, I hope that David Carr is better at sizing up opposing linebackers than he is at evaluating television personalities.

Busy busy busy. Is this really July already? How did that happen?

The “dog days of summer” are supposed to be laid back for people who work in the education sector (like me). Right? Well, I haven’t got too bored yet at the office (and I never did get round to the big cleanup and paper-purge I’d had penciled in for sometime in June…was going to dust the bookcases and everything). And as for life away from work, between obsessing over the World Cup, fussing over fine-tuning the new blog, and going over preparations for a summer vacation, that’s been plenty full too.

Said vacation will be coming just in time, if I say so myself. Haven’t given the passport a good workout, or myself a good long break from the usual quotidian existence, for too long.

On an island in the sun
We’ll be playing and having fun
And it makes me feel so fine
I can’t control my brain

(Lyrics from Weezer, “Island in the Sun”. Very, very fun track; best 99¢ I’ve spent on iTunes lately.)

Mmm, sounds good. Afterwards, I ought to be tanned, rested, and ready to do enough blogging—and enough self-promoting—to get this place properly humming. That’s the plan, anyhow. See y’all later in the month.