America!

Picture from Facebook, story from Ricochet.

 

And:

The Burrito:  Quintessential American Food.

 

Now, I happen to agree greatly with the first, though humorously, and disagree with the second on the same grounds.

America’s food is kind of like English language.  “Ooh, that word looks good… and I like that turn of phrase… And we’ll steal this saying, but use it a bit differently… and let’s take their name for this specific group or philosophy, but broaden it out to everything like that.”

The burrito is just another example of the difference between, say, American pizza and what you’d get in Italy these days, or Chinese food (chop suey!"), or the German dishes we don’t even notice. (Dad still misses the “sausage and a bun” meals he got in Germany during Vietnam—nothing like a hot dog.)

Part of the changes are to folks’ taste, part of the changes are based on what’s around—can someone make a definite difference between the American forms of goulash, pan surprise, chop suey, and “I haven’t done shopping this week and we need to finish this stuff before it goes bad”?—and, just to make things more complicated, WE ARE NOT A PLANET OF HATS!  Dishes are different from cook to cook, let alone between families, and when you get to entirely different populations that just happen to vaguely share some culture, the type of food available and some cooking techniques.  Is a dish less “authentic” if new ingredients are introduced?  Where’s the tipping point?

 

Food isn’t a very good spot for scientific levels of precision. ^.^

Just who is waging a war on women?

This story has been making its way around the blogosphere. This one from Donald Douglas:

Jeez, this dude needs to put on a raincoat — either that, or keep it holstered permanently.

See the Los Angeles Times, “Man who had 30 kids with 11 women wants child-support break” (via Memeorandum)

As Darleen Click put it, “Dependency is the new freedom . . . .”

I have seen this story floating around, and while the irresponsibility of Desmond Hatchett is obvious, what I haven’t seen is anyone asking:

• Don’t the women involved have any responsibility for contraception; and
• Just what kind of self-respect do the ladies in question have if they are copulating with a guy who has been fornicating with that many other women?

The feminists who normally comment on just about anything relating to sex and families have been notably quiet: Amanda Marcotte has, at least thus far, said nothing, Feministing has been completely silent, despite having an article up about maternal health still being a feminist issue, and is concerned about the possible sexism on a picture of a woman riding two dolphins, Melissa McEwan was very busy condemning those who are concerned about the recent demographic news that more non-white babies were born in the US than white ones, including a condemnation of anybody who is in any way critical of contraception, yet hadn’t a word about the Hatchett case, and Think Progress and the Lost Kos and the Delaware Liberal were all silent.

Why? Well, if any of our friends on the left even questioned this case, it would raise questions about the women’s responsibility as well as the man’s. Thirty children by eleven different women means that most of these women had to have multiple children by the same man to whom they were not married and could not support. Were our friends on the left to raise this topic, it would call into question their abandonment of the apparently quaint and surely anti-feminist notion that sex has natural consequences, that women bear the greater burden of these consequences, and the old-fashioned norms that women shouldn’t screw around were for their own protection and well-being.

Contraception? It’s inexpensive and widely available. Abortion? Yes, I would like to outlaw it, but it is still perfectly legal, and a large city like Knoxville, Tennessee (which is the home of the University of Tennessee) has two abortion clinics, with inexpensive fees, along with a link to an organization which can help poor women with those fees.

Dr Douglas concluded:

And it is. The report indicates that some of the mothers of Hatchett’s children get as little as $1.50 a month. Somewhere along the way, probably as early as the first child, Hatchett and his hookups were relying on government to pay for their children, the hospital costs, for example (and pre-natal care), and unless the mothers are living with family members and self-sufficient, there’s no doubt that the kids are being supported through public assistance. Indeed, that’s why the county is all over this dude to get with the program. And I can guarantee you that if you say one word about the breakdown of individual responsibility in this case you’ll be attacked as racist. It’s almost unbelievable to think about what’s happened to this country. That’s almost unbelievable. As long as marriage is ridiculed by the enlightened progressive, and as these same left-wing idiots insist on perverting the institution through gay marriage radicalism, things will only get worse before they get better.

The county “is all over this dude to get with the program?” How? He makes minimum wage which, if the reports are accurate, means he is making $7.25 an hour, or $15,080 a year. Supposedly half of his income is being taken for child support, but, divided among thirty children, doesn’t go very far. If some of the children’s mothers get $1.50 a month, the administrative costs alone are higher than what the recipients get.

The war on women? It was waged with not by Republican policies, but with Desmond Hatchett’s dick, and the people who are suffering the casualties are the eleven women who have children for whom they receive virtually no child support (they were willing casualties), for the thirty children growing up without their scumbag father, and the taxpayers who are going to have to pay for the irresponsibility of Mr Hatchett and his eleven sluts.
______________________________
Cross posted on THE FIRST STREET JOURNAL.