Friday Randomness

~ Laura

I am working on an article this week, which took a sharp left turn. I started writing about a small problem. I did a bunch of interviews, and the information took me into a whole new area.  It’s like I’ve been writing about tigers for years and suddenly realized that tigers have morphed into turtles. I’m not sure what to do with the information. Sit on it and write the little article? Write it all up now? Who should I tell about this? Do I really have the right story?  I spent more time thinking than writing this week.

Did you know that there aren’t any organizations or groups, with real power or visibility, that represent the interests of college students?

Luckily, we can afford for me to waste time thinking and not constantly churning out words for dollars, like most writers today. Still, one does have to actually produce something eventually. So, I’m shutting down all distractions for the morning and producing a rough draft, even if it is triple the size of a normal article. I’ll divide it up later.

Does anybody feel a little sorry for Al Franken?

Check out Harry’s post on 529s at Crooked Timber?

 

Published by Laura

78 thoughts on “Friday Randomness”

  1. “Does anybody feel a little sorry for Al Franken?” Sorry? Mmmmm… he sounds like a dick. On the other hand, it’s also the case that he’s gotten the back of the hand from a real mob situation, I think. Claire Berlinski has written a piece about the moral panic we are currently undergoing, the incentives for the Mike Pence strategy, and do we really want to go this road: https://www.the-american-interest.com/2017/12/06/the-warlock-hunt/ which I think is worth reading and with which I largely agree.

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  2. Don’t know if the thought on organizations representing college students isfor a piece or not, but thought I’d bring up the example of MASSPIRG, in case you don’t know about it. Not national, but statewide here in MA. It’s funded by a fee on students attending public universities and colleges in the state – each campus student government can vote to assess a fee on all students. It’s an opt out fee – it appears on your bill automatically, but students can visit the bursar to opt out of paying. It’s ~10, so on an overall bill that’s pretty large, most students do not opt out.

    I am not sure how effective they are, but they are certainly active. For instance, on our campus, they’ve been working this semester on a petition for the campus to make a stronger commitment to renewable energy (can’t remember the details). The Faculty Senate will be taking this up next week.

    At any rate, it’s a model – creating student fees to overcome the collective action problem – for some entrepreneurial activist to think about implementing nationally.

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  3. Shannon said:

    “I am not sure how effective they are, but they are certainly active. For instance, on our campus, they’ve been working this semester on a petition for the campus to make a stronger commitment to renewable energy (can’t remember the details). The Faculty Senate will be taking this up next week.”

    That has a fair chance of raising tuition.

    That’s not an example that makes me feel better about the chances of organizing college students to defend their interests.

    My concern is that doing anything serious to budge a college’s policy is usually going to take way longer than the college career of the average student, unless it’s something really dire and scandalous like college coverups of rape by athletes, where just describing the problem has had an impact.

    Graduate students seem better organized, but they are also older, better educated and spend a longer amount of time at one institution.

    Do I feel sorry for Franken?

    No. He should have realized that his “hobby” was incompatible with a serious political career and that it was ultimately going to end in embarrassment.

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    1. Very true AmyP. That’s why I gave one of the organizers of the petition a ~30 minute lecture about just that when he came to my office. I told him I couldn’t support anything that increased costs for students, and if he didn’t know if it would do so, then I wouldn’t sign his petition. I also threw in stuff about how to make effective arguments to convince those who don’t agree with you. Then I sent him off to do more research to answer those questions before I agreed to sign. I still haven’t seen him, so my signature is not on that petition. I suspect that he’ll get more of those sorts of question when it comes before the Faculty Senate – and not just from me.

      But they’ve also organized campaigns on textbook costs and free college tuition, so not all of what they do will necessarily increase costs for students. Given that they use the money they collect to hire staff and host interns and volunteers, it is one model for organizing college students though.

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      1. “organizations or groups, with real power or visibility, that represent the interests of college students?” Well, the PIRG agenda is a fashionable left agenda. No tuition is – I went to Berkeley when we had essentially no tuition ($212.50 per quarter) and we had a fair number of perennial students who stayed for years and years. I don’t think that was good for them, it certainly wasn’t good for the rest of us. Renewable energy as a specifically student interest? Probably not – it’s stylish, but if it’s not cost-effective it simply raises student costs. It’s the wrong context. So I’m thinking this is a kind of a hijacking.

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      2. Shannon said:

        “That’s why I gave one of the organizers of the petition a ~30 minute lecture about just that when he came to my office. I told him I couldn’t support anything that increased costs for students, and if he didn’t know if it would do so, then I wouldn’t sign his petition. I also threw in stuff about how to make effective arguments to convince those who don’t agree with you.”

        CLAP CLAP CLAP!!!

        “But they’ve also organized campaigns on textbook costs and free college tuition, so not all of what they do will necessarily increase costs for students.”

        Free tuition is pie in the sky, but I definitely agree that there’s room for improvement with regard to textbook costs. Even just reusing the same edition multiple times (in subjects where that’s appropriate) could save students a lot of money.

        (True story–when my husband was in math grad school, students would save money by buying Russian editions of textbooks.)

        Professors should have stronger qualms of conscience about the question–am I assigning enough of this book to make it reasonable to ask students to buy it?

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      3. “Professors should have stronger qualms of conscience about the question–am I assigning enough of this book to make it reasonable to ask students to buy it?”

        Textbook cost is a huge issue for me. I almost never use a textbook, though I am technically supposed to. The one textbook I use is for TV Studies, and there hasn’t been a new edition in years. Which is kind of ironic, if you think about it, because tv has changed much more than math has in the past 8 years.

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      5. I guess I can wait until the article comes out, but I’m not sure what “access codes” are for students. Did people move on to pay-per-semester course websites?

        As far as physical text books, I used to work with a Chinese guy who would get me a PDF copy of some very expensive books that I would have gotten from the library otherwise. The indexes are all in Chinese so I couldn’t find them myself.

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      6. Along with a textbook, students have to pay about $100 for an access code to the publisher’s website. There they take exams and do homework. In the past, these assessments were considering part of the part of the price of tuition. Now, students have to pay an additional cost for those services. Students are pissed.

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      8. That does seem fairly outrageous, to charge students an additional fee so they can submit homework and take exams. Although when I went to Berkeley, we had to buy our own bluebooks to write exams. Having been in private institutions all my prior educational career, I thought that was really unfair, like charging the condemned man for the rope he is hanged with. (The cost was obviously nothing like $100, of course.)

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      10. I’m old enough to remember when the use of online resources was praised as a way to save money.

        Rather than a way to suck more money out of a captive audience.

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      12. Yes, access codes. We have them for HS classes, now, too (in a private school. I hope they can’t do it in public school). And, the textbooks are now sold at the local university bookstore, rather than ordered in house, and when I priced them out, I found that 1) no, kiddo didn’t need the biology textbook and 2) the other books were available on Amazon for about 30% less.

        Yes, I remember when I imagined that online resources would be a way to save money. Now, it seems like they’re a way to sell subscription services that require you to continue paying for access.

        I think schools have to look harder at how the are being complicit.

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      13. bj, speaking of subscription fees, do you use Lightroom CC subscription for $100 per year? I want to pay one price and keep software for ten years like I always do. Now, they are trying to get me to pay every year. Ugh.

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      14. I am still using the last non subscription version of photoshop and Lightroom. I’m facing a challenge, though because PS won’t read my newest RAW files, which means I have to use extra software to convert them to DMG files when I use them. And, I don’t know what I’ll do when I get a new computer.

        I detest the subscription model.

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  4. It’s hard to feel sorry for someone as sanctimonious as Al Franken. (Actually, it’s hard to feel sorry for any politician ever, just for that reason.) But I think that the kind of extra, mildly inappropriate gropes and squeezes of which he is accused are pretty standard behavior in the entertainment industry–as opposed to Harvey Weinstein’s behavior, which would be outrageous anywhere, although probably more common in the entertainment industry than elsewhere. So considered in the abstract, one might feel sorry for someone who finds himself in a strange culture and is shunned for faux pas he didn’t know he was committing.

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  6. Franken’s public personal does not invite empathy.

    I am sorry for young adults. Have any of you tried to discuss these changes with recent college graduates? We tried with a cousin who recently graduated from one of the “safe space” colleges. Discussing such cases makes him “uncomfortable.”

    I fear we are witnessing the rise of a neo-Victorian Age. (Name of said Age to be determined.) The easiest way to prevent sexual harassment and indelicate jokes is to separate the genders. In my opinion, that would be a giant step back, but I’m afraid it’s on the way.

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    1. Case in point, perhaps: http://www.wbur.org/news/2017/12/11/tom-ashbrook-allegations.

      Tom Ashbrook, the host of “On Point,” is currently suspended.

      Tirades directed at young women in the studio. Name calling and belittling critiques of show ideas during meetings. “Creepy” sex talk, hugs and back or neck rubs after a dressing down. That’s the pattern of alleged abuse described by 11 mostly young women and men who filed a multi-page document outlining their complaints against On Point host Tom Ashbrook.

      Is the offense sexual? Or making members of the Millenial generation uncomfortable?

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      1. If you think that touching a person who works for you with hugs and back/neck rubs is simply “making Millennials uncomfortable” then I think we have a serious disagreement.

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      2. Yes, yelling and belittling someone and then offering to rub their neck to make them feel all better is not appropriate workplace behavior.

        I am concerned about peer to peer interactions and what the rules are. At least in high school, I believe a lot of the kids are sincerely confused about the rules.

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      3. Wendy said:

        “If you think that touching a person who works for you with hugs and back/neck rubs is simply “making Millennials uncomfortable” then I think we have a serious disagreement.”

        Again, would a heterosexual male boss do that with a male subordinate after calling the subordinate on the carpet?

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      4. Gee, if Joe Biden was my boss, his touchy ways would certainly make me uncomfortable, and I wouldn’t be comforted by the knowledge that he touched both sexes to the same degree. At the same time, I wouldn’t see it as a political issue. If you don’t like your boss, get a new job. Or ask him to stop touching you, although recognizing that personal comments tend to poison relationships.

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    2. Discussing such cases makes him “uncomfortable.”

      I don’t think you have a snowflake millennial cousin. I think you have a polite cousin with better manners than you who is trying to avoid a political argument at a family gathering.

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      2. There’s nothing young people like better than detailed conversations about sex with older relatives. I’m sure it’s not you.

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      3. If you can’t talk about what determines sexual harassment with adults, that’s a problem. It’s in line with the reported reluctance of Harvard Law students to hear the word “rape.” http://reason.com/blog/2016/05/09/trigger-warning-at-oxford-squeamish-law#comment

        That’s a huge problem for the real world where there is harassment and rape.

        MH we aren’t in the Midwest. Topics of family conversation range widely. That’s why it was noticeable, and to me a sign of a rise of neo-Victorianism.

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      4. Topics of family conversation vary widely even in the Midwest, but the need to not tell an older relative to go fuck himself when he starts with “I feel sorry for young people today” is universal even if the ability to take a hint about changing the subject isn’t.

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      5. “I have learned this watching the TV news on Fox and would like to explain to you why you young people are wrong and I’m only trying to be helpful so you’ll sit there and be helped and this is in no way at all similar to the conversations that made my skin crawl when I was twenty because I remember when Phoebe Cates came out of the swimming pool and thus I can’t possibly be old and unhip.”

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      6. But here’s the thing…it doesn’t look as if they’re talking about it with each other, either.

        Which is how you get things like this: https://nypost.com/2017/12/10/snap-execs-discussed-ordering-hookers-on-business-call-source/

        Funnily enough, if there were anyone in the US who should be unlikely to be accused of harassment, it should be the On Point guy because all he (and other NPR discussion shows) do is talk about changes in popular culture.

        Hounding people out of jobs through internet shaming based on allegations does not necessarily build a better culture. It could very well build a culture in which young company founders decide it’s not worth the risk to have women reporting to men in the same building or department. As many businesses are distributed across the country or world, it would be possible for many to stratify the workplace so that young women are “protected” from men.

        I wonder if the job of chaperone will come back into fashion? So no young lady will ever be alone with a man… And of course nearly every contact will soon be logged in some fashion, whether by location taggers on cellphones, or through text and email strings left on servers.

        According to some, Millennials need more classes on interpersonal communication skills, such as reading body language: http://www.bbc.com/capital/story/20130828-the-crucial-skill-new-hires-lack

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      7. Well, Cranberry, the fabled Em Aitch charm is on display here… you are right, Pence will be seen as a thought leader! I think it’s a problem when families can’t talk, though I have a bro-in-law with whom it is difficult. I’ve found it useful to say, ‘Well, our views differ here.’

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      8. And, Cranberry, I think ‘chaperone’ or ‘three person casting committee’ could be a very helpful strategy for the Weinstein/Woody Allen problem, where I hate to lose the output (as Weinstein said of Allen – ‘The man is a comic genius’) but I don’t want them to be able to keep operating as they have been.

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      9. I’m pretty sure that the sexual topics millennials are willing to talk about in front of their older conservative relatives are not representative of the sexual topics millennials are willing to talk about with each other more generally. Anyways, if my Republican uncle starting telling me how women today were too sensitive to being groped in the workplace, I would back pretty quickly out of the room.

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    3. This is odd. I work with a lot of Millenials and I’ve not seen this. But I would not discuss sexual harassment with with my family either and I’m 51.

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      1. My daughter is home from college (yay!) and so I brought up “Cat Person” with her and also the issue of talking about sexual harassment. She had already read “Cat Person” and sent it to everyone she knew. She was interested in the whole attraction-repulsion dynamic of the main character with the guy, probably because she was kind of repulsed by her ex-boyfriend yet also attracted to the idea of him (ftr, he was a cute guy). I brought up the idea of having bad sex with someone and kind of going along with it not to cause a confrontation, but she wasn’t into talking about that because I suspect she hasn’t had sex yet. But she is starting to realize that she has a kind of power as an object of attraction, and she’s not sure how to handle it. Anyway, we had a pretty decent talk about it even though she generally hates telling me anything.
        I also brought up the issue of sexual harassment and discussing it. She said that she did talk about it at college. In fact, in one of her classes they talked about female pain a lot (they read a lot of Didion; I think her grad student instructor is writing his diss on Didion) and they spent a week talking about the Harvey Weinstein stuff. And she says she and her friends have talked about it.
        She did say that among her social group (marching band), the first-years have been warned about some of the members who are a little touchy. They’re told if they feel uncomfortable, they need to tell one of the band leader-types asap. S says it’s in part because they don’t want to be put on probation at all (which would limit their band activities), so they try to be vigilant.
        And that seems instructive to me. If you hold the group as a whole responsible for the actions of its members, the group will self-police.
        Anyway, anecdata.

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      2. Wendy said:

        “She did say that among her social group (marching band), the first-years have been warned about some of the members who are a little touchy. They’re told if they feel uncomfortable, they need to tell one of the band leader-types asap. S says it’s in part because they don’t want to be put on probation at all (which would limit their band activities), so they try to be vigilant.”

        Related:

        http://pervocracy.blogspot.com/2012/06/missing-stair.html

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      3. “If you hold the group as a whole responsible for the actions of its members, the group will self-police.”

        Rather contrary to liberal principles, and to modern Anglo-American jurisprudential principles, but perfectly in keeping with medieval and/or contemporary collectivist notions of justice.

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  8. I feel sorry for Al Franken, because I don’t think his behavior is resign-worthy. But mostly I feel truly sorry for the Democratic party.

    They are trying to make a point of supporting women—which is great—but somehow they are managing to show that they don’t know what the heck they are talking about.

    Sen. Gillibrand, the politician leading the charge to force Franken to resign used as an argument that there is no difference between sexual assault and sexual harassment:

    “I think when we start having to talk about the differences between sexual assault and sexual harassment and unwanted groping you are having the wrong conversation,” Ms. Gillibrand said Wednesday at a Capitol Hill news conference when asked about calling on Mr. Franken to resign. “You need to draw a line in the sand and say none of it is O.K. None of it is acceptable.”

    Of COURSE there is a difference between sexual assault and sexual harassment! That is an absolutely ridiculous argument. It’s absolutely the conversation we need to be having.

    If Franken wanted to make amends for his stupid behavior, have him sponsor legislation to strengthen women’s rights, ensure working parent’s workplace rights, end non-disclosure agreements, etc. etc.

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  9. I suspect that less–much less–socializing between the sexes in the workplace is in the offing. It simply isn’t worth the risk for most men. Obviously, the allegations that get widespread play involve behavior that is clearly over the line, but for every case like that there are a hundred petty offenses that result in a man being raked over the coals, perhaps reprimanded, perhaps exonerated in the end, but generally having an unpleasant time. All for no discernible payoff, since there are plenty of women to hang out with outside the office.

    Oddly enough, rules for behavior in a non-business context are very different. You hear plenty of off-color jokes, discussions about politics, etc. at parties. Pictures of scantily clad women and sexual innuendo adorn every bus shelter and subway car. I don’t know if the coming age will be called neo-Victorian, but I know that the age after that will consider their predecessors to be unfathomable hypocrites. Maybe someone in 2060 will write a book, “Eminent Millennials.”

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      1. What was hypocritical about the Victorians having standards of propriety in the drawing room where upper class women were present and different standards in the brothel where lower-class women work? Almost everything in the world works like that.

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      2. When you get to the office tomorrow, why don’t you try comparing working women today with Victorian prostitutes and see if you can make the news.

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      3. Why don’t we both wait until 2060, and see who judges whom? (I won’t be here, alas.) Plenty of people in Pope’s day thought their grandchildren were intolerable hypocrites; plenty of people in Strachey’s day thought that of their grandparents.

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      4. I am very certain that in 2060 people will think the people of today were hypocrites for some (probably sound) reason. I am equally certain that it won’t be because women at work demanded to be treated as if they weren’t a woman from an ad on a bus shelter.

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  10. I’m pretty down with, how about we treat people as individuals, based on their individual personalities, and not simply as a generic X as part of X group? Next time you think about how to treat “a woman,” simply plan on treating her like a human individual, with an individual personality and a particular social role that is context dependent. If it’s hard to figure that out, Amy P has a great test: would you treat a man in the same position in the same way? If it’s not a romantic role relative to you, then the answer should probably be “yes.”

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    1. “would you treat a man in the same position in the same way?”–That can’t be the right analysis. That would mean that you could tell a female co-worker a dirty joke if you would tell a male co-worker the same joke. (By “dirty joke,” I mean something along the lines of a reference to the Seinfeldian “master of your domain” meme.) That’s exactly the sort of thing that people consider sexual harassment.

      I strongly recommend against treating the women you know the same as you treat the men you know. Or vice versa. Doesn’t work with spouses, doesn’t work with children, and doesn’t work with officemates.

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      1. First they came for the guy who made masturbation jokes at work and I said, “Honestly that seems like a pretty reasonable rule regardless of gender.”

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      2. Well, I confess I don’t talk about my period with men. I would, but they tend to freak out.

        I’m on a group text chat with 2 of my co-workers, one male, one female. We manage to be hilarious and occasionally profane without making anyone uncomfortable. IJS.

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      3. Why not? I have close male and female friendships and I treat my friends the same way. They’re also my colleagues and no, there are no dirty jokes I would tell a female friend and/or colleague and not a male friend and/or colleague. If a dirty joke isn’t ok to tell a man in a particular setting, I wouldn’t tell it to a woman in that same setting (or whatever way you want the genders to go). I also haven’t had a problem with sexual harassment in the workplace, which I know is entirely luck, but it also indicates that plenty of men are capable of being around women in professional settings while treating them as humans and not sex objects.

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  11. B.I. said:

    “If it’s hard to figure that out, Amy P has a great test: would you treat a man in the same position in the same way? If it’s not a romantic role relative to you, then the answer should probably be “yes.””

    It’s not my rule, but I do like it a lot.

    I got it from the excellent Captain Awkward, but she probably got it from somewhere else, too. She once told an advice seeker:

    “Would Peter send male colleagues -his boss, say, or male colleagues who are his same age & peer status – messages like this? (To be clear, if he does, that doesn’t make it okay, but when gender/power shit gets weird at work it’s good to use this as a reality check.) If he did overshare with these guys, would they be like “right on Peter, that’s a totally normal thing to do, pip pip cheerio!” No, they would find it weird and they would either avoid the messages (and him) or tell him to knock it off.”

    This was a response to a female advice seeker dealing with a much older colleague leveraging a professional relationship into a crying-on-young-female-colleague’s-shoulder relationship.

    Captain Awkward adds (and this was before the big perv purge started):

    ” I also think it’s likely that Peter seeks out “working”/social media friends relationships with very young women (like you, and your best friend) because he likes the weird power-imbalances and ambiguous situations. There’s an element of grooming behavior going on here that I do not like. Over the last year I’ve read a ton of stories about sexual harassment at work (especially in universities) and “It started with him confiding in me about his romantic life and contacting me a lot outside work hours wanting emotional support” is a common thread in a lot of the stories. A lot. It’s the old “my wife doesn’t understand me, not like you” trick dressed up for a new generation. I need all young people everywhere to recognize this shit for what it is and to learn the response “Huh, that’s sad, but let’s stick to work topics!” when someone tries that with them.”

    #1041: “How do I get my much older work ‘friend’ to stop messaging me late at night to talk about his relationship problems?”

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      2. Yup – I can’t tell you how many times I heard the line, “my wife doesn’t understand me like you do” starting in my early 20’s. Nope, maybe it’s because she understands you ALL too well buddy…

        Back to the topic, it isn’t that hard to treat people with respect at work.

        It is such a pleasure to banter and joke around with someone and have it just be that – enjoying the banter and joking around. And it is soooooo tiring when it flips into them assuming that you’re hitting on them. Nope – just banter.

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  12. I don’t feel sorry for Franken. I want to point out that he hasn’t actually resigned. He also hasn’t apologized for anything other than the Tweeden photo. Everything else has been the classic non-apology “I’m sorry you’re upset.” People seem absolutely determined to defend him – ‘what he did wasn’t so bad’, even at the expense of women office holders. It really shows what bullshit Democratic support for women really is.

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    2. The world changed around him, and stuff – bad stuff – he did in the reasonable expectation that he could get away with it, suddenly came back to bite him. Very like what happened to Clinton, when he had acted no worse than did JFK or LBJ. Clinton was kind of pissed of about this, too. So there’s a sort of settled expectations argument that Al could ask for the ability to reform and go forward. But, it was bad stuff, and reveals him to be a jerk, and we generally want at least a perception that our politicos are nice people. Warren Buffet had a nice line, “When the tide goes out, that’s when you see who was swimming naked”. He was unlucky when the tide went out, but the tide did go out, and it’s a compelling argument that when he started swimming in the buff he assumed the risk.
      Speaking of swimming in the buff, how about that Joe Biden? I think he’s not Presidential timber now, either.

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      1. Are there Biden stories? There’s certainly a broad photographic record of him being huggy, but I haven’t seen anything about any particular person complaining about him. (I mean, if a story broke I wouldn’t have any reason to disbelieve it, I just haven’t seen one.)

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      3. No. What Franken is accused of (and remember there are more accusers than Tweeden) was never ok.

        I wasn’t aware that JFK and LBJ were also rapists, although it doesn’t surprise me. But again, it was NEVER OK.

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      4. (defensively) I’m not claiming it was okay, in the past. I’m claiming it was get-away-with-able. The okayness has not changed. Using your power to compel a young girl to let you fuck her is vile, and was in 1961 and was long before that. It’s the get-away-with-ableness which went. It was always kind of undependable (‘what is Gary Hart’s favorite dish? Rice peel-off’). But a well liked and politically important person like Packwood or Franken or Clinton could generally exercise droit de seigneur – until suddenly they couldn’t. It was also true for a long time that J Edgar Hoover had the goods on a lot of guys and could threaten them that he would drop the dime unless they gave him what they wanted.

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  13. So pleased that yesterday my wish “I’m just waiting for [all] of those people to stop voting” came true (enough).

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  14. I’m fascinated people aren’t discussing these things with their family’s next generation.

    I remember sitting at the table discussing with my fiance and his parents the practices in my father-in-law’s industry. Ahem, such things as executives hiring call girls at conferences. Vendors offering such. And a discussion of why such things happen, why it’s a bad idea to do such things (including marital breakups, marital revenge, and blackmail), and why it’s a corrupting influence.

    Now, I’m sure it was not official company policy printed in the manuals and featured in corporate training to do such things, in that industry or others. But I’m sure it was, and still is, a common practice. Such as: https://tinyurl.com/zalwo2o And: https://tinyurl.com/y79fb84h

    If you’re a young person starting out in a field, if your parents don’t talk to you about such things, who does?

    As to other topics, does this intergenerational prudishness extend to financial planning (ie money) as well?

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    1. People still talk about this stuff. Certainly I explain what is sexual harassment to my own son and he sees the news and asks questions. My parents also discussed things like that with me. But there were (and are) many (nearly all older) relatives that I will not have a discussion about politics or sexual harassment with because I think it would severe the relationship and I’d prefer to let it wither on the vine slowly. These people very often try to steer the conversation that way, but I don’t see why that obligates me to follow their lead any more than I would let a Jehovah’s Witness get going on their Watchtower before shutting the door.

      As an aside, somehow my son knows there’s a pee tape out there and I’m 95% sure he didn’t hear it from me. I guess kids learn things at school?

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    2. Cranberry said,

      “I’m fascinated people aren’t discussing these things with their family’s next generation.”

      I’ve given the big kids (tween and teen) PG versions of a couple of recent scandals. They were horrified enough by, “and he said that being famous, he could just grab women and get away with it!”

      At our house, we are big believers in keep your hands to yourself.

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      1. If you don’t explain that there is probably a tape of Trump paying prostitutes to pee on a bed because President Obama stayed in it, you’re engaging in intergenerational prudishness.

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    3. Marital breakups and marital revenge aren’t much of a concern for single young men, and low-level programmers and analysts aren’t much susceptible to blackmail. Most young men would need a lot more reason than that to avoid hiring a call girl.

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      1. My parents managed somehow to instil in me the idea that it was tawdry, icky, and dangerous. And that lusts slaked that way weren’t very fun, anyhow. It worked, so that is my strategy with my sons.

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  15. dave s. has a better strategy, although saying the part about not very fun that way might not be advisable at work if there are women in the room. You can say it at home, but not in the office.

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