Dinner Table Digest № 72
The Dinner Table Digest is an intermittent collection of interesting material from around the internet, curated by Peter Thurley at Dinner Table Don'ts. Subscribe today!
It’s been a while since my last Digest, though there has been a lot going on. Two weeks ago I officially graduatEd from the stroke rehab program at Grand River Hospital’s Freeport location. My lst Occupational Therapy session was on June 21st. While I still have some remaining deficits, primarily left-sided inattentiveness, I have, by and large, recovered all my physical abilities lost to the stroke. I’m still dealing with some mental health issues, including well-documented post-stroke depression
Sections: Liberals Defending liberalism / Age Gap Relationships / Hypocrisy in Professional Sports / / For Paid Subscribers: Calling for the Death Penalty / Abstinence from Masturbation
Why Liberals struggle to defend Liberalism - Adam Gopnik - The New Yorker
This piece starts off by reminding us that the big question is this what is liberalism anyway?,.
The New Yorker piece written by Canadian Adam Gopnik focuses primarily on reviewing two books written by philosophers and economists on the nature of liberalism, particularly it's deficits.
Both books, m it turns out, warm to rely on Rawlsian egalitarianism to make theur for arguments. The Lefebvre book highlights the Rawlsian Reflective Equilibrium, while the Chandler text focusses on Rawls Difference Principle, which is famously secondary to his Liberty Principle.
Gopnik never actually answers the question posed by the title if his piece. Instead he focuses on how these two authors have or have not interacted with the real world. The closest thing to an answer to the title's question is tha Defenders of Liberalism don't spend enough time in the real world, instead preferring to build fancy .theories, even if those theories don't adequately reflect the empirical evidence.
If Gopnik's goal was to get me to read the two books, then he accomplished that goal: I've added the books to my 'Must Read' list. If course, being someone who made copious use of Rawls in my Master's degree thesis I just might be part of th target audience, who can say?
The Age Gappers - Lisa Shapiro - The Cut, New York Magazine
I’ve been interested in human relationships lately, in part as my wife and I do our own exploring of our sexualities, and after 17 years married, w think about ways to improve our relationship with each other and with others. . In this piece, published in December 2023, the Lisa Shapiro writing for New York Magazine, explores the sometimes taboo world of sge gap relationships. While it’s not really scandalous, as is perhaps the first story in Shpiro’s article (37M/19/F) I am 6 years my wife’s senior. We met and tarted dating when I was just turning 26 and she had just turned 19. We married when she was 20; so while it is not the kind of significant age gap that Shapiro is interested in I occasionally feel the awkwardness of making a cultural reference that my wife not be aware of.
After describing how Jessica Moss and Kevin Hardsty met, fell in love and were married in 2017 after knowing each other zinc 2000. She was 19 and he was 37 when thy met.Shapiro quotes Moss, speaking about the sexual agency that adult women ought to have over their own lives, thusly:
They are aware that people out in the world might look askance at their relationship given how young Moss was when they met. A few weeks before we spoke, news emerged that the stand-up comedian Dane Cook, who is 51, had married a 24-year-old Pilates instructor named Kelsi Taylor; the pair had started dating when Taylor was 18. On the internet, some were calling Cook a predator, implying that Taylor was an unwitting victim. “I took such offense to that,” Moss said. “It just assumes that this 24-year-old is not her own woman and that she can’t make her own choices and she is somehow bamboozled or victimized or abused. It doesn’t have to be that.” She flicked a hand toward Hardesty. “This is proof it’s not.”
While I am in no position to comment on Moss and Hardsty’s relationship - It’s honestly none of my business, I do feel that my in exploration of relationship styles and sexuality age gaps, whether between friends or lovers, don’t matter that much. As far as I’m concerned, If individuals participating are adults (18+), participating of their own free agency, with full consent and knowledge of all relevant parties, then have at it.When you get down to brass tacks, there ar far more important things than zn age gap that out to qualify as dealbreakers. So what if your partner likes Tina Turner but you grew up on Linking Park. Do you show each other kindness, love and respect
Lucrative Sports Hypocrisy - Cathal Kelly - Globe and Mail
Published on Christmas Day 2023 this story probably missed your desk unless you’re a sports generalist, though this piece had become even more relevant in the aftermath of Kansas City Chiefs kicker Harrison Bitker who gave a much mlignd misogynistic and homophobic commencement speech to a Catholic University this spring. While Butker took a lot of heat, particularly from people who r politically left of centre Butket had many defenders, including Roger Goodell, the Commissioner of the NFL who noted that the league celebrates the diversity of beliefs and opinions that is found across the NFL, a pretty hilarious comment, given the blackballing of QB Colin Kaepernick from the league in 2016, Cathal Kelley’s piece in the Globe and Mail highlights the hypocrisy that professional sports leagues open themselves up o when they become involved in social causes. Regarding sports leagues grappling with oppressive social policies Kelley convincingly writes that it was only ever about money anyway:,
“Two, three years ago, we were having serious philosophical discussions about the intersection of human rights, sports and state-level investment by autocracies. Now we’re talking about how we can figure out a World Cup of Hockey that includes Russia and when Saudi Arabia should get an Olympics.
The fundamentals never changed. Money was, is and always will be everyone’s paramount concern. The protest era flared so brightly because, for an instant, fighting the power became a potential vein of revenue.
Now that it’s tapped out, leagues know what they have to do. Just keep commiserating with everyone on everything. That way, the likelihood of genuine protest is vastly reduced.
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