The present I humbly send her today is this column; this public note, this irrevocable display of affection and support and gratitude; this worldly absolution from any guilt or sadness she felt between the time she said no to me and the time she said yes to him. No one ought to have to carry that with them into a marriage.Wow! Wow. "Hey, I dunno if you are still feeling bad about what you did to me, but if you are, don't worry about it anymore." That doesn't strike me as particularly affectionate, supportive, or grateful. Lizzie Skurnick's response is outstanding and warranted.
Yes, publishing, on her wedding day, a rundown that frames the lady's virtues almost entirely by how well she treated you falls somewhere between inconsiderate and catastrophically narcissistic.Seriously. His ex's wedding is not about him.
All I could think of after finishing the second article was, What a bitter, bitter bitch. No wonder she's still single after twenty years of dating...Huh, after reading this comment, I read the second article. I was all ready for a psycho bitter bitch-fest, and frankly I was pretty disappointed. Honestly the article comes across as pretty reasonable to me. Her criticisms seemed pretty reasonable to me.
Inevitable XKCD link.#420? I can't believe he didn't do a weed joke.
The first time I read your piece I was upset. The second time I read it I realized you've spent the last 20 years or so looking (and failing, evidently) to find someone or something in a relationship.Stay classy, Andrew.
I wonder if there's a better way to curb this sort of benign narcissism and "nice guy" behavior.OK, hivemind. We all know that this flavor of "nice guy" isn't nice at all, and that there's something else at play. Can we put our heads together, coin a new term, start a meme or something? Because hot damn, we all need a better, faster shorthand for "Look, you're being 'nice' but not really nice because your niceness isn't really nice..."
davejay: '...Since so many jerk stereotypes also apply to frat boys, I'm gonna start thinking of "nice guys" (again, as opposed to actual nice guys) as "scaredy-frats."'
EmpressCallipygos: 'Well, Charles Dickens came up with a good example of such a character in Uriah Heep. Perhaps calling them "Heeps?"'I love you both so much. "Heeps" and "Scardey-frats" also gives us a nice casual vs. formal variation...
......!Me: say hello to Io for me
Him: I will pet her...and hit the other one, but I will refrain because her constant destruction of property and antisocial attitude and beautiful eyes sometimes remind me of how I think of you
ha ha ha
but true
Is there a compassionate way to get people to acknowledge their own entitlement?Yes! There are! But they're not nearly as satisfying as aggression and snark. Really good diversity facilitators have this down to an art so subtle that you wouldn't know that it's happening. The Color of Fear has a really poignant example of this, but it's not a movie that you'll find easily or cheaply.
This is really just my personal objection but hello -- "She did not give in or sell out or become one of those poor women of a certain age in New York who have put their careers ahead of their lives" -- what was that? In the trade, I believe this is called a neg, and it is exactly as successful as anything called a "neg" should be. Is this something you dropped as a hard sell on her? It's not surprising, then, that it's not you she's marrying. And if it's you projecting -- and ding ding ding on that, my dear sir -- why don't you get busy marrying yourself and stop worrying about the single women who aren't marrying you? We want you to know how our hair smells, and we are legion.This is really just my...
I say he's grandstanding, and I say the hell with it.Grandstanding. I've been looking for that word ever since I found a poem on an ex's website all about our torrid affair and the ensuing torrid breakup, written several years after everything was over. And in installments! I mean, I suppose writers have license to do such things, right? People write about their experiences and publish biographical details all the time--like I'm doing now--and it's their right to do so. But, yeah, publishing something like that, whether it's in a national publication or your small-time blog, strikes me as being more about self-aggrandizement than artistic expression.
Stumpy,posted by notyou at 8:10 AM on August 6, 2010 [23 favorites]
Thank you for your graceful action in forwarding my pantaloons to my fiancee, together with an inventive account of how you came by them, sundry calumnies about my early life, and what appears to be a forged letter purporting to be from my lawyer and alleging certain passages betwixt me and him.
Doubtless you will have heard that there has been a breach between De Coverley and myself. I wish you to know that this is merely temporary in nature and anyway has nothing to do with your slimy machinations, your repulsive toad. The fact is that, despite Lumsden daily urging me to seal our union, I have decided to continue my stage career for a while, seeing no reason to exchange the triumphs of my art for a domestic setting just yet. This and no other led to my estrangement from Lumsden - which, I reiterate, will pass. Despite all your efforts, my hold over him is complete and I will yet be Lady De Coverley.
Nevertheless, I shall not forget the bad turn you have attempted to do me, and whether as Duchess or doyenne of the stage, I intend to exert all of my powers to effecting your complete and utter destruction, you maggot. If a single day goes by without my having done you some disservice I shall account it a day wasted. Good breeding and an innate compassion for the sickly and malformed prevent me expressing all that I think of you, so I shall just content myself with saying that it is my dearest dream that you may one day be brought to see yourself as others see you - a shambling, misshapen wretch who would be pitied rather than despised if he only had the sense to keep his loathsome gob shut for two seconds at a time instead of continually bombarding the town with failed epigrams and onion breath, a ridiculous kobold who giggles like a demented schoolgirl and apparently lets his blind, palsied mother cut his hair for him, a capering buffoon who glides about a dancefloor with the tranquil grace of an epileptic being devoured by termites, a squat, slobbering troglodyte with sausage fingers whom any woman would rather die of pleurisy than suffer herself to be touched by, a coarse, blunt-thumbed hobbledehoy who lights up a room like a rumour of smallpox, a dank-souled misanthrope with mouldering feet whose appearance at any social gathering is as welcome as the first signs of canker in the fur of a much-loved pet, a malign excrescence in ill-judged apparel whose very elbows cause infirm persons to weep with revulsion, a festering goblin with a soul of pus and the skin-tone of a scrotal sac, an animated pile of goat-puke in a badly-fitting frock-coat whom people fling themselves into middens to avoid, a waddling little arse-burp with the spirit of a slug-breeder and alarmingly hairy ears, a forlorn, twisted, Rumpelstiltskin figure with the social polish of a puddle of monkey-jism and eyebrows like deranged voles. Really, why do you not make an end to yourself? Your life must be as much a burden to you as it is to others.
More in sorrow than in anger,
Clarissa
Do none of you actually stay on good terms, and in contact with, your exes?I am in touch with several. That doesn't mean I'm automatically so self-absorbed or would write something like that (or publish it) on their wedding day. Trust me, it can suck to watch an ex who you aren't quite over move in with someone or get married. It's no fun at all. But you suck it up, maybe get drunk or whine to your friends, and you carry on.
Indeed. And this is why we call people who do this kind of thing "creeps."Heeps, people. Heeps.
On Saturday, CBS legal correspondent and Politics Daily contributor Andrew Cohen wrote a heartfelt tribute to the love that got away on the occasion of her wedding to someone else.She acknowledges that the missive was heartfelt. She also notes that it was entirely inappropriate. It seems to me that Skurnick can admit that both may be true, while Cohen and his defenders think that being sincere is a defense from being creepy or from being a jerk. It's not.
Sorry guys, I can't get behind the Heep= Nice Guy meme. Heep was an unctuous, fawning toady, yes, but I never got the idea that he considered himself a nice person; he only wears a thin mask of niceness which he soon drops when David figures him out. The real Nice GuyTM always fools himself-- he really does believe in his own niceness and never understands why girls don't fall in love with him. Heep would have been astonished if Agnes fell in love with him and he would have calculated the best way to use that knowledge.I ran this past my wife, whose experience in such matters (i.e., British literature) is much greater than mine. She concurred, and after some thought announced that Guppy, from Bleak House, would be perfect.
I find it disturbing that so many people attribute maliciousness to his letter when it could easily, quite likely in fact, have been a sincere gesture.Who is attributing maliciousness to the letter? Certainly not Skurnick. As I have stated, something can be both sincere and hurtful.
Basically, he spends several column inches listing what a fine, decent, admirable human being she is.Really? I've read the column several times and I can not think of one trait that he listed, besides the fact that she's funny, and perhaps that she dazzles HIM. The problem is not that he praises her - it's that all his praise is centered around HIM. How she makes HIM feel. How she makes HIS DAD feel. How she makes HIS SON feel. How she changed HIS life. How HIS LIFE will not be the same without her. How she's "the one who got away" FROM HIM. Do you see the trend?
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posted by Parasite Unseen at 6:37 PM on August 5, 2010 [90 favorites]