Helen H. Moore's Blog, page 841

“I was melting from the inside”: My struggle with postpartum anxiety

When my daughter, Clara, was 4 months old, I became mentally ill. The psychiatrist I’d called—following two fully sleepless nights, escalating panic attacks, lack of appetite, and the fear that I would never recover from the birth of my child—said I was experiencing a “moderate to severe episode of postpartum anxiety.” It didn’t matter that I had work (teaching and writing) I loved, or Danny, my kind and brilliant husband, or my perfect baby girl. Even with all of these gifts, I’d gone officially crazy.

It started with me feeling tired, but more than the usual new mommy standard. Commuting on the subway rendered me nauseous and dizzy. The effort of bumping Clara down the stoop for a stroll in the winter sunshine was insurmountable. I planned our Mommy Group’s first-ever-night-out-without-babies, but then worried too much to show up. My arms vibrated when I held Clara. As I walked to get coffee and a scone, passing faces grimaced and swelled with malevolence. Car alarms, sirens and unexpected footfalls made me jump. I felt as if I was melting from the inside.

That was the beginning, of what a tidier writer or mother might call my “journey to recovery,” a story that would progress in neat, even beats. Before I gave birth, I didn't think postpartum mental illness could happen to me; I got sick, received treatment and medication; post-recovery, I became an advocate for other women, turning this worst-thing-that-ever-happened-to-me into the topic for my first book. That story isn’t wrong, exactly. As my grandmother would have said, I took lemons and made lemonade. Cue the surging string section out of "The Blind Side" or "Erin Brockovich."

But I’m not a tidy writer or mother (as the collection of socks under my sofa attests), so cue a different soundtrack, with tensile strings and more percussive looping. Or maybe I should just say it, into the needle-bump drag at the end of the soundtrack: I’m not recovered, and never will be.

Then what am I?

I’m a woman with a mental illness. I’m a mother whose brain doesn’t always behave itself. Since my daughter’s birth, I carry emotional instability like a spore in my head, latent, but ready to sprout. That potential has affected my parenting style ever since. Which is not necessarily a bad thing.

As teacher, I’ve worked with kids with learning differences for years. The result of successful remediation is rarely recovery. But once the frustration of knowing they won’t be “cured” wears off, something else happens: They learn to budget more time for schoolwork than their friends or to plot ahead how they’ll talk to their teachers when—not if—they need help. These kids often come to understand their needs better than typical learners.

I’ve come to realize that mothers (including myself) who struggle with postpartum mental illness have to prepare, to remediate parental problems. But we can transform our weaknesses into… I hesitate to use the word “strengths.” More like: if we have to rewrite the manual, we might as well make it a better book. So, five years after my diagnosis (practically to the day) here is my messy, arrhythmic story of parenting with anxiety.

***

After I got my meds —Zoloft for the anxiety that my exhausted body turned into depression, Ativan to cut the panic, and Ambien to put me to sleep—I was devastated to hear that I might need to wean my daughter. Breast-feeding was one of the few “mommy things” I was pretty sure I was doing right.  I read up on the literature, consulted extra doctors, and ultimately felt safe continuing to nurse, carefully, on my pharmaceutical regimen.

Now, most of my breast-feeding friends weaned between 6 and 12 months. Somewhere in that timeframe, their babies learned how much fun it was to try out their new teeth on something with more texture and taste than Mama’s boob. Clara never got less interested in “the nursing relationship.” We kept going . . . for two and a half years.

The usual explanation for extended breast-feeding is that it’s better for the child. I’ll admit the truth, though. I kept breast-feeding for me. That connection reassured me that I wasn’t an unfit mother, all panic and no nurture.

After my insomnia hit, my doctor and therapist insisted that my health required eight uninterrupted hours of sleep, in a room away from Baby. We live in a small Brooklyn rental, and Clara's crib was in an alcove next to my head. Danny heard the doctors, and insisted we figure it out. We put Clara’s bassinet in his office on the far side of our apartment, two heavy wooden doors away from medicated me in the marital bed. Danny slept on the couch, taking Clara’s nighttime feeds. He continued to do this even after she was big enough to sleep through the night, knowing that I still needed the rest. Six months later, we built Clara her own room, and Danny came back to bed.

Women with postpartum mental health issues obsess over their maternal failings, and I was a classic case – I couldn’t wake in the night with my baby, which (in my mind) meant that I wasn’t the parent whose body and smell was her first source of comfort and succor. The reality: Fathers or other parenting partners can become a second “mother” for the child. Clara often turns to her daddy as the more nurturing, less exhausted and irritable parent. I could lock that Bad Mommy yoke around my neck forever, or acknowledge that Clara and Danny are better off with the relationship my illness forced them to have.

Then, when Clara was around 3, she started sleeping in bed with me. As with the extended nursing, I kind of loved it. I was finally getting that snuggle time I’d missed in her infancy. Danny and I always figured we’d move her back to her own bed any day, but she’s loud and screams, and, well, we’re working on it. Guess what? Clara is happy and healthy, and she knows that both Mommy and Daddy will be there for her in the middle of the night.

The obvious question: Isn’t it hard with my husband on the couch? Well, yes. The big deal isn’t Danny literally or metaphorically coming back to bed. Anxiety isn’t one partner’s issue. It becomes a part of the marriage’s history. For a while, it becomes the marriage.

I'm a crier; floods of tears have always been part of how I process difficulty. For my husband, however, floods of tears look like a frantic signal of oncoming panic. We’ve had to work to let him trust me to fail and falter, to feel anxious and manage it.  I don’t get to suck in all the emotional light. Danny doesn’t want to be the guy who big-foots over his sick wife’s feelings, but sometimes I have to blow my damn nose and give him his turn.

Last September Clara started kindergarten. The same week she pulled on her new sparkly pink backpack with wings, learned to tighten her own new sparkly silver sneakers, and walked into her kindergarten classroom, I began a new teaching job. In addition to my other teaching job. In addition to writing yet another revision of my book. Danny was responsible for all school drop-offs after the first day, and most of the pickups. I didn’t feel as if I knew what was happening with my own child, just like when she’d been an infant and I was so sick. This time, however, I was making changes for the good, and so was she; we were both growing. Except our growth looked like a mess.

Clara loved her school, but she was exhausted, cranky, and – for the first time in her young life – regularly melting down with us at home. I wasn’t much better. At night, I’d stay up late prepping lessons or rereading my book, putting myself into sleep deprivation. On an October afternoon, I had a panic attack on the train on the way home, then another a few days later on my way to class, and then, inevitably, I felt the familiar hot-cold-looping-thinking during a class. It had been years since I carried Ativan in my purse, and now I found myself replenishing my “emergency” pill daily.

“I think I’m having a relapse,” I told my therapist. “Also, Clara is really stressing us out.”

“Both of your lives are very new right now,” she said. “Give it time.”

This is the reality of living with anxiety of any kind, you thread it through, having good days and bad days, weeks, months. A child complicates that. Your bad day isn’t yours alone.

We’re better now, six months in. I’m still sleeping too little, but the lack isn’t making me panic. Clara has gotten better at telling us what she needs -- and to deal when she doesn’t get it.

Yesterday, I went on a field trip with Clara’s class to a pizza bakery. When I had to leave, she cried a little, but then bounced off to recess with her friends. I went home and worked, then back to Clara’s school for pickup, and Danny was home in time for all of us to eat tacos together at the dinner table, listening to George Gershwin. Today or tomorrow might bring possible stomach flu (I just got a warning call from Danny), a babysitter crisis, and a cold snap for which we don’t have enough clean laundry. We’ll deal. It’s not recovery, it’s life.

When my daughter, Clara, was 4 months old, I became mentally ill. The psychiatrist I’d called—following two fully sleepless nights, escalating panic attacks, lack of appetite, and the fear that I would never recover from the birth of my child—said I was experiencing a “moderate to severe episode of postpartum anxiety.” It didn’t matter that I had work (teaching and writing) I loved, or Danny, my kind and brilliant husband, or my perfect baby girl. Even with all of these gifts, I’d gone officially crazy.

It started with me feeling tired, but more than the usual new mommy standard. Commuting on the subway rendered me nauseous and dizzy. The effort of bumping Clara down the stoop for a stroll in the winter sunshine was insurmountable. I planned our Mommy Group’s first-ever-night-out-without-babies, but then worried too much to show up. My arms vibrated when I held Clara. As I walked to get coffee and a scone, passing faces grimaced and swelled with malevolence. Car alarms, sirens and unexpected footfalls made me jump. I felt as if I was melting from the inside.

That was the beginning, of what a tidier writer or mother might call my “journey to recovery,” a story that would progress in neat, even beats. Before I gave birth, I didn't think postpartum mental illness could happen to me; I got sick, received treatment and medication; post-recovery, I became an advocate for other women, turning this worst-thing-that-ever-happened-to-me into the topic for my first book. That story isn’t wrong, exactly. As my grandmother would have said, I took lemons and made lemonade. Cue the surging string section out of "The Blind Side" or "Erin Brockovich."

But I’m not a tidy writer or mother (as the collection of socks under my sofa attests), so cue a different soundtrack, with tensile strings and more percussive looping. Or maybe I should just say it, into the needle-bump drag at the end of the soundtrack: I’m not recovered, and never will be.

Then what am I?

I’m a woman with a mental illness. I’m a mother whose brain doesn’t always behave itself. Since my daughter’s birth, I carry emotional instability like a spore in my head, latent, but ready to sprout. That potential has affected my parenting style ever since. Which is not necessarily a bad thing.

As teacher, I’ve worked with kids with learning differences for years. The result of successful remediation is rarely recovery. But once the frustration of knowing they won’t be “cured” wears off, something else happens: They learn to budget more time for schoolwork than their friends or to plot ahead how they’ll talk to their teachers when—not if—they need help. These kids often come to understand their needs better than typical learners.

I’ve come to realize that mothers (including myself) who struggle with postpartum mental illness have to prepare, to remediate parental problems. But we can transform our weaknesses into… I hesitate to use the word “strengths.” More like: if we have to rewrite the manual, we might as well make it a better book. So, five years after my diagnosis (practically to the day) here is my messy, arrhythmic story of parenting with anxiety.

***

After I got my meds —Zoloft for the anxiety that my exhausted body turned into depression, Ativan to cut the panic, and Ambien to put me to sleep—I was devastated to hear that I might need to wean my daughter. Breast-feeding was one of the few “mommy things” I was pretty sure I was doing right.  I read up on the literature, consulted extra doctors, and ultimately felt safe continuing to nurse, carefully, on my pharmaceutical regimen.

Now, most of my breast-feeding friends weaned between 6 and 12 months. Somewhere in that timeframe, their babies learned how much fun it was to try out their new teeth on something with more texture and taste than Mama’s boob. Clara never got less interested in “the nursing relationship.” We kept going . . . for two and a half years.

The usual explanation for extended breast-feeding is that it’s better for the child. I’ll admit the truth, though. I kept breast-feeding for me. That connection reassured me that I wasn’t an unfit mother, all panic and no nurture.

After my insomnia hit, my doctor and therapist insisted that my health required eight uninterrupted hours of sleep, in a room away from Baby. We live in a small Brooklyn rental, and Clara's crib was in an alcove next to my head. Danny heard the doctors, and insisted we figure it out. We put Clara’s bassinet in his office on the far side of our apartment, two heavy wooden doors away from medicated me in the marital bed. Danny slept on the couch, taking Clara’s nighttime feeds. He continued to do this even after she was big enough to sleep through the night, knowing that I still needed the rest. Six months later, we built Clara her own room, and Danny came back to bed.

Women with postpartum mental health issues obsess over their maternal failings, and I was a classic case – I couldn’t wake in the night with my baby, which (in my mind) meant that I wasn’t the parent whose body and smell was her first source of comfort and succor. The reality: Fathers or other parenting partners can become a second “mother” for the child. Clara often turns to her daddy as the more nurturing, less exhausted and irritable parent. I could lock that Bad Mommy yoke around my neck forever, or acknowledge that Clara and Danny are better off with the relationship my illness forced them to have.

Then, when Clara was around 3, she started sleeping in bed with me. As with the extended nursing, I kind of loved it. I was finally getting that snuggle time I’d missed in her infancy. Danny and I always figured we’d move her back to her own bed any day, but she’s loud and screams, and, well, we’re working on it. Guess what? Clara is happy and healthy, and she knows that both Mommy and Daddy will be there for her in the middle of the night.

The obvious question: Isn’t it hard with my husband on the couch? Well, yes. The big deal isn’t Danny literally or metaphorically coming back to bed. Anxiety isn’t one partner’s issue. It becomes a part of the marriage’s history. For a while, it becomes the marriage.

I'm a crier; floods of tears have always been part of how I process difficulty. For my husband, however, floods of tears look like a frantic signal of oncoming panic. We’ve had to work to let him trust me to fail and falter, to feel anxious and manage it.  I don’t get to suck in all the emotional light. Danny doesn’t want to be the guy who big-foots over his sick wife’s feelings, but sometimes I have to blow my damn nose and give him his turn.

Last September Clara started kindergarten. The same week she pulled on her new sparkly pink backpack with wings, learned to tighten her own new sparkly silver sneakers, and walked into her kindergarten classroom, I began a new teaching job. In addition to my other teaching job. In addition to writing yet another revision of my book. Danny was responsible for all school drop-offs after the first day, and most of the pickups. I didn’t feel as if I knew what was happening with my own child, just like when she’d been an infant and I was so sick. This time, however, I was making changes for the good, and so was she; we were both growing. Except our growth looked like a mess.

Clara loved her school, but she was exhausted, cranky, and – for the first time in her young life – regularly melting down with us at home. I wasn’t much better. At night, I’d stay up late prepping lessons or rereading my book, putting myself into sleep deprivation. On an October afternoon, I had a panic attack on the train on the way home, then another a few days later on my way to class, and then, inevitably, I felt the familiar hot-cold-looping-thinking during a class. It had been years since I carried Ativan in my purse, and now I found myself replenishing my “emergency” pill daily.

“I think I’m having a relapse,” I told my therapist. “Also, Clara is really stressing us out.”

“Both of your lives are very new right now,” she said. “Give it time.”

This is the reality of living with anxiety of any kind, you thread it through, having good days and bad days, weeks, months. A child complicates that. Your bad day isn’t yours alone.

We’re better now, six months in. I’m still sleeping too little, but the lack isn’t making me panic. Clara has gotten better at telling us what she needs -- and to deal when she doesn’t get it.

Yesterday, I went on a field trip with Clara’s class to a pizza bakery. When I had to leave, she cried a little, but then bounced off to recess with her friends. I went home and worked, then back to Clara’s school for pickup, and Danny was home in time for all of us to eat tacos together at the dinner table, listening to George Gershwin. Today or tomorrow might bring possible stomach flu (I just got a warning call from Danny), a babysitter crisis, and a cold snap for which we don’t have enough clean laundry. We’ll deal. It’s not recovery, it’s life.

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Hillary’s predicament and the history of capitalism: Former Monty Python member explains it all

Here’s the only problem with “Boom Bust Boom,” a whimsical edutainment documentary from former Monty Python member Terry Jones that seeks to upend the conventional wisdom about capitalism and mainstream economics: It couldn’t see the future. Jones and his co-writer, Dutch economist and entrepreneur Theo Kocken, obviously conceived this project some years ago, because movies take time. They couldn’t possibly have seen the improbable rise of Bernie Sanders coming, let alone the transatlantic shock delivered by Britain’s Bernie cognate, Jeremy Corbyn, the left-wing insurgent who went from total obscurity to leader of the Labour Party within five months. So while “Boom Bust Boom” is unquestionably entertaining, and useful in terms of framing a brief history of economic cycles for high school students, college undergraduates and interested civilians, it finds itself a little behind reality — not to mention behind “The Big Short,” perhaps the year’s unlikeliest Hollywood hit. It’s a curious development, and an index of how fast public perception and imagination have shifted. To most regular people in most parts of the world, the thesis that unfettered capitalism is unstable, empowers predatory behavior and worsens inequality is not merely uncontroversial but empirically obvious. We appear to be entering an era of political history when socialist or social-democratic reforms are once again in play. Perhaps for understandable reasons, “Boom Bust Boom” is a movie about the discipline of economics that is extremely light on theory and ideology. John Kenneth Galbraith shows up, in Muppet-style puppet form, to explain that the periodic outbreaks of financial madness that sank the Western economy in 1929, and did so again eight decades later, appear to be baked into human economic behavior. Also offering puppet wisdom is Hyman Minsky, the now-legendary Washington University economist who was largely ignored during his lifetime but whose “Financial Instability Hypothesis” — the idea that extended periods of economic prosperity and stability inevitably produce irrational bubbles and crashes — was borne out in spectacular fashion in 2008, a dozen years after his death. A number of prominent liberal economists and social scientists appear in the film to praise the Galbraith-Minsky line, including a trio of Nobel Prize winners: Paul Krugman, Robert Shiller and social psychologist Daniel Kahneman. But I honestly can’t tell you why John Maynard Keynes, the father of interventionist macroeconomics and the intellectual avatar of the entire tradition embodied in “Boom Bust Boom,” is never mentioned by name. Have the right-wing attacks on Keynesianism since the Reagan-Thatcher years really rendered him untouchable? I do understand, more or less, why Karl Marx is not mentioned — although it’s time to get over that, for God’s sake. (Thomas Piketty, who isn’t here — no doubt he’s making his own film — got an international bestseller out of a high-caffeine blend of Marx and Keynes, tailored to the world of global consumer capitalism.) Similarly, Jones and Kocken offer us only the barest summation of the opposing views represented by neoclassical economics or its supply-side libertarian variations. This movie is designed, I suppose, to reach young people who have already been partway indoctrinated with free-market ideology, but even so that feels like a mistake. In framing the argument about why neoclassical economics is so wrong and so damaging, I think we also need to understand why it’s so seductive. As Irish economist Stephen Kinsella puts it in “Boom Bust Boom,” a theoretical model exploring how markets function in conditions of perfect transparency, equal access to information and universal rationality can be useful in many ways — until you forget that it’s a theoretical model and start confusing it with reality. No human society has ever operated on that basis, and outside the erotic fantasies of Ayn Rand, it’s hard to imagine one that might. In any case, Adam Smith and John Stuart Mill also go unmentioned, let alone more recent free-market ideologues like Friedrich Hayek or Milton Friedman. Is it important for the high-school seniors or community-college freshmen who might watch “Boom Bust Boom” to know those names? Maybe not, but their influence has so thoroughly permeated Western politics that even a mainstream Democrat like Hillary Clinton, while nominally representing a more Keynesian view, has to make ritual noises about the supremacy, efficiency and even moral superiority of the market. Actually, one of the philosophical problems involved in the Clinton-Sanders race — you knew that’s where I was going, right? — is the question of what economic theory or ideology Clinton and the Democratic Party represent in 2016. It’s probably fair to say that it’s a variable mixture of free-market hopefulness and lightweight Keynesian interventionism, driven more by political calculation than by core beliefs. But no one really knows! Hillary Clinton’s unreleased six-figure speeches to Goldman Sachs and other Wall Street firms embody this a little too perfectly. Gosh, it’s almost as if what she says in public isn’t what she really thinks (paging Mitt Romney!), and as if she doesn’t want us to know what she tells the overlords of the economy behind closed doors. Under Bill Clinton, the Democrats conclusively ditched the Keynesian model in which government plays an active role in regulating the financial markets, and flung the FDR-LBJ welfare state out the window after it. Those were some good times! Britain’s Labour Party under Tony Blair did exactly the same thing, and both parties got stuffed to the eyeballs with Wall Street and/or City of London cash. If “designer suits purchased by so-called liberal elected officials” is construed as a leading economic indicator, then the economy was booming. Jones and Kocken make fun of George W. Bush for delivering a State of the Union address in 2006 telling us the economy was in great shape, but that’s almost too easy. There’s no doubt that Bush drove the economy into a brick wall by spending countless billions (if not trillions) on pointless overseas wars, but it was the Clinton administration that had removed the brakes from the car. Perhaps more tellingly, we also see Gordon Brown, the future British prime minister who was then Tony Blair’s chancellor (or finance minister), assuring Parliament that Labour’s policies had brought a permanent end to the cycle of boom and bust. Every economist in the film agrees that this is deluded self-confidence is a universal feature of bubble-mania: Things are different now; we’re smarter than our grandparents; the stuff that went wrong in the Dutch tulip craze or the South Sea bubble or the stock-market crash of 1929 can’t possibly happen again. Everyone who says that is always wrong. Anyway, it took more than 20 years after the Clinton-Blair rebranding of the electoral left (as, in effect, the squishier, friendlier right) for large swaths of the public to realize how thoroughly they’d been conned. Now Hillary and payday-lender BFF Debbie Wasserman Schultz and the rest of the compromised Democratic Party apparatus find themselves in a tough spot. In Britain, the Blairite wing of the Labour Party didn’t see the danger coming. After an unexpected defeat in the 2015 election, Labour’s leadership assumed the public would swing back toward the center-right. So they hilariously sandbagged themselves with the equivalent of a nationwide primary campaign, which was intended to reduce the influence of the left-wing labor unions. It produced exactly the opposite result: New members signed up by the hundreds of thousands (many of them young people with no previous political affiliation) and Corbyn, a lifelong outsider initially seen as a token hard-left candidate, won in a landslide. The situation in the United States is obviously quite different, but not quite as different as the Clintonistas wish it were. I have repeatedly argued that Bernie Sanders never had much of a shot. For various reasons good or bad, Sanders has made few inroads with African-American voters; after big primaries in Michigan this week and Florida, Illinois and Ohio next week, his campaign is probably over in all but name. But if the Democrats were holding a two-month national campaign on the Labour model, ending with a nationwide primary in April or May — well, of course I don’t know what would happen, but the result would be closely contested and the party leadership would be sweating bullets, rivets, bolts and exhaust manifolds. I’ve already made the argument that the Democratic Party is in a whole lot more trouble than is visible right now. One aspect of that is the fact that a campaign between Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump is full of unknown unknowns and hidden dangers. An institutional centrist famous for prevarication, triangulation and rhetorical drift is precisely the wrong candidate to run against a demagogue who is immune to facts or reason, defines himself as an economic populist and is more than happy to attack her from the right and left at the same time. Of course Clinton is now walking back her decades-long support for heartless neoliberal policies of austerity, privatization and free trade. At least in the Democratic campaign, she has slid right past the friendly, center-left Keynesianism of “Boom Bust Boom” to position herself as the decaf Bernie, with more hardheaded practicality but only 20 percent less passion. I understand why she thinks that’s the right strategy; I don't know whether she expects anyone to believe it. ”Boom Bust Boom” opens this week at the Village East Cinema in New York, and will be available on-demand from iTunes and other vendors beginning March 15.

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“Donald Trump is a 70-year-old f**kboy”: How our masculinity crisis helped Trump rise to political power

It’s no secret these days that men are in crisis. Hanna Rosin’s “The End of Men” got at the problem quite eloquently. A new book, Jack Myers’ “The Future of Men: Masculinity in the 21st Century,” uses analysis and interviews (many of them with women) to try to plot a path forward. Documentarian Morgan Spurlock calls it “an incredibly important and timely book. A game shifting story.” Jack Myers is the founder of MediaVillage.com and the author of “Hooked Up: A New Generation’s Surprising Take on Sex, Politics, and Saving the World.” He also advises businesses on trends in media and technology. (His book's passages on Super Bowl commercials and ads for beer companies are especially insightful.) We spoke to Myers from New York. The interview has been lightly edited for clarity. How did your book get started? I’d started out just to get answers; I’d done a book called “Hooked Up,” about the first generation to grow up with the Internet, and I saw so much female dominance emerging with that generation that I kept getting the question, “What’s happening with men?” And I didn’t have answers. It’s become a passion for me. It’s emerging as my life’s purpose. The crisis in masculinity has been going on for a long time. Was there an event or image that crystallized things for you, made it clear you had to pay attention to this? There were three areas where it really crystallized. Education – the decline in college education among young men, especially in the black and Hispanic communities. Economic: One thing that surprised me is that young women are out-earning young men under 30 … Because women are out-earning their male partners, they’re more likely to stay in their jobs while the men leave. And third, in terms of relationships: In long-term heterosexual relationships, 85 percent of them are ended by the woman. So I went on a path to try to understand those realities. Those were the triggers that told me there’s more to understand here. Is this a shifting balance of power or a change in roles? Or maybe a little of both? It’s a shifting balance of power driven by shifting roles. But so much of it is positive. The women’s movement has been a positive force. There’s still a long way to go. But I’ve spent my life in media and advertising, where more than 60 percent of the employees are female, so we see the inevitability of the glass ceiling shattering over the next few decades. Your book is very good at sketching out how this works in pop culture. Can you talk about how commercials or television shows  illustrate what you’re talking about? You have strong examples from Super Bowl ads and “Mad Men” in the book. “Mad Men” is a great example: That series will ultimately prove to be one of the great television series of all time, and it personifies the transformation in gender relationships and gender norms. We look at Don Draper in the first season as the personification of the “real man” of the 1950s – strong, silent, building his whole life around lies and mistruths. Women are disposable to him… That strong, silent, macho, James Bond-like character. And by the end of the series, the last episodes, it’s about how can we bring everyone together, how can we live as one. How can men, women, all cultures, be happy together. With young men today, many of them are growing up in fatherless homes, many of them are growing up in an educational system with female teachers and female students. Online there’s cultural and gender equality. And then they come to their adult years, thrown into a world that still expects them to conform to that 1950s Don Draper [model]. Beer commercials personify the man as idiot or the misogynist served by gorgeous women and he’s the fuckboy. So they’re getting those images that are just completely outdated and for many of them, just not relevant to who they are, but they feel they need to conform to. The crisis today is a crisis of self-identity. What kinds of men are better able to adapt to this, and what kinds of men are having more trouble? Do class and generation make a difference? Great question. The man most suited to the transformation is a man comfortable with his feminine side – comfortable being emotionally open, being honest with relationships, honest with himself, honest in his career – all the qualities that we’ve historically attributed to women. And all qualities that a lot of young men have. But also, a man who’s not threatened to show that side of him in a heavily, traditionally male environment. The other men who seem quite adept at making this transformation are ones who, unfortunately, are angry and fighting back. They seem perfectly willing to hold onto their traditional definitions of masculinity based on physical strength and power, financial strength and power, and regulatory strength and power. Let’s call it for what it is: Donald Trump is a 60-year-old fuckboy. Just as that model is very successful in a bar, very successful with some types of women, he’s very successful at putting his macho foot forward. And the hell with anyone it might hurt. Funny that we’re talking about a style of masculinity we’re saying is ending, but it’s exemplified by someone who is very likely to win the Republican nomination. It’s not surprising that in any period of creative destruction, you have a strong desire to hold onto the past. We’ve seen an eclipse of machismo and a rise in female authority over the last few decades. We’ve also seen more openness about sexual orientation. There’s more tolerance, gay people are more visible in pop culture… Do these changes have anything to do with one another? Absolutely. One of the lines in my book is that ironically, the future definition of a real man, quote-unquote, may be more in line with the qualities we attribute to gay men. The fact that we see more of an openness and acceptance allows straight men to accept their feminine qualities. All women have male qualities, all men have female qualities. It’s clear that the rise of women is good for women. But do men have something to gain from this shift as well? I’ll go back to the statistic of 85 percent of heterosexual relationships being ended by women. Young men have grown up being exposed to porn as the defining sexual standard – I think a better understanding of what makes a good sexual partner, without having to live up to some standard set by false media images, to eliminate the negative images in advertising of man as moron, man as buffoon, the Homer Simpson … These stereotypes, especially for men growing up in fatherless homes, are the role models men have to measure themselves against. So I think when society pays more attention to those negative stereotypes, everybody gains a better understanding. Let’s look at the male mantra of deny, deny, deny. That prostitution is OK because no one’s getting hurt, that strip clubs are OK, that infidelity is OK as long as my partner doesn’t know about it. Women are basically standing up in relationships and saying, No, this is no longer OK. The male benefit to that is the man learns about intimacy – that being emotionally connected, and being honest about your relationship, 100 percent open, is a healthy way to live. To me, that’s a huge positive for men.It’s no secret these days that men are in crisis. Hanna Rosin’s “The End of Men” got at the problem quite eloquently. A new book, Jack Myers’ “The Future of Men: Masculinity in the 21st Century,” uses analysis and interviews (many of them with women) to try to plot a path forward. Documentarian Morgan Spurlock calls it “an incredibly important and timely book. A game shifting story.” Jack Myers is the founder of MediaVillage.com and the author of “Hooked Up: A New Generation’s Surprising Take on Sex, Politics, and Saving the World.” He also advises businesses on trends in media and technology. (His book's passages on Super Bowl commercials and ads for beer companies are especially insightful.) We spoke to Myers from New York. The interview has been lightly edited for clarity. How did your book get started? I’d started out just to get answers; I’d done a book called “Hooked Up,” about the first generation to grow up with the Internet, and I saw so much female dominance emerging with that generation that I kept getting the question, “What’s happening with men?” And I didn’t have answers. It’s become a passion for me. It’s emerging as my life’s purpose. The crisis in masculinity has been going on for a long time. Was there an event or image that crystallized things for you, made it clear you had to pay attention to this? There were three areas where it really crystallized. Education – the decline in college education among young men, especially in the black and Hispanic communities. Economic: One thing that surprised me is that young women are out-earning young men under 30 … Because women are out-earning their male partners, they’re more likely to stay in their jobs while the men leave. And third, in terms of relationships: In long-term heterosexual relationships, 85 percent of them are ended by the woman. So I went on a path to try to understand those realities. Those were the triggers that told me there’s more to understand here. Is this a shifting balance of power or a change in roles? Or maybe a little of both? It’s a shifting balance of power driven by shifting roles. But so much of it is positive. The women’s movement has been a positive force. There’s still a long way to go. But I’ve spent my life in media and advertising, where more than 60 percent of the employees are female, so we see the inevitability of the glass ceiling shattering over the next few decades. Your book is very good at sketching out how this works in pop culture. Can you talk about how commercials or television shows  illustrate what you’re talking about? You have strong examples from Super Bowl ads and “Mad Men” in the book. “Mad Men” is a great example: That series will ultimately prove to be one of the great television series of all time, and it personifies the transformation in gender relationships and gender norms. We look at Don Draper in the first season as the personification of the “real man” of the 1950s – strong, silent, building his whole life around lies and mistruths. Women are disposable to him… That strong, silent, macho, James Bond-like character. And by the end of the series, the last episodes, it’s about how can we bring everyone together, how can we live as one. How can men, women, all cultures, be happy together. With young men today, many of them are growing up in fatherless homes, many of them are growing up in an educational system with female teachers and female students. Online there’s cultural and gender equality. And then they come to their adult years, thrown into a world that still expects them to conform to that 1950s Don Draper [model]. Beer commercials personify the man as idiot or the misogynist served by gorgeous women and he’s the fuckboy. So they’re getting those images that are just completely outdated and for many of them, just not relevant to who they are, but they feel they need to conform to. The crisis today is a crisis of self-identity. What kinds of men are better able to adapt to this, and what kinds of men are having more trouble? Do class and generation make a difference? Great question. The man most suited to the transformation is a man comfortable with his feminine side – comfortable being emotionally open, being honest with relationships, honest with himself, honest in his career – all the qualities that we’ve historically attributed to women. And all qualities that a lot of young men have. But also, a man who’s not threatened to show that side of him in a heavily, traditionally male environment. The other men who seem quite adept at making this transformation are ones who, unfortunately, are angry and fighting back. They seem perfectly willing to hold onto their traditional definitions of masculinity based on physical strength and power, financial strength and power, and regulatory strength and power. Let’s call it for what it is: Donald Trump is a 60-year-old fuckboy. Just as that model is very successful in a bar, very successful with some types of women, he’s very successful at putting his macho foot forward. And the hell with anyone it might hurt. Funny that we’re talking about a style of masculinity we’re saying is ending, but it’s exemplified by someone who is very likely to win the Republican nomination. It’s not surprising that in any period of creative destruction, you have a strong desire to hold onto the past. We’ve seen an eclipse of machismo and a rise in female authority over the last few decades. We’ve also seen more openness about sexual orientation. There’s more tolerance, gay people are more visible in pop culture… Do these changes have anything to do with one another? Absolutely. One of the lines in my book is that ironically, the future definition of a real man, quote-unquote, may be more in line with the qualities we attribute to gay men. The fact that we see more of an openness and acceptance allows straight men to accept their feminine qualities. All women have male qualities, all men have female qualities. It’s clear that the rise of women is good for women. But do men have something to gain from this shift as well? I’ll go back to the statistic of 85 percent of heterosexual relationships being ended by women. Young men have grown up being exposed to porn as the defining sexual standard – I think a better understanding of what makes a good sexual partner, without having to live up to some standard set by false media images, to eliminate the negative images in advertising of man as moron, man as buffoon, the Homer Simpson … These stereotypes, especially for men growing up in fatherless homes, are the role models men have to measure themselves against. So I think when society pays more attention to those negative stereotypes, everybody gains a better understanding. Let’s look at the male mantra of deny, deny, deny. That prostitution is OK because no one’s getting hurt, that strip clubs are OK, that infidelity is OK as long as my partner doesn’t know about it. Women are basically standing up in relationships and saying, No, this is no longer OK. The male benefit to that is the man learns about intimacy – that being emotionally connected, and being honest about your relationship, 100 percent open, is a healthy way to live. To me, that’s a huge positive for men.It’s no secret these days that men are in crisis. Hanna Rosin’s “The End of Men” got at the problem quite eloquently. A new book, Jack Myers’ “The Future of Men: Masculinity in the 21st Century,” uses analysis and interviews (many of them with women) to try to plot a path forward. Documentarian Morgan Spurlock calls it “an incredibly important and timely book. A game shifting story.” Jack Myers is the founder of MediaVillage.com and the author of “Hooked Up: A New Generation’s Surprising Take on Sex, Politics, and Saving the World.” He also advises businesses on trends in media and technology. (His book's passages on Super Bowl commercials and ads for beer companies are especially insightful.) We spoke to Myers from New York. The interview has been lightly edited for clarity. How did your book get started? I’d started out just to get answers; I’d done a book called “Hooked Up,” about the first generation to grow up with the Internet, and I saw so much female dominance emerging with that generation that I kept getting the question, “What’s happening with men?” And I didn’t have answers. It’s become a passion for me. It’s emerging as my life’s purpose. The crisis in masculinity has been going on for a long time. Was there an event or image that crystallized things for you, made it clear you had to pay attention to this? There were three areas where it really crystallized. Education – the decline in college education among young men, especially in the black and Hispanic communities. Economic: One thing that surprised me is that young women are out-earning young men under 30 … Because women are out-earning their male partners, they’re more likely to stay in their jobs while the men leave. And third, in terms of relationships: In long-term heterosexual relationships, 85 percent of them are ended by the woman. So I went on a path to try to understand those realities. Those were the triggers that told me there’s more to understand here. Is this a shifting balance of power or a change in roles? Or maybe a little of both? It’s a shifting balance of power driven by shifting roles. But so much of it is positive. The women’s movement has been a positive force. There’s still a long way to go. But I’ve spent my life in media and advertising, where more than 60 percent of the employees are female, so we see the inevitability of the glass ceiling shattering over the next few decades. Your book is very good at sketching out how this works in pop culture. Can you talk about how commercials or television shows  illustrate what you’re talking about? You have strong examples from Super Bowl ads and “Mad Men” in the book. “Mad Men” is a great example: That series will ultimately prove to be one of the great television series of all time, and it personifies the transformation in gender relationships and gender norms. We look at Don Draper in the first season as the personification of the “real man” of the 1950s – strong, silent, building his whole life around lies and mistruths. Women are disposable to him… That strong, silent, macho, James Bond-like character. And by the end of the series, the last episodes, it’s about how can we bring everyone together, how can we live as one. How can men, women, all cultures, be happy together. With young men today, many of them are growing up in fatherless homes, many of them are growing up in an educational system with female teachers and female students. Online there’s cultural and gender equality. And then they come to their adult years, thrown into a world that still expects them to conform to that 1950s Don Draper [model]. Beer commercials personify the man as idiot or the misogynist served by gorgeous women and he’s the fuckboy. So they’re getting those images that are just completely outdated and for many of them, just not relevant to who they are, but they feel they need to conform to. The crisis today is a crisis of self-identity. What kinds of men are better able to adapt to this, and what kinds of men are having more trouble? Do class and generation make a difference? Great question. The man most suited to the transformation is a man comfortable with his feminine side – comfortable being emotionally open, being honest with relationships, honest with himself, honest in his career – all the qualities that we’ve historically attributed to women. And all qualities that a lot of young men have. But also, a man who’s not threatened to show that side of him in a heavily, traditionally male environment. The other men who seem quite adept at making this transformation are ones who, unfortunately, are angry and fighting back. They seem perfectly willing to hold onto their traditional definitions of masculinity based on physical strength and power, financial strength and power, and regulatory strength and power. Let’s call it for what it is: Donald Trump is a 60-year-old fuckboy. Just as that model is very successful in a bar, very successful with some types of women, he’s very successful at putting his macho foot forward. And the hell with anyone it might hurt. Funny that we’re talking about a style of masculinity we’re saying is ending, but it’s exemplified by someone who is very likely to win the Republican nomination. It’s not surprising that in any period of creative destruction, you have a strong desire to hold onto the past. We’ve seen an eclipse of machismo and a rise in female authority over the last few decades. We’ve also seen more openness about sexual orientation. There’s more tolerance, gay people are more visible in pop culture… Do these changes have anything to do with one another? Absolutely. One of the lines in my book is that ironically, the future definition of a real man, quote-unquote, may be more in line with the qualities we attribute to gay men. The fact that we see more of an openness and acceptance allows straight men to accept their feminine qualities. All women have male qualities, all men have female qualities. It’s clear that the rise of women is good for women. But do men have something to gain from this shift as well? I’ll go back to the statistic of 85 percent of heterosexual relationships being ended by women. Young men have grown up being exposed to porn as the defining sexual standard – I think a better understanding of what makes a good sexual partner, without having to live up to some standard set by false media images, to eliminate the negative images in advertising of man as moron, man as buffoon, the Homer Simpson … These stereotypes, especially for men growing up in fatherless homes, are the role models men have to measure themselves against. So I think when society pays more attention to those negative stereotypes, everybody gains a better understanding. Let’s look at the male mantra of deny, deny, deny. That prostitution is OK because no one’s getting hurt, that strip clubs are OK, that infidelity is OK as long as my partner doesn’t know about it. Women are basically standing up in relationships and saying, No, this is no longer OK. The male benefit to that is the man learns about intimacy – that being emotionally connected, and being honest about your relationship, 100 percent open, is a healthy way to live. To me, that’s a huge positive for men.

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“It’s Always Sunny” gang goes to hell: The long-running “Seinfeld” heir skewers rape culture, homophobia and religious hypocrisy in two-part finale

If we live in the golden age of television, the FXX comedy “It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia” is one of the underappreciated gems. Often billed as “Seinfeld on crack,” the show has a distinct comic sensibility of its own, cynically reveling in the monstrosities of its five main characters, who have been described in-series as “the most horrible people alive.” Although it’s one of the longest running live-action comedies in history (its first season aired in 2005), “It’s Always Sunny” hasn’t received much critical recognition or won any awards (which the show itself has pointedly referenced). It also hasn’t lost any of its edge, mining dark comedy out of a twisted mythology that it has had more than a decade to develop. It has also, incidentally, produced some truly memorable social commentary. That was especially evidenced in last week’s episode “The Gang Goes to Hell,” the first half in a two-part season finale that feels like a series closer (the show has been renewed through next season, though). Not only did it heavily suggest that the main characters have died and are now in the afterlife – which, for obvious reasons, will be a game-changer for the show if it proves true when the second part airs on Wednesday – but in the process it tackled sensitive issues like homophobia, rape culture and religious morality (spoilers follow). The episode opens with the title card telling us that the gang is standing in an Unknown Location. They stand before an unseen judge against a white background wearing white robes while they try to talk themselves out of being damned for eternity … literally. We hear something about a cruise ship sinking (a plot thread that will presumably be picked up in Part 2), but Mac (Rob McElhenney) assures their captor that they are good people before the title credits roll and we cut to them on board the mysterious ocean vessel. Apparently Mac won free cruise tickets at a church raffle (which we never see), and the gang members will get to vacation in Suite H666 in an environment that seems specifically designed to test their moral vices. Dennis (Glenn Howerton) is lust, Dee (Kaitlin Olson) is wrath, and Frank and Charlie (Danny DeVito and Charlie Day) are gluttony. Mac remains intriguingly undesignated (more on that in a moment). Dennis’ subplot in this series is that rare thing in American comedy – an effective joke on rape culture. The premise is that Dennis, who has severe delusions of grandeur when it comes to his prowess with women, harbors a fantasy in which he physically isolates a woman on a boat in the middle of the ocean, coercing her into sleeping with him because of “the implication.” This joke is never told in a way that is crass or exploitative, and the punch line is never at the expense of the women. The joke is that, although Dennis gets off on his perceived power over the women in those scenarios, he loses power because other people see him as a transparent creep. “'Cause if the girl said ‘no,’ then the answer obviously is ‘no,’” he unconvincingly reassures Mac in an earlier episode (“The Gang Buys a Boat”) with this theme. “But the thing is, is she's not gonna say ‘no.’ She would never say ‘no,’ because of the implication.” In “The Gang Goes to Hell,” Dennis finally gets to live out his fantasy, stalking a barely legal woman who he insists is tempting him, even though her behavior is completely innocuous. He confronts her, she politely allows him to make his coercive pitch, and then immediately gets him thrown into the boat’s jail. There is nothing cool or erotic about Dennis’ fantasy, as he has always envisioned it, and instead of being in control of the power dynamic, Dennis unexpectedly found that a greater moral force was presiding over affairs, one that would pluck him out of a scenario in which he was about to harm another person. Instead of indulging in its fantasies, it just throws him in the brig. Dennis, and by extension the misogynistic mentality he embodies, is oblivious to its own ominousness… but that doesn’t make it any less sinister. Rape is taken seriously in this universe, as shown when a bird literally defecates in Dee’s mouth when she brags to Dennis about psychologically coercing them into sleeping with her with “an insinuation” of what will happen if they don’t. Perhaps the most interesting character in the episode is Mac. As the series progressed, a running gag emerged about the devoutly Catholic and virulently prejudiced Mac being a closeted homosexual. Unlike shows where the joke is at the expense of his homosexuality, though, “It’s Always Sunny” has made it clear that the punch line is Mac’s pointless sense of guilt. For example, in the episode “Mac Day,” when Mac meets a cousin who is in every way a cooler version of himself, the superior version of Mac is completely comfortable in his homosexuality, in contrast to the regular Mac’s deep denial and overcompensating. The humor stems from just how far Mac is willing to go to deny his homosexuality, in the process implicitly arguing that the intolerant behavior we see from people like Mac in real life is often just so much self-hatred externalized. In this episode, all of those threads are built to a climax in which Mac – having found a religion that truly fulfills him spiritually, only to discover that it accepts homosexuality –finally admits that he is, in fact, gay. This isn’t the payoff, though, but the setup: Since he is gay, he now no longer believes in God. Interestingly, though, there are hints that there might be some sort of god in the “It’s Always Sunny” universe. Whenever Mac makes intolerant comments about homosexuals, a loud thunderclap goes off to suggest a divine being’s displeasure. This is a proactively progressive view on religious morality: There is a place for God in our universe, and for the metaphysical in general, but it doesn’t cast out homosexuals or objectify women. (Dennis, for what it’s worth, seems to be agnostic, but then again there are plenty of professional atheists with well-known sexist streaks.) As a result, when “It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia” creates humor on subjects like sexism or homophobia, it doesn’t do so by ridiculing the victims, but by deflating the delusions that fuel prejudices. Dennis thinks he’s cool because of how he treats women and Mac thinks he’s righteous because of how he scorns homosexuals; in fact, those traits merely make them creepy and lame, respectively. There is a case to be made that, while not all of the series’ best episodes take place on boats, any episode on a boat is going to be one of the best (see “The Gang Buys a Boat” or “The Gang Misses the Boat”).  Here the boat could very well be a ferry across the river Styx, transporting them to the next realm; or, just as likely, a clever gimmick that will pay off in an unexpected and memorable punch line that allows the series to hit the reset button at the start of Season 12. All I know is that, if “The Gang Goes to Hell: Part Two” lives up to the promise of last week’s episode, the story arc could stand on its own as an example of satire done right.

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Ladies, don’t smoke, drink or have bad thoughts while pregnant. But for men, anything goes?

The burdens of modern parenting fall disproportionately on the shoulders of mothers. Studies find that among couples who work full-time, household chores are evenly divided, until they have a kid, when working moms end up doing more of the childcare and housework. New mothers, in significant numbers, report feeling depressed—in some cases, to the point of suicidal ideation—under the weight of unrealistic expectations of perfection. A 2011 Slate article cites research indicating mental health disorders in new moms are worsened by “breast-feeding troubles, sleep deprivation, and unhelpful partners.” Saddled with so much responsibility, both married stay-at-home moms and those who work outside the home overwhelmingly state they feel like single parents. Actual single mothers, researchers find, are so stressed out it eventually takes a toll on their physical health. Even before children enter the picture, women are tacitly informed that they bear almost exclusive responsibility for getting the whole pregnancy thing right. We’ve heard lots about how women’s age, daily habits and environments can have huge consequences for their babies’ health. Those are useful warnings, and no one’s saying they should go unheeded. But even researchers admit that sexism impacts scientific research, leading to a disproportionate number of studies focusing solely on what mothers are doing wrong. As men are responsible for 50 percent of the babymaking process, it stands to reason that dads probably have at least a tiny bit of biological input. Drinking seems like a good place to start. Since the early 1970s, public education campaigns have let women know that consuming alcohol during pregnancy can cause fetal alcohol spectrum disorders, including lifelong learning disabilities, abnormal physical features and problems with hearing and seeing. In 2013, researchers published findings suggesting that men who drink before conception also contribute to FASD. Male lab rats were exposed to alcohol for seven weeks, allowed to dry out for one week, then paired with non-alcohol-exposed females. These matings resulted in offspring afflicted with “severe fetal abnormalities,” according to researchers. As the Examiner notes, these included exencephaly, a cranial malformation where the brain is formed outside the skull. Researchers attributed these conditions to the harmful impact of alcohol on sperm, and wrote that the frequency of their appearance was “statistically significant.” Alcohol use by fathers-to-be, they concluded, didn’t have to be extreme to pose serious risks to fetal well-being. This was fairly groundbreaking information related to an issue of near moral panic, with big implications for public health. Three years after the study’s conclusion, the CDC issued a warning to women hoping to get pregnant immediately about the potentially devastating effect of alcohol. While lots of people called out the agency for essentially telling all women who aren’t on birth control how to live their lives (it didn’t), the real sexism of the campaign went largely overlooked. Here was a chance for the CDC, which has its finger on the pulse of medical advancement and discovery, to spread the word about possible serious downsides to men’s alcoholic consumption. Yet for some reason, it wasn’t mentioned at all. This is pretty much in keeping with our singular focus on women where babies are concerned, despite lots of research showing the daily lives and chosen experiences of would-be fathers come heavily into play. There’s constant awareness-raising about the dangers posed when women smoke during pregnancy. But as the Conversation notes, “[s]tudies from China, Australia and Europe have identified an approximate 30 percent increase in the rate of childhood cancers"—particularly brain tumors, lymphoma and leukemia—"when fathers smoke prior to conception.” For children under age 5 with long-term heavy smokers for dads, that increase can be as high as 80 percent. A 2012 study even points to a possible link between fathers who expose mothers to secondhand smoke at the time of conception and serious congenital heart defects in newborns. The accepted wisdom about women of “advanced maternal age,” or 35 years, is that their ticking biological clocks require them not only to overcome issues around declining fertility, but that their children are more likely to have health problems. That’s also true for men as they get older, though we don’t hear much about it. Harry Fisch, a urologist at New York Presbyterian Hospital and professor at Cornell’s medical school, wrote about the issue in his 2005 book The Male Biological Clock. The doctor says that for his efforts to inform, he received an unexpected amount of blowback. “I took so much crap for writing that book, it was unbelievable," Fisch told the Washington Post last year. "Holy cow, when it first came out, a lot of people were upset that I was debunking the machismo image of men as they age.” But getting older isn’t unique to any one sex, and aging leads to many of the same problems in both fathers and mothers. “I don’t see why everyone is so surprised,” Pamela Madsen, founder of the American Fertility Association, told the New York Times. “Everyone ages. Why would sperm cells be the only cells not to age as men get older?” One UK study found that it took men age 45 and older five times as long to successfully impregnate their female partners as men under 25, even when controlling for frequency of sex, lifestyle choices and women’s age. Another study presented at the American Society for Reproductive Medicine last year found that men’s fertility drops about 7 percent each year between ages 41 and 45, after which it declines even more precipitously. In that four-year span, men's odds of reproducing fall from about 60 to 30 percent. Other studies from researchers in Pakistan, the United States and France find that once men reach age 35 to 40, their partners' risk of miscarriage increases by as much as 50 percent. A Swedish study of more than 23,000 cases found that “[p]regnancies fathered by a man aged 50 or more years had almost twice the risk of ending in a fetal loss” compared with fathers aged 25 to 29. Researchers in that study indicated that the impact of paternal age on fetal mortality began to present itself as early as age 45. “Obviously there is a difference between men and women; women simply can’t have children after a certain age,” Fisch told the New York Times. “But not every man can be guaranteed that everything’s going to be fine. Fertility will drop for some men, others will maintain their fertility but not to the same degree, and there is an increased risk of genetic abnormalities.” The doctor notes that like all cells, mutations develop in both sperm and eggs as the years pass. The difference for women is that at birth, they have all the eggs they’ll ever produce. Men’s sperm cells continually regenerate, dividing again and again over the course of a lifetime. Those cellular “splits” have happened an estimated 840 times by the time a man hits 50. Consider it a bit like a photocopy that degenerates slightly with each replication. Those mutations are passed along from father to child, with older fathers passing along increasing numbers with age.

Fathers passed on nearly four times as many new mutations as mothers: on average, 55 versus 14. The father’s age also accounted for nearly all of the variation in the number of new mutations in a child’s genome, with the number of new mutations being passed on rising exponentially with paternal age. A 36-year-old will pass on twice as many mutations to his child as a man of 20, and a 70-year-old eight times as many.

Those genetic mutations in men of “advanced paternal age,” to modify a phrase, were found to be associated with psychiatric disorders in multiple studies. A 2014 report examining more than 2.5 million public health records found an increased risk of autism, ADHD, psychosis, bipolar disorder, suicide attempts, and substance use problems in offspring born to men age 45 and up. “When compared to a child born to a 24-year-old father, a child born to a 45-year-old father was 3.5 times more likely to have autism, 13 times more likely to have ADHD and 25 times more likely to have bipolar disorder,” reports advocacy organization Autism Speaks. Those findings were preceded by a 2006 study conducted by an international group of researchers that found children of fathers “40 years or older were 5.75 times more likely to have [autism spectrum disorder] compared with offspring of men younger than 30 years.” Another study even found that men who became fathers when they were 50 or older were nearly twice as likely to have a grandchild with autism than those who did so at age 20 to 24. “To me, this was a remarkable observation because when I was in medical school, we were always warned about the age of the mother," neurologist Kári Stefánsson, who led the study on sperm mutations, told the Washington Post. "You could argue that in our work, there is buried a little bit of redemption for the old mother that we are always criticizing for the risk of having children, because what is truly dangerous is the high age of the father." There are additional factors. High stress levels of fathers while their babies are in utero may be associated with behavioral problems in their toddler-aged kids. Researchers think they’ve found a causal link between some birth defects and paternal occupations, a list of which includes both predictable and totally unexpected vocations (“mathematical, physical and computer scientists; artists; photographers and photo processors; food service workers; landscapers and groundskeepers; hairdressers and cosmetologists; office and administrative support workers; sawmill workers; petroleum and gas workers; chemical workers; printers; material moving equipment operators; and motor vehicle operators”). And fathers whose diets are nutritionally deficient may increase the risk of “severe” birth defects in their children by as much as 30 percent. “No one ever thinks of birth defects as coming from the father if they aren’t genetic,” Sarah Kimmins, a reproductive biologist of the latter study told the Washington Post. “This is becoming a really outdated way of thinking.” Forget, for a moment, the myriad ways mothers can negatively affect their babies’ health and instead, briefly consider how much damage is done by not examining what dads should be doing. The problem isn’t just that ignoring paternal issues exacerbates sexism or inequality, though those are pretty good reasons to rethink our biases. It’s that the role men have to play in creating healthy babies is being overlooked. Which can add up to pretty terrible outcomes for babies overall. All because of our outdated ideas about gender roles. “It’s not just about women anymore, it’s about you, too,” fertility advocate Madsen added, speaking to the Times. “It takes two to make a baby, and men who one day want to become fathers need to wake up, read what’s out there and take responsibility.” That’s all true, but we could be doing a lot more to ensure the information men need is widely available. Most women, whether they want to have kids or not, have been inundated for decades with messages about what they should and shouldn’t be doing before and after pregnancy. Direct some of those messages to men. Women don’t make healthy babies on their own. Kali Holloway is a senior writer and the associate editor of media and culture at AlterNet.

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Forecasting the GOP war over Donald Trump: How likely is a brokered convention?

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GOP committee tweets that Iraq vet, a double-amputee, “has a sad record of not standing up for our veterans”

The National Republican Senatorial Committee (NRSC), which works to elect and re-elect Republican senators, fell prey to seriously unfortunate phraseology when its account tweeted: https://twitter.com/frankthorpNBC/sta... It's an innocuous jab — common among partisan Twitter — absent the knowledge that Rep. Duckworth (R-Ill.) is a double-amputee who lost both legs while serving in Iraq after her helicopter was hit by a rocket-propelled grenade. The NRSC account promptly deleted the tweet and issued the following response:

"It would be great if reporters would pay as much attention to a deleted tweet as they should to Tammy Duckworth being sued by VA whistleblowers for ignoring claims of mistreatment and corruption."

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Bernie’s idealism is his greatest virtue: America needs dreamers — and now more than ever

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Japan just eats better than us: What America can learn from its diet’s evolution

An article in the most recent issue of Scientific American Mind explores the emerging field of nutritional psychology and finds there is increased recognition of the relationship between diet and brain health. Although no singular food may improve mood or sharpen the mind, research suggests that diets from the Mediterranean, Scandinavia, and Japan may play a role in preserving psychological and cognitive well-being. Experiencing the benefits of such diets may require a change in eating habits--something the Japanese themselves know from their own experience. Acclaimed food historian Bee Wilson explains in her latest book, First Bite: How We Learn to Eat, “Japan itself is in fact a model for how whole food environments can change in positive and unexpected ways.” Using history, neuroscience, anthropology, psychology, and nutritional science, First Bite explores the origins of food habits and finds that they are influenced by a variety of factors, including gender, memory, culture. Since a large portion of taste preference is learned, it can also be re-learned by both individuals and countries. Japan is a nation now known for its culinary aesthetics and emphasis of umami. Despite the perception that Japan has always had an innate culinary culture, it was primarily seen as sustenance prior to the twentieth century. As Bee Wilson explains, a confluence of events shaped the cuisine typically considered as being quintessential to the country. Excerpted from First Bite: How We Learn to Eat: [T]he Japanese only really started eating what we think of as Japanese food in the years after World War II. During the war, Japan suffered some of the worst hunger in any of the nations involved in the war: out of 1.74 million military deaths from 1941 to 1945, as many as 1 million were due to starvation. Once again, the Japanese were reduced to acorns and rough grains and sparse amounts of rice, as they had been so often before. Japan was heavily dependent on imported food and was therefore hit especially hard when the war curtailed supplies. The ration rice—given in woefully inadequate quantities—became known as “Five Color Rice”: white rice, stale yellow rice, dried green beans, coarse red grains, and brown insects. Yet when the Japanese finally bounced back from hunger in the 1950s, they boomed to a state of unprecedented prosperity and gained a new openness to the pleasures of food. Japan’s adventurousness about food was partly a consequence of American postwar food aid. In 1947, the occupying US forces brought in a new school lunch program to alleviate hunger among Japanese children. Before this, children would bring food from home: rice, a few pickles, maybe some bonito flakes (made of dried, fermented tuna), but almost nothing in the way of protein. Many children suffered constant runny noses from their inadequate diet. The new official American lunches guaranteed that every child would have milk and a white bread roll (made from US wheat) plus a hot dish, which was often some kind of stew made from the remaining stockpiles of canned food from the Japanese army, spiced with curry powder. The generation of Japanese children reared on these eclectic lunches grew into adults who were open to unusual flavor combinations. In the 1950s, as the national income doubled, people migrated from the land to tiny city apartments. Everyone aspired to buy the “three sacred treasures”: a TV, a washing machine, and a fridge. With new money came new ingredients, and the national diet shifted from carbohydrate to protein. As the Japanese food historian Naomiche Ishige has explained, once levels of food consumption rose again to prewar levels, “it became clear that the Japanese were not returning to the dietary pattern of the past, but were rather in the process of creating new eating habits.” In 1955 the average person in Japan ate just 3.4 eggs and 1.1 kilogram (2.4 pounds) of meat a year, but 110.7 kilograms (244 pounds) of rice; by 1978, rice consumption had markedly decreased, to 81 kilograms (178.6 pounds) per capita, while people were now eating 14.9 eggs and 8.7 kilograms (19.2 pounds) of pork alone, not to mention beef, chicken, and fi sh. But this wasn’t just about Japan moving from privation to plenty. More than anything else, it was a shift from dislike to like. Where once it was seen as extravagant in Japan to serve more than one or two dishes to accompany the evening’s rice, now—thanks to the new affluence—it was becoming common to serve three or more dishes, plus rice, soup, and pickles. Newspapers published recipe columns for the first time, and after centuries of silence at the table, the Japanese started to talk with great discernment about food. They embraced foreign recipes, such as Korean barbecue, Western breaded prawns, and Chinese stir-fries, and made them so much their own that when foreigners came to Japan and tasted them, it seemed to be “Japanese food.” Perhaps thanks to all those years of culinary isolation, when Japanese cooks encountered new Western foods, they did not adopt them wholesale, but adapted them to fi t with traditional Japanese ideas about portion size and how a meal should be structured. When an omelet was served, for example, it probably did not have fried potatoes on the side as it might in the West, but the old miso soup, vegetables, and rice. At last, Japan had started eating the way we expect them to: choosily, pleasurably, and healthily. There was nothing inevitable or innate in the Japanese spirit that gave them this near-ideal diet. Instead of being dispirited by the way the Japanese eat, we should be encouraged by it. Japan shows the extent to which food habits can evolve. We sometimes imagine that Italians are born loving pasta, or that French babies have a native understanding of globe artichokes that runs in their blood. The food scholar Elizabeth Rozin has spoken of the “flavor principles” that flow through national cuisine, often changing very little for centuries, such as “onions, lard and paprika” in Hungary or “peanuts, peppers and tomatoes” in West Africa. “It would be as unlikely,” Rozin writes, “for a Chinese person to season his noodles with sour cream and dill as it would be for a Swede to flavor his herring with soy sauce and gingerroot.” Yet Japan shows that such unlikely things do happen. Flavor principles change. Diets change. And the people eating these diets also change. It turns out that wherever they are from, people are capable of altering not just what they eat, but also what they want to eat, and their behavior when eating it. It is startling that Japan, a country whose “flavor principles” included little spice except ginger, should fall in love with katsu curry sauce made with cumin, garlic, and chili. A country where people once ate meals in silence has shifted to one where food is obsessively discussed and noodles are loudly slurped to increase the enjoyment. So perhaps the real question should be: If the Japanese can change, why can’t we?  

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Evangelicals are hurting the GOP: The movement is now synonymous with bigotry and abject stupidity

Back before 9/11 indelibly linked Islam with terrorism, back before the top association to “Catholic priest” was “pedophile,” most Americans—even nonreligious Americans—thought of religion as benign. I’m not religious myself, people would say, but what’s the harm if it gives someone else a little comfort or pleasure. Back then, people associated Christianity with kindness and said things like, “That’s not very Christian of him,” when a person acted stingy or mean; and nobody except Evangelical Christians knew the difference between Evangelicalism and more open, inquiring forms of Christianity. Those days are over. Islam will be forever tainted by Islamist brutalities, by images of bombings, beheadings, and burkas. The collar and cassock will forever evoke the image of bishops turning their backs while priests rub themselves on altar boys. And thanks to the fact that American Evangelical leaders sold their congregations to the Republican Party in exchange for political power, Evangelical Christianity is now distinctive—and widely despised. Another way to put this is that the Evangelical “brand” has gone from being an asset to a liability, and it is helpful to understand the transition in precisely those terms. How Brand Assets Get Depleted In the business world, a corporation sometimes buys or licenses a premium brand in order to either upgrade their own brand desirability or to sell a lower quality product. Coca-Cola acquired Odwalla for example. Dean Foods acquired Silk soy milk. Target and Walmart license various designer labels for their made-in-China housewares and clothes. Donald Trump sells his name to real estate developers who use it to set an expectation of quality. Once a premium brand or label is acquired, the parent company often uses the premium label to sell an inferior product. Alternately, if they acquired the whole company rather than just the name, they may gradually change the product, ratcheting down input costs (and quality) to the point that the premium brand becomes just another commodity. The profit advantage comes from the fact that it takes people a while to notice and change their brand perceptions. Also, being creatures of habit, a person may stick with a familiar brand even though the quality of the product itself has changed. In this way, a corporation can draw down the value of a brand the way that a person might draw down a bank account. Republican Acquisition of the Evangelical “Brand” A generation ago, the Republican Party realized that Evangelical Christianity could be a valuable acquisition. “Evangelical” had righteous, “family values” brand associations, the unassailable name of Jesus, the authority of the Bible, and the organizing infrastructure and social capital of Evangelical churches. Republican operatives courted Evangelical leaders and promised them power and money—the power to turn back the clock on equal rights for women and queers, and the glitter of government subsidies for church enterprises including religious education, real estate speculation, and marketing campaigns that pair social services with evangelism. As in any story about selling your soul, Evangelical leaders largely got what they bargained for, but at a price that only the devil fully understood in advance. Internally, Evangelical communities can be wonderfully kind, generous and mutually supportive. But today, few people other than Evangelical Christians themselves associate the term “Evangelical” with words like generous and kind. In fact, a secular person is likely to see a kind, generous Evangelical neighbor as a decent person in spite oftheir Christian beliefs, not because of them. The Evangelical brand is so depleted and tainted at this point that Russell Moore, a prominent leader of the Southern Baptist Convention recently said that he will no longer call himself an “Evangelical Christian,” thanks—he implied—to association between Evangelicals and Trump. Instead he is using the term “Gospel Christian”—at least till the 2016 election is over. While Trump has received endorsements from Evangelical icons including Jerry Falwell, Jr. and Pat Robertson, other Evangelical leaders (e.g. here, here) have joined Moore in lamenting the deep and wide Evangelical attraction to Trump, which they say is antithetical to their values. But how much, really, is the Trump brand antithetical to the Evangelical brand? Humanist commentator James Croft argues that Trump iswhat Evangelicalism, in the hands of the Religious Right, has become: “The religious right in America has always been a political philosophy based on bullying, pandering, projecting strength to hide fear and weakness, and proud, aggressive ignorance. That’s what it’s been about from the beginning. Trump has merely distilled those elements into a decoction so deadly that even some evangelicals are starting to recognize the venom they have injected into American culture.” Croft says that Pastors like Joel Osteen and Rick Warren use Jesus as a fig leaf “to drape over social views that would otherwise be revealed as nakedly evil.” As a former Evangelical, I have to side with Croft: the Evangelical brand problem is much bigger than Trump and his candidacy or the morally-bankrupt priorities and theocratic aspirations of fellow Republican candidates Cruz and Rubio. Evangelicals may use the name of Jesus for cover, but even Jesus is too small a fig leaf to hide the fact outsiders looking at Evangelical Christianity see more prick than heart. Here is what the Evangelical brand looks like from the outside: Evangelical means obsessed with sex. Evangelicals are so desperate to fend off their own complicated sexual desires and self-loathing that they would rather watch queer teens commit suicide than deal with their homophobia. They abhor youth sexuality and female sexual pleasure to the point that they have driven an epidemic of teen pregnancy, unintended pregnancy and abortion—all because accurate information and contraceptive access might let the wrong kind of people (young unmarried and female people) have sex for the wrong reasons (pleasure and intimacy) without suffering for it. Evangelical means arrogant.Wheaton College put Evangelical arrogance on national display when administrators decided to suspend and then fire a professor who dared to suggest that Muslims, Jews and Christians all worship the same God. Evangelical means fearful and bigoted.While more secular Europeans and Canadians offer aid to Syrian refugees, Evangelical Christians have instead sought to exclude Muslims.  They have used their vast empire of telecommunications channels to inspire not charity but fear of imminent Sharia in the U.S. and of refugees more broadly. They have urged that Latin American refugees be sent home so that we can build a wall across the southern border before they come back. Evangelical means indifferent to truth.Evangelicals refuse to acknowledge what is obvious to everyone else, including most other Christians—that the Bible is a human document woven through with moral and factual imperfections. Treating the Bible like the literally perfect word of God has forced Bible believers to make a high art out of self-deception, which they then apply to other inconvenient truths. They rewrite American History, embrace faux news, defend in court the right of “Crisis Pregnancy Centers” to lie, and force doctors to do the same. The end justifies the means. Evangelical means gullible and greedy.From televangelists and Prosperity Gospel to adulation of Ronald Reagan and Ayn Rand, Evangelicalism faces the world as a religion of exploiters and exploited—both of which are hoping to make a quick buck. Evangelical means ignorant.The only way to protect creationism is to keep people from understanding how science works and what scientists have discovered. As evidence accumulates related to evolutionary biology, insulating children requires a constant battle to keep accurate information out of textbooks. Insulating adults requires cultivating a deep suspicion of science and scholarship, an anti-intellectualism that diffuses out from this center and defines Evangelical culture at large. Evangelical means predatory.Evangelical missionaries prey on the young and ignorant. They have fought all the way to the Supreme Court to ensure they canproselytize children in public grade schools. Having failed to block marriage equality in the States, they export Bible based gay-hate to Central Africa, where gays are more vulnerable. Since Americans lost interest in tent revivals, evangelists now cast out demons, heal the sick and raise the dead among uneducated low-information people in developing countries. Evangelical means mean. Opposing anti-poverty programs, shaming and stigmatizing queers, making it harder for poor women to prevent pregnancy, blaming rape victims, diverting aid dollars into church coffers, threatening little kids with eternal torture, supporting war, denying the rights of other species, . . . need I go on? Laid out like this—sex-obsessed, arrogant, bigoted, lying, greedy, ignorant, predatory and mean—one understands why a commentator like Croft might say that Trump isEvangelicalism. But reading closer, it becomes clear that Trump and Cruz and Rubio are not the problem. The Evangelical brand is toxic because of the stagnant priorities and behaviors of Evangelicals themselves. Desperate to safeguard an archaic set of social and theological agreements, Evangelical leaders bet that if they could secure political power they could force a halt to moral and spiritual evolution. They themselves wouldn’t have to grow and change. They also believed that they could get something for nothing, that they could sell their brand and keep it too. They couldn’t have been more wrong. Back before 9/11 indelibly linked Islam with terrorism, back before the top association to “Catholic priest” was “pedophile,” most Americans—even nonreligious Americans—thought of religion as benign. I’m not religious myself, people would say, but what’s the harm if it gives someone else a little comfort or pleasure. Back then, people associated Christianity with kindness and said things like, “That’s not very Christian of him,” when a person acted stingy or mean; and nobody except Evangelical Christians knew the difference between Evangelicalism and more open, inquiring forms of Christianity. Those days are over. Islam will be forever tainted by Islamist brutalities, by images of bombings, beheadings, and burkas. The collar and cassock will forever evoke the image of bishops turning their backs while priests rub themselves on altar boys. And thanks to the fact that American Evangelical leaders sold their congregations to the Republican Party in exchange for political power, Evangelical Christianity is now distinctive—and widely despised. Another way to put this is that the Evangelical “brand” has gone from being an asset to a liability, and it is helpful to understand the transition in precisely those terms. How Brand Assets Get Depleted In the business world, a corporation sometimes buys or licenses a premium brand in order to either upgrade their own brand desirability or to sell a lower quality product. Coca-Cola acquired Odwalla for example. Dean Foods acquired Silk soy milk. Target and Walmart license various designer labels for their made-in-China housewares and clothes. Donald Trump sells his name to real estate developers who use it to set an expectation of quality. Once a premium brand or label is acquired, the parent company often uses the premium label to sell an inferior product. Alternately, if they acquired the whole company rather than just the name, they may gradually change the product, ratcheting down input costs (and quality) to the point that the premium brand becomes just another commodity. The profit advantage comes from the fact that it takes people a while to notice and change their brand perceptions. Also, being creatures of habit, a person may stick with a familiar brand even though the quality of the product itself has changed. In this way, a corporation can draw down the value of a brand the way that a person might draw down a bank account. Republican Acquisition of the Evangelical “Brand” A generation ago, the Republican Party realized that Evangelical Christianity could be a valuable acquisition. “Evangelical” had righteous, “family values” brand associations, the unassailable name of Jesus, the authority of the Bible, and the organizing infrastructure and social capital of Evangelical churches. Republican operatives courted Evangelical leaders and promised them power and money—the power to turn back the clock on equal rights for women and queers, and the glitter of government subsidies for church enterprises including religious education, real estate speculation, and marketing campaigns that pair social services with evangelism. As in any story about selling your soul, Evangelical leaders largely got what they bargained for, but at a price that only the devil fully understood in advance. Internally, Evangelical communities can be wonderfully kind, generous and mutually supportive. But today, few people other than Evangelical Christians themselves associate the term “Evangelical” with words like generous and kind. In fact, a secular person is likely to see a kind, generous Evangelical neighbor as a decent person in spite oftheir Christian beliefs, not because of them. The Evangelical brand is so depleted and tainted at this point that Russell Moore, a prominent leader of the Southern Baptist Convention recently said that he will no longer call himself an “Evangelical Christian,” thanks—he implied—to association between Evangelicals and Trump. Instead he is using the term “Gospel Christian”—at least till the 2016 election is over. While Trump has received endorsements from Evangelical icons including Jerry Falwell, Jr. and Pat Robertson, other Evangelical leaders (e.g. here, here) have joined Moore in lamenting the deep and wide Evangelical attraction to Trump, which they say is antithetical to their values. But how much, really, is the Trump brand antithetical to the Evangelical brand? Humanist commentator James Croft argues that Trump iswhat Evangelicalism, in the hands of the Religious Right, has become: “The religious right in America has always been a political philosophy based on bullying, pandering, projecting strength to hide fear and weakness, and proud, aggressive ignorance. That’s what it’s been about from the beginning. Trump has merely distilled those elements into a decoction so deadly that even some evangelicals are starting to recognize the venom they have injected into American culture.” Croft says that Pastors like Joel Osteen and Rick Warren use Jesus as a fig leaf “to drape over social views that would otherwise be revealed as nakedly evil.” As a former Evangelical, I have to side with Croft: the Evangelical brand problem is much bigger than Trump and his candidacy or the morally-bankrupt priorities and theocratic aspirations of fellow Republican candidates Cruz and Rubio. Evangelicals may use the name of Jesus for cover, but even Jesus is too small a fig leaf to hide the fact outsiders looking at Evangelical Christianity see more prick than heart. Here is what the Evangelical brand looks like from the outside: Evangelical means obsessed with sex. Evangelicals are so desperate to fend off their own complicated sexual desires and self-loathing that they would rather watch queer teens commit suicide than deal with their homophobia. They abhor youth sexuality and female sexual pleasure to the point that they have driven an epidemic of teen pregnancy, unintended pregnancy and abortion—all because accurate information and contraceptive access might let the wrong kind of people (young unmarried and female people) have sex for the wrong reasons (pleasure and intimacy) without suffering for it. Evangelical means arrogant.Wheaton College put Evangelical arrogance on national display when administrators decided to suspend and then fire a professor who dared to suggest that Muslims, Jews and Christians all worship the same God. Evangelical means fearful and bigoted.While more secular Europeans and Canadians offer aid to Syrian refugees, Evangelical Christians have instead sought to exclude Muslims.  They have used their vast empire of telecommunications channels to inspire not charity but fear of imminent Sharia in the U.S. and of refugees more broadly. They have urged that Latin American refugees be sent home so that we can build a wall across the southern border before they come back. Evangelical means indifferent to truth.Evangelicals refuse to acknowledge what is obvious to everyone else, including most other Christians—that the Bible is a human document woven through with moral and factual imperfections. Treating the Bible like the literally perfect word of God has forced Bible believers to make a high art out of self-deception, which they then apply to other inconvenient truths. They rewrite American History, embrace faux news, defend in court the right of “Crisis Pregnancy Centers” to lie, and force doctors to do the same. The end justifies the means. Evangelical means gullible and greedy.From televangelists and Prosperity Gospel to adulation of Ronald Reagan and Ayn Rand, Evangelicalism faces the world as a religion of exploiters and exploited—both of which are hoping to make a quick buck. Evangelical means ignorant.The only way to protect creationism is to keep people from understanding how science works and what scientists have discovered. As evidence accumulates related to evolutionary biology, insulating children requires a constant battle to keep accurate information out of textbooks. Insulating adults requires cultivating a deep suspicion of science and scholarship, an anti-intellectualism that diffuses out from this center and defines Evangelical culture at large. Evangelical means predatory.Evangelical missionaries prey on the young and ignorant. They have fought all the way to the Supreme Court to ensure they canproselytize children in public grade schools. Having failed to block marriage equality in the States, they export Bible based gay-hate to Central Africa, where gays are more vulnerable. Since Americans lost interest in tent revivals, evangelists now cast out demons, heal the sick and raise the dead among uneducated low-information people in developing countries. Evangelical means mean. Opposing anti-poverty programs, shaming and stigmatizing queers, making it harder for poor women to prevent pregnancy, blaming rape victims, diverting aid dollars into church coffers, threatening little kids with eternal torture, supporting war, denying the rights of other species, . . . need I go on? Laid out like this—sex-obsessed, arrogant, bigoted, lying, greedy, ignorant, predatory and mean—one understands why a commentator like Croft might say that Trump isEvangelicalism. But reading closer, it becomes clear that Trump and Cruz and Rubio are not the problem. The Evangelical brand is toxic because of the stagnant priorities and behaviors of Evangelicals themselves. Desperate to safeguard an archaic set of social and theological agreements, Evangelical leaders bet that if they could secure political power they could force a halt to moral and spiritual evolution. They themselves wouldn’t have to grow and change. They also believed that they could get something for nothing, that they could sell their brand and keep it too. They couldn’t have been more wrong. Back before 9/11 indelibly linked Islam with terrorism, back before the top association to “Catholic priest” was “pedophile,” most Americans—even nonreligious Americans—thought of religion as benign. I’m not religious myself, people would say, but what’s the harm if it gives someone else a little comfort or pleasure. Back then, people associated Christianity with kindness and said things like, “That’s not very Christian of him,” when a person acted stingy or mean; and nobody except Evangelical Christians knew the difference between Evangelicalism and more open, inquiring forms of Christianity. Those days are over. Islam will be forever tainted by Islamist brutalities, by images of bombings, beheadings, and burkas. The collar and cassock will forever evoke the image of bishops turning their backs while priests rub themselves on altar boys. And thanks to the fact that American Evangelical leaders sold their congregations to the Republican Party in exchange for political power, Evangelical Christianity is now distinctive—and widely despised. Another way to put this is that the Evangelical “brand” has gone from being an asset to a liability, and it is helpful to understand the transition in precisely those terms. How Brand Assets Get Depleted In the business world, a corporation sometimes buys or licenses a premium brand in order to either upgrade their own brand desirability or to sell a lower quality product. Coca-Cola acquired Odwalla for example. Dean Foods acquired Silk soy milk. Target and Walmart license various designer labels for their made-in-China housewares and clothes. Donald Trump sells his name to real estate developers who use it to set an expectation of quality. Once a premium brand or label is acquired, the parent company often uses the premium label to sell an inferior product. Alternately, if they acquired the whole company rather than just the name, they may gradually change the product, ratcheting down input costs (and quality) to the point that the premium brand becomes just another commodity. The profit advantage comes from the fact that it takes people a while to notice and change their brand perceptions. Also, being creatures of habit, a person may stick with a familiar brand even though the quality of the product itself has changed. In this way, a corporation can draw down the value of a brand the way that a person might draw down a bank account. Republican Acquisition of the Evangelical “Brand” A generation ago, the Republican Party realized that Evangelical Christianity could be a valuable acquisition. “Evangelical” had righteous, “family values” brand associations, the unassailable name of Jesus, the authority of the Bible, and the organizing infrastructure and social capital of Evangelical churches. Republican operatives courted Evangelical leaders and promised them power and money—the power to turn back the clock on equal rights for women and queers, and the glitter of government subsidies for church enterprises including religious education, real estate speculation, and marketing campaigns that pair social services with evangelism. As in any story about selling your soul, Evangelical leaders largely got what they bargained for, but at a price that only the devil fully understood in advance. Internally, Evangelical communities can be wonderfully kind, generous and mutually supportive. But today, few people other than Evangelical Christians themselves associate the term “Evangelical” with words like generous and kind. In fact, a secular person is likely to see a kind, generous Evangelical neighbor as a decent person in spite oftheir Christian beliefs, not because of them. The Evangelical brand is so depleted and tainted at this point that Russell Moore, a prominent leader of the Southern Baptist Convention recently said that he will no longer call himself an “Evangelical Christian,” thanks—he implied—to association between Evangelicals and Trump. Instead he is using the term “Gospel Christian”—at least till the 2016 election is over. While Trump has received endorsements from Evangelical icons including Jerry Falwell, Jr. and Pat Robertson, other Evangelical leaders (e.g. here, here) have joined Moore in lamenting the deep and wide Evangelical attraction to Trump, which they say is antithetical to their values. But how much, really, is the Trump brand antithetical to the Evangelical brand? Humanist commentator James Croft argues that Trump iswhat Evangelicalism, in the hands of the Religious Right, has become: “The religious right in America has always been a political philosophy based on bullying, pandering, projecting strength to hide fear and weakness, and proud, aggressive ignorance. That’s what it’s been about from the beginning. Trump has merely distilled those elements into a decoction so deadly that even some evangelicals are starting to recognize the venom they have injected into American culture.” Croft says that Pastors like Joel Osteen and Rick Warren use Jesus as a fig leaf “to drape over social views that would otherwise be revealed as nakedly evil.” As a former Evangelical, I have to side with Croft: the Evangelical brand problem is much bigger than Trump and his candidacy or the morally-bankrupt priorities and theocratic aspirations of fellow Republican candidates Cruz and Rubio. Evangelicals may use the name of Jesus for cover, but even Jesus is too small a fig leaf to hide the fact outsiders looking at Evangelical Christianity see more prick than heart. Here is what the Evangelical brand looks like from the outside: Evangelical means obsessed with sex. Evangelicals are so desperate to fend off their own complicated sexual desires and self-loathing that they would rather watch queer teens commit suicide than deal with their homophobia. They abhor youth sexuality and female sexual pleasure to the point that they have driven an epidemic of teen pregnancy, unintended pregnancy and abortion—all because accurate information and contraceptive access might let the wrong kind of people (young unmarried and female people) have sex for the wrong reasons (pleasure and intimacy) without suffering for it. Evangelical means arrogant.Wheaton College put Evangelical arrogance on national display when administrators decided to suspend and then fire a professor who dared to suggest that Muslims, Jews and Christians all worship the same God. Evangelical means fearful and bigoted.While more secular Europeans and Canadians offer aid to Syrian refugees, Evangelical Christians have instead sought to exclude Muslims.  They have used their vast empire of telecommunications channels to inspire not charity but fear of imminent Sharia in the U.S. and of refugees more broadly. They have urged that Latin American refugees be sent home so that we can build a wall across the southern border before they come back. Evangelical means indifferent to truth.Evangelicals refuse to acknowledge what is obvious to everyone else, including most other Christians—that the Bible is a human document woven through with moral and factual imperfections. Treating the Bible like the literally perfect word of God has forced Bible believers to make a high art out of self-deception, which they then apply to other inconvenient truths. They rewrite American History, embrace faux news, defend in court the right of “Crisis Pregnancy Centers” to lie, and force doctors to do the same. The end justifies the means. Evangelical means gullible and greedy.From televangelists and Prosperity Gospel to adulation of Ronald Reagan and Ayn Rand, Evangelicalism faces the world as a religion of exploiters and exploited—both of which are hoping to make a quick buck. Evangelical means ignorant.The only way to protect creationism is to keep people from understanding how science works and what scientists have discovered. As evidence accumulates related to evolutionary biology, insulating children requires a constant battle to keep accurate information out of textbooks. Insulating adults requires cultivating a deep suspicion of science and scholarship, an anti-intellectualism that diffuses out from this center and defines Evangelical culture at large. Evangelical means predatory.Evangelical missionaries prey on the young and ignorant. They have fought all the way to the Supreme Court to ensure they canproselytize children in public grade schools. Having failed to block marriage equality in the States, they export Bible based gay-hate to Central Africa, where gays are more vulnerable. Since Americans lost interest in tent revivals, evangelists now cast out demons, heal the sick and raise the dead among uneducated low-information people in developing countries. Evangelical means mean. Opposing anti-poverty programs, shaming and stigmatizing queers, making it harder for poor women to prevent pregnancy, blaming rape victims, diverting aid dollars into church coffers, threatening little kids with eternal torture, supporting war, denying the rights of other species, . . . need I go on? Laid out like this—sex-obsessed, arrogant, bigoted, lying, greedy, ignorant, predatory and mean—one understands why a commentator like Croft might say that Trump isEvangelicalism. But reading closer, it becomes clear that Trump and Cruz and Rubio are not the problem. The Evangelical brand is toxic because of the stagnant priorities and behaviors of Evangelicals themselves. Desperate to safeguard an archaic set of social and theological agreements, Evangelical leaders bet that if they could secure political power they could force a halt to moral and spiritual evolution. They themselves wouldn’t have to grow and change. They also believed that they could get something for nothing, that they could sell their brand and keep it too. They couldn’t have been more wrong.

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