Forgiveness misplaced. Pronatalism decoded. JD's wife has 3 kids. Lebensborn redux. Marianne Williamson. Chutzpah girls. Eat like toddler Levi. JD Salinger's Soul. Dog videos to die for.

Newsletter #163

POLITICS

*I’ve never heard of X poster, mattisuperman (alias Matt Randall, Jr), but his punchy peroration nails it. Do you realize this is what we’re forgiving Trump for? And why.

*Pronatalism is the fancy term for the cultural brainwashing that pressures women to have more babies and calls those who won’t give birth selfish, sinful, and abnormal. “Pronatalism typically combines concerns about falling birth rates with anti-immigration and anti-feminist ideas,” writes Margaret Talbot in The New Yorker. “It champions not just having children but having many—large families for the sake of large families, reproduction for reproduction’s sake. Except that, in this world view, not all reproduction is equal. Pronatalism favors native-born baby makers.”

*As Trump 2.0 actualizes its agenda, be prepared to be blitzed by MAGA messages about the joys of wifely contentment and beatific motherhood (a status that may suit some women but not all by a long shot). Pronatalism’s nouveau huckster is JD Vance, who famously described child-free women as “cat ladies [who are] miserable at their own lives and the choices they’ve made” and want “to make the rest of the country miserable, too.” More recently, referring to his wife, the VP-elect weirdly said, “She’s got three kids,” as if their children are solely hers. (In my world, both parents care for their progeny with equal devotion and responsibility.)

*Being attuned to MAGA’s pronatalist hype, I’ve cast a jaundiced eye at some of the “family friendly” reforms proposed in Project 2025. What follows after conservatives sentimentalize the good old days and promote their gauzy momism stereotypes? Social coercion for women to breed more and more babies. Policies that glorify it, offer incentives to avoid abortion, and press women to put their unwanted babies up for adoption. Then State coercion in the form of women’s duty to give birth to serve the needs of the nation. I’m not catastrophizing. Just recalling that we’ve been here before. See The Lebensborn Program “designed by the SS to increase Germany’s declining birthrate. It was originally intended to provide pregnant ‘Aryan’ women with financial assistance, adoption services, and a series of private maternity homes where they could give birth.”

* Looks like we may be headed there again. Idaho, Kansas and Missouri, have already come up with an anti-abortion strategy predicated on the premise that women who refuse to have a child, or more children than they want, are “causing a loss in potential population” and inflicting “a sovereign injury to the state.” According to those three red States’ Attorneys General, teens pregnant with unwanted babies and all women of childbearing age have a public duty to breed in order to save their states from losing Congressional seats and federal funds based on population. Moreover, they say, state authorities should be able to impose compulsory motherhood on women for the greater good. To understand this “ghastly argument”and arm yourself for the looming battle to keep the abortion pill legal, read two bone-chilling opinion pieces: Linda Greenhouse in the NYTimes and Michael Hitzik in the LATimes.

IMMIGRATION

*A provocative question from Marianne Williamson; ‘To those of you excited by the idea of mass deportations that go way beyond the point of removing criminals, I ask: Do the millions of busboys and dishwashers and gardeners and day care workers and housekeepers and janitors and street cleaners and sanitation workers and farmworkers who live in the shadows but make life a bit easier for you in various ways - people who have done nothing in the world to hurt you, ever, and are simply working hard each day trying to make life livable for themselves and their families - have they ever done anything to deserve your easy contempt?”

WOMEN

* Watch Bloom & Manifest’s latest video, then forward it to your mom, grandma, mom-in-law, sisters, daughters, granddaughters, nieces, female cousins and girlfriends. Send it to every man you know who has ever maligned an ambitious, aspiring, assertive (aka,“aggressive”), girl or woman who had the chutzpah to pursue her craziest dreams.

* Speaking of which — “Chutzpah Girls: 100 Tales of Daring Jewish Women” is a great Hanukkah gift for kids in your life. Girls and boys, Jews and others, will learn a lot from the authors’ lively mini-biographies of female role models from ancient times to right now: Among them: biblical prophets, Deborah and Miriam; ancient Talmud scholar, Bruriah; 19th century American poet-activist, Emma Lazarus; union leader, Rose Schneiderman; astronomer Vera Rubin, who discovered dark matter; entrepreneur and inventor of the Barbie doll, Ruth Handler, Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, and neuroscientist-actor, Mayim Bialik. I hope “Chutzpah Girls” is the first of a multi-volume series that explores the lives of many outstanding Jewish women, some not yet famous, all of whom merit recognition.

PURE PLEASURE

* Cooking for Levi videos are a total delight thanks to the culinary curiosity and infectious enthusiasm of this incredible 3-year-old boy, and his father’s efficient preparation and beautiful presentation of tasty food that any adult would relish. “He's not a picky eater so he will try anything, we get him kind of excited so I kind of hype him up beforehand," said his dad Jack Zhang, a professional chef in Buffalo, NY, who started cooking for the toddler when he was 2-years-old. Now 3, Levi cooks with his dad. His mom, Emmy, joins the team as co-author of their cookbook, “Cultivating a Curious Palate.” Every child, no, every one of us, should eat this well.

*Agnes takes a deep dive down her human’s polo shirt. Though a dachshund wriggling against one’s chest is a greater distraction than texting I bet there’s no law against it.

*Don’t mean to overdo the dog videos, but for me at least, watching this pup help her human pack for a trip provided comic relief from the growing list of DJT’s inane cabinet picks.

EVENTS

*Wed, Dec. 11th, at the JCC of Manhattan, I’ll be in conversation with the author of “Salinger’s Soul,” Steve Shepard, about his fresh interpretations of J.D. Salinger’s fiction and the elusive writer’s personal, literary and religious odysseys. If you’re a fan of the enduring adolescent classic ,“Catcher in the Rye” (who isn’t?), or such idiosyncratic short stories as “A Perfect Day for Bananafish” and “For Esmé - with Love and Squalor," you won’t want to miss hearing, and perhaps contributing to, what is certain to be a revelatory discussion. Register here.

Wishing you a Happy Thanksgiving and much to be thankful for in the year to come. While also sending a nod of respect and recognition to native peoples’ National Day of Mourning and remembrance.