"John O’Connor was the sole first gentleman for over a dozen years. He and RBG’s husband Marty..."

"... used to joke that they were members of the Dennis Thatcher Society, which Marty described as one’s wife having 'a job which deep in your heart you wish you had.' Marty added, 'Now let me just say that in my case it is not true. Only because I really don’t like work. She works like fury all the time. The country’s better off as it is.'"

From "'Marty Was Always My Best Friend': Ruth Bader Ginsburg's Love Story," via Metafilter, which warns "Don't read this unless you're ready to sob like a baby."

When Jeb — giving a sword to Rubio — talked about a made-up Chinese character he called "Chang" — a "mystical warrior" who "has never let me down."

From a WaPo article — by Sean Sullivan, Manuel Roig-Franzia and David A. Fahrenthold — called "The 17-year story behind Marco Rubio’s cut-down of Jeb Bush":

By 2005, the two men were close enough that when Rubio gave an emotional speech after winning the race to be Florida’s House speaker... [Jeb] honored Rubio with a gift: a sword, which he said belonged to a great “conservative warrior” named Chang.

“Chang is somebody who believes in conservative principles, believes in entrepreneurial capitalism, believes in moral values that underpin a free society... Chang, this mystical warrior, has never let me down.”

This gesture was even stranger than it sounds. It appears that “Chang” was not a real person but something from a Bush family in-joke about Chinese Nationalist leader Chiang Kai-shek (“Unleash Chiang!”). Now, Jeb — whose ­father was once the U.S. envoy to Beijing — had garbled the story into something about a mystical warrior with a sword.

The sword “really meant something to Jeb,” a longtime friend and colleague of both men said. “He thought it was Marco who would continue his legacy.”

So Jeb gave Rubio a sword and later Rubio performed a (metaphorical) "cut-down." With 3 writers on that WaPo story, couldn't they at least have figured out where Jeb got the sword?

I suspect re-gifting. Somebody gave somebody in the Bush family a sword. H.W. Bush served as an envoy in China. I suppose that over the years, the Bushes have gotten many gifts they don't love or need. Stuck with a sword... until you can stick somebody else with it.

What went into the decision to give the new speaker of the Florida house a sword? Normally, the speaker wields a gavel, a symbol of calling a diverse, noisy group to order, so that the many can proceed with the business of the whole. Why supplant the gavel with a sword, a symbol of violence and divisiveness. You literally divide with a sword. But in Jeb's mind, that seemed like the right message.

Now add to that the invention of a Chinese character. Nothing Chinese was going on. It was about the Florida legislature. And Chinese culture was appropriated for the occasion... why? Some stereotype about warriors? About "mysticism"? Or is it just something internal to the Bush family, within which it's (apparently) a running joke to say "Unleash Chiang!" Did Jeb imagine that the sword ritual was initiating young Marco into the Bush family secret society?

That question made me look up Skull and Bones, the Yale secret society to which George H.W. and George W. Bush belonged. But Jeb Bush didn't go to Yale. He went to the University of Texas, and he didn't even join a fraternity. He'd met his future wife during a trip to Mexico when he was 17, and that affected his approach to college:

When his friends decided to rush fraternities, Bush stayed behind — he wasn’t interested in dates or parties, [best friend Rob] Kerr said. It took him less than three years to graduate magna cum laude with a degree in Latin American studies.

“He had a very good ability to study really intently while other people were goofing off,” Kerr said. “He was probably more studious than the rest of us.”

After a few years of constant phone calls and occasional visits, Jeb, 21, married Columba, 20, at the UT-Austin University Catholic Center in 1974.

Those 3 WaPo writers — Sean Sullivan, Manuel Roig-Franzia and David A. Fahrenthold — offered to explain the 17-year story of Jeb and Marco, but they never say anything deep about the human personality. I just want to make up a coherent story of the man who made up a fake story about the mystical Chinese warrior as he gave a sword to Marco Rubio:

The warrior Chang stands in for the elder Bush who fought in the war and went to China. The younger man, Rubio, stands in for the younger brother, George W. Bush, who, like the father, went to Yale and performed whatever those secret rituals were, while the studious older brother buried himself in books at the state university, earnestly striving to marry the girl he fell in love with when he was 17. The callow brother surged past him and acquired the mystical power over the American soul that is the presidency, and now another man is surging ahead.

The sword was passed.
CORRECTION: This post originally had George as the younger brother and Jeb as the older brother. Jeb may have seemed more mature, but he is, of course, younger.

AND: Reading this post, Meade inferred that the 3 WaPo writers got this story from Rubio, who has a motive to make Jeb sound bad. Did Jeb really "garble" the Bush family story? Was it an "in-joke" or meaningful references to Chiang Kai-shek? Did Bush, handing over the sword, really talk about an invented character named "Chang," or was he saying "Chiang"? Chiang Kai-shek was a warrior, and Chiang Kai-shek could be said to be "conservative" and even "mystical." The Wikipedia article on Chiang Kai-shek identifies him with The New Life Movement, which "was based upon Confucianism, mixed with Christianity, nationalism and authoritarianism":

Chiang Kai-shek used the Confucian and Methodist notion of self-cultivation and correct living for the Movement; to this end it prescribed proper etiquette on every aspect of daily lives. Some of its many measures included: opposition to littering and spitting on the floor; opposition to opium use; opposition to conspicuous consumption; rejection of vice entertainments in favor of artistic and athletic pursuits; promotion of courteous behavior; and promotion of flag salutes. Among its more unusual campaigns was its promotion of bathing with cold water: Chiang Kai-shek pointed out the (supposed) Japanese habit of washing their faces with cold water as a sign of their military strength, and expected the Chinese to be able to do the same if not better.

"No one is forcing anyone to accept 'one wife, many husbands!'" said the Chinese economics professor, proposing a solution...

... to the problem of too few women in China to meet the demand of Chinese men who want wives.

The professor, Xie Zuoshi, blogged his idea. He has a lot of readers — 2.6 million followers for one of his 3 blogs — and this idea went viral — though the post itself has "been removed."

By 2020, China will have an estimated 30 million bachelors — called guanggun, or “bare branches.”...

One answer is: Stop aborting girls. But Xie's solution takes the current situation as it is.

Many men, especially poor ones, he noted, are unable to find a wife and have children, and are subsequently condemned to living and dying alone without offspring to support them in old age, as children are required to do by law in China. But he says he believes there is a solution.

Old-age pensions from the government? No:

“The guanggun problem is actually a problem of income. High-income men can find a woman because they can pay a higher price. What about low-income men? One solution is to have several take a wife together. That’s not just my weird idea. In some remote, poor places, brothers already marry the same woman, and they have a full and happy life.”

Polyandry has been practiced before in China, particularly in impoverished areas, as a way to pool resources and avoid the breakup of property. And apparently, there are Chinese who think polyandry may already be legal....

Click for more »

Imagine being 12 years old in a world where everyone was reading about your father giving some woman who is not your mother the best sex she ever had.

Politico has a story this morning about Donald Trump's daughter Ivanka, "The Quiet Power Behind the Trump Throne/Ivanka Trump is her father’s most influential adviser, his most powerful surrogate—and his total opposite." Excerpt:

The caution and composure Ivanka brings to business is applied in every corner of her life and is, in part, the product of growing up as the child of a mother and father who often made tabloid headlines, including the New York Post front pager—“Best Sex I Ever Had”—about her father. Looking back at that time, when the whole world seemed to be taking sides in her parents’ divorce, she says, “You can’t control for other 12-year-old girls bringing a copy of the newspaper to school. People knew. They heard their parents talking about it at the breakfast table, so they would ask me.” Ivanka sounds like she’s straining as she seeks the most positive light for this dark moment. She says the scandalous episode probably made her appreciate her parents more. But in the end, she concludes, “I actually view it, all in all, as a thing that obviously was negative.”

I was curious about "Best Sex I Ever Had." I couldn't call up the original story, but I found a Post piece from 2012 titled "Worst ‘lust’ Trump ever had":

Marla Maples famously gushed “Best Sex I Ever Had” in a Post Page One headline when she started her affair with Donald Trump back in 1990 — but The Donald wasn’t as thrilled, according to a gossipy police confession tape.

Chuck Jones — Maples’ shoe-fetishist former publicist — has recorded a video statement for Manhattan cops and prosecutors.... “I said [to Trump], ‘Did you love [Maples]?’... He thought about it,... And it’s not like he said, ‘I’m madly in love with her.’ He said, ‘You know . . .I think it was lust . . . and had I the opportunity to do it over, I would have stayed with my family,’ ” meaning Ivana and their three kids.

Interesting... not that there's much reason to believe Jones, who convicted of "burglarizing Maples’ home and stealing 70 pairs of shoes, which he admitted he was having a 'sexual relationship with.'"

Trump is now married to his third wife, and I suppose I think more highly of a man who's on his third wife if I know that he regretted ever leaving his first wife. But how awful to be 12 years old and to see everyone reading about your father giving some woman who is not your mother the best sex she ever had.

"Sharafat Khan, the co-owner of a million-dollar mansion in suburban Houston, has spent the past 6 months living on his front lawn after his wife kicked him out the house."

And the WaPo has written an article about him, replete with photographs.

“He’s wearing the same clothing, it’s dirty,” neighbor Debbie Scoggins told NBC TV affiliate KPRC. “He has no bathroom facilities, no shoes.”...

“They’re married so it’s community property,” Detective Tim Dohr of the Lakeview Police Department, which oversees policing in the neighborhood, told the Chronicle. “One has just as much right as the other to be there. We can’t make him leave, which is her wish, and we can’t really force her to do anything with regard to him.”...

While Khan lives outside, with no access to food, his wife, a physician, has placed a sign on the front door asking people not to feed her husband....

According to the son, "My dad has abused my mom, emotionally as well as physically." Obviously, the living on the lawn is a form of emotional abuse. “We are ashamed that my father has caused all this problem and hate toward my mom.”

Sharafat says he wants his wife “to realize whatever she is doing she’s doing bad. People will know, the neighbors and everything else. People will ask her, put her down. Let her know what you’re doing to your husband.”

I'd lean toward the wife, but she has the power to seek a divorce and to divide that property. She's not taking that step, supposedly because of "religious reasons."