Comments on: Making the Private Public

By: Robert Schwartz

Robert Schwartz — Thu, 17 Feb 2005 04:17:17 +0000

The political wife who really made me cringe was Gov. McGreevy’s wife, who had to stand there and smile while he outed himself as a “gay American” and as a man who had cheated on her. Her family is old world, Canary Islanders. I can only hope that her male relatives blot out this shame in the right way, not like some crazy Jordainian.

By: Ginny

Ginny — Wed, 16 Feb 2005 04:07:54 +0000

Yes of course – I agree with both of you.

By: Jonathan

Jonathan — Wed, 16 Feb 2005 02:37:10 +0000

Ginny, I agree with you. There are many more stakeholders in a marriage than just the bride and groom, and there is nothing wrong with celebrating a marriage publicly.

My point was different. A marriage is a contract. One may announce and celebrate a contract publicly but one usually negotiates it privately. To confound the announcement and the negotiation, as these public marriage proposals (if they are real) do, strikes me as unseemly and manipulative.

By: dick

dick — Wed, 16 Feb 2005 02:19:42 +0000

Ginny,

What you said was so powerful in its meaning that we can even overlook the way you spelled pragmatism.

It is wonderful to hear someone say these things. I came from a small midwestern town where marriage really means the whole megillah. I have always believed that and when I look around at the people who can get married 4 or 5 times and it seems to meand nothing to them at all other than a couple of words they forget immediately after the ceremony, the old ways to me seem the best ways.

By: Ginny

Ginny — Wed, 16 Feb 2005 01:04:07 +0000

Jonathan, I don’t at all disagree with you in specifics. Those p0ublic proposals always seemed to me to be manipulative. (Actually I come from the wedding in the living room, nuclear family style – getting used to the big Czech polka fests has not been something with which i’m comfortable – though I did like my daughter looking beautiful with her new elegant husband leading the wedding march.
Nonetheless, I would like to say that when we talked to the minister at the time of our marriage – in the anything goes seventies – we tried to explain that we saw marriage in nineteenth century terms, in which we as a couple were joining the community of adults, that we were committed to each other in the sight of the community, that the chldren born of that union would be our responsibility and part of our responsibility would be to raise them as productive, ethical, loving members of that community. We may have not reached this goal, we may fail in many ways in the future, but to me that was always part of what marriage was. It is central to most communities. Our religions were not ones that saw it as a sacrament, but it was, at least in part, a sacramental rite.

In the end, I guess, wht I’m saying is that I don’t think marriage is just private – I think society has some role in marriage and that a couple has responsibility toward society. I don’t have a lot of problems with Bush encouraging marriage – I think it makes people happier but it also leads to a more productive society. In the end, as long as people out there think that the government needs to be the husband,society has a stake in encouraging others to take that role. And frankly if tomorrow a breeze passed across America and all those government programs disappeared, society would still be expected to take up that slack. And it would appear in multiple wasys – from the dysfunctional kid in the classroom that makes learning difficult to the kid that shows up on your doorstep because a parent threw him out.

It is Benjamin Franklin time – this is prsagmatism.

By: Progressive Reaction

Progressive Reaction — Tue, 15 Feb 2005 21:21:34 +0000

Eeeeewwww!

Hey, David – follow this link. But first grab a barf-bag. More at Chicagoboyz. (And good on Sue!)…

By: Steve

Steve — Tue, 15 Feb 2005 20:00:55 +0000

I figure if the lady loves him, she shouldn’t mind. Maybe it’s not a bad system after all.

For the suspenseful moments before she answers his public proposal, there is a razor-sharp balance of power between the man and woman.

For those seconds, she holds all his pride in her hands. She, he and the wedding party, all know the damage that her refusal could do to his most important possession: his prestige.

And he controls her credibility. By proposing publicly, he puts to her a public test and her response will reveal all. Were all her prior, public affections towards him fake, or real?

The longest seconds of any guy’s life!
-Steve

By: Ralf Goergens

Ralf Goergens — Tue, 15 Feb 2005 18:35:51 +0000

Alpha males know to keep private matters private.

By: Jonathan

Jonathan — Tue, 15 Feb 2005 18:13:36 +0000

Yeah. And maybe the whole thing was a joke. Didn’t look like one, though.

By: incognito

incognito — Tue, 15 Feb 2005 17:42:37 +0000

Hilarious!