Shocking Discoveries

Following up an insane week of travel and other commitments I will be attending tonight’s Flames/Rangers tilt with the World’s Most Dangerous Professor and have another silly Times op-ed to get to, so I’ll have to let someone else give the remarkably high words-to-content ratio of Caitlin Flangan’s latest joint a more extensive treatment. I do wish to make a couple of points:

• I often hear that, whatever one thinks of Flangan’s silly ideas, they are expressed in first-rate prose. I note that, on Decemember 7, she wrote the following sentence: “Whether that was the game-changer or not is a question for near-constant debate.” (In fairness, she at least did not follow-up that up by saying that Prop 8 opponents couldn’t “close the deal.”)
• I am unable to discern any meaning to her distinction between ordinary coalitions and “rainbow” coalitions, except that apparently the internal tensions that are inevitable in large parties are more troubling if they contain people of color.
• I am afraid that she considers the fact that “one oppressed group does not necessarily support the goals of another oppressed group” some sort of novel insight. She may want to talk to a feminist who was involved in anti-war politics in the 60s…