The Other McCain

"One should either write ruthlessly what one believes to be the truth, or else shut up." — Arthur Koestler

Happy Valentine’s Day to the (Totally HAWWT) Future Mrs. Steven Crowder

Posted on | February 14, 2012 | 46 Comments

In the latter times some shall depart from the faith, giving heed to seducing spirits, and doctrines of devils; speaking lies in hypocrisy; having their conscience seared with a hot iron; forbidding to marry . . .
– I Timothy 4:1-3 (KJV)

Steven Crowder gets some CPAC PDA from his fianceé, Hillary

“My theory is that, in contemporary culture, young ladies have become unaccustomed to being paid compliments outside the context of being ‘hit on.’ Because of feminism and political correctness, young guys have never learned to flatter a girl merely for the sake of flattery.”
– Robert Stacy McCain, Feb. 28, 2010

Every great love story ends “happily ever after,” and my concern for Traditional Family Values is often expressed by three words of encouragement to young couples: “When’s the wedding?”

One of the tragedies of 21st-century American culture is that young people from affluent backgrounds have been indoctrinated to think of marriage as a horrible financial burden, which must be avoided until one has completed  college (and perhaps also grad school), and landed one’s Dream Job with all the perks — middle-class salary, 401(k), health insurance, et cetera. To do otherwise, the Indoctrinators of Youth have taught them, is to doom oneself to a life of impoverished misery.

Urgent News Bulletin to American Youth: That’s crazy.

If you listen to that nonsense, you’ll be 37 years old on your wedding day. I’ve often remarked that many upper-middle-class parents who would not dare disapprove if their daughter came home from college and announced she was a lesbian would, however, be outraged if their daughter came home from college and announced that she had eloped to marry her boyfriend.

There is no law that says college students can’t tie the knot, nor is there any law that requires young couples to pay for a lavish wedding, and anyone who says you can’t afford to get married is lying.

You can get married at the courthouse. A marriage license costs next to nothing. And two can live as cheaply as one.

Of course, I urge young people to respect their parents’ guidance in regard to marriage, but I must also caution that many parents — including sincere Christians – have heeded “doctrines of devils,” so that their guidance to young people comes near to “forbidding to marry.”

What has crept into our culture in recent decades is a subtle prejudice I call “Middle Classism,” the belief that the only life worth living is the affluent upwardly-mobile life, with a college education, a suit-and-tie office job, and two late-model cars in the garage of a house on a suburban cul-de-sac in a good school district.

Middle Classism is a status-obsessed sort of materialism, which measures people according to their incomes, their career advancement, their possession of consumer goods, and other indicators of social status associated with the middle-class lifestyle. What this involves is a type of cargo-cult fixation on acquiring the superficial trappings of “success,” a pursuit of overpriced symbolism that often misleads young people into foolish choices, impairing both their spiritual and economic well-being.

When Professor Glenn Reynolds talks about the “higher education bubble,” he is criticizing one of the biggest side-effects of Middle Classism, the Everybody-Must-Go-to-College Syndrome in which young people believe that they must pursue post-secondary education, without regard to their academic aptitude or their ability to pay for it.

Whatever else might be said about Middle Classism, my point here is that it generally involves an implicit requirement that marriage be postponed until couples are well past the age when their wedding song might be that classic by the Carpenters, “We’ve Only Just Begun.”

Sharing horizons that are new to us
Watching the signs along the way
Talkin’ it over, just the two of us
Workin’ together day to day.

Where are those romantic “horizons that are new to us,” when the newlyweds are 30-something professionals who have been cohabiting for three years? And here is a fact that is likely to shock many young people: When the Carpenters recorded that ballad in 1970, the median age of newlyweds was 22 — 23.2 for men, 20.8 for women — which means that nearly half of American brides in 1970 were still in their teens.

Go ask your Grandpa and Grandma, kids: There was a time when many people married their high-school sweethearts, and they often didn’t wait too long after high school to do it.

‘Who’s the Blonde?’

When my buddies and I gathered in the lobby bar at CPAC in late February 2009, we discussed all the important questions of the day: What sort of policies would the newly-inaugurated President Obama pursue? How could Republicans possibly recover from Bush-era “brand damage” and the Democrat landslides of 2006 and 2008? What the heck was all this crazy talk about “tea parties”?

Yet there was no question so widely discussed as, “Who’s the blonde?”

Tall, slender, fashionably attired and with teeth of astonishingly white perfection, the mysterious young lady had cut quite a swath through the conference, turning heads everywhere she went. And so, as happy hour arrived during CPAC and the Usual Suspects bellied up to the hotel lobby bar, many of my colleagues murmured in awestruck curiosity about the identity of this long-stemmed lovely.

The responsibility of answering this question was asigned to me and, with my fine-honed chivalry, I was able to properly introduce the young lady to my curious colleagues, including the famed VodkaPundit:

The young lady’s name is Hillary and I hasten to point out:

A. For some reason, VodkaPundit was drinking bourbon that night; and
B. Their acquaintance was entirely platonic, an assurance necessary to prevent Mrs. VodkaPundit from murdering her husband.

Having met the Mystery Blonde, she was quickly de-mystified, as we learned she worked as an assistant producer for a talk-radio program, and CPAC 2009 thus passed into the annals of history.

Fast-forward to CPAC 2010 where I was minding my own business in the lobby bar when I espied amid the passing throng a suspiciously familiar figure — a certain long-limbed blonde, whom I approached as if greeting a long-lost friend. This earned me a suspicious glance from the young lady’s companion, Steven Crowder.

And no sooner had Mr. Crowder explained that he and Hillary were romantically paired than I asked, “When’s the wedding?”

This earned me yet another suspicious glance, and there subsequently ensued a minor uproar when I sent this message on Twitter:

Outrage! How dare I compliment Crowder’s girlfriend and jocularly congratulate him on his good fortune? Such was the reaction from at least one of the young lady’s friends, who suggested it was “degrading” to call attention to Hillary’s pulchritude. And as I said at the time, I blame feminism and political correctness for this widespread attitude — an attitude which seldom gets critical scrutiny — that there is something “degrading” or unseemly in taking notice of beauty.

Neo-Victorian Prudery

It seems to me as though this attitude is also symptomatic of our sexualized culture, wherein every social interaction is laden with sexual meaning. Among other things, the sexualized culture obliterates any separation between the erotic and the aesthetic.

Even while concerns about “discrimination” tend to suppress any overt mention of disparities in attractiveness in our workaday lives — lest we be sued for harassment or creating a “hostile environment” – people are simultaneously (and quite surreptitiously) playing a sort of mental “Rate-a-Date” game with everyone they meet, evaluating them in terms of their romantic desireability.

Perhaps never before in human history has a society been so sex-obsessed as ours, while at the same time we rigorously suppress discussion of this topic with a neo-Victorian prudery.

People magazine annually devotes an issue to declaring one celebrity “The Sexiest Man Alive.” Sports Illustrated annually publishes its Swimsuit Edition. However, even while our popular culture constantly emits such messages – next time you pass a magazine racke, glance at the cover of Cosmopolitan, with its quite explicit monthly offers of “Sex Secrets” — it is considered scandalously rude, if not indeed legally forbidden, to remark that a good-looking young woman is . . . well, young and good-looking. Because such a remark is assumed to imply:

A. Sexual interest in the woman; and
B. Discriminatory intent toward women who are old or not quite good-looking.

As I say, this attitude seldom gets critical scrutiny simply because it has been so widespread for so long that most people under 40 have no experiential frame of reference by which to judge it, and even most older people have forgotten what life was like before the advent of political correctness.

It is therefore unfortunately necessary for me to remind readers, both old and young, that it was once considered scandalous for unmarried couples to live together, but not scandalous for a man to compliment a lady on her looks.

The implicit assumptions of the sexualized culture have so pervaded American society that we don’t notice these ironic contradictions for the same reason that fish don’t notice water: It’s all around them, it’s all they’ve ever known, and it defines the entirety of their existence.

People who are either shacking up or else looking for their next hook-up will therefore find it necessary to condemn me, a happily married husband and father, for remarking (in the common parlance of contemporary youth) that Steven Crowder is fortunate to have won the affections of the fair Hillary.

Because she’s HAWWWWTT.

And let’s admit that Crowder’s kinda sexy, too.

See what I mean? This is the real “homophobia” that bugs me: No heterosexual man is supposed to be aware that some men are more handsome than others. Guys supposedly can’t tell the difference between Brad Pitt and Michael Moore, or between George Clooney and Carrot Top, because it we do we’re presumed to be closet cases — another seldom-remarked aspect of the sexualized culture.

In the Famous Words of Elvis . . .

Also seldom remarked (indeed, it seems quaintly old-fashioned to mention it) is the biological purpose of sex, namely the propagation of the species. Sex has become so drastically separated from its procreative function in our culture that we are supposed to think of sex only as a recreational activity, rather than in terms of breeding the next generation. Americans nowadays do not as a rule embrace the worldview expressed by an old Elvis song:

Mama never told me ’bout nothin’ like Y-O-U.
Well, I bet your mother must have been a good lookin’ mother, too.

Yes, beauty is a genetic trait, yet the sexualized culture does not encourage us to think of ourselves as gene-bearers. The procreative purposes of sex are suppressed in popular discourse, so that young people do not evaluate their prospective partners as breeding stock, nor do we see a young beauty and have that Elvis moment of realization that her mother must have been a good lookin’ mother, too.

Three years have passed since that 2009 CPAC when everyone was asking, “Who’s the blonde?” And two more years have gone by since I was happy to congratulate Steven Crowder on his good fortune in regard to the young lady. So it was quite a pleasant surprise when, upon encountering the couple again at CPAC last week, I got a surprising answer to my customary question, “When’s the wedding?”

Hillary displayed her engagement ring, and that dazzling rock on her finger betokens a scheduled trip to the altar, when young Mr. Crowder will be required to recite those fateful words, “Forsaking all others . . . ‘Til death do you part.”

Ah, speak memory! What a sudden psychic jolt I had that long-ago April day, in the Gordon County Courthouse in Calhoun, Georgia, when Probate Judge Johnny Parker had me pledge such a solemn vow toward my own lovely bride.

 ”Forsaking all others . . . ‘Til death do you part.”

Wow. That’s a heavy concept right there. And even though I’d devoted extraordinary effort to wooing that brunette beauty, the momentous nature of this nuptial oath hit me in that moment with overwhelming force. Here I was, giving my word before God and man to eschew the companionship of “all others” for the rest of my life.

Six children and more than two decades later, I’m so accustomed to being married that it might be possible to forget how shocking those words seemed back in the days of youthful glory. Most days, I just take it for granted that I have a wife, one who has retained her bikini beauty much more than has her erstwhile Speedo-sporting husband.

This morning I woke up early, came down to my basement office to work and had been at it nearly an hour before I needed to check the date and noticed that today was February 14. Then I heard my wife upstairs getting in the shower, which inspired me to go to the kitchen and start a pot of coffee. Once it was brewing, I went to the bathroom, drew back the shower curtain and said, “Happy Valentine’s Day, naked lady.”

Married folks can do stuff like that any time they want.

You’ll excuse me for having neglected to add a “Disturbing Mental Image” disclaimer to this post, but the silly neo-Victorian prudery of political correctness requires me to point out that married middle-aged couples sometimes get naked, and our six children are proof that Mrs. Other McCain and I have gotten naked together a few times.

Having glanced back to the distant past, then, now we look forward to the future and think of generations yet unborn. Our oldest daughter got married a couple of summers ago, but she and her husband insist we’ll have to wait a while for grandchildren. Our 19-year-old twin sons have girlfriends, but so far have not suggested the prospect of marriage, et cetera. (Important Reminder to 19-Year-Old Sons: Please make sure that the “et cetera” does not precede marriage.)

Such thoughts of the future generation are probably far from the minds of Steven Crowder and his bride-to-be. Young people do not usually think forward like that, and so they probably haven’t given much thought to what their circumstances will be on Valentine’s Day 2035.

However, we should all join together in hoping that this fine-looking couple are blessed with a Duggar-sized brood of baby Crowders, because I will dare to make this Valentine’s Day prophecy: At some point in the remote future, when one of those little baby Crowders is all grown up, she’ll walk into a honky-tonk saloon where a crooked-grinning hillbilly-looking fellow with a guitar in his hand is up on the stage.

Just as beauty is a hereditary trait, so too is musical aptitude, and if I know anything about crooked-grinning fellows who play guitars — trust me, I do – I can say with prophetic certainty that when the grown-up baby Crowder girl walks into a future honky-tonk, that hillbilly boy is going to start singing an old Elvis song, wondering what T-R-O-U-B-L-E is doing A-L-O-N-E. Ain’t that right, Travis?

Happy Valentine’s Day, to Steven and Hillary and young lovers everywhere, but also most especially, to Mrs. Other McCain.

UPDATE: Speaking of CPAC, unintentional offenses, and clever song lyrics, Crowder had to explain his short pants to some HuffPosters who got their knickers in a twist.

UPDATE II: And speaking of Professor Glenn Reynolds, why does it seem he is always blogging about sex?

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Category: Marriage, Mrs. Other McCain, Rule 5, Sex

Comments

  • mojo

    Also Elvis:
    “A little less talk, a little more action.”
    “Get out in that kitchen and rattle them pots and pans!”

  • Quartermaster

    Too thin for my taste, but no one asked me. The only one that matters is Crowder himself.

    I’m tempted to say something that would fit with “Louder With Crowder” but that might be in bad tasteand I have no wish to give offense to the RSM Blog babes.

  • http://evilbloggerlady.blogspot.com/ Evi L. Bloggerlady

    Given the costs of an even “modest” American Wedding, eloping is something a lot of fathers might actually embrace!  

  • http://evilbloggerlady.blogspot.com/ Evi L. Bloggerlady
  • Anonymous

    Shake, rattle and roll!

  • Anonymous

    Too thin for my taste

    Nothing that couldn’t be cured with a few weeks of eating mama’s buttermilk biscuits and cornbread.

  • Datechguy

    I found myself constantly complementing women at CPAC for their astounding beauty.

    This is a simple matter of necessity.  Considering how many absolutely beautiful women of exceptional intelligence and discression attend CPAC  one can’t help complement them.

    I’ve discovered also if you complement a lady on her beauty right up front, you get it out of your mind and can get on with actual friendship or a working relationship.

  • http://evilbloggerlady.blogspot.com/ Evi L. Bloggerlady

    Talking about butter,  the Left is busy spinning itself into butter over its continual raaaaacist outrage (it has a Crowder connection over the knickers thing so it is sort of on point).  

  • http://evilbloggerlady.blogspot.com/ Evi L. Bloggerlady

    Well said.  

  • http://evilbloggerlady.blogspot.com/ Evi L. Bloggerlady

    Nothing says love better (sometimes) than well made biscuits!  

  • Anonymous

    Holy hell…. all I’m saying man…. I need to leave Michigan… whoa… 

  • http://evilbloggerlady.blogspot.com/ Evi L. Bloggerlady

    Oh and congratulations to Crowder and his fiance Hillary!  

  • Anonymous

    Um,

    Because she’s HAWWWWTT.

    And let’s admit that Crowder’s kinda sexy, too.

    See
    what I mean? This is the real “homophobia” that bugs me: No
    heterosexual man is supposed to be aware that some men are more handsome
    than others. Guys supposedly can’t tell the difference between Brad
    Pitt and Michael Moore, or between George Clooney and Carrot
    Top, because it we do we’re presumed to be closet cases — another
    seldom-remarked aspect of the sexualized culture.

    Dude. O_o
     

  • http://thecampofthesaints.org Bob Belvedere

    Some goofballs have all the luck.

  • Paul Mitchell

    “Middle Classism is a status-obsessed sort of materialism, which measures
    people according to their incomes, their career advancement, their
    possession of consumer goods, and other indicators of social status
    associated with the middle-class lifestyle. What this involves is a type
    of cargo-cult fixation on acquiring the superficial trappings of
    “success,” a pursuit of overpriced symbolism that often misleads young people into foolish choices, impairing both their spiritual and economic well-being.”

    Thanks very much.  I needed that.

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  • Anonymous
  • http://www.haemet.blogivists.com/ Roxeanne de Luca

    McCain, you’ve asked people who have known each other for three hours when the wedding is. 

     

    There is no law that says college students can’t tie the knot,
    nor is there any law that requires young couples to pay for a lavish
    wedding, and anyone who says you can’t afford to get married is lying.

    When I was in college, I was getting dumped for not having premarital sex, getting dumped for my ‘putting out within five dates’ then-friend, or being told that I didn’t actually need that engineering degree – by men who subsequently dropped out because they couldn’t handle it.

    Needless to say, marriage was not an option.

  • http://twitter.com/richard_mcenroe richard mcenroe

    One of the advantages of being a member of the Bachelor-American Community 
    http://tinyurl.com/8xny2ec
    is that I could say something like that without having to worry about explaining it to MRS. Belvedere…

  • http://profiles.yahoo.com/u/EU5DQWQTTHTPO4A4ZYSL3AAV2U Adjoran

    Best wishes to the bride-t0-be and congratulations to the prospective groom.

    And Steven – take some advice:  don’t keep the lady waiting.

  • http://twitter.com/richard_mcenroe richard mcenroe

    Ya gotta unnerstan’, Stacy is basically the Nanny Ogg of the dextrosphere….

  • Physics Geek

    If you listen to that nonsense, you’ll be 37 years old on your wedding day.

    Uh, I was actually 37 when I got married. As it happens, my wife is somewhat younger than I am. If I had met her at an earlier age, I might have run afoul of state and federal laws.

    Oh, and a few of my friends were on their second divorces by the ripe old age of 30. It seemed like a much better option to wait until the right girl came along.

  • http://www.facebook.com/agnes.b.bullock Agnes B. Bullock

    BRAVO!!!!!!

    And thank you for the Travis tribute at the end!

  • http://marezilla.com/ Zilla of the Resistance

     I got married in 2004, we had 70+ guests, the whole thing was under three thousand bucks, including my dress! We hired a Justice of the Peace because husband and I have different religions and had the event at a nice local restaurant, a friend played the music on a stereo I brought in and we all had a great time. My dress was gorgeous and cost about a hundred and fifty bucks, including alterations.  A great wedding doesn’t have to cost a ton of money, or be an anxiety producing nightmare for the whole family.

  • Pathfinder’s wife

    Eh, not really — there’s something to be said for doing it the old fashioned way…going to meet the respective parents in law to get their blessing, doing all that.
    It’s a fiction that it has to be some opulent, high cost affair.

    I used to think eloping was the sensible thing, now not so much (because….my daughter just eloped over the weekend…oy!).

    Yeah, she’s known the fellow for quite a while, and any couple that can stay faithful to one another while in different units, in different parts of the country will likely be able to weather a lot of stuff, plus they seem to have planned quite a bit of things….still.
    Now I think there is something to be said for being a bit more traditional.

  • Pathfinder’s wife

    This is true.  Too many people have been led to believe that marriage is something that you hold off doing until the conditions are “just right” and you find the absolute “right one”.  There is no such thing — and then they wonder why they are in their 30s and have no one or they marry, then quit it when the first snag pops up.

    Marriage, like life, is what you make of it, and it sure beats being alone.  For all its inevitable ups and downs, there’s something to be said for sharing your life with somebody else.

    And men should compliment women (and women should learn to accept the compliment).  I told my young son to always compliment women, just be sure it is a sincere compliment and a truthful one, and you say it because you wanted to  – he is rather popular with the girls for that reason.

  • Pathfinder’s wife

    …which means that I should quit being such a nattering hypocrite with my eldest and my now son-in-law of course…

  • http://evilbloggerlady.blogspot.com/ Evi L. Bloggerlady

    You are a wise and good woman.  

  • http://evilbloggerlady.blogspot.com/ Evi L. Bloggerlady

    I am sorry you missed your daughter’s wedding.  Perhaps a better option is the Zilla way described above.  And the moderately low cost will make Dad happy too.  

  • Wombat_socho

    GJ providing an example of exactly the sort of attitude he was talking about.

  • Pathfinder’s wife

    eh, she did it on purpose because she knew her pappy and I would lecture her roundly on her contractual marriage to Uncle Sam (along the lines of “if the Army wanted you to have a husband they would have provided you with one”) — maybe that was asking too much of her; it isn’t a bad thing to want to be married to an actual person I suppose

    we’ll try to put together a little wedding party when the two of them manage to get some leave time, and maybe this wasn’t such a bad thing…at least they didn’t shack up or something 

  • http://twitter.com/richard_mcenroe richard mcenroe

    ”
    If I had met her at an earlier age, I might have run afoul of state and federal laws.”

    You’ll have to explain that to Stacy.  Remember what red neck of the woods he hails from. *g*

  • Pathfinder’s wife

    and, it wasn’t a case of them having to get married (not that I don’t applaud it when people do the right thing in that situation, but it is a relief that wasn’t the case with my own kid)

  • http://thecampofthesaints.org Bob Belvedere

    Mrs. B. knows that I’m a helpless and harmless flirt, so I have no problem.

  • http://thecampofthesaints.org Bob Belvedere

    Two points…

    -Don’t you be dissin’ Carrot Top – he’s beautiful inside.

    -You wrote: And speaking of Professor Glenn Reynolds, why does it seem he is always blogging about sex?

    Duh!  He’s married to Dr. Helen.

  • http://thecampofthesaints.org Bob Belvedere

     Dead solid perfect advice, Peterino.

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  • http://thecampofthesaints.org Bob Belvedere

     Why are you back, Patrick?

    Just back in October, you called Stacy ‘a moronic tool’(1).

    A year before that you whined:
    It was written by Robert Stacy McCain —- Yeah, that Robert Stacy McCain. The same guy who threw me under the bus to satisfy and pacify a Michelle Malkin fan boy. The one who has quite the checkered past and is now the Neo-Conservative darling; despite his checkered past(2).

    I’m surprised you want to hang around with us?

    Perhaps you’ve come up with some new slanders that you’re waiting for the right moment to fling at Stacy.  I hope so, ’cause the old ones(3) were so weak and tiring – about what I expected from such a crashing bore.

    (1) http://politicalbyline.com/2011/10/20/i-dont-know-whether-to-laugh-or-scream/

    (2) http://politicalbyline.com/2010/10/06/the-feckless-right-exhibit-m-for-morbid/

    (3) http://politicalbyline.com/tag/robert-stacy-mccain/

  • AndrewInON

    Too pale for my taste, but still; not bad for a white chick.

  • Wombat_socho

     We’ll see how long it takes him to step on his crank this time.

  • Wombat_socho

     Cyborg love. Awwww yeah. :)

  • DetroitRight

     *shrug* he’s the one that tossed $10.00 into my tip-jar. But seeing my presence bother’s some. I’ll leave. good day.

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  • http://thepagantemple.blogspot.com/ ThePaganTemple

     Also, if you compliment them they might be willing to pose for pictures nyuk nyuk nyuk.

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