The Teenage Anxiety Epidemic

Posted on | February 19, 2020 | Comments Off on The Teenage Anxiety Epidemic

For some reason, nobody was talking about teenage anxiety when I was a teenager. Of course, that was the 1970s, when we were threatened by real dangers like the Arab oil embargo, the Symbionese Liberation Army, Soviet aggression, and the presidency of Jimmy Carter. How did teenagers cope with anxiety back then? Speaking only for myself, it involved massive amounts of drugs and listening to Led Zeppelin albums, but maybe that’s not the advice I’d give kids in the 21st century:

Megan, 19, wants to stand out and be “the person,” but she perceives herself to be falling short. The problem began in high school. She attended an elite academy, where she began “to feel like I was mediocre or below average.” Earlier, at a regular school, she “was the smartest person in the class” and had been on the gifted and talented track since the fifth grade. This heady recognition made her feel special. But then came the academy, where she was surrounded by very bright, high-achieving kids. She began to “feel marginalized” and yearned to “feel special again.” These feelings carried over into college.
Although she is now a scholarship student at a first-rate university, Megan is frustrated and despairing of herself. She explains that she is attending her “safety school” and wants to “show that I should be somewhere better by acing all my classes and being president of 40 organizations.” But, she adds, “that is really not happening. I am, if anything, a mediocre student … and that just makes me so angry at the world and then me for not being the person.” Although she wants “to impress someone,” she says, “I end up being impressively unimpressive,” and that “crushes me.”
Megan is one of the many young people that I, with the help of my students, have interviewed over the past decade. Stories like hers are not unique. The distress of America’s young people continues to attract attention from the media and experts. Anxiety in teens is on the rise and constitutes the leading mental health issue among American youth. Frequently-cited surveys show that the number of adolescents diagnosed with an anxiety disorder is growing, more and more high school seniors are reporting feeling overwhelmed, and the past-month prevalence of college students feeling “overwhelming anxiety” surpasses 40 percent. . . .

You should read the whole thing. As the father of a teenage girl, I try to pay attention to trends like this. Our daughter (thank God) doesn’t have the kind of problems my parents had to deal with when I was a teenage dopehead, but as this article makes clear, the anxiety epidemic seems to be affecting nice kids worst of all. The one thing nobody ever accused me of being was a “nice kid.” So I had that going for me . . .

Otter: “Come on, Flounder. You can’t spend your whole life worrying about your mistakes. You f**ked up. You trusted us. Make the best of it. Maybe we can help you.”
Flounder: “That’s easy for you to say. What am l going to l tell Fred?”
Otter: “I’ll tell you what. I’ll swear you were doing a great job taking care of his car, but you parked it out back last night, and this morning, it was gone. D-Day takes care of the wreck. We tell the police. Your brother’s insurance buys him a new car.”
Flounder: “Will that work?”
Otter: “It’s got to work better than the truth.”
Bluto: “My advice to you is to start drinking heavily.”
Otter: “Better listen to him, Flounder. He’s in pre-med.”

Did I mention Jonestown? Polyester slacks and disco? Man, there was a lot to be anxious about in the 1970s, but for some reason, nobody cared.

Probably it was the weed . . .

Category: Fear. Loathing.

R.I.P., ‘Sexual Intellectual’

Posted on | February 19, 2020 | 1 Comment

Amie Harwick was a licensed marriage and family therapist (LMFT) in California who specialized in talking about sex. Harwick claimed to be a former Playboy centerfold, but good luck finding those photos. On her official website, Harwick described her qualifications:

She has her Bachelors of Arts in Psychology from California Polytechnic University in Pomona, California. She has her Masters of Arts in Clinical Psychology with an emphasis on Marriage and Family Therapy from Pepperdine University. She graduated from the Institute for Advanced Study of Human Sexuality with her Doctorate of Human Sexuality.
Amie has worked with a variety of populations of clients in a variety of settings ranging from a private practice to community based mental health facilities. She has worked with a range of clients including, but not limited to, anxiety, depression, sexually exploited teenagers, juvenile sex offenders, children with trauma, court mandated adults, divorce, sexual identity issues, chronic pain, sex addiction, Bipolar disorder, displaced adolescents, and domestic violence.
Amie was a recipient of the Phillips Graduate Institute stipend award for her multicultural knowledge and awareness regarding displaced children.
Amie is also a member of:

AASECT (American Association of Sexuality Educators, Counselors, and Therapists)
CAMFT (California Association of Marriage and Family Therapists)
PSI CHI (Psychology Honor Society, Pepperdine Chapter)
KAP (Kink Aware Professionals through the National Coalition for Sexual Freedom)

Dr. Amie is the author of The New Sex Bible for Women available at most major booksellers including Amazon and Barnes and Noble.

Years ago, I observed that the most popular form of “feminism” is really a very simple formula: Cute young women talking about sex. Not to say that Harwick lacked qualification as a therapist — her credentials were equal or superior to most practitioners, and her former clients praised her — but her stock in trade was her youth and good looks. That’s why, for example, she was a guest on the Good Morning LaLa Land program. Because the book trade depends on such programs for publicity, having a telegenic presence makes a prospective author more valuable to publishers, thus Harwick became author of The New Sex Bible for Women: The Complete Guide to Sexual Self-Awareness and Intimacy.

Like I said: Cute young women talking about sex. That sells, and never mind whether Amie Harwick had more knowledge about sex than you or I might have, there’s always a ready market for such a product.

Here’s a question: When did sex become so complicated that people needed someone with a Ph.D. to explain it to them? For most of human history, human beings somehow managed to do the basic deed without consulting any credentialed experts, and yet nowadays one must have a doctorate degree from the Institute for Advanced Study of Human Sexuality to claim enough knowledge to dispense advice on such matters.

Just last week, Amie Harwick offered this advice on Instagram:

With Valentine’s Day coming up, many people may be reflecting on past relationships. More often than not, when a relationship ends one or both partners may feel that they have not had what they feel is closure. Moving on, moving forward, and taking care of yourself after the end of a relationship often means accepting that you may not have the ideal closure. Making peace with this takes time.

That seems like good advice, right? And maybe some of Harwick’s fans thought she was referencing her relationship with The Price Is Right host Drew Carey, to whom she was engaged for about a year before they split in 2018. On the other hand, most of Harwick’s fans didn’t know that she was being stalked by an ex-boyfriend she broke up with about 10 years ago. Gareth Pursehouse is a computer programmer and photographer who dated Harwick when she was in her 20s and, evidently, had trouble “accepting that you may not have the ideal closure.” Big trouble:

The Los Angeles Medical Examiner revealed the cause of death of Amie Harwick, a family therapist and the ex-fiancee of comic and “The Price Is Right” host Drew Carey.
Harwick, 38, died of blunt force injuries to her head and torso, according to the Medical Examiner’s Office. Police said they were responding to reports of a “woman screaming” on Saturday when her roommate said Harwick was being “assaulted inside of her residence.” When officers found Harwick at her home, below a third-story balcony, she was “unresponsive” and they determined her injuries were “consistent with a fall.”
The Los Angeles Fire Department then transported her to a local hospital, where doctors pronounced her dead.
Police also found “possible evidence of a struggle” and “forced entry to the residence.”
The suspect, 41-year-old Gareth Pursehouse, was arrested outside his home in Playa del Rey and booked on murder charges, the release explained.

Further details on the accused killer:

Hollywood sex therapist Amie Harwick’s alleged killer, ex-boyfriend Gareth Pursehouse, “stalked and threatened” her at a starry porn awards show hosted by Stormy Daniels just weeks before her death.
Pursehouse confronted Harwick at the XBiz adult-industry awards ceremony Jan. 16 in downtown LA, leaving her terrified, her close friend, former adult-film star Jasmin St. Claire, exclusively told Page Six. Fearful Harwick — who was at XBiz representing Pineapple Support, an org that offers mental health services to sex workers — alerted the cops, but nothing was done, St. Claire claims.
She said, “Gareth knew Amie was going to be at XBiz. He stalked her there and went bats–t crazy. He was at the awards working as a photographer, but his behavior was abusive and threatening. He was yelling and screaming. Amie told me after the incident that she was scared he would show up at her home. She went to the police, but they did not take it seriously. He was really obsessive over her; controlling.”

Pursehouse had a history of abusive and threatening behavior:

Slain celebrity family therapist Dr. Amie Harwick, who was killed Saturday morning at her Hollywood Hills home, was abused multiple times by her ex-boyfriend, according to court documents. . . .
Harwick applied for a restraining order against Pursehouse on two separate occasions, once in 2011 and again in 2012, but neither were still in effect at the time of the killing. . . .
“He has suffocated me, punched me, slammed my head on the ground, kicked me,” Harwick told police, according to the restraining order.
She said Pursehouse also broke into her apartment complex previously and “smashed 10 picture frames on my door.”
According to the restraining order, Pursehouse also texted Harwick saying “things will get worse,” which prompted her to call the police. . . .
Dr. Hernando Chavez was with Harwick when that most recent encounter happened.
“He was irate, angry, aggressive, verbally abusive, distraught, under duress,” Chavez said. “And she was trying to calm him down, she was trying to help him soothe, she was trying to be compassionate and empathic.”

Guess he didn’t have “closure,” even after all these years. Why is it that some guys just can’t move on and find somebody new? When I was young, I carried the torch a while for some ex-girlfriends, pining with nostalgia for lost love, but it never occurred to me to blame them for my pain, when obviously the fault for those breakups was all mine.

“Better to have loved and lost than never to have loved at all,” as Tennyson said, but I guess they don’t teach romantic poetry anymore, nor do guys watch the kind of movies that would teach them how to walk away from a relationship: “Frankly, my dear, I don’t give a damn.”

Always act like a winner, even when you lose. If you really want revenge against the girl who dumped you, the thing to do is to carry on with your life as if you’ve suffered no pain at all. If she’s done you wrong, there are other women in the world who’ll do you right. Or such would be my advice, if any heartbroken young guy sought my advice.

Were there any other clues Gareth Pursehouse might be dangerous?

He tweeted anti-Trump comments frequently in the weeks before his arrest, including a February 12 tweet saying, “Reminder… Once Trump is not president, the FBI can prosecute him for all the Mueller report findings…”

Here’s some advice for you ladies: Don’t date guys who show clear symptoms of Trump Derangement Syndrome.

Not that I’m a Ph.D. therapist or a relationship expert or anything, but like I keep saying, Crazy People Are Dangerous.

UPDATE: Welcome, Instapundit readers! And thanks to the commenter who identified Amie Harwick’s nom de nude as “Nicolette Novak.”

She was definitely not a “Playboy centerfold,” but rather a so-called “cybergirl” (i.e., web-only) whose profile had some interesting quotes:

“I grew up around Philadelphia, Pennsylvania,” she says. “It was a normal middle-class environment, like Stepford. Nothing unexpected, and I didn’t really fit in. I moved to Los Angeles when I graduated from high school, and now I really feel like I’m home.” . . . Nicolette started modeling to pay for her graduate school tuition . . . “I’m attracted to a man that is motivated and self-actualized,” she says. “And I don’t like traditional gender roles. Chivalry casts women in a ‘damsel in distress’ role — a position of inferiority.”

This was circa 2012-2013. Evidently, she got a nose job since then.

Category: Crime, Sex Trouble

In The Mailbox: 02.18.20

Posted on | February 18, 2020 | 1 Comment

– compiled by Wombat-socho

OVER THE TRANSOM
357 Magnum: Dave Chappelle Is a Genius
EBL: Charles McCall Portis, RIP
Twitchy: Clay Travis Has Some Words For “Wildly Hypocritical” LeBron James
Louder With Crowder: Boy Scouts Of America File For Bankruptcy Amid Sexual Abuse Scandal

RIPPED FROM THE HEADLINES
Adam Piggott: Podcast #135 – The Godless Marriage Episode
American Conservative: If Duterte Wants Us Out, Then Let’s Go
American Greatness: Senator Murphy Admits Meeting With Iranian Minister
American Power: The Limits Of Democracy Promotion
American Thinker: Bloomberg’s Red Chinese Conflict Of Interest, also, The Epic Donald
Animal Magnetism: Animal’s Daily Auf Deutsch News
Babalu Blog: Bloomberg’s The “Moderate” Democrat, Right?
BattleSwarm: Coronavirus Update – Red China’s Economy Burns, also, Texas Early Voting Starts Today!
Cafe Hayek: Another Open Letter To Oren Cass
Camp Of The Saints: Welcome To The Jungle – Arts & Entertainment & Letters
CDR Salamander: Naming Ships With Style, Verve…And Sanity
Da Tech Guy: Report From Louisiana – Gov. Edwards Breaks His Promise To Teachers, also, The Case For Getting Rid Of The CIA & FBI
Don Surber: NYT Wonders Why Blacks Escape Chiraq, also, Mini-Mike Embraces Anybody But Bernie
First Street Journal: The Libertarian Mess, also, How #TrumpDerangementSyndrome Scrambles The Brains Of Some Supposed Conservatives
The Geller Report: Buttigieg – “We Are All Lifted Up” By Stories About Abortions, also, Dutch Museum Debates Censoring Degas Painting To Avoid Offending Muslims
Hogewash: Team Kimberlin Post of The Day, also, That’s No Moon, It’s A Space Station!
Hollywood In Toto: How Crisis Moon Strikes A Blow For Conservative Art, also, How Downhill Leaves Will Ferrell Out In The Cold
JustOneMinute: “Assault Weapon” Ban Fails In Virginia
Legal Insurrection: Tom Steyer Claims Trump’s Economy Is Not That Great, also, Financially Stressed Oberlin College Seeks To End Unionized Custodial, Dining Services
Megan McArdle: Bernie Sanders Is Not Just A Garden Variety Social Democrat
The PanAm Post: Getting The Facts Right On Venezuela Is Important
Power Line: The Washington Post Pulls The Old Switcheroo On Trump, also, Bernie Ascendant
Shark Tank: Mast & Bilirakis Praise Trump’s Tactical Sanctuary City Crackdown
Shot In The Dark: If It’s Tuesday, Minneapolis Must Be An Urban Utopia
STUMP: Taxing Tuesday – Don’t Worry, Gamers!
The Political Hat: News of The Week
This Ain’t Hell: Threats & Violence Against GOP Voters – Part Of A Pattern? also, Naval Aviation Call Sign Protocol
Victory Girls: Media Freakout Over Trump At Daytona 500, also, Bloomberg Says Farmers Not Smart Enough To Code
Volokh Conspiracy: Are Laws Requiring lawyers To Join (And Fund) State Bar Associations Unconstitutional?
Weasel Zippers: Dershowitz Says He Has Proof Obama Ordered FBI Investigation At Soros’ Request, also, Stacey Abrams Says She’d “Go Around Constituion” To End “Racist” Electoral College
Mark Steyn: Pony Tailspin, also, The Candidate Who Never Made The Primary

Amazon Warehouse Deals

Category: Linkagery

My Celebrity Brother-in-Law

Posted on | February 18, 2020 | Comments Off on My Celebrity Brother-in-Law

You probably never heard of Bucyrus Copper Kettle Works, which has occupied the same building in the same small Ohio town for more than 140 years. My wife’s brother Rex has worked there as a coppersmith for about 30 years. You can see Rex at work in this episode of Our Ohio, a series that airs on Ohio public television:

Click here to see a selection of the products they offer.

Category: Family, Ohio

Bernie Wants to Make Everything Free …

Posted on | February 18, 2020 | Comments Off on Bernie Wants to Make Everything Free …

. . . so “Free the Nipple,” I guess?

A topless protester disrupted Sen. Bernie Sanders’ campaign rally in Nevada on Sunday — moments after Mayor Bill de Blasio introduced the Democratic presidential candidate to the stage.
De Blasio had just introduced Sanders to the crowd in Carson City as the “next president of the United States,” when Sanders entered the stage with his wife as the song “Power to the People” played.
That’s when a fully clothed woman jumped up and tried to wrest the microphone out of the Vermont senator’s hand, before grabbing another one from the lectern, and started speaking about the candidate’s support for dairy farmers.
“Bernie, I’m your biggest supporter, and I’m here to ask you to stop pumping up the dairy industry and to stop pumping up animal agriculture,” she said. “I believe in you…” she continued, before the mic suddenly went dead and security moved toward her.
Sanders moved to the edge of the stage as a string of women then paraded across holding images of cows — followed by a topless woman, who gestured to Sanders as members of his security detail positioned themselves between the two.
“This is Nevada. There’s always a little excitement — at no extra cost. Except we have a lot of water on the stage,” he said as he returned to the stage.
The protesters were prompted by the senator’s support in 2018 for legislation that provided emergency financial support for dairy farmers across the country because of the falling price of milk.

If you’re protesting dairy subsidies, I suppose showing your udders makes sense. By the way, I believe a majority of Trump supporters agree with me in opposing federal agriculture subsidies on limited-government principles. Nor do we mind attractive young women going topless, but the word “attractive” doesn’t describe most of Bernie’s supporters.

Democrats 1932: "The only thing we have to fear is fear itself."
Democrats 1960: “Ask not what your country can do for you, ask what you can do for your country.”
Democrats 2020: https://t.co/kjDgJbuFMU

— The Patriarch Tree (@PatriarchTree) February 18, 2020

Category: Bernie Sanders

Wait a Minute: Did Joe Biden Suggest Bernie Voters Are White Supremacists?

Posted on | February 18, 2020 | Comments Off on Wait a Minute: Did Joe Biden Suggest Bernie Voters Are White Supremacists?

The same day he claimed illegal aliens “are better Americans than most Americans are,” Biden decided to exceed his daily gaffe quota:

Democratic presidential candidate former Vice President Joe Biden said Monday on MSNBC’s “Deadline” white supremacists were “very enthusiastic” about President Donald Trump.
While criticizing Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) for not disowning his supporters’ attacks, Biden said, “I know you’re seeing what has been online, the vicious, vicious threats, the misogynistic things they’ve said referring to the women who are leaders of the Culinary Union, and they received death threats. I mean, this is way, way — this is Trump-like. Way over the line. And I think Bernie has to disavow this.”
Host Nicolle Wallace said, “Do you think Bernie Sanders is acting Trump-like in his refusal to disavow people that may be unsavory but that are very enthusiastic about him?”
Biden said, “By the way, the white supremacists are very enthusiastic about Trump.”

What does this imply? If leaders of the Culinary Union have received death threats, have the police investigated? Do we know that Sanders supporters are responsible, or is this just what Joe Biden is assuming? And what was that “white supremacists” remark meant to signal? Was it just a random jab at Trump, or did he mean it as a dog whistle aimed at the black voters in South Carolina he’s counting on for his “firewall”? Did Biden mean to imply that, because Bernie supporters behave in a “Trump-like” way, they are somehow soulmates of the white supremacists who are “very enthusiastic about Trump”?

Go back and look at Nicolle Wallace’s question, though: Is this why she abandoned the Republican Party and became an MSNBC host, because she finds grassroots GOP voters to be “unsavory” people?

Think back to how Wallace backstabbed Sarah Palin, and think also about how she and the other members of the Bush-era GOP apparatus never expressed any real support for the Tea Party movement. Some Republicans have never actually liked the kind of people who vote Republican — the “credulous boomer rube demo,” as Rick Wilson says — and we should be grateful that Trump has flushed them out in the open, so everyone can see these #NeverTrump types for what they are.

Category: Bernie Sanders, Joe Biden, Nevada, Racism

Joe Biden: DACA Recipients Are ‘More American Than Most Americans Are’

Posted on | February 18, 2020 | Comments Off on Joe Biden: DACA Recipients Are ‘More American Than Most Americans Are’

Remember, he’s the Democrat who’s gonna win working-class voters:

During a campaign rally in Reno, Nevada [Monday], former Vice President Joe Biden (D) said illegal aliens who are shielded from deportation by former President Obama’s Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program are “more American than most Americans are.”
While speaking to a crowd of supporters, Biden accused American citizens of being less American than even the roughly 800,000 to 3.5 million DACA illegal aliens living in the United States while touting his plan to provide them all with amnesty:

Once again, legalize all the DACA students. These DACA students are more American than most Americans are. No, I’m serious. Think about it. They come along when they’re eight-years-old and their mom says they’re crossing the … they don’t know where they’re from. They’ve never been [to their native country]. They’ve been good, decent citizens and they’re great additions. By the way … you know our Social Security system is still solvent? Because of immigration. They didn’t cost us anything, they’re paying for it … and there’s a reason why it’s moving. . . .

Biden has routinely used this talking point on the campaign trail, most recently telling Iowa voters that DACA illegal aliens are “more American than most Americans” because they have “done well in school.”

From Biden’s open-borders perspective, being an American is not about anything except going to school, paying taxes and voting Democrat. If you don’t vote Democrat, you’re un-American, according to Democrats, who are determined to import good “Americans” who will vote for them.