Cock-eyed Vision

One of my favorite passages in contemporary writing is in Vince Bugliosi's book on the OJ Simpson trial, Outrage. The first chapter is titled "In The Air". Reading it was one of those moments when another piece of the puzzle snapped into place. Bugliosi writes of how so much of what we think we know is part of the landscape, picked up through radio, television, magazines, commentators, casually overheard conversation in everyday settings.
Bugliosi was specifically writing about all the network pundits commenting on the trial who were presented as eminent "legal authorities". Bugliosi's point was that he -- the winningest DA in LA history and after a lifelong career as a trial lawyer and eminence himself -- had never heard of any of them. The ones he did know he viewed as lightweight or worse on the subject they were weighing in on.
We absorb what's floating around us and assume It's Reality. So much of what we are presented as the truth, or what really is, is a tightly controlled lie endlessly repeated until dissension or disagreement from it appears aberrant or demented. Andrei Sarkharov comes to mind.
Anyway, the latest bit of groupthink that set me off was in an advice column by a local "relationship guru" answering a 35-year-old, single careerist female who suddenly realized the office and a paycheck is not enough and wants to "settle down", get married and start a family.
The "guru's" response (in part) was a classic of I-Want-My-Cake-And-Eat-It-Too feminism: "There has to be a point when your priorities change from all work and no play to a healthy balance of both, allowing you to finally have it all...You don't have to sacrifice your career to make room for a man, but you need to find a way to fit him in." (emphases are mine).
So, in our postmodern world of "Girls Rule!" and made-for-TV movies where the First Female this-or-that is constantly showcased as proof that the glass ceiling has finally been smashed, a man has been reduced to a mere appendage to a successful woman's career. He is viewed as simply another appliance that will somehow fulfill whatever is left unfinished in Contemporary Woman's quest for completeness.
Never mind that Society now is hellbent on destroyng the very idea of a male as head of household and breadwinner, and that divorce and family courts are extortion rackets that exist only to keep him in financial and mental penury for the rest of his life paying for ex-wives who always get custody and their new boyfriends.
Our "relationship guru" expects the average single young man -- whose opportunities for advancement, thanks to affirmative action, government-dictated hiring practices, frivolous sexual harassment lawsuits and outsourcing, have left only the meatgrinder of the military as a career path -- is expected to leap at the chance to make Modern Woman fulfilled, married, financially secure and a mother. At least until she gets as bored with him as she is of her Brave New World of corporatism and paycheck.
If I were a 20-something guy looking at a future like this, I would either join the French Foreign Legion (unless feminists have made it a kinder, gentler bastard shadow of its former self) or be packing a prenup agreement in my wallet.