Daily Clips: February 23rd, 2016
David Brooks pontificates about marriage: Of course he does. The guy cannot write a column without the words “moral” and “spiritual.” Get a load of this generalization he endorses from psychologist Eli Finkel:
The best marriages today are better than the best marriages of generations ago; the worst marriages now are worse; over all, the average marriage is weaker than the average marriage in days of yore.
Does he provide any specific data to back up such an anecdotal claim? Of course not. Also, check out this amazing reader comment:
One of the most popular forms of marriage until recently was the ‘shotgun’ marriage, where marriage proposals took the form of coitus pregnantus, and a lifelong union was born, for better or for worse.
Many of these marriages lasted a lifetime, and many caused a lifetime of utter misery.
Fortunately, thanks to the waning hypnotic power of both religious prisons and traditional misogyny and modern contraception – including a woman’s right to manage her own body parts – the ‘shotgun’ wedding has mostly been relegated to America’s Bible Belt where the dynamic duo of abstinence ‘sex education’ and Bible Study still seems to produce a bumper crop of impregnated teenage girls, forced pregnancies and shattered economic futures.
Congress has only now banned slave labor in US imports: TIL.
US consumer confidence ebbs: Worries of a recession coupled with “relentless declines in oil prices” contributed to a fade in consumer confidence this month. The Conference Board Consumer reported that its consumer confidence index “fell to 92.2 from a reading of 97.8 in January.”
