7/14 - Social TREND???!!!???

My Monday residue relates to the wife whose husband's father had reappeared in his life after a lengthy absence.  I hope the Prudecutor's statement to the effect that the LW didn't want to tell her husband ITYS was intended as advice rather than assessment.  Of course the LW wanted to tell her husband ITYS.  The letter was dripping with it.  She might have tried to break off or disallow the connection had she not figured out that it gave her a much better position of power to smile through the reunion and then niggle her husband over gifts and expenditures later.

For today's group of letters, I apologize for any loud noise anyone may have heard some time ago.  If this sort of thing, happening so quickly on the heels of the last time I made a similarly loud noise, had happened in September rather than July, I might be announcing my imminent departure.  But nothing is going to spoil Homocentric August.  Also for today, I have a contemporary parallel rather than a classic one, but I trust it will not disappoint.

Quick Thoughts:

L2:  Very interesting that Mr Prudecutor has so much influence over his wife.  In fact, I'd have felt justified in comparing the Prudecutor to Mrs Bachmann had I not preferred my first choice.  This is an interesting letter.  The sightseeing comes across as an additional detail provided by W2 to make her visits look more legitimate, while ultimately proving just a shade overdone and making it suspicious that W2 would return to the same area so consistently without a branchout.  In cross-examination, one mkight want to establish for certainty that W2 refuses to allow LW2 to accompany her to that part of Florida at any time, on a joint holiday as well as an individual visit.  Assuming that to be true, there are innocent enough reasons that she might be unwilling at some point to Show Him Her Florida, but if she can't understand that her hoarding is making her reasons look rather guilty, then there's more than potential infidelity in play.  It might be interesting for LW2 to begin taking a separate holiday of his own (timed NOT to coincide with W2's) to which she is not invited...  And, by the way, should LW2 be looking for a private detective to trail W2, I am convinced that Ferdinand Isaac Gerald Newton (or Ferdinand Ian Gilmour, either way known as Fig in the trade) would be delighted to accept a job in Florida, where he would presumably not acquire the cold in the head he so frequently gets from observing errant spouses in inclement weather.

L3:  How to cope with Righteous Anger?  Run for Congress.  Why not?  Quite a few political careers start out of such little things.

L4:  Now I COULD advise LW4 that, if she really MUST engage her sister on the issue, invoke Miss Ramsay and throw around liberal reference to the P-word.  That would cause fireworks and be quite entertaining to observers.  But I am primarily interested in the Prudecutor on this one.  That should not surprise the gentle reader.  Social trend?  Tweeting one can reasonably count as a social trend.  If it caught on, such a practice as seating all men on one side and all women on the other side of the table at a dinner party could become a social trend.  There are one or two other social trends to which one might draw the Prudecutor's attention.  Right about now, the cheeriest one might be the Failure Rate of Second Marriages.  At least that should keep me from an explosion.

On to L1:  A fascinating situation, and again I note that the Prudecutor has kindly provided the gentle reader with a response containing very nearly as much of interest as LW1 herself.  First for LW1.  It seems reasonable to think that a high schooler might be forgiven for expecting a high school attachment to trump major lifestyle change.  The breakup could certainly have been handled (more) elegantly, and the miscarriage certainly makes LW1 quite the sympathetic figure at that point in time.  I shall give her the benefit of the doubt by accepting that she lists the causes of her discontinued education chronologically rather than by order of importance, but even so, linking the pair as she does does not serve her cause well.  How many years later might be interesting to establish.  Why such pictures would be detrimental to X1's reputation might make for some interesting speculation.  Is he going Christian? coming out? getting married?  I'm also unsure why LW1 is so devastated to be contacted by X1's representatives instead of X1 himself.  Surely that's standard practice.  If nothing else, X1 and/or his people might well have thought that personal contact from X1 might cause hostility.  And I note that LW1 did not ask "his people" why or reply to them that she would only discuss the matter with X1 personally.  One might speculate (perhaps better if left to the final address to the Jury) that LW1 is making this into a convenient reason for what she wants to do anyway.  Describing this as vindication is interesting also.  In what way does she think selling the pictures to a tabloid might possibly make her look better?

Now for the Prudecutor.  Why is she so eager for LW1 to be thankful that the computer and by extension the pictures have been preserved?  She certainly seems quite pleased by the prospect of LW1 making a bit of money out of the transaction.  I give the Prudecutor a rare Well Done for going to the extent of consulting a genuine expert in the field.  Telling LW1 to hire an attorney conversant with privacy law is a bit of a push, more or less guaranteeing that the pictures are going to be sold to somebody.  After all, there will be the legal fees to consider.  Then the Prudecutor calls X1 a jerk - saying he dumped LW1 in a jerky manner seems a little more accdurate, but that's a minor quibble.  Then she calls him an emotional moron - all on the basis of what he said at some point during breaking up with LW1.  Of course - everybody who ever handled a breakup awkwardly during high school loses his Humanity Card in perpetuity and deserves as much humiliation as he might possibly receive.  The Prudecutor concludes with her own little dilemma.  She has to give lip service to the future consideration of how LW1 will feel about herself being better if she negotiates with X1 through representatives, but makes it clear that she would love to see LW1 carry off a triumphant and highly profitable revenge.

It's very interesting that LW1 never told X1 she was pregnant.  It's not entirely clear whether she knew or not at the time of the break.  It would seem logical that she might use the pregnancy to try to keep him from dumping her.  One presumes that she did know before she miscarried.  My personal speculation on what limited information we have is that she wanted to have the baby and then hit X1 up afterwards, when the situation would have packed a much greater wallop.  Another possibility is that she avoided telling him to remain free of pressure to abort.

I don't know about the gentle reader.  However, were I forced to choose between LW1 and X1, I should call LW1 worse.  The whole of the evidence against him is one sentence uttered during a time of considerable stress to the witness and perhaps to the utterer as well.  Not telling a partner about a pregnancy (entirely her right, had she intended to abort, though it seems clear enough that she wasn't strongly inclined in that direction) seems rather more sinister.

I am a little surprised that the Prudecutor didn't hit on the possibility to which she veered so near - that of LW1 telling X1's people that the computer was donated.  Those who want X1 and his people to stew in fear (always assuming that they want the pictures destroyed rather than to control the leak themselves) would like such a course.  They then would have to worry about the pictures turning up at any time.  Personally, I don't care what LW1 does with the pictures enough to make a voluntary recommendation.  If I were forced to do so, I'd probably advise her to barter the copyright for therapy.  And, whatever she does, she should avoid reading Dr Barreca, who will only encouraging her worse self.

Mym parallel is drawn from real life, and quite a good one.  Although not taken from the field of music, it concerns someone of superstar status and his breakup with the sweetheart of his youth.  They did have a happier ending when he had a change of heart and reportedly got her back after begging.  And, given what event began today, it seems even more apt than usual to be invoking Mr McIlroy.  His reason for the breakup was quite similar, although, one presumes, rather better expressed - the need to work more relentlessly on improving his golf.  It was fortunate all around that he was able to see that his chosen course would not work well, the pair were able to reconcile, and his results have suddenly taken such an explosively good turn.

By way of moral, I shall quote Mr Wilde:  "The only way to defeat temptation is to yield to it."