For a change, trains, France, food, and Jews

-File under obvious, but I wouldn't recommend NJ Transit on St. Patrick's Day. We got seats, because (as per usual) there were empty spots in an otherwise packed car, next to a guy who happened to be black - must have been a coincidence, and not evidence that Americans/those who take this train line are all kinds of racist. I suggest a trip on the NE Corridor line for anyone in need of evidence against this being a "post-racial" nation.

Anyway, a 9:30 AM train did not mean the party hadn't started. After several months of near-seclusion among a handful of scientists, there was something kind of fun about being in a spray-tanned, hot-pants-wearing horde. I'm used to feeling mildly self-conscious about, say, wearing lilac nail polish, so I welcomed the sea of acrylic. OK, it wasn't so great when I overheard remarks about how someone has "never" had to pee this badly, and you can kind of guess what's coming. But otherwise, it had its moments.

-The market for books about France, food, and Americans' sense of inferiority is officially infinite. I fully intend to get started on mine, which will be called: "The Move To France And Have Your Jaw Wired Shut Miracle Diet." Its sequel, "Life in the Sixteenth Arrondissement With A Persistent Gastrointestinal Ailment: Fahbulous, Dahling!," is also in the works.

-Because I am incredibly suggestible, I followed Mark Bittman's advice and bought miso, without knowing quite what to make with it. I guess my favorite flavor is umami, both because I remember vividly spending a long time at a very snazzy bar mitzvah (at the Pierre hotel!) chock full of cute boys from the grade above me, affixed to a wheel of Parmesan they just had, like, out, and you could take as much as you wanted, and because now, I'm wondering if the best use for it might be eating it out of the container with a spoon.

-On the scandal that wasn't: at the tail end of the Fluke-Limbaugh debacle, a blogger evidently had a field day over the fact that Fluke's boyfriend (wait, she has a boyfriend? wouldn't that ruin the fantasy of her as the most promiscuous woman in America? or is that too rational?) is a Jew. Said blogger, whose influence it's fair to say falls short of, say, Limbaugh's, sees a connection between this fact and Jewish socialism, or Jewish money-and-power, or something. A very smart woman I met at a conference a while back has a post worth reading about this, and David Schraub, also very smart, makes a good point in his response as well.

And I feel as though I ought to weigh in on this, what with that pesky dissertation on intermarriage. My interpretation of this latest installment of the Fluke story would be that this is less about a gender-specific anti-Semitic trope, of Jewish men somehow corrupting non-Jewish women (assuming Fluke isn't Jewish), and more the broader anti-Semitic trope of Jews as anti-Christian, anti-family-values. And historically, this has hit Jewish women and men alike - the Jewish-prostitute motif, as well as the (male, generally) Jew as radical. (Léon Blum's support for premarital experimentation, Alfred Naquet's for divorce...).

I mean, it is about gender, but almost more than it's about Jewishness. To even pose the question of who Fluke's boyfriend is, to suggest that there lies the true origins of her political opinions... sure, the answer they find plays into stereotypes about Jewish intelligence/conniving, but is more obviously (and I see Sarah Seltzer made this point as well) the usual 'silly young woman inherently incapable of thinking for herself' cliché, as if she's the Gloria to his Mike "Meathead" Stivic.