And speaking again of parents, from the New York Times:

Racially segregated proms have been held in Montgomery County — where about two-thirds of the population is white — almost every year since its schools were integrated in 1971. Such proms are, by many accounts, longstanding traditions in towns across the rural South, though in recent years a number of communities have successfully pushed for change.

/snip/ Students of both races say that interracial friendships are common at Montgomery County High School. Black and white students also date one another, though often out of sight of judgmental parents. “Most of the students do want to have a prom together,” says Terra Fountain, a white 18-year-old who graduated from Montgomery County High School last year and is now living with her black boyfriend. “But it’s the white parents who say no. … They’re like, if you’re going with the black people, I’m not going to pay for it.”

Interesting corollary, from the same issue of the Times magazine:

According to the group Freedom to Marry, about 13 percent of Americans now live in a state that allows gay marriage or recognizes marriage licenses issued in other states, and that percentage is certain to rise. The gist of the disagreement now isn’t partisan or theological as much as it is generational. Unlike their parents, younger Americans and those now transitioning into middle age have had openly gay friends and colleagues all their lives, and they understand homosexuality to be a form of biological happenstance rather than of emotional disturbance. They’re less inclined to restrict the personal decisions of gay Americans, even if they don’t necessarily want the whole thing explained to their children as part of some politically correct grade-school curriculum. In a sense, the gay rights movement of an earlier era was so successful in changing social attitudes that the movement itself can now seem obsolete, in the same way that younger Americans who have grown up with the premise of environmentalism in their daily lives consider Greenpeace to be a kind of hippie anachronism.

A sharp-eyed Twitterer observes: “Hmmm…#3wordsduringsex still trending over Sonia Sotomayor. Oh, America.”

Here’s me. (Or at least that — speaking of parents — is what I look like when I go home and instantly regress.) What about you?

Did you learn most of what you know about relationships from your parents? And is that good or bad?

If the latter, at least we’ve always had fantasy families to lean on: the Huxtables, the Wilders, the late great Joyce Summers. So please enjoy, at Babble.com, this list of — and homage to — the 25 Best Fictional Parents.

Climbing the corporate lad, from February 9, 1998…

Dear Breakup Girl,

Now that I’m over my ex (although there are still a few of his belongings in my garage; I think I’ll create some metal art), I’m ready to move on. There is a fellow at my workplace whom I’ve recently met; he works in another department in another building, is friendly and has a photograph of he and his daughter on his desk (no wife). I would like to get to know more about him. Well, in this world of appropriate workplace behaviour, how do I get the two of us together outside of the office in order to find out more about him? In my position at work I am confident and can tackle the unknown, but in my personal life I can’t seem to initiate that first step. What’s a professional woman to do?

— Tired of Following the Rules

(more…)

May … September … February 9, 1998…

Dear Breakup Girl,

I have been seeing a much younger man for about two years now (he’s 28 and I am 58). We are really crazy about each other but I am afraid that I may offer him more of a mother-figure relationship than one of a lover. We haven’t talked about “where we are” lately, but should I let him go, or make something more permanent out of it? Yes, I mean marriage. Would it be fair for someone my age to try to wed a young stud like him?

— Darry

 
Dear Darry,

Wow, that is a May-September thing (yeah, as in May 1958, September 1998). Let me ask you this: are you worried about the mother-figure thing in principle, or in practice? I mean, does your concern stem from a vague “Is this weird?” notion — or from some actual dynamic you guys have (e.g. when he didn’t call to say he’d be late for dinner, you took away his phone privileges). Or, for that matter, is there some Freud-oid episode in his past (oh, say, loss of his mother) that might predispose him to seek out a substitute? Or one in your past that might predispose you to be that substitute?

(more…)

And yeah — much like this story on Tango’s website muses about the onstage-only heat that’s generated between Dancing with the Stars’ two-stepping twosomes — I three-quarters wish that Shawn were dancing in the sheets with Mark Ballas. Despite the whole, you know, potential ick factor of her being underage and all.

*Translation: Olympic gymnast Shawn Johnson, all of 16, won this season’s Dancing with the Stars mirrorball trophy Tuesday night. She was considered a way-underog behind French-fried throb du coeur Gilles Marini, who qualifies as an aforementioned “star” because he gave us all a peep at his pecker in the Sex and the City movie.

Is the U.S. “not ready for snarky superheroes” — you mean, besides the super-popular Captain Hammer? — or does this series just sound kind of grim?

At very least, clearly we do need some sort of hero here — a sidekick, at least, called Rewrite, or something — to swoop in and vaporize all lameass gay jokes.

The United Nations, home of the United Nations Inter-Agency Network on Gender and Equality, the United Nations Division for the Advancement of Women, the United Nations Development Fund for Women, and the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women, apparently needs to take a good look inside its own ranks. As today’s Wall Street Journal reports:

The United Nations, which aspires to protect human rights around the world, is struggling to deal with an embarrassing string of sexual-harassment complaints within its own ranks.

Many U.N. workers who have made or faced accusations of sexual harassment say the current system for handling complaints is arbitrary, unfair and mired in bureaucracy. One employee’s complaint that she was sexually harassed for years by her supervisor in Gaza, for example, was investigated by one of her boss’s colleagues, who cleared him.

Cases can take years to adjudicate. Accusers have no access to investigative reports. Several women who complained of harassment say their employment contracts weren’t renewed, and the men they accused retired or resigned, putting them out of reach of the U.N. justice system.

“No matter which way the cases go, they mishandle it,” says George G. Irving, a former U.N. attorney who now represents clients on both sides of such cases.

The U.N. has announced plans to implement changes to its internal justice system on July 1, but some in the know say they’re still not enough. For one thing: “Many U.N. managers have diplomatic immunity from criminal prosecution or civil litigation.” Well, then.

The WSJ has done an in-depth investigation; click here for the rest of the gories. And here, and here, for BG’s take on sexual harassment.

Let’s hope they’re more charming than the want-ad for their services.