Tag Archives: Dr.Keith Ablow

General discussion

Healthy eating

More tu quoque in the news.  This time, again, perhaps for the nth time, Michelle Obama, advocate of healthy eating.  This from Talking Points Memo:

Dr. Keith Ablow, a member of something called the Fox News Medical A-Team, doesn’t think First Lady Michelle Obama has any business promoting childhood nutrition.

“And how well can she be eating? She needs to drop a few,” Ablow said during Tuesday’s episode of “Outnumbered.”

The comment drew a collective cringe from the same four female panelists who had called the first lady “annoying” for her health initiatives only seconds earlier.

Despite the ridicule from his fellow panelists, the show’s “one lucky guy” dug in.

“Well, no, let’s be honest. There’s no french fries happening? That’s all kale and carrots? I don’t buy it,” Ablow said, adding that he would welcome nutrition advice from President Obama.

This guy makes my job too easy.  By the way, this is my job.

Ad Hominem Abusive

Adoption is a beautiful choice

Busy lately, so outsourcing to Think Progress.  Here's Dr.Keith Ablow on David Brock, former right-winger and founder of Media Matters:

ABLOW: He’s a dangerous man, because having followers and waging war… this isn’t accidental language. It’s about violence, destruction, and he feels destroyed in himself. […] This is an adopted boy who needs to plumb the depths of his psyche. He was adopted. Many adopted children are tremendously well-adjusted, but for some reason, this man feels he’s unloved and unloveable, shunted to the side, and that’s the antidote he feels: unlimited power. Guess what? It never ever works.

But Keith Ablow is bald.  You cannot ignore that.  Many bald people are well adjusted, but for some reason, Ablow isn't. 

Seriously, however, when I make up these arguments for quizzes on fallacies I feel as if I'm being unfair.  Nice to be proven wrong.  I think.

General discussion

Not sure if Troll, or just illustration of Poe’s Law part #1834

4 Comments

The other day I posted something on Senator Grassley's attempt to find a contradiction in Democrats' support for more robust child labor laws–it would keep children from being physically active, he said.  That sounded like a joke–but it wasn't.  Now comes Keith Ablow, of Fox News, arguing that Newt Gingrich's adultery makes him a better candidate for President than non-adulterers.  He argues:

1) Three women have met Mr. Gingrich and been so moved by his emotional energy and intellect that they decided they wanted to spend the rest of their lives with him.

2) Two of these women felt this way even though Mr. Gingrich was already married.

3 ) One of them felt this way even though Mr. Gingrich was already married for the second time, was not exactly her equal in the looks department and had a wife (Marianne) who wanted to make his life without her as painful as possible.

Conclusion: When three women want to sign on for life with a man who is now running for president, I worry more about whether we’ll be clamoring for a third Gingrich term, not whether we’ll want to let him go after one.

The people, by whom I mean three women who have been married to Gingrich, have spoken.  Clearly the nation as a whole will like him.  There's more:

4) Two women—Mr. Gingrich’s first two wives—have sat down with him while he delivered to them incredibly painful truths: that he no longer loved them as he did before, that he had fallen in love with other women and that he needed to follow his heart, despite the great price he would pay financially and the risk he would be taking with his reputation.

Conclusion: I can only hope Mr. Gingrich will be as direct and unsparing with the Congress, the American people and our allies. If this nation must now move with conviction in the direction of its heart, Newt Gingrich is obviously no stranger to that journey.

Hm. Not sure if Ablow means he hopes Gingrich dumps the US for a younger, sexier country, which he will carry on a secret affair with (Iran maybe).

General discussion

Verum ipsum factum convertuntur

6 Comments

Yesterday I saw a link to an essay by America's Psychiatrist, Dr.Keith Albow (I thought it was Charles Krauthammer too), on Fox News about a little boy who likes pink, and who paints his toenails with his mother.  He writes:

A recent feature in J. Crew's online catalogue portrays designer Jenna Lyons painting her son Beckett’s toe nails hot pink. The quote accompanying the image reads, “Lucky for me, I ended up with a boy whose favorite color is pink. Toenail painting is way more fun in neon.”

Here's the feature.  What's his problem with this?

Yeah, well, it may be fun and games now, Jenna, but at least put some money aside for psychotherapy for the kid—and maybe a little for others who’ll be affected by your “innocent” pleasure.

This is a dramatic example of the way that our culture is being encouraged to abandon all trappings of gender identity—homogenizing males and females when the outcome of such “psychological sterilization” [my word choice] is not known.

In our technology-driven world—fueled by Facebook, split-second Prozac prescriptions and lots of other assaults on genuine emotion and genuine relationships and actual consequences for behavior—almost nothing is now honored as real and true.

As far as I can tell, the little kid happens to like pink–and let's assume for the sake of argument he likes to paint his toenails as well.  Kids do that stuff.  So do grown ups. 

This, Dr.Ablow argues, will lead to psychotherapy for the kid and for others.  Don't know about the latter claim there (which others?).  One reason for this–not the one that Ablow is thinking about presumably–is the rigid enforcement of heteronormativity–boys better act like boys, otherwise someone will have to bully them into doing so.  Bullying will lead to psychotherapy for the pink-loving boy and perhaps for the bully. 

But rather than this obvious side-effect of the rich tapestry of humanity story here, Dr.Ablow goes off on a tangent about the "real and the true." 

As far as I know, there is nothing "real and true" about gender color selection.  That is entirely conventional.  Sure it's real and true that people think there's something real and true about these things.  But that's a different matter. 

And if there's anything homogenizing going on here, it's the idea that boys have to wear blue nailpolish.