GOODY TWO SHOES: Conservative Blogger Finds Love
The New York Times’ Jan Hoffman reports that the Internet is abuzz (and probably a-Twitter as well) with the news that University of Wisconsin-Madison law professor and conservative blogger Ann Althouse, 58, is engaged to a man who regularly commented on her posts:
Consider the erotic potential between blogger and commenters.
The blogger is boss, a salon host with wit and whip. Certainly a blogger thrives on commenters - who wants to declaim to an empty e-room? But let’s be clear: blogger, sovereign; commenters, courtiers.
That’s why the bloggerati pounced gleefully last week on the news that one of their own had fallen in love with a commoner, er, commenter.
Reader, she is going to marry him. …
The jeers spiked ever since the March 22 announcement on her blog that this divorced mother of two adult sons, stalwartly single for more than 20 years, is engaged to a commenter known simply as “Meade.” Except for her closest readers, the blogosphere was taken by surprise.
“Does she know the guy?” sniggered Mickey Kaus, the Slate blogger, in a bloggingheads.tv interview. …
The tale of Meade and Ms. Althouse is a cross between the studiedness of a Victorian epistolary courtship - a modern-day Robert Browning googling his dear Elizabeth Barrett - and the wackiness of 21st-century life online. …
About four years ago, Mr. Meade happened upon Ms. Althouse’s blog, by clicking through a series of Web links originating on the popular blog written by Andrew Sullivan (who also snickered at her betrothal last week).
Intellectually smitten, Mr. Meade read Ms. Althouse’s blog daily, becoming a regular commenter. …
Over the years, Mr. Meade developed a blog-crush on Ms. Althouse. His wry, eloquent commenter persona became even more flirtatious.
The Stiletto doesn't understand what all the fuss is about, as she comes from a culture where it is the norm for men and women to court by exchanging increasingly passionate letters over the course of a year or more (as her own parents did).
Kaus may be surprised that in those letters, The Stiletto’s parents learned enough about each other to remain faithfully married through better times and worse, being richer and poorer, and in sickness as well as in health. We should all be so lucky to find someone to love and cherish us as they do each other.
And as the HIV-positive Sullivan has anonymously advertised for bareback sex (AKA a bufu with no love-glove; explanatory links include explicit language) on AOL and at least one Web site catering to the unsafe practice, he shouldn't be stone-throwing about where and how other people find love.
The Stiletto detects elitism rearing its ugly head: Laurence Meade, 55, a college drop-out who works as a garden designer and caretaker for a Cincinnati estate, admits, “I don’t have the education she has. I don’t have the social status she has.” No, but you have shared values, and that’s the glue that binds relationships together for the long haul.
Editorial Note: For her part, The Stiletto does not post mash notes from her readers, preferring to keep those private.
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