Tonight's guests are Lena Dunham on The Daily Show and Admiral Mike Mullen on The Colbert Report.
Lena Dunham is an actress, screenwriter, producer, and director best known for her show Girls on HBO. She is also an author and is on tonight to promote her new book Not That Kind of Girl: A Young Woman Tells You What She's "Learned"
In Not That Kind of Girl, Dunham illuminates the experiences that are part of making one’s way in the world: falling in love, feeling alone, being ten pounds overweight despite eating only health food, having to prove yourself in a room full of men twice your age, finding true love, and most of all, having the guts to believe that your story is one that deserves to be told.
“Take My Virginity (No Really, Take It)” is the account of Dunham’s first time, and how her expectations of sex didn’t quite live up to the actual event (“No floodgate had been opened, no vault of true womanhood unlocked”); “Girls & Jerks” explores her former attraction to less-than-nice guys—guys who had perfected the “dynamic of disrespect” she found so intriguing; “Is This Even Real?” is a meditation on her lifelong obsession with death and dying—what she calls her “genetically predestined morbidity.” And in “I Didn’t F*** Them, but They Yelled at Me,” she imagines the tell-all she will write when she is eighty and past caring, able to reflect honestly on the sexism and condescension she has encountered in Hollywood, where women are “treated like the paper thingies that protect glasses in hotel bathrooms—necessary but infinitely disposable.”
Exuberant, moving, and keenly observed, Not That Kind of Girl is a series of dispatches from the frontlines of the struggle that is growing up. “I’m already predicting my future shame at thinking I had anything to offer you,” Dunham writes. “But if I can take what I’ve learned and make one menial job easier for you, or prevent you from having the kind of sex where you feel you must keep your sneakers on in case you want to run away during the act, then every misstep of mine will have been worthwhile.”
Take, for instance, “Girls & Jerks,” an essay in which Dunham contemplates her inclination toward inappropriate men. In a scene that takes place during her time at Oberlin, Dunham observes how growing up in SoHo with well-heeled artist parents may have helped contribute to this preference. “I had a lucky little girlhood,” she muses. “I had a family that loved me, and we didn’t have to worry about much except what gallery to go to on Sunday and whether or not my child psychologist was helping with my sleep issues. Only when I got to college did it dawn on me that maybe my upbringing hadn’t been very ‘real.’ . . . What was it that I couldn’t understand and how could I understand it, short of moving to a war-torn nation?”
Instead of taking the first flight out to Iraq, Dunham, like so many before her, turns to men who treat her badly. This goes about as well as one might expect. “[L]earning about the ‘world’ is not pretending you’re a hooker while a guy from the part of New Jersey that’s near Pennsylvania decides which Steely Dan record to put on at 4:00 a.m,” she reflects.
One-liners like that are what make the book a worthwhile read, as is Dunham’s observational humor.
Book review ‘Not That Kind of Girl’ by Lena Dunham
Admiral Mike Mullen According to
wikipedia he
is a retired United States Navy admiral, who served as the 17th Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff from October 1, 2007 to September 30, 2011. Mullen previously served as the Navy's 28th Chief of Naval Operations from July 22, 2005 to September 29, 2007. He was only the third naval officer in Navy history to be appointed to four different four-star assignments; the others being the Commander, U.S. Naval Forces Europe and Commander, Allied Joint Force Command Naples from October 2004 to May 2005, and as the 32nd Vice Chief of Naval Operations from August 2003 to August 2004. As Chairman, Mullen was the highest-ranking officer in the United States Armed Forces. He retired from the Navy after over 43 years of service.
I think he is on to talk Iraq, Syria and ISIS.
The Pentagon can advise the White House on a strategy for combating Islamic militants in the Middle East, but the buck stops with President Obama, Adm. Mike Mullen, former chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said Sunday.
"There should not be any question, in the end, who decides this," Mullen said on NBC's "Meet the Press" program. "And that's the president."
Mullen said Dempsey's comments have been "blown way out of proportion," arguing that Dempsey was simply trying "to explain, to some degree, how the process works."
"I don't know of any leaders, military or civilian, who are talking about brigade-sized units," Mullen said. "We certainly learned in these wars that it's important to have indigenous forces on the ground, and our ability to both train them and support them has made a difference."
Mullen: Buck stops with Obama on troop decision
It should be an interesting discussion at the very least.
This Week's Guests's
THE DAILY SHOW WITH JON STEWART
Th 10/2: Ben Steele
THE COLBERT REPORT
Th 10/2: Lynn Sherr