The past is a foreign country II: Ann Landers

(but also child molesters)

The past is a foreign country I: Revenge of the Nerds

“Living memory” is of course subjective, because some people are eight years old, and some are eighty eight, and most people remember very little about the recent past. But 1978 is living memory for me, if only just, and looking back at some things from that year can remind me how much we have forgotten. To illustrate, I want to present some advice Ann Landers gave in 1978 to young girls fending off the unwanted advances of grown men. I’m quoting at length here, but please follow along:

I have received so many letters from baby-sitters who tell me, “Mr. ——— made a pass last night when he was driving me home. I was so shocked I didn't know what to do. I had no idea he was that kind of a person.”

The sitters ask for advice. Should they tell his wife? Should they tell their parents or other sitters? Should they sit for the family again?

Usually, the wife is “a lovely person.” Often the sitter goes into detail: “The children are adorable. I’d hate to give up sitting with them.” Or: “Mrs. ——— would be heartbroken. I’d rather die than hurt her feelings.”

Sometimes they say, “I need the money, but I'm scared. What should I do?”

My advice is as follows: Do not tell the wife. It could create a great many problems and would serve no useful purpose.

Do not mention the incident to your parents or friends. Again, it would not help the situation and it might stir up real trouble and do irreparable damage.

If you are under fifteen, do not sit for the family again (just say you are booked) unless arrangements can be made for you to be driven home by Mrs. ——— or one of your own parents. This means you would have to contact Mr. ——— privately and tell him he will have to suggest to his wife that she drive you home because you could not do so without putting him in a bad spot. If Mrs. ——— doesn't drive or if Mr. ——— is unwilling to ask her, no more sitting for that family.

If you are sixteen or over, you should be mature enough to handle the situation. Tell Mr. ——— in no uncertain terms hands off—and if he makes another pass you will refuse to sit for the family again and his wife will be left to draw her own conclusions.

The important thing to remember is this: Keep cool. Let Mr. ——— know you are in command of the situation—that you will not mention the incident to anyone because of your regard for his wife and family. Chances are he will gain a great deal of respect for you and you will not be bothered by him again.

The first thing you’ll notice is that technically, due to a mathematical error, fifteen-year olds get no advice, but the second thing is that this advice is apenuts insane! Hey, high school juniors, the only way to deal with predators is to earn their respect! Middle schoolers, just walk away! Most importantly, don’t warn your friends!

I’ve said this advice is insane, but that doesn’t mean it was bad. I mean, in 1978, it was absolutely not bad. I know this was good advice, because Ann Landers gave it. Not only is Ann Landers a better arbiter of advice quality than I am, she is (or was; she’s dead) a better arbiter of advice quality than any human in American history, with the possible exception of her twin sister.

I mean good advice back in 1978, of course. I don’t know if Ann Landers every specifically recanted this particular piece of advice, but she certainly would have of asked. “Noble enough was she to recant,” as Nietzsche would say. Certainly Landers was not averse to changing her mind. In 1975, Ann Landers could speechify, “I believe the vast majority of homosexuals, both male and females, are cases of arrested development”…

(—she said this as part of an attempt to pacify “Gay Liberation” protesters who were picketing (“Ann Slanders Homosexuals!”) one of her appearances; Landers claims she used arguments like the above to talk them around, completely successfully: “‘There seems to be a real problem of communication,’ said the young man apologetically. ‘We didn't realize you held these views.’” Obviously this never happened, although I’ll admit I could have chosen quotes differently and made Landers sound less homophobic—)

…and by the late ’90s she had cloven much closer to the progressive view. But in 1978 she felt strongly enough that she was right about not narcing on old pervs that she put it in a fat hardcover book.

Our attitudes on macking on teenagers have changed so fast…I guess they’ve been changing for a while, now, which is why even though Jerry Lee Lewis and Edgar Allan Poe both married their thirteen-year-old cousins, only one ended his career thereby. But the arc got weird in the twentieth century.

In the latter half of the twentieth century, sexualizing children became coded as progressive, which is why Eve Ensler’s Vagina Monologues celebrate a sexual encounter between a thirteen and a twenty-four year old (later performances would change the age to sixteen, in a nod to Our Changing Times).

Perhaps we should not take this into account, because it’s on another continent, but the German government spent decades making known pedophiles foster parents in the name of progressivism.

Of course, leftists (unlike, say, Puritans) have never been unified or consistent in their attitudes about sex, so there has always been reaction against these gambits, but when insane conservatives blog about Hillary Clinton lizardly molesting children, this is the legacy they’re riffing off. The left can, contrarily, demonstrate that blue states are more likely than red states to ban “child marriages,” and everyone points fingers at everyone. But this consensus—that we should be pointing fingers—is a recent innovation. While in 1958 Ann Landers’s twin sister could answer a letter from a seventeen-year-old girl who was unsuccessfully pursuing a thirty-six-year-old man with a merely befuddled why are you into him? by 2020 Warren Ellis lost his writing gigs for “grooming” girls “in their late teens or early twenties.” But everyone’s pointing fingers. We all agree.

And when a scandal erupts, the bad guys are the people—the Vatican or Joe Paterno—who don’t report it. This is all fair enough, and I have no desire to try to salvage their reputations, but perhaps they were alive in 1978, when the best advice available to any American was that a tween babysitter groped by an adult should sweep it under the rug.

It’s been a weird forty-five years.

[Ann Landers, The Anne Landers Encyclopedia (Doubleday, 1978) p. 92; id., Ann Landers Speaks Out (Fawcett, 1975) pp. 109–10; Eve Ensler, The Vagina Monologues (Villard, 1998) p. 75; Ellis: Emma Nolan, “What are the Warren Ellis Allegations?” Newsweek (7/13/2020); twin sister: Abigail Van Buren, Dear Abby (Prentice-Hall, 1958) p. 47.]