The "L" Word - In Consideration

There is a woman that I know who says the words "I love you", in a deep emotive voice, countless times during the day. It seems that every time that she says "thank you" it is followed by an "I love you". For her, there is some emotional and verbal connection between an expression of appreciation and an expression of love.

And, it isn't just to her family that she says these words, it is to her friends, her colleagues, her clients, the guy who details her car, the guy who delivers her lunch...on and on ad nauseam.
For some reason I find this really annoying.

I wonder if it is a cultural, religious or generational thing? I was raised in an all American WASP (low not high) environment she was raised in a Persian Jewish environment...and she is a little younger than I am. But I suspect that it is neither cultural nor religious nor generational. I believe that she just developed this specific personality trait on her own in order to strengthen existing relationships and create social alliances.

It is probably strange that I don't have any recollection of my parents telling me that they love me, although I know that they do...and honestly I don't really even tell my children very often that I love them, although I most certainly do. My family is just not verbally emotive in that way...and we're fine with it.

When I consider the total number of people that I love, it comes down to my children, my parents and stepparents, my brothers and a very few selected friends....and that is it. I don't feel compelled to love everyone I deal with...or even like them for that matter. But I do feel compelled to be kind and polite.

If you tell everyone from your husband to the guy that details your car that you love them, doesn't it just diminish any real significance of the words?

Does this over emotiveness annoy anyone else besides me?

Least Influential List of 2010

I am cracking up over this list from Time.com
Here are a few of the entries

Dmitri Medvedev President of Russia
Yeah, sure he is.

Giorgio Napolitano President of Italy
He makes decisions, and Silvio Berlusconi ignores them. It's pretty funny.

Toll Brothers Homebuilders
That was a lot of McMansions you built. You'll totally get a segment on I Love the 2000s.

Greece
European country Hairy-chested, aggressive with women, charmingly backward — you briefly charmed us with that big, fat wedding. Then you spent so much more money than you made, you forced the E.U. to bail you out. It will be a long time before we watch a movie about you again.

Dick Fuld
The last CEO of Lehman Brothers ever That has to be hard to explain on a résumé.

Happy Friday

The Best Books I've Never Read - Until Now

Do you sometimes wonder how it is that after spending a lifetime of reading, you have still missed so many great books. And isn't it a pleasure to finally read them.

Snobbery has been on my mind this week, especially with the two extraordinary posts written by the Duchesse and the fact that I just finished reading Evelina by the incomparable and groundbreaking Fanny Burney. (Seriously, what is all the fuss about Jane Austin? Next to Fanny Burney, and Maria Edgeworth, she is a second rate author.)


I don't consider myself to be an anti-intellectual reverse snob, I see myself as much more of an anti-snob. In terms of material goods, I'm the first one to brag about the fact that I almost never pay retail....and why would I when I work in a wholesale business. Sitting with a stylist from CBS who was on her way to pick up a Kevin Hall dress, I was only so happy to tell her that I just bought a Kevin Hall dress for $19.99 at Ross! Whether with clothes, handbags or jewelry, I do appreciate quality, but I'm not going to overpay just to be able to own a status brand that is overpriced to begin with. My self worth isn't tied up in what I own or where I shop, as it is with materially oriented snobs.


About snobbery as it relates to attitudes, I put little stock in what socio-economic class one was born into, and what schools one attended. Like with the characters in Evelina, I've known people from the wealthiest caste who were unbearable boors and lower middle class people who were equally as bad. I've seen serious snobs in action...and walked away amused thinking that they only impressed themselves, their peers and their sycophants, but not me.


One has to belong to an exclusive group to be a snob, say a group like upper echelon private school graduates or country club members or even members of a royal family. One has to be born into, married into or moneyed into those exclusive groups. But membership in such groups only matters if a person wants to included. Fortunately, after spending time around people with real money, new and old, private island-private jet-private bank account kind of money, I've learned to be an unimpressed anti-snob.


What does impress me is education, achievement, taste and character and those attributes can exist with people across class lines. A little humility isn't bad too.

If you haven't read Evelina, I encourage you to. You will see all kinds of snobs and reverse snobs in that book and enjoy it immensely.

Around Town - Denali Quartet At Greystone

So many choices, so little time
with the Denali Quartet performing at the beautiful Greystone Mansion in Beverly Hills on Sunday at 2:00 or the weekly hike in the hills above Brentwood
With the start of Spring this weekend, I'm opting for the hike
Perhaps I will listen to progressive chamber music on my ipod while I hike...

Skankdom Rules!

So, let me get this straight you are married to this goddess

extremely talented, successful and not exactly a sight for sore eyes

and while she's off doing her job making movies for which she gets paid a fortune

you just can't help but to tap into some of this

because what man wouldn't want to have an 11 month affair with this lovely creature?

Yep, she definitely looks like she was worth that one day a week private time that you shared
Oh...you were lonely because your wife was off filming 'The Blind Side'?

You say your wife wasn't giving you the attention you deserved?

Well, you know it's not as though you were strapped for money and couldn't afford to, you know, to go and visit her. God knows you it's not like you couldn't afford a private friggin jet to fly back east to visit your wife every single weekend that she away working.

And on the topic of skankdom

Is this the video that we want all 10 year olds to watch?

It's not that I object to the song, it's the imagery

especially the Tarentino-esque scene where Lady Gaga and her homegirl Beyonce

murder an entire diner full of people...and a dog

Watch the whole thing and tell me what you think

No Pants For Parisiennes

George Sand (in trousers) listening to Chopin

From the telegraph

Women banned from wearing trousers in Paris

who knew?

The rule banning women from dressing like men – namely by wearing trousers - was first introduced in 1800 by Paris' police chief and has survived repeated attempts to repeal it.

The 1800 rule stipulated than any Parisienne wishing to dress like a man "must present herself to Paris' main police station to obtain authorisation".

Did anyone tell George Sand about this law?

In 1892 it was slightly relaxed thanks to an amendment which said trousers were permitted "as long as the woman is holding the reins of a horse".

Then in 1909, the decree was further watered down when an extra clause was added to allow women in trousers on condition they were "on a bicycle or holding it by the handlebars".

In 1969, amid a global movement towards gender equality, the Paris council asked the city's police chief to bin the decree. His response was: "It is unwise to change texts which foreseen or unforeseen variations in fashion can return to the fore."

Can someone have really said that in 1969?

The latest attempt to remove the outmoded rule was in 2003, when a Right-wing MP from President Nicolas Sarkozy's UMP party wrote to the minister in charge of gender equality. The minister's response was: "Disuse is sometimes more efficient than (state) intervention in adapting the law to changing morays."

As Evelyne Pisier, a law professor whose book Le Droit des Femmes (The Rights of Women) unearthed the curious decree points out, given that trousers are compulsory for Parisian policewoman, they are all breaking the law.

Should arcane laws like this one be repealed or just stay on the books, but not be upheld, because of historical significance.

And isn't it just so French to have a law which everyone routinely ignores.

Skip Skyping Away

Yes, I know, when it comes to stepping up the technology I'm on the slow side.
I've had Skype on my computer for years and just never really got around to using it.
until yesterday
and, it really was the easiest thing to have a conversation, with video on the other end, with a friend in Germany
that cost nothing.
People who know me well understand that I am not a phone person, in fact I almost have a phone phobia...yeah, it's weird. I much prefer texting and email.
But I've willingly joined the cult of Skype

Around Town - A Day At The Musée Granet

On my many trips to France over the last 30 or so years, I've always preferred wandering to shopping. I can find plenty of cute boutiques here in the States, but what I can't find is charming buildings like this and ivy draped gardens like this

But it was really too hot to do much wandering so I stopped into the Musée Granet

to see the Picasso Cezanne exhibit

which I didn't enjoy because I'm not a fan of Picasso.

OK, I think that he was a brilliant artist in terms of his technique

but overcome by his own ego and desire for crass commercialization.

Don't judge me.

So after all that Picasso nonsense I walked through the permanent painting collection.

Lot's of lovely landscapes and powerful portraits

and then I saw this

I hadn't realized that Mannerist masterpiece, Jupiter and Thetis

painted by Ingres when he was only 30 years old

is HUGE.

The canvas takes up an entire wall.

From William Feaver's article Why All Ingres Is Erotic in Art News

Bare-chested, his pink robe draped to one side like a furled curtain, the great big god sits with high, thick clouds wreathing his throne and cushioning his left elbow. He’s in one of his moods. How to arouse him? Thetis the sea nymph is sure she can manage it. Bare-breasted, her sage-green gown elegantly draped around buttock and thigh, she molds herself against the mighty knee and reaches up to twiddle his beard.

I didn't find it particularly erotic, but I did find it absolutely stunning.

Idiocy Is Cross Cultural

Dog Jewelry
Positive proof that people across cultures are freakin' idiots.

To Cheap To Be Chic?

Jewelry, "It" bags, Range Rovers are these the true status signifiers?

Or is it something more basic?

Daniel Akst in his Wall Street Journal article

I once was chic but now I'm cheap explores the subject.

It's cool, for example, to spend a fortune on solar panels or hybrid SUVs that will never pay for themselves in saved energy, even though the money could do far more for the environment spent in some less ostentatious way. Shopping at Whole Foods is cool, as is obvious from the hipsters in the aisles -- and the high price of the groceries. This kind of cool disdains luxury labels like Rolex and Coach yet works just as hard to impress.

Most of the cool people I know use a Mac. My sense is that they like to think of themselves as egalitarian sorts unencumbered by snobbery -- rather than, say, brainwashed cultists obsessed with class-signaling. Yet at today's absurd prices the Mac is even less than ever "the computer for the rest of us." Instead it's a well-designed status symbol for the elite -- another way that people with money can distinguish themselves from hoi polloi.

Like eating only locally grown food or majoring in gender studies at college, Macs have become luxuries that command a premium out of all proportion to their utility -- unless their utility is simply to broadcast your own disposable income. For a long time the extra cost of a Mac wasn't outlandish and seemed justified by its great design and ease of use. Our years of bitter experience with Windows systems involved far too much hair-tearing over random glitches and security problems. To us, going Mac was the price of computer sanity.

But the affordability gap has lately yawned into a gulf. Today, with money scarce, a Mac costs roughly twice as much as a comparably equipped PC -- and in my recent experience, the PC performs impressively indeed.

The current financial crisis has many causes, but surely the death of thrift has been among them. If there is a silver lining to the grim economic news that besets us daily, it may be that cheap will once again become chic.

I can only hope so because I'm stuck with my Windows Vista system and it will be years before a home technology upgrade will be necessary.

Savvy Shopping - Going Green For The Getty

So what do you do when the Santa Ana winds have left Los Angeles so clear that you can see from the mountains to Catalina?

You go to the Getty Center of course to appreciate the view while catching up with some culture.

Captured Emotions: Baroque Painting in Bologna, 1575-1725

This exhibition tells the extraordinary story of a small group of artists who changed the course of art history. In the decades after the deaths of the great Renaissance masters, such as Raphael and Michelangelo, the art of painting was thought to have gone into steep decline. But then, in the late 16th century, the Carracci family of painters from Bologna burst onto the scene with tremendous energy and vitality, raising art to new heights. Their heroic achievement set standards that were to remain authoritative for more than 200 years. Here a selection of key works by the Carracci and several generations of their pupils and followers brings this artistic triumph to life. For them, the visible world became their principal source of inspiration, and nature was their teacher. Painting was about to enter a new era of creativity and lavish patronage, resulting in the glories of the Baroque age.

J0seph and Potiphar's Wife by Simone Cantorini at the Getty

Beladora.com vintage emerald and diamond dangle earrings $1650


Armani Collezioni at Neiman Marcus on Sale with additional 20% off

Beladora2.com vintage emerald and diamond ring $1295

I like the baroque-ish look of this vintage jewelry with the satin texture of the Armani jacket...

clearly very painterly

Specific Subcultures - Who Knew?

Yes, it's true. I'm full of tech questions this week.

First it was how did I end up getting spammed by my own email address.

Now it's an even bigger conundrum.

How does a website steal a trademarked name and logo and then shamefully use it on their homepage? And how do they continue to do this after receiving a cease and desist letter?

Trust me, you might not really want to know about this whole House of Beladora thing....but I feel like sharing. As we all know there is a whole world of specific sub-cultures out there in the US that the mainstream has never been exposed to. While doing a search on Google for Beladora I found The House of Beladora website using the Beladora logo and tag line. (the brazenness!) So naturally, I perused the site to see what it was all about.

What is this House of Beladora you ask. It is site for a specific subculture of black/gay/transvestite men, broken down by geographic area, who do runway modeling, dancing and I assume that they hire themselves out to clients for specific "entertainment" purposes. Who knew that they have whole runway shows with be-muscled black male models in their underwear showing the goods to a roaring crowd of black rapper style guys on the down low. Sort of a Victoria's Secret style fashion show....except shows put on by black men for and audience of black men.

So there you have it. Don't say you never learned anything on this blog....

Move Over Mistletoe - It's Time For Blog, Broadband and Block Graph

From the Telegraph
Words associated with Christianity and British history taken out of children's dictionary
Words associated with Christianity, the monarchy and British history have been dropped from a leading dictionary for children.

Oxford University Press has removed words like "aisle", "bishop", "chapel", "empire" and "monarch" from its Junior Dictionary and replaced them with words like "blog", "broadband" and "celebrity". Dozens of words related to the countryside have also been culled.

Words Taken Out

Carol, cracker, holly, ivy, mistletoe
Dwarf, elf, goblin
Abbey, aisle, altar, bishop, chapel, christen, disciple, minister, monastery, monk, nun, nunnery, parish, pew, psalm, pulpit, saint, sin, devil, vicar
Coronation, duchess, duke, emperor, empire, monarch, decade
adder, ass, beaver, boar, budgerigar, bullock, cheetah, colt, corgi, cygnet, doe, drake, ferret, gerbil, goldfish, guinea pig, hamster, heron, herring, kingfisher, lark, leopard, lobster, magpie, minnow, mussel, newt, otter, ox, oyster, panther, pelican, piglet, plaice, poodle, porcupine, porpoise, raven, spaniel, starling, stoat, stork, terrapin, thrush, weasel, wren.
Acorn, allotment, almond, apricot, ash, bacon, beech, beetroot, blackberry, blacksmith, bloom, bluebell, bramble, bran, bray, bridle, brook, buttercup, canary, canter, carnation, catkin, cauliflower, chestnut, clover, conker, county, cowslip, crocus, dandelion, diesel, fern, fungus, gooseberry, gorse, hazel, hazelnut, heather, holly, horse chestnut, ivy, lavender, leek, liquorice, manger, marzipan, melon, minnow, mint, nectar, nectarine, oats, pansy, parsnip, pasture, poppy, porridge, poultry, primrose, prune, radish, rhubarb, sheaf, spinach, sycamore, tulip, turnip, vine, violet, walnut, willow

Piglet, porcupine and poodle!!!

Words Put In

Blog, broadband, MP3 player, voicemail, attachment, database, export, chatroom, bullet point, cut and paste, analogue
Celebrity, tolerant, vandalism, negotiate, interdependent, creep, citizenship, childhood, conflict, common sense, debate, EU, drought, brainy, boisterous, cautionary tale, bilingual, bungee jumping, committee, compulsory, cope, democratic, allergic, biodegradable, emotion, dyslexic, donate, endangered, Euro
Apparatus, food chain, incisor, square number, trapezium, alliteration, colloquial, idiom, curriculum, classify, chronological, block graph

What I want to know is why anyone at the Oxford University Press would think that any words need to be removed.

Loving A Little Lang Lang

Lang Lang Mozart Piano Concert nr24 c-moll Kv491

Transcending National Culture or Music For The Masses

I've posted before about how the West will soon be bowing down, intellectually at least, to their Chinese masters and Spengler makes the case with musical study for why that will be so.

From the Asia Times
China’s six-to-one advantage over the US
By Spengler


It must be a conspiracy. Chinese parents are selling plasma-screen TVs to America, and saving their wages to buy their kids pianos - making American kids stupider and Chinese kids smarter. Watch out, Americans - a generation from now, your kid is going to fetch coffee for a Chinese boss.
That is a bit of an exaggeration, of course - some of the bosses will be Indian. Americans really, really don’t have a clue what is coming down the pike. The present shift in intellectual capital in favor of the East has no precedent in world history.


America outspends China on defense by a margin of more than six to one, the Pentagon estimates. [1] In another strategic dimension, though, China already holds a six-to-one advantage over the United States. Thirty-six million Chinese children study piano
today, compared to only 6 million in the United States.[2] The numbers understate the difference, for musical study in China is more demanding.


The world’s largest country is well along the way to forming an intellectual elite on a scale that the world has never seen, and against which nothing in today’s world - surely not the inbred products of the Ivy League puppy mills - can compete.
There is little doubt that classical music produces better minds, and promotes success in other fields. Academic studies show that music lessons raise the IQs of six-year-olds.
Any activity that requires discipline and deferred gratification benefits children, but classical music does more than sports or crafts.


China's commitment to classical music will have effects that are at once too subtle and too powerful to categorize easily. It is not that classical music helps to train good scientists, for example. Music and the sciences are different disciplines to begin with. Mathematicians who learn music, though, are more likely to cast an ironic eye upon their craft, and look for flaws and opportunity in its cracks and crannies. It is not Mozart's sense of order, but his sense of irony that refines the mind of the mathematician. Mozart goes unerringly toward what is not mathematical in music, but instead is asymmetrical, strange and ambiguous. He can be inspiring, or frightening. Years of instrumental practice, knowledge of repertoire and study of theory are necessary to approach this sort of genius.


Spengler goes on to point out that the Chinese musicians not only are excellent on a technical performance level, they get the joke.
Few musicians nowadays get Mozart's jokes, but one of them is China's most famous musician, Lang Lang. The 26-year-old virtuoso has an undeserved reputation for mugging. "Like a hammy actor," wrote New York Times critic Anthony Tommasini on November 27, Lang Lang "has a penchant for interpretive exaggeration. His playing can be so intensely expressive that he contorts phrases, distorts musical structure and fills his music-making with distracting affectations". Another way to look at the matter is that Lang Lang gets the joke, and Tommasini does not.


And...thank god the Chinese are embracing Western classical music because when they take over the world I really don't want to have to listen to Chinese Opera which sounds like squealing cats in a bag. Just thinking about it makes me cringe.


Something more than the mental mechanics of classical music makes this decisive for China. In classical music, China has embraced the least Chinese, and the most explicitly Western, of all art forms. Even the best Chinese musicians still depend on Western mentors. Lang Lang may be a star, but in some respects he remains an apprentice in the pantheon of Western musicians. The Chinese, in some ways the most arrogant of peoples, can elicit a deadly kind of humility in matters of learning. Their eclecticism befits an empire that is determined to succeed, as opposed to a mere nation that needs to console itself by sticking to its supposed cultural roots. Great empires transcend national culture and naturalize the culture they require.


So....maybe this year for Christmas, instead of buying new skateboards or computer games for the kids in your family, you might want to consider music lessons.

The Ultimate Buying Experience - Reproduction For Hire

You've all heard the expression

"If it Flys, Floats, or F**ks, Lease it."

Well now you can add "If it Goes Through Labor, Rent It."

Wow, there's a lot of breeding stories in the news this week.

This is too good not to share.

From today's Wall Street Journal

Rent-a-Womb Is Where Market Logic Leads

At long last, our national love affair with the rich is coming to a close. The moguls whose exploits we used to follow with such fascination, it now seems, plowed the country into the ground precisely because of the fabulous rewards that were showered on them.
Massive inequality, we have learned, isn't the best way to run an economy after all. And when you think about it, it's also profoundly ugly.

Some people haven't received the memo, though. Take Alex Kuczynski, author of the New York Times Magazine cover story for Nov. 30, which tells how she went about hiring another woman to bear her child.

Billionaire Beauty Alex Kuczynski Buying A Baby

Somewhere along the way, Ms. Kuczynski went from observer to observed. She married a hedge-fund billionaire and in 2005 was the subject of a memorable bit of plute-worship in W magazine. Here we learned about her four homes (including one on Park Avenue and one in Southampton) but mainly about her really inaccessible spread in Idaho, where everything has to be flown in: the masseuses, the meat, the guests, the yoga instructor, the chefs, and the logs that were required to restore the property's log cabins to her husband's exacting standards.

Maybe if this young woman had been donating her eggs to buy groceries Ms. Kuczynski would have understood that all this reproduction-for-hire was a product of her billionaire-centric world as surely as the Blahniks and Versace she used to trill about

Instead she tells us, very sincerely, how much she enjoyed spending the last few months before the child arrived "by white-water rafting down Level 10 rapids on the Colorado River" -- presumably Level 10 rapids are really quality rapids -- "racing down a mountain at 60 miles per hour at ski-racing camp, drinking bourbon and going to the Super Bowl." She also does a lot of "Bikram yoga," which is presumably a really quality form of yoga.

The Strapped for Cash Surrogate Mother Barefoot and Pregnant

Surrogate motherhood has been the subject of much philosophical and political dispute over the years. To summarize briefly, it is a class-and-gender minefield. When money is exchanged for pregnancy, some believe, surrogacy comes close to organ-selling, or even baby-selling. It threatens to commodify not only babies, but women as well, putting their biological functions up for sale like so many Jimmy Choos. If surrogacy ever becomes a widely practiced market transaction, it will probably make pregnancy into just another dirty task for the working class, with wages driven down and wealthy couples hiring the work out because it's such a hassle to be pregnant.

What she doesn't tell us is even more revealing.

About Ms. Kuczynski's own feelings and fears and cravings we get paragraph after maudlin paragraph. The one who does the labor is almost completely silent.

If you want to read about the trials and tribulations of Ms. Kuczynski's baby making experiences

her New York Times article is here.

The Need To Breed

Look, I can understand the maternal mechanism or hormonal surge that tells us at a certain time in our life that we need to breed.

But if I had found out that I was unable to have children in a country as populous as India, with its countless unwanted and abandoned children, I would have opted for ADOPTION.

But nooooo...that's not what this woman did.
After 55 years of a childless marriage, this elderly lady had fertility treatments and gave birth at the age of 72.
70-freakin- 2!

From the Telegraph

New mother Rajo Devi, "We longed for a child all these years and now we are very happy to have one in the twilight years of our life."
Husband Ram said he wasn't worrying over who would look after the child if they died.
"The upbringing of the child is not a problem. We have a joint family as is common in rural Haryana," he said.
The couple said they were facing social stigma for being childless for the last 55 years.

I'm so culturally ignorant that I didn't realize that social stigma played a big part in the lives of people who are over the age of 70. I sort of thought that by the age or 60 or maybe 70 you've matured to the point of not really giving a damn about what others think of you. Apparently that is not the case in rural India.

Mazel Tov on the baby and all, but I think that this is just wrong.

Rocking It Saudi Style

Times, they are a changing
Check out this music by an all Saudi female rock band.


Change happens...even in the KSA
(Hat tip Instapundit)

Japan's "Princess Girls" - Oh Grow Up Already!

As reported in the Wall Street Journal

From the country that made Hello Kitty a cultural icon
we know have the Princess Girl.

Ms. Yamamoto is a hime gyaru, or princess girl, a growing
new tribe of Japanese women who aim to look like sugarcoated, 21st-century
versions of old-style European royalty. They idolize Marie Antoinette and Paris
Hilton, (!!!!) for her baby-doll looks and princess lifestyle. They speak in soft,
chirpy voices and flock to specialized boutiques with names like Jesus Diamante,
which looks like a bedroom in a European chateau. There, some hime girls spend
more than $1,000 for an outfit including a satin dress, parasol and
rhinestone-studded handbag.

36 year old Myumi Yamamoto spends $3,000 per month on little girl dressing

24 year old Keiko Mizoe sells $95,000 per month in hime fashions

Japan has been famous for its extreme
fashion fads, mostly among teenagers. These have ranged from the Lolita look, in
which women dress up in baby-doll dresses and bonnets

But the princess boom is seen as a more
polished and sophisticated look that's popular among working women in their 20s
and 30s, perhaps as a bit of escapism from workaday stress and economic
uncertainty.
"There's a longing for a happy-ending fairy tale," says Asuka
Watanabe, a sociology professor at Kyoritsu Women's Junior College, who
specializes in street fashion.

Can I ask why the Japanese have a fetish for infantalizing women?

Are Japanese men secretly pedophiles?

Admittedly, most little girls want to be a princess at sometime in their lives....but it usually goes away by the time they reach 2nd grade.

Election 2008 - Time For The Big Chill

Glenn Harlan Reynolds, Law Professor, Instapundit and all around voice of common sense has a great article in Forbes.com

Whoever Wins, Chill A Bit

Here's what he writes:

We've had eight years of Bush Derangement Syndrome. Before that, we had eight years of Clinton Derangement Syndrome. And though people forget it now, President Reagan inspired a lot of anger and hatred, too. Can I ask that, regardless of who wins, we tone things down a bit?

You don't have to love the "other guy." You don't have to hold back on fighting against policies you don't like. You don't have to pull punches. But once someone is duly and legally elected president, you do owe some respect to the office and the Constitution. And to your fellow Americans.

And he quotes blogger and author John Scalzi:

One of the reasons I have always registered as an independent voter is that I believe my highest allegiance as a voter is not to a political party but to the Constitution of the United States, the foundational document of our law. Our Constitution sets up the system we use to choose a president. If a candidate--any candidate--fulfills the requirements of that system to become our president, then I believe it's my duty to acknowledge that, yes, that candidate is now my president. I can criticize that president, argue with that president, loathe that president and work to replace that president in the manner allowed for by the Constitution … but what I can't do is deny that he or she is my president. That's wrong, factually and morally, and it's dismissive of the Constitution of the United States."

And I agree

Whoever wins....Can we all just get along?