Grooming

Tuesday

Suzi Feay

The grooming of teenaged Linn Ullmann

Girl, 1983, a fusion of novel and memoir, tantalises with what we already know of its author. Linn Ullmann is the daughter of the Norwegian actress Liv Ullmann and the much older Swedish film director Ingmar Bergman. Their relationship was probed in her previous work, Unquiet. Here the parents are more distant figures, as the adult Linn attempts to reconstruct her headstrong 16-year-old self and recover a disturbing interlude spent in Paris as a would-be model. In 2019, Ullmann is struggling to write when her younger self materialises like an imaginary friend with a message that demands to be heard. Ullmann has a daughter now, which makes the quest to understand the events of decades ago all the more urgent.

Friday

Rob Crossan

Below the belt: the indelicate truth about male grooming

Let’s get one thing perfectly clear. I’m British, divorced, ginger-haired and I once accidentally called the late Radio 1 DJ Annie Nightingale ‘mum’ during an interview. So there’s very little I can learn about embarrassment. Or so I thought. My perspective changed somewhere around the moment that a male groomer versed in the nascent trend of the ‘boyzilian’ placed hot wax over my most intimate areas and told me, in the nonchalant manner of a butcher asking me how I’d like my sausages bagged, that I should prepare for a certain amount of pain. A certain amount of pain? I have always considered my discomfort threshold to be somewhere between an aged poodle with lumbar ache and a toddler playing with a freshly singed match.

Wednesday

Ryan Girdusky

Showtime lets the Lincoln Project off the hook

Showtime’s latest docuseries follows the Lincoln Project, the anti-Trump Super PAC, during the end of the 2020 campaign as the organization blew up in notoriety. The series displays the shallowness within modern day American politics. What starts as a hero’s journey, with former Republican consultants disavowing the racism of the GOP, proves to be more of a Greek tragedy as one-by-one they ultimately become everything they claimed to hate. The show centers around Lincoln Project co-founders — Reed Galen, Jennifer Horn, Mike Madrid, Ron Steslow, Steve Schmidt and Rick Wilson — as well as principal members of the organization such as Keith Edwards, Sarah Lenti, Conor Rogers, Stuart Stevens and Ryan Wiggins.

lincoln project steve schmidt

Thursday

Amber Duke

Why the left really wants to sexualize your kids

From our US edition

Conservatives, for practically the first time ever, have gone on offense in the debate over Florida's Parental Rights in Education bill. They've responded to the left's "Don't Say Gay" moniker by accusing them of wanting to groom children. Some right-wing commentators have expressed discomfort at this discourse. I am curious as to why conservatives would back off an aggressive but largely accurate allegation against people who regularly smear them as bigots over the most minor of political differences. In fact, I was fired last month after left-wing activists falsely accused me of racism over criticizing the vice president's outfit. It's awfully satisfying to see them get a taste of their own medicine.

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