The overflowing cups of Reese as imagined by Ross

Annie Savoy: Right, honey, let’s get down to it. How was Ebby Calvin LaLoosh?
Millie: Well, he fucks like he pitches – sorta all over the place.

Substitute “Ross Douthat” for “Ebby Calvin LaLoosh”, and “writes” for “fucks”,  moving “fucks” into “pitches” place in the batting order and you pretty much have Douthat’s latest in a nutshell.

As best I can tell, this weeks  column seems to be  public sexy talk aimed at Mrs. Douthat.

Yes, there is a Mrs Douthat. Stop giggling.

The column (“The Way We Love Now”) breaks down in three parts.

Foreplay:

So which is the real America? Is it Tsing Loh’s dystopia, where everyone “works” grimly on their relationships, and post-feminist husbands happily cook saffron-infused porcini risotto but rarely practice seduction on their wives? Or is it tabloid country: The land of Jon minus Kate, and governors who vanish to “hike the Appalachian Trail” — not to mention gossip-column fixtures like Britney Spears (rumored last week to be contemplating her third marriage in six years) and the mistress-parading Mel Gibson?

How it applies to “us” using others as an example:

As Nehring observes, our hyper-educated, socially-liberal elite is considerably more romantically conservative than its blasé attitude toward pornography or premarital sex would lead you to expect. The difficult scramble up the meritocratic ladder tends to discourage wild passions and death-defying flings. For bright young overachievers, there’s often a definite tameness to the way that collegiate “safe sex” segues into the upwardly-mobile security of “companionate marriages” — or, if you’re feeling more cynical, “consumption partnerships.”

The veiled suggestion:

Better, perhaps, if this dynamic were reversed. Our meritocrats could stand to leaven their careerism with a little more romantic excess. (Though such excess is more appropriate in the young, it should be emphasized, than in middle-aged essayists and parents.)

Yeah. Ross Douthat just used his weekly New York Times column to suggest anal to his wife.

This will not end well.