Episode 43: The Age of Double Standards
The Remnant with Jonah Goldberg
The Dispatch
4.7 • 6.6K Ratings
🗓️ 2 June 2018
⏱️ 78 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
It wasn’t until Tabitha had dinner at a friend’s house as a teenager that she realized there was something odd about how her family handled food. At her friend’s, there was food with a variety of healthy and even some unhealthy snacks. Her mother didn’t have a lock on the “special food” so no one could have access. Their mealtime was engaging and fun with everyone participating in the conversation. There were no snide remarks about eating too much or being forced to eat seconds. It was an enjoyable experience.
But it wasn’t until years later, when Tabitha realized that her mother was narcissistic. Still, she didn’t make the connection between narcissism and food until she had her own family meals. And then, it struck her: her mother’s narcissism translated into an unhealthy obsession with food. This explained so much about Tabitha’s own anxious journey with food. The unhealthy food rules she grew up with were an extension of her mother’s controlling and manipulative behavior. Here’s how.
- Food management. Tabitha’s mom disliked fish so she refused to serve it eventhough everyone else in the family loved it. Her mom’s food likes and dislikes dominated the menu, if she didn’t like something then it wasn’t to be served at all.
- Food supremacy. Perhaps the oddest realization was that Tabitha’s mom expected that she would always be served the best and/or largest portion of food. Whether she cooked the food or not, her mom demanded the first pick.
- Food as power. One morning Tabitha’s dad surprised the family by making a large pancake breakfast. Tabitha’s mom took one look at the meal with disgust on her face and started making herself eggs. When confronted, she said she didn’t like being told what to eat.
- Food as entitlement. Even when Tabitha’s family was a guest at someone else’s house, her mom would find something wrong with the food being served. She doesn’t like cheese and therefore can’t eat the meal. She would then expect an additional meal to be especially prepared for her.
- Food as control. During family meals, Tabitha’s mom would scold her for eating too much and make fun of her for asking for seconds. But when company came over, her mom would demand that everyone have seconds or else she won’t believe that they liked her food.
- Food and appearance. To make matters worse, Tabitha’s mom would look at what she was eating and make a comment like, “You’re not going to eat that are you? You know how easily you gain weight.”She did this even when Tabitha was struggling with anorexia.
- Food arrogance. Growing up, Tabitha’s dad did a lot of the family cooking. One several occasions after he prepared the meal and it was ready to be served, her mom would take a phone call and hold up when the family ate. One night, they sat at the table for over an hour staring at the food waiting for her.
- Food as a stage. Tabitha could not remember a family meal time that was not dominated by her mother talking about herself and her work. There were no questions about Tabitha’s day and if she chimed in, her mother would give her the death stare and then ignore her.
- Food snobbery. There were only a handful of restaurants that Tabitha’s mom would agree to go. Looking back, Tabitha realized that these establishments treated her like she was a queen, giving her the best place to sit in the restaurant. This explained her tolerance for the average food quality that came at a high price.
- Food expectations. Tabitha’s mom would openly complain if the food was not to her liking whether at home, at a friend’s house, or in public. Worse yet, she would then make fun of what she called “food ignorance” for their lack of adequate preparation. Ironically, her mom was not a good cook.
- Food as attention. When her mom did cook, she demanded excessive amounts of appreciation during the meal and afterwards. If she didn’t get enough gratitude, then she would passively-aggressively say, “You didn’t like my cooking?”
- Food superiority. For a couple of years, Tabitha’s mom became a vegetarian. During that time, no meal was allowed in the house and everyone was expected to eat the way she did. When they ordered meat from a restaurant, she would talk about how they were supporting the killing of animals.
- Food as punishment. When Tabitha was little, her mom used to punish her by saying that she was not allowed to eat dinner. If she was still angry in the morning, her mom would make her go to school without breakfast. There were many days when Tabitha would go without any food.
- Food as a possession. After a night out with friends, Tabitha brought home some of her leftover dinner. It was from an expensive restaurant that she spent weeks saving up her money, so she could go. The next morning, she discovered that her mom ate her food. When confronted, her mom’s attitude was what’s yours is mine. However, what was her mom’s was only her mom’s.
It’s not hard to see how Tabitha came to view food as a weapon of control from her mom. She used food to manipulate others, demand attention, dominate her family, and justify her selfishness. Now as a mom herself, Tabitha made a concerted effort not to repeat any of the unhealthy patterns of food preparation and consumption.
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| 0:00.0 | music |
| 0:19.0 | Greetings dear listeners. This is Jonah Goldberg, the host of the Remnant Podcast, and I am talking to you from |
| 0:27.0 | not quite sunny today, Fairbanks Alaska, where I've been out here for as I mentioned on the last episode, |
| 0:37.0 | the funeral for my father-in-law Paul Gavora, who was just this amazing guy, and I'm going to try if I can get to actually writing |
| 0:48.0 | the G file today, writing a little bit more about him, but if I could say this was really felt like an end of an era out here, |
| 0:59.0 | watching this guy who's such a huge role in so many people's lives, sort of come to a close, and kind of felt a little bit like, you know, |
| 1:09.0 | a funeral in the night's watch, where we'll never see his like again kind of thing, although it wasn't ironic, it was real. |
| 1:16.0 | Anyway, I'm not here, I'm four hours behind, and we're doing this via Skype, which I normally do not like to do, because I like to physically intimidate my guests in the studio and dominate them, |
| 1:28.0 | and fortunately I know I can still do that with Jim Garrity, who'll be coming on in a second, even by Skype, because I know things about Jim, and he knows I know them, but I do want to say, |
| 1:40.0 | we don't have an ad this week, for reasons that I will get to the bottom of no doubt standing amidst pools of blood and missing teeth at our HQ one day when I interrogate the right people, |
| 1:54.0 | but since we don't have an ad, I've been meaning to do this for a long time, I just want to do a very short little two minute rant about something, you know, magazines like National Review, commentary, the weekly standard, |
| 2:07.0 | we all have these podcasts now, we all run these ads for, you know, all these various projects, products, most of which happy that pedal, happy to sell, some of which I'm really happy to sell, you know, if we can finally land that Jameson's contract, then, you know, everything will be right in the world, |
| 2:27.0 | but the one thing that none of us do is actually ask people just to, we ask people to subscribe to the podcast, we don't ask people to subscribe to the magazine, and you know, it's important to point out to people, because I don't think a lot of people actually appreciate this, |
| 2:43.0 | and I mean this about all the little magazines, you know, National Review, weekly standard, commentary, national affairs, you can go down a long list, |
| 2:51.0 | as much as web strategies are really important, and the web is the future, and online stuff is the future, and I was big part of that at National Review for very long time, |
| 3:00.0 | at the end of the day, a huge part of the business model still remains subscriptions to the print magazine, in all sorts of ways, starting with just the money from subscribing to the magazine, |
| 3:13.0 | and if you like what National Review does, whether it's the podcasts, or the website, or the magazine itself, or if you like what the weekly standard does, and commentary, I don't think people really appreciate how much just a simple subscription to these magazines matters in the mix of everything, because it's not just the revenue from the subscription, it's also the ability to say to advertisers, here's our reach, it's also part of including people, |
| 3:41.0 | including people in the wider, you know, so much about this stuff is like marketing, the wider reach of National Review subscription base, you know, it helps us reach people who might be inclined to come on cruises, it pays the salaries of a lot of people that a lot of people out there say they want to support, and well look, I very much, you know, if I have, if I have to, you know, push comes and shove today, whatever, rather you buy my book right now, yeah sure, but in the long term, none of this is possible for any of these podcasts, |
| 4:10.0 | for so many of these writers and editors, and the work that we do without subscriptions, and one day that'll change when we figure out the business models to be online for everything, or maybe we'll just sort of like, you know, t h x 1138, just, you know, plug USB cards into everyone's brains, but for the time being, it really matters a lot, it's a very simple thing that people can do, plus you get a great magazine, or you get a great you know, number of magazines, and you, you'll find the name of a big magazine. |
| 4:39.0 | You'll find that the more you read these magazines, the more you want to read more of them, the more that you feel like you're part of the conversation, and you know, national review in particular is this storied, great institution on the right that matters. I think so much wherever you come down on the specific issues of the day, and you can help, you know, and giving money to the national review institute is great, and if you have the ability to do that, that's great. If you can do all these other things, that's great too. But if you don't subscribe to national review, or the weekly standard, |
| 5:09.0 | or commentary, I feel a little bit like Santa Claus and Miracle in 34th Street telling people to go to gimbals, but you know, subscribe to all of them. You know, first in line should be national review, of course, but it makes a big difference, and I think it makes a big difference for the subscribers to when they realize that once they do subscribe. So anyway, done with doing that, I just, it's bothered me that I, you know, I listened to all these podcasts, I never people, you know, and that we're plugging all these other products for advertisers, but we're never plugging the mothership product itself. And I think it's worth doing at least |
| 5:39.0 | once. So now to the rank punditry, Jim, welcome aboard. Jonah, it's good to be back. I want to start off, I say I'm really sorry to hear about your loss. I too have one of those inspiring came here with nothing built in amazing life, fathers and father and law, and I thought your column about the joys of immigration and what we gain from it and how these sorts of success story that was brilliant, it was heartfelt, and it was, you know, ranks among your old time best. |
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