House of Eratosthenes

I’m going to call it right here and now: Future generations of high school and college students are going to be allowed to enroll in special U.S. History classes dealing with the last two-fifths of the twentieth century, specifically between 1965 and about 1980. And how incredibly, unbelievably wrong we were.

I’m not criticizing the widespread unified notion that history was heading in a certain direction. I am referring specifically to this toxic, companion notion that anyone on the wrong side of history should be driven out of whatever position of authority had been entrusted to them — and executed otherwise capably — and these offenders should be defrocked, isolated, ostracized, “disappeared.”

I was looking over this article about the National Organization of Women handing out their smug, condescending “awards” to advertisers and other mass media merchants who were unlucky enough to have NOW disagree with them with regard to their portrayal of women. And I suddenly realized: It’s okay we didn’t have blogs during that time. It is quite alright that we were not allowed to say out loud in any public venue, “you know, I’m not too keen on this part of feminism” or “maybe that guy shouldn’t be fired.” All fine and good that NOW secured their monopoly on free mass-media speech in the 1970’s, and got the first-word last-word all-words-in-between…all of the time…just because they wanted it.

Look at it this way: What if you found a newspaper article from much earlier. Say, from 1899…about the jail term a guy got for using a dirty word with no kids around, but a cop/constable overheard. Or for drinking a beer on a Sunday. Or for dropping what he was doing and helping a “colored” with some personal household chore.

You wouldn’t need to see an argument from the other side, would you? You’d just think “what a bunch of flaming fucking assholes.”

And that’s precisely what this article looks like to me. That is how our grandchildren will see it. What a bunch of unpleasant, nit-picking, controlling shrews.

According to Wikipedia, Paul Anka also won the “Keep Her In Her Place” award for his song, Having My Baby. I don’t recall a single instance of anyone requesting, let alone demanding, the feminists to elaborate on the point they were seeking to make with this. In Mr. Anka’s case I would want some specification on which among the lyrics were most oppressive. Ever listen to it? Not a single negative, oppressive or condescending syllable in it. Someone, somewhere got the idea that this number deserved scorn. That person should have been abducted and studied, because that’s nucking-futz.

Since then, feminism has evolved. It now zeroes in on two points of focus, one of which became prominent sometime in the 1990’s and the other of which started capturing attention in 1973: Gay marriage and abortion.

Gay marriage does not enhance the role of women in society. It diminishes it.

Ditto for abortion.

So in some ways, feminism is crazier now than it was then. But back then, it was much more accepted to force an entire nation to do things your way, by means of an energetic and highly visible campaign to destroy people who don’t agree with you. To go out looking for things that piss you off. And advertise that this is what you’re doing, so the people who make the decisions become frightened of you. That would not be quite so appealing now…I don’t think.

The era will be studied. Sometime. As soon as we have done a more thorough job of pulling our society’s metaphorical head out of its own ass. I would say, as I write these words, it is somewhere around…forty percent extricated. Depending on our collective mood from moment to moment.

Thing I Know #322. Feminism exists today to make women disposable; it attempts this by confining their energies to those specialties a man could pursue just as capably.

Update: Here’s an example of a healthy way to deal with odious advertising. You don’t see some man’s-rights-group gathering together to hand out self-important, sanctimonious, scolding “awards” for dreck like this:

But everyone with two testicles, and a wife or girlfriend, would love to give that asshole a beat-down kinda like what Joe Pesci got in Casino. Depriving him and his bosses of a livelihood? Pretty fun to think about it.

But we don’t mobilize to actually get it done, because grown-ups know there is such a thing as having destructive thoughts, and there is also such a thing as acting them out. Those are two different things.

These otherwise-decent people we call “feminists”…they lack this adult sense of self-restraint. They think every impulse — provided it’s hostile — m-u-s-t be acted-upon. At least, they thought that 35 years ago. And I’m still making up my mind about today. The most militant ones seem to still have this problem.

In a way, I’ll go ahead and defend that commercial. At least it’s a small attempt at discouraging women from wanting their men to smell like women. And it also implies that yes, you can get those things that your womanly bits think are great – tickets to that thing you like, diamonds (and I’ll posit that those are symbolic, not literal) – without needing it to be some all-inclusive package deal where your man also turns into a woman in the process of getting them for you. It’s a way of saying that just because lines are drawn, doesn’t mean anyone is left out. Your man really can appreciate you without dumping the contents of his scrotum in the recycle bin.

All that for an Old Spice soap commercial. Sheesh, I need to go build something.
- Andy | 03/06/2010 @ 11:46
I’m apparently not nearly sensitive enough to the “man” issues of the day to be offended by the Old Spice commercial. I’m just really damn impressed by the editing and\or CGI effects in it.
- darury | 03/08/2010 @ 17:51

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Aging PoorlySaturday, March 6th, 2010

Aging Poorly
Saturday, March 6th, 2010