Alarming News: I like Morgan Freeberg. A lot.
American Digest: And I like this from "The Blog That Nobody Reads", because it is -- mostly -- about me. What can I say? I'm on an ego trip today. It won't last.
Anti-Idiotarian Rottweiler: We were following a trackback and thinking "hmmm... this is a bloody excellent post!", and then we realized that it was just part III of, well, three...Damn. I wish I'd written those.
Anti-Idiotarian Rottweiler: ...I just remembered that I found a new blog a short while ago, House of Eratosthenes, that I really like. I like his common sense approach and his curiosity when it comes to why people believe what they believe rather than just what they believe.
Brutally Honest: Morgan Freeberg is brilliant.
Dr. Melissa Clouthier: Morgan Freeberg at House of Eratosthenes (pftthats a mouthful) honors big boned women in skimpy clothing. The picture there is priceless--keep scrolling down.
Exile in Portales: Via Gerard: Morgan Freeberg, a guy with a lot to say. And he speaks The Truth...and it's fascinating stuff. Worth a read, or three. Or six.
Just Muttering: Two nice pieces at House of Eratosthenes, one about a perhaps unintended effect of the Enron mess, and one on the Gore-y environ-movie.
Mein Blogovault: Make "the Blog that No One Reads" one of your daily reads.
The Virginian: I know this post will offend some people, but the author makes some good points.
Poetic Justice: Cletus! Ah gots a laiv one fer yew...
Congratulations to blogsister Cassy for getting hitched over the weekend. And by the way, she’s once again reading Feministing so you don’t have to. Where harpy gargoyle and ex-Edwards-blogger Amanda Marcotte is being interviewed. Just let the words wash over your ears and eyes…
For me, women’s rights and liberalism are, in my mind, pretty hard to unhook, and it fascinates and amuses me that you see conservatives complain that feminists are always with the democrats, as if there’s ever going to be a form of conservative feminism. You look at someone like Sarah Palin trying to wear that mantle, and you see the flaw in trying to be a so-called conservative feminist, which is that you’re not very pro-women. Women need things for equality that tailor very neatly to the general liberal agenda: Clean environment, universal healthcare, civil rights, individual rights, bodily autonomy, things like that. I fail to see how the two agendas are all that different. The flipside, of course, is that most liberals I know, whether they call themselves feminists or not, tend to agree with the general feminist goals. The only real opposition that you see to those goals is coming from the right.
…The healthcare battles were truly awful, because Bart Stupak was allowed to run around on television, portraying himself as some kind of morally upstanding icon, whereas, what I was seeing was an idiot who didn’t understand the issues and was being duped by a bunch of Republicans. And I saw no investigation whatsoever into the fact that he had all these connections to Republicans that he wasn’t really talking about – except on The Rachel Maddow Show. That was probably the thing that has made me angriest because it nearly brought the healthcare debate to a close. And I think it’s hilarious that he’s retiring and thinks he’s the target of harassment now. He should take a day at an abortion clinic and find out what it’s really like to be a target of harassment and abuse. And of course, the thing with Stupak is that most of the threatening emails and phone callers that he was getting were from the right. They don’t take well to a perceived betrayal at all.
What I think is hilarious and infuriating and makes me LOL and grind my teeth together and let loose a big ol’ gut chuckle and get angrier than Marvin the Martian and tickles my funnybone and chaps my hide, is this awkward-beyond-any-description working-in of “It makes me (some superlative term) angry” and “I find amusing.” I grew up in a college town and I’m well acquainted with this. There is no intentional irony going on there; the contradiction speaks to the general thoughtlessness of it. It’s a cliche the college kids toss into their monologues after they’ve been told a few times too many how unbelievably smart they are. This makes me sizzle with fury; this makes me laugh out loud. I find this to be unforgivable, I find this to be comical.
If you hear these words phonetically, you understand the situation. Four-five-and-six-syllable words that real people don’t use, like “stereotypical” and “patriarchy” and “heteronormative” just slide off the tongue. Each consonant carefully articulated, but the entire overwhelming syllable-sequence is over and done with in a heartbeat, like rapid fire from a machine gun. It is well rehearsed. Know why? Because the dedicated feminist talks like this all day.
As to the nugget of thought that goes with this tsunami of syllables: Some of the aborted babies are female. Just that one fact by itself, entirely brings down her house-of-cards. Back to Womyn’s Studies 101 classroom with ya.
As Cassy points out, what we call “feminism” today does not equal what feminism was at the beginning. People like Amanda have been allowed to re-define it too much. Think about it: If I were intent on molding and shaping our modern society so that women were more expendable and had less of a role to fill, what would be the issues most worthy of my support?
Well, I would try to push a lot of abortions, which stops women from taking on what two thirds of us now say, and have said for awhile, is a woman’s most important role. Just like our modern feminists. And, I would work like the dickens to sell gay marriage so that I could re-define the institution as something that doesn’t necessarily have to include a woman. Just like our modern feminists. What would be my third-most-important issue? I dunno; I’d care most about those two. What’s their third-most-important issue? I dunno that either. Lately, most of the “feminist” outbursts that make their way to me, concern one of those two. “Environmental” stuff maybe? Marcotte specifically identified “Clean environment, universal healthcare…” So okay, if it can be used as a euphemism for turning a thriving beacon of prosperity and free trade into yet another filthy socialist mudpuddle, she’s for it. So if you’re in her camp, you want to do things that make women less important in our culture, you want to sell socialism, and outside of those there really isn’t an awful lot to it other than being generally unpleasant and nasty.
I have never entirely understood this. They pressure girls and young women to “pursue a career” when the girls and young women don’t really want to; they browbeat everyone within shouting distance into believing the girls and young women can run a department, or run a fifty-yard-dash, better and faster than the dudes. But when you think on it for awhile — what of it? If all the women all over the place dropped out and concentrated on mothering, we’d find a man to run the department. We’d find a guy who can run the fifty-yard-dash. Even if the best and fastest woman is superior to the best and fastest guy. What, on the other hand, is to happen if all women abandon mothering? I can’t get pregnant. I can’t give birth. Once the child is born, I can’t mother it. We’re supposed to be finding ways to make women important, respected, valued. Feminism’s actions are in direct conflict with the stated goal. They should’ve worked to bring women this much-valued “choice” — along with the responsibilities that go with it — and then left well enough alone. Instead, it’s more like they brought women the choice and then pressured them regarding what choice to make, and now, as Cassy pointed out, the whole “movement” is nothing but a perversion of what it once was.
Regarding the socialist bumper sticker issues, if you do buy into that stuff, there’s another problem with what Marcotte said up there: Men and boys need a “clean environment” too, and we have health care needs too. If there was anything left of her argument after that earlier broadside fusillade, this last one would finish it off.
This is the problem with modern feminism. It dwells far too much on the negative, and as Marcotte demonstrates, people who devote themselves to it don’t have to walk too far down that toxic road before they can’t think straight anymore.
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Dennis the Peasant routinely flays Amynda’s version of logic. While I find the exercise entertaining, I also find it boring. She’s so stupid and illogical that watching someone point out her idiocy is like pointing out that the ocean is wet.
Frankly, I don’t see how Cassy manages to read that stuff without wanting to gouge out her eyes.
One more ADD comment: I especially enjoy watching “feminists” like Mandy state that Palin is completely the opposite of what feminists should strive for. Sarah achieved political power on her own, she’s been happily married for 20 or so years, she’s raising five children and she’s a popular political figure and author. Palin exemplifies “having it all”, which feminists claim to love. Yet the majority of people like Marcotte hate her (Camille Paglia is a notable exception). This puts the lie to their words and shows what their agenda really is: increased socialism, with the government intruding further and further into people’s lives, because Amynda sees her and her ilk as being among the anointed who will get to set the rules for the rest of us. Sadly, not only is she stupid, she is quite mistaken.
- Physics Geek | 05/12/2010 @ 08:51This puts the lie to their words and shows what their agenda really is: increased socialism, with the government intruding further and further into people’s lives..
This is news? I had this one figured out at least as far back as when N.O.W. or whomever *didn’t* rally to the defense of any of the women that Bill Clinton used and abused. One of these harpies even said she’d go down on the guy just for “keeping abortion legal” as if had been up to him in the first place. As far as I’m concerned, their pathetic little “movement” lost all credibility back in the 90’s. I cannot believe anyone pays attention to them anymore. After Clinton’s bimbo eruptions, I knew I would never again take seriously anything these “women” said in the name of female rights.
The way they’ve treated Palin, only buttresses that observation. I knew that when they rallied behind Hildabeast, it wasn’t because she was a woman, it was because she was a left-winger.
The first thing I always want to ask these miserable shrews is, “If the terrorists win, do you have any idea what those barbarians are going to DO to the likes of you, and to your allies in the homosexual-rights business? Do you have any idea what the Taliban do with your kind? Any idea at all?”
I won’t even get into how sick-and-tired I am of the pathetic, worn-out, beaten-to-death, roundly-discredited left-wing trope that conservatives do not care about health care reform or a clean environment. Let’s not even go there.
- cylarz | 05/12/2010 @ 23:48Amanda is retarded.
- Daphne | 05/13/2010 @ 06:19This is news?
It wasn’t meant to be news, merely an observation that bears repeating, over and over again until everyone gets it.
Daphne,
That’s just mean. To retarded people.
- Physics Geek | 05/13/2010 @ 08:11