Archive for the ‘Classy Women’ Category

I Made a New Word XXXVI

Saturday, May 8th, 2010

neg • burp (v.)

The act of endlessly hovering around a room or living space, burping out negative comments about disparate subjects, as if expressing a desire for wrong things to be made right. But even if this were to somehow magically become the case in the blink of an eye, the neg-burping would and will continue. Often done by women in foul moods when the DVD has just started and the plot to the movie is being defined (in a rather timid volume)…especially if the woman works full time.

Neg-burping is a test. There is no correct response to it. If a man pauses the movie, rushes over and furiously begins scrubbing the stove top, all he can manage to communicate by such an emergency response is: I am weak and passive. I can be whipped around in all sorts of different directions like some kind of toy. I am not capable of reading between the lines. I believe all the bullshit in glossy magazines about men being sexier when they do housework. I do not have the courage to perceive reality around me as it really exists. And yet I am a “details dude,” a thoroughly incompetent one, even worse I am adapted into that thinking mode, without resistance, on your say-so. There is no inertia to me and I am woefully unfit for the far more critical role of visionary household patriarch. I am a pussy beta male and therefore I am Darwin-fodder. You now may choose whether your genetic material is to be spliced with mine, and die along with it.

So nobody wins by obeying the neg-burping.

And of course, ignoring it doesn’t get you ahead. A smart-ass comeback doesn’t win you any points. Sitting there on the couch with your big ol’ beer gut hanging out, eyes at half-mast, burping like a bullfrog, yammering for another bottle doesn’t work either…I’ve tried those.

When you think about it, about the only fair thing you can do is exactly what she’d do to you if the roles were reversed: Order her to go to bed as if she were five years old, and wish her a better day tomorrow.

Your mileage definitely may vary.

This is the official contribution of The Blog That Nobody Reads, to national Offend a Feminist Week. I am going to keep my silence on whether or not it accurately describes our evening last night.

“Hot Chicks Playing Football? Fail”

Friday, February 5th, 2010

I have a very short list of “exhibits” to enter into any argument in which someone asserts that a lady cannot be classy when she’s wearing skimpy clothes. Ahh…let us refine that shall we…

…a very short how much time have you got?? list of “exhibits” to enter into any argument in which someone a thoroughly unpleasant, frumpy-looking female person asserts that a lady cannot be classy when she’s wearing any time after someone somewhere has seen her wearing skimpy clothes.

Anyway. Marina Orlova is certainly at, or near, the top of the list. She could certainly stand to eat a samrich or two. But I’m completely wild about her slogan, “intelligence is sexy.” That puts her on another list…that two-column ledger, of people who are helping our current society and people who are hurting it. She goes into the “helping” column. It’s a situation I personally don’t find all that funny. But funny or not, it’s certainly a message for the times.

And I like the way when I’m done watching one of her videos, I know maybe just a little tiny bit more about things than I knew a few minutes before. So both of my heads get something out of it. <bseg>

“Fumble” is Scandinavian in origin? Uff-da.

GOP Recruiting Women

Wednesday, February 3rd, 2010

Hotline On-Call:

[RNC co-chair Jan] Larimer has spearheaded the party’s efforts to recruit and train more women candidates. And based on the GOP’s efforts this year, the party needs the help.

Among the NRCC’s Young Guns program, just 4 of 41 candidates in one of the top 2 tiers are women. The NRSC has done a little better, quietly favoring women candidates in CO, CA and NH. Now, party officials are on the case.

“We’re working with the women in Congress … to empower the women in their states to get involved and to participate,” Larimer told Hotline OnCall in an interview at the party’s annual Winter meeting in Honolulu.

“Women sometimes need a little more handholding, or they need their friends to help them make a decision. And by our going in and talking to them and recruiting and educating and training them to either get involved in a campaign or become a candidate, we’re giving them the tools so that they can do that on their own,” Larimer added.

Some of the smart women figured out, when the democrat party came out swinging against Sarah Palin this pretty much proved the democrat party was opposed to any woman exercising too much control over anything unless it’s in the democrat party’s interests. But the trouble with women, is they’re people. The trouble with people, is that when you start talking about “the smart ones” you’ve defined an exclusive club.

And the trouble with exclusive clubs is they don’t win elections.

Omigosh! Did I just type in something unforgivably chauvinistic? Did I just say women are stupid? Ack! Actually…no. Go back and read those paragraphs again, lightweight, and spare me your preachy e-mails.

Really, I don’t know why a woman would vote for a democrat; it can only make sense if she’s using abortion as a birth control method every single month. I notice I’m hearing an awful lot about “womens’ issues” and then what comes next has something to do with managing a household or raising children…things that I don’t personally see as womans’ issues. Getting hold of foodstuffs and other supplies for a reasonable price, making some arrangements for kids who get sick without missing work yourself, raising the kids into responsible adults.

Wage gap? Don’t make me laugh. If you’re really concerned about making a living, you don’t organize to bully your boss into meeting a higher payroll than he can afford.

Am I getting a little off topic here? Maybe. But maybe not. The women I know are plenty smart enough to get it: You don’t make the people living in a society better by changing the rules under which they live. As I noted in Item #2 of my forty-two definitions of a strong society:

If thinking a certain thing is evidence that you’re a wonderful person, and then you get penalized for thinking something else, then thinking that thing is no longer evidence of your wonderfulness, now is it?

Women ought to be particularly receptive to such a message. After all, if this self-improvement-through-rulemaking actually worked worth a damn…you know what would happen? Motherhood would diminish in importance, on something of a grand scale.

Efforts like this generally don’t enjoy my support. Yes, I get the reasoning…the camera pans over a Republican convention, it’s a bunch of white male faces and so the hot air pundits get all their pot shots in.

Trouble is, a passive approach is the only one that’s really helpful. When your objective is “get more women to run [as Republicans]” then, if & when a studly young dude approaches you and says “I’d like to run, will you help me?” you have to tell him NO. So that you can do your bit to make sure that camera sweep at the next convention picks up more female faces. So that, if the party does have a problem, you can help to hide it.

That is deceptive by nature. If there’s something about the Republican message that appeals more to the masculine mindset…well, it is what it is.

For those who find the passive approach to work too slowly, perhaps fearing that the “average” woman isn’t bright enough to figure out the democrats are anything but helpful — I have a suggestion. If you want to take a more active approach, seek out some of the women who have already made the decision to support the conservative cause, and give them some attention. Find out what they have to say about why they chose the path they chose. They are, for the most part, articulate, intelligent, erudite, compelling and they have fascinating stories to tell. They know what they know, as well as what they want to do and why they want to do it.

Just find out what they have to say, and pass the word along. Stop just automatically handing the microphone over to the termagants. Thatisall.

Next problem.

Cosmo, Stupak and Defiant-Looking Women

Wednesday, November 25th, 2009

Cassy Fiano brings us the latest example of Cosmopolitan nags making abject fools out of themselves, with an alarmist expose absurdly headlined Are Your Rights in Jeopardy? Once again, the glossy-mag scolds are confusing the right to indulge in baby-killing, with the right to demand taxpayer-funded baby-killing.

Cosmopolitan has gotten in on the anti-Stupak movement. Without bothering to think for themselves at all, they’ve just taken the feminist route and decided that cutting abortion funding means that “women’s rights” are being threatened somehow. Check it out:

If you’re pro-choice, you may not be aware that an amendment to the health-care reform bill that passed in the House earlier this month threatens women’s rights. Called the Stupak-Pitts Amendment, it bans abortion coverage for millions of women who will purchase health insurance in the new health exchange. This ban will also extend to women who opt to be covered under the “public option” form of health insurance that the bill will create.

The health-care reform bill still has to be passed by the Senate, so it isn’t law yet. If you want to preserve a woman’s right to comprehensive reproductive health care, click on the link below to sign a petition that will be sent to President Obama and key legislators.

To really get their point across, they even included the prerequisite picture of a defiant-looking woman.

Defiant-Looking WomanI guess it would be impossible for someone to point out to these harpies that abortion would still be legal. Any woman in the United States, provided she is over the age of 18, can legally get an abortion without any trouble at all, beyond the occasional pro-life protestors. All the Stupak amendment will do is prevent abortion from being taxpayer funded… in the new health care bill. It doesn’t ban all taxpayer funding for abortion. But to hear these feminists carry on, it’s as if abortion is going to be completely outlawed and the world is going to end.

But Cosmopolitan wouldn’t possibly point out all those pesky little facts, would they? They phrase it in a very specific way. They aren’t lying, but they don’t point out that abortion itself isn’t going to be banned, nor is all taxpayer funding going to be ceased. Women who don’t pay attention to politics — which would be many Cosmopolitan readers, of course — could very easily be misled. And why would they offer the other side of the argument, either? It’s all one-sided with liberal publications like Cosmopolitan, which, of course, masquerades as a non-partisan, non-political publication.

A hundred years from now, historians will look back and associate pictures of defiant-looking women with all the evils, liabilities and weaknesses of the times in which we live. Here we go again: People pretending to be preserving “rights,” when really all they’re trying to do is destroy things. Every single abortion that might happen, has to happen. The lying, the obfuscation, the half-truths.

And gol darn it, we’re just trying to get the world to spin on its axis with a little bit more peace, love, mutual respect and harmony…and the standard we hoist as we ride into this battle, is always some kind of a hip skinny spoiled white chick with her arms crossed looking like she’s ready to lay some smack down.

I remember last time I was single and available. I had certain “jobs” expected of me on dates…and they no longer had much to do with pulling out chairs or opening doors. They had to do with what I was supposed to be, and what I was supposed to be was something very, very normal but at the same time very, very extraordinary. Usually, I failed that test before things went on to the next step…but the next step was to show lots and lots and lots of empathy.

My date would reciprocate by demonstrating how self-assertive she was and how she wouldn’t-take-no-shit-from-anybody.

That was not, by the way, for the purpose of laying ground rules for a potentially lasting relationship. That, I suppose, might have happened around step five or six, by which time I would typically have been dismissed from the interview process quite some time ago. No, this I-am-woman-hear-me-roar bullshit was…and this gets back to Cassy’s observation about feminists, and I find it exceedingly sad…the young lady’s offering. She was demonstrating for me what she would be bringing to the table. It was the reason why I should want to continue dating her.

Just imagine. I had to show empathy. That was her way of reciprocating: Hey, she knew exactly what I wanted! To spend the rest of my life with a spoiled rotten harridan. Gee, I’m so impressed, she knows me better than I know myself. What a keeper.

So from this experience of mine while I was “on the market” — some ten months or so, now five years out of currency — I have this impression that there’s a lot of delusion and fantasy taking place out there. There are single and available females somehow operating under the premise that cantankerous bitches are rare and therefore sought, coveted and highly prized.

Toward the end of it, I had to conclude that I was being offered an endless procession of just the women who happened to be available, each of them arriving with a bundle of reasons why they were the ones still available.

Feminism hurts women in all kinds of ways. In this case, it mentally “abducts” them when they’re at an impressionable age, and indoctrinates the weaker among them to the idea that everyone is going to be oh so nice to you, if you can just show how irascible and vicious you can be. And this has been going on for forty years now. It’s thankfully on the wane, it seems to me…part of the female coming-of-age is, more and more often, learning how to show proper etiquette, smile sweetly at the right time, do your bit to keep things pleasant…then just wait until the time’s come to stand up for yourself, and do so. Behind closed doors. That’s what a mature, capable, sophisticated lady does. That’s what a woman of class and substance does.

But the less capable grown-up-girls are still out there, the “Real Housewives of New Jersey” types, eager to showcase their talents for dripping acid.

This does not represent womanhood well. In fact, thinking on it awhile one has to notice: These “ladies” must have some friends who tolerate the behavior, or else they wouldn’t keep doing it. Sure, most women grow out of it by the time they’re thirty. But that’s a long time to be going through life spoiling for a fight, with your brow all furrowed up like that and your arms crossed.

Cosmopolitan-and-similar-mags: Civilization will ultimately succeed in spite of you, not because of you.

Sloane Peterson Taught Her to Be a Good Girlfriend

Tuesday, September 29th, 2009

Not too much attention being paid these days by the ladies, in these not-quite-so-delicate matters of how to be a good girlfriend. Things do seem to be improving there slightly, I think…but it’s tough for me to tell because I’ve got the best girlfriend of all. So for me it’s like trying to look at the stars in the sky while standing under a very bright light.

Sloane PetersonWhatever the situation, I thought I’d help the improvement along, because this is a great post and it deserves linkage (and she, in turn, found it over here). And I think I found some new blogroll entries as well:

THE GUIDE TO BEING SO CHOICE:

How Sloane Peterson from Ferris Bueller’s Day Off Taught me how to be an Awesome Girlfriend.

 • Get along with his friends if you don’t get along with his friends you are done. seriously. That is number 1. Even if you think his friends are uptight weirdos or hypochondriac freaks, HEY, he is friends with them for a reason, so cut the shit. You’ve probably got some weird and crappy friends too.
:
 • Pack lightly ever notice how tiny Sloane’s purse was? The bigger the purse, the lamer the girl. Its called baggage for a reason.

Kind of funny that this weekend just past was our “Ferris Bueller” weekend. I haven’t even sent the disc back, it’s sitting right there on top of the red envelope under the teevee staring me in the face.

I have mixed emotions about this one. On the one hand, Ferris is so clearly headed for a future of being a welfare bum…but you can’t bet any real money on that, can you. After all, he is a smart kid surrounded by stupid grownups, recognizing the futility of a mediocre school curriculum churning out mediocre graduates by going through the motions. He’s taking the bull by the horns. But of course, he could be taking the bull by the horns doing something productive and not quite so fun to watch. This is, after all, the kid from War Games.

In the end, Ferris lands on the “approve” side of my fence because of his sister. It’s a movie not quite so much about the things we do, as about the emotional reaction we have to the ideas of doing those things…and through the high-strung sister, the film recognizes my conflict and addresses it head-on:

“I hate him.” It is the hate that comes from doubt. It is hate felt by those who “know” they’re doing the right thing by preserving order, even when that order leaves dimwits in charge…but aren’t completely sure that this is the right thing. They know they’ve been given a choice of rejecting rebellion versus rejecting incompetence, and have chosen to tolerate incompetence.

A and B

Friday, August 7th, 2009

Annalynne McCord and Beyonce Knowles…

They’re both out-of-this-world lovely, but I fail to see how or why anyone would give the trophy to Annalynne. Hair, face, breasts, stomach, hips, thighs, arms…everything. Brains? I’ve no way to tell. I’ve always had the uneducated impression Beyonce had a lot going on there too. Beyonce is genetic wonderfulness, maybe perfection, come to life and nobody’s competing with that by vomiting her way down to a double-zero dress size.

Samrich, Annalynne sweetie. Have one with mayo, and maybe two.

Blogsister Daphne has inquired as to what our thoughts are about Welch, Loren, Bassinger, Jaclyn Smith, two selected supermodels and the craziest Desperate Housewives. We’re researching it, but we can say at this point that back-in-the-day, Raquel Welch takes the prize. Just out of that list. Because it didn’t occur to Daphne in the moment to mention the immortal and incomparable Natalie Wood.

Working on Plans for the Next Forty-Three

Thursday, July 16th, 2009

Well, we’re a workin’ blogger, so we have to get off our fat ass and get our day started here. There is so much more to be said about our wonderful blogger friends all around the innerwebs…a few days ago I awarded a “first place” ribbon to one of them for updating her link to us after we moved our site, and we were going to get a sequenced list going of all the other early-birds.

Blogsister Daphne's Birthday CardIt seemed fair. It’s OUR move; we decided to do it, and how obnoxious would it be if every time someone moved a blog and his buddies didn’t update their links to him that day, he started sending out snotty notes to them to the effect of “Hey goddammit! Update your links!” I’d be all, like screw you pal. So sticks are inappropriate here. Carrots over sticks.

Well it didn’t happen, because the next time I checked everyone apparently had updated their links to this spot, www.peekinthewell.net/blog. It really is true: You can’t fool bloggers.

So with the gracious accommodations to the blog-move, and the birthday wishes, we have so many shout-outs for so many wonderful folks. We just don’t have time for it all at the moment. We’ll have to remedy that one soon.

But I do have to get by with just one…this virtual birthday card from Blogsister Daphne. What is it about Texas women that makes them so classy and precious? I can hear you all virtually yelling at me “Don’t say it!”…

…that’s one birthday wish I can get behind. Badump Bup Psshhh!! Tip your waiters. Try the veal. I’m here all week.

Gotta go, it’s getting late. After showering and dressing, I still have all those boxes of beer to lug up the stairs…ten of ’em. This weekend we’re going to go out and catch a movie, and then another couple weeks I’ll be making the trip to go pick up my twelve-year-old so he can get ready to start the school year. And then I won’t even have to go out to the balcony to get the next bottle of beer, I’ll have someone I can send. Free labor.

Life is good.

These Pussy Betas Are Killing the Country

Monday, July 13th, 2009

Ding ding ding! Blogsister Daphne takes the prize among all the blogger friends, for updating her sidebar link to our new location first…assuming there’s nobody out there who made the change even quicker, someone I haven’t found quite yet. Thanks Daph! You get a double-dose of linky love, and tonight you’re well worth it.

She’s thinking about eugenics, not from out of your history books, but in the very near future:

It’s too hot do anything more demanding than drink ice cold beer and wonder at the mind bending folly of liberals. I’ve attempted to understand their worldview, mark some sane tatter of rationale for the thought processes that would endorse one John Holdren as our president’s Science Czar. This man has some seriously disturbing views on population control. The whole czar thing is creepy to begin with, populating these pet posts with people of this weird caliber is more than a little troubling.

“If some individuals contribute to general social deterioration by overproducing children, and if the need is compelling, they can be required by law to exercise reproductive responsibility—just as they can be required to exercise responsibility in their resource-consumption patterns—providing they are not denied equal protection.”

Obama’s okay with this viewpoint? How about this ripe nugget;

“Indeed, it has been concluded that compulsory population-control laws, even including laws requiring compulsory abortion, could be sustained under the existing Constitution if the population crisis became sufficiently severe to endanger the society.”

:
I’m assuming liberals are fine with this scunty prick’s historical opinion, which just so happens to stomp all over the inviolate rights of women’s bodies and reproductive choices…I will never comprehend an individual’s willing subservience to the state. Never. We have too many grown men pining for the safety of momma’s tit and a handful who’d love to control the milk.

I believe women need to start raising more alpha males, these pussy betas are going kill the country.

Time to bring out our favorite Robert A. Heinlein quote. With my custom dessert topping to go with it:

Heinlein’s Observation: The human race divides politically into those who want people to be controlled and those who have no such desire.

Freeberg’s Corollary: Those who want to control tend to want, on some subconscious level, to be controlled; those who lack the desire to be controlled, are similarly disinterested in any opportunity to control others.

What can be more controlling than forcing people to languish away into obscurity and the grave, without benefit of reproduction, because you think there are too many of them?

Daphne continues with this theme

Do you read Roissy? I do. He’s a scandalous piece of work, spilling unwelcome truths about men, women and sex. He’s got a raw style of dealing with a topic that most handle with kid gloves. He calls it as he sees it and, from my jaded viewpoint, he’s usually right. He weighs on politics with this post;

In short, women are voting more Democrat because the Democrat Party is the prime force for turning the government into the world’s biggest provider beta. From the time of the “sexual revolution” (which was really a “sexual devolution” back towards pre-agricultural mating norms when 80% of the women and 40% of the highest testosterone men reproduced) women have been more free to choose mating opportunities based on their gina tingles and the economic and social empowerment granted, respectively, by their pointless humanities degrees and the disintegration of traditional slut shaming mechanisms. The life of serial monogamy and alpha cock hopping has never been more attainable for the average American woman, and the result has been predictable: Women are substituting the beta males they no longer want or need for marriage with a Big Brother Daddy government to help them foot the child-raising bills that their PUA, drug running and serial killer lovers won’t.

Ring any bells?

Yer goddamn right it does. It’s the Morgan Freeberg Theory of the Charismatic Wrecking Ball.

See, here’s what’s going on with these airhead women. They aren’t looking for men who will inject a stronger base of genetic material into their bloodline. Perhaps if they were exposed to danger as frequently as their ancestors from thousands of years ago, they would. But hey. It’s 2009, they’re one debit card swipe away from their next tank of gas, their next pint of Haagen Dazs, their next iced-mocha coffee drink that takes ten minutes just to order, their next feminine hygiene product…there are no snakes underfoot, they were all killed before the swamps were drained before the landscape was prepped before the foundation was laid before the building was built. No saber-tooth tigers. They, like the rest of us, are safe. Not perfectly so, but relatively so. Humankind suffers from a paucity of natural predators.

Boyfriend ShirtHow far into the depths of dumbth can our young Clinton/Obama Sex-in-the-City girl-women descend? Blogger friend Gerard brings us tales, tall tales but verifiable tales, of bored young strumpets forking out North of $200 for a “boyfriend shirt.” Gerard points out the obvious: “Or you can just get a boyfriend and steal it like women with standards since time out of mind. If you take it the morning after, he won’t mind at all.” Stellar advice, but only in an Idiocracy age devoid of natural threats or predators and liberated from Darwin’s purifying spirit, could any humans be in need of it.

And so their priorities change. They need that Bill Clinton charisma…in the next President, in the guy that repairs the copier machine after they sat on it, in the UPS guy. They select the guy who’s going to fix their car based on his charisma. And then bitch about having to pay five times as much as they think they should have.

Charisma, charisma, charisma. Don’t you blame the idiot-girls in my presence; our idiot-boys are just as susceptible, every bit as intoxicated on the elixir, every bit as disoriented and senseless. The charisma that was of such inconsequential value back when someone had to pump the water and churn the butter, and is such a central agent of “survival” now. The nectar of all people who’ve gone too long without really worrying about anything — and because they aren’t truly sane, their thirst for it is never quenched. They don’t really know how much they need or want of anything, for they have never been left for want of anything.

But let’s return to the central theme — now that I’ve qualified exactly how much we’ve robbed ourselves of our own common sense, in this world run by assholes whose hands have never known callouses, and women who’ve adored nobody save for the soft-handed assholes. Let’s inspect this Wrecking Ball theory. Just who, in this atrophied, stultified age, has this charisma? We are divided, fundamentally, into those who want to build things and those who want to destroy things. These two factions of person, do not think of things the same way. They do not live life the same way, so they don’t look at life the same way. Building things is infinitely tougher than destroying things, because things have to fit together with other things — you have to build them just right and line them up just right. You have to measure every step, and you have to adhere to a design. The design has to have taken everything into account that might become a factor during the building process, and this does mean everything. Temperature. Humidity. Slope. PH level. Altitude. Wind speed. Drag coefficient. If it matters, then the design must have taken it into account, and if anything is missing then this is all just a big waste of time.

Builders just aren’t very much fun to watch. They don’t build until they have a line inked in; they don’t ink the line in until they’ve penciled it; they don’t pencil it until they measure it, and measure it again, and again, and pencil it in ever-so-lightly, measure yet one more time, curse heavily, erase…I tell you, watching these people is like water torture.

Wrecking Ball of ChangeWrecking balls are fun to watch. Their mission is far, far simpler, and so they enjoy the benefit of moving in a straight line…to such an extent as they don’t want to move that direction anymore, then they swing back again. With sufficient inertia as to overpower everything else. A wrecking ball can afford to move that way — because it is concerned only with destruction, not with creation.

That’s how people are. If you’re out to destroy things and not build things, you get to move in a straight line just as long as you want. Your actions are utterly predictable, since it’s a physical impossibility for you to abruptly change course or speed. And yet you’re so much fun to watch.

And so our destroyers…our hardcore liberals, our eugenicists, our shrinks, our lawyers, our politicians, our hopey changey “There’s Just Something About Him!!” Christ-replacement iPresidents, they’re just so much fun to watch. Because they’re charismatic. Their movements are unalterable. Their mission is one of destruction.

They come off looking like alpha males, but that’s only because they enjoy the luxury of moving like a wrecking ball. Being fun to watch. They aren’t really alpha males though; alpha males are nerds. Alpha males build things.

These are destroyers. They are pussy betas, and Daphne’s right, they’ll kill the whole damn country if we let them. They don’t know how to do anything else. They cannot design, they cannot build, they cannot preserve…all they know how to do is go through the motions of doing those things, for campaigning purposes.

Their real passions always have to do with destroying things. That’s all they know how to do.

Update 7/14/09: Ah, I was afraid this would happen. Blogger friend Phil got his link updated at about the same time and probably deserves to split the first-place spot, but I shorted the poor guy. Ah well. We’ll wait to see who else climbs aboard and then figure out what to do.

Sansone, Behind the Scenes

Monday, July 13th, 2009

She’s not just pretty, she’s actually fun to watch.

Something We Have Internally Decided Not to Address

Monday, June 8th, 2009

Well, that takes care of my question about how & why liberals and progressives have a better rep for sympathetic, compassionate, and respectful treatment of women. When the opposite takes place, it simply goes unreported — by fiat.

AOL News has been bending over backwards lately to make sure that they do not cover the controversy surrounding Playboy.com writer Guy Cimbalo’s vile attack on conservative women. AOL News has taken some drastic steps to censor any mention, let alone criticism, of Playboy’s screed. They have deleted posts about the article, banned contributors from mentioning it, and even fired one of their liberal writers over it.

The fact that banning reporters from, well, reporting is so contrary to the purpose of a news organization it really is puzzling. It seems to be in direct contrast to their commitment to “traditional journalistic values”.

The evidence is stacking up quite high that AOL News fired liberal writer Tommy Christopher today due to his repeated attempts to get coverage of the Playboy attack list on AOL’s Politics Daily.

Christopher had first attempted to post this criticism of Playboy’s sick list the day it was published on their website. However, he was surprised to find that shortly after putting his article on Politics Daily it was deleted by an editor.

His surprise stemmed from the fact that in his two years of writing for the site not one other post had ever been deleted by an editor.

Another former Politics Daily writer NewsBusters spoke with, Caleb Howe, confirmed that fact. And while Tommy Christopher released a statement to NewsBusters criticizing AOL’s decision to let him go Caleb Howe went further than Tommy in his opinion of AOL’s motives.

“His coverage of the Playboy “hate f***” list must have had a lot to do with Tommy being fired, if not everything to do with it” Howe told NewsBusters. “It would be absurd to think the timing is coincidental” referring to the fact that Christopher was fired three days after his original Playboy story and only hours after pitching a new story on the same topic. Further allegations of AOL censoring coverage of the Playboy controversy came to light when Christopher and Howe appeared on Media Lizzy’s show this afternoon.

At the 74:50 mark of the show Media Lizzy (Elizabeth Blackney) claimed that her editor, Michael Kraskin, sent her an email regarding a question she submitted for the AOL Hot Seat Poll. Her original question was going to be “does Playboy empower or exploit women”. In his response email Media Lizzy claimed that Kraskin asked for a different question and said “This Playboy story is something we have internally decided not to address”.

Tommy Christopher claimed on the show that AOL told him the story was pulled because the Playboy story was too profane. However, Christopher’s story censored out all of the profanity and given Media Lizzy’s claims it seems that no mention of the Playboy story would be acceptable to AOL. Plus there is a post by Christopher that has been on AOL’s Politics Daily (until recently called Political Machine) for nearly a year with several uncensored curse words and was not mentioned as a problem by anyone NewsBusters contacted.

NewsBusters contacted Politics Daily’s editor in chief, Melinda Henneberger who both deleted Tommy Christopher’s original story and fired him, for comment but she never returned our email.

As Christopher notes in the statement he released to NewsBusters he was a productive and successful writer for AOL. He is a well respected, widely read, and widely linked writer. His stories and opinions have been featured on Bill O’Reilly, Hot Air, Red State, The College Politico, The Daily Kos, The Huffington Post, and even NewsBusters. It seems highly unlikely that AOL fired him for lack of performance and it is important to note that nobody has claimed that as of now.

With all of this it seems that coincidental timing is an extremely hard sell for why Tommy Christopher was fired by AOL News today. It appears that Christopher was intent on covering a story which he found to be particularly important but that AOL News had “internally decided” was off limits.

What has the liberal/progressive movement done for women lately, anyway? At this point it seems a more than fair question to ask. Last summer the democrat party had a formal convention that specifically addressed — specifically addressed, I say again, as a priority above all others — who has the superior victim-cred, between women and persons-of-color. It is quite absurd to offer the idea that Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama represented significantly different policy positions, on much of anything. The dust-up was about victim-cred, and very little else. Which of the two candidates could stand behind spectacularly bad policies and then get away with it, accusing any & all critics of engaging in some kind of “ism”?

Anyway, the gals were found to be lacking. Better to accuse the critics-of-bad-policies of racism, than of sexism. That would do a better job of avoiding reasoned scrutiny and debate. And so Hillary was asked to step down. Typical party shenanigans: Ask not what the party can do for the people, ask instead what the people can do for the party.

The rest is history. The democrat party went on a tear, spending vast sums of Soros money convincing the public that the opposing ticket was dangerously inadequate because the vice-presidential candidate on that ticket was a dumb ol’ girl. Stupid inbred midwestern-accent redneck hick from Alaska who could see Russia from her house, and all that.

Bottom-line: They haven’t been pro-women — in any way other than advocating more baby-butchery — in a very long time. To actually defend women when someone comes along to harm, or to threaten, is an agenda that has fallen by the wayside.

Of course, officially, AOL isn’t really supposed to be a liberal advocacy group. And neither is Playboy. They’re just doing things that are considered, rightfully or wrongly, to be politically correct and “mainstream.” And because of that, this disrespect is a poor reflection on all of us. It speaks to who we have been allowing to win arguments, and who we have been determined to see lose the next argument. This late disrespect toward women shows how our sense of civility has come full-circle, and we have now devolved downward. If you could thaw out the average English knight from eight hundred years ago, he’d be our superior in every single way when it comes to treating women with decency…and the representative from our age would be left stammering “uh yeah, but, but I would support her right to end a pregnancy and…and…” …and that would be it.

Well, during a divorce, we award women custody of the kids even if the mom is a coke-fiend. And we give her lots of her ex-husband’s money for no reason. We make movies about stupid idiot dads, and we make sure movie moms are never, ever stupid or incompetent — just unpleasant. Other than that, our society hasn’t really shown much old-fashioned respect to the fairer sex. Once our liberals say it’s in their interests to abuse or threaten women, such as compiling a hate-fuck list against good-looking conservative ladies — AOL does an adequate job here of representing our prevailing societal response. We have internally decided not to address it. If it’s female-friendly enough to our left-wing progressive politically-correct types, well then surely it must be female-friendly enough for the rest of us.

Toward the objective of becoming more P.C. and more civilized, we’ve become, in some ways, a culture of uncultured, uncouth clowns. Women who don’t occupy the correct spot on the ideological spectrum, are now fair game.

Does Wonder Woman’s Costume Undermine Her Portrayal as a Strong Female Character?

Sunday, May 24th, 2009

Submitted for discussion some nine or ten months ago.

Does Wonder Woman’s costume undermine her portrayal as one of the DCU’s strongest female characters?

Shouldn’t she be wearing something a bit more practical, after all they changed Catwoman’s costume to make it seem more practical & less glamour. WW has worn better costumes such as her armour, than her traditional look. So is it time fo[r] a permanent change?

Someone please point me to the last superhero who restored his or her “portrayal of a strong character” with a costume change.

I’ll tell you what undermines Wonder Woman’s portrayal as a strong character. It isn’t her female-ness. It’s the opinions of all these sycophants that are brought out of the woodwork by her female-ness. Everyone wants to play the game of “The Womens’ Movement Was About To Be Set Back By A Century Until I Spoke Out And Rescued Everything.” And her suit doesn’t cover much, so that just seems to set it all off.

What very few people seem to understand, is that Wonder Woman’s costume actually makes a great deal of sense. A great deal of sense — more than the costume worn by any superhero who wears a cape. What’s the downside? Why would a superhero not wear a gymnast’s outfit and boots? Let’s see…too many people would notice — doesn’t apply. She’s an ambassador. As a super-heroine, she lacks a secret identity, because of this ambassadorial status. Not modest enough — also doesn’t apply. Wonder Woman comes from a place where women prance around naked all day & all year. The costume was selected in order to show us, in the US of A, respect; as a gesture of goodwill. She thinks she’s dressing up. Leaves her too vulnerable — doesn’t apply. Her bracelets deflect bullets. She might get cold? She’s made out of clay.

Wonder WomanI always thought of her as fitting into the Big Three with perfection. Superman’s got godlike powers; Batman doesn’t have any at all; Wonder Woman’s just someplace in between. She gets into a fight in the middle of the city in midsummer, wearing her trademark bathing-suit-and-boots — it’s easy to think she’s human. The fight is taken into a frozen arctic tundra, now you have a subtle reminder that she’s a super being.

In fact, if you want to look at things that undermine her portrayal as a strong female, that would be a far better place to start. The inconsistency. Can she fly? If she can’t, then can she leap an eighth of a mile like the original Superman? Does she have that stupid invisible jet? I really think, if the movie goes forward, the invisible jet should be included only as a joke. What about invulnerability? What happens if she tries to deflect a bullet with her bracelets, and fails? Is it true that her magic lasso becomes as long as she wants it to be at any given time? (I always thought that was kinda silly.)

Super strength? How much? Can she go toe-to-toe with Superman? Could she win? Can she bear his children if she cares to? How’s that work, exactly?

It’s just a fact: If she’s made weaker than Superman, the rights & privileges of ordinary women will survive just fine.

You know what she really needs, is a makeover just like the one slapped down on Superman back in 1986 by John Byrne. That was awesome. The Man of Steel’s powers were limited; he was and is completely vulnerable to anything magic, including the lightning bolts that transformed Billy Batson into Captain Marvel. The silver-age “planet hurling” Superman, you could forget about. His costume was ordinary fabric, and remained intact in an onslaught of machine gun fire thanks to a narrow field of Kryptonian energy that surrounded Superman’s body, maybe a quarter inch or so. So that did away with the absurd notion of Ma Kent “unweaving” the blue, red and gold Kryptonian fabric in Baby Superman’s birth rocket, and re-weaving it into a costume. Plus, if Superman was in the presence of a bomb, the costume would come away intact but the cape would be shredded, maybe set on fire. Way cool.

That’s how you solidify Wonder Woman’s position as a icon that represents female strength. Confine the re-inventing energies to things that really need re-inventing. WW has more than her share of them.

Women are in sad shape right about now. They’re being defended by people who honestly think of themselves as tireless defenders of womens’ position in society, and of womens’ rights; but those defenders don’t believe women are strong or worthy of respect, if they’re wearing certain things. That pretty much sums it all up, I think.

Kari Byron

Tuesday, April 21st, 2009

…just because.

I think she’s Daphne‘s ugly twin. That must be true, right?

Jack’s Rules to Ensure You Don’t Get Called Back

Friday, April 10th, 2009

Frustrated girlfriend writes in for advice to Jack M. at Ace of Spades:

Dear Jack M.,

You seem like the only regular coblogger who has ever dated a member of the opposite sex. You also seem like the kind of guy who gets dumped a lot.

I want to end a relationship with a guy, but I want him to think it’s his idea because I’m a wimp. Can you give me advice on how to do this? I’m sure you know.

*Name Withheld*

Blogger gold ensues…ten nuggets, of content equivalent to this…

No man sporting a pair of testicles (and I can probably widen the list to include uniballs like Lance Armstrong) gives a rats f’n ass about “Sex and the City.”

If you admit to watching it, you are announcing to the world that you identify with:

A) A 90 year old whorebag;
B) A red-headed lesbian;
C) A phony, holier-than-thou goody-goody or
D) Matthew Broderick’s sloppy seconds.

None, and I repeat, of these characters are attractive in the long term. Unless you, as the red headed lesbian, also have a hot and eager female friend.

Which seems unlikely. After all, if you did, why would you be wasting time watching “Sex and the City”?

Trust me on this: Just drop the phrase “I’m such a Miranda” into small talk and I guarantee you your phone won’t ring again. Unless the guy you are dating is gay and wants fashion tips.

I try to keep my comments to myself on the single life. Because I really haven’t spent that much time in it…at all…what was it, about eight months of dating some five years ago? And then before that, something like three weeks on the market a decade previous.

But there is something going on out there. A young, intelligent, hot & attractive single and available woman, is single and available for a reason.

From the more recent experience, I perceive it is the shopping that does ’em in. Not the spending of money — the impression that shopping leaves, upon the waifish, inexperienced mind, still learning how to perceive the world in which it lives. They were there to pick something out. And they didn’t have to do that good a job of it…they were well accustomed to dealing with an overly generous return policy…they were just gliding along, showing about as much cognitive thought as your average Obama voter, waiting to be dazzled by something. That the something could be picking them out, was a completely foreign concept to most of ’em.

And some of the things I heard coming out of their mouths; just tragic. Showing themselves just completely unready to reconcile on anything, challenges large or small, with a masculine consciousness. “I’m such a Miranda” — I don’t even know what that means but that captures it.

Don’t even get me started on how they wrote their personal ads. Over 50 percent of female-personal-ads, I would conservatively estimate, contain this phrase: “I’ve kissed a lot of frogs.” How much thought do you need to put into your draft, to figure out this might not be what a guy has in mind when he’s reading that section?

How did I get myself out of that pathetic existence? I used reason and logic. The “average” woman, after all, to the extent she exists in any form — she’s no dunce in the department of treating love and romance as a financial transaction. Girls are way ahead of guys here. And yet, when you advertise a product (herself) to its potential consumers, in terms of how happy they will make you (saleslady) by doing the consuming after all the frustration you’ve been through with getting it sold previously…that demonstrates just a mind-blowing lack of comprehension in exactly that area. You don’t place an ad for a car, using up your precious $2 words droning on about all the customers who bought the car before, and then for some reason demanded their money back?

And yet the “average” lady advertising her availability, thought there was great urgency in getting this mentioned. Her pitch was “Hey fellas, here’s a chance to make me happy,” and then we were all supposed to come running. They were accustomed to family members, and fictitious movie characters, behaving strangely, living out their lives for no higher purpose than to please Princess. Like I said: Available for a reason. And so I figured out, there’s some tiny slice of women who are in this market, who don’t really belong here…they understand things the rest of ’em don’t.

And so I defined the target, developed some ways to recognize it when it popped up, and zoomed in on it. Worked out pretty well.

“I’m such a Miranda.” That cracks me up. I wonder if there’s anyone anywhere with a penis & testicles who has even the slightest idea what that means.

Leave it in the comments below, if you’ve a mind to educate me. I really don’t care. Google requires such precious little effort, but somehow I can’t quite work up the give-a-damn.

Unhappy Alpha Women

Wednesday, January 7th, 2009

Oooh…this is good. Fascinating stuff. But I don’t see a way to extract meaningful pieces out of it, so I’ll just read in the entire thing.

I was talking about relationships with my buddy John Hawkins of Right Wing News, and the following IM conversation ensued:

John Hawkins: Show me a woman who is stronger than the man she is with and I will show you a woman who is unhappy or getting there.
Cassy Fiano: Think so?
John Hawkins: Definitely. Some women like being stronger than the guy at first…but it eats at them both over time.
Cassy Fiano: You don’t think there are any circumstances where maybe the woman is the alpha and the man is the beta and its a good thing?
John Hawkins: Short term, yes. Long term, I think it’s unhealthy. Some people make it through anyway, but it’s not good for them, nor do I think they are nearly as happy as they would be if the positions are reversed.
Cassy Fiano: why do you think the man needs to be the alpha for happiness to occur?
John Hawkins: Not just that. I think the woman needs to be the beta to be happy.
Cassy Fiano: OK, but why? I don’t see myself as a strict beta female.
John Hawkins: You don’t have to be. But, it’s built into us. It’s genetic. A woman, in her core, wants a man who is stronger than she is. If that’s not the case, she will eventually feel like less of a woman. A man wants to be stronger than the woman he is with, too. It makes him feel like a man. If you are stronger than the man you are with, you will eventually start to feel contempt for him. It’s as natural as a dog chasing cats. You can train a dog not to chase a cat, but it’s his nature.

That conversation definitely got me thinking. Do women really need to be the beta in a relationship in order to be happy? My first inclination, obviously, was no. As I said above, I certainly don’t see myself as a beta.

In a sense, I agree with John. I do think that in a healthy, long-term relationship, the man needs to be the “alpha” in order for him to feel happy and secure. If a man feels like his wife is stronger than he is, and more controlling, then he will feel disrespected and, as John said, like less of a man. Likewise, while many feminists will probably tell you that women are perfectly happy as the Alphas in their relationships, if a woman’s husband cannot show her strength and backbone, then she will slowly cease to respect him. (Marie Claire had a great article on an alpha female-beta male relationship implosion.)

A lot of women will think this means that men don’t want strong women, and I don’t think this could be further from the truth. I think most men do want a strong women… I think they want a partner who is intelligent, successful, confident, and intelligent. However, if a man is made to feel like less of a man, then there’s a problem. Men need to know that they are respected by their partners, and women need to feel like their partner is strong enough to be deserving of their respect. A spineless weakling a woman can walk all over is not going to garner any of her respect, is it? The more disrespected the man feels, the less happy and fulfilled he will be. Likewise, the less a woman respects her man, the more resentful and bitter she will become.

On the other hand, a man whose wife respects him and looks up to him will probably be the happiest man in the world, while his wife will find herself proud rather than resenting.

So, I guess I agree with John. I think it is importantand healthy for the man to be the “alpha”, or the head of his household, or however you want to phrase it.

I just have one exception. And it’s a big one.

I don’t think that either the male or the female needs to be “stronger” than the other. I think for a relationship to be healthy, the two need to be equals. Just because the man is the alpha, it does not mean that the woman needs to be the beta doormat. The main issue here, I think, is respect, and it needs to go both ways. Just as it is unhealthy for a woman to feel she can walk all over and control her man, it is unhealthy for a man to feel that he can walk all over and control his woman. There needs to be an equality and a balance, and without it, the relationship is doomed regardless of who the alpha is.

I’m curious about other thoughts on this topic. Are John and I way off base here? What do you think — do women need to be betas to be happy?

My own thinking? John’s got some of it…Cassy’s on her way there. As for the rest of it, I dunno. Maybe I should break form and keep my silence this one time, for sake of getting along. I know that’s not my trait, but I’m still smarting from that beak-poking I got last time I talked about women. Yes, let’s try to turn over a new leaf. That’s the ticket.

Naw. In for a penny, in for a pound. So here goes.

Women are more sensitive than men are, to pointlessness. A common mistake I see fellas making with their women, is to acquiesce. It starts out so harmless — “oh no, honey, those shorts do not make you look fat.” And then the “oh, I dunno, whatever makes you happy” in response to…what dress should I wear…eggshell or creamy off-white…Noritake or Corelle…cedar or mahogany…

Having no opinion, is so safe. Can’t guarantee an opinionated man will be threatening, but you can always guarantee a man without an opinion, won’t be. Right?

It’s not so simple. Because women are sensitive to pointlessness, they train this sensitivity, first and foremost, upon their men. It’s instinctive. The man is there for the purpose of planting his seed; the seed exists to carry a genetic blueprint; having no opinion, is like having no blueprint. Women want men to provide a signature. An inclination. Something that sets the fella apart from that other fella she was thinking about choosing, but decided not to. What’s the impact? What’s being done differently from the way that other guy woulda done it? That’s the question; the million-dollar question.

Note…I’m not talking about what’s done better. Just different. It’s the sense of identity. And so, to the feminine way of looking at things, a guy who doesn’t put his opinion into a relationship doesn’t put anything else into it either. They never say that, especially the feminized ones. But they all feel it. So in real life, all these guys go out of their way to act like Luke Wilson in “Legally Blonde,” just doing nothing but…adoring. Nothing else. And they end up losing their women, because they aren’t providing the signature.

What complicates this, is that women want themselves to have purpose as well. Oh, Lordy, do they ever.

Both of these are non-negotiable, so when it comes to making women happy it’s a little bit useless to talk about terms like “Alpha” and “Beta.” But you can see, by now, where I agree with John; if a woman provides all the strength, and all the function, to day-to-day living, what’s that guy doing there? Emotional support? She can get that anywhere, really. So even if her material needs are being met, and all other needs being met — she’ll still be unhappy and unfulfilled. It’s not that she thinks some other guy would make her happier. It’s just there’s no hard answer to the question, “Why Him?” That love-shit doesn’t cut it. Being friends as well as lovers doesn’t cut it. Deep down, she knows she could just as much be in love with someone else. Things have to have a purpose.

So each half of the couple has to have a “turf,” and the lady has to realize internally that she, as well as her dude, have it. She doesn’t have to come first in all things, she doesn’t have to come last in all things either. The point is, is the whole greater than the sum of its parts? If so, then she’s fulfilled, and if not, then she isn’t. A woman who feels she’s just there to do stuff for her man, and nothing else, is going to be unhappy, not because of all the work, or the lack of gratitude, but because any other woman would be able to do it just as well. A woman whose man is a jack of all trades and master of none, will be equally unhappy, not because of his lack of talent but because of his lack of specialty. She wants that sense of identity, and she doesn’t want it to come from within her; she wants it to come from her man, as the Good Lord intended. Yes, I mean that. Look at all these civilizations that grew, isolated from each other. In all those cultures, the male is in charge of the surname — he passes the one to his children, that he got from his Dad. This is not an accident.

This is made out to be something a tad more complicated than it really is. Our women adjudicate our relationships with them, and they do it according to what makes those relationships worthwhile, whether they realize it or not. They’re doing what just makes sense. If both participants are living a life richer together than it would be if they were apart, the relationship is a success, and if not, then it isn’t. This is true in general of women. They don’t seem to make much sense, until you study them awhile, and then they do.

Case in point, my happy alpha-beta woman seems to have slipped off to bed. Think I’ll shut this laptop down and go join her. G’night.

More Predictions, From the Girls

Friday, January 2nd, 2009

Ladyblog:

What will the headlines reveal in the next 12 months and what do culture-making women think will happen in 2009? We’ve got your political and cultural predictions…

Blogger friend Cassy is in there, as is Dr. Melissa, and others. But we think the “Sure to come true, to the point that the prediction isn’t even going out on a limb anymore” award would have to go to Michelle Malkin —

Michelle Obama will say something obnoxious and conservatives who dare to criticize her will be accused of racism/sexism. A trillion-dollar stimulus plan will pass with bipartisan support and will — like every other government intervention over the last year — fail to “rescue” America from economic pain.

Now, we’re a dude here. So we weren’t asked. But we prefer to rely on science rather than on mystics for our predictions, which means to remove the guesswork by looking at history. It’s pretty well established by now if you look at the municipalities. Cities put left-wingers in charge of every li’l thing, and from then on everything that can be a problem, is one. The newspapers and electronic media within that city do their part by presenting every screw-up as a “challenge” that their “leaders” are now “facing.”

Kind of like the September 11 attacks really did represent a challenge being faced by George Bush, but that was presented as a Bush Administration f*ck-up. Yeah, exactly like that. Except backwards. Seeing cause-and-effect where there is little or none, and then, not seeing it, where it’s plainly there.

Don't Blame MeIt’s already happening. The Annointed One told Joe the Plumber that He wanted to spread the wealth around; He won the election; the stock market, of course, tumbled immediately because what else was it going to do? Now it’s a problem that He is going to face with His Holy Youthful Visage and His Divine Courage. The reality is that He already faced it.

Just think Seattle. Or San Francisco. Even better, think of the Chicago From Whence He Comes. The most mundane, everyday problems are like the Cuban Missile Crisis, demanding such steely resolve from He Who Is To Deliver Us. Nobody calls anything a mistake, or a gaffe, or a screw-up or a boondoggle, unless the thing being discussed is a holdover from a Republican administration.

Meanwhile, everything that’s busted, is. Everything that is, stays that way.

Can’t blame Republicans. There aren’t any.

Exceptions to that rule? There could be some. I don’t recall any during Jimmy Carter’s time in office.

Oh, and we definitely will have the stimulus plan. Bill Clinton had one. The economy didn’t turn around until Newt Gingrich’s fellas got in there, not that you’ll read about that in the papers.

Melissa says “Higher birth rate to those who don’t have enough money.” Yup, that’ll happen too…part of a “Twentieth Century Motor Company” paradigm that’ll fall over the nation, as need becomes the coin of the realm. The cities that are hungriest for headlines, will start new “magnet” social programs to bring in the homeless, and be sure and train those TV cameras on them. Had we just sworn in a Republican President, this would be evidence that homelessness is on the rise, but instead we’ll see it presented as a holdover Bush problem with which The Chosen One must heroically grapple.

Lots of photo ops. Lots of big, broad toothy smiles, on the faces of democrat politicians posing for cameras. You really won’t see that much smiling anywhere else.

Cassy predicts severe buyers’ remorse for the Obama voters. She’s probably right, but you’ll never read about it except in crazy, wild-eyed right-wing blogs like this one.

Not In It For The Attention, Mind You… XXV

Tuesday, November 18th, 2008

But The Blog That Nobody Reads — the one you’re reading now, that is — is, it would seem, responsible for injecting new life into Duffy’s Marriage. Yay!

Or for making the poor fellow sleep on the couch the other night. One of the two.

I know very little about Ms. Duffy, but I’ve been convinced for quite awhile she must be a wonderful lady, for a number of reasons. Now there’s another one.

Speaking of wonderful ladies, our cynical post also caught the attention of Jaded Haven who sprinkled it with her “ribald lagniappe of jolly smut.” Some crappy writers make up for their lack of talent by keeping a thesaurus at their elbows; she may or may not have a thesaurus at the elbow, but she’s a wonderful writer who will have you anchored at her corner of the web, leafing through the archives, grasping for more. To the sidebar she goes…

Men and Women – The Differences

Thursday, October 9th, 2008

Old. But a great find.

Call me a mushy sentimentalist, but I liked the ending the best.

More Interested In Her Policies Than Her Periods

Sunday, August 31st, 2008

Gerard Van der Leun, a man I deeply respect, is a professional in the editing/publishing business; he is a man of few words, who dispenses praise rarely. Nevertheless he has bestowed on The Anchoress the coveted Finest Fisking Award — richly deserved — in her dealing with the left’s “Palin Talking Points.”

Which is rather like lancing an abscess after it’s swelled to a pint-and-a-half or thereabouts. Not pretty. But now the healing can begin.

Except, that is, for my reputation as an awful, insecure, knuckle-dragging sexist. The long weekend is still young, and now I’ve said flattering things about two women, without even a sign of doing so reluctantly or grudgingly. What can I say? I love classy women. But how do I make up for this transgression against my chauvinist brethren? Maybe after my girlfriend gets done with her job at ten o’clock tonight and stumbles through the door all bleary-eyed, I can yammer at her to get me a beer as long as she’s up. And not say please. Perhaps that will restore my good name.

But seriously. Go read every single word of Anchoress’…handling. And most especially, hang on for that final uppercut at the end. Fantastic stuff.

Twelve Thoughts (Plus Some Miscellany) on the Palin Pick

Saturday, August 30th, 2008

Just some stuff I’ve been noticing since the news broke about Sarah Palin. Apart from sharing blogger friend Phil’s sense of alarm that my age is very close to that of one of our fifty state governors. And training my brain to remember, when the eyeballs see “Palin” in written form, that the name rhymes with “sailin’.”

1. I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again: Hold-outs, like me, are vindicated. If we all “banded together” and “showed our support” as my right-winger brethren were telling me, today we’d have a McCain/Lieberman ticket. I guaran-damn-tee it. When people who own decisions are sleeping restlessly, or not sleeping at all, good things happen. And, in politics, if you want to decide things…DON’T. Nobody gives up anything to make friends with someone who is already thought of as a friend. Especially a devoted, loyal friend. It just doesn’t make strategic sense to do that. Loyalty is not rewarded here, and that’s why people don’t like politics very much. Nervous nellies and nay-sayers, like me, gave you Sarah Palin. You’re welcome.

2. No question about it, the chicks are excited. It’s Easter Sunday in the Church of The Goddess. This was a very smart move for McCain. We’re talking millions, maybe tens of millions, of votes. Dare I hope California will turn RED? Yeah that’s still far-fetched…in fact, Obama still might win…but it shows the scope of what an advantage this is, that California going for McCain has become a possibility worth pondering. I just hope with all this estrogen lathering up, the shirts are still being ironed and the samriches are still being made.

3. There is some consternation about the real possibility that history will be made by a pro-life conservative Republican woman. Being from a planet called “Earth” and having warm blood, I’m naturally inclined to accept there was something insincere, from the very get-go, about the whole “Get A Woman In There” thing. Otherwise, Palin’s ideology would inspire no such squeamishness. People who face this conundrum need to examine their own motivations and examine them hard. They are NOT quite so much in favor of “equality” as they’ve been fooling themselves into thinking.

Beauty Queen4. The child born with Downs Syndrome. I didn’t mention it for two reasons. Nobody would be mentioning it if she was a man; and if I was the child, I wouldn’t be too pleased, years down the road, with all these archives of articles about how my mom is the second coming of Florence Nightingale just because she didn’t kill me. C’mon, she’s pro-life, and she isn’t a damn hypocrite. Good on her, but some things don’t need to be talked about ad nauseum.

5. A lot of gals are saying what Hillary said. Some are considering voting for the McCain ticket even though “[Palin’s] policies would be terrible for the country.” What a bunch of disgraceful, embittered old cows. I hope they vote for McCain/Palin, and then never vote in anything again. They just admitted to wanting to hurt the country to support a woman! It’s a national disgrace. Oh, and yeah, Hillary still can’t stop talking that way ALL THE TIME.

6. A lot of references to Palin’s speech, which, frankly, I found offensive. And not just a little bit. Glass ceiling, shmass shmeiling; yes, it’s irritating when you are judged by your class membership, because you have no control over that. You rise above it by running on your individual attributes. And people aren’t actively keeping you out of things when they’re being mentally lazy — it’s a passive obstruction, not an active one. Men run for office because in order to run for office you have to leave yourself open to confrontation, attack, and ridicule. Women are up to enduring ridicule, occasionally, like an occasional cat is willing to go for a swim. Palin, I believe, understands this was a load. I see it as something she had to say. She had to hit a “home run” on this, and that was the magic elixir. It reflects on the rest of us, not so much on her. I’ll look past it.

7. I do NOT see anyone falling for the “inexperienced” talking point. Just a handful of DailyKOS folks…that’s about it. I’m still surprised the Obama camp had the big brass balls to trot that one out.

Palin8. I do NOT see anyone falling for the “town of 9,000” talking point. Not at all. And this idea of having everyone who lives in a town with 9,000 or fewer people call & fax the Obama campaign, is a fantastic idea. I’ll be paying close attention to that one.

9. A lot of guys “would hit that.” Interesting that this prurient desire sports just a hint of the “forbidden fruit” about it; when childish schoolgirls squeal around Obama as if he were the reincarnation of Johnny Fontaine, there’s a slightly different connotation involved. Anyway, I think Gov. Palin is pleased with what she’s got at home. I’m happy with what I’ve got at home too, so I’ll follow her lead. But NO question, the lady is a looker.

10. If I didn’t know one thing about Sarah Palin or any of the other players, and didn’t give a rat’s ass about conservatives and liberals, I’d vote McCain/Palin because there’s someone on that ticket who isn’t a senator. I’m a little surprised McCain hasn’t been talking that one up.

11. I’m looking forward to seeing Palin repeat some of what George W. Bush said about defending the country vs. appeasing foreigners — following up “the course of this nation does not depend on the decisions of others.” That line drew APPLAUSE. So take that “Bush’s third term” thing, and shove it down Obama’s throat. Something along the lines of “yep, that’s our goal.” You’ve got the political capital to do that now.

12. I do NOT see any conservatives expressing newfound reluctance now that they have to have to vote for a girl. I have not seen so much of a speck of evidence for that. C’mon guys, we’re supposed to be a bunch of damned sexists here. Doesn’t living up to a reputation mean anything to anyone anymore?? Well, I’ll live up to mine — I’m an equal-opportunity sexist. Palin’s a good running mate for McCain, but if somewhere there was a man who would make a better one, I’d say he made the wrong choice. There isn’t. She was, as I said before, the best choice he could’ve made, and being a woman has nothing to do with being a good Vice President. I hope, while the Republicans gulp this intoxicating elixir of identity politics by the gallon, they don’t get punch-drunk on it like the democrat party has been since the 1950’s. But…they probably will. That’s bad for the G.O.P., over the long term, because it diminishes what distinguishes them from the democrats. But good for the country if Palin shows the kind of leadership she’s been showing in Alaska. That’s a trade I’ll take.

I have a dream, that one day our children and our children’s children, will judge each other by the content of their character…and not by the configuration of their genitals.

I wonder if my “girlfriend” from third grade has ever thought of me. Probably not. But chicks-in-glasses have meant something completely different to me over the last 34 years, than they did in the eight years that came before. That’s just an added plus for Sarah.

Cross-posted at Right Wing News.

On Feminists, and NeW

Sunday, August 17th, 2008

Some afterthoughts about Cassy‘s profile of Network of Enlightened Women (NeW), and feminist complaint-blog Feministing‘s critique of same. It would be more appropriate, perhaps, to call them “late thoughts” compared to “afterthoughts” because I never did opine in any way on this. What inspires my late thoughts is the comment section under Feministing’s original post; it has been growing, at least throughout the balance of last week, and I think this gives us some valuable and educational insight into the feminist mind.

I’m not referring, here, to what we said about feminists when we invented the word Flog as a portmanteau of “feminist blog”:

Check out masthead after masthead after masthead on some feminist blogs if you have trouble envisioning this. You’ll see what I mean. The “author” is represented by silhouette, or by avatar, or by an actual photograph. There is no smile…not unless it’s been made up into some misshapen sneer. Read the actual posts — and the problem is more pronounced still. Time after time, the theme is left intact, unshaken, unwrinkled, unmoved.

It is this: Somewhere, something is, and it ought not be. That’s it. Overall, it seems the fem-blog hasn’t much else to say. Sensors have detected something somewhere that exists, that we think should be banished to oblivion. Can we get an “Amen” here?

No, not that thing. The other thing. The control freak thing. The control they seek to exert over objects that may be kept around…if only they change. They want to customize what they own; what they only partially own; what they don’t own; what is, really, none of their damn business. Every little thing they find done, contrary to the way they’d do it if they were the person doing it, is a battle cry — no exceptions.

They seem positively eager, lately, to prove what Cassy said, lest there have been any doubt:

With feminism, women don’t have a choice. It’s follow blindly, and agree with everything we tell you. Don’t think for yourself. Don’t think that men aren’t the enemy. We know all, and don’t you dare get a second opinion…[F]eminists seem to think that if anyone, anywhere disagrees with anything they decree, it automatically makes them sexist and woman-haters. They fail to realize that debate can be and is healthy, and constantly trying to stifle opposing viewpoints only serves to strengthen those opposing viewpoints.

There are now several posts under the Feministing comment section, making the point that conservatism as used by NeW is underdefined or undefined.

This is a worthwhile point, I think. I don’t believe it applies to NeW. I read posts like this one, and the values and principles are crystal clear:

It is the liberal tendency today for some Americans to criticize the nation’s status in the world. Instead of recognizing America for what it is: a beacon of hope, liberty, freedom, democracy, and principles; some look to the rest of the world to measure our success. How far have we fallen? We are a nation of independence, with every citizen possessing equal opportunity. With such an amazing reality, why should we ever be ashamed of our country? The President’s comments indicate his belief that America is a strong nation, and we must never forget this great truth.

Reminds me of sf4’s suggestion that I jot down my own conservative platform and let liberals comment on it. I’m still giving it some thought.

But getting back to the subject at hand…

It occurs to me that feminists have an awful lot of antipathy in store for an organization they claim stands for something they don’t understand. I mean, I know the feeling. I’ve had people try to draft me into things like Amway, L. Ron Hubbard, Scientology, Mormonism, etc., going on and on about some kind of wonderfulness without expounding too much on what exactly it was they were trying to say. Yes, I find it a little irritating. No, it doesn’t make me want to lash out with those kinds of feelings the feminists seem to have; indeed, seem eager to showcase. So I call bull-dookey.

It also reminds me of something Larry Elder said once:

Conservatives consider liberals well-intentioned, but misguided. Liberals consider conservatives not only wrong, but really, really bad people.

And in addition to that, it reminds me of something I said; specifically, Thing I Know #217:

Populism, according to the hard evidence that has managed to come my way, has a tough time staying positive. It seems there has to be a dirty so-and-so who’s due for a come-uppins, behind every energized populist movement. That might be because populism seeks to decide issues according to the satisfaction of the majority, and most of us like to feel our way to a decision rather than think our way through. Naturally, laying the smack down on an enemy feels a whole lot better than actually solving a problem.

The NeW/Feminist back-and-forth is explained completely, I think, by Elder’s observation. Or nearly so. I read comments on NeW and the worst they think about their feminist sistren, is that the feminists have either been hoodwinked or are hoodwinkers. The feminists think this about the NeW ladies — that, or much, much worse.

And they say so over and over again.

I wonder if “middle-of-the-road” people are as leery as I am, of people who have to show off over and over again what good people they are. Now there is something I’d like to see the whole country talking about — and it’s a much bigger issue than conservatism versus liberalism or NeW ladies versus feminists. If you’re a good person who does good things, and you damn well know it…you just…keep on keepin’ on, right?

On the other hand, if you’re a bad person and you know that, or you try to be a good person but you don’t feel very good about your success in being good, what do you do? You call yourself a “feminist” and make tedious and repetitious comments about what a bad person someone else is, who doesn’t believe in the same things you do.

Nice Guys Sleep Alone

Tuesday, June 24th, 2008

Via Karol, confirmation of what you already knew, although quite a few folks have been telling you the opposite, or something calculated to slow your absorption of reality’s lessons. Females especially…Karol included.

NICE guys knew it, now two studies have confirmed it: bad boys get the most girls. The finding may help explain why a nasty suite of antisocial personality traits known as the “dark triad” persists in the human population, despite their potentially grave cultural costs.

The traits are the self-obsession of narcissism; the impulsive, thrill-seeking and callous behaviour of psychopaths; and the deceitful and exploitative nature of Machiavellianism. At their extreme, these traits would be highly detrimental for life in traditional human societies. People with these personalities risk being shunned by others and shut out of relationships, leaving them without a mate, hungry and vulnerable to predators.

But being just slightly evil could have an upside: a prolific sex life, says Peter Jonason at New Mexico State University in Las Cruces. “We have some evidence that the three traits are really the same thing and may represent a successful evolutionary strategy.”

When the article says “nice guys knew it,” I expect what it’s talking about is the same personal experience all us guys have had at one time or another. You give some attention to a cute girl and you think it’s reciprocated. Maybe you actually go out with her a time or two. Then you find out your rival for her affects gets more affection…then more…then more…and pretty soon, she isn’t returning your calls. Meanwhile, he’s treating her like dirt. He doesn’t know she exists, she doesn’t know you exist.

And then your momma and your sister and your ex-girlfriend and every single other female you know, comments knowingly on it as if it’s an isolate incident. But in the years that follow, you learn it isn’t. And all the other guys you know, seem to have the same story. Huh. It’s like reading the National Enquirer — everybody refuses to buy it, only glimpsing at the cover while waiting in line to pay for groceries, but someone must be buying the damn thing, right?

Jonason and his colleagues subjected 200 college students to personality tests designed to rank them for each of the dark triad traits. They also asked about their attitudes to sexual relationships and about their sex lives, including how many partners they’d had and whether they were seeking brief affairs.

The study found that those who scored higher on the dark triad personality traits tended to have more partners and more desire for short-term relationships, Jonason reported at the Human Behavior and Evolution Society meeting in Kyoto, Japan, earlier this month. But the correlation only held in males. [emphasis mine]

I have a few ideas about this. They all blame the ladies. But that’s fair, isn’t it? Someone’s making the decision about whether these guys do or do not get some.

First of all, women tire quickly from having to make all the decisions, and with only a moderate level of experience, that’s exactly what a well-mannered gentleman is going to force them to do. It’s quite a simple thing to offer the time-honored advice, “Take charge!” But then what? You take her out someplace, there’s a choice to be made, and then the fella makes the choice so that his lady doesn’t have to. That gives rise to the possibility that maybe she would have preferred something else. So he asks, right? Just to make sure?

How far does he take that? If he checks with her about every little thing, he’s essentially placing the burden on her to choose everything. Feminism or no, women find that exhausting. Partly because it customizes every single choice to be made, with the profile of the woman’s preferences; partly because it deprives every choice to be made of the emotional imprint of of the man.

Simply put, such a considerate gentleman removes his unique signature, incrementally, until there is nothing left. At that point, she might as well be with someone else.

So of course she’ll be more attracted to the guy who doesn’t check. His list of preferences may not be the one that she would have picked, but at least it’s there. This is a metaphor for what takes place inside, after the genes have been spliced. She has an evolutionary instinct to look for the patriarch who will leave the most indelible signature.

I have another theory, inspired by the comment about “the three traits are really the same thing.”

What Jonason has discovered, I think, is what we’ve been exploring in these pages under the Yin and Yang theory. The Yang enter into a two-directional pact with those around them, benevolently manipulating others and at the same time, being manipulated. The Yin abstain from this, usually because they’ve been discouraged from it during childhood development by a lack of success — they’re what you’d call “nerds.”

Because of this natural emotional resonance that can only be developed from an early age, the Yang are more approachable even though they may be so manipulative as to qualify for the first trait in this triad, the narcissism. You see this in all kinds of people, men and women alike, who tend to obsess over “feelings” — they obsess, without thinking too much about it, about their feelings. The feelings of others usually don’t factor into it too much, and at that point you’ve reached the very definition of narcissism, and you’ve fleshed out much of the definition of the second trait as well — the psychopathic behavior.

So that’s two strikes in favor of the Yang; you have the easygoing emotional resonance, and you have the drive to get What I Want. It’s an intoxicating combination for the woman who isn’t consciously trying to avoid it (which, giving Karol the benefit of the doubt, is probably her).

The article closes with an interesting dissent:

“They still have to explain why it hasn’t spread to everyone,” says Matthew Keller of the University of Colorado in Boulder. “There must be some cost of the traits.” One possibility, both Keller and Jonason suggest, is that the strategy is most successful when dark triad personalities are rare. Otherwise, others would become more wary and guarded.

Yes, that’s my thinking as well. If everyone possesses this triad in abundance, the social order breaks down.

Another thing to consider is that society itself can’t continue if everyone’s a narcissist, psychopath and Machiavellian genius. You’ve got to have your celibate Teslas, so that things get built. Sure, an advanced society builds great things when there’s an egotist around to build them; there are very few Federation Starships being constructed “for the common good.” That’s what the Yin are for — they’re the egotists. But egotism is a completely different thing from narcissism. Narcissism tends to pull the trick involving Tom Sawyer and the whitewashed fence, and trick others into doing the work. And over the long haul, nothing really gets built that way, therefore society can’t endure.

Like the doctors said in Jurassic Park: Life will find a way. And that, in my theory-notebook, is why we’re still here and why we still have both kinds. And always will.

Memo For File LVIII

Thursday, April 17th, 2008

I barely have the time this morning to deal with all of what’s busted in whiny, insipid, counterproductive, self-serving snotty immature screeds like this one…although I’m sure if I take a passing glance to it later, I’ll spot even more. The subject under discussion is why, oh why, aren’t there more female bloggers and how come the ones that are out there, don’t get more attention?

I asked around and heard a lot of different answers. Some say it’s because the men got a head start. Jen Moseley, the politics editor at Feministing says, “I think there are a lot of female political bloggers out there. But since most of the ‘old guard’ big political blogs (funny that something 4-5 years old can be considered old now), were started by men, so they’re still looked at as the only ones that matter.”

Amy Richards, an author and one of the co-founders of Third Wave, thinks that the amount of attention focused on the boys might be more than just their first-mover status—it’s an artifact of their historical control of the media. Richards claims that “Political punditry has always been dominated by men and thus blogging is likely to follow that pattern.” Richards agrees that women aren’t becoming blogospheric stars as quickly as some of their male colleagues. She says, “I know that women are jumping into this debate with their opinions and perspectives, but because they are doing so in spaces more likely to attract women—they aren’t being legitimized.”

Ezra Klein agreed with Amy about the ghettoization of female voices, noting that while male political bloggers are known as “political” bloggers, women are more often known as “feminist” bloggers. “There’s this rich and broad feminist blogosphere, which is heavily female and very political, but considered a different sort of animal. Is Jill Filipovic a political blogger? Ann Friedman?” he says. Male bloggers are seen as talking about politics with a universal point of view, but when we women bring our perspective to the field, it’s seen as as a minority opinion.

But does it have to be that way? Blogs are supposed to be populist and thus it would seem like women could more easily level the playing field here than in other media. Red State’s Mike Krempasky says, “You’d think the internet would be the great equalizer or the ultimate meritocracy. ‘far from it.”

What a festering, rotting open sore of microbial, infectious, stupid ideas. What a fetid, bubbling stewpot of poppycock.

It’s like an invasion of scavengers hitting your farm all at once. Coyotes, hyenas…buzzards…what have you. Craven. Cowardly. Seeking to survive on the merits of others. There is so much wrong with this, it’s like a big herd of such scavengers descending in unison, each scavenger blissfully unaware the others are there.

A fine buckshot approach to this invasion is to simply withhold my own fire and rely on a non-whiny female blogger like Cassy Fiano, who was responsible for me finding out about this in the first place. And Cassy lays out the hot lead in such a way that most of the scavenger-herd is…addressed…leaving few stragglers.

Whenever I read these kinds of articles, I just want to smack the author in the face. Here’s what they seem to be completely incapable of understanding: if you think you’re a victim, that’s all you’ll ever be.

First of all, is Arianna Huffington really the best example of a female blogger she could come up with? I can think of several right off the top of my head: Michelle Malkin (duh!), Pamela Geller, Em Zanotti, LaShawn Barber, Mary Katharine Ham, Rachel Lucas, Melissa Clouthier… the list goes on and on, and these are just conservative female bloggers.

Right Wing News even did two pieces on female conservative bloggers, and most of them looked at being a female blogger as an asset.

I’ve never had one single person tell me my opinion had less merit because I’m a woman, or that I wasn’t as good as the guy bloggers out there. I’ve seen no evidence of a “boy’s club” in the blogosphere; in fact, every single male blogger I have had any kind of communication with whatsoever has been gracious, helpful, and more than willing to assist me in building my blogging career.

And good grief, the “ghettoization” of female voices?! What the hell planet is this Megan Carpentier writing from? Because there are more male bloggers than female, female voices are being “silenced” and “ghettoized”?!

Uh, sorry, honey. Not quite. Maybe if you live in Saudi Arabia you could have a point. But here, the only thing keeping female bloggers back is… female bloggers.

Why, then, are there more male bloggers than female? The answer is simple, and it’s feminism’s favorite catch phrase: choice. Men, in general, are more interested in politics than women are. Sure, women are interested, but I don’t think that there are as many women who are diehard political junkies like there are men. Go ahead, feminists, rip my skin off for stating That Which Must Never Be Said: that women do not have the same interests as men do. Anyways, if you want proof, look at blogosphere readership. Most people reading politics blogs are men, so it stands to reason that most political bloggers would be men as well. This also means being a female blogger is more of an asset, and not just because it gives all your male readers something to ogle at (although that’s a plus, too). It means you stand out more, your blog stands out more. And that’s a good thing.

Women also tend to be more thin-skinned. The insults female bloggers get are very personal, and very hurtful. They very often have nothing whatsoever to do with what you’re actually writing about, unless of course you’re talking about how ugly you are or perverted sexual tendencies. A lot of women just cannot take that kind of thing. It’s like an arrow to the heart for them. After so much of that, a lot of them quit, because it isn’t worth the stress and heartache for them.

And why does the internet — the political blogosphere, specifically — need to be “the great equalizer”? Why does it matter how many female vs. male bloggers there are out there? There is not one blog I read because of the gender of the author. I read them because of the content in the blogs, what the blogger has to say. I could give two shits whether it’s a man or a women writing behind the computer screen. Putting the emphasis on something as shallow as gender accomplishes what? Instead of focusing on the skin-deep, why doesn’t this lady focus on the ideas different bloggers put forth?

I don’t know where feminists got this idea that all male-dominated careers were unfair to women unless there are an exactly equal number of women participating in these careers, but it’s ridiculous. They need to get over the bean-counting. Living in a state of perpetual outrage or victimhood will get you nowhere.

One blast. All farm scavengers tremble in fear before the fury of Cassy’s 12-gauge.

But some wounded furballs are still limping around. For example, Cassy’s retort to the “ghettoization” remark is limited to chastising Carpentier for her lack of perspective in identifying what might be amiss in the status quo. She did a fine job of dealing with that, but I’m more concerned with what thoughts were percolating away in what passes for Carpentier’s cranium before she jotted down her whiny bromide. If I want to “ghettoize” someone, or a class of someones, in the blogosphere — how do I go about doing this? What are my goals, exactly? Assuming the solution would resemble the problem, it must be up to the reader to fill that in because Carpentier admits ignorance in understanding how to fix it.

Megan Carpentier is kind of like Luke Skywalker wandering into the dark cave; she found in there what she brought in with her. Her point is “these blogs that I’m looking at are mostly male” but she could have looked at some other blogs. Prominence is measured, on the blogosphere, mostly in the eye of the beholder. What Carpentier has done, is confess — without even realizing she’s so confessing — that she comes from a weird, surreal universe in which that is not the case. She’s used to living in a place where some central kiosk tells everyone what to watch.

But it must be a two-way street, in some way, or else there’d be no point in Carpentier whining away. She must be an example of what I’ve noticed about most people who can’t cope without a central authority telling them what to do: Now and then, such complainers want to have a voice in telling the central authority what to tell others to do. So there’s a pecking order to this. Sniveling whiny complainer supplies instructions to the central kiosk; central kiosk radiates the instructions to the unwashed masses within line-of-sight.

I’ve never had any respect for people like this. I’ve always thought of them not only as tedious, thin-skinned banshees, but as shallow thinkers. They do their shrieking selectively. They only complain about the things we decide for ourselves, that have come to their attention at any given time, remaining agnostic and unconcerned about our choices of: Ice cream flavor, color of socks to wear today, stick shift or automatic, plain-cake or chocolate-with-sprinkles, the list goes on and on. One can’t help but nurture a fantasy that has to do with calling their attention to all these things at once, and kicking off some kind of carping-bitching-overload chain reaction. Like Captain Kirk and Mister Spock talking some ancient alien computer into a sparkling, smoky mess of paper mache and dry ice on the stage of Desilu.

We live as free men, deciding for ourselves and living with the consequences. Too many who pretend to walk among us are left unsatisfied by this state of affairs. Let posterity forget they were our countrymen, as the saying goes.

Cassy has been distracted by the great umbrage she’s taken — rightfully so — to the low pain threshold of Screechy Megan. What her criticism has allowed to walk away mostly unscathed is Megan’s mindset. The mindset of insects. Except insects, so far as I know, don’t bitch when the queen tells them to go someplace not to their liking.

I think my afterthought-comment over at Cassy’s place might address what’s left…

I was doing some more thinking about this. It seems we have some “dry rot” in the blogosphere, people who are blogging, and for the sake of their own sanity probably should not be.

How do we change that? How loud do women have to shout?

The ‘sphere promotes equality by failing to embrace it. Let’s say some left-wing pinhead says something on TV and it rubs Michelle Malkin the wrong way. Cassy Fiano is also piqued about the same thing. Malkin writes it up with something original; Fiano also writes it up with something original.

I like what Michelle said and I also like what Cassy said. Neither one linked or referenced the other, and they both said essentially the same thing. Linking both of them is pointless. I have a finite amount of time to blog and my readers have a finite amount of time to read.

So I must choose…

…and I’m going to link Malkin because she gets more traffic. And so, male or female, a blog “hits a groove.” It gets to the point where it is hit more because it does not need the traffic. It’s like a society with the ultimate regressive tax system — we all get together to help out whoever doesn’t need it.

The system works, because it achieves a blend of group-think and individuality. We’re all looking at the same stuff…kinda. But we’re also looking at our own stuff and forming our own ideas.

The exasperated inquiry “how loud do we have to shout” betrays an immature mindset, one that is accustomed to an all-powerful centralized authority. A “mommy” figure. But a weak mommy figure; one that panders to whichever “child” does the most bitching.

Not that I mean to imply Ms. Carpenter [sic] grew up that way. But if I had to bet some money, I’d bet it on the affirmative, and that would go for a random selection among her regular readership as well. The notion that some adequate amount of carping and bellyaching will change the universe to the liking of whoever’s doing it, is hideously offensive to me…to most men…and I would add to all “real” women as well. It’s a decidedly out-of-date 1960’s mindset, one that pays lip service to “choice” but only honors the choices made by certain, deserving people, and insists that everyone else has to follow along whether they like it or not.

How do you make more bloggers female? Might as well make more cars on the road listen to country music on their radios. It’s up to the dude/dudette behind the steering wheel, and it seems Ms. Carpenter [sic] just can’t handle that.

Womens’ Characters That Should Be Models For Others

Wednesday, May 23rd, 2007

Jessica AlbaJessica Alba doesn’t understand what she’s doing to herself. Gorgeous body…irritating mannerisms, displayed deliberately, ostensibly to portray someone who can get along without anyone else’s approval…but beneath the surface, craving it. Does this have some staying power? Well, whatever happened to Dark Angel?

Despite a strong fan base (and a second season finale directed by James Cameron), Dark Angel was cancelled in 2002 after just two seasons due to budget costs and low second season ratings.

Not hard to see coming. I predicted it the very first time I heard Alba open her mouth and deliver a line. Being a smartass before the bad guy is really dead. Mistake. Building a television series around it. Bigger mistake. Letting five-times-married misogynist James Cameron have something to do with something about strong female characters: Huge mistake, done over and over again.

Alba, I’m convinced, is a walking reflection of that funny birthday card. The one with a gorgeous woman with a perfect body sunbathing on the beach in a bikini resembling two band-aids and a cork — and the caption is “No matter how hot she is, someone somewhere is tired of her shit.” Would you like to start shacking up with Jessica Alba? Not just sleep with her whenever you want…not just brag to you buddies about shagging Jessica Alba…but listen to her smack wise at you all day, ever day, for months.

People don’t have an apetite for it. Even if they share the agenda of building a generation of female smartasses, you hunger for this stuff only so long. Otherwise, Dark Angel would have had a third season.

Her smartass mouth betrays the problem:

Jessica Alba – ranked No. 2 on this year’s “Hot 100” list by Maxim magazine – has a rebellious side. “I love challenging authority,” the 26-year-old actress tells InStyle in its June issue, on newsstands Friday. “It probably wasn’t easy being my parents. The second somebody says ‘no’ to me is the second I’m going to jump up and say ‘yes!'”
:
She’s finally “getting to play characters and dive into things and not just be sort of this version of ‘this girl,'” says Alba, who found she was typecast as “some kind of little tart.”

“Because obviously, if you have a womanly figure, you’re not allowed to have a brain or any idea of the world whatsoever. You just have to be hot and use your body to get ahead.”

Doing it to yourself, sweetie. Doing it to yourself. Speaking for myself…and trust me, I’m labelled as a male chauvinist pig about as often as the next guy, not that I find these accusations to be well-thought-out or anything…I would go so much further out of my way to see what Scarlett Johansson is doing in a new movie, than Ms. Alba. And that’s not a good thing if you are Jessica Alba. Scarlett has a pretty nice body too, and she seems to be a sweet girl. I think if Scarlett and I were the last two people on the planet, I’d stay sane for awhile. I can’t say the same about Alba.

Scarlett JohanssonFear of strong women? Some people would say so. Johansson, however, doesn’t impress me as being submissive or weak. Just like the “Alba Zen” of developing a sudden taste for Coke, when you see I want a Pepsi, is not exactly the definition of strength.

But while Alba’s comments are intellectually vacant, to say nothing of repititious, the question that is opened by her observations is well worth pondering. Mankind has been working on incorporating female characters into drama, for — well, all of recorded history, it turns out. As a science, this remains hit-or-miss. People who have devoted their entire lives to figuring out how to do it, overseeing the investment of hundreds of millions of dollars into it, often know nothing significant beyond what can be observed by someone watching a movie or reading a book for the very first time.

But we do have some patterns. If anyone takes a minute or two to jot them down. So I thought I would.

First, women have a specific role to play in books and movies, and it’s a role men don’t support quite as well. Regardless of our sexual preferences or the agenda we have in mind for women, it seems we all identify with the ladies when they learn things. This is why the most intriguing female characters are never in James Bond films. It isn’t because of chauvinism from a bygone Cold-War era; it’s that in spy movies, the all-important task of figuring out what’s going on is supposed to be done by, well, the spy. Even in situations like those, where men step into the female role of detective, it’s done differently. James Bond steps into a hotel room and the audience expects him to get on a phone and meet his local contact. Instead, he searches for bugs. He finds some. Aha! I didn’t know there would be bugs in the room…James Bond did. He’s one step ahead of the audience. He knew something, the audience did not.

No matter how feminized some of us are, we just don’t tolerate this in female characters for some reason. We learn what they learn…as they learn it.

And it’s okay for the audience to know things the female character does not yet know. It just can’t work the other way.

That’s not to say, however, we want our film ladies to be quivering wallflowers. We do want them to be resourceful in their own way. They should be captured by the bad guy, and usually, if they try to escape, their attempt at escape should fail. You need a hero to escape. Is that sexism? It could be…it might be defended, however, as constructing a strong story. A villain isn’t threatening if he can’t perform the simple task of keeping a captured woman captured. But also, while a woman is captured, she can help develop her own character as well as the character of the villains in proximity. When this communication is coed, it’s more interesting than two guys talking smack at each other. We would rather see boy-girl. So captured the damsel shall remain.

But the best female characters, while in captivity, outsmart the villain in some way. This is a matter of balance. The villain has already done some outsmarting in his own way; she’s his captive, no? So without escaping, she can turn the tables on him. Trick him into revealing something. The result is we’re forced to keep watching, because we don’t know who’s going to “win.” Good drama.

Female characters question the hero’s loyalty, but never his competence. We are programmed to think that if a woman regards a man as weak or ineffectual, she must be right — and if that’s the case, this isn’t a very intriguing hero. We end up looking forward to the end of any scene that flaccid hero is in, so from then on, when the hero is at center stage the audience is being bored. So she views the hero as a maelstrom of unlimited power. Her issues with him, while she has some, have to do with where that power is being applied.

She has an emotional hold on the hero. This is important. If he doesn’t care what she’s doing, what she thinks, what happens to her, how she’s feeling, then she can’t motivate him. The best heroines provide a sense of purpose to a mission that, otherwise, would be without purpose. They define a hero who is motivated out of love, and we are more captivated with that hero than with any other.

Also, she should place pressure on the hero. She should be good at what she does, and in this way impose a necessity on him to prove things. She should offer him friendly competition. In short — she should use a number of tools to make him better than what he would otherwise be.

We are somewhat more intrigued by a female rebel breaking rules, and producing results that would have been unrealized had protocol been followed — than masculine figures doing the same thing. This is why the “cop movie” was mostly a fad of the 1980’s. You know the one. A rebel cop, or duo of black-cop-white-cop, breaks all the rules, ends up suspended, after being constantly yelled at by his “Lieutenant,” who in turn was almost always portly and black. Started with Dirty Harry, ended with Lethal Weapon. The Byronic hero, who subjects himself to endless torment because he just can’t stay within the lines, begins to bore us after awhile. Not so with the ladies who do the same thing. There is the additional angle that they can use their feminine charms to get out of trouble, and we never know how well this will work for them. A guy breaks a rule, we expect he’ll get his come-uppins…through someone yelling, at least. Gets boring after awhile.

And of course, no primary character should do what is expected of them all the time. So a female character should break some rules.

We are always fascinated, I suspect, when a female knows how to do things spectacularly well. It’s often a big help when the hero knows what to do, how to do it, and his plan involves about thirty steps…and before he can get started, the heroine comes along and gets it all wrapped up in one or two.

There are quite a few things a woman should not do. There is, for example, the slasher-film tango, the big bundle of physical things a woman does right before she is snuffed. Taking long sultry showers, walking backwards, closing medicine cabinet doors and moaning “Is that you?” and “It’s not funny anymore!” In 2007, this is all beyond tiresome. And of course she should never, ever, have arguments with the hero about whether she’s coming with him or not.

Being hysterical, assuming there was ever an audience for this, I’d say has just about run its course. Elegant storytelling means the audience knows what to feel. Do that job right, and we won’t need a walking cue card.

I’ve personally never cared for women being brainwashed. Someone somewhere must have been endlessly fascinated with this, perhaps sexually. Most recently we had Dark Phoenix in X-Men III, and the trend started…sometime in the sixties. The Star Trek episodes where Captain Kirk had to smack one of his female Lieutenants across the face, knocking her out instantly of course, so that she’d stop being hysterical and they could all leave the doomed planet before it exploded…or the monster…or whatever. On Her Majesty’s Secret Service, in whch Blofeld sought to destroy the entire world’s agricultural products through an army of hypnotized, brainwashed women. Somehow, the women lose control of their intellectual faculties. This has strong appeal for someone somewhere. Not for me.

The women who have captured our attention, have never limited themselves to sitting around waiting to be rescued. Victims are boring.

Compelling female characters do not cheat. It compromises the hero’s character. They may cheat on the villain, but even that diminishes the woman’s character. They aren’t remembered later. Look at poor Diane Lane; everybody knows her name, but nobody can remember the name of any character she played. Her characters are almost always married, and straying outside. People find this titillating, but they don’t respect it.

The female characters who have spoken loudest, to me…

1. Marion Ravenwood (Karen Allen) in Raiders of the Lost Ark (1981)

What a stroke of brilliance it was to give her a “super power,” which was the endless capacity for imbibing alcohol without getting tanked. It starts out as a seemingly useless skill, and she ends up working it into an escape plan. Perfect. She respected her hero, didn’t entirely trust him, overcame a broken heart but still carried herself with confidence. Easily the greatest female movie character of all time.

2. ElastiGirl (Holly Hunter) in The Incredibles (2004)

The movie is divided cleanly into two segments, in the first of which Mrs. Incredible has to find out what Mr. Incredible is doing, and after that they unite in a common cause. She loses a point for arguing with her leading man about whether she’s coming with him or not. Other than that, everything a strong female should be. Not sure about what’s going on — until she is — and then she quickly re-solidifies the union with her husband and helps to save the day. And what a stunning rear end. In the right mood, I’d rather stare at her than Lara Croft.

3. Dagny Taggart in Atlas Shrugged (Book) (1957)

Probably the best execution of “heroine trying to figure out what’s going on” in literary history. She’s interested in things other women find vulgar, bored by things that are supposed to define the whole world for other women, and she’s not the least bit concerned about any of it. Confidence personified.

4. Helen Tasker (Jamie Lee Curtis) in True Lies (1994)

Her issues with trusting her husband, after finding out he’s been a spy since two years before marrying her without telling her, define the central storyline for the entire movie. She looks amazing in her undies. This is metaphorical; just as even Jamie Lee Curtis’ fans were surprised about how she still looked and what she could do, this reflected Harry Tasker’s surprise at what his wife could do. A metaphor involving the actress herself, what an amazing achievement and how difficult it must have been. And it’s the brainchild of the guy who did Dark Angel. James, why can you do it some of the time but not all of the time?

5. Mary MacGregor (Jessica Lange) in Rob Roy (1995)

She was responsible for starting the chain reaction that would lead to good finally winning out over evil. She loses a point for doing it by going blubbering to a big powerful man, but it’s a very small point she lost. This was all the power a woman of her station would have in the young British Union. But she gets it back again by never, ever arguing with her husband about whether she was coming with him. She argued, instead, about whether he was going at all. Best of all, she agreed with him about his principles, admired him for having them, and simply disagreed about how far he would take them because she didn’t want him to die.

Simply put, the perfect movie wife. Perfectly capable of managing day-to-day without her spouse — but decidedly incomplete.

6. Holly Gennero McLane (Bonnie Bedelia) in Die Hard (1988)

Holly McLane has all of the ingredients. She’s in love with her husband, she respects him as a potent, powerful fighting force, she doesn’t trust him entirely, she doesn’t think highly of the way he does things, she finds him frustrating and irritating. She gets kidnapped. She outsmarts the bad guys, in her own way. She figures out what’s going on and the audience figures it out with her. The only thing she takes a pass on is getting in on some of the action. But she covers that, too, in the last couple of minutes in the movie by slugging that reporter.

7. Caroline “Ma” Ingalls (Karen Grassle) in Little House on the Prairie (TV) (1974-83)

She thinks for herself. But she’s motivated by exactly the same goals as her husband. If she thinks she has a need to stop what she’s doing and question him, she will.

8. Kay Adams (Dianne Keaton) in The Godfather (1972)

Tragically, here we have a woman with some good reason to question what her man was doing. But she knew Michael was lying. He really did intend to make the Corleone family legitimate, but he was doomed to fail. She probably knew this better than he did. She’s a critical pillar in the story, and she makes it work.

9. Marge Gunderson (Frances McDormand) in Fargo (1996)

What a woman! She faces down the bad guy as he is feeding his partner’s body into a woodchipper. Sees to it that justice is done, in her third trimester, without breaking her water. Comes home, snuggles up to her husband, and points out that his three-cent postage stamp is going to be just as important as any other. That is just so touching in it’s own way.

10. Ophelia (Jamie Lee Curtis) in Trading Places (1983)

Another one played by Curtis, how interesting. She’s easy on the eyes whether she’s from Austria, or Sweden, or just plain doesn’t know herself. She’s got a plan for making it, with or without Dan Akroyd. Akroyd’s character isn’t nearly as resourceful. But she goes with his plan, and in the end they both end up far wealthier than either of them would have been alone. Well, with Eddie Murphy’s help, but the formula is there. And best of all, in the very last scene of the movie, all the guys are fully clothed and the women are wearing next to nothing, as the Good Lord intended.

11. Evelyn Cross Mulwray (Faye Dunaway) in Chinatown (1974)

The only one on my list who knows something the audience doesn’t. Thanks to Faye Dunaway’s talents, we just can’t stop watching her, and we’re constantly wondering what will happen next until the very end of the movie.

12. Ripley (Sigourney Weaver) in Alien (1979)

She’s not there to yell at people or to act tough, she’s there to solve a puzzle. There’s the magic formula again: What she knows, the audience knows, what remains a mystery to us, is a mystery to her too. If she was a man, it wouldn’t work nearly as well. Well, I suppose Roy Scheider did the same thing when he faced off against the mechanical shark. This could be thought of as Ridley Scott’s answer to that. It works. The feminine mystique adds more depth than the outer space setting and the unseen enemy from another planet.

13. Dana Scully (Gillian Anderson) in X-Files (TV) (1993-2002)

The bitch is always wrong, and in ten seasons she never learns to shut her mouth. “But Muuuuuulllder!!! I can’t believe you think these cows were eviscerated by beings from another planet, there’s no eeeevvvvvviiiiidence!!!” Ugh. He’s Mulder. He read the script. Just go with it.

But give her a lot of credit. It was much more fun to watch these two, than Jack Webb and Harry Morgan. And it wasn’t because of the glowing creature emerging at midnight from the swamp, or the government conspiracies. It was because she was a beautiful, intriguing, intelligent, complex woman.

14. Clarice Starling (Jodie Foster) in Silence of the Lambs (1991)

There we go again. A woman applies some critical-thinking skills to the problem at hand, and we feel compelled to watch her do it. Sexual preference doesn’t matter, everyone likes to watch a woman solve a puzzle. We feel what she feels. A man can’t pull it off as well. But Clarice is no ordinary woman. She’s got scars from her past, she’s bright, energetic, capable, independent, married to her job. She’s a whole new character. Dented and flawed. The Byronic hero in female form. Somehow, it works.

15. Sarah Connor (Linda Hamilton) in Terminator (1984)

The movie starts, she has no clue what is going on. The weird stuff starts happening, she has no clue who she can trust. After building the pipe bombs with Kyle Reese, she’s still somewhat clueless about what she’s fighting. But she learns to be resourceful, and figures out how to lower the press on the evil crawling metal skeleton. She is the best embodiment of Joseph Campbell’s “Hero with a Thousand Faces.”

16. Queen Gorgo (Lena Headey) in 300 (2007)

Now, this was interesting. She saw Leonidas off to war, bidding him to come back home again carrying his shield, or on it. It was up to him to fight the physical battle, and face down Xerxes himself, but back at home she was left to confront an enemy her husband was spared: The Fifth Column. In this way, the masculine energies were leveraged against Saddam Hussein and Osama bin Laden, while the feminine mystique was positioned opposite Harry Reid and Howard Dean. A story for our times.

17. Adrian Pennino (Talia Shire) in Rocky (1976)

Okay, she is made great through a single line, and for that the bell gets most of the credit. But you aren’t human if you don’t get chills when she says, simply, “win.” That’s the job: He is transformed into something far greater than what he would be without her.

18. Charlotte Seccombe (Lynn Redgrave) in Centennial (TV) (1978-79)

She knows how to get her man away from the filthy clutches of Clemma Zendt. And it’s a delicious scene, which would have failed to blossom with the talents of a lesser actress — like Jessica Alba for example. You don’t want to mess around with Charlotte.

Those are all the ones I can think of for now. But you see, the point is this is something much more complicated than saying “yes” when someone else says “no.” And perhaps it’s an unfair burden that the male characters don’t have to share; the females have to define what they’re all about, at the same time as they do the same for other characters.

I think the gals have the long end of the stick on this one, though. It takes much more talented writing in order to use what they have to offer, properly. And once this is done, you have a kick-ass story. All those other staples, like dizzying photography or spellbinding music, you can pitch back if you want.

Now, try this. Go through a list of cream-of-the-crop movies. The innernets are covered with lists like these…Star Wars and Godfather and Shawshank Redemption always at the top. You will find — there are a whole bunch of movies that have no women. War movies. And some others…

This is not to say female character make a movie bad. They make the movie more challenging to make. Those best-of-the-best, that have no women in them as primary characters, they simply sidestepped the challenge. And you’re going to find the photography in those movies is breathtaking. Because it has to be. The music is original. And it just blows you away. Otherwise, you wouldn’t be seeing the movie on a top-one-hundred list.

Characters can contribute enough to make that expandable. Coed, not male-only. If the female characters are complex, and walk that fine balance between dependence and independence. Ditzy wallflowers don’t get the job done. And neither do smartass attention-whore rebels. For this, you need works of art, not tiresome tropes.

And I’m afraid, due to vapid sentiments given voice by Ms. Alba, this is an art that is gradually being lost. Too many more “Gotta Make A Boat Payment” movies, with cookie-cutter female characters, and the females are going to be lowered into yet another cultural malaise.

And we all know what happens then. Ho hum…BLAME THE MEN…must be rampant sexism out there.

Well, I’m not on board with any of that, so don’t send any of the blame my way when the time comes. And I hope it doesn’t get that far, because now that movie tickets are north of the ten dollar mark, I haven’t got much patience for crappy movies anymore.

Sandra Bullock

Friday, November 17th, 2006

Sandra BullockI don’t know it for sure and I have no way of testing it. But I’m thinking if, somehow, I could become acquainted with all the Hollywood celebrities I’ve ever seen in a movie, getting to know each one of them as a human being, Sandra Bullock might be my favorite. Or one of my favorites. As a person.

Bullock married motorcycle builder and Monster Garage host Jesse James on July 16, 2005; they met when Bullock arranged for her ten-year-old godson to meet James as a Christmas present. On her husband and her marriage, Bullock has commented “So basically through a courtship of letters… I learned about a human being. It was not something I wanted, needed, or looked for, but because he was a stronger person than I was, spiritually and on a tolerance level, I was lucky enough that he educated me… I always thought of marriage as a death sentence, that there’d be a ball and chain, and you’d be told, ‘You need to stop doing these things and become a good little wife.'” Now people say ‘oh my God you’re going to have sex with one person the rest of your life!’ I hope I have sex with him for the rest of my life – because I like it!”[5] Bullock was once engaged to actor Tate Donovan, and had previously dated football player Troy Aikman, blues guitarist Guy Forsythe, Austin musician Bob Schneider and film co-stars, Ryan Gosling and Matthew McConaughey.

Isn’t that exactly what every fella would want his new wife to say?

Now, if she’d just stop making these godawful womyns’ movies.