House of Eratosthenes

About the time I stopped dating liberal women for good, some decade or so ago, I began to become aware of a phenomenon in which said liberal women tried to manufacture more liberal men. They did this then, and continue to do it today, with their verginers. I’m about to describe, pretty much, exactly what you think I’m going to. I saw they would put out subtle clues that, as they made the God-only-knows-how-complicated decision about whether the rooster would be allowed into the henhouse that night, said rooster’s political opinions were definitely part of the equation. How flattering it was for knight to know that his princess’ special evening with him, was just a tiny figment within a grand master plan to change the political direction of the country!

Perhaps in another time, history would have gone different for me. But Clinton was finishing his second year in office, and my mouth, which couldn’t be silenced, cost me a handful of carnal opportunities. I’m grateful for this. There are men who are much more seasoned than I am and much more intelligent than I am, who to this day don’t understand how empowering it is to tell a woman the following, and mean it: You are right, we’ll both be happier with other people, best luck to you and don’t let the doorknob hit you in the ass.

It is seldom done. Men aren’t wired for it. We’re the keymasters, they’re the gatekeepers.

And perhaps that is why there seem to be so many men, who appear to be relatively adventurous, sexually, who are well on their way to old age without having learned this: Women, by and large, don’t crave yes-men. Smart women, stupid women, blondes, brunettes, redheads — when they pick up the essence of a strong, decisive man, it’s like the most powerful pheromone. Men who are decisive about important stuff, “We aren’t buying aluminum siding from that asshole,” or silly stuff — “I like beer, I like hotwings.” I’m not talking about being a raging dickhole just for its own sake.

I’m talking about treating the lady with respect by saving her some freakin’ energy. Making a decision without checking with her, once in awhile. Women crave this, especially the ones that frequently demand the opposite. I’ve written about this before.

But once a man starts down the slope of “Pillsbury Doughboy,” molding and shaping himself into what a woman says she wants, it becomes egomaniacally important to deny what I have written above. So the men become liberals.

It must be an awful existence, because I notice liberal men seem to have dry spells now and then, just like conservative men. How else do you explain these “mating calls” wherein they are forced to advertise their pliable philosophies, in their role as slaves in search of a mistress. And what is up with THAT? Shouldn’t indentured servitude, and unemployment, be mutually-exclusive albatrosses? How badly do you have to screw up to end up wearing both of them on your neck at the same time?

One of these liberal mating-call advertisements has something to do with “appreciating a woman with spunk.”

What I find a little bit silly about this whole thing is, when “a woman with spunk” has our own values, we all appreciate that; and when she doesn’t, who the hell does this guy think he’s kidding? Locked into the timeless “when are you going to stand up to your mother” argument that has resurfaced periodically since Shakesperean times, and before, every man is going to find a spunky woman a raging pain in the ass. When a man advertises that he likes a spunky woman without reservation, what he is advertising is that he never, or seldom, has been in a position where he disagrees with his woman.

And when women have been around long enough to figure out what they like in men, and what they don’t, this doesn’t intrigue them. Not in the slightest.

But we’re all entitled to our personal tastes, so if these guys are out there in an endless search for a “Mommy” figure to tell them what to do and what to think, more power to’em. Here at this blog, however, we have a “You Go First” rule about such things. You crusade for a law against being able to watch TV from the dining room table, you should be among the first to position your dining room table so you can’t see the TV. You think more people should be driving hybrid cars, you should be among the first to buy one.

And if you think there should be more spunky, assertive women flooding our streets, lying in wait to pounce on the rest of us whether we ask for it or not, you should be married to a woman like Barbara Streisand for six months or so.

I don’t mean to complain, here, about women who are opinionated. Good heavens, no. If it were so impossible to be around opinionated people, a lot of us who are not alone, would have to be — and certainly I would be among them. But it’s a cinch that if Babs doesn’t think the Los Angeles Times should be allowed to go about its day, free to think about other things besides the recent sacking of Robert Scheer, her stud James Brolin probably isn’t free to think about too much else either.

And is he free to disagree, perhaps to think something like, for example, it’s about goddamned time the Los Angeles Times got rid of that s.o.b.? That is a private matter for the Streisand/Brolin household to hash out, of course.

But for chrissakes, don’t make me laugh.

LOS ANGELES – Barbra Streisand has canceled her subscription to the Los Angeles Times over the firing of the paper’s liberal columnist.

The newspaper dropped Robert Scheer and several other columnists last month; Scheer speculated he was let go because the Times had tired of his politics.

Perhaps the most liberal voice on the paper’s opinion pages, Scheer had been a Times columnist for 12 years. He was a reporter for the newspaper for 17 years before that.

“Robert Scheer’s column, with its often singular voice of dissent and groundbreaking expositional content, has been among the most notable features that have sustained my interest in subscribing to the LA Times for many years now,” Streisand wrote in a letter she sent to the newspaper and posted on her Web site.

Streisand, a well-known supporter of Democratic candidates and liberal causes, wrote that by firing Scheer the Times had reduced the diversity of voices on its opinion pages. A shortened version of her letter was printed in the Times Nov. 23. The full letter is posted on her Web site.

You know, it really isn’t that hard to figure Barbra Streisand out, and there are millions and millions of people who suffer from her illness, not all of them women. It’s very simple. Barbra cannot state a compelling case as to why you should think a certain thing, because she’s formed an unattractive and unproductive habit of skipping to that last part and simply telling people what to think. That’s where she was years and years ago. Her disease has metastasized, now, to the point where she can’t do anything without telling lesser people what they’re supposed to be thinking. She makes a movie, she must tell lesser people what to think. She runs a website, she must tell lesser people what to think. She writes a letter to the newspaper, she must tell lesser people what to think. She takes a shower, brushes her teeth, washes her naughty bits, takes a crap, she must tell lesser people what to think.

Not this is what I noticed and this is why I think it’s important and this is what it must mean and why…but, simply, this is what you should think. Passing out opinions like hard-candy, as opposed to the well-stated, logically-established arguments upon which those opinions rest. It is a subtle, but meaningful, difference. Barbra, and people like her, wouldn’t understand it. I pity her for that, but I pity her more, for this apparent inability to do even the most trivial things in life, without telling people what they’re supposed to be thinking.

It appears to have become something like a bad case of gas.

I have a short list of final chapters to my existence within this mortal coil, which I absolutely dread. One is burning to death in a car, from which I’m unable to extract myself. The rest of them have to do with being alienated from my own thinking apparatus: a brain tumor, like the one I watched slowly kill my mother; strokes; dementia; schizophrenia; and…

…living with some bitter old cow who wants to dictate to me what my opinions should be.

I’m probably “doomed” to never experience the last of those. For that, President Clinton has my undying gratitude.

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You Go First IIThursday, December 8th, 2005

You Go First II
Thursday, December 8th, 2005