And Still I Persist points out that maybe, just maybe, we’re seeing the reason for the decline of newspapers, paraded right in front of our noses each and every single morning we bother to crack one open. On the online edition of The Denver Post, take note of the first headline which is in bigger and bolder type than all the rest:
Over a generation ago we used to wonder “Are our newspapers applying such scrutiny to (insert name here) because he happens to be a powerful nationwide-officeholder, or because he is a Republican?” What a wonderful learning experience. In 2009 there are no powerful nationwide-officeholders who are Republicans — and so all uncertainty regarding such questions, has been scientifically removed.
Prediction: It is not going to be all Palin, all the time. As soon as 1) another conservative rises up to frighten our liberals more than she does, or 2) it can be strategically calculated that silence would do more damage to her cause than talking about her, our newspapers will stop talking about Sarah Palin. But until then, the dead-tree industry is a Palin-tabloid industry, and the “news bureaus” in Anchorage remain open…and if we want to crack open a newspaper to read about the people who really do have all the power right now, well, you should expect to read about the fashion sense of our First Lady, vegetable gardens, good intentions and puppies. Newspapers are not, for the most part, businesses that are just out to make a buck. That’s a lie. Now that the rebels have grown up to become the power structure they once despised, our newspapers have fallen into an unfortunate habit of comforting the powerful and afflicting the afflicted.
Mmmm, hmmm…I thought I was the King of Lists, but I’m a-missing this one. Should I shamelessly steal Andy’s idea and start my own, or admit that I have met my superior and humbly submit some proposals for him to add to his own?
I don’t know what to do about that one. I do like to have the creative juices sloshing around in the list-making department, but I like to recognize a unique idea when the credit is duly deserved. I’m leaning toward the latter of those two.
Either way, I’ve got some ideas percolating for #4, #5, #6 and onward. Hey, how about posting your own in the comments below? You’ll feel better.
A higher standard of writing, about a rather ordinary subject that is the center of our entire lives, in the case of many of us.
Motherhood is balancing act for me. Fierce, indescribable love fighting a driving desire to run from the mind numbing dailiness of children’s needs. Doesn’t matter if you work or stay home, the requirements never change. I’ve done it both ways, the working mode was probably better for my mental health, but I understand that other people take to raising children with much more ease, regardless of circumstance, settling into the demands with little perceived effort or sacrifice.
Endless repetitions of simple instructions; brush your teeth, chew with your mouth closed, say thank you, start your homework, take a bath, send me slipping the rims of lucidity. The constant refrain of schedules and activities, laundry and meals don’t suit me. The endless brawling noise drives me straight out of my mind. I would kill without blinking for my boys, but raising them into responsible members of society, sunrise to sunset, sends me straight around bend. Buckets of monotonous drudgery go into molding decent human beings fit to take their place in society.
Blogger friend Buck was threatened by a neighbor. Didn’t realize until he was neck-deep, what anguish might ensue from a casual day of video-ing.
This is the age in which we live; the paradox of our time. Public things are now private, and private things are now public. Kids retreating into a world in which they listen to their private stash o’ tunes…that is now a public thing, since they want you to notice they’re doing it on a true, genuine iPod-whatever. Even as they ignore you.
On the other hand, if you’re a nice-lookin’ girl at Mardi Gras, it’s perfectly acceptable to flash your pink puppies around…even obligatory, if all the other gals are doing it. But then you should have complete control over whatever videocams or Kodak-disposables happen to take in the sights you’ve now made public. Just show some angst, and it isn’t public anymore.
Decorum. Discretion. The presumption that, whatever you put on display, will by the next morning be splashed across the New York Times (or, to make the analogy more current, whatever thing people nowadays actually read). Controlling whatever is actually under your control…which is what people are capable of seeing.
Whatever happened to it, I wonder? Nowadays, it seems people do as they like, and then if someone might possibly make a record out of it they think it’s somehow appropriate to go camera-chasing.
1. Home schooling.
2. Bikes versus cars versus pedestrians.
3. Chiropractors.
4. Declawing cats.
5. Music piracy/copying/sharing/theft/freedom.
6. Breastfeeding.
7. Coldplay.
8. Twitter.
9. The ending of The Sopranos.
10. Macs and PCs.
Not to beat around the BUSH, but I’m having some doubts about whether this can be reLIED upon as an exhaustive list of things you should avoid talking ABOUT. It seems to me there might be one or two other WEAPONS in the arsenal, things that attract lots and lots OF acrimonious debate that doesn’t seem to be headed anywhere…tons and tons of volume but precious little MASS involved in these things. I can’t quite place what the missing item might be…hmmm…I should try to think of it, because runaway pointless debates like these could easily lead to the Internet’s eventual DESTRUCTION. What could it be?
Well done, Rick. We’ll try sometime off in the future, hopefully the not-too-distant one, for that “meet in the middle somewhere” motorcycle trip…maybe before your two millionth hit. We’ll see.
Nugget of Wisdom I left at Cassy’s blog. The subject under discussion is a feminist who hates, hates, hates people paying too much attention to her overly-large breasts.
Hello, good friend/acquaintance/classmate/stranger. I’m just writing to let you know that I am in fact aware that my breasts are big. Thanks.
I mean, I’ve only been living with them for years. But thank you, person/classmate-who-I-may-or-may-not-know-particularly-well-and-don’t-necessarily-feel-comfortable-with for informing me. Your comment about my chest really spurred meaningful and insightful conversation and didn’t embarrass or dehumanize me in the slightest. I feel incredibly respected.
No but seriously. Don’t tell me to, “put them away,” or notify me that you could probably swipe a credit card through my cleavage. I don’t want to hear it. If my bra is visible and you would like to enlighten me of that fact, that’s fine, but making a “hilarious” comment about my breasts because you somehow feel that it’s appropriate or because you “only want to give me a compliment” ISN’T charming. What it tells me is that you’re more interested in discussing cup size than anything I may have been able to add to our conversation.
And another thing, wearing a low-cut shirt doesn’t give you the right to comment either. I’m sorry if I’m showing cleavage, that must be really difficult for you, but I’m sure you can move your eyes about six inches to the north . It is NOT my fault that you think yourself incapable of doing the simple task of looking at my face. And NO, wearing a low-cut shirt does not mean I’m “asking for it,” no matter how many people may have told you so. Please desist.
This may seem harsh, but I have HAD IT with STRANGERS and even CLOSE FRIENDS of both genders thinking it’s entirely normal to say, “Wait, oh my God, but you have really big tits,” in the middle of a conversation. And I’m fucking sick of letting such inconsiderate assholery get to me.
With the most sincere “go fuck yourself” I can muster,
Phoebe
Cassy’s wisdom:
I know what it’s like to have these kinds of comments. Sometimes it’s funny, sometimes it’s creepy, and most of the time it’s inappropriate. But guess what? People do not always behave perfectly, and life is not going to fit into this perfect little model of what you want it to be. I have had all kinds of comments from men and women alike about my boobs, and I certainly do not carry around this baggage, thinking about how horrible it is and what a victim I am…My freshman year of high school, when I first started — ahem — developing there were two boys who rode the bus with me who used to say stupid shit like that all the time. It got them nowhere and did nothing to me beyond getting me to roll my eyes and call them some name, probably the equivalent of today’s “assclown”. And then I went on about my day. I never felt like these guys were acting like terrible men trying to keep me, a woman, down. I thought, “Gee, what immature assholes.” And then I’d forget about it. Stressing about it and dwelling over it so much that you have to write a blog post about it is pathetic.
Because you know, letting someone define you by their insults says more about you than it does about them.
:
The other part of her post that I found interesting was how she apparently didn’t like people staring or even mentioning her breasts, even when she says herself she’s wearing low-cut shirts. Honey, if you wear low-cut tops with your boobs hanging out, people are gonna look. They just are. Either learn to deal with it or cover up more, because there will never, ever be a complete absence of people ogling a woman with large breasts. There are simply some people who will just look, and it’s our responsibility to find a way to handle the situation. Oh, and if there are so many people pointing out your boobs, it may not be a compliment. They might be trying to tell you something — as in, “Um, Phoebe? Your boobs are like, huge, and maybe you should put them away,” meaning, “Um, Phoebe? I’m about half a [centimeter] away from seeing some nipple action and I really don’t want to, so why don’t you cover up before you start stripping in the middle of my calc class, OK? Great.” I guess when you’re completely self-centered and narcissistic (and modern-day feminists are by definitely self-centered and narcissistic), it may never cross your mind that when someone mentions your body, it’s not automatically because they’re looking at you as a sex object.
My contribution, from a man’s perspective:
It’s generally been my experience that feminists have engaged their thinking about the proper role in society for women, at the expense of any and all reasoned thinking about the proper role in society for men; just thirty seconds of that, were they to indulge in it, would do enormous benefit to them. But they won’t ponder it for even that long.
Suppose all men woke up one morning and resolved to do whatever feminists want them to do, just as soon as the feminists all agreed on what exactly that is. I guess that would have something to do with the new-boyfriend stock character on Lifetime TV, who makes tons and tons of money but doesn’t have any opinions about anything except for how incredibly devoted he is to whoever-the-starlet-is.
In a world like that, what do we think of boobs, anyway? It seems we’d be regarding them purely clinically. A woman’s entire body, I guess, would have no sensual value to us at all…but we’d fall “madly in love with” one and only one woman. Over the course of an entire lifetime. If she’d have us. So we won’t have any attraction toward physical attributes whatsoever, but that one woman — oh, how beautiful she is! So we would have some.
The whole thing is such a dizzying mess of glaring contradictions. But hey, we’ve been oppressing you for five thousand years, we deserve to get a little dizzy.
It’s interesting how many of these progressive movements, all of which have thus far achieved only a fraction of what they someday want to, are concerned with a piece of a plan about how societies should work. They bitch, and bitch, and bitch some more about Come A Long Way We’re Not There Yet. But the flaw is the lack of agreement they have, and therefore coherence, about the hated oppressors. Within the activist groups and constituents, everyone agrees on who these are…conservatives, whites, males, straights, whatever…but there’s no agreement on anything else about us, other than that we’re just plain bad.
They’re non-influential, or influential only to a limited magnitude, because they’re incoherent, or coherent only to a limited magnitude. They’re all run by folks plenty sharp enough to notice and comprehend the link. And yet the conundrum remains the same, and it remains unresolved, across the generations. Which tells me the people who follow the movements, place trust in things that they know, deep down, they should not — or they’re not bright enough to figure out who they shouldn’t be trusting.
The point of the commercial (aside from to sell the product) is that you shouldn’t look down on it.
You’d think the feminists would be jumping for joy. Well, nope. Silly you. When’s the last time you saw a feminist jumping for joy…when a man wasn’t rolling around on a floor in agony clutching his nuts?
Men’s armpit hair does not grow that long, why would a woman’s? It kind of reminds me of the movie Without a Paddle (specifically @ 1:20) and how women’s body hair, when we allow ourselves to have it, is greatly exaggerated in the media. Because we’re supposed to be hair free, otherwise we’re masculine. *rolls eyes*
:
Screw you for enforcing gender stereotypes and body issues.
People fighting for men and women to be exactly the same. And feedin’ on their own, like sharks at a frenzy.
I think “Maeve” has language issues. Doesn’t exactly strike me as virginal to the college-curriculum of Entirely Useless Skills. I mean, real people, who get real things done…don’t talk like this. “Screw you for enforcing gender stereotypes”?
The word “feminist” is gradually devolving into something that has to do with crusading for bits and pieces of a world in which most people do not want to live. I mean, think about it. Women with hairy armpits. Men and women exactly the same. Men not allowed to have opinions. Women acting like Dr. House. No one has a gun except the bad guys.
Nothing really going on to reign them in, is there? So expect to see a whole lot more of it.
But it can still get a whole lot worse. When I was coming of age, it was the early 1980’s…and whatever feminists wanted, they got, no questions asked. I wonder if we’ll go that far this time.
Melanie Sill, Sacramento Bee Editor, has a column out this morning saying it is “Time to look at newspaper roles and woes.” I lightly skimmed over it, but it would appear there is no point in the column in which she attempts to blame the “newspaper woes” on the Bush Administration. I must say, the title really grabbed me. I could’ve sworn it was just last month we had an inauguration ceremony, and if it was time to do anything, it was time to celebrate the end of all problems and the dawn of a new age of sweetness & light. Here it is five weeks later, and it’s time to look at problems again. Wha’ happened?
Why newspapers are hurting, I’m going to leave unexamined. After all, she did. Also, it seems the entire management layer at The Bee, and at other newspapers, is leaving it to outsiders to declare what the newspapers should do in order to save themselves. That was the point of her column, to announce “The Conversation,” which can be found at www.sacbee.com/conversation.
The trend continues. No one, so far as I know, is blaming failing newspapers on the Bush Administration. No one, so far as I know, is saying Obama’s gonna fix ’em. Not unless you want to count this Connecticut newspaper-bailout-guy.
So my question is this.
If George W. Bush caused just about all of our problems…but not quite…and Barack Obama can fix just about all of our problems, but not quite…
Can Obama fix problems that George Bush didn’t create?
Kind of a “If God is all-powerful, can He create a rock so big that even He cannot lift it?” sorta thing.
Although I would give SOME credit to balanced reporting in the article, one line stood out when I read it: “… and the general public all in support …” This comment board is proof that this is not so. Very common in global warming articles, being told that we all support action, being told that all scientists agree, that there is a concensus, that the debate is over. All fabrications. Ed mentioned the global cooling hoax in his post. I’m in possession of several articles from that period, and they include the phrases “all scientists agree”, “an avalanche of evidence”, and other fictional remarks. I hope it’s not too late for our naive and impressionable society.
To revisit this other question, about why newspapers are in trouble: LOTS of reasons! But one that shouldn’t be discounted, I believe, is that they are poisoning their own food supply. Their fantasy-game that Iraq was a “quagmire,” well past the point where it clearly wasn’t one, is a testament to their “If It Bleeds, It Leads” mindset that will be embarrassingly preserved for generations in journalistic history.
They’re forced to do that because they cover up other news we want to know — by pretending we’re more unified than we really are.
If you’re a left-leaning libby, you think I’m a knuckle-dragging neanderthal posting garbage on his tighty-righty blog, about to destroy the planet by encouraging people to own guns, go to Hooters, believe in God and emit that terrible, terrible carbon. I, in turn, think you got your Replacement Jesus in the White House and far from being satisfied, you’ll never be happy no matter what.
Each of us is interested in what the other one is doing. We’re divided and will probably continue to be so for generations.
Newspapers could report on that. But instead, as folsomboy points out (by the way, take my word for it, I’m not him) — every popular idea, no matter how fanciful, no matter how extravagant and ramshackle, has to be presented as if “everyone” agrees on it.
If you believe in that…you’re forced to ask yourself, why should I buy a newspaper?
This is more than just lazy reporting. It’s bad business.
Media Matters was just bursting with pride yesterday. The liberal watchdog group had caught Fox News using “GOP talking points” as their own research.
I scanned the piece from top to bottom, looking for a report about inaccuracy in these GOP talking points. Failing to find that, I looked for an insinuation that any of the facts/figures were subject to discredit, controversy, challenge, contention, dispute…anything. Couldn’t find any of that, either.
Nevertheless, that is a little bit on the slimy side. I’m inclined to give MM the point. Although it would be a much better point, more in keeping with the grandstanding headline, if Fox News recycled Republican talking points as fact in the middle of some kind of argument between the two parties. That would be a clear-cut case of deciding-instead-of-reporting. Not the case here.
But what does that then say about the Sacramento Bee’s headlines tonight. The story underneath carries the byline of “Bee News Services” although it matches word-for-word the first paragraph of a Washington Post story, here. But look how this Sacramento Bee editor chose to present it to the world:
Two logjams broken
Leaders in House, Senate OK blueprint for recovery MEASURE IS UNPRECEDENTED AND ITS IMPACT UNCERTAIN
Yup, they’re talking about the stimulus plan. The trillion-dollars-worth-of-condoms plan.
Okay, I exaggerate, it isn’t $1 trillion worth of condoms. It’s actually a little less than a trillion, and some of the money goes to things with more of a “stimulative” effect than condoms. There’s lots of good stuff…like…the National Endowment for the Arts…TV conversion…global warming…the Department of Education…
Let’s bottom-line it. You gotta be more than just a little bit left-leaning to think of this as a real “blueprint for recovery.” You gotta be out of yer gourd.
I anxiously await the power, profile and gravitas of Media Matters, showing up to join me in my call for the Sacramento Bee to reverse their cranial-rectal inversion process on this one. This is the front page to the major newspaper of a thriving industrial valley, capital city of one of the nation’s largest and most prosperous states. It’s not a children’s fairy-tale book.
And if it’s wrong to put Republican talking points on the airwaves even when they are not subject to dispute, it’s wrong to put democrat talking points on the front page of such a high-profile newspaper — that are.
I mean, the good things goin’ on. Not this Obama stuff, which we will, mark my words, survive just fine. The liberation of our culture from the monolith media —
In the age of mass media, the press was able to define the sphere of legitimate debate with relative ease because the people on the receiving end were atomized — connected “up” to Big Media but not across to each other. And now that authority is eroding…Take a sheet of paper and make a big circle in the middle. In the center of that circle draw a smaller one to create a doughnut shape. Label the doughnut hole “sphere of consensus.” Call the middle region “sphere of legitimate debate,” and the outer region “sphere of deviance.”…Now you have a way to understand why it’s so unproductive to argue with journalists about the deep politics of their work. They don’t know about this freakin’ diagram!
There’s a little bit of Yin-and-Yang stuff involved with this. When we’re all connected to a common intellectual hub but not to each other, like spokes on a bicycle wheel, it really doesn’t matter what the hub is or what the hub tells us to do. The communication arrangement strongly compels us to think with the OFC, the Orbito-Frontal Cortex, that part of the brain that is responsible for “rapping one’s own knuckles.” Think of it as your “don’t go outside the lines” cortex. There is no because when the OFC is at work. When you shout “No!” at a baby, you’re stimulating the baby’s OFC.
It’s a survival mechanism. If you touch a hot stove, and wait for pain to register then think about the prospect of removing your hand through conventional means, you will be much more badly burned. The OFC has its place; with that lobe telling you to remove your hand, you’ve got a decent shot at recoiling before you sustain any physical damage at all. That would not be possible otherwise. To preserve our ability to procreate and survive, we have to route some experiences through this special “because-free” zone.
Well, when people are communicating with a common nucleus but not with each other, they’re strongly motivated to think with the OFC. And when you introduce some limited means by which they can communicate with each other — just a few minutes over the fence that divides their lawns, or at the water cooler at work — they tend to persuade each other to do cognitive thinking with the OFC. No cause-and-effect, just don’t-do-that, like back in kindergarten. All protocol. No real weighing of costs vs. benefits of available options.
I found out about the article from Kate at Small Dead Animals, and Alice the Camel…they, in turn, make the point that this is probably why the press reacts so vituperatively to blogs. The blog is disorganized, and yet, strangely, at the same time organized. It provides a reliable and sustained means by which thinking consumers of news can talk to each other about what it is they have seen. It erodes the revenue base of advertising, to a certain extent, and that’s turning out to be damaging enough to the Old Guard. But it also erodes that spoke-hub atomization authority.
It gets people thinking with the cerebral cortex, the way the Good Lord intended when He built it. That part of the brain you use for cause-and-effect thinking, inferential thinking, process-of-elimination, all that good stuff. The traditional knuckle-rapping is demoted to just an occasional, meaningless staccato within a symphony of more honest deliberation.
Not sure where Lauer’s sense of priorities is here, or where anyone else’s is either, I can only speak for myself.
But if I had my way, I’d see to it we were all freakin’ drowning in all kinds of “outrageous statements” if it meant more kids were raised by fathers and mothers. Lauer may spend as much time and energy as he wishes to spend keeping us clean of such things, but where I came from, if you’ve got free speech you’re going to hear some stuff that goes “over the line” from time to time. And if you value free speech in any genuine way you aren’t going to very much care about that.
Also, if you’re so sure your way is right, you’ll let the other person finish a sentence now and then. Especially when you’re supposed to be giving an interview. That’s the way things work on my planet.
“Samitha” from Feministing is upset about some kind of double-standard, but as she explains it over and over again, she persistently fails to coherently express exactly what it is.
Last week Salon put up a list of the sexiest men alive and boyyyy they sure were sexy! …when I get written about as sexy on other people’s blogs it is usually in a “get back in the kitchen-shut up bitch-you are hot” kind of way which is far from flattering.
So this morning I was reading through the HuffPo and came across the world’s sexist woman alive. Here is the list as decided by E!
1. Karolina Kurkova 2. Bar Rafaeli 3. Angelina Jolie 4. Gisele Bundchen 5. Scarlett Johansson 6. Adriana Lima 7. Heidi Klum 8. Penelope Cruz 9. Manuela Arcuri 10. Shakira
OK, obviously one main difference is that one of these lists is via E! and the other via Salon. But there are never lists of women that are considered sexy because of what they do, but always for how they look, in either outlet type. The list of sexy men was extremely diverse and picked from an array of men doing different types of work. Salon is cool and progressive like that. So these men are not only sexy, but they do different, unique and innovative things that make them sexy.
Maybe what’s missing from her life, is she needs to become a fan of Sarah Palin, who is a “VPILF” not just because she’s hot-looking, but because she’s done stuff. Well Palin isn’t ever gonna have any fans from that corner…so this is kind of a self-fulfilling prophecy is it not?
How much more coherent this rant would be, if they came up with some examples of ladies who have accomplished something, and are put on the list partially because of that.
There’s the rub. “Partially.” There is a double-standard at work here…and it’s theirs. Take Shakira for example. Shakira is gorgeous, has an amazing, mesmerising curvy body, and is smart as a whip. Unlike Sarah Palin, Shakira is on the “E!” list. Why does that not soothe the feminist angst?
Thing I Know #52. Angry people who demand things, don’t stop being angry when their demands are met.
Feministing has the double-standard. They want pretty boy-men and ugly women.
Don’t take my word for it. Go ahead and browse this list of “accomplished” men from “cool and progressive” Salon.
He’s an award-winning writer who wrings humor from chaos. His dreamy eyes don’t hurt…An astonishing athlete with his priorities (and his Speedo) in the right place…The swaggering MC every woman wants to bang and every man wants to be…A Renaissance man with a tireless work ethic, an aesthetic in the kitchen and piercing blue eyes…Hip-hop vlogger, self-confessed nerd and darn cute to boot…This athletic heartthrob is not only tall, dark and dashingly handsome, but an heir to the throne. [emphasis mine]
This is where feminists don’t understand themselves, very well. They don’t want “womens’ other accomplishments” to be factored in along with their looks. They don’t want the female aesthetics to be evaluated at all. At least not positively.
Rush Limbaugh is right. The movement exists “to allow unattractive women access to the mainstream of society” (Undeniable Truth of Life #24). Superior facial and body appearances are to be helpful to the gentlemen but harmful to the ladies.
If you are a woman that is sexy because of the work you do, you are rarely, if ever, put on a list of sexy women. You must first and foremost, look hot in a bikini.
Yeah, for that to make sense, what I need to be looking for is a homely-lookin’ dude tossed in with those other sexpots and then blended in. That’s what Samitha is demanding for the women, isn’t it? Sexy because of the work she does…does not look hot in a bikini. Okay. Where’s the counterpart-dude? Salon didn’t offer one…maybe, in their bitterness and hatred, the feminists forgot to notice. Every cock-on-the-block has dreamy eyes.
I scanned through the comments to see if I could get a better lock on what the real focus of the complaint was. Problem is, when feminists are in the company of the like-minded, they become very comfortable, and they start to drop things in their scribblings. First commas, then periods, then verbs. So many of the sentences that were supposed to define the complaint for the benefit of whoever might be happenin’ along wondering about it, failed to do so because they were babbling and incomprehensible. But angry. No mistaking that. That’s one mission in feminist writing that never seems to go unfulfilled.
Buck’s right. I really do need to put a maximum-quota on the time I spend reading that angry, angry blog. There’s still a whole world out there of gas turbine engines, diesel generators, tasty dead animals basted with yummy barbeque sauce, and Hooters’ waitresses in little orange short-shorts. His Holiness The Obamessiah will make sure I’m drowning in feminist claptrap to my heart’s content in the years ahead, any time I want to be.
A worldwide media survey released on Monday shows that coverage around Obama’s successful bid to become the next American president was written about twice as often as any other news event since the turn of the century.
“Obama was unprecedented. He has captivated the world,” said Paul Payack, president of the Global Language Monitor, which conducted the survey.
Uh oh. Yet another world-surveyor, speaking on behalf of “the world.” I wonder if this one has some captivating tales to recount about running door-to-door on all seven continents to find out what everybody’s thinking?
Or, perhaps, it’s yet another example of re-defining the seemingly static concept of “everyone.”
His Holiness Who Walks On Water damn sure didn’t captivate me, I know that much. Last I checked, I was part of “the world.”
Obama had been written about roughly 250 million times, said Payack. Stories about all the other big news events this century have together generated about half that coverage, he added.
Just…wow. Words fail me. So I’ll rely on Darth Misha, who gets the hat tip for this story, to express the unexpressable…
Oh, and those 3000+ innocent people who died on Sept.11?
Puhleeeeze. Can’t we all just Move OnTM?
Isn’t it enough to know that he only has to raise his nicotine stained metrosexual hands, flex those glistening man boobs pecs, wave his Dumbo ears and the winds will die down, the waves will calm, the climate will cease to change, dogs and cats will be at peace with one another, and Oprah will finally shut the hell up?
Forget that once he’s out of his “President-Elect” bubble he’s going to be busier than a one legged man in an ass kicking contest trying to hide who and what he really is, which is to say…NUTHIN…He’s the Obamessiah!!
I can’t help but feel a tinge of fear for what is happening to another very basic concept. Authority. We spend all these giga-calories of energy, millions, billions of dollars to erect our corporate and government “Do As I Say Not As I Do” people. They tell us things that are categorically untrue, things that directly contradict even themselves — sentences that twist around in 180-degree hairpin turns before they even reach the dot at the end. “Equal opportunity employer, women and minorities encouraged to apply.” Stuff like that; same breath.
And then all the charlatans who insist on being right, even though they’re telling us untrue, self-contradictory things, are subordinated to the mega-charlatan. His Holiness The 44th President tells you it is a dry sunny day outside and there’s raindrops falling on your head, well, leave the umbrella behind, because you’ve just received The Word. And He talks kinda like Walter Cronkite so it must be true.
That’s what I find a little bit more unsettling than, I suspect, even the most rabid left-wing hippie ever found the P.A.T.R.I.O.T. act to be, rhetoric notwithstanding. This hierarchy of lying. The supremacy each face on the totem pole takes on in relation to the face beneath it, is so uncompromising, so non-negotiable. Just stop asking questions. It doesn’t matter what that face on the pole says, if the face above it, says something different.
And worst of all, Obama isn’t the one on the tippy-top. He was elected to “sit down and talk” with that I’m-A-Dinner-Jacket guy over in Iran, and His Holiness will tell I’m-A-Dinner-Jacket…what, exactly? “Oh, mkay…alright, if you say so.” Anything beyond that?
Go on, Obama fans. Tell me where I’m off-base here.
Dave Kopel has an interesting analysis on how the economics of the newsroom push it there.
Seems nothing ever comes along to push it back where it belongs, again.
Our newspapers have crossed the first milestone on the pathway to complete insanity. How many milestones have to be passed on by before the whole thing is just a birdcage liner and nothing else?
Not safe for work. Because it’s got bare breasts. Of gorgeous women. Hundreds of ’em.
Okay…now if you aren’t firing that sucker up already, you’re just not paying attention.
Feminists. Pffft. You realize how utterly muddled and disoriented they would be if they were confined to battling…oh, let us say…two dozen different forms of what they call “sexism,” and committed to disassociating themselves from any issue that couldn’t be tied into such a list? Theirs is the single most confused political agenda in modern times. It’s got something to do with young girls screwing indiscriminately, although it shouldn’t; it’s got something to do with homosexuals getting married and adopting children, although it shouldn’t; it’s got something to do with protesting wars, grabbing guns away from law-abiding citizens, Christian-bashing, cutting down carbon emissions — although it shouldn’t have anything to do with any of those.
And it has a lot to do with keeping Sarah Palin away from any job with responsibility in it. And gosh, you know, if they were honest with themselves, let alone anybody else, and their movement meant anything it was supposed to mean, they’d love ‘er all to pieces, or at least get out of her way. But that’s not the way it works, of course. There’s something special about Sarah. Which means there’s something special about God only knows how many other women, who have the proper reproductive aparatus in their bodies, but don’t seat their gorgeous tight little bottoms on the correct spot on the political spectrum.
Kind of a “nobody can tell the womyn folk what to wear and do except us” thing.
Anyway — my favorite thing about the commercial? It’s for washing machines. But it manages to spend three minutes not showing one of ’em. And lots of other stuff does get shown. Just watch.
It’s simple. Just list all the jobs you’ve had in your life, in order. Don’t bust your brain: no durations or details are necessary, and feel free to omit anything that you feel might tend to incriminate you. I’m just curious. And when you’re done, tag another five bloggers you’re curious about.
Oh-kay. Here we goes…
• Paperboy
• Babysitter
• Lawnmower guy
• Typist
• Data entry clerk
• Computer networking office know-it-all guy
• Database programmer
• Software consultant
• Kelly Girl
• Office phone answerer guy
• Affirmative Action statistics compiler reports guy
• Software Design and Maintenance Specialist
• Software Engineer
• Cloak ‘n Dagger Office Politics Shitstorm Tattletale guy (not my choice, long story, don’t ask)
• Lightning Rod for Wife’s Frustrations with Life
• Single-Wide Trailer Inhabiting Redneck Yokel
• Software Engineer, Again
• Software Consultant
• Office Scapegoat
• Design-By-Contract Requirements Coordinator
• Version Control Administrator
• LAN Administrator
• Database programmer, again
• Workstation Image Architect
• Client/Server Network Computing Engineer
• Senior Network Systems Engineer
• Y2K Mud-Wrestling Engineer (Guess what year it is, by now)
• HIPAA Team Lead
• HIPAA Project Lead
• Cryptology Technician
• Computer Forensics Technician
• HIPAA Project Manager
• DITSCAP Project Manager
• DIACAP Project Manager
• Single Dad
• Unemployed Bum
• Project Management Consultant
• Unemployed Bum, Again
• Waterer of Girlfriend’s Tomatoes
• Senior Software Engineer
• Guy In Parking Lot Yelling At You For Taking His Space When Christmas Shopping
• Christmas Present Wrapper Guy, and Folder of Laundry
As has been noted many times, all the way back to the days when it was literally true…this blog, the blog you’re reading now, has a “virtual trademark” on the phrase “The Blog That Nobody Reads,” thanks to the civilized behavior of some of those nobodies who read it and have blogs of their own — and can, they claim, present statistics proving they are more deserving of brandishing this as a tagline.
Civilization will prevail, so the slogan is ours. Finders keepers losers weepers.
Here’s the question. Since we get to keep this, does that make us the electronic counterpart to the New York Times?
It’s a labor union. Except you don’t have to have a job to belong to it; you DO have to have a verginer; and the labor union officials are so passionate about what they do, they don’t have to be paid. If you applied those three simple changes to any labor union, you’d have feminism.
Viewed in those terms, it all makes sense. You see it isn’t that feminists should be allowed to get away with violating the dress code. It’s that, when they violate it and you blow the whistle on ‘em, you are subjected to such an endless acid rain of crap that next time you’ll decide it just isn’t worth the hassle. Yeah, in the minds of some, this is what “representation” means: Someone cheerleading the notion, whether they ultimately succeed at it or not, that you and people like you shouldn’t be held to standards, but everyone else outside your clique should be.
The subject under discussion is that Jessica Valenti doesn’t think women should be held to the standards of a dress code, if they’re willing to join her union and call themselves feminists.
I’m kind of obsessed with the site Passive Aggressive Notes; I think it’s hilarious. This one I found particularly irritating/interesting:
Apparently this woman’s supervisor sent this charming note because someone had been complaining (!) about her showing a bit of cleavage. According to the sender, “as I’m currently 7 months pregnant, i could be wearing a turtleneck and still be showing ‘too much’ cleavage.”
Ugh.
I really don’t understand this comment about wearing a turtleneck and showing cleavage. But I’m a guy, I don’t have to face the rigors of dressing up on planet-woman every single day, other people do, so we’ll just let that one go. I’m a little bit more curious about this “sender,” Jessica herself, and other folks climbing on the sender’s bandwagon. The full quote is —
“the shirt in question was a run-of-the-mill top with an empire waist…but as i’m currently 7 months pregnant, i could be wearing a turtleneck and still be showing ‘too much’ cleavage.”
And NO, there is not a pic. Just a one-line description of this run-of-the-mill top, which Jessica didn’t even see fit to carry forward on the help-me-deplore-this jungle-telegram.
So maybe we have two camps. The “people in our group shouldn’t be held to standards at all” camp, and the “people in our group always tell the truth all the time” camp, somehow laboring under the delusion they’ve been allowed to independently evaluate this run-of-the-mill top, when they haven’t. This nameless-faceless nipple-exposing hussy could be claiming she saw Elvis at lunch that day, and goddamn it you better believe it, because it’s Gospel.
This brings me to the second front of what we now, today, call feminism — the character disorder.
Rather than spell out the next point about the above clip, which would be tedious, try to imagine just a few differences injected into it which, in a sane situation, would be meaningless differences.
A couple of dudes raising emergency funds for the financially troubled “Asshole Magazine” who’ve been working extra hard at making themselves unattractive. Not like Wayne and Garth. More like Jimmy and Adam — plus 150 pounds each, their sneakers and blue jeans not quite as clean looking, foregoing the blubber-hiding untucked-shirt look in favor of the “Why Can’t Men Wear Half Shirts?” look. Big ol’ spare tires spilling out over their filthy frayed grease-covered blue jeans, maybe one of ’em picking his nose every few seconds…”Dude! We gots ta get hold of fifty billion dollars cause our magazine is in trouble!”
Just those few minor changes would expose what’s going on here.
People…entirely inexperienced at (or not giving a ripe about) figuring out what others want…just got an idea in their heads about what their product should be. Not the timeless entrepreneur’s idea of “If I build X, the world will beat a path to my doorstep.” Just a child’s idea — after she’s spent too much time playing with dolls. “This guy wants X.”
In the psychological domain, this is what feminism is. That you are here, feminists can accept. Everything else about you, including the thoughts in your head, is either irrelevant, or pre-planned. And where the plans disagree with reality, the plans win. Wherever the feminist mind is confronted by some uncomfortable difference, the answer is revolution.
It is, in the psychological makeup of people, the simple character deficiency of being unable to perceive.
The labor-union part of it, is a cause-and-effect consequence of multiple people struggling with this same deficiency, and banding together to get what they want.
Multiple generations of people have now been born since those long-gone days when feminism was something much bigger than it now is. And so while it’s obvious to those who lived through it, it should be jotted down for the benefit of those who did not:
Mainstream society used to accommodate this. You may have been wondering why workplaces are so yielding to the feminist movement, when the feminist movement seems to be nothing more than a bunch of chubby goth chicks scribbling down acrid blog posts and sending money to each other. The answer is tradition. These deficiently-charactered harpies, thirty years ago, had the world by the balls. If word got out they wanted something, things stopped under the capitol dome, and in the corporate board rooms, until someone could figure out what they wanted and give it to ’em.
Back in those halcyon days, was feminism more than a labor union and a character defect? No, not really. Not among the true believers. Not among the work-for-free union officials (and vastly greater numbers of them did not work for free). The only difference between then, and now, is that they had more people fooled. They’ve had this line of propaganda that “it’s all about ensuring women make a fair wage,” et cetera…they’re still trotting it out to this very day…there are far fewer takers.
Why is nobody believing it anymore?
Because when Bill Clinton takes advantage of women, thus completing the very picture of an overly-powerful male staying in power while abusing women sexually, socially, legally…they support him.
And when Sarah Palin runs for the Vice-Presidency, thus completing the very picture of a woman who represents others, courageously, attempting to achieve a bigger voice in forming the policies that affect the lives of so many millions, while at the same time dedicating herself to her family…they snark away at her with the hatred that used to be reserved for abusive men.
It’s been exposed.
It’s a labor union, formed for the purpose of achieving political goals that really don’t have that much to do with opening up options for women — killing babies (half of whom are girls), gay marriage, hippie peacenik protests, the two-minute-hate of the target-of-the-hour. And it’s a labor movement made up of people who’ve made it through childhood without developing the ordinary, everyday attributes of their personalities that the rest of us have to have, that enable us to work together and live together. And those attributes have to do with recognizing what the other guy thinks is important that we don’t, and somehow learning to deal with it.
Simply put, most people…if they started a magazine exploring what dickheads they are and glorifying their nose hairs and butt cracks, and the magazine started to go out of business…would say to themselves “Huh. I guess most people don’t want to see my butt crack.” And move on.
Feminists who cover themselves with tatoos and call themselves bitches, need forty big ones.
So won’t you please donate today. C’mon, those soldiers who need prosthetics and those kids whose homes burned down, can wait; we need your help calling ourselves bitches.
Kelly can be a girl’s name as well as a boy’s name…so poor little Kelly has a problem with Santa Claus leaving him adorable pink girl stuff.
And the feminists have a problem with Kelly having a problem with it.
Okay, one MORE time…what does this have to do with promoting dignity in the stature and treatment of women in a civilized society, and developing and defending the opportunities they have?
Feminists. They want so badly for people to listen to their propaganda. And they want so badly for people to join on in when the feminists say “please help me deplore the latest thing I’ve placed in the crosshairs, today.”
But that ends up meaning they don’t want people to have memories.
Because if you remember all the things that have ever been in-the-crosshairs-today, across any significant swath of time…the propaganda just crumbles. You know what propaganda I mean. The “narrow agenda” propaganda. The “oh no, we’re not here to dismantle gender differences or anything like that, we just want a fair wage.” The a-man-can-be-a-feminist propaganda.
The it-doesn’t-have-anything-to-do-with-being-a-bitch propaganda.
The propaganda that says feminists are just as loving and charming as any other kind of woman. If you aren’t knocking a woman’s tooth out, or swatting her on the butt, or behaving in a way toward a woman that you wouldn’t behave around your own grandmother, then we have no beef with you.
The propaganda that comes out anytime they’re called on their crap. The propaganda we saw when Cassy, Hawkins, myself and others helped Jessica Valenti get that free publicity for her book.
It’s all a crock o’ bullshit. At least, on web sites like Feministing, it is.
Keep sufficient wits about you to observe and remember trends, and you can’t help but form some opinions about these post-modern feminists they aren’t gonna like. They aren’t friends to chastity, or even to any kind of discretion an available young lady might use in choosing her sexual partners or keeping the number thereof down beneath a non-scandalous ceiling. Somehow, that rankles them. It always has. The one exception seems to be the woman who resolves not to sleep with any conservative Republicans — that’s alright. Any other kind of criteria applied…no. If you have something to say about an Aspirin between the knees, or waiting for marriage, or waiting until he meets Mom and Dad, or waiting a few weeks — feminists ain’t gonna like it.
They might like it if you say women can do something.
If you say men can do something, they won’t like it.
If you say women and men can do more things than they’re doing, feminists won’t like it.
If you say women can’t do something, they’ll come out swinging.
If you say women and men can do things together, they aren’t going to be too happy about it. Unless it’s holding a candlelight vigil and calling George W. Bush a war criminal.
It’s pretty tough to get them to opine at length about the draft.
They’re very passionate about gay marriage. I don’t think I’m ever going to understand that one. If a woman wants to support the feminist movement with her time or her money, but she’s opposed to gay marriage, feminists don’t want her support? What’s gay marriage got to do with womens’ rights? It’s just stupid, in my opinion. It’s like starting a movement to promote responsible pet ownership, and spaying and neutering and proper veterinary care for your pet — and oh, by the way, we’re also big Monster Truck fans. If you don’t go to the shows then we don’t want your support. One has nothing to do with the other, so why tie the two together?
Actually, re-defining marriage has a distinct effect of diminishing the role of women in society. So I would say it’s like promoting responsible pet ownership and also owning your own monster truck. But whatever.
When Feministing opined about Sarah Palin for the first time — that is when the site hit the low nadir. That just completes the picture, doesn’t it? A more complete and fulfilling role for women in society, goes off in this direction…progressive politics dashes off in the other…Feministing follows the progressive politics. Embarrassing to watch. Just like when liberals circled the wagon around Bill Clinton when he was trying to stop the women he’d been exploiting from having their day in court — and went on to call themselves staunch defenders of womens’ rights. Based on what? Just plain ol’ tradition? We’re supposed to think left-wingers think highly of women just because they’re left-wingers?
Left-wing politics, in general…and the feminist movement, in particular…these are, at a breakneck pace, rapidly degenerating into places that are ideal for a lifelong male chauvinist pig to join, places where he can feel at home. I mean, just stand back and look at it. If a male politician supports the right policies he should be able to exploit women, shove his penis into the faces of perfect strangers, and that’s okay. The whole world should be his glory hole. If women are offended by that and want to sue, they shouldn’t have their day in court. They aren’t entitled to it. Because the right political agenda is worth exploiting a few broads, if they’re good lookin’. Wives aren’t special. Housewives aren’t special. Stay-at-home-moms aren’t special. There’s no need to feel appreciative about any of these women or what they do. Actually, when they get down on their hands and knees and scrub your toilet so it sparkles, you should behave as if it just happened…by magic. Like Tinkerbell flew in and sprinkled some pixie dust on it. Anything but show the goddamned minimal gratitude your mother eventually insisted you start showing.
And wives are disposable, because now we’re going to re-define marriage as being whole and complete if there aren’t any women involved in it at all. Two guys can raise a kid just as nicely — which means mothers are disposable too — and oh by the way, if you dare to disagree with us about it, we’ll crush you.
Anything a woman can do a man can do better. Including playing with pink toys.
Looks like a chauvinist pig platform to me.
So after today, let’s not have any further discussion about whether modern feminism, or Feministing anyway, is all about erasing the gender divide, trying to make men and women the same. We don’t need to wonder about it anymore. It’s settled. That is what it’s about. And it’s about eradicating masculinity. They don’t like it; they want to see it go away. I guess when a boy is unfortunately saddled with fluffy pink toys, he should just turn gay on the spot.
Next up on the list of things feminists would like help hating…is a catalogue entry for these cool irons you can have customized so they brand your own name into things. The idea is that when & if you’re extra-extra proud of this steak you barbequed, you can “sign” it.
I think it’s a pretty cool idea. Only thing is, I’d value it at about…$14.95. They want five times that, so that’s gonna be a no. And that’s the way things will stay, I’m afraid. After I make my first billion, the price I put on this kind of ego trip is still in the low teens.
Feminists are almost just as candid about their feelings. They don’t like ’em. At least I think that’s what the message is.
I generally love RedEnvelope for their nice gifts (though a bit overpriced), yet this made me laugh out loud. Of course the picture of their monogrammed branders (of your monogrammed choosing) has to be of “son” and “dad.” Because there’s nothing manlier than doing some grillin’ some steak and branding your manliness into the meat.
I’m presuming “laugh out loud” has pejorative intent. It’s the “yet” that so inclines me.
Here’s the part I can’t quite make out: Why does this make the feminist “help me deplore this” list? I know it’s about as exclusive a club as your phone book’s white pages. I find that question intriguing, because I don’t think the feminists themselves understand the answer to it.
Let’s see…
We have — eating meat. Feminists are at odds with that. I’ve been wondering why that is, for decades now, and if I haven’t figured it out by now I’m not going to figure it out today. Meat makes people strong. Women are people. Feminists want women to be strong, yet meat ends up on the “Hate” list.
Grilling. Grilling is a manly thing. Feminists don’t like manly things. Okay, that’s a little bit easier to see, although it contradicts the talking points put out by the feminist P.R. machine…which say, they love men as much as anyone else, and if you don’t get in the way of female empowerment then they have no “beef” (har!) with you. Well, I think anyone who’s watched ’em for a minute or two knows that’s a load of bullshit. So if you end up in an argument with a feminist over whether the movement is all about man-bashing or not, I guess this is something to chew on (snicker).
What interests me is the signing, and the pride in workmanship that it represents. I believe, if you were to subject the enraged feminists to an afternoon of deep psychiatric probing — eww — you’d eventually find out this is a primary bone of contention. Feminism has a whole buffet of antithetical relationships to simple but important things, antithetical relationships to which feminist advocates will avoid confessing. It is at odds with all kinds of beneficial human activities and situations, and spends so much energy trying to pretend not to be at odds with them. One of those essential elements is individualism. Which means work, achievement, and pride taken in it.
Feminism is hostile to that.
Feminism doesn’t want people to think of it as being hostile to that.
But it is.
We-ell…whether it’s the taking pride in the work you’ve been doing, eating meat, grilling, or doing silly man-stuff that doesn’t make too much sense…you have to admit. A feminist movement that is truly confined to opposing oppression against women, or promoting the dignity of women in a civilized society, wouldn’t give even a passing thought to this. I realize this is more of an elbow-in-the-ribs to the like-minded (bitter) girls in the neo-feminist movement, than any kind of call for storming a male mysoginist fortress with pitchforks and torches. But the point stands — that this item interests the people who call themselves feminists, even in a humorous way, interests me. It is a window into their dark souls. Condemning the monogrammed branders, or even chuckling derisively at them, has nothing at all to do with any kind of human-rights movement. Not unless they’re being used on human flesh, which doesn’t seem to be the case here.
It’s just another overpriced rich-person’s silly toy. One of thousands. Get over it.
And that’s your latest specimen of scope creep in the man-bashing feminist movement. You haven’t too much longer to wait for the next one.
Oh, this is rich. (Warning, dirty words used, like right outta the gate, so mute this if you’re at work.)
The other day my girlfriend came home from work and she found me whacking myself in the head with a claw hammer. She asked “why are you hitting yourself in the head with a claw hammer?”
And I replied, quite sensibly, “Because the ball peen is way downstairs, in the garage.” Looking at her like she’s an idiot, of course.
It’s exactly the same logic. Exactly the same as saying “Feminist bloggers put in long hours, face lots and lots of criticism, and they do it for free.” Duh…yeah. Scuba diving involves getting wet. Blogging involves being called out on your crap if you jot something down that doesn’t make a whole lot of sense, and furthermore, everybody gets it at some time or another.
Why are feminist bloggers subjected to this torture? Because bloggers are. And complaining about how nobody’s paying you for doing it, puts the Big Reveal on feminism itself.
It’s the science of complaining. And being ready to do a whole lot more of it. It’s proven, here…lots of bloggers aren’t feminists, they’re scrutinized, they’re unpaid, they’re not famous. In fact, some of us who write for what’s informally known as The Blog That Nobody Reads, and things like those, don’t give a rip about the not-being-famous part. That’s part of the reason why we call it that.
In the mind of the feminist, being subjected to exactly the same treatment, is a manifestation of oppression…I suppose. Or something. How pathetic. She assigns herself the task of listing all the reasons why feminist bloggers are entitled to some belated kudos, and she can’t think of a single thing applicable to feminist bloggers, that doesn’t apply to all bloggers.
Heh heh. Next up — if bloggers did get paid, as a dude, I would be getting a bigger cut. In fact, with things as they are, the feminists are being paid only seventy percent of the nothing I’m being paid. And it’s just not fair, dammit!
You know, if the innernets ever get hit with some kind of meteor, and we have to choose, let’s say, a thousand resources to be shielded in some kind of underground cave so they can emerge after the disaster and re-populate the ‘net all over again — I want Feministing to have one of the very first spots. World wouldn’t be the same without ’em. Wouldn’t be half as entertaining. Sure, a little bit of ’em goes a long, long way, but I’d miss them.
You hear this soft, inflected tone everywhere that young people below, roughly, 35 congregate. As flat as the bottles of spring water they carry and affectless as algae, it tends to always trend towards a slight rising question at the end of even simple declarative sentences. It has no timbre to it and no edge of assertion in it.
It is a conscious assault upon male things…or an unconscious one. Most likely a sloppy hodge-podge of those two. Being a resident of Folsom, I decided a month ago I’d left my own observations unmentioned plenty long enough:
The patchwork-quilt of [F]olsom is polka-dotted with parks of varying size, and being a parent myself I get to watch lots of parents interact with their children.
:
Fathers…and mothers…modulate their voices way, way upward. Several octaves in the case of the gentlemen. It does not sound like me telling my kid to keep his feet on the pedals. It does not lack a declarative tone at the end, like the Castrati described by Van der Leun. They declare things. They just declare them in this weird, other-worldly, somniferous voice. Kind of like Marvin the Martian. Except Marvin the Martian sounds like an opera baritone compared to this.
Victor Davis Hanson, last week, got in on the act (he must’ve been reading Gerard’s blog because nobody reads this one!):
Something has happened to the generic American male accent. Maybe it is urbanization; perhaps it is now an affectation to sound precise and caring with a patina of intellectual authority; perhaps it is the fashion culture of the metrosexual; maybe it is the influence of the gay community in arts and popular culture. Maybe the ubiquitous new intonation comes from the scarcity of salty old jobs in construction, farming, or fishing. But increasingly to meet a young American male about 25 is to hear a particular nasal stress, a much higher tone than one heard 40 years ago, and, to be frank, to listen to a precious voice often nearly indistinguishable from the female. How indeed could one make Westerns these days, when there simply is not anyone left who sounds like John Wayne, Richard Boone, Robert Duvall, or Gary Cooper much less a Struther Martin, Jack Palance, L.Q. Jones, or Ben Johnson? I watched the movie Twelve O’clock High the other day, and Gregory Peck and Dean Jagger sounded liked they were from another planet. I confess over the last year, I have been interviewed a half-dozen times on the phone, and had no idea at first whether a male or female was asking the questions. All this sounds absurd, but I think upon reflection readers my age (55) will attest they have had the same experience.
And now the eggheads have done their studies on exactly this thing. To whatever extent you allow eggheads to tell you what the girls want, it would seem the girls are starting to place a premium value upon that which is, according to the observations of the three of us, in a state of wane:
While Justin Timberlake’s high-pitched voice may be music to many female ears — it seems women actually prefer men with raspier, deeper voices like that of Sean Connery.
A study, done by researchers from Harvard University and Ontario’s McMaster University, found women are attracted to deeper voiced partners, which experts claim indicate dominance and good genes, the Daily Mail reported.
For the study, anthropologists and psychologists from the two universities studied 88 members of the Hadza tribe in Tanzania.
They found that when women are at their most fertile, they are attracted to deeper voiced partners because they are considered to be better hunters who offer more protection, the newspaper reported.
In fact, women are only attracted to higher pitched male voices when they are at their least fertile, such as when they are breast feeding, researchers said.
The findings, published in the British medical journal Proceedings of the Royal Society B, go on to say: “Voice pitch may be an indicator of underlying mate quality in humans. Vocal attractiveness is correlated with body and facial attractiveness.”
Now, I’m no egghead; I don’t have sheepskin on the wall or a white lab coat or a pocket protector to put in the lab coat or a propeller beanie I can wear on my head. I may have picked up a thing or two about how to work with statistics, but I don’t apply it to my “research,” which amounts to nothing more than looking around at people, watching the idjit box, not being afraid to use the word “whenever” or to remember things like Hanson does.
Nevertheless — my “research” has noted there is a strong correlation between these cultural enclaves in which higher pitches are used for what passes through the masculine voice box, and lower standards in defining what is, or might be, a threat. No, not so much lower standards. Confusion. You know what I mean. Wherever people who mean to harm others, are perceived not to, and people who only mean to harm those who do harm, are perceived to be out of control and dangerous.
Social circles in which Denny Crane would be the “bad” guy…
These are bubbles of thought in which I notice the masculine voice starts to rise……..? And I would extend that into the playgrounds in which I see the daddies talking like Mariah Carey. I’m just going to assume, and I’m not going out on a limb here, that these daddies-and-kids come from households in which masculinity is regarded as a useless burden, an intrusive threat, or both. So daddy talks high, like mommy. Who wants to threaten his own kid? I don’t think this is conscious. I think this is an evolutionary trait — when the village imposes a new criteria for belonging, people who live within it start working like the dickens, to belong. Gals are better at this than guys are, but guys are improving their chameleon skills as they become more feminine. Spending more of their time within the walls of the village, as opposed to outside, where they used to be, running around in their loincloths hunting for rapidly-moving, sneaky, tasty things.
I find it interesting the eggheads have started to pick up on this conflict. The conflict will no doubt unfold, in the years ahead, becoming more and more effervescent…I find that interesting too.
What I find most interesting of all, is that the two juxtaposed and contradictory forces in this conflict — men talk high, men talk low — are both provided by the preferences of the females. Females, as we’ve said many a time before here at The Blog That Nobody Reads, are individuals just like anybody else. They are not of one mind. And the female individuals part company on whether or not it’s a good thing that men are different from them, and can do things they cannot…write something in the snow, open a pickel jar, grow all kinds and types of hair on the face.
There are women who get agitated just thinking about it. And still prefer the company of “men.” Quasi-men. And they manage to find some. The poor bastards.
There are other women who practice viva la difference. They may be conservative, they may be liberal, they may go hunting for moose, they may have spent their entire lives indoors.
What should men do? My advice is the same for all men, whether they’re looking for a nice lady, or are already happy with the one they got. Just talk the way you naturally talk. If your voice is, indeed, two octaves above Middle C, then by all means talk that way — but I don’t think it is.
Save the question-mark-on-the-end for occasions on which it belongs there. Learn to declare things. I’m convinced, at this point, and with the passage of time I’m only becoming moreso…this has a direct bearing on how a man thinks. Some things are open to question, others are not, and the guys I’ve met who talk like women, seem to have a profound weakness for intellectually regarding matters closed that, in fact, are. They seem to live in this mind-falsetto world in which everything’s open to question, constantly. That isn’t good. And no, I’m no longer willing to entertain any further thought or pondering about that. Dammit.
Hey, this is really good to see. Virgil’s been our blog-bud for awhile now, and not only is he picking up some traffic but he got himself a guest spot on manufacturethis.org as well. Well deserved.
Hope it’s the first limelight out of many, Virgil.
The active and play-ful type. They are especially attuned to people and things around them and often full of energy, talking, joking and engaging in physical out-door activities.
The Doers are happiest with action-filled work which craves their full attention and focus. They might be very impulsive and more keen on starting something new than following it through. They might have a problem with sitting still or remaining inactive for any period of time.
Buck claims to have been missed by a country mile. On the other hand, the engine-widget-whatchamacallzit had a look over our material here at The Blog That Nobody Reads, and it came back with the same thing produced by everyone else who’s ever inspected us with MBTI in mind, going clear back to childhood:
INTP – The Thinkers
The logical and analytical type. They are especialy attuned to difficult creative and intellectual challenges and always look for something more complex to dig into. They are great at finding subtle connections between things and imagine far-reaching implications.
They enjoy working with complex things using a lot of concepts and imaginative models of reality. Since they are not very good at seeing and understanding the needs of other people, they might come across as arrogant, impatient and insensitive to people that need some time to understand what they are talking about.
I’m attracted to this because it’s a weekend, and the subject matter has nothing to do with politics. However…I take umbrage with this “imagine far-reaching implications” thing. Next time you want to write up a profile on INTP, I say, get an INTP to write it. We don’t imagine connections between things that appear unrelated, to the casual observer — we comprehend them.
There I go, failing to see or understand the needs of others again.
