Take a culture. Any culture (or sub-culture, really).

Deprive them of choices.  Stuff them into ghettos, literally or figuratively. Punish them just for the simple act of being who they are. Make their identity the subject of scorn and abuse within the larger society.  Actively denigrate their traits, their identity – their being.  Lather, rinse and repeat for a few generations.

What do you get?

Cultural pathologies.   The world’s full of them:

• Russians, with over a thousand years of rule by strongmen and monarchs who used systematic abuse as a fundamental tool of power, have the most exaggerated sense of cultural Stockholm Syndrome imaginable.  It’s been quipped by not a few Russophiles that Russia is generations away from being comfortable with western-style liberal democracy; the peoples’ cultural memory is as utterly tied to abuse as any battered spouse after leaving a thirty year marriage; as awful as it is, they keep finding more of it.
• Jews the world over exhibit all sorts of stereotypical cultural traits – insularity, fatalism, and on and on – that sociologists have linked to the centuries of segregation, pogroms, and mass-murders epic and small that they’ve endured.
• African Americans are still showing the cultural ills bred during 400 years of slavery; the black male, in particular, is still fighting with the marginalization he suffered under slavery, which lives on in far too many black families (and is glorified in way too much of the current popular culture); after 400 years of seeing signs of “uppityness” – education, initiative, individual thought – punished ruthlessly, it’s not hard to see why the culture’d have a hard time recovering in between 47 and 146 years.
• White Trash, too; southern white working-class non-land-owners were treated little better than serfs until the civil war, and not much better after.  Most of the ills that affect the white south – rural crime rates that in places like Louisiana and South Carolina overtop most urban areas, poverty, the Cyrus family, limited regard for education, the general sense of low expectations – trace back to the Antebellum period, where poor non-land-owning Scots-Irish crackers were expected to be cheap labor and foot soldiers.

And now, a full 49% of American society.

We’ll come back to that.

———-

A couple of stories popped up on the radar the other day that led me to a topic I’ve been stewing over writing for quite a while now.

Author Kay Hymowitz is the author of the best-seller Manning Up, which argues that twenty and thirty-somethings today are putting off adulthood, preferring instead to remain in a sort of arrested adolescence she terms “pre-adulthood”.

The Wall Street Journal published excerpts; she got some feedback.  And she wrote about it in the Daily Beast by way of defending her premise:

But a lot of the responses unwittingly proved my point—and another one: Men are really, really angry. Consider: “We’re not STUCK in pre-adulthood, we choose it because there aren’t any desirable American women. They’ve been bred to abuse men.” This fairly typical response that appeared at the Seattle Post Intelligencer website: “Sorry ladies. In the age of PlayStation 3s, 24-hours-a-day sports channels, and free Internet porn, you are now obsolete. All that nagging, whining, and stealing our hard earned cash have finally caught up to you.”

Shocked? I wasn t. During the last few years researching this age group, I’ve stumbled onto a powerful underground current of male bitterness that has nothing to do with outsourcing, the Mancession, or any of the other issues we usually associate with contemporary male discontent.

Hymowitz focused largely on “men as potential mates for women” and the dating lives of the age group, of course, and her observations reflect the scope…:

No, this is bitterness from guys who find the young women they might have hoped to hang out with entitled, dishonest, self-involved, slutty, manipulative, shallow, controlling—and did I mention gold-digging?…Women may want equality at the conference table and treadmill. But when it comes to sex and dating, they aren’t so sure.

…but I think she missed a much, much bigger point.  Men, especially younger men, are angry – and it’s not just about dating, mating and sex.

She gets ever so close to the real point, too:

So, is this what Susan Faludi famously called the backlash? Is it immaturity, as my own book seems to suggest? Is it the Internet as an escape valve for decades of pent-up rebellion against political correctness? Or, is it just good, old-fashioned misogyny?

(Hymowitz’ theory is it’s a little of all of the above, plus the “men aren’t used to competition” slur, plus a broad upset over dating/mating gender roles, which have changed, partly, for women but not for men, in case you’d rather not read the whole thing).

Hymowitz missed the real story – or perhaps the real story was outside the scope of a book and article whose purpose seemed to be to reassure a generation of jaded younger women that they’re OK, it’s all those guys who have the problem.

There was another bit of news last week that is interesting to juxtapose with Hymowitz, though.

———-

Earlier this week, a Texas non-profit announced it was going to start giving scholarships for white guys.

The “Austin American-Statesmen” reports a Texas nonprofit group called the Former Majority Association for Equality is behind the scholarships.

Texas State University student Colby Bohannan says he launched the group after returning from the Iraq war to find there were college scholarships for women and minorities, but white males were left out.

Bohannan and his friends will start giving out 500-dollar scholarships this summer.

It’s a stretch to call it “racist”; applicants need to be 25 percent Caucasian, so the skinheads who fret about “mud people” aren’t likely to be much assuaged.  It’s certainly politically-incorrect, of course – a point in its favor.  Our self-appointed elites are tittering, of course – not just the giggly bit from the Daily Beast’s Lloyd Grove, but the inevitable droning jeremiads from the Southern Poverty Law Center, whose stock in trade is finding hatred in every box of Cheerios:

“It looks to me like a simple provocation,” says Mark Potok, who monitors hate groups for the Montgomery, Alabama-based Southern Poverty Law Center. “These people have fallen directly into the ever more popular myth of white oppression in America. The reality is that whites, to this day, have enormous privileges in landing scholarships and have real advantages in finding places at good schools.”

Potok says he isn’t impressed by the Former Majority Association for Equality’s avowed benign intentions, pointing out that professional racist David Duke, of the European-American Rights Organization, has used similar anodyne arguments while making a big show of sending money to poor whites in Appalachia. Potok also cited one of Duke’s favorite tracts, racial theorist Wilmot Robertson’s influential and wildly popular 1972 book, The Dispossessed Majority, which argued that the relative population decline of the United States’ white founding stock, compared to rise of non-Caucasians and immigrants, was allowing the nation to fall under the pernicious influence of foreign interests and Jews.

Potok is doing the SPLC’s usual voodoo, finding correlation and claiming causation, and doing a poor job even of that.  Is “White Oppression” an absurd case to try to make?  Sure.

But Potok, Bohannon and Hymowitz all came —-> || <—-that close to hitting an actual point.

Simultaneously!

Are white males oppressed?  Not in any meaningful way.

Are young males of most races angry, and perhaps reacting to that anger detrimentally?  Very likely.

Is it because they face changing gender roles in dating?  Maybe, but then so did my generation.  If anything, the change was more radical thirty years ago. when the entire change in gender models at home, at work and in society was both brand new and being taught as a crash course.   Today, young men express puzzlement that women their age can have sex without guilt just like they (purportedly) do; thirty years ago, it was that women could earn a living without guilt.

But guys in my age bracket, and not a whole lot after, had one huge advantage over today’s young men.

More tomorrow.

I am a firm believer in the sanctity of marriage.

So it’s a tragedy, truly, that Scarlett Johannson and, er, whatshisface are calling it quits:

“After long and careful consideration on both our parts, we’ve decided to end our marriage,” they say in a joint statement. “We entered our relationship with love and it’s with love and kindness we leave it. While privacy isn’t expected, it’s certainly appreciated.”

Johannson and that other guy. One might worry about the sanctity of marriage in Hollywood.

According to a source, the couple quietly split six months ago, and Johansson initiated the move. The actress began apartment-hunting in New York City and is currently in Jamaica with some girlfriends, the source adds.

Like I said.  No comment.

UPDATE:  Welcome, readers of PZ Myers’ Twitter feed.  The line you’re looking for is down in the comments. 

And, using the same logic Gavin Sullivan used in stating I “confirm” that your hero’s marriage was “ordained by God”, it’s fairly certain that Gavin Sullivan supports indiscriminate torture, since he pretty well waterboarded context.

I was a little leery of tackling the Tom Hackbarth story last week.   

Not because I didn’t think I had the story right; Hackbarth’s behavior was unseemly, as was that of those who piled on to add detail to the story based purely on innuendo and supposition.  

No, I was leery mostly because whenever the topic of Planned Parenthood or any sort of offense against women is concerned, there are not a few people out there who would toss rationality to the wind, if they ever had it in the first place.  

I don’t know Rachel Nygaard, and she damned sure doesn’t know me.  Can she approach this, or any, issue rationally?  Well, she writes for Minnesota Progressive Project, which isn’t a good sign.  But that’d be a smear by association, and judgment by innuendo, and that’s the sort of stuff I condemned in my original piece on the subject.  

Of which more later.  

For better or worse, Nygaard does capably summarize the core of the local Sorosphere’s meme on the subject:  

“I understand why the police and the security guard thought what they might have thought, but it really was insignificant to me.” – Representative Hackbarth  

Tracking down a woman you met once while carrying a gun is an insignificant act? Even if you remove the fact that he was carrying a gun, a man that felt the need to track a woman down when he felt she wasn’t being completely honest with him is stalking behavior  

And if you leave aside the facts that Hackbarth was accused of no crimes, that there is no evidence that the target of his misplaced interest ever knew Hackbarth was looking for her, and that  the gun is irrelevant (Hackbarth has a permit, and permit-holders are two orders of magnitude less likely to commit any kind of crime than non-permittees like, well, Rachel Nygaard, among others), she’s right.  Hackbarth, by his own admission, was at the very least exceptionally clingy; at worst…  

…well, we don’t know, because there was no “at worst”.   Hackbarth parked his car – near Planned Parenthood.  He got out and changed jackets; a security guard saw Hackbarth’s legal, holstered gun, and called the cops.  But for that chance encounter with a closed-circuit camera, we’d have likely have known nothing of the story…  

…and, Rachel Nygaard will no doubt remind you, Hackbarth could have gone on to shoot the woman in a fit of rage.   

Which is, really, all she has.  Could-haves.  

Could-haves and dogma, of course:  

The ‘boys will be boys’ dismissal of his actions by the conservative bloggers astounds me.  When is this type of behavior ever okay?    

This is the GOP blogger Mitch Berg commenting on the Hackbarth issue.

Remember – in the world of domestic law, including “abuse”, “domestic violence”, “stalking” and the like, men are considered guilty until proven innocent.  

Going on to say that

Everything Is Stalking

He later qualifies his more offending statements (not those listed above) but the misogynistic attitude seethes from his post. 

Go ahead and read the article.  It’s nonsense, of course; there is no “misogynistic attitude” – not in the sense that a rational person would understand.  The only “offense” would be to those who find any questioning of The Narrative offensive.  

I won’t say “Nygaard is lying”, because “lying” implies knowing that she’s spreading a falsehood; I think that to Nygaard’s perspective, which (I’m going to go out on a short limb and guess) comes from marinading in Big Feminist dogma for an entire adult lifetime, men are guilty of misogynism, stalking, abuse, or whatever until proven innocent – and furthermore they can never be proven innocent! 

Of course, to Big Feminism (and I think it’s fair to say Nygaard is acting as an agent of Big Feminism), defending a man against even the most facile, unsupported innuendo, by introducing fact into the discussion (or, in this case, pointing out the lack of facts behind the innuendo thrown at Hackbarth), is itself “anti-woman”.   

Clearly, Mitch Berg and Rep Hackbarth have a different moral compass than the rest of us. 

Clearly. 

I believe that the guilty should be punished – and that people are innocent until proven guilty, and that “proof” means a lot more than innuendo, narrartive, and ideology-based assumptions.  I believe in empirical, observable fact, not dogma.  I believe that people are individuals with their own motivations and backstories and strengths and weaknesses and the dignity (and degradation) that comes from the exercise of their own free will  – not facile cartoons that follow pre-written narratives.

 And it’d seem that Nygaard believes that I’m a cartoon.  She puts it in as many words:

I truly hope that they educate themselves about domestic abuse and difficulties protecting women, men and children from domestic assault. 

Dear Rachel Nygaard; keep your prejudices, your narratives, your bigotry off my body.  You don’t know me.  You have no idea where I’ve been and what I’ve done in my life (and I’m not going to tell you any of it here, anyway).  Just as your idiot friends rushed to judge Tom Hackbarth based (as I showed) entirely on narrative, screed and innuendo, so you’re doing with me.  

That’s OK – I can take care of myself just fine, and it’d seem to be all you are equipped to do anyway, and we should expect no more.  

As I said in my original post; stalking is wrong.  Clinginess is a bad idea.  Separation and divorce are a bitch, psychologically as well as every other way.  

All clear?

I’d always suspected this was true.   Now, we have documentary evidence.

(Not remotely safe for work, or kids, or those with delicate senses of language or decorum).

Before Algore invented the Internet, he had Tipper were purportedly the models for the book and movie Love Story.

The sequel may not be such a feel good hit:

Former Vice President Al Gore and his wife, Tipper, are separating after 40 years of marriage.

No global warming there…

Katie Kieffer on Obama’s feminist face in bringing Wall Street to heel:

There are three women on Wall Street who have literally gone wild. No, they didn’t strip off their matronly suits on a GGW spring break tour bus. Rather, they are on a mission to strip Congress, small businesses and individual Americans of proper authority, rights and freedoms and replace these with their own rules and regulations for how to play the financial game on both Wall Street and Main Street.

These three women, who graced the May 24 cover of TIME Magazine and were touted as the “Sheriffs of Wall Street,” are an embarrassment to my sex. Rather than advancing equality between the sexes, their self-centered political agendas do the following:

1. Send the message that women do not understand finance or business, and this makes them insecure. So, they use their authority to control and regulate finance and business.
2. Reinforce the notion that the only way men will take women seriously is if they exert “control” over men.
3. Teach young women to prioritize power over finding solutions.
4. Dismiss equality entirely and send the message that women should referee men and dole out red cards – not play the soccer game with them.

Let me introduce you to these women, one by one. You can decide if they are on a mission to “protect consumers” or if they are on a quest to disprove an imagined bureaucracy of male chauvinists on Wall Street. If the latter is their goal, then the bigger question is whether cracking down on business and the financial industry is a good way to achieve this goal.

Read the whole thing.

A guy, in prison for four years for a rape he didn’t commit, is finally freed; the victim lied all along.

A young mother who falsely cried rape, sending an innocent man to prison for nearly four years, will experience firsthand what he suffered — she’ll spend one to three years behind bars for perjury.

“I wish her the best of luck,” said William McCaffrey last night of Biurny Peguero Gonzalez.

“Jail isn’t easy.”

McCaffrey, 33, of The Bronx, was locked up after Gonzalez accused him of raping her at knifepoint on a Bronx street back in 2005.

Ms. Gonzales, who concocted the story to explain to her idiot girlfriends why she ditched them while out clubbing, didn’t just lie once, either:

It was a lie she repeated to doctors, cops, prosecutors, a grand jury and the jury that convicted McCaffrey.h

The “rapist” McCaffrey didn’t have a great time of it in the joint, to say the least:

McCaffrey said he has some sympathy for Gonzalez and hopes she “doesn’t go through what I went though.

“I was an accused rapist in prison,” he said, adding that in prison, “rape is the worst crime possible.”

All is clearly not forgiven.

Nor should it be.  McCaffrey’s case seems to support the accusation that, when it comes to accusations of rape or domestic violence made by women, that men are innocent until proven guilty.

In the comment section, some say that the District Attorney should in in jail alongside Ms. Gonzalez.  Not sure about that – but if there’s evidence that the DA concealed exculpatory evidence, it would be a great idea.

Although I’m sure that the laws – largely written by lawyers including not a few former District Attorneys – shield them from exactly that.  (No, I don’t know it, but that’s the way things seem to work out).

Victorian Harry Reid wants to pass a huge pork-barrel “jobs” bill that will benefit only government jobs…

…to protect women from the foul, urge-driven Neanderthals they’ve shacked up with against their better natures:

Reid, speaking in the midst of a Senate debate over whether to pass a $15 billion package meant to spur job creation, appeared to argue that joblessness would lead to more domestic violence.

“I met with some people while I was home dealing with domestic abuse. It has gotten out of hand,” Reid said on the Senate floor. “Why? Men don’t have jobs.”

Men, you see, are slaves to their base urges.  Harry say man no have job, man hit:

Reid said that the effects of joblessness on domestic violence were especially pronounced among men, because, Reid said, women tend to be less abusive.

“Women don’t have jobs either, but women aren’t abusive, most of the time,” he said.

Well, that’s not really true, but Reid’s gotta answer to his political masters, and it’s a little off-topic anyway.

“Men, when they’re out of work, tend to become abusive,” the majority leader added. “Our domestic crisis shelters in Nevada are jammed.”

Hear that, all you guys in Nevada?  If Big Brother doesn’t keep you amused and occupied, you just can’t help taking it out on those around you.  Your little male peabrain can’t handle the tough times.

Here’s hoping the voters of Nevada send Reid home to pummel his wife to sit in a support group for potentially violent out-of-work Democrats soon.

The headline is that Arlen Specter told Michele Bachmann to shut up and get back in the kitchen.

Not quite in the headlines?  Even if you leave out Specter’s little sexist jape, you hear Bachmann clobber Specter on all the points that are going to be big and key this fall; jobs; prosperity; everything but more and more and more regulation.

Green couples are  having all sorts of troubles:

He bikes 12 1/2 miles to and from his job at a software company outside Santa Barbara, Calif. He recycles as much as possible and takes reusable bags to the grocery store.

Still, his girlfriend, Shelly Cobb, feels he has not gone far enough.

He’s a green guy.  She’s a wannabe High Priestess of Green. That can’t end well:

Ms. Cobb chides him for running the water too long while he shaves or showers. And she finds it “depressing,” she tells him, that he continues to buy a steady stream of items online when her aim is for them to lead a less materialistic life.

Mr. Fleming, who says he became committed to Ms. Cobb “before her high-priestess phase,” describes their conflicts as good-natured — mostly.

But he refuses to go out to eat sushi with her anymore, he said, because he cannot stand to hear her quiz the waiters.

“None of it is sustainable or local,” he said, “and I am not eating cod or rockfish.”

Therapists are apparently seeing an influx of couples who are under straing due to differences in “green” philosophy:

Robert Brulle, a professor of environment and sociology at Drexel University in Philadelphia, said he had seen divorces among couples who realized that their values were putting them on very different long-term trajectories.

“One still wants to live the American dream with all that means, and the other wants to give up on big materialistic consumption,” Dr. Brulle said. “Those may not be compatible.”

The couple at the beginning?

Mr. Fleming, in Santa Barbara, said that he was not quite at that point, but that he was drawing some firm lines.

He continues to make purchases on eBay — although he immediately breaks down the delivery boxes and puts them in the recycling bin to “avoid scrutiny.”

And unless Ms. Cobb can make peace with his long, hot showers, the issue may someday be a deal breaker.

“I like to see the water pouring down,” he said, sounding utterly unrepentant.

You go, guy…

Sex is, apparently, a very good thing:

Yoga instructor Sadie Nardini and her husband got an early start on their New Year’s resolution: In December, the New York couple decided to have sex every day for the entire month.

Nardini and her husband, a professional photographer, initially decided to have sex like bunnies in the hopes that all the activity might help them overcome his-and-her bad habits: cigarettes and chocolate, respectively. And indeed, the nightly trysts did help. But they also found, unexpectedly, that frequent sex made them feel better in other ways, too.

Nardini says they both slept better and had more energy, and she didn’t get a cold or the flu all month as she usually does in the winter. “Sex doesn’t seem at first glance to be the cure for what ails you, but there’s so many health benefits of having more sex,” Nardini says. “Anyone can be better served by having more sex.”

You know what would serve “some people” even better?  If they’d just shut the hell up!

In fact, the experiment was so successful, the couple plans to have daily sex in January, too.

Well, I hope they also plan to just shut up and…

…and…

…oh, shut up.

It’s nice to know there’s something to look forward to:

The 86-year-old governor of a southern Indian state resigned, a day after a television news channel broadcast a tape allegedly showing him in bed with three women.

Morals, ethics and laws aside, of course…

Talking Points Memo on why lefties hate Michele Bachmann:

Michele Bachmann (R-MN) sat down for an interview with MinnPost, and among other things was asked why she is the object of so much loathing among liberals.

“I don’t know. I’m a lovable little fuzz ball!” said Bachmann.

I am starting to get the impresison that Bachmann has the one thing any conservative woman must need to stay in the game without going nuts; the ability to keep her most deranged detractors firmly in perspective.

Which is a nice way of saying “mocking them”.

 “I have no idea what they would have to fear. I guess you would have to ask them; they would have the better answer to your question. I am doing my job. That’s what I was elected to do. I don’t fear the left, and maybe that’s part of the loathing that they feel toward me. I’m not afraid to speak out on conservative positions and on issues.

Which is, of course, the problem for the left; wimmins are supposed to be barefoot, pregnant and dewy-eyed over Obama.

Eric Kleefeld, the writer, tries to answer Bachmann’s question – sort of:

Bachmann has previously wondered why Democrats don’t like her. We’ve collected some of the reasons — such as her having called for revolution against President Obama’s Marxist tyranny, and calling upon conservatives to slit their wrists and become blood brothers in the fight against the Democrats on health care, and many other examples.

I”m always fascinated that the party of “nuance” gets so flatly literal when a conservative woman talks. 

But here’s a serious question:  whenever a woman “comes out” as a conservative, she is instantly branded “teh crazee”, “extremist”, “stupid”, and the whole range of petty defamations.  For Bachmann, of course, it’s old hat – her detractors date back to before her time in the State Senate, when she started the Maple River Education Coalition; the regional left has been sputtering over Bachmann for over a decade.  The contradiction is grating; Bachmann is vastly more accomplished than Betty McCollum, and no more “extreme” to the right than McCollum is to the left.

But I am assured by various liberal friends out there that “there are consevative women that we can respect”.

And I disagree.  Until we reach some critical mass of conservative women in this country, I suspect that every single woman who comes to prominence as a conservative will draw the attentions of the liberal machine.  I can not thing of a single woman of any prominence as a conservative at any level, from local through national, that doesn’t draw the same exact response.

So prove me wrong.  Name a conservative woman of any prominence that hasn’t gotten smeared beyond reason.  And by “conservative”,  I mean conservative; not Christine Todd Whitman or Olympia Snowe.

Ready?  Go.

Reading Salon’s vacuous interchangeable 20-something “music writer”, who seems to be  encountering a bit of cognitive dissonance over the runaway success of Taylor Swift:

Feminism is confusing sometimes! As I’ve lamented before, it occasionally compels me to defend the anti-feminist likes of Sarah Palin and “Twilight,”

(Note to conservatives, who actually will get this:  Palin is “anti-feminist”.  No extra points for guessing what this writer’s sine qua non of feminism is, now, is there?)

and if that weren’t bad enough, now I can’t figure out what to make of this year’s platinum success story Taylor Swift, recently nominated for eight Grammys. I haven’t thought much about Swift, but I’m generally inclined to agree with ladybloggers like Amanda Hess and Sady Doyle, two smart writers in their 20s who have concluded that the 19-year-old’s songs reinforce some not-so-woman-friendly stereotypes in extremely annoying ways. But today, with a typically excellent post about pop culture’s promotion of patience as a girl-powerful virtue, Hess got me wondering — not that she meant to — about whether there might be a legitimate feminist argument in favor of Taylor Swift.

Let’s see; she started writing music when she was a pre-teen, actually worked on being able to sing without the miracle of Auto-Tune, play an instrument or two, and build a career at an age when most of her peers are, well, writing dreary politically-correct drivel for web-zines.

First, let’s acknowledge some major points in the Not Feminist column. As Hess says, “Taylor Swift sings songs about waiting around, being a princess, and crying for her ‘Romeo’ to rescue her from her dad, who is so mean. Then, she makes videos for these songs where she is literally waiting in an ivory tower for her prince to come.”

Goodness.  Indulging in fairy tales. A form of “literature” that’s been around for thousands of years, for good reason; people like ’em.  Hence they’re popular.  And what, homophonically, is the goal of writing and performing “popular” music?

I don’t wanna keep seeing the same hands, here.

And that brings us to the crux of the “Is Taylor Swift good for women?” debate, which — exceptions like “White Horse” aside — really comes down to Taylor Swift, lyricist, vs. Taylor Swift, public figure. It’s her superstardom (and apparent business savvy) itself that provides the most compelling pro-Swift argument. As music critic Ann Powers wrote in the L.A. Times last year, “Swift might play a princess in many of her songs … but in the studio she’s her own boss, writing and producing those fairy tales.” Hess is unconvinced: “This is the Sarah Palin theory of feminism. If she’s a woman, and she does stuff, it’s feminist…”

Well, of course.  Being a woman and doing stuff isn’t as important to “feminism” as being a woman and believing all the same stuff, word for word and note for note, that the modern, academic notion of gender-identity feminism tells women to believe.

It’s why a Sarah Palin, a Michelle Malkin, a Michele Bachmann or a Laura Ingraham or Ann Coulter or Katherine Kersten or even a Taylor Swift – women who’ve actually accomplished something without having to either demanding allowances for their gender or, for that matter, losing any ground due to it – can be called “anti-feminist” with a straight face, while mainstream, academic gender-identity feminists can wipe out decades of “workplace equality” and “no means no” rhetoric overnight on behalf of, say, Bill Clinton.

Because the fact is this; to a modern, academic gender-identity feminist, a “feminist” who’s never amounted to anything outside of a make-work pseudoacademic university “Women’s Studies” program, but who supports abortion without question, is a feminist, while a pro-life women who’s moved mountains through skill, determination and the force of her own merits who is pro-life is not.

Put another way – it’s “framing the argument” for the not-so-bright.

I don’t follow golf much; good lord, who cares?  I mean, if I played, it’d be one thing – I am my family’s only male non-golfer, so far – but I don’t. And so while I know Tiger Woods is the shiznit when it comes to golfers, I can’t say as I much care. 

And so my reactions to his domestic travails ranged from “gee, a superstar with no sense of consequences, how friggin’ shocking” to “Oh, no, crazy billionaires with cars”.

But there was one other angle; the bit about Elin Nordegren allegedly attacking Woods, and eventually beating his car with a golf club.

No news flash here; domestic abuse is a bad thing…

…unless it’s aimed at a guy, when it apparently turns into comedy gold:

On Saturday night’s episode, the NBC sketch comedy show made light of Tiger Woods’ scandalous week, satirizing reports – denied by the golfer – that his wife, Elin Nordegren, attacked him prior to his early-morning car accident on November 27 with a sketch featuring Keenan Thomson and host Blake Lively.

So what was the controversy? 

However, the show’s musical guest was Rihanna – a victim of domestic violence earlier this year from then-boyfriend Chris Brown — prompting concerns from several media outlets that the show’s humor was insensitive from some corners.

Insensitive to Rihanna?  Perhaps – although the incident opened a can of legal whoopass on Brown that his career might not survive, not that that’ll make anyone but Brown especially upset.

But what about Woods? 

“It was another sketch that gave us pause,” noted PopEater in an article titled “‘SNL’ Lampoons Alleged Violence in Tiger Woods’ Marriage,” on Sunday. “We think, had the genders been reversed, ‘SNL’ wouldn’t make light of the potentially violent situation.”

Er, d’ya think?

Society observes a cancerous double standard; domestic violence against women is a serious crime – while violence against men is treated with all the solemnity of Ma Kettle whacking Pa Kettle with a rolling pin. If Nordegren had, for whatever reason, had an affair – or even alleged affairs with (ahem) six people, it would have been equally narcissistic – and if Woods had scratched up her ace, or attacked her car with a golf club, that would have been the story, and everyone from the local cops to all the morning zoo idiots around the country who’ve been tittering at Woods’ predicament (and social life) would be singing a much more serious tune.  Saturday Night Live would find nothing funny about a putter bent around Elin Nordegren’s head.

It’s politically incorrect to observe that women are just as violent as men are – but it’s the truth:

Several studies of domestic violence have suggested that males and females in relationships have an equal likelihood of acting out physical aggression, although differing in tactics and potential for causing injury (e.g., women assailants will more likely throw something, slap, kick, bite, or punch their partner, or hit them with an object, while males will more likely beat up their partners, and choke or strangle them).

Of course, men are considered guilty until proven innocent when it comes to domestic violence – and while I don’t know whether there are grounds to accuse Elin Nordegren of violence, it wouldn’t matter; violence against men is devalued so systematically as to be a freebie.

Like this one, ripped from the headlines:

Prostitutes Offer Free Climate Summit Sex

But just because the joke writes itself doesn’t mean we can’t, too.

Have at it, readers!  The comment section is open for your versions of the story – and like those Danish doxies’ ministrations, it’s absolutely free, although that offered by the Scand0-Strumpets, the  “Happy Ending” will be purely rhetorical.

 Two reviews of Sarah Palin’s book – sort of.

On the one hand, we have local leftyblogger “Penigma” from, well, Penigma.  You’ll recognize him from this blog’s comment section; after years of telling him to “start his own blog”, he went and did it a while ago.  And while this may be taken as damnation by the fainest emanation from a penumbra connected to “praise”, it does in fact suck less than most regional left-wing blogs. 

Anyway, Pen writes:

Bob Schieffer, long-time CBS newsman, political conservative, and host of “Face the Nation”, has described her book as, “This is Sarah Palin’s turn to get even, as it were.”

He goes on to describe her national political future and the book as, “I think she’ll be a great attraction as an amusement. She’s interesting, she’s a celebrity. But I can’t imagine that she has much future in politics, I really don’t.”

While I give mad props to Schieffer – who is indeed one of the rarest critters in the world, a conservative in the upper reaches of the mainstream media – his very status makes him the wrong person to ask about a populist phenomenon like Palin.  His perspective – like that of George Will, to pick a not-entirely-random example – is that of someone who’s more time talking with Presidents and Congresspeople than, say, plumbers and ranchers.

I bring this up because it’s the same mistake the nation’s “elites” made about Reagan.  He’d never played the paper chase; his BA was from an undistinguished college in the middle of nowhere – he couldn’t be as capable as a Yalie, could he?  His “credentials” didn’t involve any time at Columbia School of Public Policy! He’d never worked for a think tank!  How could he have a future in politics?!

The “elites” were wrong about Reagan.  Are they wrong about Palin?  We’ll see. 

We’re going to meet someone familiar next:

A little more than a year ago I told a local conservative blogger (just after the Republican National Convention) that Sarah Palin was an albatross, that her political star was ascending temporarily because she was an unknown who had given a fiery speech, but as her past and especially her comments became public, she would be a boat anchor on McCain’s campaign.

If memory serves, I’m that “conservative blogger”.   Memory may not serve, but the conversation (a comment thread, if memory serves, and more and more it does not) rings a bell.

I was told by that blogger that I was mistaken, that Palin “was exactly what the campaign needed right now.” His point was of course that to the “tea party set” McCain was too liberal, and so to get the ‘base engergized” an issue light-weight, but ultra-conservative photogenic candidate like Palin was needed.

Well, no.  For starters, I have never said that Palin was a lightweight.  Indeed, I repeatedly expressed that I believed she was vastly more qualified to be President that the one we got.

It should go without saying that, being a conservative, a woman’s photogeneity is secondary to her accomplishments and talent, of which more in a bit here.  And while I realize that “from Sacramento, Denver is way out east”, Palin is no “ultra-conservative” in any sense that matters to, y’know conservatives. 

But he got the rest of it right; Palin was what the campaign needed; indeed, Palin was the only reason the 2008 election wasn’t a 15 point debacle.

Perhaps that was the case for the right-wing base, but as the election bore out, it was the undecided and independent voters, not the base, who would ultimately decide the election and who needed to feel ‘safe’ with the VP candidate, and Sarah Palin made virtually no one feel safe thinking she was John McCain’s heartbeat away from being President.

I think it’s highly monumentally implausible that, as bad a year as it was for Republicans and as polarizing a person as Palin was, that a single voter anywhere in the country felt “safe” with Joe Biden. 

In the year (plus) since, Palin has time and again proven herself to be a goof-ball, a daffy ill-informed, fire spewer ready to mouth idiocy like death panels,

(Show of hands:  Anyone tickled pink that a Democrat – someone from the party of Saul “Frame Your Opponent!” Alinsky – is complaining that a “dumb” conservative has out-framed them on their pet issue?)

and one who talks about having to ‘work for a living’ (as compared to a ‘community organizer), but who then went and quit her job because she was not seeking re-election.

Which, at this remove, is a move that makes more and more sense.  Had she stayed in office, the Democrat Smear Machine (R) would have kept lobbing an endless series of phony, borderline-defamatory “ethics complaints”, whose only purpose was to provide grist for the chattering classes’ mill, at Palin.  It was a risky move, and we’re three years away from knowing if it’ll pay off, but it gave Palin one key advantage; it allows her the time and bandwith to define herself, especially with that most important of tasks for any conservative – to outflank the media and define herself directly to the people.  Again, it’s a risk – but what did she have to lose?

She berated Levi Johnson – who maybe even deserved derision, but she appeared cheap and petty

Really?

That’s an interesting “but…”.  Levi Johnson knocks up her daughter, and then goes on a defamatory spree in the media attacking not only her (no big whoop if you’re a public figure) but her daughter?  And responding is “cheap and petty?”

The mainstream media and the Sorosphere (pardon the redundancy) have observed a fascinating double standard in re the Levi Johnson “scandal”; while most people agree that Johnson is a disgusting low-life, Palin’s response (which has been both low-key and fully proportionate to what any parent should do in defense of their children and grandchildren) has been pilloried for no better reason than “she’s a family-values conservative, she deserves what happens to her”.

 and got into a national TV fight with David Letterman – a stupid move that could have resulted in her becoming the same kind of clown Dan Qayle proved himself to be with “Murphy Brown”/Candace Bergen.

“Could have?”

Leaving aside the fact that the two episodes were utterly different (Quayle was criticizing a fictional character, albeit quite correctly; Letterman told a disgusting joke about a child; if I were A-Rod, I’d have bitch-slapped Letterman long before Palin’s fairly mild response got on the air) – it didn’t. 

That this women continues to enrapture the right-wing tea-party crowd speaks only to their enormous ability at self-delusion (rivaled by Palin’s own ability in that regard).

Ah.  Really?

“Self-delusion” means “to decieve oneself into believing something that isn’t true”.  I’m not quite sure what “Penigma” means by calling either Palin or the “Tea Party Crowd” “self-deluded”, and he’s not helpful enough to elaborate. 

But here’s the part that got my dander up:

She appears to be a petty and shallow back-biter, looking more like a mean-spirited and dishonest hick queen dressed up in Versace than a serious and educated candidate and this books seals that impression in gold-plated tell-all tin-foil hats.

“Hick Queen dressed in Versace?”

For starters, the term “Hick” is less onerous than “Nigger” in one, and only exactly one, way; lower-class rural whites were never formally enslaved, never had their rights systematically stripped away due to that status and their skin color, and got the slur due to a condition applied by society rather than birth and ethnicity alone.  It is a thoroughly disgusting, demeaning slur that deserves no less approbation than, say “dirt-worshipping heathen”.  It demeans and dehumanizes based not only on the most trivial, surface aspects of personality, but aspects that are in Palin’s case completely inaccurate and wrong. 

And what does “Hick Queen in Versace” mean?  That them backwoods wimmins should know their place and not pretend to be above their station?  Feminists, you wanna take this one?

Can anyone imagine a liberal referring to, say, Mike Huckabee as a “Hick King?”  Of course not – because Huckabee, being male, is not an apostate.  And it’s to apostates that all the worst punishments are reserved.

And when Pengima says “s books seals that impression in gold-plated tell-all tin-foil hats”, my first question is…

…well, it’s “Huh?”  I have no idea what that means.  I even tried to diagram the dependent clause; I got hung up on the concept of the “tell-all hat” before giving up.

But my second question is “Really?  How does it “seal” that impression?  What part of the book did you read to get that impression “sealed?”  Did you actually read  the book?”

Of course he didn’t.  The “book” didn’t “seal” anything; Penigma’s preconceptions, like those of most of her critics, did.  And it’s about the Big Left’s canonical line (at one point, I’d have called it a “talking point”) about Palin, or indeed about any conservative woman (Latino/Afro-American); she’s “teh crazee/extremist/out of touch not “elite” enough/a hypocrite”.

But retired Brigadier General Anthony Tata did read the book.  And A he “sealed” an entirely different impression, to say the least:

When I got about halfway through the book I set it down, stepped outside of my Washington, DC townhouse and went for a run around the U.S. Capitol. Listening to the Outlaws, Marshall Tucker Band, and Lil Bow Wow (my daughter slipped that one in there) on my iPod, the recurrent thought in my mind was that this woman is far more qualified to be president of the United States than the current occupant of the White House.

Which is something an awful lot of us noted before the election – and in which this Administration’s hapless first year has borne us out.

When I completed the journey that is Going Rogue, I wrote down five things:

–She is a positive role model for all Americans
–She is an executive, takes on hard problems and makes tough decisions
–She has tremendous energy, balance and intellect
–America shafted itself in this last election
–Alaska is lucky to have her

Oh, and a sixth, Sarah Palin could be the next president of the United States.

She certainly could.  And not just because Obama set the bar so low Jimmy Carter must even be feeling good right about now.

Her book washes away all doubts that any reader might have had about her readiness to be president. She comes across as exceptionally bright, dedicated, and passionate about public service. Her moral compass is strong, pointing true North in this case. And she has a wicked sense of humor.

Which are a slew of things that liberals dislike under any circumstances; when they occur in a woman  (or a Latino, or Afro-American)? They must be destroyed.

The most salient take-away from Going Rogue for me was what I admired most in her campaign, which was that she had been in charge as either a mayor or a governor whereas none of the other candidates on either ticket had. Having been a commander several times in the military I know that there is a huge difference between being a hardworking and important staff officer and an ‘alone at the top’ commander. No matter how fancy the title, executive officer or Senator, at the end of the day, you are recommending to someone who actually makes the decision.

As a Governor, mayor or commander, you have the unparalleled responsibility to actually make decisions that have ramifications. There is little training that can prepare you for all those heads turning in your direction when it is decision time. You can’t blithely abstain on a vote or hide behind the guy in front of you, because you own the decision.

Remember all those “present” votes during the two whopping years Obama spent in the Senate?  Did you think it was just an abstract thing?

Case in point is Obama’s inexcusable delay in making a decision on Afghanistan. His indecision, cloaked as ‘sleeves-rolled-up-pensiveness’, is an indicator that he was, at a minimum, unprepared to be commander in chief…Palin, on the other hand, demonstrates decisiveness and vulnerability. Is she prepared for the enormous breadth of responsibility of president? I think she’s ready for the hard part, which is making tough decisions. She’s no “Ruminator-in Chief”, that’s for sure, and if the American people think a second year back bench senator was ready to be president, I’m not sure we’ve got the right rubric out there.

Palin’s got warts; of course, so does every other person in the world.  It’s one of the reasons many of us love Palin, political aspirations notwithstanding; we have kids who givegive us hell; we got through college in fits and starts, and didn’t have time or resources to play the “paper chase” game; most of us tried a couple of different courses in life before settling, at least for now, on what we are.  And she’s not the “perfect” candidate, whatever that is.  But  Conservatism does not expect politicians to be the revealed font of perfection.  Quite the opposite; the imperfection of people and the temptation of power are two of the many, many reasons we advocate limiting government power.

Palin is real. She takes counsel of her fears and continuously comes back to her foundation of family, God, state and nation for reassurance and guidance. She has strong moral guideposts that she uses to navigate the shark infested political waters. Reading about the decisions Sarah Palin faced at multiple levels of government reminded me of something my command sergeant major in the 82nd Airborne Division used to say when we faced a tough decision together: “Sir, when you’re right, don’t worry about it.”

Palin is right on many issues such as energy policy, defense, business, and size of government.

And underneath the carefully-arranged slime jobs, the impeccably-unflattering editing of her first, ill-advised round of interviews with Couric and Gibson, and the endless torrent of hatred disguised as “humor” from the left, that’s what many of us still love about Palin; she’s right.  Above and beyond her personality and history and record, she stands for what I stand for“.

As her father said, “Sarah’s not retreating; she’s reloading.”

We should hope so, because she’s precisely the kind of leader America needs.

Need I repeat that Gen. Tata read the book?

Read the rest of the review – which includes a Hillary Clinton story that sets this whole thing off perfectly.

“Conservatives hate women” is conventional wisdom…

…among people who aren’t all that wise

– in this case, Politico’s Meredith Shiner and Glenn Thrush:

But the growing schism between the Republican Party’s ascendant right wing and its shrinking moderate core has clear gender undertones — and Scozzafava’s departure raises fresh questions about the GOP’s ability to recruit, elect and even tolerate the sort of moderate women who used to be part of its ruling mainstream.

While Republicans scored a pair of impressive electoral victories in New Jersey and Virginia with solid support among female voters, the events of the last week offer harbingers of serious trouble ahead with the largest swing voter bloc in the country — women.

Right.  Because Dede Scozzafava is the only woman in the GOP.

As opposed to Sarah Palin and Sarah Palin?  Or – here in Minnesota – conservative movement stalwarts Pat Anderson and Laura Brod?

Rob Port from Say Anything:

The problem with this analysis?  It’s awfully selective.  It leaves out people like Arlen Spector and Lindsey Graham, both frequent targets ofthe conservative base.  And it also leaves out Sarah Palin and Michele Bachmann, both very popular figures within the resurgent conservative movement.

If the tea party movement had a problem with women, why would people like Sarah Palin and Michele Bachmann figure so prominently in it?  And why wouldthe opposition to so-called “RINOS” or ‘moderates” include both men and women?

Leave aside the fact that many of the Tea Parties – including the Twin Cities’ ones – are largely organized by…women?

Politico has a conclusion in search of data.

It reads almost like a joke; female politicians are better…because they dish the pork and play the government game better than guys?

 

That’s the preliminary conclusion of a study conducted by researchers at Stanford University and the University of Chicago, who say that on average, women in Congress introduce more bills, attract more co-sponsors and bring home more money for their districts than their male counterparts do.

The study, which examined the performance of House members between 1984 and 2004, found that women delivered roughly 9 percent more discretionary spending for their districts than men.

For instance, during Rep. Judy Biggert’s first two-year term, Illinois’s 13th District received $382 million in federal funds, $70 million more than it received during the final term of her predecessor, Rep. Harris Fawell.

Rep. Zoe Lofgren delivered around $859 million to her district, compared with $541 million brought in by her predecessor, Rep. Don Edwards, during his final term, the researchers said.

And during then-Rep. Connie Morella’s first term, Maryland’s 8th District received $780 million, $183 million more than predecessor Rep. Michael Barnes brought in during his final term, they said.

So that’s how we measure excellence in government – by how much pork a politician brings home?

While there are obviously variables beyond gender — seniority, party affiliation, majority/minority status and the differing priorities of a freshman and a veteran lawmaker — the researchers say they’ve accounted for those in making their male-to-female comparisons.

Oh, I don’t think they factored “party affiliation” out one bit…

There are a few lessons Republicans, Conservatives, and women who opt not to vote Democrat can learn from the past year in Sarah Palin’s life:

1. No matter how scrupulously you stick to your constitutional role on policy matters, if you are conservative and Christian, your opponents will call you a fundy theocrat.
2. No matter how accomplished you are,  people will insist you’re not very bright.
3. If you are a woman who attempts a life in public service without an Ivy League degree, no matter what you’ve done in the intervening twenty years, the tittering nabobs will call you the kinds of things they’d be excoriated for saying about a Dallas Cowboy cheerleader or a Hooters waitress.
4. If, only other hand, you are a conservative woman who did get an Ivy League degree and went on to huge accomplishments, you’ll be called a bitch who boffed up.
5. If you are a conservative of either gender, no matter how closely your views are tied to those of most mainstream Americans, you will be called “crazy”.
6. If you are a conservative of either gender, the media will consider you guilty until proven innocent of any ethics charges  brought against you.  Note the double-standard; a liberal lothario is linked with exploiting interns on company time and lying about it by a stained blue dress, and we were urged to “Move On”; Crazee McJackal from Otter Giblet Alaska says Sarah Palin took hush money from Venusians, and it’s treated with solemn urgency.

So there you go, conservative women.  Those are the ground rules.

You can thank all those “feminists” on the left for all they’ve done for women.

This bit here might ring a bell or two (Youtube video; audio intermittently not safe to be openly played at work…)

Happy Father’s Day, everyone!

Father’s Day is one of those holidays that I’m very ambivalent about.  Not because it’s a Hallmark Holiday, per se – but much more because of the way fatherhood has been devalued in our society.

At the core, of course, I have little to complain about. I grew up not only with a father, but a really great one, the kind that, for whatever his shortcomings, was the kind of father any kid should have, someone who passed along not only genes, but values and traditions and the little things that helped him in his own life.  Dad wasn’t like a lot of dads in my neighborhood; he couldn’t tear down an engine, and he didn’t hunt.  A lot of that, of course, comes from his own childhood; his father, my grandfather Oscar, died when he was a toddler, long before I was born.  So Dad didn’t learn a lot of that kind of stuff.  And his love of sports certainly didn’t rub off on me.  But he was a speech teacher – as noted in this space many times, one of the best teachers ever – and his love of the craft and art of giving a great speech, and of writing, and communication, certainly did.  Although he only really held two jobs in his adult life (teaching with two different districts), and always had a hard time relating to my post-industrial, new-job-every-year careers, it was the skills he gave me – communicating, reading other people, knowing that making an impression on people was a matter of careful planning and not happenstance – made my career(s) possible.  I despair, at times, of being able to do as well with my own kids; but having my own, I suspect he must have felt the same way at least once or twice.

Anyway – thanks, Dad.
Not everyone is so lucky, though.  24 million Americans are growing up without fathers.  Some of it is due to cultural shifts; big swathes of our society are being born into “fatherless” families; “Urban” culture in this country exalts skipping out on ones’ kids; it sounds tragic, and it is, but it’s a natural offshoot of the devaluation of men, and fathers, left over from slavery and the matriarchal nature of most African societies (which was, in return, reinforced by the rootlessness and destruction of families under slavery).  Marriage is an otion rather than the expectation for many in our society – in some quarters, most of our society.

Madison Avenue doesn’t help.  The standard archetype of the father in American advertising is the bumbling, inept,. schlubby oaf who’s lucky to be saved by his gorgeous, competent wife (and children – usually girls, of course, since the boys are going to grow up to be fathers one day, too – right?).  And if the schlub and Mrs. Fix-It break up?  The nation’s family courts systematically undercut the rights and value of fathers in divorce and custody settlements nationwide.

I’ll chalk this one up for President Obama; he’s not much of a President, but when it comes to fatherhood’s meaning and value, he knows a thing or two:

The president showcased fatherhood in a series of events and a magazine article in advance of Father’s Day this Sunday. He said he came to understand the importance of fatherhood from its absence in his childhood homes — just as an estimated 24 million Americans today are growing up without a dad.

A Kenyan goatherder-turned-intellectual who clawed his way to scholarships and Harvard, Barack Hussein Obama Sr. left a family behind to get his schooling in the United States. He started another family here, then left his second wife and 2-year-old Barack Jr. to return to Africa with another woman.

His promise flamed out in Africa after stints working for an oil company and the government; he fell into drink and died in a car crash when his son was 21, a student at Columbia University.

“I don’t want to be the kind of father I had,” the president is quoted as telling a friend in a new book about him.

And in an interview Friday with CBS News, Obama said: “It was only later in life that I found out that he actually led a very tragic life. And in that sense, it was the myth that I was chasing as opposed to knowing who he really was.”

His half-sister, Maya, called his memoirs “part of the process of excavating his father.”

Obama now cajoles men to be better fathers — not the kind who must be unearthed in the soul.

Which is certainly something to strive for – not only as individuals, but as a society.

On my IPod just now:

1. Bruce Springsteens’ “Backstreets”, perhaps the greatest bittersweet angrysweet breakup song of all time (…”when the breakdown hit at midnight, there was nothing left to say/but I hated him, and I hated you when you went away…”), immediately followed by
2. Stevie Wonder’s “I Believe” (When I Fall In Love It Will Be Forever), perhaps the best song about faith in the idea of romance ever.

Fifteen rounds, come out at the bell.

One of the most irritating conceits of feminism run amok is that women are smarter/more capable/more worthy/just-plain-better than men.

Usually you get it in an offhanded jape from the not-overly-bright; a comic’s “ladies, we know you’re smarter than us” – harmless stuff.

And I wouldn’t go to far as to say Charlie Brooker’s piece in the the Guardian is “harmful” as observe that it explains a lot about a certain part of the left.

Women – why aren’t you running the world yet? Frankly I’m disappointed in you. Men are still far too dominant for their own good, and consequently we’ve made a testosterone-sodden pig’s ear of just about everything: politics, the economy, religion, the environment … you name it, it’s in a gigantic man-wrought mess. The world’s been one big d***-swinging contest, and we’ve caught our collective glans in a nearby desk fan. By rights we should be squealing for your help, but we’re not, because we’re too damn stupid and too damn proud. We swagger convincingly, and that’s about it. And swaggering’s fine for scraping by in primitive times, but the world we’ve built is altogether more complex now. We’ve got stock exchanges and nuclear warheads. It’s too easy to swagger your way into big trouble without even realising. Well, we’ve had our turn. It’s time for the Rise of the Ladies.We don’t need a few women in conspicuous positions of power scattered here and there – we need a 10-year prohibition on all forms of male power.

I’ve read this same piece a few countless times, of course; it wends its way through the usual bilge; men are simple and singleminded, the world would be better if men lay about like pigs, which is (couldn’t see this coming) their true nature, bla bla bla, along with the inevitable:

Seriously: a decade in which men don’t get to control anything, from the remote control upwards. Imagine the consequences. For one thing, there would be an instant and massive reduction in armed conflict around the globe.

Of course, women in power in major countries seem to inevitably end up fighting wars…

…but let’s not confuse the issue with actual history and stuff.

I read this kind of tripe, and I’m dragged back to something I asked a few years back:

Who have been the great rulers of matriarchal societies?   Who knows?

The theory I’ve heard – and I can’t remember when or from whom, sorry – is that matriarchal societies tend to be more inward-focused; it’s in matriarchal socities that it’s believed that “it takes a village to raise a child”; according to the theory, a matriarchal society behaves more or less like a group of girls will act; verbal, group-oriented, alternately supportive and undercutting.

Patriarchal societies, says the theory, act like boys; outward facing, rules-based, individualistic.

Most societies, of course, mix the two in some way or another, more or less.  And when two societies collide in conflict, it’s usually the patriarchal one that prevails (see:  the spread of intensely patriarchal Islam across heavily-matriarchal Africa).

Again – as I noted above, the only large, significant society in all of history that has seriously addressed the notion of equity among races, beliefs and genders is the patriarchal, Judeo-Christian western civilization.

Question:  If the Judeo-Christian West were a matriarchal society, would it have developed into small-l liberal democracies?  Or would they be recognizable to us today?  Would they be viable?

As re Mr. Brooker, I’m casting pearls before misandric swine.  But the question has fascinated me for years: what  would a matriarchal west look like?  And I don’t mean the idealized fantasy that the likes of Brooker and some of the identity feminists give us, where female rule brings universal peace and healthcare and calm rationality.

Would would a matriarchal west look like?

It’s hard to keep up with all the Change since Obama took office.

As we’ve noted in this space, it used to be that dissent from the government – which was seen, from 2001 to 2008, as the supreme manifestation of patriotism – is suddenly actually UnAmerican.

And now, it seems that rape – which was once, by non-partisan consensus, considered in many ways just as bad as murder – is now the height of comedy.

From Pink Elephant Pundit:

Playboy writer Guy Cimbalo published what might be one of the most offensive articles I’ve seen in a long time. I ranted about it on RFC Radio earlier, but I am still fired up enough to express my fury in words.

Top 10 Conservative Women We’d Love To Hate F**. What a sick, twisted, horrible premise. They list all the heavy hitting conservative women you’d expect – Michelle Malkin being at the head of the pack, and the notable absence of Ann Coulter. He then proceed to talk about why they’re attractive, why he hates them, and the “hate f*** rating”.

“Hate F***” is apparently what all the hip kids call “rape” these days.  I’d have figured it would be more like “Hate Powermongering”, but I guess I’m not hip to all the “change” going on these days.

The list?

A few highlights:

Michelle Malkin

This highly f***able Filipina is a massively popular blogger who is known to dress up like a cheerleader on occasion (see video). She’s also a regular on Fox News, where her tight body and get-off-my-lawn stare just scream, “Do me!”

Mary Katherine Ham

You get this one pregnant, she stays pregnant. Karma’s a b*tch, isn’t it?

Amanda Carpenter

She is also a columnist at TownHall, a website for illiterates who disprove evolution by their very existence.

Mind you, this isn’t a posting at some drooling lobotoblog like Cucking Splotch or Minnesota Tragedy of Spyrochaetal Paresis “Progressive” Project.  This is Playboy – the “legit” media (as long as you read for the articles). The rest of the list includes:

Megyn Kelly

Elisabeth HasselbeckDana Perino

Laura Ingraham

Pamela Geller

Michele Bachmann

Peggy Noonan

Back to Tabitha:

Aside from getting the facts wrong re: Carpenter [she’s not with Townhall], the entire thing is vile, unmasked hatred. It’s sick. It’s wrong. It’s something that, unfortunately, many conservative women are too used to.

Apparently being a conservative undermines our femininity? Much in the way that being a black conservative or gay conservative undermines their elevated status as a minority in the eyes of the Left, women on the Right are ignored, abused, and hated. As a conservative woman, I have only been in the line of fire a relatively short time, but have experienced this first hand. Nothing is off limits regarding personal attacks. The double standard is completely nauseating. If this list had been published containing women like Katie Couric, Soledad O’Brien, and other liberal women, it would be front page news. There would be attempts on the author’s life. Instead, Guy Cimbalo, the tool responsible for this, is proud of what he did. Amanda Carpenter, who was included in the list, pointed out that Cimbalo has said he’s proud of his article, and is adding fuel to the fire. He sent out a link, asking people to “join in the fun”.

Cimbalo also took a swipe at Michele Bachmann; “Chemical castration would be preferable”, he said, providing a point on which I’m sure he and Bachmann agree.
No surprise coming from Tabitha Hale, who is basically a junior-size Laura Ingraham.

But I thought; what do the leftybloggers think about this?

“Megan” from Jezebel:

Because it’s not as if Cimbalo does anything in his piece but slag on these women for having the audacity to be attractive, conservative, opinionated and loud about those opinions. In other words, if he didn’t agree with us mouthy liberal broads, he wouldn’t want to fuck us either, and apparently prefers his women quiet and agreeable. And that – no matter what your politics are – is just gross….So, liberal ladies, just make sure you keep your opinions to yourself, never get old, never get a high-powered career and goodness knows don’t disagree with Guy Cimbalo or, like George H.W. Bush, he might not want to fuck you. And you wouldn’t want that.

Emily Kaiser at City Pages:

You’ve got to love a man who tears apart women for having an opinion, some power, and something to say that differs from his own. At least your looks make you good enough for one hate-fuck out of the deal with this sleazy guy.

We’re not the usual voice to speak up for Bachmann, but this column should be a painful read for anyone who has the slightest respect for women, conservative or liberal.

I have to admit, I am so cynical about the local lefty alt-media, I expected worse.  I’m happy to admit I shorted Ms. Kaiser.

And even Jeff Fecke, who is normally one to abase and prostrate the entire male gender and take the odd squib thwack at conservatives (especially Rep. Bachmann);Jeff’s not amused either:

This is seven kinds of despicable, and it is a reminder that there are plenty of fauxgressives running around who somehow think one can be a good liberal and still hate women. One can’t. By all means, attack the politics of Malkin, Coulter, Ingraham and Bachmann. But do so by attacking their politics, not by asserting that their vaginas make them an inviting target for defiling.

Well, good; we’re largely agreed that rape is a bad thing, even for conservative women.

Of course, the left does treat conservative women differently than the politically correct ones; a good chunk of the media and left think that conservative women (like conservative blacks, hispanics and gays) deserve what they get; that a major, dare we say “mainstream” (at least within the realm of soft-core pr0n) publication would think of publishing it, much less pay for it, says something about the outlook of an influential minority (or so I hope) in the media.

The piece was pulled from Playboy’s site not long after the bipartisan wave of revulsion impacted.  Hopefully Mr. Cimballo will get his wish; he seems to have “hate-f***ed” his own career.