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I think this most recent attempt by Maureen Dowd to tar Barack Obama as Teh Ghey will backfire. It’s a classic example of her worst impulse to think that she’s speaking for the common man by assuming that the common man is 100% douchebag. This is empathy, you know. Her low opinion of the great unwashed flyover masses really shines in this quote:
After 200,000 people thronged to see Obama at the Victory Column in Berlin, christening him “Redeemer” and “Savior,” it turned out Sarko was also Obamarized, as the Germans were calling the mesmerizing effect.
“You must want a cigarette after that,” I teased the candidate after the amorous joint press conference, as he flew from Paris to London for the finale of his grand tour.
“I think we could work well together,” he said of Sarko, smiling broadly.
Her assumption is that she can make Obama seem queer by suggesting he hangs out with straight men who don’t flinch at the occasional off-color joke about homosexual interaction. She fails to understand that 95% of straight American men make these jokes on a routine basis, though. And playing up Obama as so charismatic that everyone---male or female, straight or gay---wants to have sex with him like he’s a rock star or something is not exactly the best way to diminish him. Upon reading this column over and chatting about it, Jesse and I determined that this was so going to backfire.
Jesse: the times really could print “democrats are faggy gaytards” every sunday and save modo’s paycheck
11:45 AM me: well i think this is going to fail
11:46 AM because even though she thinks that describing someone as so charsmatic that everyone in the audience wants to fuck him makes him Teh Ghey, i think it’ll probably just make him seem powerful
or perhaps i’m unduly optimistic this morning
Jesse: i think you’re right
11:47 AM i mean, the big thing is, mixing all of the obama attacks together, you get the sense of a guy who’s going to be in your bedroom fucking your wife and asking you to freshen his drink before he finishes
11:48 AM me: so james bond
What Dowd fails to understand is that even though, by her measures, James Bond should repulse the great unwashed flyover people, what with his robes and his martinis and his European sensibility that she likes to slur with variations of the “so femme!” bullshit she operates with, there’s a reason that Bond films continue to make shitloads of money, even though the franchise lost most of its energy eons ago. (I do like the new Bond, though.)
To make all this worse for the usual media narratives is that McCain is increasingly coming off as the political version of the Nice Guy®---a morally repugnant misogynist who continues to claim entitlement to power by virtue of hanging in as long as he has, who the twittering media assholes can’t see as anything but a nice guy who deserves to get some pussy a seat in the Oval Office.* His seething bitterness and general inferiority to Obama is going to really come out during the debates, and it’s going to be worse because McCain and the media fanboys that gather around him don’t see it. Well, scratch that. The mainstream media does indeed see that Obama’s just the all-around winner in these personality wars,** but they’re not happy about it, because McCain’s such a nice guy. You know, except he’s really not.
With that, I’ll leave you this lazy summer Sunday with a relevant quote from The Onion:
LANCASTER, PA—According to the latest information provided by the unnamed, impossibly debonair-sounding European man who is now answering all of her calls, your ex-girlfriend, Rebecca Norsten, “don’t want to speak to you no more.”
The new policy of non-communication, not elaborated upon by Norsten herself, was announced during a phone call to her apartment early Monday morning in the suave, confident tones of an Italian or possibly Portuguese individual of indeterminate height and muscle tone. Phone records indicate the statement was made at 9:35 a.m.—approximately one hour and 25 minutes too early for the speaker to have been a platonic visitor who did not spend all last night giving the love of your life everything you never could.
“Rebecca is no coming to the phone, my friend,” reported the exotic-sounding stranger, who rolled his R’s in a manner that strongly suggested he can outperform you sexually. “I am condolence for you, but what is to be done? There are many fishes, yes?”
The probable Mediterranean sex god concluded the statement by saying “ciao,” after which it can be assumed he returned to his previous task of hand-feeding your ex-girlfriend slices of juicy mango while she reclined naked in a hammock, finally free from the burden of dating you.
Then again, maybe it will work by tapping the resentment vote Republicans often channel so well. For some reason, though, I just don’t think the national mood is there right now.
*I have to give credit to J Train for pointing this out to me in email.
**Er, not to mention the other, more important policies and issues wars, which is actually why he’s going to win. *cough* Iraq *cough* economy
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Posted by
Amanda Marcotte on 01:50 PM •
Permalink
They’re having the same problem they did with Clinton.
Their attacks make him seem cooler and more likeable.
aHa!
The Onion Quote was F%ckin great. I have to wipe the beaujolais off the screen, i’m sending it to a couple of my ex’s under the title NOW I NOW WHY! dammn.
The more the media make Obama more like Clinton, the more they insure a victory for Obama.
I firmly believe the nation wants a return of someone like Clinton, but without the baggage. Clinton never was an overriding embarrassment so that everyone, including us, thought he was a fool.
Dowd’s a hack. She’s part of the Obama-love team now. It’s about money and power, folks. Face it.
I am tired of the fetid and overheated nature of this campaign season and am thinking of tuning out.
Amanda, what with the fuck panel and all, I was worried that you would intentionally dull the rapier of your wit. I doubted, Lord! But you are keeping the cutlery sharpened, and Modo should certainly take some lessons: “… media assholes can’t see as anything but a nice guy who deserves to get some pussy {scratch} a seat in the Oval Office.”
That so fits the perennial high school mindset of the press, viz the infamous Swampland post that McCain is the “cool” guy in high school! I don’t know what is worse, the notion that we never leave adolescence (enabled by a press that wants us to be dumb and dumber) or the notion that McCain is some high school kool guy.
Off topic, but I found an article that could probably use a good fisking:
http://firstthings.com/article.php3?id_article=6262
It basically argues that Humanae Vitae‘s anti-contraception message has been vindicated by time, and even quotes some Third Wave feminists to prove its point. Has anyone tried really analyzing this piece to see its flaws? Or does it contain a bunch of recycled anti-contraception talking points that have already been debunked?
Taking a look at it, I notice it claims the predictions that have been fulfilled are <quote> a general lowering of moral standards throughout society; a rise in infidelity; a lessening of respect for women by men; and the coercive use of reproductive technologies by governments.</quote>
In order, a rebuttal:
1. Is always accused of happening. Regardless of anything. Nice try.
2. This one might even be true, although blaming it on contraception seems . . . disingenuous. Like wanting to block the HPV vaccine to prevent teenage sex through threat of cervical cancer. Surely illegitimate children aren’t a good, by Catholic standards. Their argument seems to tie the non-married parenthood revolution to contraceptives, which again seems silly.
3. I doubt is borne out by the evidence, unless you frame it specifically in Catholic terms.
4. Their big example, China, draws not at all from the contraceptives that ordinary people might be expected to use, and instead from the Eugenics techniques of the first half of the century.
That’s just a sketch, and if anyone wants to expand it I’d be honored.
It’s very easy to say that a prediction “came true” when it was made in purely subjective terms. None of those claims can be easily quantitatively proved. There’s a huge difference between predicting that the divorce rate will rise and predicting that “moral standards will sink lower”. I mean, how can you even test that?
The next Bond movie comes out the Friday, Nov. 7, 3 days after the election. Coincidence?
OT too, but I also have a find: an ethical atheist who says, repeatedly, that because a woman wears clothes and thus creates the risk of being raped, she consents to the risk of rape:
In this type of case, [a woman who gets raped after wearing short skirts in the wrong part of town] the victim of the crime and the person who may have caused the crime are the same person. From which we may assume that the person harmed consented to the risk.
“who the twittering media assholes can’t see as anything but a nice guy who deserves to get… a seat in the Oval Office.*”
That’s disturbingly accurate; someone really ought to (translation: I had the idea, can I con someone into doing it so I don’t have to?) make a list of the journalists/pundits who’ve said things like, “I’d vote for McCain just because he spent five and a half years being held/tortured in Viet Nam!”
It’s not only disturbing because it’s such a pack-journalism-meets-mindless-man-crush effect, but because it’s the kind of luxury you have to be either (1) exceptionally rich and oblivious to afford, or (2) a total fucking imbecile to use as the basis for such a choice. Millions of other Americans have sacrificed and suffered for their country. Millions of Americans have spent years having shitty things happen to them. Millions of Americans cannot all earn the votes of dipshits in the media for president for simple mathematical reasons—and even if McCain was the most “deserving” of the millions of “long-suffering” candidates, who the hell thinks that would automatically correlate with any kind of administrative talent at all?
On the other hand, it’s easy for a lot of people in the media to say, “Republicans have been bitching about what liberal anti-military people we are, so maybe if we support their guy, who’s our new friend, then they’ll be nice to us!”
For people who use and recycle appeasement analysis, they’re awfully susceptible to it.
Hattie, I agree.
I think you should tune out. Right away, if you don’t mind.
This post seems come si dice overdetermined. You point out that Dowd’s banter with Obama will help him by suggesting that he is a sex God with a sense of humor and no anxiety about his gender orientation (sounds like a likely guess as to the effect if any). You describe this as “backfiring” that is you assume that Dowd was attempting to help McCain and was doing a very bad job of it. For some reason, you dismiss the possibilities that she want to help Obama (why not) or just doesn’t give a damn who is elected President. It is very odd. Why do you think Dowd is a Republican. I’m sure Republicans are sincerely convinced that Dowd is a Democrat. Maybe she’s so self absorbed and sex obsessed (I wrote “sex obsessed” not sex starved) that she’s neither.
Now as to this Mediterranean sex God thing, uhm don’t buy a plane ticket for that reason alone fellow citizens of the female gender.
I am 5’7” 17* lbs with a huge nose and two teeny tiny eyes. I have had sex with 2 Italian women (not at the same time what kind of boy do you think I am?) . They both definitely agree that it was by far the best sex they have had (on average not every single time). More importantly when they were angry with me (very often) they would list my faults (makes for very long sentences especially in Italian) but not modify qualify or retract in any way their assessment of my ability in bed (this includes the suggestion that we base our relationship on sex alone because otherwise I’m a pain).
signed
like hell I’m going to sign this. If you require a genuine name, delete it.
James Bond would have slept with Obama.
Dowd is unimaginably loathesome. She is a foul blot on our polity.
Hey. Pope. Yes, indeed. I’ll leave it to you to run the world.
You describe this as “backfiring” that is you assume that Dowd was attempting to help McCain and was doing a very bad job of it. For some reason, you dismiss the possibilities that she want to help Obama (why not) or just doesn’t give a damn who is elected President. It is very odd. Why do you think Dowd is a Republican. I’m sure Republicans are sincerely convinced that Dowd is a Democrat. Maybe she’s so self absorbed and sex obsessed (I wrote “sex obsessed” not sex starved) that she’s neither.
Shorty, Dowd certainly does seem to be very self-absorbed. I would not describe her outlook as neutral, however.
Ms. Marcotte is viewing Ms. Dowd’s current actions in terms of Dowd’s history. Dowd has followed a program of smearing male Democrats as being too effeminate, and female Democrats as being too butch, or some time now. Her claims about her own political leanings notwithstanding, in practice she has done nothing for the past decade except smear Democrats as being gay freaks, and laud Republicans as being ‘real men’, or ‘real women’. In my view, Dowd is a subtle, clever, partisan, character assassin. If Dowd believes that she is a liberal, then perhaps she has a deep inablility to view herself. In the end, her personal feelings matter for nothing, and her writings matter for everything.
Ms. Marcotte is theorizing that Dowd’s strategy of smearing male liberals as being “effeminate”, or “not real Americans” will fail with Obama, and with this American public. If that is so, then that will be an excellent advance.
The larger question is how to defeat Dowd’s strategy for good. I don’t know how that could be accomplished, but perhaps we will learn something about it in this next year.
Finally, Shorty B, don’t worry about not signing your name- none of us sign our names here (and even if you did, no-one would try to out you).
does this maureen doody take it in the azz with or without lube ??
and does she do the Dirty Sanchez afterward ??
Rump Ranger
Furthermore, are you in the eighth grade?
So, Hattie and the Pope say Dowd’s on Obama’s side, while Amanda says she’s sniping at him.
Hattie, you’ve always been 2 beers, no, make that six beers, short of a six-pack, but this is a new nadir.
And Pope, you’re a new idiot if you agree with that crank.
Huh? One line about wanting a cigarette after that, a very old joke at that, and it’s all about Maureen Dowd wanting to make Obama seem gay?
That’s pretty thin gruel, even for you Amanda.
Or it would be, if only every Dowd column wasn’t some variation of “Obama’s gay and Hillary’s a man, so I love Repubs"…
Fuck, who would have thought this was the delete-the-asshole-comment thread?
I’m going to leave the guy pretending like he’s ever had sex that he didn’t pay for, much less in a foreign country, up though. He amuses me. Completely unaware that no one believes a single fucking word.
down, brooks, kristol...i rarely view the op ed page anymore. the letters to the editor are far more insightful.
It’s quite simple really. Barack Obama is Austin Powers. John McCain is Dr. Evil.
Think about it for a few minutes. You’ll understand.
It’s a classic example of her worst impulse to think that she’s speaking for the common man by assuming that the common man is 100% douchebag.
Thank you. I’m white, I’m a man, I’m “working class.” Why do I always have to be the misogynist, racist asshole every time these rich, weaselly typists have a deadline and can’t think of anything new to say?
maureen dowdy is sooo much like many of her “liberal” colleges in the media. They are afraid of their wingnut bosses and peers and turns into pathetic gutless pimps for the right.
By the way, when NYT hired kristol, I immediately canceled my subscription. Pass the word, if enought people do this, then the Times can become a full fledged propaganda tool for the fascist assholes that run this country. Fuck them, we have the internets. For free.
I don’t think McCain is the Nice Guy so much as he is the asshole boss (not necessarily yours) you suck up to because his dad/wife/whatever is rich and can make your life hell. Oh, and because you live in that world, your ambition is not some kind of justice but rather a chance to be the asshole boss yourself.
Thanks for writing about Dowd, Amanda. I won’t click her stuff any more. I assume it’s bad, and if it’s really bad someone (like you) will have a take down.
I wish there was a site to read the stuff without clicking the NYTimes. I don’t want to give them the hits.
Dowd wants Obama elected for the same reason she wanted Bill Clinton in of office: more potential proof of how even funny, smart, and confident men will inevitably disappoint a wonderful and perfect gal like herself. In Dowd’s circumscribed world, all the men that she encounters—young or old, Republican or Democrat (but never “common”, dahlink)—turn out to be either abusers, philanderers or wimps.
Her projection of what amount to bitter “chick-lit” pieces into national political commentary is an embarrassment to the NYT’s op-ed pages.
AlanB:
James Bond would have slept with Obama.
I distinctly remember reading somewhere that the new Bond, Daniel Craig, suggested to the producers (screenwriters?) of Casino Royale that Bond should be involved in a gay sex scene.
That would have been a heck of a new direction for the franchise, no?
James Bond would have slept with Obama.
Aren’t all secret agents just information whores, one way or another? Just because they will do just about anything to get what they want, and what they want is not necessarily money, does it matter?
*sighs*
Well, as a global citizen attempting to keep informed about all the issues regarding liberal/progressive politics where ever they are, I found myself pointed to this page via Eschaton. And despite not being American, I was already aware of the terrible, shallow and rigidly defined by clique-identity nature of Maureen Dowd, so the main gist of the article wasn’t too hard to follow… but the SPECTACULAR lack of self awareness about the author’s own clique-focused presentation was staggering; Yes John McCain is a misogynist, and yes he’s a sociopath too… but must we really suffer this elitist crap associating him with a “Nice Guy®”, as if it’s not enough to mock his cold hearted selfishness, but we have to associate him with all those inferior guys from high school the ladies apparently still feel superior too as well?
Because firstly, it’s not even accurate; The reason (some) Republican’s love McCain is not only because by their definition he’s an Alpha Male (Trophy blonde wife, military career, running for President) but they love him precisely because he’s NOT a Nice Guy®; Bomb, Bomb Iran anyone? If he’s getting the Bitter Male vote, he’s doing it because they expect him to be able to actually DO what they in their impotence only wish they could… not because they see in him their own impotence reflected back. McCain is, if anything, the Penis Substitute, not the Nice Guy® He’s the sports car, the gun-in-every-room, the American Football Team… in their eyes at least. He’s Mr Big Dumb Sexy Violence.
Where as I happen to work on helplines for abused children; children who often do their utmost best to be “Nice” to everyone, to be the perfect little boy or girl, because they hope that if they can just learn to be Nice enough, they’ll avoid having the crap beaten out of them… Of course, it never works because life itself isn’t Nice, and by the time they get to high school, where we run into them as Nice Guy®s they are not only psychologically damaged by parental abuse, but also now a target for clique-related bullying because they are just so self-effacing and shattered. But by then they often don’t know any other way to be, and are often so traumatized by violence that they cannot even conceive of inflicting it on others, even in self defence… So when I hear this crap about Nice Guy®’s being bitter, as if the world doesn’t shit on the genuinely Nice sometimes, then I hear you laughing about how the broken and beaten will never be as good as Beautiful Liberated You; and I hear you kicking down on people whose lives are already loveless and hard enough as it is being made just that bit harder… and well that’s just as sickening and ugly to me as hating them just because they are different and weak like the Right typically does.
Think I’m reading too much into it? Yet it’s exactly that attitude is what “shorty bignose” was actually trying to satirize you for, for fuck’s sake… and it flew straight over your heads. Admittedly it was bad satire, because it was incoherently written, but the name should have been a giveaway; He set himself up as the stereotypically “ugly” man, the one that would never get hot liberal babes like you, and then made up some nonsense about Italian women (a gender reversal of the Onion article and it’s Adonis adoration) seeing his inner beauty, or rather, his sexual technique which wasn’t related to his ugly pasty white ass… and then proving his point, you left his post up so you could mock his assumed complete lack of sex in reality; and thus showing the very physical elitism he picked up on with the mocking of Nice Guy®’s too, because obviously no “shorty bignose” could hope to be with an Italian woman, right?
God knows what he was trying to say with those final lines though… but here’s what I’m going to say with mine; stop this Nice Guy® mocking crap. It might be funny amongst your successful feminist friends, but out in the wider world, where good people lose, and evil ones like McCain and Bush can go all the way to the top, it’s often patronizing, offensive and not perhaps not even remotely compatible with the wider liberal cause; because if you aren’t on the side of the genuinely Nice losers in life, or at least prepared to give them a break, a hand up, a way forward then you aren’t any kind of liberal I’d recognise at all.
And theorizing I’m not any kind of a liberal myself, or an ugly one, is just going to make the comments section as well as the original post insulting and depressing too… so kindly spare everyone that.
I don’t think McCain is the Nice Guy so much as he is the asshole boss (not necessarily yours) you suck up to because his dad/wife/whatever is rich and can make your life hell.
He’s a Nice Guy in the sense of being unpleasant, unlikable, and unpopular, which to the Nice Guy way of thinking makes him the underdog you should root for.
OK. That was a poor attempt at a joke. Shoot me. 
Just Bloody Stop It,
Amanda’s trademarked “Nice Guy(R)” is a slightly unclear concept. After reading this blog on and off, I’ve learned to interpret this archetype not as the genuine and generic nice fellow you describe, but more as an entitled passive-aggressive type who, while claiming “niceness” and maybe even displaying the outward characteristics, really isn’t all that nice (feel free to correct or clarify if I’m wrong here, regular readers).
That said, I would agree with you that Amanda’s applying the “Nice Guy(R)” label to McCain is a little strained, even if the sense of entitlement to the Oval Office is present.
Oh, and norbizness @10:13 gets the win for this thread.
Just Bloody Stop It, Nice Guy®s are not actually nice guys… that’s why we mock them. They are men who think that women are all alike, that we are pussy vending machines and if they just had the right coin we would vend them some pussy, that they are somehow entitled to sex with hot women because they are so Nice, never mind all the perfectly nice women *they* overlook for being overweight or not attractive by their standards… because it’s okay for men to desire who they find desirable, but when women do it it’s a sign that we are shallow bitches.
They are not nice. They just *say* they are nice as a bitter explanation for why they can’t get laid, and assholes can. They take their sorrow about being the guy that everyone picks on, and project it outward so it is women who are bitches for not taking them to bed, instead of a fault in themselves (and if they do identify a fault in themselves, they identify it incorrectly, ie, that they are “Nice” and not that they are passive-aggressive doormats who don’t actually think women are people.)
That is what McCain is being described as. Now, I don’t think it’s accurate; you’re right that McCain is the alpha male, the asshole who supposedly gets the girl, so the fact that Barack Obama is in fact infinitely sexier than he is is being put down to the fact that Obama is gay. No, that makes no sense… it’s not supposed to. This is brought to you by the kind of people who think that men liking to spend time with women is gay, possibly even that men liking to perform cunnilingus on women is gay, because “gay” doesn’t actually mean homosexual, it means “traitor to the cause of Suppressing The Bitches”. But neither Amanda nor anyone else at Pandagon is actually mocking genuinely nice men with the term Nice Guy®. The whole *point* is they’re not actually nice, they just are clueless enough about themselves to think they are.
Why doesn’t Dowd just call Obama a fag and get it over with.
If there’s one thing worse than a professional slimer, it’s a slimer who doesn’t even have the courage of her slimy convictions.
I see that somebody named ‘ema’ has decided to distort my views on this forum - claiming that I said something that she merely wants to interpret me as saying.
“OT too, but I also have a find: an ethical atheist who says, repeatedly, that because a woman wears clothes and thus creates the risk of being raped, she consents to the risk of rape.”
The statement occurs in a discussion about the degree to which it is morally wrong to put another person in a position where they are at risk of becoming the victim of a crime. For example, if I discover that a co-worker were a serial killer, and I introduce him to my neighbor (whom I want killed), is that immoral.
I argued that it is immoral to put somebody else at risk of being the victim of a crime.
Somebody asked about the case where a person puts himself or herself at risk of becoming the victim of a crime - such as the rape example above.
I answered that it is not immoral for a person to put himself or herself at risk of being the victim of a crime because (we may assume) she has voluntarily assumed that risk.
This does not excuse the criminal in any way. It only excuses the person that put the victim at risk.
However, ema, being apparently has a fetish for misrepresenting other people because she(?) has such a need to believe that people are saying such things that she warps what she reads to conform to her(?) desires.
My god! I thought I was obsessive compulsive, but Maureen Dowd is freaking OBSESSED with Sarkozy and Carla Bruni. You can’t read a column of hers without some reference to Sakro these days.
Just come out with it already, Mo: “I want to fuck the frog.”
I answered that it is not immoral for a person to put himself or herself at risk of being the victim of a crime because (we may assume) she has voluntarily assumed that risk.
Alonzo, the giant stinking problem with the example you gave is that a woman being in a bad section of town wearing a short skirt actually is a *low-risk* activity as far as rape risk, because 80% of all rapes are committed by men the woman they rape knows. So higher risk activities would include going on a date with a man, hanging out with male friends, or being in the company of men for any reason at all.
Given that such an incredibly normal activity that involves women interacting with half of the human race is a greater risk than walking down the street in a short skirt, creating an analogy that takes as its *premise* that a woman consents to the risk of being raped by being in a bad section of town with a short skirt is massively flawed and deeply offensive. By your logic a woman consents to the risk of being raped by being in the presence of any man, ever, because 99% of rapists are men and the thing that makes a woman likely to be raped is that she’s in the presence of a rapist.
So the problem is that you assume a woman has voluntarily assumed the risk of being raped when she’s in a dangerous neighborhood wearing a short skirt, but in fact you’re not accurately assessing how much risk there is or what situations cause risk, so you end up in the position of inadvertently arguing that a woman consents to the risk of being raped by existing. Which is pretty fucking offensive.
If I were you I would change it to a less inflammatory analogy. Such as “just because I leave all the doors to my car unlocked, and therefore can be assumed to be voluntarily accepting the risk that my car will be stolen, does not reduce the moral culpability of the car thief.”
Remember, MoDo does her luffly columns with the assistance of at least one paid assistant and a couple of interns, not to mention Lexis-Nexis.
Amanda just has her keyboard and a functioning brain.
Amanda wins.
Alara Rogers
You wrote: “Alonzo, the giant stinking problem with the example you gave is that a woman being in a bad section of town wearing a short skirt actually is a *low-risk* activity as far as rape risk, because 80% of all rapes are committed by men the woman they rape knows.”
It does not matter for the purposes of the discussion in which my original statement was made whether there are greater risks. The question was, “Is a woman who takes a risk that increases the chance that she will become the victim of a crime morally blameworthy for taking that risk?”
The existence of greater risks does not materially affect my argument that women are not to be blamed for actions that increase their risk of being raped.
If you disagree with my position, then this must mean that you believe that we should blame women for actions where they put themselves at risk of being raped.
By the way, Alara Rogers, I don’t think that you disagree with my position. I think that ema misrepresnted my position.
Again, the context that ema lifted my sentence out of was this.
(1) I argued that if Person A puts Person C at risk of being the victim of a crime (Person A introduces Person C to somebody that Person A knows to be serial killer, for example), the Person A did something that was morally wrong.
(2) I was then asked about cases where people put THEMSELVES at greater risk of being the victim of a crime - e.g., by dressing provocatively or by taking a stand on a controversial issue where he might be assassinated.
(3) I argued that we cannot blame the person who puts HIMSELF or HERSELF at risk of being the victim of a crime because the person voluntarily assumed the risk.
The question here is whether a woman does something immoral by putting herself in a position that increases the chance that she would be raped. I argue that women are not to be blamed.
Ema then lifted my statement out of context. Separated from its context, there is no way for the reader to know that I was talking about blaming women for putting themselves at risk of being raped. They assume that I must have been talking about women consenting to being raped.
Ema saw my statement in its original context. She should have known better. She was too eager to misinterpret my argument to go through the effort of discovering what I actually said.
The question was, “Is a woman who takes a risk that increases the chance that she will become the victim of a crime morally blameworthy for taking that risk?”
Except that wearing a short skirt in public does not increase your chances of being raped. You’re taking an imaginary situation and drawing a moral lesson from it. You may as well be debating whether a woman really has to be an absolute virgin for a unicorn to lay its head in her lap or if she can get by with technical virginity.
People, it’s <blockquote. <quote isn’t valid HTML.
“What was she wearing” is never a valid criticism. Women wearing fucking burkhas get harassed and/or raped. Paradoxically there’s not a lot of rape at beaches. It’s not the fucking clothes, it’s the asshole looking at you that is the problem.
Funny, Alonzo signing himself as “Alara” in his second comment. Identity issues? This thread is nearly surrealistic, starting with Dowd’s stylings and winding up wrangling over rape.
I wonder what Scots highlanders think about the issue of wearing short skirts in public, although kilts aren’t all that short.
Still, McCain as NiceGuy? Creepy and misogynistic, sure (and ignorant and militaristic, corrupt and hypocritical) but he manifestly can not only get a date, he’s on his second wife. I wasn’t around when Amanda came up with the concept, I thought I understood it, but I guess I don’t. McCain seems straightforwardly abusive, to a point, but Cindy’s the one with the money, so perhaps he accommodates himself to her, or ....
Shit. Maybe I should just order her book, in which all is hopefully made clear.
bad jim, I’m a Campbell. We think it’s just fine. However we’re not the target of constant, persistent harassment through all levels of society. So… *shrug*
beers. bring on the beers.
Great analysis from Jesse and from Amanda on this. But the point I think you are missing is that Dowd’s “everyman” approach to gay sexuality misses something that “everyman” has been believing and acting on for centuries-that is, that it matters whether you are pitching or catching, dominant or submissive. Her “teasing” of Obama drew attention, as she thought, to the notion that he was “gay gay gay” because his interaction with sarkozy and with the crowd could be likened to sex and its euphoria. But in both cases Obama, whether percieved as gay or straight, was in the dominant position socially and visually. That means that it *doesn’t count as gay* in a negative sense, even for homophobes. So the james bond comparison is really apt--especially given the new james bond’s open acknowledgement of his gay male fan base--because Bond’s appeal is hypermasculine and the hyper in that masculine overwhelms the negative connotations associated with modo’s version of democrats-are-fagz.
aimai
“I distinctly remember reading somewhere that the new Bond, Daniel Craig, suggested to the producers (screenwriters?) of Casino Royale that Bond should be involved in a gay sex scene.”
Just to clear things up, that was in fact what was reported but it was a misquote. There was discussion of whether M should be shown to be a lesbian (they chose not to), and one of Craig’s prior roles was a gay (full nudity) role, and it raised the question of whether Bond movie-goers would be turned off by homosexuality in the franchise, and whether having played gay would make him unacceptable to the Bond fans. Craig said the thought not. This immediately, of course, got turned from “gay characters in Bond movies” to “Bond having gay sex.”
Back to the thread.
Bad Jim, I think the idea here is that the “Nice Guy” concept re McCain here is a metaphor for h the way his campaign seems to be working. He has all these surrogates out there who are using logic like how McCain “deserves” the presidency, the problem with Obama his that he’s just so damn “likeable”, etc.
Uhhh, yeah, you don’t get to be president because you deserve it, and yeah, if people like the other candidate more they’re probably more likely to vote for him. That’s just the way it is. The commonality is this manufactured sense of victimhood, wherein the simple fact that you’re not successful is proof that clearly there must be something oppressively unfair at play. When of course the bottom line is that life isn’t fair, and you don’t always get what you want or what you work for or what you “deserve”.
I didn’t get that anyone was saying that McCain himself is a Nice Guy.
I can’t believe you dumbfucks are bringing over some fight from some other blog into this hallowed sanctuary.
Holy crap Lesly, that is awesome
still amazed this race is even close. nothing brings out teh stupid like a presidential election.
Dear webtards:
No one actually reads Maureen Dowd.
Thanks,
The World
Why don’t we all just call Maureen Dowd a cunt and get it over with?
You know you want to. And you’d be perfectly justified in doing so.
Ms. Dowd continues to top the list of Columnists my parakeets most love to communicate with directy after eating.
Why don’t we all just call Maureen Dowd a cunt and get it over with?
You know you want to. And you’d be perfectly justified in doing so.
Why would we want to do that?
Maureen Dowd is not a warm, soft, moist source of pleasure and origin point of all human life.
Nor is she a fiercely loyal, somewhat dumb animal that warns her masters of the grave threat of squirrels in the yard by barking.
How about we call her an asshole, because she’s full of shit?
Dowd is saying that Sarkozy is hot for Obama, not vice versa. That makes the Frenchie the fagelah, not Barack. And if you can’t use a French film metaphor when in France, when can you? Besides, Dowd is crushing on Carla, not Sarko.
Funny thing, the first thing I thought of, seeing Connery’s pic + the context of this post, was an entry from (the now sadly defunct) Badazz Mofo magazine’ “Asskicker’s Issue.’ The part on Connery started, “Sean Connery is the only actor that other men, who don’t happen to be gay, wouldn’t mind having sex with. The man is that cool.”
Not the way to diminish Obama’s appeal, indeed.
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They’re having the same problem they did with Clinton.
Their attacks make him seem cooler and more likeable.