Off With His Head
--The Red Queen has spoken
Well, I talk about boys, now,
What a bundle of joy!
--Boys, The Beatles
One way or another I’m gonna find ya
I’m gonna getcha getcha getcha getcha
--One Way or Another, Blondie
No one will ever win the battle of the sexes.
There's too much fraternizing with the enemy.
--Henry Kissinger
'Cause I gonna make you see
There's nobody else here
No one like me
I'm special, so special
I gotta have some of your attention
give it to me
--Brass in Pocket,
The Pretenders
And you're boring, and you're totally ordinary,
and you know it.
--American Beauty (1999)
______________________
What a bundle of joy!
--Boys, The Beatles
One way or another I’m gonna find ya
I’m gonna getcha getcha getcha getcha
--One Way or Another, Blondie
No one will ever win the battle of the sexes.
There's too much fraternizing with the enemy.
--Henry Kissinger
'Cause I gonna make you see
There's nobody else here
No one like me
I'm special, so special
I gotta have some of your attention
give it to me
--Brass in Pocket,
The Pretenders
And you're boring, and you're totally ordinary,
and you know it.
--American Beauty (1999)
______________________
The Game of Cat and Mouse: Can't Have One Without the Other
Subtitle: It really IS an Idiot Box.
Today, we'll peep in on the Battle of the Sexes, cos, hey, the news outlets say it's news. We are RangerAgainstWar after all, and in the annals of martial history this one has been going strong since time immemorial, with nary a durable truce. (And just like the Wars on Poverty and Drugs, it has a zed chance of conclusion of hostilities.)
Comparatively, in the longevity arena, the Phony War on Terror (PWOT ©) is a piker.
My stupefaction at what passes for media news is boundless. Over the past couple of weeks, the news ventured credulously into the oft-lurid territory of power and sexual dynamics, games as old as the day is long.
That commentators like Public Television's Mark Shields and David Brooks must feign shock and play "Captain Renault" to the female anchors tests the limits of credulity.
This is not an apologia for the Droogs
In last week's Public Television's Friday news roundup, Mr. Shields perhaps unwittingly let some ray of sunshine fall upon the Trump Administration when he circumambulated around the story, trying to tie up the requisite disparate parts.
Saith he, because Mr. Trump is who he is, he may be making male rutting behavior that much more unpalatable to the masses. Well, certainly he gave it a college try, but for attributing any Good Thing to the current White House, Mr. Shields will no doubt get a wrist thumping .
The thing is, since most of these newly-revealed sexual improprieties occurred many years hence -- many during Democratic presidencies -- are we to assume that Democrats have a certain "Penis Protection Society" for its wayward male members?
Why were we not shocked then? Perhaps the slippery morality of the bobos allowed the secretive behavior to continue. Are we entering a more morally black-and-white time?
Do you think that you're made out of gold and-uh, can't be sold? -- Jimi Hendrix
The horreur du jour is simply: Powerful men are taking sexual favors from guileless women. Are you as shocked as I?
Mrs. Clinton may not have won the election, but the press is giving her revanchist acolytes their moment in the sun to skewer the feral (mostly) White Men via yet a new avenue.
The doughty liberal women rejoice as they lasso the powerful men like so many head of steer. Those leading this charge have been handed the Consolation Prize in the never-ending Liberal Collective Anger Sweepstakes.
These bruised yet stalwart Hillary Clinton minions are trying to make the power-money-sex troika sexy headline news again, some 50 years hence.
The Bad Boyz have been dropping like flies. Senator Al Franken, Hollywood's Harvey Weinstein, newsmen Charley Rose and Matt Lauer, etc. And no longer are the accused innocent until proven guilty.
So horrid is their behavior that the trap door must be opened as if on a Vaudeville stage and the perp must then disappear presumably into a gulag run by female prison guards like in a bad Russ Meyer film.
Feminists demand this behavior -- Who knew? -- stop, and that the alleged perpetrators be summarily dismissed from their area of operations. A hundred years on, The Perils of Pauline have been re-packaged for modern consumption, with Wonder Woman to the rescue of the hapless Pearl White.
The press states that Mr. Trump qua Trump has ripped the scab off some great festering disease in our society committed by men much like him. As an archetypal powerful white male, he is the great abettor and enabler of this great undertow of exploitation.
Don't buy it.
First it was the press's frightening indictment that the President was responsible for a renascent white supremacist movement. Now, it is as though the fictional character Don Draper from tv's Mad Men has infected American men with some new, as-yet unseen, aggression.
We secretly yearn for that ur-Male, but want to castrate him when he arrives. Just look at the number of military programs, movies and video games produced in which the macho protagonist fights and gets the girl(s), too. It is the whole cake and eating thing.
The heady combination of power and sex is as old as Salome's dance and Delilah, and then some. It is capitalism at its finest: Opportunity meets availability. Consumption occurs 'til satiation, or until the Next New Thing comes down the pike.
Since one may not re-engineer the chemical makeup of the human being, one would need some broad, consistent and formative re-education to change unwanted social behaviors. Unfortunately, the United States is burdened by both a highly-sexualized, and a highly Puritanical background, resulting in some deep schizophrenia regarding relations between the sexes.
More to the point: why is this headline news, and why when the alleged offenses are often many years after the fact? Rather than some great awakening on behalf of the offended, it is not hard to imagine that powers arrayed against these powerful men troll about to find these women, offering the correct incentives for their testimony.
Of course, we are talking here of grown women, not minors. Consenting adults. It is a game they chose to play when they entered the fray of competition (in Hollywood, politics, etc.), and a price many are willing to pay, to give favors in order to receive.
It is an understood if unsavory quid pro quo. Don't cry wolf when it is you who walked into the wolf's den.
This is all nothing new.
And who are these men? Does power confer privilege only occur among the entertainment and political set (entertainers of their own sort)? Does sexual favoritism and exchange not transpire among the more mundane, simple folks like you and me?
How does everything old get new again, entering our never-ending chorus of outrage and indignation? Are there not other topics more worthy of coverage on the nightly news?
Does Anyone Really Need to Say This?
Watching the media coverage evinced no response so much as, "be an adult, and be smart. If you don't want to get dirty, do not play with dogs or pigs."
Shame on the press, for they know that firing at this target will leave them with Maggies Drawers flapping in the breeze every time.
[Update: An unedited cy. of this piece went on 12/4/17.]
Labels: battle of the sexes, talking heads, the idiot box
posted by Lisa at 9:26 PM
15 Comments:
I must say, I never thought I would see the day when Republican officials defended child molestation as Biblical.
Evidently a critical mass of America believes that being a sexual predator disqualifies you from neither Congress nor the White House, so in that sense it does appear to be a non-issue.
I assume that the main reason Franken is keeping his job is because, as we would say in the private sector, his connections -- specifically to Hollywood donors -- are "good for business."
What will they say when millions of Muslims begin to demand marriage to 9 year olds? Haven't read the Bible in a while, but I think that what we would call underage marriage is in there too, but it's been toned down in recent centuries.
David, It looks like both Conyers and Franken are going to step down, Some say Franken goes tomorrow.
What a mess. These people do things that I would never dream of in my worst moments. A button under your desk that locks the door to your office? Pulling your pants down and demanding and then taking sex from the now trapped married woman until she passes out? Absolutely freaking outlandish. The whole culture is sick sick sick. If someone did that to my wife, I would kill him and damn the consequences. If someone did that to my friend's wife I would beat him half to death and only let him live so people could laugh at the mutilated freak with his arms jammed so far up his ass that even a major surgery couldn't remove them. Come to think of it, if I learned that a co-worker was acting like that and management wouldn't do anything, I'd ask him out to a happy hour that wouldn't be so happy in the end. Where are the men surrounding all of this? Have they no sense of honor and duty? Disgusting worms and psychopaths!
avedis
...and, if you can look yourself in the mirror after all of that, I think it is safe to assume that creating fake news/fake campaign promises would hardly prick one's conscience.
avedis
Avedis
I don't disagree with any of that. What worries me is that even on something as simple as that partisan tribalism has completely taken over.
The Republicans decided Moore was beyond the pale but have reconsidered. The Democrats initially decided Franken was okay, but apparently now have changed their minds. Which is more craven?
As for this question:
"Where are the men surrounding all of this? Have they no sense of honor and duty?"
I imagine it has something to do with the swamp and the creatures attracted to dwelling there. Between the soul-selling paths to power and the unrelentingly shallow coverage of the modern media, it would take only a particularly deranged narcissist to want to make a living in Washington. As you say, it's no surprise.
Guys,
this is Lisa's post but since shes ill i will fill in.
sorta.
last nite watching Seal Team the show was filled with sex and innuendo of sex. the advertiser was Victoria secret selling sex in big gobs.
then i watched designated survivor for the first time and it was filled with young sexy honeys pretending to be white house denizens.simply put their tits were flopping and their dress code loose and flapping. have you watched house of cards? no special made cakes for spacey.
i hope you get my point.
btw i never saw such a crap series as seal team.
it's absolute garbage.
i won't say more as i don't want to hijack Lisa's essay.
Jim,
I get it.
Before I moved to NY, I lived in communities where that sense of honor was still in place. Mostly. When I moved up here there was a major culture shock for me in the sex sector. I was younger, fitter and more handsome than now. Women at work would hit on me on all the time. Married women and, especially engaged women. Underlings, superiors, you name it. This was not flirting to alleviate boredom and for fun. This was serious let's you and me have a head board shaking affair stuff. I know the difference. My wife and I were invited to join the local fox hunt (being horsemen and all). Turns out that whole group was more about wife swapping and multi-sexualism orgies than riding and hunting. We wanted no part of that. I hadn't exactly led a sheltered life out West, but I hadn't ever seen anything close to the ubiquitous loose morals that encountered "back East".
So I'm thinking like you. It's everywhere you look and it's weird that Franken et al have been singled out by those who, most assuredly, are doing the same themselves.
avedis
oh...and I really deeply don't like the whole guns, violence + sex thing as entertainment either. It's stupid and twisted. Who is feeling horny, let alone romantic after slaughtering humans? Only a psychopath. Which, I think, gives some insight into the mental status of those creating this junk.
avedis
Avedis
I think the country was big enough to survive social differences but the political tribalism is more destructive.
If Franken doesn't resign, then the Democrats would still vote for him over a Republican. Yet they are in high moral dudgeon that Alabama Republicans might do exactly the same thing they would.
Now some of this rough partisanship has always been par of the course, but when the tribalism runs so deep that the religious right will embrace a child molester and the progressive left will embrace someone cheerfully photographed groping women he hardly knows, we're a little bit beyond the "live and let live" territory I was more comfortable growing up in.
I don't know enough about psychology to know whether you're right in diagnosing it that way, but it does seem like yet another example of what looks more and more to me like what we would call state failure if it was happening in the Third World.
David,
I hear you. I have fallen into that trap myself. I watch myself going down into the hole, but can't stop it. Like, if I lived in Alabama I wouldn't think twice about voting for Moore because, for christsake, we can have a leftist take the slot. And I'd be serious. This position occurs - at least for me - because the political platforms are so utterly polarized and the poles are so far apart. I'm a conservative (sort of kind of in more of a moderate libertarian kind of way)so maybe I'm biased, but from where I'm sitting, it's the liberals who have gone farther and farther off the deep end/extreme. Remember, I used to lean moderately democrat and I voted for Bill Clinton, Al Gore and Obama. I could never do that now. The liberals have become so radical (to my mind) and so hateful and intolerant and so focused on promoting bizarre causes, socialism and anti-white people/western civ that I just can't support them, ever. Not one itty bitty iota.
avedis
avedis,
Spot-on:
The liberals have become so radical (to my mind) and so hateful and intolerant and so focused on promoting bizarre causes ...
This is the point of my curiosity. Any of these supposedly incomprehensible behaviors have been going on in most cases for years -- decades -- to everyone's complicit knowledge. Only when someone, for some reason, decides to publicize matters do we feign outrage.
Tomorrow, I will post a boots-on-the ground report from probably the most liberal college in the university (universe-city). Just a few discrete recent examples which demonstrate why we are not better, and why we can't get any better, neither women nor men.
Jim
You mean the White House is NOT filled with promiscuous young women ripe for the plucking?
If only somebody had told Bill that, we might have been spared both Clintons.
Lisa
Indeed. To quote a British political sitcom from the '80s, the public didn't resent the abuses. What they resented was being told about it.
Avedis:
Itty bitty! Learned that word from your teenage ladyfriends maybe????
Cervantes,
Good guess, but no. It was your mother explaining to me what she didn't like about your father. Genetics are a bitch sometimes, huh?
avedis
Wicked, wicked boy, avedis (which is one reason I'm so fond of you.)
Post a Comment
<< Home