Dr. Hilzoy is a very smart person. It’s very sad to see her waste her brain power on gutter-trash wingnuttery that’s normally the terrain of Sadly, No! At the same time, the fact that she’s doing it means I don’t have to. So thank you, Dr. Hilzoy. You are teh awesome.
And with that, I’m off to the baaaaaaaaaah to watch the Saaaaaawx.
As you may have noticed, I have been feeling incredibly cranky lately. Part of it has to do with the apartment situation, but another part of it has to do with the fact that the Virginia Tech tragedy has produced some of the most insulting and embarrassing news “analysis” I have ever seen in my entire goddamn life. Witness this piece in the Sunday Times, for instance. Here’s the subhead:
When Cho killed 32 people at Virginia Tech, the horrific slaughter revealed not only the poisons lurking in popular culture but the crisis of young males in a feminised society, says Sarah Baxter
Yep, the bitches made ‘im do it! Cho is a symbol of the horrible things men can do when they’re forced to live in a culture that’s run by nasty females! And if you think I’m exaggerating how stupid, how tragically and depressingly stupid, this article’s content is, then read further:
Camille Paglia, professor of humanities and media studies at the University of the Arts in Philadelphia and author of Sexual Personae, believes Cho is emblematic of the crisis of masculinity in America. “Women have difficulty understanding the mix of male sexual aggression with egotism and the ecstasy of self-immolation,â€? she says. Or to quote Martin Amis on that other killer, Fred West: he became “addicted to the moment where impotence becomes prepotenceâ€?. […]
Cho is a classic example of “someone who felt he was a loser in the cruel social rat race�, Paglia says. The pervasive hook-up culture at college, where girls are prepared to sleep with boys they barely know or fancy, can be a source of seething resentment and alienation for those who are left out.
“Young women now seem to want to behave like men and have sex without commitment. The signals they are giving are very confusing, and rage and humiliation build up in boys who are spurned again and again.�
Holy crap.
Must… stop… clicking… on articles… on the MSN… front page…
In Defense of Alec Baldwin
By Martha Brockenbrough
Special to MSNIt’s hard to think of a man in Hollywood with a scarier reputation than Alec Baldwin.
Baldwin’s divorce from Kim Basinger has been a protracted slugfest. A co-star reportedly quit working on a play with him because he slammed his fist through the wall when the air-conditioning wasn’t working to his satisfaction. And just last week, word got out that he’d left his 11-year-old daughter a voicemail message calling her “a rude, thoughtless little pig.”
After this, does he have any fans left?
Despite his faults, he does: me.
Despite the fact that this article came out 23 years too late, I still think it’s what inspired Dylan to write “Idiot Wind.”
To the people accusing me of rampant sexism/woman hatred in this post:
Guys, I’m spending most of the post making fun of men and/or myself. I don’t actually believe that women are engaged in a broad conspiracy to keep men awake at night. Nor do I believe the Swedish government is out to steal the pot of gold in my pancreas. I don’t really spend days holed up watching Airwolf to escape PMS attacks. Nor do I draw smiley faces on my… God, you get the point. C’mon. I thought these examples were ridiculous and outlandish enough for you to understand that I was taking digs at myself and/or stereotypical male behavior.
And just to put a fine point on it:
“Hey Alyssa, I’m a blogger who gets in trouble for calling David Horowitz sexist nicknames and for making insensitive fat jokes. Wanna join me for dinner at Taco Bell tonight?�
C’mon, guys. I am very clearly making fun of myself here.
(I do actually think men are more prone to cheating just for the sake of cheating, but that’s a topic for another discussion. Or this discussion. Auguste seemed to have a lot to say about it.)
I swear I’m not stalking Alyssa Milano. Really.
Hubba-hubba. Have I mentioned she likes baseball? And she blogs?
It’s just that MSN’s front page featured the 10 Things You Don’t Know About Women article she wrote for Esquire, and I simply *had* to check it out. For each one of her ten things I don’t know about women, I’m going to list things that women already know about men, but desperately want to pretend aren’t real. Let’s giddy:
1. Women are innately self-conscious. This is not a choice; it’s a genderwide condition. On a bad day, I look in the mirror and see my ten-pound-heavier alter ego. Her name is Bertha. On a really bad day, Bertha sees her two-hundred-pound-heavier alter ego. Her name is Brian Dennehy.
Yeah, that’s not a healthy thing, Alyssa. No sane women should look in the mirror and see Dafydd ab H… uh, on second thought, I’m not gonna go there.
Oh, and as for Something You Already Know About Men, But Desperately Want to Pretend Isn’t Real:
1.) We think about our balls. A lot. I’ve even named mine Joseph and Pinky. Sometimes, when nobody’s home, I’ll get a magic marker and start drawing faces on them an… uh, I think I’ve said too much about this. Next:
2. Women produce half the world’s food but own only 1 percent of its farmland. So we’re ï¬?ne with you picking up the tab. And after about three thousand dinners at Nobu, we should be even.
2.) Men hate picking up the tab. And it isn’t because we can’t afford to pay for your food; it’s because we’re cheap.
Jon Swift on the Virginia Tech shootings:
Many liberal blogs used this incident for partisan posturing, claiming that they were horrified by the tragedy and offering condolences to the victims. Of course, this was just a clever ruse to secure the moral high ground before they swoop down and take away our guns. If they really feel so bad about the victims, where were they when efforts were being made to protect students at Virginia Tech by arming them?
Read teh whole tihng.
The Ismail Axpress to Mecca has long since left the station. The tracks have been sold as scrap metal. All that’s left of the attempt to pin the Virgina Tech massacre on Muslims? A lonely tumbleweed bouncing down the dusty and forgotten Road to Paranoia, past the boarded-up Ticket Booth of Jumped-to Conclusions, through the rusty Turnstile of Strangled, Tweaking Desperation.
Folks, tumbleweed. Tumbleweed? Folks.
Yes … in a move that surprises even us, Pammycakes is STILL trying to play the ‘Ismail Ax’ angle.
Even the Costco Coulter seems to have given up on that one, seeing as how the only publicly available image of the one-time nom-de-jihad ‘Ismail Ax’ is actually written as ‘A. Ishmael’.
An image that Pam actually posted on her blog. On Wednesday. Whereas today is Friday. That says ‘A. Ishmael’, not ‘Ismail Ax’. That she posted on her blog. Again – not ‘Ismail Ax’ but rather ‘A. Ishmael’, posted on her blog, etc. etc. Wednesday, Friday, her own blog.
Anyway. Here’s Pam today, Friday, two days after ‘Ismail Ax’ and attendant theories were debunked:
Who or What Taught Ismail Ax to Kill?
I know everyone is dismissing the glaring Ismail Ax angle of the massacre and calling the depraved murderer Cho, but it seems to me that if this savage wrote (or tattooed, still unclear) Ismail Ax on his arm, signed his suicide note Ismail Ax , sent an overnight package from A Ishmail, made sure he had no other ID on his person after he martyred himself , you can be damn sure he wanted to be remembered as Ismail Ax.
Or alternately, A. Ishmael. Which, again, has pretty much been accepted by even the wingnuttiest of the wingnuts (in the Costco Coulter’s case, by omission).
Also, when you read the line “I know everyone is dismissing the glaring Ismail Ax angle of the massacre and calling the depraved murderer Cho” …? Can you feel a trace of a contact high from the breakaway flakes of meth-rotted fingernail crud grinding into Pam’s keyboard as she types, that somehow travels through the internets and in through the pores of your eyes?
Or is that just me?
Cold Standard: Virginia Tech and the heartlessness of our media and therapy culture
Above: Suggested the second ‘R’ in the title of Nelly’s 2002 hit, ‘Hot In Herre’
‘Shorter’ concept created by Daniel Davies and perfected by Elton Beard.
Travis adds: Noonan chides Barack Obama for drawing a tenuous societal link between language and violence, but in the very next section of her essay she writes:
With all the therapy in our great therapized nation, with all our devotion to emotions and feelings, one senses we are becoming a colder culture, and a colder country. We purport to be compassionate–we must respect Mr. Cho’s privacy rights and personal autonomy–but of course it is cold not to have protected others from him. It is cold not to have protected him from himself.
Aren’t they basically talking about the same thing, only using different language?
It isn’t often I disagree with the geniuses behind Fire Joe Morgan, but I do have a nit to pick here:
I am going to give this blog an official thumbs-up. Not just because she’s hot. Because she likes baseball.
Best of both worlds, dudes. Alyssa Milano’s hot and she likes baseball. She’s officially going on the blogroll once the hamster server lets me have a blogroll again, along with some other sports blogs.
(Note to people who complain when I write about sports instead of politics: eat it. It’s Friday and the Yankees are coming to town this weekend. I got baseball on the brain.)
Shorter Charles Krauthammer: It is more humane to lock crazy people away forever than to prevent them from buying semiautomatic weapons.
You know, I’m mostly against gun control. I think that, as a general rule, people should be allowed to carry weapons for their own self-defense.
That said, I think we can make exceptions for people who have a history of stalking and mental illness. Why didn’t the fact that this guy was committed to a mental hospital show up on his goddamn background check? Does anybody know how this process works?
UPDATE: Here’s some more information on Cho’s history in the legal system:
Federal gun regulations suggest that a judge’s ruling on the mental health of the Virginia Tech gunman should have barred the man from buying the handguns used in the massacre.
Cho Seung-Hui’s two gun purchases were subject to federal and state background checks, which turned up no problems. That happened even though a judge ruled in December 2005 that Cho “presents an imminent danger to himself as a result of mental illness.” The judge ordered outpatient treatment.
Federal regulations bar the sale of guns to individuals who have been judged “mentally defective,” including people who pose a danger to themselves.
But Virginia’s standard is slightly different. State police say the sales would have been barred under state law only if the judge had committed Cho to a psychiatric hospital.
Time to change that, guys. People who “present an imminent danger to themselves as a result of mental illness” should simply not be allowed to buy semiautomatic weapons.