The Orwellian Inquisition Against Verbal Naughtiness

Katie Roiphe in the New York Times: (h/t Instapundit)

In our effort to create a wholly unhostile work environment, have we simply created an environment that is hostile in a different way? Is it preferable or more productive, is it fostering a more creative or vivid office culture, for everyone to vanish into Facebook and otherwise dabble online? Maybe it’s better to live and work with colorful or inappropriate comments, with irreverence, wildness, incorrectness, ease.
Is the anodyne drone typing away in her silent cubicle free from the risk of comment on her clothes, the terror of a joke, the unsettlement of an unwanted or even a wanted sexual advance, truly our ideal? Should we aspire to the drab, cautious, civilized, quiet, comfortable workplace all of this language presumes and theorizes?

Naturally the comments section brims with bland, earnest objections, the bulk of which suggest that said anodyne drone is precisely the goal they seek to achieve. Asked and answered, then. But one fellow sums up the progressive contrition perfectly:

Hey, I'm no professional feminist, but I'd rather let people decide for themselves what they find acceptable. That might include humoring some people who indeed seem Puritanical and hypersensitive. Who am I to tell them where "the line" is?

It does not occur -- or is not said -- that "humoring" the seemingly Puritanical differs not at all from accepting their interpretations and obeying their diktats, and that this achieves precisely the opposite of the free-thinking, tolerant universe that the "Who am I to ... ?" mantra prays for. The (seemingly!) Puritanical and hypersensitive have no qualms about saying exactly where the line should be, not merely for themselves but for everyone else. And they suffer no guilt about enforcing this line with all the power of the law.

Do you possess a mind, capable of distinguishing between good and bad? Then you can say where the line ought to be. Any who attempt to silence you do not share your good will.

Herman Cain is Pro-Choice, and I Don't Care...

Vox Populi has the skinny.

I'm more or less in Santorum's wheelhouse on this issue. An abortion obtain for any other reason than to save your own life is a moral failure, and I don't have a problem with them being illegal. But I also don't have a problem with a GOP pres candidate who thinks differently, because abortion is not my #1 issue for the federal government to handle right now. It's not even Top Ten. In fact, I don't want the federal government to handle it at all, which is why I want the Supreme Court to rescind Roe v. Wade and Doe v. Bolton.

But then, I haven't been burning incense to a little Herman Cain doll. I'm about ready to vote for Newt, just to see him tussle with Obama in the debates.

Because the Only Way to Decrease Rape is to Rape More People...

Sheriff Joe Biden, the executive branch's most prominent FailBot, rides again.

Biden's reasoning -- that more rapes will undoubtedly occur if the federal government doesn't subsidize law enforcement -- doesn't pass the smell test. For that matter, I didn't know feminists were so approving of the way our law enforcement systems handled rape cases.

But these are difference that the reality-based community can surely paper over.

BY THE WAY: Biden's facts are wrong.

Queen's Court of Alberta Legalizes Infanticide

Or something. (h/t Ace and NRO)

"Naturally, Canadians are grieved by an infant's death, especially at the hands of the infant's mother, but Canadians also grieve for the mother."

Do they? I don't. Please lay out who put a gun to this woman's head and made her give birth to her newborn son, strangle him, and then toss him over the fence into the neighbor's yard.

Her lawyer, Peter Royal, asked the court to do away with the penalty or allow her to serve the time on weekends. It was "unjust" and "almost mean to incarcerate her" at this point, he argued.

Right. And we sure wouldn't want to be mean to someone who murdered an infant. That would be horrible.

But don't worry, the court isn't about to get all licentious on this subject:

In her judgment, the judge rejected arguments from the Crown that the single father and the grandparent also face "the same stresses of the mind" as a mother who kills her own baby.

Silly daddy, infanticide is for moms!

Women are Good at Blogging, Bad at Tech Conferences.

A while ago I stumbled upon a blog post by Susannah Breslin, Instapundit's new defaut link, found it reeking with female chauvinism, and took a big steaming dump on it. Of late, I've found her blog at Forbes.com pretty readable, for the opposite reason. She sticks it to the sisterhood, but recognizes that there's a lot more than what she sees. Most of the time, she focuses on writing and blogging and working in the digital age, and that's all to the good. Her How Not to Be Unemployed post is solid stuff.

Today, she writes a post, Why Women Shouldn't Go To Tech Conferences, which turns the post I first didn't like on its head. Which leads me to believe that I was reading that post, and especially the offending paragraph, wrong. Maybe I was confusing a strawman with an argument.

Or maybe I was just looking for something to piss on. In any case, apologies.

Is Married at Sixteen Really Worse Than Pregnant at 16?

RS McCain has been following Courtney Stodden's (who?) marriage, for reasons that I suspect have something to do with his Rule #5. I find caring about the lives of demi-celebrities (or even the real ones) difficult, because I have a life. But he makes a fine point comparing Stodden's decision with Bristol Palin's:

But let’s ask a hypothetical question: Suppose that your daughter was determined to have sex at age 16. Given the choice, would you rather her first time be . . .
A. Drunk on wine coolers in a pup tent with Levi Johnston, orB. On her wedding night, in a luxury hotel suite, with her movie star husband.

Somewhere along the way, we as a society decided that the worst thing a 16-year-old (or 18-year-old, or 20-year-old) could do was get married and have a baby. Never mind that 16-20-year-old bodies, male and female, are screaming to make babies; it's become the sin by which one falls out of the middle class.

But getting wasted and dumbly engaging in the act that makes babies? Normal Friday night fun, acceptable so long as one pops a pill or convinces the young swain to slap an uncomfortable piece of latex on his John Thomas.

Never made a lick of sense to me. But my mom dropped out of college to marry my dad and have me, and she's having their vacation house renovated as we speak, so it's possible I don't know what I'm talking about.

If You Think Gay Marriage Will License Polygamy, You're Crazy

You're also right.

And all the proggies will not only not prevent it, they will work themselves over to first countenancing, then supporting, then calling you a bigot for disagreeing with it.

And they will have forgotten the fact that anyone ever predicted this chain of events.

It's what they do.

UPDATE: Right now, on Red Eye, Marc Lamont Hill is embracing "live and let live" towards polygamists.

Yeah, Marriage isn't Changing At All. Nope. Totally the Same.

Except now it's "nonmonogamous." (h/t: Insty)

But gay marriage totally won't open the door for polygamy. Nope. Preposterous.

New York Republicans...

...are apparently even more impotent than the Maryland variety, which put the kibosh on gay marriage this past winter.

Equality Über Alles, New York

Yeah, that should stop the demographic slide.

Ladd Ehlinger, Jr. Remains Awesome

His attack ad:



Before you call racism, note all the honky criminals, such as Capone and Manson, whose pictures float in an out whilst the gangbangers bang their gong.

Before you call sexism, the content is no different from what routinely played on MTV, back when MTV played videos. Most of that content is defended on the grounds that it is at least partially tongue-in-cheek. As Chuck D put it "When a man says 'nigga buggin'' he's saying a lot of things beside 'nigga buggin''." As the whole point of this ad is to take that content and hold it up to ridicule, the defense should apply even more. So who're the real sexists? The people who mock gangsters and the way gangsters treat women, or the people who celebrate them?

And before you punt and call this ad "Willie Horton on steroids" be ready to have the facts at hand. It's not 1988 anymore; the Internet exists.

Here's What I Don't Understand About NOW...

Look, nobody likes throwing an ally overboard. I get that. But when even his fellow congressional Democrats are calling for his resignation, why does the local NOW chapter keep supporting him?

“But he happens to be one of the best politicians out there, so we’re in a bad position. We’re trying to give him the benefit of the doubt.”

Is it really so hard to find another person in the NY Democratic Party (or the NY Republican Party) who'll be a reliable abortion vote?

I Thought the French Beheaded Their Aristocracy

Apparently I was mistaken.

This morning, I hold it against the American judge who, by delivering him to the crowd of photo hounds, pretended to take him for a subject of justice like any other.

Does this American judge not know that he is dealing with Strauss-Kahn, Comte de Money, Baron du Socialisme, and Seigneur De La Marmalade-Douche? Quelle effrontery!

Feminists are Stooges.

Stacy McCain again piles on the No Boys Allowed Club. This time, his target is Stephanie Coontz and her anti-mythological mythologizing. Naturally, he cannot resist quoting her during the Great Lewinsky Betrayal:

So we see that, at a time when the Predator-in-Chief was caught perjuring himself about an exploitative affair with an emotionally unstable subordinate less than half his age, Coontz’s principle concern was that the scandal was distracting attention from the important issues that mattered to liberals. Whatever credibility Coontz as an advocate for the equality and dignity of women in the workplace, she was willing to cast it aside — ignoring Clinton’s sordidly sexist behavior — rather than to let Clinton’s conservative critics gain any advantage by the exposure of his Oval Office affair.

Which reminds me of my own rant on this subject, from my baby days as a blogger:

And all you feminists out there: the fact that you stood mum while he sidestepped that very same law you fell over yourselves applauding in '94, the fact that you threw every nasty caveman stereotype you claim to abhor at Jones and Lewinsky, that you lined up to protect this Lothario, tells me everything I need to know about you. Like your spiritual mother de Beauvoir, you don't care what the Power does to others as long as you have a room of your own.

This is tangential to McCain's point, however, so Read the Whole Thing.

Hey, My Scrotum's Right Where I Left It!

Holy shneikes, even Adam Corolla's chiming in.

You don’t want us to fight. You don’t want us to pay the bills. You don’t want us to open the car door and pull out the chairs. So guess what? We’re going to play Nintendo and watch our YouPorn. We can hop on the computer and stay busy for the next several years.

Millions of versions of this have hit teh intertubes since Kay Hymowitz put out the first male-bashing book that tenatively suggested that women might do that too much. And it's not as though I disagree with it. But sitting on our fat asses collecting pizza weight and spyware actually is a problem. And complaining that women are just too damn mean and scary actually isn't the solution.

If we think that our society needs some manliness, we need to sack up and pay the cost of being men. Of earning it. Of looking at our lives and ourselves with the flinty eye that our grandfathers employed as a matter of course. And of telling our girlfriends and wives that what we are and what we do matter, and we'll take our share of respect for it, thank you very much.

Otherwise, why shouldn't the ovarians win?

Justin Bieber's Litmus Test

I cannot bring myself to write about Justin Bieber at Genre Confusion, so I'm doing it here. It's more about politics, anyway.

So the golden boy of the pop world got asked a bunch of questions that have nothing to do with music, and he may not have answered them like he was supposed to:

"I really don't believe in abortion," the teen idol said. "It's like killing a baby?" When asked if he was still adamantly pro-life in cases of rape, his stance didn't really change. "Um. Well, I think that's really sad, but everything happens for a reason," he said. "I don't know how that would be a reason. I guess I haven't been in that position, so I wouldn't be able to judge that."

So far, so 16-year-old. It's probably not something he's ever really thought about, and he mumbled through it as best he could. Whatever. I neither know nor care what he really thinks enough to criticize him on how artfully he articulates it.

Another point of contention from the interview is the Canadian crooner's admission that he never plans to become an American citizen. "You guys are evil," he joked. "Canada's the best country in the world." The young man even took a dig at the U.S. healthcare system. "We go to the doctor and we don't need to worry about paying him, but here, your whole life, you're broke because of medical bills."

Let's give the kid a little credit here. Sure, he's traveled the world and is in a higher tax bracket than most of us can even fathom, but how many 16-year-olds are even remotely aware of how insanely expensive healthcare can be? The fact that he's cultured and tuned in to the everyday struggles of those surrounding him (he mentions his bodyguard's premature baby and the costly complications stemming from that) is a refreshing glimpse of a Hollywood star that hasn't completely lost touch with reality and everyday people.

This, on the other hand, is just bursting with stupid. Not Bieber's polite and thoughtful opining on the intricacies of health care, that's just the opinion every Canadian is issued at birth. What's stupid is this particluar Popeater claiming that mere chauvinism coupled with declarations of evil reflects maturity and insight.

Justin Bieber doesn't know anything about health care or how much it costs. He doesn't have to: he's Canadian. Debates about health care costs occur above his pay-grade. Somber, credentialed professionals in brightly lit rooms have these debates for him, so that, as he boasts, not a golden hair of his pretty head ever need be disturbed by them.

Justin and his opinions on premarital sex are understandable -- the kid is, after all, a sex symbol to millions of tween girls -- but were the questions about abortion, rape and even politics appropriate given his age and the fact that these topics have seemingly nothing to do with his music, movie or any of the products he sells?

"I think that anyone who has as much sway in popular culture as Justin should be asked all questions," Grigoriadis said. "I agree that he does not bring up these issues in his work at the moment, but it's possible that he will in the future, as he decides that he wants the public to know more about him."

How does one say "bullshit" in Canadian?

Rolling Stone asked these questions for one reason and one reason only: to determine if Frankie Avalon Leif Garret Justin Bieber was one of the Right People with the Right Opinions. If he is, then RS can insert the Teen Idol as More Sophisticated Observer of Human Affairs Than We Would Have Thought angle. If not, so much the better: the Pop Sensation With Troubling, Controversial Opinions angle always sells better (you don't think these thumb-suckers actually like interviewing 50 Cent and Eminem, do you?).

So based on this, I'm guessing he got a C+. Expect continuing coverage for the next several millenia.

Palinoia is Bush Derangement Syndrome in a Skirt

Losing your mind over Sarah Palin has it's own cute name: Palinoia.  I won't take Taranto's argument and run with it, the way Robert McCain does, because I'm not that devoted to the vigorous thwacking of contraception. Rather, I found the key quote in Taranto's column early on:

They resent her because, in their view, she has risen above her station.

Sarah Palin is a state-college grad, and state-college grads aren't supposed to eke out Ivy-Leaguers for the top spot on the greasy pole of politics. She's the American equivalent of what Roman patricians called a homo novus, a New Man, one whos family had never had a consul before. Thus a good deal of the "she's a moron," is more or less the same as calling Gaius Marius an Italian hayseed with no Greek.

I do not mean to say that Sarah Palin is as accomplished as Gaius Marius. As I've said before, I have my doubts about her aptitude for the presidency. But snobbery is snobbery, and we've seen this before:

There are many among our political and media elite, and among those on the coasts who are in their zone of influence, who simply cannot believe that a born-again Christian from Texas can ever be right about anything, ever. Decades (centuries?) of internalized bigotry of urbanites against provincials, of secular humanists against unsophisticated believers, does not vanish overnight, not even in the face of an act of war, not when the same group has drank deep of the waters of Wilsonian collective security and refuses to believe that their enemy is their enemy because he wants to be so.

In short, George W. Bush has been despised since long before the Iraq War, because he is the living embodiment of Those People, and the habit of the American media and political establishment has for some time been to mock Those People as cruel, stupid, and dangerous.

The oldest kind of elitism in the world is the only kind that our ruling class celebrates.

UPDATE: In light of this post at Classical Values, I should point out where exactly my doubts on Palin spring from.

To start with, they aren't properly "doubts." That implies a bias toward thinking Palin is not competent to be President. Really, my problem with her is that there's been so much dust kicked up about her, that it's hard to discern the true person underneath. At the moment she was tapped to be Vice President, I liked everything I heard about her. Her speech at the convention was good (not great, but better than McCain's). After that, she entered the Media Circus and to date, hasn't come out. Almost everything about her is now part of the ongoing drama of her against her assailants. All of which I find a distraction to determining whether she really can handle the presidency.

If she steps up in the campaign, and takes the heat, and demonstrates her acumen, then I'll give her a vote. If not, there are others.

We're All Perverts Now.

From the WSJ's "Eek! A Male!" (h/t: Althouse)

What's really ironic about all this emphasis on perverts is that it's making us think like them. Remember the story that broke right before Christmas? The FBI warned law-enforcement agencies that the new Video Barbie could be used to make kiddie porn. The warning was not intended for the public but it leaked out. TV news celebrated the joy of the season by telling parents that any man nice enough to play dolls with their daughters could really be videotaping "under their little skirts!" as one Fox News reporter said.

The more we think about children as victims of pedophilia, the more pedophilia is on our minds. It's a self-perpetuating obsession, the Last Taboo.

And that's not the worst. In England in 2006, BBC News reported the story of a bricklayer who spotted a toddler at the side of the road. As he later testified at a hearing, he didn't stop to help for fear he'd be accused of trying to abduct her. You know: A man driving around with a little girl in his car? She ended up at a pond and drowned.
We think we're protecting our kids by treating all men as potential predators. But that's not a society that's safe. Just sick.

When you catch a predator, the predator also catches you.

Feminism for Me, But Not for Thee

Classical Values, noting the absence of the rather obvious sexism narrative:

When I said this:

If we suppose that Loughner's victim had been black or hispanic, I think there would be a pretty loud chorus on the left that the racist motivation for the shooting was obvious. Similarly, had Barney Frank been shot, there would have been immediate cries of homophobia. 

I should have noted that it would not be true if the black, hispanic or gay victim happened to be on the right side of the political spectrum. Thus, if, say, Clarence Thomas or Alberto Gonzales were assassinated (especially by leftist gunmen), they would not be seen as victims of racism. Similarly, when Pim Fortuyn was assassinated by an anarcho-primitivist nut, this was not condemned as homophobic by the PC classes.

It is a basic law of identity politics that such identities are conditioned upon being on the left. Which is another reason that no indignity heaped on Sarah Palin can ever be condemned as sexist.

Read the whole thing.

How Do You Separate the Writers From the Children at HuffPo?

With a crowbar.

So when did proggy intellectuals become all about the jailbait?

Rape-Rape Rapity Rape

Other McCain takes a shot at Feministe's opining on Julian Assange's sexual assault charges and ends up making the wrong point:

In an era when some 40% of U.S. births are to unmarried women, in a culture where “Girls Gone Wild” and “hook-ups” are normative, where threesomes, bisexual experimentation and amateur video-porn orgies have become a virtual rite of passage for many young Americans, where chlamydia and herpes are pandemic — in this era of rampant sexual decadence, I say, does Jill Filipovic (J.D., NYU) seriously expect horny strangers to negotiate consent calmly on an act-by-act basis while they’re knocking boots, making the beast with two backs, in flagrante delicto? 

Listen up, sweetheart: You buy the ticket, you take the ride.

If you will forgive the puns, I take his thrust, but not his point.

Sex does not submit well to legalese. It is the animal in us, acting on non-rational desire, creating an experience that our bodies ride but do not fully control. Contracts made in such a state lend themselves easily to misunderstanding.

And yes, women would do well not to shag impressive-seeming strangers just because their goddamn names are in the paper. That's stupid, and no one should be subject to a harpy-bomb of dull denunciations ("slut-shaming!") because they point out that it's stupid. Sex should come from a well-ground of mutual respect and commitment. You can't have that with someone you don't know, and it's stupid to assume otherwise, and it's irresponsible to teach young people the contrary.

So yes, so-called "sexual liberation" has made it easier for cads like Assange to behave caddishly.

That said, just because a gentleman is hip-deep into a lady does not prevent her from applying the breaks, however foolish her actions up until that point. I don't accept the idea that once the pants are off, she's obligated to cut him a slice of trim. No man could walk into any court of law and say "Hey, she took my pants off. She owes me at least an old-fashioned." Life just doesn't work that way.

So yes, when she says "STOP," he's obligated to stop.

Whether his failure to do so meets the legal definition of rape is another question. The circumstances would play an enormous role. Say, for example, he doesn't hear her, because he's climaxing, and her protests aren't loud enough. Say she tells him to stop, and she does, because of some sudden thing he did/said that kicked her completely out of mood. But then they talk some more, and he moves in again, and she doesn't say "no"? Tacit consent? Not? Murky?

I don't know, myself. But I suspect that yelling the louder will not illuminate the issue.