June 10, 2013

Cluelessness is next to godliness

One of the interesting trends over the last generation is toward willful ignorance. In the past, newspaper columnists got paid in large part because they could put on a knowing manner. But obliviousness is the new saintliness. Thus, New York Times op-ed columnist Frank Bruni isn't embarrassed to admit he doesn't have a clue:
Sexism’s Puzzling Stamina 
By FRANK BRUNI 
... It’s gender — and all the recent reminders of how often women are still victimized, how potently they’re still resented and how tenaciously a musty male chauvinism endures. On this front even more than the others, I somehow thought we’d be further along by now. 
I can’t get past that widely noted image from a week ago, of the Senate hearing into the epidemic of sexual assault in the military. It showed an initial panel of witnesses: 11 men, one woman. It also showed the backs of some of the senators listening to them: five men and one woman, from a Senate committee encompassing 19 men and seven women in all. Under discussion was the violation of women and how to stop it. And men, once again, were getting more say. 
I keep flashing back more than two decades, to 1991. That was the year of the Tailhook incident, in which some 100 Navy and Marine aviators were accused of sexually assaulting scores of women.

All those poor women who traveled across the country annually to party in a Las Vegas hotel with fighter pilots ... How could those innocent women possibly have known that a convention entitled "Tailhook" might not be solely devoted to the discussion of naval aviation landing tackle?
It was the year of Susan Faludi’s runaway best seller, “Backlash,” on the “war against American women,” as the subtitle said. It was when the issue of sexual harassment took center stage in Clarence Thomas’s confirmation hearings. 
All in all it was a festival of teachable moments, raising our consciousness into the stratosphere. So where are we, fully 22 years later? 
... But what about movies? It was all the way back in 1986 that Sigourney Weaver trounced “Aliens” and landed on the cover of Time, supposedly presaging an era of action heroines. But there haven’t been so many: Angelina Jolie in the “Tomb Raider” adventures, “Salt” and a few other hectic flicks; Jennifer Lawrence in the unfolding “Hunger Games” serial. Last summer Kristen Stewart’s “Snow White” needed a “Huntsman” at her side, and this summer? I see an “Iron Man,” a “Man of Steel” and Will Smith, Brad Pitt, Matt Damon and Channing Tatum all shouldering the weight of civilization’s future. I see no comparable crew of warrior goddesses. 
Heroines fare better on TV, but even there I’m struck by the persistent stereotype of a woman whose career devotion is both seed and flower of a tortured private life. Claire Danes in “Homeland,” Mireille Enos in “The Killing,” Dana Delany in “Body of Proof” and even Mariska Hargitay in “Law & Order: SVU” all fit this bill. 
The idea that professional and domestic concerns can’t be balanced isn’t confined to the tube. A recent Pew Research Center report showing that women had become the primary providers in 40 percent of American households with at least one child under 18 prompted the conservative commentators Lou Dobbs and Erick Erickson to fret, respectively, over the dissolution of society and the endangerment of children. When Megyn Kelly challenged them on Fox News, they responded in a patronizing manner that they’d never use with a male news anchor. 
Title IX, enacted in 1972, hasn’t led to an impressive advancement of women in pro sports. The country is now on its third attempt at a commercially viable women’s soccer league. The Women’s National Basketball Association lags far behind the men’s N.B.A. in visibility and revenue. ...
But about the larger picture, I’m mystified. Our racial bigotry has often been tied to the ignorance abetted by unfamiliarity, our homophobia to a failure to realize how many gay people we know and respect. 
Well, women are in the next cubicle, across the dinner table, on the other side of the bed. Almost every man has a mother he has known and probably cared about; most also have a wife, daughter, sister, aunt or niece as well. Our stubborn sexisms harms and holds back them, not strangers. Still it survives.

It's almost as if the conventional wisdom does more to obscure than to enlighten about something as basic as male and female.

My recollection is that gay men once took a particular pride in being clever and perceptive about sex differences, while lesbians tended to be obtuse.

What happened? Can you imagine Bruni's essay being written by, say, Oscar Wilde? Noel Coward? Cole Porter? George Cukor? Lorenz Hart?

104 comments:

Anonymous said...

Title IX, enacted in 1972, hasn’t led to an impressive advancement of women in pro sports. The country is now on its third attempt at a commercially viable women’s soccer league. The Women’s National Basketball Association lags far behind the men’s N.B.A. in visibility and revenue. ...



There oughta be a law requiring men to attend WNBA games!

Bruni's bullying said...

Gay guys just love telling everyone else how to live, don't they? So full of helpful, universal advice.

Dr Van Nostrand said...

I keep flashing back more than two decades, to 1991. That was the year of the Tailhook incident, in which some 100 Navy and Marine aviators were accused of sexually assaulting scores of women. It was the year of Susan Faludi’s runaway best seller, “Backlash,” on the “war against American women,” as the subtitle said. It was when the issue of sexual harassment took center stage in Clarence Thomas’s confirmation hearings. "


According to liberal logic , the antidote to all this rampant caveman sexism was....Bill Clinton!


Im glad for Bruni's sake that he is gay as I cringe whenever a so called straight man spews such feminist drivel.

I decided I was going to be far far more selective about which movies I watch after I saw Ridley Scott's Robin Hood where to my horror maid Marion was transformed in Englands Joan of Arc out to battle the French invaders of Albion alongside Robin.

Leaving aside the bizarre history, I honestly dont know which demographic the fimmmakers wish to appeal to when they indulge in such bizarre gender revisionism.
Most of these medieval movies are watched by straight white men ,who are not averse to a little homophobia and traditional gender roles.
I dont see how by pandering to the faculty of queer studies department will in any considerable manner complement the revenue at the box office.

My experience is anecdotal however very few white American women,or for that matter women of any other ethnic group, seem terribly impressed by girl warriors on screen unless its a domestic violence Lifetime themed movie.

rightsaidfred said...

The implication here, from Mr. Frank Bruni, is that there is money left on the table. Somewhere there is a female auto mechanic better able to fix your car; a female NBA star picking grapes because the male cabal won't give her a proper shot; maybe even an NFL linebacker doing her second choice of a career. Tsk. I hope Frank Bruni is doing his part and seeking out all this languishing female talent when he has the chance to hire.

Anonymous said...

There oughta be a law requiring men to attend WNBA games!

6/10/13, 9:23 PM

Oddly, WNBA games are not that highly attended. But watching Michelle Jenneke sprint is always popular. Can't imagine why though...

Bob Loblaw said...

Oddly, WNBA games are not that highly attended.

There are a lot of people saying this will be the WNBA's last season. My Girrrl Power!!! sister in law said the game she took her daughters to was about as well attended as the ones at the local high school.

Steve Sailer said...

"Gay guys just love telling everyone else how to live, don't they? So full of helpful, universal advice."

They used to be more perceptive, more aware. Can you imagine director George Cukor writing this? Cole Porter? Lorenz Hart? Noel Coward?

rcocean said...

I have a dream that one day I will live in a nation where Pro Basketball Players will not be judged by their ability to play basketball - but by the size of their breasts.

I have a dream today.

Anonymous said...

My experience with Real Live Women (a scarce resource on the internet) is that they don't give a crap about 'warrior women' or the WNBC or women wielding power.

Most real women don't really care about sword fights, watching team sports, or even politics.

Anonymous said...

With all this data that's the writer observes why is it that he is unable to make the last step towards the fundamental differences between men and women? We are genetically different yet he is unable to see it or accept it.

Dr Van Nostrand said...


They used to be more perceptive, more aware. Can you imagine director George Cukor writing this? Cole Porter? Lorenz Hart? Noel Coward?"

When did gay guys turn from being borderline misogynists (makes sense if you think about it) to a silly straight woman's best friend?
And historically ever since Greece and Rome atleast, women have looked askance at gay couplings as they preferred full access to men.
In a precursor to NAFTA protestors, female prostitutes in late Republic Rome routinely petitioned Senators to ban the unwelcome Asiatic import of catamites and ladyboy types.

Was it just a quid pro quo between feminist movement and gay rights or did they genuinely changed the way they viewed each other

Anonymous said...

DVN said: I keep flashing back more than two decades, to 1991

I was just a child during the Tailhook scandal. The only memory I have of the incident is of some angry feminist on KPFA(I think) relating a story about revelers who drank liquor from dildos during the festivities. I believe genital shaving was mentioned as well. Throughout the whole lurid description the broadcaster was livid. Or titillated. Or both. As a pre-pubescent boy, I couldn't really tell, but then I'm not sure the radio harpy in question could either.

While today's SWPL PC enforcers are more powerful than the 90's gender maoists ever were, they lack the humorless fervor and preternaturally bad haircuts of their predecessors. To me, the 90's were crazy, toxic, and oppressive.

I would imagine that middle-America was saner in the 90's than it is now, but my Bobo infected world was bonkers. Yes, I know that the media is probably more slavishly and uniformly PC these days. However, IRL, the new millennium almost feels like socialism with a human face, at least comparatively speaking.

When I look back on it, the year (decade?) of the woman probably laid the foundation for my visceral disgust towards the narrative. Yuck.

-The Judean People's Front

Anonymous said...

No mention of rap?

No mention of black rape?

No mention of machismo culture among Hispans and Muslims?

No mention of liberals, Jews, and homos running the media and hollywood?

Btw, what's the racial breakdown of attackers and victims in the military?

And wahat about slut pride and pussy riot?


Anonymous said...

America in general doesn't seem to know what to do with femaleness. It's like we want to regard everyone as men, and women are complicit in this. They are treated in our country as if they were a smarter superior version of men, with some anatomical differences which can be tittered about on occasion.

Case in point is the falling out of fashion of the word "actress". All persons who act are "actors" now. Women want to adopt the male title. It's actually quite sexcist in an anti-female way if you think about it.

Anonymous said...

I wa watching a post-NBA finals show the other day and there was a female analyst. P.c.-mandated no doubt. I'm sure that's what most basketball fans want to hear - a woman breaking down the game for you.

Anonymous said...

Zimmerman's action was self-defense, pure and simple.

If a pit bull attacked you and you saved your life by shooting the crazed animal, would it then make sense for the media to show puppy photos of the dog that mauled you and make it appear as though you shot a helpless baby dog?

If Zimmerman shouldn't have used to the gun to defend his own life, when is the use of the gun ever permissible?

Anonymous said...

http://santamonicapd.org/Content.aspx?id=32107

Was Jaqueline ever Jack?

Anonymous said...

There was a curious article about how apparently women judge women of, er, looser morals harshly - even slutty women do it:

"For a study published in the Journal of Social and Personal Relationships, researchers from Cornell University asked college women to read a vignette describing a hypothetical female peer, “Joan,” then rate their feelings about her personality. To one group of women, Joan was described as having two lifetime sexual partners; to another group, she’d bedded 20. The study found that women—even women who were more promiscuous themselves—rated the Joan with 20 partners as less competent, emotionally stable, warm, and dominant than the Joan who’d only boasted two."

http://www.slate.com/blogs/xx_factor/2013/06/07/slut_shaming_study_women_discriminate_against_promiscuous_women_but_so_do.html

Am I really the only one who sees this as a wonderful chance to do some fascinating research? So women see sluts as worse people. Is that actually true? Are they worse people? I'd read that research.

But noooooo, we have to see this as inherently problematic, and spend our time whining about slut shaming. It's just...so...boring...No wonder feminists are in such a bad mood.

Anonymous said...

Hey Whiskey another white woman who HATES HATES HATES white men...
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2336911/Racist-Facebook-rants-gets-911-operator-April-Sims-fired.html

And another... http://translate.google.com/translate?sl=auto&tl=en&js=n&prev=_t&hl=sv&ie=UTF-8&u=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.expressen.se%2Fkvp%2F17-arig-tjej-atalas-for-hets-mot-folkgrupp%2F

Anonymous said...

http://www.freakonomics.com/2013/02/24/women-are-not-men-a-new-freakonomics-radio-podcast/

Simon in London said...

Heck, this is nothing - I get in trouble* on the Internet if I say that men and women have different average upper body strength.

My impression is that US University education, especially elite University education, has been effective at educating Politically Correct ignorance and making hatefacts (eg: men stronger than women) unthinkable.

*From men, especially sedentary men. I don't think I've seen a woman tell me that greater male strength is a social construct, but men have told me that, and also that saying the contrary is a means to oppress and disempower women, and cause them to be raped - because they will then lack confidence to fight off their attacker. Saying that men are stronger than women makes you an accessory to rape.

Anonymous said...

The headline says it all. Vintage. Cluelessness is next to Godliness. Who knew abandoning common sense might have perverse consequences?

Gilbert P.

DYork said...

Can you imagine Bruni's essay being written by, say, Oscar Wilde? Noel Coward? Cole Porter? George Cukor? Lorenz Hart?

Yes, if they were being paid by the NY Times.

Maybe Bruni believes what he is writing or maybe he's doing what his employers expects of him.

sunbeam said...

Hmmm you are assuming, I think, contextual knowledge some of us don't have.

"Can you imagine director George Cukor writing this? Cole Porter? Lorenz Hart? Noel Coward?"

All those guys are gay right? I knew Oscar Wilde was, but the other guys were too?

And this Bruni guy is gay right? Am I understanding what you are writing?

Other than Krugman, Friedman, and Dowd I don't know the names of any Times Op/Ed writers. I never read it unless someone puts up a link to something.

And even then I usually don't bother to notice the byline.

Except for Maureen Dowd. I'd totally do her. I would no doubt regret it, but I'd totally do her.

I'll leave Friedman, Krugman, and this Bruni guy to other readers.

Marlowe said...

He resorts to typical liberal scolding: what would your mother think? As Laurie Anderson sang:

'Cause when love is gone, there's always justice.
And when justice is gone, there's always force.
And when force is gone, there's always Mom. Hi Mom!

Mighty Whig said...

Lorenz Hart, Noel Coward, George Cukor were all at the top of their professions. If Frank weren't gay, would he even have a column?

Dr Van Nostrand said...

Except for Maureen Dowd. I'd totally do her. I would no doubt regret it, but I'd totally do her."

You do realize she like a 100 years old and probably is responsible for giving Michael Douglas oral cancer.

Anonymous said...

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2336911/Racist-Facebook-rants-gets-911-operator-April-Sims-fired.html

The exception that proves the rule. And what a beautiful exception.

Also note that the top 3 most popular comments are all supportive. It goes like this (IMO):
1. Support
2. Support
3. Support
4. Soft support
5. Mild support
6. Strong support (full blown WN)
7. Mild support
8. Against
9. Against
10. Support

Never in my wildest dreams a decade ago would I have believed that today there would be a MSM outlet allowing these sorts of comments to be published, that there would be people writing them, and that they would be the most popular, by far. The people on here who say that our cause is hopeless have no idea. The winds of change are blowing as we speak.

The world is closing in
Did you ever think
That we could be so close, like brothers
The future's in the air
I can feel it everywhere
Blowing with the wind of change

Take me to the magic of the moment
On a glory night
Where the children of tomorrow dream away
in the wind of change

Lara said...

He sounds jealous.

Hunsdon said...

DVN said: I decided I was going to be far far more selective about which movies I watch after I saw Ridley Scott's Robin Hood where to my horror maid Marion was transformed in Englands Joan of Arc out to battle the French invaders of Albion alongside Robin.

Hunsdon said: Yes, so very much yes. You know, they could identify the archers who perished on the Mary Rose. Their skeletons were deformed from archery practice; pulling the English (or Welsh) war bow is no light duty.

DVN said: You do realize she like a 100 years old and probably is responsible for giving Michael Douglas oral cancer.

Hunsdon said: Ageist!

Our host said: My recollection is that gay men once took a particular pride in being clever and perceptive about sex differences, while lesbians tended to be obtuse.

Hunsdon said: My recollection is that men once took a particular pride in being perceptive.

Jordan's Footcream said...

" I see an “Iron Man,” a “Man of Steel” and Will Smith, Brad Pitt, Matt Damon and Channing Tatum all shouldering the weight of civilization’s future. I see no comparable crew of warrior goddesses."


That's because Hollywood knows it doesn't sell as well. The view of action heroines strikes most people as simply being too fake. There are far too few real life accounts of female police officers heroically facing a hail of gunfire to stop the bad guy, female soldiers standing atop Iwo Jima after bloody campaigns against the nation's enemies, female firefighters kicking down doors in a raging inferno to save a small child, etc. And that is with a media that is wholly complicit in the leftwing lies of exaggerating these behaviors in women when anything can be remotely used as grist for a story. They simply aren't there as heroines. Its like the obscenity of putting up a statue to honor a handful of nurses who died in WWII while ignoring the ocean of men who died.

Its bad enough that they depict black guys as heroes when they are disproportionately the ones creating the messes in real life or needing rescue. But at least they are physically plausible as heroes.

sunbeam said...

Dr. Van Nostrand wrote:

'Except for Maureen Dowd. I'd totally do her. I would no doubt regret it, but I'd totally do her.'

"You do realize she like a 100 years old and probably is responsible for giving Michael Douglas oral cancer."

I'll reply with another quote I think comes from Hunter S. Thompson:

"I'll worry about that like a Hell's Angel worries about VD."

Anonymous said...

Advice on women from a homosexual will wonders ever cease?

Kell's Masonry said...

"From men, especially sedentary men. I don't think I've seen a woman tell me that greater male strength is a social construct, but men have told me that"

That's odd, usually the deniers seem to be women. I've met adult women who were downright puzzled to find out that men were actually stronger than them. Its as if they had heard this wacky rumor before at some time, but didn't actually believe it. Not until they engaged in real world physical tests against men- arm wrestling, wrestling, arm punches, etc... Amazing what Hollywood and the media can make otherwise reasonably bright, sane people believe, when it meshes with a higher self-esteem for them.

SFG said...

"Leaving aside the bizarre history, I honestly dont know which demographic the fimmmakers wish to appeal to when they indulge in such bizarre gender revisionism.
Most of these medieval movies are watched by straight white men ,who are not averse to a little homophobia and traditional gender roles."

The gay and female nerd contingent has become a lot more vocal. It's kinda surprising, actually.

Alden said...

"My experience with Real Live Women (a scarce resource on the internet) is that they don't give a crap about 'warrior women' or the WNBC or women wielding power.

Most real women don't really care about sword fights, watching team sports, or even politics."

Nailed it. Women simply don't care as much about this stuff as leftists desperately want them to.

anony-mouse said...

Well, both Wilde and Porter were married to women. that might have helped.

Anonymous said...

OT/ check out bank director Biff McGraw - I mean Phil Fuentes:

http://www.chicagobusiness.com/article/20130611/NEWS01/130619972

carol said...

When did gay guys turn from being borderline misogynists (makes sense if you think about it) to a silly straight woman's best friend?

think of it as merely more cattiness in the form of concern trolling.

Dr Van Nostrand said...

Advice on women from a homosexual will wonders ever cease?"

The objectionable aspect is militantly gay guys like Dan Savage dispensing sex advice to straight couples.

WTF , why should I heed their counsel?

Anonymous said...

"Our racial bigotry has often been tied to the ignorance abetted by unfamiliarity"

I think that the correct version of that sentence should be "Our racial bigotry has often been tied to the knowledge abetted by familiarity"

alexis said...

"Gay guys just love telling everyone else how to live, don't they? So full of helpful, universal advice."

They used to be more perceptive, more aware. Can you imagine director George Cukor writing this? Cole Porter? Lorenz Hart? Noel Coward?


I was remarking the other day how gay guy culture has really gone downhill. They used to be annoying, but clever. Now they're just annoying.

Jeff W. said...

Compare Sgt. Schultz: "I see nothing! I know nothing!"

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UmzsWxPLIOo

One thing about Sgt. Schultz: He kept his job.

Pat Boyle said...

I think a lot of the feminist flap was caused by contraception and modern medicine.

In classical times women were assigned by their fathers to some likely man when they were children or barely nubile. They married as soon after menarche as possible and had their first child shortly thereafter. Many died in childbirth.

All societies were engaged in perpetual warfare and warfare was a thing that required upper body strength. Men fought each other with clubs, truncheons, and heavy swords. Their personal weapons that projected force - simple bows - took even more muscle power.

Women didn't show up on the battlefield and they didn't live long enough to be worth an investment in their education.

That began to change in the fifteenth century when printing and corned gunpowder were invented. Gunpowder was a liberating development. It allowed the weak to overcome the strong. Printing meant that there was a way to acquire knowledge without being an apprentice.

The next technological breakthrough was about the end of the nineteenth century with Koch and Pasteur. Childbirth became safe.

The final innovation was the birth control pill. Women were now free from their biology. Before then the fate of a woman was to driven to have sex which made her pregnant and that often killed her. She was like the spider in 'Charlotte's Web' - a prisoner of her genetics. Heretofore women were fated to be weak in a world organized around physical strength, and driven by reproduction instincts that would get her killed young.

That's not a happy fate. But it was natural. Natural in the sense that it was the product of millions of years of biological evolution. Then in an eye blink all that changed.

Salmon if they were more reflective might choose not to swim up that stream to their deaths. Certainly if they had another choice for reproduction and species survival they would prefer to cavort some more in the open ocean. We have given women exactly this choice.

Women haven't been liberated from men but rather from their genetic programming. Men were part of that programming but babies are a more important part.

No other species has done anything like this. We are moving into new territory here. We see what happened to groups like the Shakers who defied the natural drives of reproduction. Will we in the larger society escape their fate?

The scales may be weighted such that we can have feminine freedom but only at the cost of species annihilation. It's too soon to tell.

Albertosaurus

Mr. Anon said...

Bruni forgot to mention that perrenial complaint of feminists: the anxiety that women are forced into by their inability to fit into the clothing turned out by the fashion industry - an industry dominated by homosexual men.

Bruni's column was certainly rich: a dude who screws other dudes wonders why society undervalues women.

Anonymous said...

"I feel as disappointed as Madonna when she heard she missed Tailhook."

In the hearings against Clarence Thomas the witness who was upset by the coke can incident recalled that it happened when Thomas wasn't there so .... it must have been done by Bill Clinton and white privilege kicked in.

If you want a turning point when the media went to complete imbecility this would have been the time.

Anonymous said...

Title IX is exactly the wrong direction. Sports should be de-emphasized in schools. There is no future in it for 99% of the kids. And they get injured, even badly injured.

Why must I pay for the development or identification of professional athlete talent or Olympic talent? I don't care about it and I know for a fact that Phys. Ed. class is oppressive on the great majority of kids. Without the Phys. Ed. classes, the schools couldn't justify the enormous expense of the team sports so the great majority of kids have to be oppressed. It sickening.

At least a lot of colleges and universities got rid of Phys. Ed. requirements. It was insane. I remember reading about an $80,000/year bowling instructor at CUNY about 20 years ago.

Marc B said...

"It's almost as if the conventional wisdom does more to obscure than to enlighten about something as basic as male and female."

I returned to college in my late 20's to get my degree and became convinced that the main goal of modern education, particularly at the university level, was to educate your innate intelligence right out of you.

Anonymous said...

I skimmed the article but did he mention Clinton?

There was never any contradiction to these facts: As governor of Arkansas he sent a state trooper to fetch a young state employee to his hotel room. She was working the state table at a convention in the Excelsior Hotel Little Rock. Brought to the governor's hotel room by the trooper, she says that Clinton made a lewd proposition.

Clinton has never contradicted her account. The state trooper affirmed that he was sent to get her and that he brought her to that room.

candid_observer said...

"Cluelessness is next to Godliness"

That's a keeper -- a headline for our age.

Anonymous said...

"I see an “Iron Man,” a “Man of Steel” and Will Smith, Brad Pitt, Matt Damon and Channing Tatum all shouldering the weight of civilization’s future. I see no comparable crew of warrior goddesses."

Resident Evil.

Mark Plus said...

I saw a comment on another blog that the stereotypical body armor for "warrior women" wouldn't work in real life. The armor covering the breasts would just deflect edged weapons to the center of the chest and increase the odds of lethal penetration into the heart.

I just shrug off these depictions of warrior women, female super-spies and female super-scientists/inventors by pointing out that we call the kinds of stories these characters appear in by the names of "fantasy" or "science fiction."

candid_observer said...

"My experience with Real Live Women (a scarce resource on the internet) is that they don't give a crap about 'warrior women'

Yeah, it's kind of funny how the Warrior Women always seem to have the body type of Angelina Jolie instead of, say, Serena Williams, which would seem a little more plausible in the role.

I have the slightest hunch that when most men see these warrior princesses in the movies, their feelings aren't entirely bellicose.

Anonymous said...

From Victorianism to Correctorianism.

Observing from the Sidelines said...

"I've met adult women who were downright puzzled to find out that men were actually stronger than them"

Yet the Olympics (and any sports leagues where strength is important) still separate the competitors into male and female. You'd think feminists would be pushing to eliminate this discrimination altogether - "time for the WNBA to go the way of the Negro League!" Conclusion: at some point, the real world must have its say.

Anonymous said...

The WNBA is not as popular as the NBA is proof of sexism? The WNBA is a money loser for the NBA which owns it, the NBA operates the WNBA as a loss leader for good PR. If it were not owned by the NBA it would have folded years ago. Half the WNBA teams are owned by NBA teams and play in those NBA arenas during the NBA off-season. The NBA gets ESPN to give the league far more coverage than it deserves based on ratings which are below a lot of marginal male sports like college baseball. The WNBA's team salary cap is only $900K, the max salary for any WNBA player is $101,500, and despite this the majority of teams lose money. PC makes you stupid, this guy is so lost, he can never be brought back to reality.

Anonymous said...

"Most real women don't really care about sword fights, watching team sports, or even politics."

All this superhero stuff reflects badly on males. It means they never grow up.

Anonymous said...

http://shadowlight9.blogspot.com/2013/05/the-world-at-war-i-128-years-of-war.html

Anonymous said...

http://stuffrichpeoplelove.com/

Dr Van Nostrand said...

There oughta be a law requiring men to attend WNBA games!"

A joke for us maybe food for thought for others...

Anonymous said...

http://radio.foxnews.com/toddstarnes/top-stories/soldier-who-read-conservative-books-now-faces-charges.html

Anonymous said...

"Title IX, enacted in 1972, hasn’t led to an impressive advancement of women in pro sports. The country is now on its third attempt at a commercially viable women’s soccer league. "

LOL back when the MLS wanted the women's soccer league to join hands with them, they'd rather men not ride on their world cup success coattails. Now the same folks want MLS to have women's division.

http://espn.go.com/soccer/s/2000/0412/477455.html

http://espn.go.com/espnw/news-commentary/article/7962722/espnw-julie-foudy-explores-whether-women-pro-soccer-make-us


"Almost every man has a mother he has known and probably cared about; most also have a wife, daughter, sister, aunt or niece as well. Our stubborn sexisms harms and holds back them, not strangers. Still it survives."

LOOL this old "women are your daugthers, sisters, mothers, etc." rhetoric has already been deemed misogynistic for making women's existence dependent on men.
Get on with the times, Bruno!!

Anonymous said...

"I decided I was going to be far far more selective about which movies I watch after I saw Ridley Scott's Robin Hood where to my horror maid Marion was transformed in Englands Joan of Arc out to battle the French invaders of Albion alongside Robin."

Prospero got a sex change as well. Being an utter misogynist, I didn't check out the movie to see whether Caliban was deemed as a misogynistic bigot upholding unattainable standards of beauty for not trying to populate the island with Miranda's mother. Come to think of it, who knows whether Miranda was not replaced by a fatty as well.

A recent Sherlock Holmes rendition has also gone post sex changism, a strong independent Joan Watson taking the place of the original doofus who couldn't even shave well.

Anonymous said...

Off topic:

From this article:

http://www.theatlanticwire.com/politics/2013/06/opponents-immigration-reform-are-running-out-options/66108/?.tsrc=tmobustoday

"Who wants less legal immigration?" [Idaho Rep. Raul] Labrador asked, according to the notes of a person who was in the room.

Of the roughly 100 conservative Republicans in the room, only [Iowa Representative Steve] King raised his hand.

Svigor said...

Let's talk sexism. Why am I constantly assaulted with images of nude male chests on television? Why are there so many more naked male bums shown on television than naked female bums? Why are men degraded in this fashion?

Why are all the murderers and villains on TV men? Why are all the people shot, stabbed, murdered, mangled, tortured, and beaten on TV men?

Are the Lords of Television sending us a message? Or do they just hate men? Or both?

agnostic said...

I started to write a comment, but it turned into a full post:

http://akinokure.blogspot.com/2013/06/female-heroines-are-boring-who-lack.html

Female heroines are boring who lack maternal motivation

countenance said...

Eric wrote:

There are a lot of people saying this will be the WNBA's last season. My Girrrl Power!!! sister in law said the game she took her daughters to was about as well attended as the ones at the local high school.

I respond:

Don't bet on it. The NBA will prop up the WNBA just to make the lesbian lobby happy.

C. Van Carter said...

Noel Coward once observed "I have always been of the opinion that a large group of queer men was unattractive. On Fire Island, it is more than unattractive, it's macabre, sinister, irritating and somehow tragic." Imagine the New York Times reaction if a homosexualist said something like that today.

blogger said...

"But about the larger picture, I’m mystified. Our racial bigotry has often been tied to the ignorance abetted by unfamiliarity, our homophobia to a failure to realize how many gay people we know and respect."

No, 'racism' is tied to how much you KNOW about racial reality. It's 'anti-racism' that is the product of blissful ignorance. 'Racists' know there are too many like Mike Tyson in black areas. 'Anti-racists' weep over a mountain sized Negro who wuvs a wittle white mouse in GREEN MILE because they're divorced from racial reality. Anyone who knows the reality can only crack up at GREEN MILE.

And if you're privileged, you get to schmooze with nice negroes like John McWhorter, Charles Blow, Obama, Jarrett, and Gladwell. You only know the creme of the crop.

Thus, elitist 'anti-racist' attitudes are really anti-poor-white attitudes. The elite whites rub shoulders with best blacks while poor whites have to rub shoulders with worst blacks. Poor whites don't like bad blacks, and so, they're condemned as 'racist'.

Some study said people of low IQ are more 'racist'. To some extent, this is because low IQ people are more pigheaded--though there are plenty of low IQ people like Forrest Gump who's like a dog.
But the real reason why low IQ are more 'racist' is cuz they are closer to racial reality. Due to their low IQ, they succeed less in life, and so they end up rubbing shoulders with more bad blacks(whereas smart whites make lots of money and move to safe areas or gentrify cities into less black places--and leave the dirty work of controlling blacks by having cops frisk them). Thus, low IQ whites see more of race reality.

As for "our homophobia to a failure to realize how many gay people we know and respect"...

...it gives the game away. Homomania is a form of neo-aristocratism.
Basically, Bruni is saying that many homos are rich, intelligent, creative, successful, powerful, and etc. They are deserving of higher respect.
If most homos were low IQ and stupid like sister-humping hillbillies, they wouldn't have his time of day. He likes them for their elitist/superior values. Gay is good cuz gay is rich.

Now, I'm fully aware that many homos are indeed talented, and I admire their talent... but why do I have to admire or applaud their form of icky sexuality?
Carravagio was probably a pedophile. I admire his artistic talent, but why do I have to like his thing for naked little boys?
Hemingway, Fitzgerald, John Huston, and Peckinpah were great artists and terrible alcoholics. While I admire and respect their talent as artists, why do I have to praise their alcoholism as well? (of course, some studies have shown that some people are BORN to be more prone to alcoholism, but that still doesn't mean it is good.)

Why can't we admire individuals who are homo for their talents--if they have such talents--without endorsing their sexual deviancy?
If a great writer is into incest, I'll still read his or her books, but I'm not gonna praise or 'celebrate' his or her strange sexual desires.

Also, if we use Bruni's logic, he should love 'racists' too since so many accomplished and talented people throughout history had race-ist and pro-eugenicist views.
But when James Watson was outed as a 'racist', liberals didn't say, "gee, it's nice to know and be familiar with such an intelligent 'racist' person." They just attacked him mercilessly.


Horace Staccato said...

All the Leftist lies and fantasies have been told and forced on us, and the truth about their pathological, contradictory nature is now glaringly obvious. When one's Leftist God represents a series of complete failures and evil tyrannies and embarrassing pratfalls, the true believer must fall back on ignorance. When all the lies are revealed as lies there is a stark choice for the Leftist between ignorance and truth.

Since a Leftist is by definition mentally ill because his agenda requires denial of reality, and because most Leftists are simply cowards who want to force us all to be cowards; then willful ignorance is the only refuge.

blogger said...

Bruni is a looney, dumb one at that.

Most superhero action movies are dumb because they're mostly about headbashing stupid power. Power isn't very interesting when it's so lunkheaded and easy. It's like Rambo blasting away at the bad guys while bullets bounce off his chest.
Power is made interesting when the protagonists have to use their wits and brilliance as well as their firepower and muscle to come out ahead. This is why GOOD, BAD, UGLY is so great. And FOR FEW DOLLARS MORE too. Them guys are always plotting and thinking to come out ahead.

And in the past few yrs, some of the more interesting Power Characters were female precisely cuz they used their wits. Take ZERO DARK THIRTY where a woman figures out how to get Bin Laden through a brilliant analysis of intelligence. All the firepower of the US military couldn't get him, but she gets him--if the movie is indeed based on how it really happened--by understanding social psychology.
Bombs can blow up a lot of people, but if you find A person in hiding, you have to know the web of social links. You have to know the culture of the people. Or psyculture.

Maya is like Ariadne of Greek mythology, which brings up another interesting Power Character in recent movies. None other than one named 'Ariadne' in INCEPTION. In my first viewing, I didn't much like the girl. She looked like the smart chick in the Foghorn Leghorn cartoon.
But in my second viewing, I got to appreciate her a lot more, and in some ways, she is the key player in the movie. All the guys are professionals and experts at what they do. They know how to navigate the dream space in physical terms, but it's Ariadne who, with feminine intuition, enters into the heart of the character as well. Though the project is to break into the heart of a son of some rich tycoon, more central to the story is the crisis of the DiCaprio who can't let go of his dead wife. While the guy characters just see Mal(his wife) as an hindrance/nuisance, Ariadne(like Maya) sees her as the root source of Dicaprio's mental crisis(it's his personal Osama), and she finds a way to navigate into the root of his soul to expunge it of Mal.

This is the kind of Power that is actually interesting. All the gun-shooting and fighting in INCEPTION struck me as silly, rather like WWE. But Ariadne's special power--one of brilliance and insight--went much deeper.

Another interesting Power Character was the mother in LOOPER. One might think the real power characters in the movie are the guys with guns, but, in a way, she is the key figure because she must rely on psychology to control her son. She is both his master and slave. He loves her and is devoted to her, but he can also freak out and do horrible stuff. She has to manage him through subtle psychological manipulation. Fascinating.

And there's another kind of power. Beauty and passion, and TWILIGHT did a pretty interesting take on this. As one of the songs in the movie suggests, Bella is the lamb and Edward is the lion. Yet, it's Bella who 'hunts' Edward. It is she who is insistent and intuits that there is something special between them so that Edward will not hurt her.
Jacob the wolf kid is bigger and more muscular, and it's one kind of power. But Bella is more drawn to Eddie cuz his power is more mysterious.
In superhero stories, power is not mysterious. Some guy runs around in a metal suit or rubber suit and kicks butt. Villains are often dumber. Daffy Duck Face on steroids in DARK KNIGHT was ridiculous.

And even though the vamp girls in TWILIGHT--actually they are more like gods than vamps--are physically powerful, what makes them interesting are their subtle or special powers. It's like Alice can see fragments of the future. And Jane Volturi, though tiny, has a psychic power to paralyze people.
And Bella's mind cannot be read.

blogger said...

Another interesting thing about TWILIGHT was the sense of power as a way of seeing and feeling than just bashing heads. When Bella finally turns into a vamp and sees/hears with new senses, it's mesmerizing. It's the power to appreciate beauty in a whole new way. Power just to FEEL.
It's too bad that this part was passed over too quickly so that the movie could settle into some plot about the war with the Volturis.

BREAKING DAWN should have been three movies. Part 2 should have been entirely about Bella's adjustment as a vampire, both its highs and dark dangers.
All that stuff about about war with Volturis should have been told in part 3 as a separate movie.
The first 25 min of BREAKING DAWN part 2 is hypnotic. Too bad it blew by too fast.

blogger said...

STORY OF RUTH. Pretty interesting movie about female power, moral power, and power of love.

Anonymous said...

In a democracy, reporters are paid to find things out and print them. In a totalitarian system, reporters are paid NOT to find things out and NOT to print them. Which one are we closer to now?

d said...

"Well, women are in the next cubicle, across the dinner table, on the other side of the bed."

Not Frank's bed.

" Almost every man has a mother he has known and probably cared about"

Probably cared about? Weird.

Anonymous said...

It reads like he's desperate for *somebody* to stand-in for his abandonment of masculinity.
He'd even settle for a woman to be "the male". Or mommy be daddy?
How did the mentally ill become the determiners of our culture?

Steve Sailer said...

"Female heroines are boring who lack maternal motivation"

I don't know if that's true in general, but the last scene in Cameron's "Aliens," which is set up as, metaphorically, a mother v. mother fight to the death was teh awesome.

Whiskey said...

Hollywood is a weird place. On the one hand, a few movies made for the international scene as much as America, make a lot of money. They feature male heroes and have a globalist plot. Iron Man 3 is a good example, a villain who is an "Evil White Guy" and Robert Downey Jr. as the lead. Who btw does indeed have to use his wits and ability, not raw power, to beat the bad guy. Building stuff and being smart is Tony Stark's sole superpower, but it is a very good one and fairly iconic -- technologist/engineer as hero. Worldwide a lot of people like the character and his movies.

A lot more than most of the movies Hollywood churns out, stuff about dwarves living under railway stations or a couple of crazy people. That stuff is made not to make money because it doesn't, but to make Hollywood happy and win awards. Just like most advertising is not to sell product but win awards for ad agencies and signal the "correct" social attitudes.

The globalism the Times writer loves is directly responsible for a lack of roles for women -- audiences in China, Pakistan, Latin America, and Russia are not eager to embrace Women Warriors no matter how loony the Left is for them. Globalization may drive out to extinction the native White/European peoples, to great elite acclaim, but it also imposes the lowest common denominator of the attitudes of Pakistan and China and Latin America. Which are not so keen on women as anything other than an object.

[As far as the woman fired goes, one anecdote does not equal data. TMZ's "Black Baby" skit satirizing the White actress habit of adopting same is on topic and hilarious. Obama's support among White women exceeds that of White men, by a margin of 10% last poll. There are far more Sandra Flukes than Emma Wests. Indeed the Flukes dominate and the Wests are a tiny minority.]

If you look at the plot of the latest Iron Man film, the villain is not the "Mandarin" (an old comic book villain) because it would not play well in China or Pakistan -- it had to be another White guy. Globalist films eventually will all star mixed race guys like Vin Diesel or the Rock, with bad guys all played by Whites. Downey is lucky, ten years from now all the hero roles will be off limits to White guys. Given that money from places like China and Pakistan drives how movies like this are made.

Anonymous said...

This Zimmerman business.

It's all very amusing since affluent white liberals use gentric cleansing to drive our a lot of blacks. Also, NY uses stop-and-frisk on blacks to keep them under control. Yet, when Zimmerman tried to guard his own community, rich affluent white and Jewish liberals all dumped on him. Their projected their own racial fears about blacks onto Zimmerman. HE is the 'racist', not themselves.

As long as they have money power and police power to do as they please, I guess they are good people. But for people like Zimmerman, who have to watch the neighborhood themselves and might have defend their own lives from attacks by thugs, they're bad bad bad 'racists'!

Cail Corishev said...

[Women pro tennis players] do less work for the same money. in majors women play best of 3 matches, men play best of 5 matches. so, not only are they piggy backing on ATP money, they give the crowd less of a show.

That's not really relevant, nor is what women make in other pro sports. What matters is the ticket prices and TV deals. If people are willing to pay as much to watch two women play 2-3 sets as they'll pay to watch men play 3-5, and the TV draw is the same, the women should get paid the same. I have no idea whether those things are the case, but I wouldn't be surprised if they are.

Do the top male figure skaters make as much as the females? I'd assume not, especially when you get into endorsements, because the girls are the draw, and that's fine. Of course, it should also be fine that in most sports, the top men make gobs of money and no one wants to watch women play.

Cail Corishev said...

I hardly ever watch anything less than 10 years old, but I get the impression that the Action Girl trope peaked a while back. There for a while they were everywhere: Buffy, Xena, Lara Croft, River Tam (it's definitely a favorite of Joss Whedon's), Trinity in the Matrix, Starbuck on the new BSG. They were even the protagonists of some shows for a while, including Alias and La Femme Nikita along with Buffy. I'm sure newer shows still have Action Girls, but they don't seem to be the star nearly as much as they used to.

I've been rewatching the X-Files lately, and it struck me that Scully rarely gets in a fight, and when it's against a guy, she generally takes one hard blow and is down. In fact, there's one episode where Mulder's caught in a virtual reality thing and a virtual Scully comes to save him, and they have some fun with her using kung-fu on a room full of virtual bad-guy nurses. It exposes right away the fact that the scene isn't real, but on many shows of the era you would have been expected to buy that as normal.

jody said...

contra bruni, title 9 has dramatically increased women's participation in sports and elevated their level of performance significantly. this is evaluated easily by measuring participation rates, which have skyrocketed for women in high school sports. from 1972 to 2012, they quadrupled, from 817000 per year to 3.2 million per year. this is due to the prospect of scholarship for NCAA play for women after their high school career finishes, a prospect which didn't exist for most of them before 1972.

men's participation has only increased in line with population growth, from 3.7 million in 1972 to 4.4 million in 2012. in other words there are almost as many women playing high school sports today as there were men 40 years ago.

http://www.nfhs.org/content.aspx?id=3282

putting aside the ridiculous stuff, like universities creating artificial sports teams out of thin air for totally minor sports so that 20 non-athlete women can be awarded athletic scholarships for purposes of balancing the number of scholarships for women and men, title 9 HAS dramatically improved women's sports in the US. they now all run faster, jump higher, swim better, hoop more effectively (though nothing like men), smack tennis balls with more velocity, drive golf balls further and putt golf balls more accurately, and so on and so forth.

of course as remarked upon for decades, title 9 implementation is sheer cultural marxism, results in various absurdities, and comes at a price that i personally would not be willing to pay, where i the person in charge. there are certainly less cultural marxist ways to implement increased opportunities for women in sports, though they never will be tried.

Anonymous said...

"audiences in China, Pakistan, Latin America, and Russia are not eager to embrace Women Warriors no matter how loony the Left is for them."

I guess you don't know much about anime, Hong Kong cinema, and Bollywood stuff.

This one is great trash. Nonsensical yet utterly inspired and romantic.

Anonymous said...

What about the GIRL WITH DRAGON ASS TATTOO?

I think I'll stick with RESIDENT EVIL. Trash should be honest.

sunbeam said...

I'm not really a tennis fan. But I've always enjoyed women's tennis more than men's tennis.

A couple of reasons:

1) Some of them are hot. And they wear bloomers.

2) Even if they are not hot, these women are in shape, so there is something to ogle even if they are not Anna Kournikova.

3) There is actually some action in the game. They will actually have volleys that can last.

Compare it to men's tennis. Like I said I don't keep up with it, but every time I watch it some android serving machine serves a ball over the net on a line hard.

It is either in or out. Then some English announcer guy says "Fault," or "Fowl," or something. Then the robot serves again. If he messes up something, the other robot serves to him.

And the audience will sit in utter silence for as long as the camera can stand to look at this.

I also like women's volleyball better than men's. I only watch beach volleyball. Men's volleyball serves no use, and is quickly channel flipped by. The women wear bikini type outfits, and they dive around. They are invariably attractive. They stand up after they dive around and pick the bikini briefs back after they rid up their rear end.

And I like that. I like that a lot. The men doing it? Not so much.

You know I like women's golf better than men's. I guess because I am not a golfer.

And well, the women bend over to putt.

Now prurience aside, I don't watch basketball in general. But like most people I used to, and have the old pickup game and horse experience. You remember those days when you played four or five times a week at someone's house or a playground?

I prefer to watch women's basketball just to watch basketball. The men's game after high school usually seems to be about some guy jacking threes or taking it to the hole. Hard to find a set play, ball movement, or anything like that sometimes.

Plus the NBA at least is totally rigged.

So women's basketball isn't all bad. If I were a real fan that is what I would watch.

Anonymous said...

http://latino.foxnews.com/latino/entertainment/2013/06/11/chad-ochocinco-johnson-asks-judge-not-to-send-him-to-jail-after-slapping-lawyer-butt/

Sheeeeeeet.

Sexual harassment or admiring woman's beauty or booty.
Common among blacks but it be sooooo nasty among higher class folks.

But if the guy came out and said "I like penises up my butt", he'd be a national hero.

Anonymous said...

"Robert Downey Jr. as the lead. Who btw does indeed have to use his wits and ability, not raw power, to beat the bad guy."

He makes stuff in no time and then is blowing stuff up all over.
He's no Sylia Stingray. Now, she uses her brains.

jody said...

"That's not really relevant"

i addressed that in the very next paragraph, where i ask what WTA pay would be in 2013 if it were not artificially linked to ATP purses. it wouldn't be 2.5 million dollars to win a major, that's for sure. and i specifically said, it's about spectators. what ticket sales and television viewership would it get on it's own. higher than any other women's sport. but how high, exactly? there are seperate WTA events, so the purses there are instructive. upon reviewing them, the highest pay for winning one of these events seems to be around 400 grand - 4 times what the highest paid WNBA player makes for an entire season. and that's for a single 2 week event. so that's about the ceiling for women playing tennis - still a very high ceiling. the WTA championship would be their version of the big one, with a 1.7 million purse to the winner. over 15 times a full year of WNBA pay for one event.

professional sports are about spectators, what are people willing to pay to watch. this affects all sports, not just women playing sports. track and field is the number 2 sport in the US, and the number 2 sport in the world, behind only soccer, but less people are willing to pay to watch it than some other sports. so it has the biggest gap between participation rate and level of play, versus viewership and consequently pay. boxing is at the other end of the spectrum, a sport so small we can measure participation rate in the low ten thousands, yet the allure of watching 2 guys punch each other until 1 of them falls down, is high, high enough to draw 20 million dollar purses for single championship matches.

wrestling is 20 times as big as boxing, but not many people want to watch a real wrestling match, so there's little money in putting on a show of real wrestlers rasslin' each other. ice hockey is another counterpart with boxing at the opposite end of the participation rate to spectator interest spectrum. it has a participation rate below below volleyball, but supports several professional leagues around the world, with the largest league, NHL, paying 10 million dollar salaries, because 18000 people want to pay to watch 80 games of ice hockey a year.

not enough people want to pay to watch women play basketball or soccer, so those leagues cannot exist. under capitalism anyway. they lose money perpetually, and can only exist if somebody is paying to keep them going and does not mind taking a loss every year forever. which is how the WNBA exists. this is why men's professional swimming & diving is confined to a very small circuit where winnings are measured in thousands of dollars a year, why there is no wrestling league at all, why soccer and baseball and basketball are all much higher paying than track & field despite it being bigger, why very small sports like boxing and competitive golf offer 1 million dollar purses while vastly larger sports like cross country or marathon running offer almost nothing, and so forth.

jody said...

forgot to mention LPGA play, where the pay tops out at about 300 grand to win a major. that wasn't what they were getting paid in 1992, let alone 1972.

so there are plenty of opportunities today for women to win big money playing professional sports, opportunities which didn't exist in the past. just, basketball and soccer aren't among them, and probably never will be.

Anonymous said...

The reason gay men have lost their jaundiced eye toward straight women and feminists is that feminists are gays' only predictable ally. And by predictable I mean that they don't have to have to use Stalinist strong-arming to keep them in line. In person gay men can often be incredibly bitchy and nasty to their straight female friends, especially the not-so-pretty ones who seek to have emotional needs met by gay men that they can't get from straight men. And these days many gay men are even rejecting that role as well. Se the below article and the outraged comments. I at first thought this behavior was highly disloyal, but now I feel sorry for gay men who just want to have sex with men, but who have to first entertain a series of straight women who'd be better off going to therapy to fix their issues with straight men.

http://www.salon.com/2009/08/18/rogers_fag_hag/

Gloria

Anonymous said...

'fag hag'.

what is a straight guy who likes to hang around homos?

fag lag?



Baloo said...

DAMN you're on a roll, Steve! I can't resist. I've linked and riffed on you again.
http://ex-army.blogspot.com/2013/06/sexism-shmexism.html

Cail Corishev said...

i addressed that in the very next paragraph, where i ask what WTA pay would be in 2013 if it were not artificially linked to ATP purses. it wouldn't be 2.5 million dollars to win a major, that's for sure. and i specifically said, it's about spectators. what ticket sales and television viewership would it get on it's own. higher than any other women's sport. but how high, exactly? there are seperate WTA events, so the purses there are instructive. upon reviewing them, the highest pay for winning one of these events seems to be around 400 grand - 4 times what the highest paid WNBA player makes for an entire season.

WNBA salaries aren't relevant to WTA purses any more than teachers' salaries are. How do WTA purses compare to ATP purses at separate, comparable events? Or if the purses are artificially linked, how do ticket prices/sales and TV contracts compare?

I have no idea, but since you're sure the women are getting more than their share, I assume you've done the research and know that the men draw more revenue. That surprises me a little, because like Sunbeam, I've always found women's tennis much more entertaining than men's. I pretty much stopped watching when the Williams sisters dominated because they played a hard-serving baseline game like the men (and because they were jerks).

Anonymous said...

Feminism is divide and rule. It works a treat.

Anonymous said...

Bruni's a lesbian?

Darwin's Sh*tlist said...

So it's official. Bruni has now taken Bob Herbert's place as the most generic, cliche'-ridden liberal at the Gray Lady.

Svigor said...

As far as the woman fired goes, one anecdote does not equal data.

The king of the anecdote says anecdotes are not data. The guy who's never cited data in his whole life says anecdotes are not data. The guy who shoehorns anecdotes into his hare-brained theories says anecdotes are not data.

Lucy said...

Sunbeam, you are watching (or not watching) tennis in an alternate universe. Or perhaps you're stuck in the eighties. Players were switching from wood to metal rackets back then, and the increased power of the serve did result in some men's matches being as boring as you (amusingly) describe. Tournaments responded by slowing playing surfaces and making the ball heavier to ensure more rallies. You might still see the odd android serving contest at Wimbledon, but, in general, long, intense battles and brilliant shot-making are far commoner in men's tennis than women's. As an obsessed fan for twenty-five years, I think the last decade has been a Golden Age for men's tennis, and the women seem increasingly dull by comparison.
I realize you're just interested in bloomers. But the ludicrous notion that men's tennis lacks action could not be allowed to stand!

Anonymous said...

The TV gals are doing their best to combat sexism.

"“SheZow” follows the adventures of a 12-year-old boy named Guy who uses a magic ring to transform himself into a crime-fighting girl. When Guy says the magic words – “You go girl!” – he becomes SheZow, wearing a purple skirt and cape, as well as pink gloves and white boots."


and Title IX has been amazing for women's sports.



" At this week's convention, present-day medical issues were also explored with candor. Serving on a panel Wednesday night were Ned Bergert, former Angels head trainer, Neal ElAttrache, the Dodgers' team physician and Dr. Kevin Wilk of Champions Sports. Their panel was moderated by Will Carroll of SI.com. … ElAttrache was curious about the audience's view on PRP and performance-enhancing drugs.

"That's something I do need to be concerned about because I take care of people of all ages and what kind of effect is that going to have, socially, on the young athletes that we take care of," he said.

"Because, believe me, I see high school kids and junior high school kids that are dabbling in steroids and HGH [human growth hormone]. It's amazing what happens. And their parents know it. Including girls, by the way, especially girls.

"Girls' soccer is rife with anabolic steroid use. It's amazing."

Bob Loblaw said...

But I've always enjoyed women's tennis more than men's tennis.

Me too, but more because men's tennis is all about serving aces, which is incredibly boring. When they change the rules to force slower rackets I'll watch the men's game again.

Glaivester said...

I wonder if Bruni realizes that the math would indicate that slightly over half of military sexual assaults happen to men.

http://www.wnd.com/2013/05/military-suffers-wave-of-gay-sex-assaults/

Anonymous said...

I often wonder how many women have been assaulted and killed because of the false sense of security that the Grrl Power attitude has created.

I have a women friend who taught cardio kickboxing and wanted to teach "Self Defense for Women" at the gym we both belonged to. I asked her if she'd ever been punched or kicked by a guy, and she hadn't. I then asked her if she thought she could defend herself against me, a large power lifter, and she said that "her speed would neutralize my strength". She invited me to be the "attacker" in her class.
During the demonstration, she proceeded to kick me in the chest and punch me in the stomach to no effect, but only after trying to kick me in the jewels, which, if she had ever actually fought a guy, she'd know is the first thing we protect. I picked her up, dropped he face down on the mat and straddled her upper thighs, announcing to the group of shocked soccer moms in the class that she could consider herself raped. I pointed out that in the more likely circumstance, a surprise assault, the outcome would be even worse, as I would have blasted her in the face first to stun her.

These were women who belonged to a gym and worked out fairly regularly, and they had STILL internalized the attitude that a little "training" would equalize any physical situation. As someone who worked as a bouncer while in college, I made them recite Dalton's Law: Never underestimate your opponent! I also added my own: scream and run if you can.

Cail Corishev said...

As someone who worked as a bouncer while in college, I made them recite Dalton's Law: Never underestimate your opponent!

I thought Dalton's Law was: "Pain don't hurt."

Anonymous said...

"During the demonstration, she proceeded to kick me in the chest and punch me in the stomach to no effect, but only after trying to kick me in the jewels, which, if she had ever actually fought a guy, she'd know is the first thing we protect. I picked her up, dropped he face down on the mat and straddled her upper thighs, announcing to the group of shocked soccer moms in the class that she could consider herself raped. I pointed out that in the more likely circumstance, a surprise assault, the outcome would be even worse, as I would have blasted her in the face first to stun her."

Alice Cullen could kick your ass.