My Wednesday Taki column is now up. It takes a close look at the 2006 Century 21 commercial Suzanne Researched This. Read it there and comment upon it below.
The facial lunge, done man to man, is an extreme dominance move. It would be directed at an at least two levels lower subordinate who has gotten out of line. The one clear memory I have of somebody doing this to me was when I was a candidate at Marine Officer Candidate School, a captain did this to me when I didn't answer a question fast enough. If your *wife* is doing this to you- you are probably a man who envies the dead.
I have been mystified when guys get the divorce decree, losing most of their stuff and getting saddled with a huge child support payment, and yet they are very happy and relieved. I guess this is what they were getting away from.
I'm a middle aged bachelor, and I lived with a woman in her condo for a while. When I couldn't tolerate her anymore, I just put my stuff in my car and left.
If this is what marriage is like for a lot of people- and it must be if they can do a commercial like this- that's a much more serious issue for society than any financial crisis.
I think that when a couple buys a house, the man is more likely to look at the house as an investment. So to the extent that the housing bubble was driven by people looking for flip potential, I would guess that men are more at fault.
Re England - I don't think there are big differences in the dynamics of housebuying here from the US. The UK & Ireland are somewhat more matriarchal than the US, especially in the Celtic fringe men are often kept heavily infantilised. But there is less inter-sex hostility than in the US, just as there is less inter-race hostility. Women don't generally hate and despise men, nor vice versa. If there's less tension over purchasing decisions though, it's more that men don't put up a fight.
Our big good fortune was that we did not have anything like the push for home-ownership as in the US, and it is not a racialised issue. In Britain the Left tend to disapprove of home ownership, and prefer people to live in 'council' (public) housing. While lending standards were somewhat imprudently lowered, nothing like the US mortgage meltdown occurred. UK banks were crippled through their purchase of US subprime derivatives, not from UK defaults.
I just found out that Mike Judge's new movie will open on September 4th.
Office Space is my favorite Hollywood movie of all time. This is only partly because I've spent the last ten years working in a cubicle.
Idiocracy's premise was very brave, socially responsible and necessary. However, its execution suffered in comparison with Office Space. He could have done so much more with that idea.
Oh, and the B&B movie and TV show were very cool too, of course.
Now I'm curious about how this one's going to turn out.
My wife says that the wife's hostile facial lunge at the 0:14 mark reminds her of the kind of looks she would give her brothers and sister when she was 14. That reminds her that Dr. Laura on the radio is always advising the women of America not to treat their husbands like their siblings. Sibling rivalry-style behavior between wife and husband is not only destructive, it's creepy.
Are you sure? I remember you saying you live in a nicer part of the valley. That means, if your house was average, your net worth probably went up about $600,000 between 2000 and 2006, and since then about $400,000 of that has evaporated.
Even if you never touched all that new equity, I think it would be hard for such a windfall not to affect you psychologically.
"Iran has no nukes Suzanne researched this." "I want to take a vacation in New Orleans! There's NO chance for a deadly hurricane--Suzanne researched this!"
"The Big Easy is SPECIAL, Jon... You guys can DO this!"
Sharks with laser beams! Funny I saw the same thing at She-conomy.com, and blogged about it -- synchronicity.
If you read my blog, you'll know that one of my themes is doubt that female-only advertising and spending is possible in a down market. Seven for All Mankind (makers of $200-500 jeans for women) is in trouble, and high divorce rates plus delayed marriage mean lots of male consumers making purchasing decisions. In fact, in my area (Irvine CA) I see LOTS of men making grocery purchases, about half of all shoppers in fact, some married (with their kids) and some by themselves, single guys. I see this after work, I see it on the weekend. But ALL the checkout counter mags are female oriented: People, Women's Day, etc.
Advertising is all kinds of messed up. Blacks make up 12.5% of the population and middle class Blacks are 40% of that number at a total of 5% of the population yet you see "nice" couples are exclusively Black-Middle Class (though there are some "doofus" Black Dad/husband commercials).
Advertising tells women their husbands are overweight, doofus, undesirable guys they can dominate (and therefore provide the sex appeal of bowl of oatmeal). Is it any wonder that the attitudes of Sandra Tsing Loh towards the "Kitchen Bitch" (as she dubbed husbands who help around the house) is permeating more and more of the culture?
IIRC the advertising business is dominated by gays and single women -- which would explain the anti-Marriage and anti-husband attitudes.
But do women dominate consumer purchasing? I think the answer is perhaps only 65%, if that, and that the future of media is "free" with ads embedded.
-- I'm Testing99 also.
Thanks Steve for Fricking Sharks with Laser beams! Happy Happy Happy!
If there were only men, houses would look a lot like one big garage with space for an entertainment center.
The man from that ad would be a lot better off with a divorce. At a minimum he should have fired that real estate agent the second she interfered in his marriage. Of course this is the world we live in today -- if a man asserts himself it's psychic abuse and grounds for divorce, if a woman asserts herself she's just taking what's due her. My wife is Japanese and happily we don't have these problems, the roles were pretty clearly laid out from the beginning. If I acted as spineless as the guy in the ad my wife would probably divorce me on principle.
I've blogged extensively on the shift in media -- towards more mass and "free" orientation.
Consumers more frequently time shift, and move towards the internet for "free" (ala Hulu.com) viewing. Consumers would ideally like free or near-free content without obvious commercials that they could play on their laptops, cell phones, or Ipods.
The future I think belongs to whoever can cheaply (District 9 was made VERY cheaply, looked great) create content with "product placement plus" i.e. the product is a key plot point (Eureka on SyFy does this a lot) and make it "free" for download and also on cable/broadcast tv. With modest charges for DVD purchases that have "extras" such as cast interviews, behind the scenes, etc.
Clearly the ad market is down, and is probably going to be down as consumer spending is down for a decade or so. My guess is that most ad spending will go to "brand building" feel-good stuff aimed at the widest audience possible which will kill a lot of niche stuff.
This means you can't have wives browbeating husbands, because it will turn off husbands or single men. It probably has limited appeal to women who find their husbands not fat, doofusy, and resent being categorized as a "loser" who ended up with a schlub.
That is one of the scariest commercials of all time. Mean, dominant wife. Fat, pushover husband. Appeal to a false authority (salesperson). Justifying the immediate need for a house because the children will grow up someday.
I know a lot of men who had to put their foot down not to buy in the middle of the CA bubble when their wives/girlfriends wanted to. And some that caved, to their detriment. But I also know people that took home equity loans to "pay debt" or remodel the patio, and those decisions seem to have been more male-driven.
A genetic study in Mexico found that cuckoldry rates vary dramatically by class. I imagine that's true most places. Cuckoldry rates among the white upper middle class today appear to be minimal. Offhand, I can't think of any gossip to that effect about anybody I know, and cuckoldry allegations might be the single most interesting kind of gossip to humans.
Cuckoos' egg rates among men confident in their own paternity to participate in medical gene studies with their children are very low. Cuckoldry rates among men suspicious enough to pay for a paternity test are very high.
For a decade or two, it's been one of the clichés of the human sciences that 10% of all children are cuckoos eggs, fathered by somebody other than the poor work-a-daddy sap who naively thinks they are his. Evidence for this popular assertion, however, was lacking. Now, a new metastudy by Kermyt G. Anderson suggests that the cuckoo's egg rate is more like only 1.9%, at least among men who are confident enough of their rightful paternity to volunteer for a genetics test along with their child as part of some other kind of study. Among men who demand a paternity test, however, the rate is around 30%, but, obviously, those are different kinds of cases. (Via The Julian Calendar).
"Thus, no critiques are allowed today of the propensities of women, blacks, homosexuals, Latinos, and most other organized pressure groups."
Such as, for instance, the group which is so immune from criticism that it can't even be listed among other groups which it isn't permitted to criticize.
"So to the extent that the housing bubble was driven by people looking for flip potential, I would guess that men are more at fault."
That's a valid point: As horrid as the ad is, the wife seems to want to keep the house until at least the children are of college age; it is not a pro-flipping commercial at all.
But what an awful ad it is. The worst part is the hug epilogue; did they really expect us to think the nastiness beforehand was heartwarming or cute? And even the dialogue accompanying the supposed sweet ending - "Are you kidding me?" - has a nasty edge to it.
If this is what marriage is like for a lot of people- and it must be if they can do a commercial like this- that's a much more serious issue for society than any financial crisis.
Private suffering is often good for society. It's hard to imagine marriage is good for the individual man in this day and age. But it's equally hard to imagine it doesn't benefit everyone as a group.
Another example is the Asian wife who has to take care of her mother in law. She's just descended into her own private hell, but at least it means granny isn't out on the street.
I'm a woman. Due to a relocation, I was a first-time homeowner at the top of a huge bubble in an area where there was no acceptable rental housing, and because I knew the area was at the top of a huge bubble I bought a ridiculously small house in the hood in preference to a ludicrously overvalued house of reasonable size for my family of five in a subdivision.
The pressure the female realtor pulled on me was nuts. She tried every shaming tactic, every groupthink tactic, every estrogen tactic in the book. The decision I was making was OBVIOUSLY the rational one but she was shaking her head and tsking as I signed the papers.
It's not just that women drove the bubble; it was women realtors and women buyers mutually influencing each other. Residential real estate got too female.
That is the most ghastly commercial - a double-bitch ball-cutting attack. Call me clueless, but I still can't figure out how it's in a woman's interest to attack her husband, not if she's in it for the long game - grandchildren, great-grandchildren.
When we bought 10 years ago, we could have qualified for a mortgage for a house maybe a third more than the one we got, or half as much again on the mortgage. My husband refused. Good thing. The income in his industry is stagnant (thanks to H1-B) and he's endured two layoffs, but we've kept the house.
My wife and I haven't purchased a new house in the past 10 years, but we have updated our existing home. New siding, roof, kitchen, etc. She has a say in which upgrades we complete first and style consideration, but I make the final decision based on financial considerations.
When I was getting quotes for the various upgrades most contractors would ask if my wife would be present during the bid walk. Then they would absolutely refuse to even come by the house or provide me with a quote unless my wife was present. I had one guy show up to quote new siding and he became agitated because my wife didn't stay for his presentation. I got an outrageous price from him and when I asked him to leave he tried the high pressure sales routine. "You need to sign now because this price is only good tonight. This is the best price for the highest quality merchandise and highest level workmanship." Salesmen want the wife there to help pressure the husband and close the deal. Generally, women are suckers for salesmen and are afraid to walk away from a high pressure sale.
Has your wife ever showed up at home with bags of new clothes and tried to explain how much she saved? Try to explain that she spent money, maybe less that she might have otherwise, but she definately didn't save anything.
Let's be frank. I've been working in the media business for 20 years.
Gay men dominate the business of commercials. The production teams of the commercial biz are run by gay men and fag hags.
The attack on hetero men you see in these commercials is devised by gay men and fag hags. The actors and actresses who appear in these commercials are gay men and fag hags.
Anybody get this? Got any idea why this is happening?
Oh, SUZANNE researched this? Well then, it must be true.
As a certified realtor (TM), Suzanne is ethically bound and has a fiduciary responsibility to put her clients' best interests first.
It's funny to listen to the paid plugs for realtors on NRP. Peter Segal goes uncharacteristically monotone when forced to extoll the virtues of realtors. Does there exist dumber and more craven class of parasites on society?
Yes, women are indeed to blame for the Mortgage Meltdown. I'm British and a woman and I can say that most British women, especially English women, are house proud. They want a house, a big house. They want to 'upscale' every few years. Each new house that they get their husbands to buy has to be redecorated top to bottom before they will live in it: new carpets, new paint/wallpaper, and often a new fitted kitchen. Not that most women these days cook in their kitchens. It's all to keep up with the Jones, that's all.
And it isn't just estate agents (realtors in the US) who tried to shame other women into getting an expensive house - other women got in on the game as well. For example, my husband and I have always been of the mind that we were not going to participate in the over-priced housing market. Instead, we rented. When I mentioned that we rented in a class I was taking, the reaction of the other women was hostile. How dare I rent when I should be buying? How dare I agree with my husband? I was letting the side down.
Of course, now these women and their husbands and families are facing bankruptcy while my husband and I are now debt-free and living in another, warmer country without worries. We saved our money and didn't fall into the property trap.
Yes, women for the most part are much more materialistic than men. Women should be reigned in. I firmy believe that women should not have the vote for this reason and others. I wonder whether anyone will have the courage to look at the economy of countries before and after women were given the vote?
Matt L wrote: "Has your wife ever showed up at home with bags of new clothes and tried to explain how much she saved? " ------------------------------ No no no...your wife is doing it wrong. This is what I do to avoid this sort of hassle. I stash the bags of clothing (or fabric or whatever) in an obscure corner of the garage until my husband is not around. Then I bring them out and put the new items away and throw the bags and receipts out. I still do this even though I earn more money than my husband now.
The relationship between Steve and t99 reminds me of battered-spouse syndrome. t99 regularly beats Steve up about anything related to the ME, military and increasingly wimmenz, yet Steve rewards this behavior by affording him more blog-realty.
It's not just that women drove the bubble; it was women realtors and women buyers mutually influencing each other. Residential real estate got too female.
Due to the after-effects of AA my ma in South Africa is in the realty business there in order to eke out a pension. From her anecdotes I can only confirm the above. Much of realty bubbles are driven by realtors chasing the fast buck. Most realtors are animals.
Generally, women are suckers for salesmen and are afraid to walk away from a high pressure sale.
I'm currently renovating my parent's realty in South Africa. Yes I know its nuts to spend money in an African country but the place is next to the US embassy so I figured it’s going to be the last few square meters to lose value there. I'm doing it on a shoe-string budget because I have zero faith in the ANC leadership and want to spend as little money as possible there. Basically the best is to do things yourself. Get an idea of the technologies involved, buy quality tools, take a few courses, prepare and plan thoroughly and spend your free time with a clear target and follow the plan. That way you can save a lot of money instead of enriching greedy subcontractors.
It's not just that women drove the bubble; it was women realtors and women buyers mutually influencing each other. Residential real estate got too female.
What's more, women buyers often started thinking that the women realtors (like Suzanne) were on their side, when in fact the commission structure means that realtors have an economic interest in pushing buyers into the most expensive houses they can afford even when that's not in their true best interests.
"Another example is the Asian wife who has to take care of her mother in law."
Why just Asian? I've know quite a few Caucasian women who have had to do the same thing. One reason why men may stay married (others being that not all wives are like the face-lunger) is because women are likely to end up as care-takers not only of their husbands and their own parents, but also of in-laws. Seen it often. As for this ad-thing, this issue really needs to be addressed on a major scale. Advertising portrays a world so bizarro, so offensive or dismissive to so many of the kinds of people who actually keep the ship afloat. Weird as the ads are, there is some sort of magic in them that makes people think that blacks are under-represented, even though blacks appear to comprise fully 40% of the subjects. I still read "minorities" complaining about a profusion of blue eyed, blondes on TV, esp. in commericals. Huh? What channels are they watching? Estonian? I need to know who these people are who think this s@#t up. I don't mean the ones who put it together, but the ones who come up with the ads and who give the OK. Because there is some weird stuff going down in advertising. I always turn the sound off commericials, being allergic to most of them; and most print ads and mag covers are just a blur in my eyes. There used to be a lot written on advertising tricks. Even back in the 60s techniques were being used that seem downright sci-fi even today. There was argument that many of these practices were illegal. The Hidden Persuaders they called them; Marhsall McLuhan was one well-known writer on the subject you never hear of today, except of course on politically incorrect blogs.
I bought my house right after my divorce settled. The home I purchased was best house I could afford and still live in the same neighborhood. I was lucky in that the neighborhood was upper middle class. I swung it by getting a house that desperately needed a remodel. It was a big house on a big lot in a great neighborhood so the upside potential was there.
What the house was lacking was bathrooms and a kitchen. I bought the house in 2003 and it had sat on the market for about 5 months. I am sure that every single women who walked into that house walked out within 5 minutes which is why it sat on the market for so long. I made an offer right away and got the house. My realtor, a guy, who is way high up in real estate and someone I know personally told me that this house was the best deal he had seen that year (he manages about 50 agents). It was because of that fucking ugly wall paper in the bathroom.
I always hear about how it's women and gay men or something that create the negative image of men in advertising, and I think it's a load of bollocks.
It instead has to do with the differing psychologies of the sexes. When a women sees another women on TV, see instinctively sees herself. So, advertiser make sure to portray women who are good looking (but not TOO good looking, or the illusion is shattered) and confident, smart, etc.
Men, on the other hand, compare themselves. A smart, handsome, guy in an ad will just remind a guy viewer that he isn't. But a shlub makes him say, "Hey, I'm better than that guy, so if he's helped by whatever they're selling, imagine how much better I could do!"
This is engraved in marketers minds. It's rule number one. (Last week on Mad Men, Don Draper set (protofeminist) Peggy straight when she complained about using an Ann Margaret type for an ad: "You know how this works. Men want her, Women want to be her")
My favorite recent example was some ads for some kind of furnace. The basic point of the ads was that they are so advanced and reliable, you don't have to know how they work. So, in the first ad, they have a schlub standing next to the furnace, and the announcer asks him how it works - and he looks like a deer in the headlights. So far, so good (men are thinking, "What an idiot! At least I could identify where the air comes in. Hmmm. Come to think of it, we could use a new furnace..."
But then they decided to push the envelope, probably because they wanted women to push their husbands into getting a new furnace. So they included a women in the next ad. But how to do it? The whole point of the ad is for the actor to be clueless. But if they just showed a women being clueless, every women who saw it would say, "That's sexist! They think a women can't figure out how a furnace works!" So, they have the women in there, but they make sure to have an even schlubbier guy next to her, looking even more clueless, so they become a sort of unit of cluelessness and the man's cluelessness cancels out the women's.
"The relationship between Steve and t99 reminds me of battered-spouse syndrome. t99 regularly beats Steve up about anything related to the ME, military and increasingly wimmenz, yet Steve rewards this behavior by affording him more blog-realty."
T99 has been respectful towards Steve even when in disagreement. Saying one is "out of depth" hardly constitutes verbal "abuse". Unlike Steve's liberal detractors, T99 has not called Steve a racist or an anti-Semite nor has he made any personal attacks like a certain traditionalist blogger. I know T99 is not well liked here because of his neocon foreign policy stance but on other blogs people are interested in T99's opinions. Sure we may give him a hard time over his repetitive WHITE WOMEN posts but many of his opinions on the subject are indistinguishable from Roissy's, another respected blogger in the HBD-o-shpere. I do not think Steve and T99's relationship is reminiscent of a battered spouse's relationship but it's more like two guys who disagree on a lot but still see value in each other's opinions.
>Someone just gave T99 an early Christmas present consisting of sharks with frickin' laser beams attached to their heads. Dude is gonna be insufferable now.<
UK banks were crippled through their purchase of US subprime derivatives, not from UK defaults.
No, no, no! The crisis in the United States cannot have been caused, to any degree, by anything having to do with NAMs or their champions, because there were crises in Europe, which weren't caused by NAMs in Europe. In fact, this is the central, take-home point of the discussion of the crisis vis-a-vis NAMs.
Similarly, if a man is killed by a bullet in the United States, and a man is killed by a bullet in Moldova, if the latter was fired by a white man, the former must have been fired by a white man as well. Ergo, black crime is a myth.
"No, no, no! The crisis in the United States cannot have been caused, to any degree, by anything having to do with NAMs or their champions, because there were crises in Europe, which weren't caused by NAMs in Europe. In fact, this is the central, take-home point of the discussion of the crisis vis-a-vis NAMs."
Heh. This reminds me of Troof's rants about there being no black people in Iceland when the mortgage bubble burst. Good times.
I wonder whether anyone will have the courage to look at the economy of countries before and after women were given the vote?
The name you are looking for is "John Lott":
[How Dramatically] Did Women's Suffrage Change the Size and Scope of Government? John R. Lott, Jr. Yale University Lawrence W. Kenny University of Florida Journal of Political Economy, Vol. 107, Number 6, Part 1, pp. 1163-1198, December 1999 journals.uchicago.edu DOWNLOAD: ssrn.org
I agree with a LOT of what Steve says, and he's influenced me quite a bit.
I DO disagree with him on broadly, military/foreign policy (I tend towards Putin's views of the weak get beaten). I disagree with him probably slightly to medium on gender issues -- but then we are probably generally aligned on broad issues and differ on specifics.
But I would say the big issues are one of personality and outlook. I am far more pessimistic/preventitve I would imagine, while Steve is more optimistic.
For example, Steve ran a bit on a tattooed woman at a Starbucks being admired by a tatted up bicycle messenger, and wondered why she would do that, when she attracts the "wrong" kind of attention. Having dealt with that kind of younger woman, my view was the tatted bicycle messenger was EXACTLY the kind of attention she wanted. Being that when women have security, they crave drama and excitement. Why would a young woman with her own money want a nice respectable accountant when she can have an "edgy" bike messenger/artist?
I am more pessimistic, Steve more optimistic I guess is the core of our differences.
"Of course, that just underlines the fact that white guys are still primarily the ones keeping this society running."
That reminded me of Fred Reed's "Without men, civilization would last until the oil needed changing." Particularly white men. I actually know more white women who can and do do their own auto maintenance and similar stuff than I do black men who do. (As a percentage, not just in absolute numbers.)
I am more pessimistic, Steve more optimistic I guess is the core of our differences.
I see you're also getting good at obfuscation. There is a certain group Steve is quite aware of, who control the terms of the public debate. You call them Wasps, whilst Steve is much more specific in his identification, which you deny due to ideological reasons.
It's funny to watch the clip and hear the woman say it's all about the schools and the kids.
It reminds me of the schools myth my own town, a very nice place to live (or as I say to tweak the townies, it's almost as nice as they think it is). The housing market didn't sink at quite the rate as the rest of metro Boston, and the housing sales are pretty strong now.
I have a friend who is a real estate agent, and what they are selling is the way the city was 5 years ago. Section 8 vouchers are about 20% of the rental market over the past 2 years. We had our first shooting in decades last summer. The final indignity, though, was the appearence of one of the elementary schools on the No Child Left Behind watch list this year.
The city proudly participates in a program that brings minority kids from Boston to suburban schools for a shot at a better education. We now have a school system that can't operate an AP physics program properly (making for some entertaining local access programming, with AP parents castigating the School Committee) but at the same time wonders why the test scores are going down!
Of course, to point out the effects of bringing a group of students averaging one standard deviation below the native population in IQ would probably get you jailed!
I know T99 is not well liked here because of his neocon foreign policy stance but on other blogs people are interested in T99's opinions."
His opinions, as held by others, are responsible for getting thousands of young white american men killed. And for nothing.
They are driving up and down roads in God-forsaken wastelands like Afghanistand and Iraq in order to show the flag. They risk death and dismemberment in order to win the hearts and minds of people who will ALWAYS hate us. Their efforts will amount to nothing the instant we withdraw (as we inevitably will) from those places.
Those are young white men who could be here, in this country, building things, raising families, and making THIS country stronger.
I like the part when the harpy, Uh, I mean wife, says that she loves that house "and the schools".
Of course what she really means is that she loves the fact that there aren't too many little brown and (especially) black kids at the school. Of course if her put-upon schlub of a hubby were to point this out to her, she would call him a racist.
He really shouldn't be happy with the big garage - he should want a smaller one.
It would take less time to fill up with carbon monoxide.
That commercial is a masterwork; when the voice comes over the speakerphone it's downright terrifying. The setting is just short of bedroom-intimate, and suddenly it's revealed this outsider, Susan, is in the room.
Her presence compels the husband to be more compliant, mortified as men are of embarrassment or impropriety--the public scene is the ripcord of domestic battle, for many women. The wive's aggressive pantomime is a little more shameless, done furtively in the spectral presence of Susan.
Susan is the disembodied, mechanized voice of the Eternal Female, endlessly compelling man to shape up; a cornerstone of civilization, and fittingly overwhelming in the male psyche. (This is sometimes mislabeled "mysogony"). The commercial stages the reality of society, for men: women, in and out of the house, determine its requirements.
Pity the poor husband; the bulk of his earnings pass directly to his wife--the dollar amount of authority surrendered. All for the order and guidance of the female. His imperative is to make her happy; this commercial is of a common type that says one thing to men: "make your wife happy." In fact, the "traditional" patriarchal family structure, in assigning women the role of moral and fiscal authority, structures society around this standing order for men: "make your wife happy."
And the doughy, decent shmuck husband is the bad guy now, the latest middlebrow fad idea holds him responsible for the thunder on the horizon (just an iteration a traditional culture-acting-out motif, the Hapless White Father).
The only thing that's changed, post-sexual revolution, is that women are no longer bound to reciprocate. We expect of men what we've always expected of them, yet openly compel women to reject the structures of the past as a prison.
Such as, for instance, the group which is so immune from criticism that it can't even be listed among other groups which it isn't permitted to criticize.
WASPs? Oh, sorry, I read Testy's WHOLE post. Those things just suck you in, man.
But if they just showed a women being clueless, every women who saw it would say, "That's sexist! They think a women can't figure out how a furnace works!"
You were doing okay until this point, where you fumbled the ball. An "own goal" might be a better analogy; the media's the lot who created this Pavlovian response in the first place.
This is a general rule; you can't substitute media-created Pavlovian response as "universal human nature" to shift the blame for the media's behavior. The buck stops on the media's desk.
Yes, he's learned how to get along here. He hasn't mentioned "Jew-hatred" (doublespeak for indifference toward Jews) as if it's a cardinal sin in a long time. Not too long ago he even threw into a comment a bone about immivasion, he's peppered with an un-PC comment (other than the warmongering kind) occasionally, and I can't remember the last time we heard about the unsinkable aircraft carrier. I've definitely noticed a shift in his style over time. Add to this the absurd conflation you mention, and his remarkably different posting styles here and at other blogs (much more free-wheeling elsewhere), and you start to get a picture of a disciplined, fairly slick fellow without much in the way of scruples. So far, other than his obvious neoconnerie, the only consistent goal I can find is his desire to replace ethnic tension with "gender" tension (not exactly much at odds with the multiculti hierarchy, that; white man is the only level on the totem pole that doesn't trump white woman, and white-on-white kulturkampf is 100% PC).
Since we're on the subject of similarities between Evil Neocon and Steve Sailer, it seems consistent with the above that he's anti-HBD (doubts IQ differences). Anything I've seen him post in the way of HBD has been cultural, not sociobiological; I can't recall him ever resorting to actual HBD, not even to support his genderkampf.
Oh yeah, Evil Neocon went from "no such thing as an elite" to pointing the finger at elites, and he's also managed to criticize the media now and then too, without morphing it into a mass of SWPLs first.
Someone just gave T99 an early Christmas present consisting of sharks with frickin' laser beams attached to their heads.
ReplyDeleteDude is gonna be insufferable now.
The facial lunge, done man to man, is an extreme dominance move. It would be directed at an at least two levels lower subordinate who has gotten out of line. The one clear memory I have of somebody doing this to me was when I was a candidate at Marine Officer Candidate School, a captain did this to me when I didn't answer a question fast enough. If your *wife* is doing this to you- you are probably a man who envies the dead.
ReplyDeleteI have been mystified when guys get the divorce decree, losing most of their stuff and getting saddled with a huge child support payment, and yet they are very happy and relieved. I guess this is what they were getting away from.
I'm a middle aged bachelor, and I lived with a woman in her condo for a while. When I couldn't tolerate her anymore, I just put my stuff in my car and left.
If this is what marriage is like for a lot of people- and it must be if they can do a commercial like this- that's a much more serious issue for society than any financial crisis.
"self-esteem vitamins"
ReplyDeletehahahaha
-Underachiever
Excellent.
ReplyDeleteNice layout for Taki's mag there. I'd like to build one similar to that myself.
I think that when a couple buys a house, the man is more likely to look at the house as an investment. So to the extent that the housing bubble was driven by people looking for flip potential, I would guess that men are more at fault.
ReplyDeletePart two, a few years later:
ReplyDeletehttp://seattlebubble.com/blog/2007/08/22/suzanne-researched-this-part-2/
Re England - I don't think there are big differences in the dynamics of housebuying here from the US. The UK & Ireland are somewhat more matriarchal than the US, especially in the Celtic fringe men are often kept heavily infantilised. But there is less inter-sex hostility than in the US, just as there is less inter-race hostility. Women don't generally hate and despise men, nor vice versa. If there's less tension over purchasing decisions though, it's more that men don't put up a fight.
ReplyDeleteOur big good fortune was that we did not have anything like the push for home-ownership as in the US, and it is not a racialised issue. In Britain the Left tend to disapprove of home ownership, and prefer people to live in 'council' (public) housing. While lending standards were somewhat imprudently lowered, nothing like the US mortgage meltdown occurred. UK banks were crippled through their purchase of US subprime derivatives, not from UK defaults.
OT:
ReplyDeleteI just found out that Mike Judge's new movie will open on September 4th.
Office Space is my favorite Hollywood movie of all time. This is only partly because I've spent the last ten years working in a cubicle.
Idiocracy's premise was very brave, socially responsible and necessary. However, its execution suffered in comparison with Office Space. He could have done so much more with that idea.
Oh, and the B&B movie and TV show were very cool too, of course.
Now I'm curious about how this one's going to turn out.
My wife says that the wife's hostile facial lunge at the 0:14 mark reminds her of the kind of looks she would give her brothers and sister when she was 14. That reminds her that Dr. Laura on the radio is always advising the women of America not to treat their husbands like their siblings. Sibling rivalry-style behavior between wife and husband is not only destructive, it's creepy.
ReplyDeleteYou say your family avoided the housing bubble.
ReplyDeleteAre you sure? I remember you saying you live in a nicer part of the valley. That means, if your house was average, your net worth probably went up about $600,000 between 2000 and 2006, and since then about $400,000 of that has evaporated.
Even if you never touched all that new equity, I think it would be hard for such a windfall not to affect you psychologically.
Some funny comments on YouTube:
ReplyDelete"Iran has no nukes Suzanne researched this."
"I want to take a vacation in New Orleans! There's NO chance for a deadly hurricane--Suzanne researched this!"
"The Big Easy is SPECIAL, Jon... You guys can DO this!"
YES!
ReplyDeleteSharks with laser beams! Funny I saw the same thing at She-conomy.com, and blogged about it -- synchronicity.
If you read my blog, you'll know that one of my themes is doubt that female-only advertising and spending is possible in a down market. Seven for All Mankind (makers of $200-500 jeans for women) is in trouble, and high divorce rates plus delayed marriage mean lots of male consumers making purchasing decisions. In fact, in my area (Irvine CA) I see LOTS of men making grocery purchases, about half of all shoppers in fact, some married (with their kids) and some by themselves, single guys. I see this after work, I see it on the weekend. But ALL the checkout counter mags are female oriented: People, Women's Day, etc.
Advertising is all kinds of messed up. Blacks make up 12.5% of the population and middle class Blacks are 40% of that number at a total of 5% of the population yet you see "nice" couples are exclusively Black-Middle Class (though there are some "doofus" Black Dad/husband commercials).
Advertising tells women their husbands are overweight, doofus, undesirable guys they can dominate (and therefore provide the sex appeal of bowl of oatmeal). Is it any wonder that the attitudes of Sandra Tsing Loh towards the "Kitchen Bitch" (as she dubbed husbands who help around the house) is permeating more and more of the culture?
IIRC the advertising business is dominated by gays and single women -- which would explain the anti-Marriage and anti-husband attitudes.
But do women dominate consumer purchasing? I think the answer is perhaps only 65%, if that, and that the future of media is "free" with ads embedded.
-- I'm Testing99 also.
Thanks Steve for Fricking Sharks with Laser beams! Happy Happy Happy!
If there were only men, houses would look a lot like one big garage with space for an entertainment center.
ReplyDeleteThe man from that ad would be a lot better off with a divorce. At a minimum he should have fired that real estate agent the second she interfered in his marriage. Of course this is the world we live in today -- if a man asserts himself it's psychic abuse and grounds for divorce, if a woman asserts herself she's just taking what's due her. My wife is Japanese and happily we don't have these problems, the roles were pretty clearly laid out from the beginning. If I acted as spineless as the guy in the ad my wife would probably divorce me on principle.
Let me add one thing more --
ReplyDeleteI've blogged extensively on the shift in media -- towards more mass and "free" orientation.
Consumers more frequently time shift, and move towards the internet for "free" (ala Hulu.com) viewing. Consumers would ideally like free or near-free content without obvious commercials that they could play on their laptops, cell phones, or Ipods.
The future I think belongs to whoever can cheaply (District 9 was made VERY cheaply, looked great) create content with "product placement plus" i.e. the product is a key plot point (Eureka on SyFy does this a lot) and make it "free" for download and also on cable/broadcast tv. With modest charges for DVD purchases that have "extras" such as cast interviews, behind the scenes, etc.
Clearly the ad market is down, and is probably going to be down as consumer spending is down for a decade or so. My guess is that most ad spending will go to "brand building" feel-good stuff aimed at the widest audience possible which will kill a lot of niche stuff.
This means you can't have wives browbeating husbands, because it will turn off husbands or single men. It probably has limited appeal to women who find their husbands not fat, doofusy, and resent being categorized as a "loser" who ended up with a schlub.
That is one of the scariest commercials of all time. Mean, dominant wife. Fat, pushover husband. Appeal to a false authority (salesperson). Justifying the immediate need for a house because the children will grow up someday.
ReplyDeleteI know a lot of men who had to put their foot down not to buy in the middle of the CA bubble when their wives/girlfriends wanted to. And some that caved, to their detriment. But I also know people that took home equity loans to "pay debt" or remodel the patio, and those decisions seem to have been more male-driven.
A genetic study in Mexico found that cuckoldry rates vary dramatically by class. I imagine that's true most places. Cuckoldry rates among the white upper middle class today appear to be minimal. Offhand, I can't think of any gossip to that effect about anybody I know, and cuckoldry allegations might be the single most interesting kind of gossip to humans.
ReplyDeleteCuckoos' egg rates among men confident in their own paternity to participate in medical gene studies with their children are very low. Cuckoldry rates among men suspicious enough to pay for a paternity test are very high.
For a decade or two, it's been one of the clichés of the human sciences that 10% of all children are cuckoos eggs, fathered by somebody other than the poor work-a-daddy sap who naively thinks they are his. Evidence for this popular assertion, however, was lacking. Now, a new metastudy by Kermyt G. Anderson suggests that the cuckoo's egg rate is more like only 1.9%, at least among men who are confident enough of their rightful paternity to volunteer for a genetics test along with their child as part of some other kind of study. Among men who demand a paternity test, however, the rate is around 30%, but, obviously, those are different kinds of cases. (Via The Julian Calendar).
ReplyDelete"Thus, no critiques are allowed today of the propensities of women, blacks, homosexuals, Latinos, and most other organized pressure groups."
ReplyDeleteSuch as, for instance, the group which is so immune
from criticism that it can't even be listed among other groups which it isn't permitted to criticize.
"So to the extent that the housing bubble was driven by people looking for flip potential, I would guess that men are more at fault."
ReplyDeleteThat's a valid point: As horrid as the ad is, the wife seems to want to keep the house until at least the children are of college age; it is not a pro-flipping commercial at all.
But what an awful ad it is. The worst part is the hug epilogue; did they really expect us to think the nastiness beforehand was heartwarming or cute? And even the dialogue accompanying the supposed sweet ending - "Are you kidding me?" - has a nasty edge to it.
If this is what marriage is like for a lot of people- and it must be if they can do a commercial like this- that's a much more serious issue for society than any financial crisis.
ReplyDeletePrivate suffering is often good for society. It's hard to imagine marriage is good for the individual man in this day and age. But it's equally hard to imagine it doesn't benefit everyone as a group.
Another example is the Asian wife who has to take care of her mother in law. She's just descended into her own private hell, but at least it means granny isn't out on the street.
I'm a woman. Due to a relocation, I was a first-time homeowner at the top of a huge bubble in an area where there was no acceptable rental housing, and because I knew the area was at the top of a huge bubble I bought a ridiculously small house in the hood in preference to a ludicrously overvalued house of reasonable size for my family of five in a subdivision.
ReplyDeleteThe pressure the female realtor pulled on me was nuts. She tried every shaming tactic, every groupthink tactic, every estrogen tactic in the book. The decision I was making was OBVIOUSLY the rational one but she was shaking her head and tsking as I signed the papers.
It's not just that women drove the bubble; it was women realtors and women buyers mutually influencing each other. Residential real estate got too female.
That is the most ghastly commercial - a double-bitch ball-cutting attack. Call me clueless, but I still can't figure out how it's in a woman's interest to attack her husband, not if she's in it for the long game - grandchildren, great-grandchildren.
ReplyDeleteWhen we bought 10 years ago, we could have qualified for a mortgage for a house maybe a third more than the one we got, or half as much again on the mortgage. My husband refused. Good thing. The income in his industry is stagnant (thanks to H1-B) and he's endured two layoffs, but we've kept the house.
My wife and I haven't purchased a new house in the past 10 years, but we have updated our existing home. New siding, roof, kitchen, etc. She has a say in which upgrades we complete first and style consideration, but I make the final decision based on financial considerations.
ReplyDeleteWhen I was getting quotes for the various upgrades most contractors would ask if my wife would be present during the bid walk. Then they would absolutely refuse to even come by the house or provide me with a quote unless my wife was present. I had one guy show up to quote new siding and he became agitated because my wife didn't stay for his presentation. I got an outrageous price from him and when I asked him to leave he tried the high pressure sales routine. "You need to sign now because this price is only good tonight. This is the best price for the highest quality merchandise and highest level workmanship." Salesmen want the wife there to help pressure the husband and close the deal. Generally, women are suckers for salesmen and are afraid to walk away from a high pressure sale.
Has your wife ever showed up at home with bags of new clothes and tried to explain how much she saved? Try to explain that she spent money, maybe less that she might have otherwise, but she definately didn't save anything.
Let's be frank. I've been working in the media business for 20 years.
ReplyDeleteGay men dominate the business of commercials. The production teams of the commercial biz are run by gay men and fag hags.
The attack on hetero men you see in these commercials is devised by gay men and fag hags. The actors and actresses who appear in these commercials are gay men and fag hags.
Anybody get this? Got any idea why this is happening?
Oh, SUZANNE researched this? Well then, it must be true.
ReplyDeleteAs a certified realtor (TM), Suzanne is ethically bound and has a fiduciary responsibility to put her clients' best interests first.
It's funny to listen to the paid plugs for realtors on NRP. Peter Segal goes uncharacteristically monotone when forced to extoll the virtues of realtors. Does there exist dumber and more craven class of parasites on society?
"no acceptable rental housing"
ReplyDeleteI'd like to hear more about this.
Yes, women are indeed to blame for the Mortgage Meltdown. I'm British and a woman and I can say that most British women, especially English women, are house proud. They want a house, a big house. They want to 'upscale' every few years. Each new house that they get their husbands to buy has to be redecorated top to bottom before they will live in it: new carpets, new paint/wallpaper, and often a new fitted kitchen. Not that most women these days cook in their kitchens. It's all to keep up with the Jones, that's all.
ReplyDeleteAnd it isn't just estate agents (realtors in the US) who tried to shame other women into getting an expensive house - other women got in on the game as well. For example, my husband and I have always been of the mind that we were not going to participate in the over-priced housing market. Instead, we rented. When I mentioned that we rented in a class I was taking, the reaction of the other women was hostile. How dare I rent when I should be buying? How dare I agree with my husband? I was letting the side down.
Of course, now these women and their husbands and families are facing bankruptcy while my husband and I are now debt-free and living in another, warmer country without worries. We saved our money and didn't fall into the property trap.
Yes, women for the most part are much more materialistic than men. Women should be reigned in. I firmy believe that women should not have the vote for this reason and others. I wonder whether anyone will have the courage to look at the economy of countries before and after women were given the vote?
"no acceptable rental housing"
ReplyDeleteI'd like to hear more about this.
It was all either gross or too expensive.
Matt L wrote:
ReplyDelete"Has your wife ever showed up at home with bags of new clothes and tried to explain how much she saved? "
------------------------------
No no no...your wife is doing it wrong. This is what I do to avoid this sort of hassle. I stash the bags of clothing (or fabric or whatever) in an obscure corner of the garage until my husband is not around. Then I bring them out and put the new items away and throw the bags and receipts out. I still do this even though I earn more money than my husband now.
The relationship between Steve and t99 reminds me of battered-spouse syndrome. t99 regularly beats Steve up about anything related to the ME, military and increasingly wimmenz, yet Steve rewards this behavior by affording him more blog-realty.
ReplyDeleteIt's not just that women drove the bubble; it was women realtors and women buyers mutually influencing each other. Residential real estate got too female.
ReplyDeleteDue to the after-effects of AA my ma in South Africa is in the realty business there in order to eke out a pension. From her anecdotes I can only confirm the above. Much of realty bubbles are driven by realtors chasing the fast buck. Most realtors are animals.
Generally, women are suckers for salesmen and are afraid to walk away from a high pressure sale.
ReplyDeleteI'm currently renovating my parent's realty in South Africa. Yes I know its nuts to spend money in an African country but the place is next to the US embassy so I figured it’s going to be the last few square meters to lose value there. I'm doing it on a shoe-string budget because I have zero faith in the ANC leadership and want to spend as little money as possible there.
Basically the best is to do things yourself. Get an idea of the technologies involved, buy quality tools, take a few courses, prepare and plan thoroughly and spend your free time with a clear target and follow the plan. That way you can save a lot of money instead of enriching greedy subcontractors.
It's not just that women drove the bubble; it was women realtors and women buyers mutually influencing each other. Residential real estate got too female.
ReplyDeleteWhat's more, women buyers often started thinking that the women realtors (like Suzanne) were on their side, when in fact the commission structure means that realtors have an economic interest in pushing buyers into the most expensive houses they can afford even when that's not in their true best interests.
Peter
"Another example is the Asian wife who has to take care of her mother in law."
ReplyDeleteWhy just Asian? I've know quite a few Caucasian women who have had to do the same thing. One reason why men may stay married (others being that not all wives are like the face-lunger) is because women are likely to end up as care-takers not only of their husbands and their own parents, but also of in-laws. Seen it often.
As for this ad-thing, this issue really needs to be addressed on a major scale. Advertising portrays a world so bizarro, so offensive or dismissive to so many of the kinds of people who actually keep the ship afloat.
Weird as the ads are, there is some sort of magic in them that makes people think that blacks are under-represented, even though blacks appear to comprise fully 40% of the subjects. I still read "minorities" complaining about a profusion of blue eyed, blondes on TV, esp. in commericals. Huh? What channels are they watching? Estonian?
I need to know who these people are who think this s@#t up. I don't mean the ones who put it together, but the ones who come up with the ads and who give the OK. Because there is some weird stuff going down in advertising. I always turn the sound off commericials, being allergic to most of them; and most print ads and mag covers are just a blur in my eyes.
There used to be a lot written on advertising tricks. Even back in the 60s techniques were being used that seem downright sci-fi even today. There was argument that many of these practices were illegal. The Hidden Persuaders they called them; Marhsall McLuhan was one well-known writer on the subject you never hear of today, except of course on politically incorrect blogs.
I bought my house right after my divorce settled. The home I purchased was best house I could afford and still live in the same neighborhood. I was lucky in that the neighborhood was upper middle class. I swung it by getting a house that desperately needed a remodel. It was a big house on a big lot in a great neighborhood so the upside potential was there.
ReplyDeleteWhat the house was lacking was bathrooms and a kitchen. I bought the house in 2003 and it had sat on the market for about 5 months. I am sure that every single women who walked into that house walked out within 5 minutes which is why it sat on the market for so long. I made an offer right away and got the house. My realtor, a guy, who is way high up in real estate and someone I know personally told me that this house was the best deal he had seen that year (he manages about 50 agents). It was because of that fucking ugly wall paper in the bathroom.
I always hear about how it's women and gay men or something that create the negative image of men in advertising, and I think it's a load of bollocks.
ReplyDeleteIt instead has to do with the differing psychologies of the sexes. When a women sees another women on TV, see instinctively sees herself. So, advertiser make sure to portray women who are good looking (but not TOO good looking, or the illusion is shattered) and confident, smart, etc.
Men, on the other hand, compare themselves. A smart, handsome, guy in an ad will just remind a guy viewer that he isn't. But a shlub makes him say, "Hey, I'm better than that guy, so if he's helped by whatever they're selling, imagine how much better I could do!"
This is engraved in marketers minds. It's rule number one. (Last week on Mad Men, Don Draper set (protofeminist) Peggy straight when she complained about using an Ann Margaret type for an ad: "You know how this works. Men want her, Women want to be her")
My favorite recent example was some ads for some kind of furnace. The basic point of the ads was that they are so advanced and reliable, you don't have to know how they work. So, in the first ad, they have a schlub standing next to the furnace, and the announcer asks him how it works - and he looks like a deer in the headlights. So far, so good (men are thinking, "What an idiot! At least I could identify where the air comes in. Hmmm. Come to think of it, we could use a new furnace..."
But then they decided to push the envelope, probably because they wanted women to push their husbands into getting a new furnace. So they included a women in the next ad. But how to do it? The whole point of the ad is for the actor to be clueless. But if they just showed a women being clueless, every women who saw it would say, "That's sexist! They think a women can't figure out how a furnace works!" So, they have the women in there, but they make sure to have an even schlubbier guy next to her, looking even more clueless, so they become a sort of unit of cluelessness and the man's cluelessness cancels out the women's.
"The relationship between Steve and t99 reminds me of battered-spouse syndrome. t99 regularly beats Steve up about anything related to the ME, military and increasingly wimmenz, yet Steve rewards this behavior by affording him more blog-realty."
ReplyDeleteT99 has been respectful towards Steve even when in disagreement. Saying one is "out of depth" hardly constitutes verbal "abuse". Unlike Steve's liberal detractors, T99 has not called Steve a racist or an anti-Semite nor has he made any personal attacks like a certain traditionalist blogger. I know T99 is not well liked here because of his neocon foreign policy stance but on other blogs people are interested in T99's opinions. Sure we may give him a hard time over his repetitive WHITE WOMEN posts but many of his opinions on the subject are indistinguishable from Roissy's, another respected blogger in the HBD-o-shpere. I do not think Steve and T99's relationship is reminiscent of a battered spouse's relationship but it's more like two guys who disagree on a lot but still see value in each other's opinions.
>Someone just gave T99 an early Christmas present consisting of sharks with frickin' laser beams attached to their heads. Dude is gonna be insufferable now.<
ReplyDeleteIn other words, he's right.
>I wonder whether anyone will have the courage to look at the economy of countries before and after women were given the vote? <
ReplyDeleteNo married man will. A prediction.
Women?
ReplyDeleteI thought it was the Minority Mortgage Meltdown. Remember?
So is it really the Minority Women Mortgage Meltdown? Or what?
Too much nuance is indistinguishable from a poor signal-to-noise ratio.
UK banks were crippled through their purchase of US subprime derivatives, not from UK defaults.
ReplyDeleteNo, no, no! The crisis in the United States cannot have been caused, to any degree, by anything having to do with NAMs or their champions, because there were crises in Europe, which weren't caused by NAMs in Europe. In fact, this is the central, take-home point of the discussion of the crisis vis-a-vis NAMs.
Similarly, if a man is killed by a bullet in the United States, and a man is killed by a bullet in Moldova, if the latter was fired by a white man, the former must have been fired by a white man as well. Ergo, black crime is a myth.
Women pressuring their husbands to do something stupid is nothing new, go read Genesis for an account of Adam and Eve.
ReplyDelete"No, no, no! The crisis in the United States cannot have been caused, to any degree, by anything having to do with NAMs or their champions, because there were crises in Europe, which weren't caused by NAMs in Europe. In fact, this is the central, take-home point of the discussion of the crisis vis-a-vis NAMs."
ReplyDeleteHeh. This reminds me of Troof's rants about there being no black people in Iceland when the mortgage bubble burst. Good times.
I wonder whether anyone will have the courage to look at the economy of countries before and after women were given the vote?
ReplyDeleteThe name you are looking for is "John Lott":
[How Dramatically] Did Women's Suffrage Change the Size and Scope of Government?
John R. Lott, Jr.
Yale University
Lawrence W. Kenny
University of Florida
Journal of Political Economy, Vol. 107, Number 6, Part 1, pp. 1163-1198, December 1999
journals.uchicago.edu
DOWNLOAD: ssrn.org
Women's suffrage over time
November 27, 2007
johnrlott.tripod.com
I agree with a LOT of what Steve says, and he's influenced me quite a bit.
ReplyDeleteI DO disagree with him on broadly, military/foreign policy (I tend towards Putin's views of the weak get beaten). I disagree with him probably slightly to medium on gender issues -- but then we are probably generally aligned on broad issues and differ on specifics.
But I would say the big issues are one of personality and outlook. I am far more pessimistic/preventitve I would imagine, while Steve is more optimistic.
For example, Steve ran a bit on a tattooed woman at a Starbucks being admired by a tatted up bicycle messenger, and wondered why she would do that, when she attracts the "wrong" kind of attention. Having dealt with that kind of younger woman, my view was the tatted bicycle messenger was EXACTLY the kind of attention she wanted. Being that when women have security, they crave drama and excitement. Why would a young woman with her own money want a nice respectable accountant when she can have an "edgy" bike messenger/artist?
I am more pessimistic, Steve more optimistic I guess is the core of our differences.
/Also Whiskey
>"no acceptable rental housing"
ReplyDelete>
>I'd like to hear more about this.
>
>It was all either gross or too expensive.
It's like that around here too. HUD section 8 can really f-up the rental market.
"Of course, that just underlines the fact that white guys are still primarily the ones keeping this society running."
ReplyDeleteThat reminded me of Fred Reed's "Without men, civilization would last until the oil needed changing." Particularly white men. I actually know more white women who can and do do their own auto maintenance and similar stuff than I do black men who do. (As a percentage, not just in absolute numbers.)
Heh. This reminds me of Troof's rants about there being no black people in Iceland when the mortgage bubble burst. Good times.
ReplyDeletethat's the level at which you have to try and argue with troof. its pointless.
I am more pessimistic, Steve more optimistic I guess is the core of our differences.
ReplyDeleteI see you're also getting good at obfuscation. There is a certain group Steve is quite aware of, who control the terms of the public debate. You call them Wasps, whilst Steve is much more specific in his identification, which you deny due to ideological reasons.
It's funny to watch the clip and hear the woman say it's all about the schools and the kids.
ReplyDeleteIt reminds me of the schools myth my own town, a very nice place to live (or as I say to tweak the townies, it's almost as nice as they think it is). The housing market didn't sink at quite the rate as the rest of metro Boston, and the housing sales are pretty strong now.
I have a friend who is a real estate agent, and what they are selling is the way the city was 5 years ago. Section 8 vouchers are about 20% of the rental market over the past 2 years. We had our first shooting in decades last summer. The final indignity, though, was the appearence of one of the elementary schools on the No Child Left Behind watch list this year.
The city proudly participates in a program that brings minority kids from Boston to suburban schools for a shot at a better education. We now have a school system that can't operate an AP physics program properly (making for some entertaining local access programming, with AP parents castigating the School Committee) but at the same time wonders why the test scores are going down!
Of course, to point out the effects of bringing a group of students averaging one standard deviation below the native population in IQ would probably get you jailed!
OH well, at least there will be one obvious and immediate benefit to Islamization.
ReplyDelete"Anonymous said...
ReplyDeleteI know T99 is not well liked here because of his neocon foreign policy stance but on other blogs people are interested in T99's opinions."
His opinions, as held by others, are responsible for getting thousands of young white american men killed. And for nothing.
They are driving up and down roads in God-forsaken wastelands like Afghanistand and Iraq in order to show the flag. They risk death and dismemberment in order to win the hearts and minds of people who will ALWAYS hate us. Their efforts will amount to nothing the instant we withdraw (as we inevitably will) from those places.
Those are young white men who could be here, in this country, building things, raising families, and making THIS country stronger.
Damned Straight, we don't like him.
I like the part when the harpy, Uh, I mean wife, says that she loves that house "and the schools".
ReplyDeleteOf course what she really means is that she loves the fact that there aren't too many little brown and (especially) black kids at the school. Of course if her put-upon schlub of a hubby were to point this out to her, she would call him a racist.
He really shouldn't be happy with the big garage - he should want a smaller one.
It would take less time to fill up with carbon monoxide.
That commercial is a masterwork; when the voice comes over the speakerphone it's downright terrifying.
ReplyDeleteThe setting is just short of bedroom-intimate, and suddenly it's revealed this outsider, Susan, is in the room.
Her presence compels the husband to be more compliant, mortified as men are of embarrassment or impropriety--the public scene is the ripcord of domestic battle, for many women. The wive's aggressive pantomime is a little more shameless, done furtively in the spectral presence of Susan.
Susan is the disembodied, mechanized voice of the Eternal Female, endlessly compelling man to shape up; a cornerstone of civilization, and fittingly overwhelming in the male psyche. (This is sometimes mislabeled "mysogony"). The commercial stages the reality of society, for men: women, in and out of the house, determine its requirements.
Pity the poor husband; the bulk of his earnings pass directly to his wife--the dollar amount of authority surrendered. All for the order and guidance of the female.
His imperative is to make her happy; this commercial is of a common type that says one thing to men: "make your wife happy."
In fact, the "traditional" patriarchal family structure, in assigning women the role of moral and fiscal authority, structures society around this standing order for men: "make your wife happy."
And the doughy, decent shmuck husband is the bad guy now, the latest middlebrow fad idea holds him responsible for the thunder on the horizon (just an iteration a traditional culture-acting-out motif, the Hapless White Father).
The only thing that's changed, post-sexual revolution, is that women are no longer bound to reciprocate.
We expect of men what we've always expected of them, yet openly compel women to reject the structures of the past as a prison.
Such as, for instance, the group which is so immune
ReplyDeletefrom criticism that it can't even be listed among other groups which it isn't permitted to criticize.
WASPs? Oh, sorry, I read Testy's WHOLE post. Those things just suck you in, man.
But if they just showed a women being clueless, every women who saw it would say, "That's sexist! They think a women can't figure out how a furnace works!"
ReplyDeleteYou were doing okay until this point, where you fumbled the ball. An "own goal" might be a better analogy; the media's the lot who created this Pavlovian response in the first place.
This is a general rule; you can't substitute media-created Pavlovian response as "universal human nature" to shift the blame for the media's behavior. The buck stops on the media's desk.
I see you're also getting good at obfuscation.
ReplyDeleteYes, he's learned how to get along here. He hasn't mentioned "Jew-hatred" (doublespeak for indifference toward Jews) as if it's a cardinal sin in a long time. Not too long ago he even threw into a comment a bone about immivasion, he's peppered with an un-PC comment (other than the warmongering kind) occasionally, and I can't remember the last time we heard about the unsinkable aircraft carrier. I've definitely noticed a shift in his style over time. Add to this the absurd conflation you mention, and his remarkably different posting styles here and at other blogs (much more free-wheeling elsewhere), and you start to get a picture of a disciplined, fairly slick fellow without much in the way of scruples. So far, other than his obvious neoconnerie, the only consistent goal I can find is his desire to replace ethnic tension with "gender" tension (not exactly much at odds with the multiculti hierarchy, that; white man is the only level on the totem pole that doesn't trump white woman, and white-on-white kulturkampf is 100% PC).
Since we're on the subject of similarities between Evil Neocon and Steve Sailer, it seems consistent with the above that he's anti-HBD (doubts IQ differences). Anything I've seen him post in the way of HBD has been cultural, not sociobiological; I can't recall him ever resorting to actual HBD, not even to support his genderkampf.
Oh yeah, Evil Neocon went from "no such thing as an elite" to pointing the finger at elites, and he's also managed to criticize the media now and then too, without morphing it into a mass of SWPLs first.
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