March 10, 2008

I'm not saying it's the mother of all bad ideas...

...bit it's close.

Posted by binky at March 10, 2008 03:53 PM | TrackBack | Posted to Corruption | Politics


Comments

It's hard for me to express how badly I want to see him frog-marched before a horde of TV cameras.

Posted by: jacflash at March 10, 2008 04:33 PM | PERMALINK

Yikes. Maybe he figured he was smart enough not to get caught. Or maybe he wasn't thinking at all.

Here's what I genuinely do not understand, and it's a side issue but it baffles me every time. His wife just looks crushed -- why did she show up to the presser with him? Of course, I asked this same question to myself when Vitter and Craig trotted their wives out during their scandals. I don't get it.

Posted by: kcb at March 10, 2008 05:11 PM | PERMALINK

kcb,
Feminists have told us this is what men are, that this is what men do, for decades. Given that, it must not come as much of a surprise to women to see their men do this. After all, how many men make headlines for being faithful to their wives?

Posted by: Morris at March 10, 2008 11:07 PM | PERMALINK

Ding ding ding! Morris making shit up again!

Posted by: binky at March 11, 2008 10:33 AM | PERMALINK

Wow Morris, that's a new low of stupidity even for you.

I hope he's convicted on a bullshit obscure statute that twists his conduct into a Federal felony via a "new interpretation" and does several years of real prison time.

Or maybe they could just put him in a pillory at the corner of Broad and Wall for a few hours and call it even.

Posted by: jacflash at March 11, 2008 12:31 PM | PERMALINK

Just saying, Binky, no politician has made the news for being faithful. And if you're looking for the kind of feminism that says "Men are just confused that women might want rights, too," take some food and water with you. In the feminist psychodrama, men are the persecutors and women are the protectors.

Posted by: Morris at March 12, 2008 10:51 AM | PERMALINK

In the one in your head, clearly.

Posted by: binky at March 12, 2008 11:22 AM | PERMALINK

Look at Steinem's piece in the NYT. In just one paragraph, she says:
1)Men are narcissists (or megalomaniacs), taking anything that happens to them more seriously than the same things happening to women.
2)Men are childish, regressing to childhood when they meet a strong woman.
3)White men are insecure, and they want black men around so they can feel masculine.
4)White men are racists, because they don't want more than a few black men around.
5)Men are primitive, because they can't get their heads around the idea that a woman in power is not a biyatch.

If anybody made any one of these implications about women, you'd be on their ass, blogging about it. Does that make you a biyatch? Of course not! It might make you insecure, just as insecure about your femininity as all white men apparently are about their masculinity; and being insecure might make you a biyatch, but it might also be your life's calling (calling sexists to account might be your life's calling, I should say). The trouble with feminist assumptions about men, about white men, and about women's inability to overcome these men, these white men, these black men, and these women who are primitive is that her assumptions are uncivil, reductionist generalizations. Yeah, I said it.

So tell me, if I expect a man to be narcissistic, childish, primitive, and insecure, how much should it surprise me that he hypocritically prosecutes and then pays for old french whores (I didn't get a good look at the picture, just making an uncivil, reductionist generalization)? And I can't believe Steinem has the stones to bash men's characters for what she claims to be a consequence of their being raised by women, their regression to childhood when dealing with women.

Of course it's a bait, a way to set the agenda and put into discourse that men are childish (arguably the childish regression of an insecure woman, if I were to make an uncivil, reductionist generalization), but she should look to herself and her movement as to why. After all, if a woman works full time, then it doesn't matter if he's a feminist, he still chips in a cares for the kids:

"The researchers suspect this finding 'suggests that mothers' full-time employment creates demands on family life that necessitate fathers' assuming more caregiving responsibilities regardless of their underlying beliefs.'"

So her assumption that women are the victims weighed down by the burdens of childrearing as well as work only holds true for those women who believed in her promise of feminism leading them to higher rates of divorce, leading to more men raised by women, leading to more childish men. Of course, if her assumption about men regressing whenever they met a strong motherly figure were true, then every time a woman whose father worked saw a man at work, they'd also see a fatherly figure and regress to childhood. Unless, I guess, they're not primitive neaderthals.

Posted by: Morris at March 13, 2008 10:04 AM | PERMALINK

So ... you take Gloria Steinem's views seriously? Mmmmm-kay. I guess it's nice for her that she has one fan. But I think treating her as the voice of feminism in 2008 is wildly inaccurate. There are many strands of feminism, but to the best of my knowledge Steinem isn't a leader in any of them these days. She's a relic of a bygone era and worldview. So if you are thinking "feminism" is what Gloria Steinem says it is ... well then no wonder you have so many odd notions about it.

Posted by: Armand at March 14, 2008 03:00 PM | PERMALINK
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