Searching for similar outrage over a related celebutard article on the Huffington Post about Kelly Bensimon receiving only 2 days of community service for beating her boyfriend and giving him a black eye and cut face [http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/06/08/ny-housewife-bensimon-get_n_212799.html]. Something about injustice, a double standard, how violence excused is violence encourage. Yet all there is is outrage over the antics of a known foul-mouthed abusive narcissist who suffers from the double damnation of being a male foul-mouthed abusive narcissist and therefore not nearly as forgivable, if not sympathetic, as, say, Elizabeth Wurtzel.

I'll keep looking for the piece about Kelly Bensimon. I know it must be here somewhere.

I quote:

"I love these men who chronically attack women on these boards. Maybe if these guys got laid themselves, they would be a lot nicer."

That's what I love about these discussions: Not only the "men who chronically attack" regardless of relevance to anything, but the knee-jerk response by the gatekeepers of such things: "you just need to get laid".

The commenter's version of "Rock-em-sock-em robots". Two scorpions in search of a bottle to share. People in a burning house taking a pause from quarreling to gulp gasoline so they can piss it out.

No matter how personal or thoughtful was the actual article by Kate Christensen, one can rely on the net phenomena of "defining dumbness downward" where de facto trolls square off and fling bumper stickers at each other. With the bumper attached, if they could.

Full disclosure: I myself am a bitter, divorced, aging misogynist (but only as a subset of generalized misanthropy) whose time biking and spend in the gym is bearing increasingly diminishing returns and, as you may have suspected, I don't get laid.

Also, and this goes without saying: I have a tiny penis.

No matter how thoughtful the observations by Kate Christensen or the article by Amy Benfer.

More coffee...

The thing about "not getting laid" is really pathetic. It shows the low intellectual level of the people commenting here.

Or it may just be that a woman who uses that insult realizes, on some level, that that's the only thing she has to offer.

And probably bad sex at that.

Not women in general, of course, just that sort of twit.

[...]

Sometimes I have been accused of being gay (as if this was a problem) and, at the same time, not being able to have a REAL woman. Hello? Is there somebody inside this brain? If I was gay, I would have no need or want to be with a woman, real or not. But when Salonistas got angry, don't expect rationality of them, only attacks who make me laugh.

What you are describing is a standard litany of "shaming tactics" that are at their core ad hominem. Usually I shy away from accusations of ad hominem, because most of what is described as ad hominem isn't. In this case it literally is: The claim that one doesn't have to be listened to because, in the view of some woman's capricious and arbitrary standards, one isn't a "real man", whatever that is. Although from my casual perusal of the subject, being a "real man" involves having a couple dozen different characteristics, half of which are mutually exclusive and come down to being a woman's well-trained pit bull and general buffer against the world: The very sort of sexist knuckle-dragger usually treated with contempt, but re-purposed to serve.

Also, note the tone of the "you're not getting laid types and read between the lines. When she claims to be "alone" it means she's trying to decide between a half-dozen men whose characteristics she would have to mix and match like separates to make one man who comes up to her exacting standards.

When a guy is alone, it means he's by himself.

Of course, the more she plays that game the more likely she herself will end up by herself, so she's just projecting her greatest fear: That one day she will really be alone, without pull, with no consolation except the sour grapes that their are no "good men", let alone "real" ones.

At that point there's nothing left for them to do except pretend to be in control and desirable in Salon comments.

Last night with Keith Olbermann, Richard Engel thought Khamenei might try to at least pay lip service to the "middle way". Now that doesn't seem to be the case at all. Khamenei and the ruling structure don't want to be accountable to popular will and demand nothing less than millions to slink off with their tails between their legs. Right from the universal playbook of tyrants, Khamenei wants submission from people who have tasted the promise of freedom, democracy and, most importantly, the idea of a new community. Watching the attempt to stuff all that back into the bottle is going to be painful.

The only consolation is that tyrants -- like Ayatollah Khamenei and Mahmoud Ahmadinejad -- have pretty abysmal retirement plans.

Unfortunately, and forgive my dichotomous thinking, there are two choices: The uprising disbands and Iran becomes a demoralized nation living under the foot of a regime that can't even pretend legitimacy.

The second is right out of Emerson:

"By the rude bridge that arched the flood,

Their flag to April's breeze unfurled;

Here once the embattled farmers stood,

And fired the shot heard 'round the world."

What else is there? If that happens, the question is what, if anything, do we Americans do?

For example -- although I have no way to independently confirm this -- when he masturbates he refers to the resulting ejaculate as "the boys".