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Sunday, Nov 8, 2009
One does wonder, though, doesn't one, why the ladies didn't like this ostensibly fabulous life you describe, and decided to fight for the right to have that 70-hour/week job.
Any thoughts on this?
Because women are miserable, ungrateful, unimaginative, ungenerative, lemming-like and resentful of men.
Yesterday or today-- men still walk away from relationships and kids and women still fend for themselves. Ever wonder if you are picking the WRONG MEN?
And it reveals the kind of world brightstar and his ilk bitterly resent losing
I have ZERO desire to be the alpha male. Something I mention every chance I get.
I ONLY WISH women would actually make some decisions in life and become responsible. As it stands now, instead women no longer need average men for anything, but they still blame us for everything.
Awesome analysis. *bows* Most of what goes on network tv is not even worthy of Rebecca's insight and colorful prose.
But I am ever the optimist, so to Rebecca I say: try cable. They're a little more progressive over there.
...and decided to fight for the right to have that 70-hour/week job...
...while still wanting to be wined, dined and bejewelled on weekends by a man who earns more than they do.
I fixed your sentence for you.
You don't have to thank me.
I can't understand why any of this would bother a man. [I'm a man, by the way.] This is network television. Network television is a part of mainstream culture, which now belongs to women and gay men. That's okay. I'm a standard liberal on social issues and I figure women and gay men are entitled to run mainstream culture for a while. Maybe they'll even enjoy it.
But virtually every man I know in my age group [20s-30s] checked out of mainstream culture a while ago. I know there is a show called "The Hills" but I don't know anything else about it except that its writers don't care about me and I don't care about their show. As far as network shows go, I watch sports, "The Simpsons" and "Family Guy." That's it. The proliferation of new media means it is now entirely possible to live a culturally fulfilling life while having very few attachments to mainstream culture.
You know where you can find great TV? Try History International, it's fantastic -- better than the History Channel. I like some Animal Planet shows. DIY Network has good stuff from time to time. ["Wasted Spaces" is awesome.] National Geographic is fantastic. [I woke up early this morning and tuned into the last 15 minutes of a show about lions. I love that stuff. Made me wish I'd seen the first 45 minutes of it.] Check out Anthony Bourdain's "No Reservations" show on the Travel Channel, it is first rate.
I know I'm opening myself up to charges of misogyny and homophobia by writing this but mainstream culture is awful. It was terrible when straight white men were running it and it seems even worse now. [At least straight white men ran videos on MTV. Now it is all idiotic 20-year-old rich girls speaking in a language that only vaguely resembles English.] The good news is that there is a healthy alternative to mainstream culture and you don't have to be a granola-crunching dropout to enjoy it. You can be a perfectly normal middle class guy living in a nice house in the suburbs and still enjoy a rich life in American culture outside of American culture.
There are DVDs of the great TV shows of yore. There are the cable TV outlets I mentioned. The Internet is chock full o' stuff for normal American males. [After all, we still run the Internet!] Shows that pulsate with loathing for straight American males are fine for the women and gay men who want to watch them. I know I have female and gay friends who like those shows and I don't take it personally. They don't seem to mind that I find their mainstream culture a mindless desert.
Stop your goddamned whining, American men! It's undignified. Control of mainstream culture actually meant something once upon a time. Now it means nothing. The TV networks are losing money and eyeballs so fast they can scarcely keep track of it. The cruel joke now being played upon women and gay men is that they are taking control of something only after it has lost its power. [I'm sure Katie Couric can sympathize.]
Ms Traister may find all these shows terribly important, but they are really only important to people like herself, people who care about popular culture. Those millions of us who have checked out need not worry our pretty li'l heads a single moment. Strong and powerful males are very much alive in American culture. You just have to know where to look for them. You won't find them in popular culture, but the glorious little secret is, popular culture no longer matters.
For Christ's sake, if women want to exchange their souls in exchange for some bogus sense of status -- which, BTW, they apparently define precisely in the proscribed vocabulary of the patriarchy -- have at it. Let me stay home and cook dinner. I promise I'll get real good at it!
Of course, 99 out of 100 women now enjoy the "privelege" of jaded toil in a sunless cubicle in order to stave off homelessness. I'm sure they say a silent prayer to Andrea Dworkin daily!
Around the same time as women were figuring out how to kick ass, some good men (and, to be fair, a lot of women) were questioning whether all this ass kicking was such a great idea, and whether it might be best to spend a little less time on it. And some bad men were of course opposing the women who wanted to start kicking some ass. These complimenting zeitgeists fed (and feed) off of each other. We're still going through it.
While all this is going on, a corresponding shift in sexual attitudes starts, but at a glacial pace. Now, women had a lot of resentment toward men because men have been freely using them for centuries as a mere adjunct to their ass-kicking (and, of course, not to mention kicking their ass). Since women were and are now trying to kick ass and continue to admire and be attracted to people who do, they start saying, "what the hell man, you suck. It's cool to kick ass, and you aren't even trying." Then the men say, "hey wait a minute, kicking ass isn't that cool" (and the worse ones said "you shouldn't be kicking ass, you're a girl.")
And now, since the sexual attitude shift hasn't caught up, the women say, "No way, kicking ass rules, and I'm not sleeping with you unless you do." And the good men say, "hey (men say 'hey' a lot), you're just concentrating on kicking ass, which isn't that cool. I still really want to sleep with you (c'mon men, you know it's true), but you're sort of starting to seem not that cool." And the bad men say (out of resentment that they aren't kicking ass as well as the women), "you're trying to emasculate me. Hey buddies, women really suck." And since women have always had a hard time telling the good men from the bad (c'mon women, you know it's true), they and men start getting into arguments like this one.
Some day though, the women who concentrate on kicking ass to the exclusion of all else will figure out that it's just not that cool, may harm those around you, and certainly doesn't make you a better person. And the men will figure that out too, and also that it doesn't matter if you're a boy or a girl, kicking ass generally sucks. And men and women will begin come together to demolish all remaining sexual preconceptions and live happily ever after, together in peace and harmony. And eat chocolate together too.
Actually, that will never happen - sorry to get your hopes up. But maybe, if those of us who question whether kicking ass is all it's cracked up to be, no matter ones sex, keep trying to hold ourselves to the highest moral standards, detach outselves from material possessions, and try our best to improve the lives of others through compassion and empathy, maybe we can improve things.
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Once seen as a lunatic fringe, reactionary anti-women groups are courting respectability
Salon headlines in your mailbox
