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Sunday, Nov 8, 2009
It actually serves a purpose and isn't the terrible thing you seem to imagine. Countless young girls are getting the message that airheaded beauty queens aren't cool. Which is a good thing.
Though I can see why the airheads at BS would be concerned. Their tactic seems basically to claim women are immune to any and all criticism. Why? Becasue they happen to be women, and barely smart enough to realize there is strength in numbers, and worried about a lot of criticism.
But they're so screechy, they actually drive away the best and brightest women. Notice there are no screechy radical feminists possessing other qualities? Notice you don't see the brilliant hard science majors, or beautiful women, or otherwise healthy, intelligent, and capable women on the Dworkin trip. Its always these below average women with inferiority complexes, or sexual neurosis, turned outwards.
I honestly don't believe that all the people who have come out of the woodwork to be shocked by the occurrence of sexual liaisons in public restrooms really spent any time worrying about public sex before this
It's not a terribly complex issue to figure out why it's not OK and shouldn't be tolerated.
Do you like strangers ejaculating in your vicinity and in public facilities which you'll be using for hygiene?
Jeebus. Most BS posters have to be some the stupidest people on the planet.
I don't really like people defecating or urinating in my vicinity either, in public facilities that I'll be using for my hygiene. But apparently that's considered to be normal.
In some comments, people defend the humor they find in the Miss Teen South Carolina video, by arguing that they also laughed at videos of men caught in gaffes. Therefore, they argue, the humor is not based on stereotypes of women and southerners. This may be true in some individual cases, but I think it does not hold up as an explanation for the general reception of the video.
Of the top one hundred videos on YouTube this week, twelve of them are postings of the (one and same) Miss Teen video. In fact, it takes up four of the top five slots for the week and five of the top ten. Another eleven of the top one hundred videos are commentary on the original video. That means nearly a quarter of the top on hundred videos are taken up with Ms. Upton's gaffe.
Altogether the twelve postings of the original Miss Teen video have gotten over 14 million views, in five days. To put that in perspective, it makes this video the 28th most viewed video in the entire history of YouTube. In five days. I'm guessing, but I would assume that few, if any, other videos have gotten that many views that quickly. The other videos with those kinds of numbers have taken months, if not years, to get there.
If you add in the other eleven commentary videos that are in the week's top one hundred, you get another 3 million views.
So it seems like one has to ask, why does this particular video garner more interest in five days than almost any video ever posted on YouTube? I don't think comparing the interest in the Miss Teen video to other (far less popular) gaffee videos makes sense. This is not just like other viral videos. What's more I think this video is far from being the most entertaining, most amazing, or funniest video ever posted on YouTube. The unprecedented amount of interest in the video is disproportionate to it's entertainment value (as merely a gaffe like others). Obviously, this particular video touches a nerve. And judging by the fairly base nature of the vast majority of the commentary out there (including the YouTube response videos that are popular) that nerve is simply: "Look at this dumb blond southern girl."
It takes little interpretation to come to this conclusion, this is what most commentators are saying explicitly. So I think it a big stretch to say any significant part of the laughter at this video has much that's sympathetic about it.
I don't think Salon has reached low enough to get the big page hit numbers.
Sure, Flory, Traister and such are pretty vapid already, well into tabloid territory. But just imagine the clicks and ad revenue if Salon just went all the way and hired Miss Teen South Carolina to blog for BS.
Even Traister and Flory, out of bare minimum of self respect, must occasionally post a dry reality based news blurb, which always fail to generate the kind of tabloid controversy they're paid for.
But Miss Teen South Carolina would have no such dilemma and be free to continually post the most absurdly stupid, controversy creating, page view and click generating tabloid gold, 100% of the time. The perfect BS blogger.
She can surely cut, paste, and make non-sensical comments, the whole BS job description. Salon could probably even sponsor her through a Women's Studies program, and call it empowerment. They have no academic standards and will pass you for showing up, so no problem there.
There's the whole issue of self respect and journalistic integrity, but hey, Salon is way past that point.
"That's an appeal to popularity, a logical fallacy. It's especially stupid in the context of BS which is filled with idiots."
Yes, you prove it with every post.
Has she surpassed the Star Wars Kid for video views yet?
I would quibble that you can't really judge a clip by the number of forwards -- lots of people just pass on everything. But overall, nobody thinks through stuff like this like you do. Keep on keepin' on.
one needn't know that the name of the country in which we're at war does not take a definite article.
with which, not in which. please correct.
They didn't say point out only the 48 contiguous states. The question was to point out all the United States of America.
No, it wasn't. The question was (I paraphrase, but I linked to the study in an earlier post) which of these land masses as indicated by a number constitutes the United States of America? Identifying each of the 50 states was not included in the question.
Much of the initial coverage about Fort Hood turned out to be wrong. Is there anything wrong with that?
The accountability imposed by another country for the CIA's kidnapping and torture reveals much about our own.
Fox News' morning show plays to type, talking about whether Muslims in the Army should face "special debriefings"
The survivor and author is upset about comparisons some on the right are making to genocide
Once seen as a lunatic fringe, reactionary anti-women groups are courting respectability
Salon headlines in your mailbox
