Letters to the Editor
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let's not forget comedians like Janeane Garofalo
and the Notorious Margret Cho and Whoopi and Ellen
and of course, the late great Molly Ivins
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men vs. women
Why are we even having this conversation? I find the whole premise "men are funny, women are not" to be a false dichotomy, and patently ridiculous. If Christopher Hitchens had written an article about why all people of some other racial or ethnic category possessed or didn't possess some personality trait, would Vanity Fair have even considered it for publication?
Gender seems to be the last category about which we are perfectly comfortable making sweeping generalizations, backing them up with "scientific" evidence. Men are from Mars, women are from Venus . . .
The premise that you can determine someone's level of "funniness" by their gender, besides being idiotic, is sexist in and of itself. Are people with blue eyes funny? Does curly hair make you funny? How about being overweight? Can skinny people be funny too?
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Was Dorothy Parker a "feminist"? She was witty in a very sharp-edged way but not exactly "funny".
I'm just about to begin Gerald Clarke's biography of Truman Capote, an effeminate man who had the reputation of being "witty" and I wonder if that's interchangeable with "funny". I'm not sure about this gender-based approach to comedy. Bette Midler has always been amusing as much for her assertive strut and facial expressions as for anything she's said and in "Desperate People" the character she played was a triumph of feminism, without overt or tacit preaching, when she got the better of her conniving, cheating husband, played by Danny De Vito.
Fart jokes are for children. I heard my first joke about flatulence when I was about ten when I was told of a new book called "Bubbles in the Bath" by Wendy (windy) Bottom. It seemed very funny at the time because it was "rude" but I don't see anything particularly daring or outrageous about such jokes now. They are dated and maybe should be replaced by jokes about belching/burping which have much the same physical origin.
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To the truly dedicated...
"Truly dedicated career women could have power, but they could not have happy lives."
Isn't there some kind of implicit assumption here that truly dedicated career males can have both?
I don't buy it personally.
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Obama, free us from the tyranny of old women in the "Clinton Machine"
Obama, free us from the tyranny of the "Clinton Machine" -- all those blue-collar, Hispanic, Asian, Jewish, gay, middle-aged-woman and senior citizen manipulators who sit around in smoke-filled rooms forcing their corrupt old games onto America.
Some of the cogs in the Clinton Machine are even old women! Clinton could belong to AARP! She wears chunky pearl necklaces!
Free the left-wing, affluent white elites and college students from their oppression!
There is only room in the "new politics" rainbow coalition for two colors: black and an elite, cool white. (That would be a bluish or lime white, not one with peach, bisque or eggshell in it.)
What America needs in 2008 is a change in STYLE and TONE, away from all these dumpy "old Democrats" with their "old politics"!
America needs unspecified change brought about by someone who acts and talks cool!
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Casting women as shrill, humorless, nags
Healthyskeptic commented: "It's often pointed out that contemporary feminism has departed from past movements and become rather shrill, zealous, melodramatic, reactionary and dogmatic, lacking deeper perspective or insight, therefore lacking capacity for great irony or humor."
One of the things that's odd about some of these conversations is how few fail to note that understanding feminism as one dimensional in this way is the work of antifeminist forces. If women are shrill, humorless, nags they easily be put down.
It's odd to me that there are on broadsheet's posting board veritable experts on Dworkin and MacKinnon's work, but on prosex feminist work? Is it all about Dworkin b/c acknowledging the vehement feminist responses to her don't fit some kind of easy, antifeminist agenda? Remember, this period in 80s feminism is called the sex wars -- as in hot contests. Why not talk also about Annie Sprinkle, Lisa Duggan, Ann Snitow, Tristan Taormino, Carole Vance, Carol Queen, Betty Dodson, or Susie Bright?
I couldn't agree more with those here who noted the limitations of Vanity Fair's belated mea culpa. Where the heck were women like Margaret Cho in that round up?
In addition to reading Salon, it seems like many folks here might check out publications like
Bitch: Feminist Response To Pop Culture.
http://bitchmagazine.org/
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A List of Things...
...never found amongst Salon's letters to the editor:
1. Consensus, and
2. Humor.
(And the thing of it is, it don't matter which gender is doin' the writin'...)
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Pot and Kettle
In Colonial days, the kettle was gleaming bright and was hung above the fire. The pot sat down in the ashes and was blackened by the fire.
Today, most people assume that they were both black.
Not so and this was the origin of the old expression.