We can’t say we weren’t warned that Ann Coulter’s little un-joke about how women should lose their right to vote functions as a way to widen the discourse to allow those sort of deeply misogynist sentiments in. Chris Matthews is one dose of No-Doz away from suggesting that Hillary Clinton be disqualified for the run for President because of Teh Vagina,* and so you can guess who’s next on the checklist of mainstreaming anti-suffrage sentiment—well, Tucker Carlson, of course. Isn’t he always third in that line? When Eleanor Smeal noted that it’s embarrassing how poorly women are represented in the halls of political power, Carlson went on a head-patting, cock-stroking rampage.
“I’m not embarrassed. I almost — when I get up at a baseball game and sing ‘The Star-Spangled Banner,’ I don’t hang my head because we don’t have enough women in Congress. I’m actually not embarrassed by it at all.” Smeal responded, “Well, it has nothing to do with your baseball game obviously,” to which Carlson said: “I don’t know why that’s embarrassing. You could make the counter case that most women are so sensible, they don’t want to get involved in something as stupid as politics. …They’ve got real things to do.”
As Jessica noted, that kind of “better things to do” rhetoric usually means something along the lines of, “I don’t actually think that cooking and baby-rocking is that important, but since I believe women are stupid, I’ll pat them on the head and tell them theirs is the most important job in the world, and the poor addle-brained dears will believe me.” While he’s not outright protesting women’s right to vote, he’s invoking the “angel of the hearth” argument that was used quite effectively to deny women the vote for nearly a century.
Of course, it’s entirely possible that Carlson buys the idea, just a little, that politics aren’t important and are just a game that have no ramifications in the real world. Certainly he and the rest of the horse race pundits behave as if that’s exactly the case.
The Carlson went and proved right everyone who thinks that deep fears of emasculation drive so much of the voting for the Republican party. (See the ongoing and awesome book club at TPM Cafe this week.)
Following Smeal’s statement that “[y]ou have, for the first time in history, a woman leading the race for president … and then you see that whole line-up, all men on the panel, two men questioning, and the ‘I got you’ question,” Carlson stated: “But they’re not just men, I mean, they’re Democrats: They’re sensitive, New Age men. I mean, they’re NPR-listening, Volvo-driving, Whole Foods-shopping. They’re the kind of guys who cry during Meg Ryan movies. I mean, they’re kind of in touch with their feelings. They’re not manly men … they’re wimpy men.”
They wear bow ties and dance on reality TV shows and flounce around—
The sad thing is that by bringing that up, I run the risk of sounding like I have anything but love for men with effeminate mannerisms, and nothing could be further from the truth. But Carlson is just demonstrating an extreme example of the typical projection/anxiety issues that drive so much of this psychosexual weirdness that sadly gives so much power to the Republicans. Bowtie and giggly demeanor aside, Carlson appears to think by checking the names off by the letter “R” on the ballot, he’s morphed into some cold-blooded mountain man, no effort or facial hair necessary. It’s hard to remember sometimes, that the people having these masculine anxiety attacks on air on a daily basis in this country are grown adults, not junior high school age boys trying to make up for the fact that they haven’t caught up with the girls height-wise yet.
*I fucking refuse to say “vajayjay”.
81 Responses to “Am I going to have a “suffrage, yes, dammit” category?”
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Tucker Carlson….cock…EW! You are seriously trying to turn me straight, aren’t you?
Why doesn’t someone just take this dweeb and stuff his bow tie up his nose?
So dad comes home and the kids are…what, dead? Collapsed into piles of laundry? Um, ok. That’s the best the “Nation League for Opposing Women Suffrage” could do?
House said vagina in last night’s episode. Awesome!
I don’t think its so much an actual combination of hypermasculine crap and pants wetting terror, as it is a case of intentional, self aware, propagandizing. The position they’re trying to put forth is a lie, so naturally their rhetoric is contradictory.
The average person in the USA is getting the shaft, economically speaking, they know they’re getting the shaft, and it’s been impacting their lives for a couple of decades now. No one on the Democratic side will dare talk about this, for fear that some Republican will shriek “class warfare”, words which apparently cause any elected Democrat to melt away like the Wicked Witch of the West.
So the only people talking to middle and lower class America about their problems are Republican windbags, and they lie. Instead of saying “hey, its the fault of the rich bastards who aren’t paying you enough, and who are busy robbing the government blind”, which of course they *can’t* say because they are the rich bastards in question, they say “its the fault of the Feminazis, the eco-freaks, the hippies, and the faggots!”
And since the Democrats won’t say otherwise, many Americans believe the lies. What baffles me is why the Democrats have, for my entire life, not once countered the bullshit.
Norah,
I think the message is “Let the women vote and the kids will become dirty laundry sniffing addicts, while Grandpa stares zombie like at the camera.”
God, I detest “vajayjay.” Enough with the cutesy-pie, infantilizing euphemisms, for fuck’s sake.
grandpa’s not staring at the camera, but the webcam feed.
“I think the message is “Let the women vote and the kids will become dirty laundry sniffing addicts, while Grandpa stares zombie like at the camera.””
That’s not Grandpa, that’s Dad, coming home from a 12-hour shift at the factory. His suffragette wife isn’t there greeting him with food while offering to satisfy his manly desires…(or some such patriarchal rot…)
“Meg Ryan movies,” Tucker? Well, Meg Ryan’s only been in one movie I’ve heard of after 2003, and it was about boxing. Yeah, those gol-derned liberals are hooked on those weepy boxing movies. Tucker needs to modernize his chick-flick reference points.
That poster reminds me of Pleasantville. “Honey, I’m home. …Honey, I’m home. …HONEY, I’m HOME. …HONEY, I’M HOME!”
You know, every time I read about the evils of Hillary and her Amazing Rampaging Cooter, I just think about Helen Clark, whose been a very successful Prime Minister for 8 goddamned years - a bit like Clinton lite, with good governance and dogged by personality issues.
And I say “eh”, and go back to my “Americans is crazy” prejudices.
I don’t want to go off topic or start a debate, but (don’t those sound like famous last words?) I just want to stand up for “vajayjay.” And vajayjays around the world! It’s an improvement from all the other weird, sexist euphemisms for our lady parts (another term I love). Maybe I’ve read too much Shakespeare, but I Always love a good euphemism.
That being said, we should parlay the interest in vajayjay into getting people to say vagina more often.* I would personally like to say VAGINA to Tucker Carlson on air and watch him squirm. But he might say I’m playing “Teh Gender Card!” sigh.
*vagina vagina vagina vagina vagina vagina vagina
And since the Democrats won’t say otherwise, many Americans believe the lies. What baffles me is why the Democrats have, for my entire life, not once countered the bullshit.
I wondered the same thing for quite awhile too, until it occured to me that there is probably a lot less difference between the Democrats and the Republicans than I had previously assumed. In short, I think most of them don’t say that stuff because they actually agree with the Republicans to a much larger degree than they let on.
How would Tucker know that? Because I’m sure he’s much too manly ever to watch a Meg Ryan movie. Even Courage Under Fire, Proof of Life, and In the Cut were probably too faggy for him.
I think the best part of the picture is the “back in an hour or so”- at least she left a note!
I find it ludicrous that Tuckery seems to think his colleagues at NBC, Brian Williams and Mr Punkinhaid are Democrats. He must never have heard the story from Mr Punkinhaid about how he wore a Bush for President pin under his lapel and flashed it a few times IIRC during the Y2K elections.
And he obviously missed the stories from the Libby trial about how Dick Cheney pwned Mr Punkinhaid’s a**.
our lady parts (another term I love)
That may be my favorite term for the vulva. It suggests that I ought to tip my hat and comport myself politely in its presence.
Richard, the whole press corps was Bush For President in the Y2K elections. Timmeh was just more honest about it than others. Of course, Friar Tuck wouldn’t believe the press is conservative even if they all lined up and kissed Shrub’s ashsaysay on the WH lawn at high noon.
I don’t know, Mike and Jeff, something about the white haired guy’s stare just says “Brains…Brrrraaaiiiins!” to me. If it wasn’t for the caption, I’d say he’d already finished off the little kids and was waiting for Mom to come in the door.
And that’s why you always leave a note.
“I don’t know, Mike and Jeff, something about the white haired guy’s stare just says “Brains…Brrrraaaiiiins!” to me. If it wasn’t for the caption, I’d say he’d already finished off the little kids and was waiting for Mom to come in the door.”
Okay, I’ll buy that. The problem in this situation is mom is supposed to be the monster, not dad. She’s the one getting all uppity and stuff…
–unrelated–
Why do we keep getting these ads for JohnQTV on the right hand side of the page with explicit images of women in lingerie? Not only do they not add anything to the discussion, they’re actively distracting if not subverting it.
They appear to come from AdBrite.com, as evidenced by the “http://b1.adbrite.com/iads/53181.jpg” URL. Of course, we readers can filter this through AdBlock and other means, but should we have to? Isn’t it somewhat hypocritical? It’s kind of frustrating to see these week after week.
–/unrelated–
Well, see, he had to eat the brains because she wasn’t there to make him dinner and he was hungry. It’s her fault! She made him do it!
Maybe instead of a kerosene lamp on the table, that’s really a gas lamp on the wall, and the kids are passed out/dead from the fumes.
Obviously, the problem is that she had no training in home economics.
Rumor has it that Tucker’s contract at MSNBC is about to expire along with MSNBC’s patience with his shitty ratings.
Buh-bye!
With Carlson, it’s about class privilege as much as pat-on-the-head sexism. Were Carlson the son of a bus driver or sheet metal worker, he might be as sexist but he would not drip his fetid pearls from Mt. Olympus re: what “women, being sensible,” should do. Carlson makes his living pretending to have something useful to say about politics; perhaps because he makes no sense, he assumes that others involved in politics are categorically as obtuse.
Of course, why he thinks women are so sensible per se is beyond me. Under patriarchy, women get punished pretty severely for engaging in the sorts of behavior that men, but especially white men of breathtaking privilege like Little Lord Carlson, take for granted, starting with walking down the street alone after having two drinks and ending with him having enough time and money to contemplate his patriotism not in Anbar Province but in Row 12 watching the Nats.
Please someone smack this asshole and bill me for the service rendered.
Has anyone explained to Tucker Carlson that claiming that a guy claiming another guy is “not a manly man” is in fact laying down a challenge?
as in “they have carte blanche to beat the fuck out of you at any time to prove you wrong.” and he just did so categorically to anyone who votes democratic. You don’t get to call someone a weak willed coward, then hide behind legal rules of civility when the challenge is answered with the sort of forceful action you just claimed they don’t make.
Carlson isn’t a manly man, so the rules on this might not have been explained to him.
hell, I think an awful lot of pundits would be much more careful if the Code Duello were reintroduced, if you’ll pardon the Zell Miller insanity for a moment.
I wondered the same thing for quite awhile too, until it occured to me that there is probably a lot less difference between the Democrats and the Republicans than I had previously assumed. In short, I think most of them don’t say that stuff because they actually agree with the Republicans to a much larger degree than they let on.
Some do. Many don’t. My current working theory is that the Democrats are trying to hide just how little they collectively agree on amongst themselves, and are hoping that if they all just grin smugly and say almost nothing, they’ll appear more organized than they actually are.
If that’s their plan, it’s backfiring—saying nothing often looks even feebler than the ongoing intraparty warfare I remember from my youth.
The only thing that every Democrat agrees on is that the key programs of the New Deal—Social Security and Medicaid/Medicare—must be protected. When Bush threatened Social Security, he suddenly faced a unified, effective Democratic party. On every other issue we get silence.
Tucker Carlson is a misogynist asshole. And as a result of his woman-hating comments, Carlson will be named an Asshole of the Week by me tommorrow.
Will someone answer a trivial question, please? As it happens I have never heard the word “vajayjay” said out loud. I assume the first syllable is pronounced to like the first syllable of vagina. So I’m guessing that the word “vajayjay” rhymes with “Awe Hey Hey”. True? False?
Thanks in advance.
If I recall correctly, Al Franken mentions something along these lines in Lies And The Lying Liars Who Tell Them. Apparently, Carlson once told him that the difference between liberals and conservatives is that the former actually believe that politics can change peoples’ lives for the better.
our lady parts (another term I love)
That may be my favorite term for the vulva. It suggests that I ought to tip my hat and comport myself politely in its presence.
Hee! This is pretty much the only context in which the word “lady” doesn’t give me the heebie-jeebies. Any other time it gets used, especially to describe me, it rankles me so much I want to unilaterally declare it hate speech. Lady, forsooth.
It is my considered opinion that absolutely *nobody* except Dr. Miranda Bailey can say “vajayjay” without causing widespread giggling and consternation. So go right on refusing to say it.
MKK
This looks like the rhetoric equivalent of driving a very elongated car.
BTW, that thought made me google Mr Carlson, and he looks like a white wine, indoors-y, bicycle clips kind of guy. The kind you’d expect to see at a Liederabend listening to the Forellenquintett. Or eagerly researching the finer points of Morris Dancing as practised in East Suffolk. Or collecting butterflies with a little net. The only other youngish man I’ve ever seen wearing such suits is Stephen Fry.
If politics is so unimportant, Tucker Carlson should, right now, refund ALL the money he has been accepting to comment on politics or turn himself in for fraud. And then he can spend the rest of his life making dinner and cleaning up after the kids for some woman who wants to bother supporting a man who can’t dance without making weird faces.
The only other youngish man I’ve ever seen wearing such suits is Stephen Fry.
But Stephen Fry has established himself as a real man’s man.
Often…
Djur:
Yeah, as I remember, Franken goes on to say that he does believe that, and lists all the ways that decisions made by political leaders made life better for his wife’s family when they were going through hard times, as well as for everybody else. This seemed to be back when they were on speaking terms, which I believe didn’t last. Could be wrong about that, though.
Reading the book, it seemed that Tucker had been saying to Franken that for people like him, it was pretty much just a game. Win elections and don’t really worry about any goals beyond that.
Amanda Marcotte:
I’m worried that some right-wing blogger is going to take this statement and distort it. Distort it in a way such as “she doesn’t look down on men with effeminate mannerisms, therefore she must like men with effeminate mannerisms, therefore she must prefer men with effeminate mannerisms and dislike masculine men, therefore she is a ballbusting man-hater who wants to emasculate everybody with a pee-nay-nay, like all of those feminazis…”
…and so on.
There’s the risk, I guess, that the same right-wing blogger might skim the comments here and think “Hey, great idea! I’ll write exactly that to make Amanda look bad! I wouldn’t have thought of that before!” Hopefully not.
I’m bringing it up because you know how people like that operate and it’s good to be careful to phrase things in a way they cannot misinterpret or distort, because otherwise they will.
karpad Well, after reading your post, and remembering Al Frankin’s bit in LatLLWTt, I’ve just challenged Carlson to a fight. Sent the following email to his contact address on the MSNBC site:
“Mr. Carlson, as a Democratic man, I’ve decided to counter your claim that I’m less manly than you and your fellow chestbeating conservatives. So I’m challenging you to a fight. I’m not in great shape, in fact I’ve never been in a fight before, but I’m game. Tell me where and when, and I’ll be there.”
Samantha Vimes I just have to say that’s the best name ever.
Interestingly enough, once you get to party leadership (and the future party leadership), the Republicans are the khaki wearing country club brats, and the Democrats are far more likely to be “manly” in the traditional sense of the word.
For example, Kerry actually is an avid hunter. Bush shoots pen-raised quail. (It’s like shooting chickens.) More prominent Democrats served in the military than Republicans.
Carlson appears to think by checking the names off by the letter “R” on the ballot, he’s morphed into some cold-blooded mountain man, no effort or facial hair necessary.
Belly-laughingly brilliant.
I don’t want to go off topic or start a debate, but (don’t those sound like famous last words?) I just want to stand up for “vajayjay.” And vajayjays around the world! It’s an improvement from all the other weird, sexist euphemisms for our lady parts (another term I love). Maybe I’ve read too much Shakespeare, but I Always love a good euphemism.
If you love a good euphemism, then maybe you remember that euphemisms, by virtue of what they are, can’t stay euphemisms? They either disappear or become as dirty as the word they’re replacing. Retarded was a euphemism once, and so was “special”. I do believe that “vagina” was something of a medical euphemism.
The only way to make a permanent, non-threatening word for something is to make the thing itself not freak people out. “Cunt” would be a perfectly acceptable word if people accepted cunts themselves. Constantly switching up euphemisms only makes it seem like female parts are too terrible to speak of.
Please someone smack this asshole and bill me for the service rendered.
Bruce - I’ll split the bill with ya.
Do people take that irrelevant little pinprick of a human being Carlson seriously? The guy who brought all of his influence to bear to get some poor clerk in a video store fired because the clerk wrote about Carlson on his web log? That Tucker Carlson? The one Jon Stewart called a “dick” on Carlson’s own show?
Carlson is a laughing stock. Is he still wearing bow-ties to try to distinguish himself?
The problem with this sort of reactive strategy is obvious: in political battles, you win some, you lose some. Now, if your only battles are to preserve what you already have, instead of trying to improve it, then you’re on a slow crawl towards losing all the gains of our left-wing forebears. Because when you win, you’re staying in place, but when you lose, you’re regressing. Even if you only lose a battle in ten, that just means you’re crawling ten times slower towards the same end game.
@Rob and Blue Jean:
You rock. Now whenever someone refers to a vagina as a vajayjay I’m going to start using pee-nay-nay and ashsaysay. We’ll see how long the baby talk lasts.
carovee - I think it’s peeneenee not peenaynay.
Also, why did the suffragette put a lampshade on her bong?
The incessant whining, wailing and complaining about their masculine insecurity that white conservative men indulge in on a daily basis is extremely tedious and irritating. We have had to listen and read about their infantile complaints for too many years.
It would be nice if conservative men actually matured and entered adulthood.
That may be my favorite term for the vulva. It suggests that I ought to tip my hat and comport myself politely in its presence.
HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA! OMFG! I loooooooove it. (Wipes tears from eyes).
Might I suggest you start doing that?
“Also, why did the suffragette put a lampshade on her bong?”
Thank god. I wasn’t the only one thinking that. The husband has a “What’s that smell?” look on his face
The coffee hasn’t kicked in yet, but I still don’t understand the graphic. I’ll admit that I’m stupid (although I prefer the euphemism “retarded”).
The wife appears to be in a position sufficiently submissive to please any fella. But the sign on the wall says “back in an hour or so.” Meanwhile, in some genetic experiment gone horribly awry, the turkey has sprouted human limbs — and yet this was before the age of the microwave. Or maybe Junior’s head has morphed into a turkey (anybody remember the band The Residents)? A young, handsome George H.W. Bush surveys the scene with characteristic resolve.
Help me, people. Help me, somebody.
There’s the risk, I guess, that the same right-wing blogger might skim the comments here and think “Hey, great idea! I’ll write exactly that to make Amanda look bad! I wouldn’t have thought of that before!” Hopefully not.
Oh, they don’t need any evidence in any way about me to make these odd statements. I’m a sex-hating, over-sexed, man-hating, cock-sucking, lesbian with a boyfriend who doesn’t get fucked except for all the crazy slutty fucking. Depends on the wind direction that day.
I like “lady business,” as in the Woomba sketch on SNL. “It cleans my business — my lady business.” Cracks me up every time.
On the topic of men who do lady things, my husband goes clothes shopping with me. Moreover, after a first pass through a store he gets me settled in a dressing room and brings me things he thinks I’ll look foxy in. What lady (and all her associated bizness) wouldn’t want that?
What I think is that there are some women who have found themselves stuck with belching, beer-drinking morons and have to convince themselves that they actually want that because it’s “manly”. It’s sad, really.
Not that this comment will ever be posted, because I appear to be too “retarded” to type in the graphic correctly.
I’m right there with you.
Personally, I have an almost physical negative response to the word. I couldn’t put my finger on why, until someone (somewhere, on one of these threads) used the word “infantile” to describe it. Then I realized that, to me, people running around saying “vajayjay” is exactly the same as people using “pee-pee” as a serious term, like we should speak with the sophistication of 6-year-olds.
What’s worse, though, is that my wife uses the word and said the other day she thinks it’s a good thing(!) because “some women” have difficulty using the word “vagina”. I wanted to say that this is very much not a good thing, but I didn’t even know how/where to start; I really didn’t want to get into a fight over a word I’m revolted by.
I fucking hate that word.
I fucking refuse to say “vajayjay”.
I love the running gag on Scrubs where the repressed female doctor can’t bring herself use the medical terms for “private parts” and the rest of staff teases her mercilessly.
When the doctor was asked to join the OB-GYN team, she complained to a nurse, “I can’t handle OB-GYN–I’d have to look at bajingos all day–bajingos, bajingos, bajingos. I can’t even stand looking at my own bajingo.”
Nurse responds: “Is that because it looks a lot like a vagina?”
I can’t hear the “vajayjay” BS without thinking about that scene.
I think that’s the oldest daughter, not the wife.
I have seen this particular poster many times in the past, and I always wonder if I’m missing meaning because I don’t understand the imagery.
I read out of it: Your wife will make your daughters into her (very incompetent) slaves.
Hi all, I have never posted before, but have lurked for some time.
What I cannot understand is the requirement to emasculate men and place them in the category of being effeminate if they do cry at a particular movie. I am a tall muscular hetero with kids of my own and would love to get Mr. Carlsen in a headlock and challenge him to call me effeminate. Who cares if I like Abba? Or going to the theater?
I mean I love my wife, I love my girls, and feel compelled to show them that there are men out there who do care and are considerate to others. I don’t know, maybe having a mother who is a feminist makes all the difference.
Is the hyper-masculinity doctrine something that is a compensation factor? Can anyone explain it?
Thanks for listening.
Hi all, I have never posted before, but have lurked for some time.
What I cannot understand is the requirement to emasculate men and place them in the category of being effeminate if they do cry at a particular movie. I am a tall muscular hetero with kids of my own and would love to get Mr. Carlsen in a headlock and challenge him to call me effeminate. Who cares if I like Abba? Or going to the theater?
I mean I love my wife, I love my girls, and feel compelled to show them that there are men out there who do care and are considerate to others. I don’t know, maybe having a mother who is a feminist makes all the difference.
Is the hyper-masculinity doctrine something that is a compensation factor? Can anyone explain it?
Thanks for listening.
If it wasn’t for the caption, I’d say he’d already finished off the little kids and was waiting for Mom to come in the door.
Seriously. Between the way the older girl was slumped on the table and the expression on her face I thought: “Sooo, women’s suffrage makes men go insane with rage and slaughter their families?”
Brad Jackson:
Because most of them are a part of the class that is winning the class war. Their party just happens to be a little better, but their main interests are still largely in the same direction as the Republicans. That is why very few of them actively counter the bullshit. Those that do (Kucinich is my favorite example) are silenced or pushed aside.
Oops… messed up my 1:43pm post. That was a reply to hp’s 12:16pm post.
If it wasn’t for the caption, I’d say he’d already finished off the little kids and was waiting for Mom to come in the door.
That’s really the only logical explanation. The older kid is clearly old enough to take care of herself and her younger sib for an hour without them both ending up dead or comatose. The guy must have killed them, probably fearing that they would one day escape his control as their mother seems to have.
I thought the older kid was the wife. The younger kid’s head has turned into a meatball or something. The man looks unflappable and quietly heroic, though incongruously so.
Maybe he “corrected” them a la Delbert Grady.
That’s what I got out of it too.
Besides, what kind of civilized family can’t take care of themselves for an hour without bursting into tears or committing homicide just because Mom’s not there to wait on them hand and foot every nanosecond of every day? Crazy, man…crazy.
From the Museum of London:
“Description: ‘A Suffragette’s Home’, early 20th century. A man arrives home ‘after a hard day’s work!’ to find his children alone and sobbing. The lamp has run out of fuel and is smoking. Pinned to a ‘Votes for Women’ poster is a note saying ‘Back in an hour or so’, written by the mother of the household who has gone off to a suffragette meeting. The implication is that campaigning for the vote meant that women neglected their families. The poster was published by the National League for Opposing Woman Suffrage to encourage recruits.”
Do I get a prize?
MAJeff:
“Tucker Carlson….cock…EW! You are seriously trying to turn me straight, aren’t you?”
Oh, yes. Yes we are. Those John Q TeeVee ads don’t lust after themselves!
(Well, okay. Maybe they do. Certainly they’d get more lust that way than if they depended on me for it.)
I thought the children were laborers in some sort of homey warehouse. . .don’t they look like they’ve been sewing? And that “after a hard day’s work” really threw me. Plus the fact that the “back in an hour” sign is really teeny.
T3h wimminz need to shut up and go back to being objects. It made life so much easier for everybody.
“Why doesn’t someone just take this dweeb and stuff his bow tie up his nose?”
Probably because they realize that he’s already the product of a few too many wedgies. It’s difficult not to to want to razz and haze guys like Tucker Carlson, but…all the signs show that they’ve already been duly razzed and hazed and that it did not help. Just more evidence to the effect that forcible indoctrination does not work, I guess.
The man looks unflappable and quietly heroic
He does? To me he just looks peeved and pissy. Plus he seems to have a moderate case of ascites to judge by the way his shirt parts at the waist. Maybe the kids are crying because he came home drunk again and took out his frustrations on them.
Wren said: And that is why you always leave a note.
Tucker Carlson’s manliness: “It’s not a trick. It’s an ILLUSION.”
And. He has pop-pop in the attic.
My thoughts precisely. Tucker is an insecure dork. No one should take anything he says seriously, and MSNBC should dump him like the load he is.
Remember, in the wake of recent “wide stance” news, Tucker also claims to have been the recipient of a gay pass in a men’s room and to have responded by leaving and coming back with a friend to beat up the pass-maker. Unadulterated BS. And yet, he manages to make even such BS offensive.
Tucker is a dork. (rinse and repeat)
This is only tangentially related (in that it’s about women and relates to feminism), but I’d really love to see your take on this if you felt inspired to comment:
http://reachadvisors.typepad.com/museum_audience_insight/2007/11/november-e-news.html
If Tucker Carlson eats food from Walmart and Shop-n-Save, I’ll eat my rubber nurse’s clogs. Oh yes, there aren’t any cut-rate grocery stores on Park and 53rd, are there…..nor are there any hardware stores in his Manhattan neighborhood.
Tucker Carlson’s manliness: “It’s not a trick. It’s an ILLUSION.”
yeah, who’s Tucker Carlson again?
“He’s the pundit in a bowtie. We’ve been talking about him all thread.”
…Him?
Phoenician:
…nothing against Stephen Fry! My point was that “what’s manly” is so tied up with culture. Sorry for being vague. Different culture, different idea of manliness. And I’m meaning the superficial kind of “manliness” - the kind that says that a “real man” is square-jawed and smelly or whatever. In that superficial sense, hereabouts both Mr Carlson and Mr Fry would be pushing the boundaries a little bit.
This kind of superficial “manliness” is silly; like little girls saying to one another “you’re not a real girl - you aren’t wearing anything pink!” Manliness comes in all kinds of shapes and sizes, just as femininity does. Hereabouts, guys who choose to look like Mr Carlson know this, because their own looks and lifestyle isn’t all that squarejawed and be-stetson-ed and swaggering. So it’s a surprise to hear Mr Carlson, of all people, utter such opinions.
Thanks for the compliment! Pratchett’s Vimes was one source that helped steer me to be a progressive; to realize that it wasn’t a bad thing to question the system that keeps the poor down and allows the Bushes Lord Rusts to fool themselves about their merits. So when I started reading political blogs, I figured I’d use my Samantha name (first used in creating a roleplaying character) to comment.
In America the Marlboro Man is the gauge by which we refer to manliness. If you are no such thing, then you are not a man. Ha. I love our fractured television culture.
Amanda Marcotte
November 8, 2007 at 9:49 am:
So…if we can acquire a weather control machine….then….we can make them our SLAVES! And not in the fun way, neither.
Slutty fucking rules, btw.
Grendel’s Advocate
November 8, 2007 at 1:10 pm:
This bullshit about “they aren’t real men” seems to be popular with many on the right. Back when Spider-Man 3 came out, I was reading stuff about how there was too much crying in the film, and this sentiment was echoed by a blogger whom I find so annoying that I don’t even want to type her full name (her initials are D.S., she’s Orthodox Jewish and very anti-Muslim, also very anti-feminist, and has been mentioned here at Pandagon a time or two before). Her belief is that any man who cries is a wimp and, to echo her fondness for Schwarzennegerian terminology, a “girly man.”
(Ironically, she had a picture taken with Sylvester Stallone when the last Rocky movie came out, and you might remember that the Rocky character has cried on more than one occasion. Guess that’s not a real man, by her logic, even though she loves the movies and the actor.)
Anyway, I rented Spidey 3 along with Sicko and Syriana on my latest trip to Blockbuster, and after what I’d read about all the tears in the movie I expected there to be enough bawling to make me roll my eyes. There isn’t, and when somebody does cry or shed a tear they have a good reason, like a friend dying, or being dumped by somebody they were very much in love with. The most painful part of the movie for me was seeing Peter Parker make an ass out of himself (and I won’t say how since I don’t want to be a spoiler machine here), not any displays of emotion. These are supposed to be human beings, after all. They should have emotions instead of being emotionless or appearing that way.
(Incidentally, it seems that if you’re a woman in that genre of movie, one qualification is knowing how to scream well and repeatedly. *eyeroll* Which is not to say that I wouldn’t shit myself in fear if I were in the same situation that induces these characters to scream–it’s just that the idea of “mostly-helpless-female-needing-to-be-rescued-by-male-and-screaming” just gets kind of old, you know?)
Back to the topic at hand…and to Al Franken’s book about liars. One chapter has him challenging Rich Lowry to a fight over the phone, after Lowry stated on the air that Democrats were all wimps or something. Franken basically told him that he might lose to the guy, but he wasn’t going to sit there and let the slight go unanswered. Lowry didn’t agree to fight him, although he later wrote that he thought Franken was making excuses for losing the fight in advance by mentioning his chronic back pain, or some such silliness.
wayward
November 8, 2007 at 7:50 am:
Does Bush do that as well? Far as I knew, it was only Cheney. And he apparently isn’t a very good shot, unless he wanted to spray his friend with bird shot (including, of course, the face).
I’m quite curious as to just how much of a “manly man” Carlson really is. He’s all hat and no cattle (thank you Molly Ivins).
So here’s my test - all are things my father does. (I do to, but then that skews the test to, you know, lesbo.)
He is to pull his little . . . whatever he drives . . . into my garage. I will hand him a box containing an oil filter, a case of engine oil, and a tool* box (containing the tools he’ll need for the job plus red herrings). He is to then change his vehicle’s oil.
Then he gets to swap out a duplex electrical outlet for one-a-them fancy designer-lookin’ ones. Without shocking himself - he’ll have to figure out how to isolate the circuit.
Then he gets to unclog the kitchen sink - using a snake and the drain’s cleanout.
Then he gets to vacuum the sofa.
Then he has to make spaghetti sauce from scratch, and make it and the pasta be done at the same time. Oh, and he has to make a salad. And garlic bread, natch.
Then he does the dishes, cleans up all the oil he spilled in the garage, sorts and puts out the recycling, and changes the cat box.
Anyone think he can do any / all of the above?
—–
* None of my tools are pink so there’s no need for him to worry about his peeneenee falling off.