Category Archives: Feminism

Updated: Bring Back The Silent Steely Type

Celebrity, Feminism, Film, Gender, Hollywood, Pop-Culture, The Zeitgeist

Steve Sailer: “After the Tom Cruise generation of boyish, small, and energetic stars, it’s refreshing to see a Golden Age of Hollywoodish leading man like tall, dark, and handsome Jon Hamm, who plays creative director Don Draper as the strong, silent type” in “the cable period drama Mad Men.”

Too true, but bless Steve: In an article about “Mad Men” the series, this is one of the few mentions the MM get.

I’ve watched Mad Men a couple of times, mainly for the Draper character. He’s perfect. As is evident from his tender affair with a teacher, the viewer recently discovered that this complex character (now that’s a novelty) would probably not be quite such an incorrigible philanderer were his beautiful wife not so icy and hostile. Poverty, military service, and a marriage of necessity—these are all interesting facets revealed recently about the Draper character.

I watch it, when it doesn’t get too tedious, for the nostalgia the production triggers—nostalgia for the days when women had soothing, soft voices, spoke in complete sentences, and seemed so much smarter and refined than their modern-day, emancipated shrew sisters.

One more thing: The Cruise generation has been followed by a slew of androgynous, unisex actors supposedly in possession of the Y Chromosome. For example, Ryan Phillippe. Yuk. Unwatchable. Or Leonardo DiCaprio; a fair actor, but frightfully undeveloped physically. I hope Hamm makes a lot of films, thrillers, especially. Maybe a couple of new-generation “Dirty Harry” flicks.

Steve’s spot on: “the show relentlessly exposes the sexism of pre-feminism men like Don Draper, seemingly for today’s women to cluck over.”

MadMan_med

Update (Oct 31): Oh for heaven’s sake: “Perfect” to describe the Draper character is meant to compliment his dashing looks, manly demeanor, and complexity. There is a lot of good about him.

Asserted and assimilated by men in the Comments Section is the feminist truism whereby saying that a man would be a good husband if he only had a loving wife is an excuse for the man’s innate badness.

Given the profile of the average woman—leftist, whining, romance-reading, Oprah-watching idiot—it makes perfect sense to feel sorry for a lot of men.

I have only to watch couples purchasing homes on the “House and Garden” channel to marvel at why more men don’t stray. The average woman shopping for a home:

“The dog would love this yard. This yard is not large enough for the dog.” Here’s a fem checking over a $1.3 million home: “my couch will go well in this living room; no, I can’t fit that grand sofa I purchased at Target in here.”

And I’m saying to Sean: “The agent is kind of cute. She gets that you don’t purchase a home to accommodate your ugly old furniture. Or dog! He should go for her.”

It’s also possible that TV reflects the worst of America.

However, certain verbose individuals should take a cue or two from the silent steely type. Never shutting up; never censoring yourself—spewing forth with every infarct of a thought the misfiring brain produces: now that is bloody off-putting.

Draper does not talk a lot. My favorite people ration speech.

An exchange with writer Rob Stove produced these BAB memories/thoughts some time ago:

“When my daughter was seven-years old, her school assigned her the task of describing her parents. On her father, daddy’s darling heaped unrealistic praise (the tables have since turned. Excellent!). For her affection-starved mother, the little lady reserved a matter-of-fact appraisal. ‘My mother,’ she wrote in her girlie cursive, ‘is a quiet woman who speaks mainly when she has something to say.’ (Rob’s riposte: ‘if everyone rationed speech thus, the entire mainstream punditocracy would cease to exist.’ Amen.)”

Pinpointed by my perceptive chatterbox of a child, this economy explains the lack of gush in my writing. Cutting and slashing at a column are one of the best things a writer can do. That’s my advice to budding writers (or people who believe they are writers). Slash mercilessly.

Kvetch Cable

Feminism, Gender, Journalism, Left-Liberalism And Progressivisim, Media, Neoconservatism

CNN anchor Campbell Brown tries here to parlay into a CNN advantage a valid point about the Fox News-White House tiff. She does not convince. While MSNBC most certainly does not do neutral news—and Brown and her CNN buddies are not blatantly biased—the CNN message seeps through via a steady stream of soporific, soft-news stories, to say nothing of the reign of the King of Kvetch, Anderson Cooper.

Mercifully, Brown et al. don’t engage in straightforward opinion, but their unadulterated leftism—not to mention hard-core statism—creeps into reports by way of story selection, slant, and facial grimaces. Examples are punishing programs such “Black, Blue, Brown, and plain Bored in America.”

Call it the CNN meta-message.

Nevertheless, this is an interesting interlude:

Over to Brown:

Videotape: Brown: officials have been very public about their feelings about fox news and what they believe fox news is and represents and they made a point of coming out and saying it.

Jarrett: that’s a different issue. What we’re saying is that we want the public to understand what’s going on. When we saw the kind of distortions this summer, particularly directed at seniors, over health care reform, it was really outrageous.

And I think what the president said in his message before congress is we’re going to speak directly to the American people and make sure that they understand the truth.

And so, certainly, if we see somebody distorting the truth, we’re going to call them on the carpet for that. But we don’t want to take our focus away from the core issues that are so important to the American people. Now, when there’s all that chatter and distortion and false information, we have to disseminate — we have to distinguish between truth and fiction.

Brown: so do you think fox news is biased?

Jarrett: well, of course they’re biased. Of course they are.

Brown: do you also think that MSNBC is biased?

Jarrett: well, you know what, this is the thing. I don’t want to — actually, I don’t want to just generalize all fox is biased or another station is biased. I think what we want to do is look at it on a case-by-case basis. And when we see a pattern of distortion, we’re going to be honest about that pattern of distortion.

Brown: but you only see that at fox news. That’s all — that you’ve spoken out about, fox.

Jarrett: what the administration has said very clearly is that we’re going to speak truth to power.

When we saw all the distortions during the course of the summer. When people were coming down to town hall meetings and putting up signs that were scaring seniors to death. When we’ve seen commercials go up on television that were distorting the truth, we’re actually calling everybody out.

This isn’t something that’s directed at fox. We want the American people to have a clear understanding, there’s so much at stake right now. We really don’t have a lot of time for nonsense and distortions.

The American people are also smarter than that. Let them reach their own judgments based on the facts. Let’s just take health care, for example. Reasonable people could differ about the right approach. So let’s have a conversation about that. Let’s not scare people by telling them that things are going to happen that are actually not even on the table. Let’s just talk about the facts. (end clip)

Brown: so, I am stating what I think is the obvious here. Jarrett seems loathe to admit that MSNBC has a bias. And that is where I think the white house loses all credibility on this issue.

Just as fox news leans to the right with their opinionated hosts in primetime, MSNBC leans left. I don’t think anyone at fox or MSNBC would disagree with that. In fact, both fox news and MSNBC are….

Update II: 'The Most Fun You Can Have With Your Clothes On'

Constitution, Feminism, Gender, GUNS, Homeland Security, Individual Rights, Liberty, Private Property, Regulation, Rights, Sport

RUGER 10/22 FULL AUTO, or modifications thereof. The absence of any kick-back is a huge plus for me. Finding an outdoors, non-range situation is another priority as well. I cannot stand the range: in-doors or outdoors. These are collective, collectivist holding pens into which regulators have herded free people who wish to become comfortable with defending life, liberty and property.

Update I: A different configuration.

The Israeli Defense Force (IDF) found that the Ruger 10/22 was more lethal than previously thought, especially in upper body injuries, and has reclassified it as a lethal weapon. That’s good enough for me.

Update II (Sept. 28): Taki Theodoracopulos once wrote a “penetrating” piece titled, “Why American Women are Lousy Lovers.” “That article,” Taki taunted his critics, “had nothing to do with the sexual act; it was an anti-feminist tract.” A connoisseur of the fair sex, Taki has often made the case that American women are devoid of femininity.

Why this prelude? Well, guys, you may be used to the manly (often manless), American female gun aficionado, who boasts about her prowess with a firearm as big as the one you can handle, but that’s not me.

I’m not an American woman, and I’m no feminist (I don’t need to compensate for anything). I still trust my guy to physically protect me (as he trusts me to use my big brain to “protect” him, so to speak). Of course, a woman must be able to drop an assailant. But I’m not going to carry on about guns like some half-male, ripped, bionic bimbo. This RUGER 10/22 seems a very sweet toy for a girl (not remotely guy-like) who wants to do damage to an advancing target, in a confined situation.

Watch this space. Photos forthcoming.