TDS: Misogynistic Bows Edition
Holy crap this is just plain batshit crazy.
The really deranged bit comes at 1:15:“Right. With big bows on her sleeve. I mean, I don’t mean to sound sexist — it can be dangerous to comment on what women wear — but the fact that she sat in for her father in a dress that was so incredibly ornamental was such a contradiction in terms”, Walsh said. “And I think that what we see is that in patriarchal, authoritarian societies, daughters have great value — they are property. And the message that she is sending about her own value, about her place in the White House, and about the place of women in this administration, I think, are really frightening.”Just so Jedburgh doesn't jump my case again, let me make it clear: I don't mean that this is worse than Trump or any such thing...it's just so goddamn delusional though! Like...every damn thing about it!
Not to mention (which, of course, means that I'm about to mention the thing in question) if anybody on the right criticized a women on the left in such a way, there would result a dogpile so massive that the lowest part would be compressed beyond critical mass and some kind of fission of crazeons would be achieved.
Ms. Trump is made proxy for the President of the United States by the President of the United States...at a meeting at the G20 summit no less. But because she wears a pink--or, not that this bit should actually matter, but--actually, a slightly pinkish...dress with two bows on it...and because...in societies completely different than ours, women are property...this...somehow...devalues or disrespects her? Showing that she devalues/disrespects herself??? And shows that she is not respected by her own father and his entire administration???? And that no women are respected/valued in this administration? And, it's not merely eyebrow-raising nor suboptimal nor even just sexist...it's frightening?
Seriously, to emphasize the consistency point: the left would never tolerate anything even 1/10th this bad if someone on the right said it about a woman on the left. If a man in the mainstream media had said this sort of thing about any woman but one of the Trump women, he'd be tearfully apologizing within a few hours, and fired within a day.
You just can't really get much more delusional than that. You couldn't make it up. If you did make it up, and you put it in a novel, people would ridicule it as too unrealistic (and programmatically anti-left) even for fiction.
On top of everything else, this is also, I suggest, the kind of free-form interpretive bullshit that runs rampant in so many of the humanities and social sciences. So it's also more evidence that academia is leaking.
And, look, I know this is a kind of worst-case anecdote...but...does this kind of abject insanity in the penumbra of commentary that surrounds actual news really tell us nothing about the objectivity of journalists at, say, MSNBC in general? I'm a bit skeptical about that.
posted by Winston Smith at
3:45 PM
7 Comments:
I don't disagree with you, but we should be fair to point out that Joan Walsh is unique in her status as both a complete feminist tool and complete DNC tool. So she isn't great evidence to update against the (entirely true in my mind) hypothesis that the media is irredeemably biased now.
Although...that she is getting consistent airtime is pretty damn good evidence of that.
Oh, y'know...I recognize her, and recognize here as someone I have classified as an idiot...but I didn't really have her classified as anything beyond that.
She seems to have gotten in a few hilarious intra-left spats involving how it was not feminist to criticize Hillary's candidacy from the Left.
My impression of her was basically the result of turning Sean Hannity into a Democrat and then merging him with Amanda Marcotte, which is kind of a comically horrible creature.
My name is Darius Jedburgh, and I approve this message.
Evidence of your counter example:
http://www.cbsnews.com/news/john-mcenroe-refuses-to-apologize-for-controversial-serena-williams-comments/
You know, this is off-topic, but no one else I know has brought up that McEnroe thing, and I'm something of a tennis fan, so...
I'm pretty disappointed in Serena that she's acting as though she hasn't said the very same things in the past, for which I thought highly of her. She had a very frank discussion in her characteristically intelligent and articulate manner with David Letterman (http://sportsradiokjr.iheart.com/onair/mitch-in-the-morning-8980/did-serena-admit-herself-men-are-15947382/) where she admitted straight-up that men are stronger, faster, and she would lose 6-0 in straight sets against someone like Andy Murray.
It's just a fact of biology and is absolutely no slight against her. Having been given the gifts of nature they have received, it would be shameful indeed for the men to fail to surpass the women in this regard. The worst part about what McEnroe has said isn't that Serena would lose to men or be ranked 700th among them (plausible), but that this means she can't be considered the best tennis player in history.
When we compare athletes, we've at least got to respect the biological distinctions between them. Sure, the whole comparison venture suffers even within sexes from not-obviously-surmountable issues regarding the value of innate physical (e.g. genetic) superiority (i.e. what credit can be given an athlete whose superiority is rooted in qualities which he or she did not earn by dint of will, labor, and exertion?), but at the very least, I would suspect, the division between men and women ought to be respected in making such judgments.
And, as is becoming expected of our public conversations, people are failing to recognize their reflexive endorsement of an implied premise whose truth value is far from certain; the idea that men and women are somehow not distinct from one another in a meaningful manner here is not required for us to refute the idea that such a distinction excludes women from consideration as the best athletes the world has seen.
I actually awaited Serena's response with pleasure, thinking she would stand up and reiterate her previous point and perhaps make something like this very point, clarifying the discussion about McEnroe's remarks, but instead she accused him of making assertions which aren't fact-based.
Sigh.
People need to get a grip. My favorite thought that's gone through my head in this and related areas of public discussion is: we need not an artificial homogeneity to recognize objective equalities among us (e.g. moral, or those based upon the will and its implementation). There are, in fact, objective equalities among us, and our heterogeneity in various respects will direct our attention there, as it has in the past, if we have the will to enforce rationality and intellectual honesty among ourselves.
People are running scared from reality even though the groundwork has been laid by our ancestors to prove to us that we need not be so scared.
A ex-gf of mine was the top-rated female tennis player in Charlottesville. I had just assumed that tennis was a game in which women could compete equally with men--I'd never watched it nor played it with any seriousness at all. Somehow this topic came up one day and she said, completely matter-of-factly: no, even merely pretty-good male college players would mostly beat even the best women in the world.
This is, as it turns out, no secret.
If men and women were competitive, then they'd compete. If women were equal to men at tennis, this fact would be shouted from the rooftops. If women were better, denying that fact would be *verboten.* But men are better, and *acknowledging* that is *verboten.*
Honestly, I really do believe that the denial of politically inconvenient facts has become almost routine on the left. It's not that the right doesn't do it...but denying some crazy, epistemically distant, impenetrable thing like climate change is different than denying things that everyone can see to be true with their own eyes.
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