Political correctness can actually be seen as an example of Hayekian spontaneous order.The guy who wrote Liberal Fascism is saying nice things about P.C.! The need to peel some unmarried-female votes from the Democrats has been judged an all-hands-on-deck situation at Camp Conservative, I guess, and Goldberg must move with the times. But he can still keep his Hayek! Also he can portray himself as a thought-leader:
I wish more conservatives recognized that at least some of what passes for political correctness is an attempt to create new manners and mores for the places in life where the old ones no longer work too well...
Identity politics is only part of the story, and not even the most important part. Medical, technological, and economic changes are almost surely far more important than changing demographics alone...The New Conservatives are watching their pressure gauges and tracking the New Mores. Apparently these studies are desperately needed (and possibly eligible for a grant!), because the New Conservatives are locked in a Mores Race with the liberals to see who's got the best political correctness, and Goldberg wants potentially donors to know that the libs' sexual Sputnik is still in orbit:
Democrats recognize this, which is why they’ve cynically exploited changes in family structure, female labor participation, and reproductive technology and declared that Republicans have declared war on women.This is like saying "Democrats cynically exploited growing tolerance of minority groups to make us look like bigots." There's a step missing there, Goldberg, can you guess what it is?
Progressives are steadily dismantling the beautiful cathedrals of traditional manners and customs, arguing that they’re too Baroque, too antiquated. They use the sledgehammer of liberation rhetoric to destroy the old edifices, but their fidelity to liberty is purely rhetorical. In place of the old cathedrals they build supposedly functional, modern, and utilitarian codes of conduct. But these Brutalist codes are not only unlovely, they are often more prudish than traditional approaches...It's like he knows us, right? To capture chick votes we smashed the cathedrals of courtly love! Which was awkward, you know, because all those apses and semitransepts are so vaginal, but it was worth it to get rid of that meddling Christ. Then we put up a Government Fucking Center. A bit sterile, but it does the job, especially after you put down the hemp mats.
Goldberg thinks he can do better:
What I would like to see from conservatives is recognition that some of the cathedrals are outdated. But instead of arguing that they should be razed and replaced with Jacobin Temples of Reason with rites and rituals grounded in abstraction, why not argue for some long overdue updating and retrofitting? I guarantee you more women prefer a modified version of the traditional process of wooing, courting, and dating before sex than the “modern” schizophrenic system of getting drunk enough for a same-day hook up but not so inebriated to forget to get a signature on the consent form. Traditional notions of romance and respect are far better tools than the mumbo-jumbo campus feminists have to offer. The problem is that the mumbo-jumbo feminists are fighting largely uncontested.I look forward to seeing this conservative modified version of the traditional process of wooing, courting, and dating before sex. "I'm here to read you some pastorals." "OK [continues texting]." Later: "I swear by my life and my love of it I won't cum in your mouth."
Just not being a dick was never an option, I suppose.
Frist. Or, you know, whatever.
ReplyDeleteI actually got lost in the verbiage and I have yet to find my footing. But is he not basically saying "can we stop treating women voters as the enemy and start trying to seduce them? It would, at any rate, be practical."
"I guarantee you more women prefer a modified version of the traditional
ReplyDeleteprocess of wooing, courting, and dating before sex than the “modern”
schizophrenic system of getting drunk enough for a same-day hook up but
not so inebriated to forget to get a signature on the consent form."
Jeebus farking Christ. Has this man ever actually dated anyone in his life?
"Hooking up" vs. "waiting until you have a commitment before having sex" is not actually, you know, a political question. It's more of a personality issue and a personal preference than anything else.
Not to mention a false dichotomy. "Perpetual anonymous screwing" and "Farcically structured dating ritual" are not the only two choices on the menu.
ReplyDeleteThat's pretty much what I got out of it--an admission that the War on Women is a losing proposition, electorally, mixed in with a lot of reassurance for his readers that liberals are still terrible people with the wrong idea about everything.
ReplyDeleteI guess what I'm wondering is how Jonah thinks this is a political program--is he proposing that the new, reimagined, Republican party will release thousands of well groomed, well off, generous, men about town to romance unmarried female voters and make them happier? Like one of those targeted releases of sterilized Mosquitoes only these happy, horny, but respectful dudes who say "please and thank you" and hold open the door for you will magically cause the scales to fall from your eyes and you'll think "why settle for a smelly hippy who promises me equality but only screws me over when I could have Ward Cleaver! Gimme that Republican ballot!"
ReplyDeleteI didn't have a problem with my local Government Fucking Center until they started outsourcing to Blackwater.
ReplyDeleteOnly slightly OT - Something that's been running through my mind lately is how conservative policies drive women to the Democratic party whether they like it or not. When Dad doesn't make enough to support a family, Mom has to go to work even if she'd rather stay home with the kids. And Mom knows if she leaves work for a few years, she will face dismal employment prospects when she returns. So is she going to support the party that is suppressing wages and promoting back to the 50s family policy, or the one that wants to raise wages and expand family leave options? The party that wants you to play baby roulette every time you have sex, or the one that wants you to be able to control your fertility? We hear often enough that young woman reject the "feminist" label, but when push comes to shove, they're not going to support the party that woos them with economic and personal insecurity.
ReplyDeleteRugosa
Every time I listen to Dan Savage's podcast, I think "only a prudish Brutalist would be such a strong advocate for mutual respect and consent".
ReplyDeleteI'm kind of puzzled that this is Jonah. Yes, it's got his glib indifference to questioning received wisdom, but the piece as a whole is too convoluted, too full of references to things that aren't syndicated on Comedy Central.
ReplyDeleteAre we sure J-Dough didn't let the Derb sneak in under his byline for one last caper?
So I guess auto-replacing "bitch/slut/whore" with more oulde-timey words like "broad/dame/skirt" in every conservative article or speech, is the extent of what Jonah is suggesting?
ReplyDeleteThat's the thing: Republican economic policies, whether by design or not, make the Susie Homemaker model economically unfeasible. You can't raise a family on Dad's salary alone when wages keep declining and middle-class jobs keep disappearing, and you can't balance work with raising young children when so many corporations are so stingy with maternity leave and full-time nannies are for rich people.
ReplyDeleteGoldberg is right, in a way, when he talks about economic changes driving social ones (Geez, what a Marxist!), he just doesn't realize that it's the economic policies he and his party support that are doing it. I've met a not-insignificant number of women my age who aren't opposed to the 'old-fashioned' stuff. But they can't have it, not if they want to keep food in the pantry and keep paying the rent.
I'm not sure Goldberg has actually written anything since he got his first intern. Here, we can just see the style discipline slipping a bit. Must be a new kid.
ReplyDeleteOh goody, JG Smoove is speaking of the pompitous of love and telling us what the ladies want.
ReplyDeleteApparently he thinks we want tastefully, but conservative redecorated cathedrals because we are all about home makeovers. Or something.
Me, I like to think his interns write any old shit knowing he'll sign off on it once he gets to the first two-syllable word that isn't his name.
p.s. Consent forms - har har har!
It's a heavy-duty think piece.* Or at least what passes for one in the whiffle-ball intellectualism that Jonah specializes in.
ReplyDelete*A piece of something, anyway.
They're called XXXe these days.
ReplyDeleteMany of us favor "farcically structured screwing".
ReplyDelete*sigh* I'm sure that Jonah was, in his own way, trying for some sort of outreach here. Yeah, he deserves a credit for being quite possibly the first culture war whiner to acknowledge that society has changed a little bit in the last few thousand years and this, rather than some secret cabal of behavior engineers, is the reason why people hold certain opinions about conservatives. But then I have to take that credit right back for this:
ReplyDeleteI guarantee you more women prefer a modified version of the traditional process of wooing, courting, and dating before sex than the “modern” schizophrenic system of getting drunk enough for a same-day hook up but not so inebriated to forget to get a signature on the consent form.
Goddamn it, Jonah, yet again you've taken a wrong turn at Good Idea Junction. There's this enduring myth among conservatives - including the culture idiots - that liberals are all a bunch of libertines, doping themselves into oblivion, fucking everything with body heat, and supporting this lifestyle by leeching off welfare. Now, I've seen both Jonah and his readers acknowledge that this isn't true, usually with a "liberals live like conservatives, they know we're right hurr hurr" remark. But all of a sudden he's forgotten it and gone right back to "liberals just want everyone to suck and fuck, hurr hurr." Pieces like this are why I'm convinced Jonah is playing up his idiocy for the crowd - he's smart enough to know when being stupid is better.
Oh, and don't even get me started on that "political correctness" dig. I'm continuously stunned that such an antique and ridiculous term still has so much purchase among conservatives.
This is too good.
ReplyDeleteWhen I do it with my girlfriend its like a pornized version Faulty Towers in Klein bottle.
ReplyDeletePiece of duty, if you will.
ReplyDeleteYou've made me think of the cad who convinces the innocent young lady to elope with him, has a friend or whatever conduct a sham wedding and after a night or two of passion takes off, never to return.
ReplyDeleteSo yes, I'm sure that's pretty much what JG Smoove has in mind. Only the actor working for the GOP will tell his victim that they'll consummate their passion after she votes.
(Which, perhaps I'm the naive one, but the runaway cad seems like one of the more unlikely literary figures. That's a shitload of planning, work and money for sex, even if you are really afraid of catching the clap.)
"No more Temples of Reason grounded in abstraction," says the guy who a minute earlier told us that he thinks being polite is "an example of Hayekian spontaneous order." Very persuasive. So, yeah, forget reason! Let's keep our Temples of Tradition, grounded in abstraction!
ReplyDeleteThe Susie Homemaker model was only ever feasible for a subset of society. Poor women worked. Middle class women frequently did at least part-time work once the youngest child was in school. And the SHM was reinforced by a job market that was viciously hostile to women.
ReplyDeletePoor Jonah. If only he'd been Todd Palin's best friend, Sarah would've humped him.
ReplyDeletePretty much, yeah. Jonah entire conception of young women is comedy character in a Tina Fey sketch who's one true wish is to have a blandly handsome dude in Dockers tell her she's interesting.
ReplyDeleteGood point. Let's say his "Boys, hold the doors for ladies" program works and they all end up in committed relationships. How's that lead anyone, male or female, to conclude "We should also gut school lunch programs and be angry about Benghazi"?
ReplyDeleteWelp, Jonah proves, once again, that every time one thinks he can't go any lower, he drives that bar even deeper into the ground.
ReplyDeleteEven when he pretends that he's all cognizant and aware of women's issues an' shit, he cannot help but put a political and a culture war spin on the issue. He's now apparently come to the conclusion that even sex is an end-of-history contest between liberals and conservatives, and is right back to that conservative shibboleth of sex as conquest, except that now it's not simply a matter of man's conquest over woman, but conservatives' conquest over liberals.
Quite apart from the inherently conservative urge to constantly meddle in women's lives and vaginas, a tendency which Doughy seems determined to ignore at precisely the moment in the argument when it shouldn't be ignored, what does any of this have to do with cathedrals, for fuck's sake? Is this man deranged as well as obtuse? Moreover, is he not making an appeal for the sort of idealized `50s Doris Day/Rock Hudson screen romancing that had about as much grounding in reality as fucking Peter Pan? Is he not actually begging abjectly for a return to a time that never really existed, out of a nostalgic impulse that has all its roots in exactly the sort of patriarchal idiocy that prompted modern feminism in the first place?
All the traditional epithets meant to illustrate diminished intelligence are insufficient to the task of describing Der Pantload's intellectual faculties.
Moron is simply no longer applicable. It's too generous.
I got we're too stupid to know what we really want and the bad ol' (male? lesbian?) liberals are making us accept this horrible modern world in which we are forced to have consensual sex. But really what we want is for a real gentleman to take us on romantic walks beneath the full moon at which point we will foreswear our pills du trolloping and settle down to fulfill our biological destiny.
ReplyDeletethe “modern” schizophrenic system of getting drunk enough for a same-day hook up
ReplyDeleteAs documented for Doughbob by Ross Douthat, I presume.
~
Somehow you forgot the groundplan of the Government Fucking Centre:
ReplyDeletehttp://www.bdonline.co.uk/Pictures/web/j/j/x/Oikema-Claude-NicolasLedou_400.jpg
By the way, it's worth pointing out that Hayek was a failed economist every time some wingnut welfare recipient brings him up.
ReplyDelete~
How is babby Government Fucking Centre formed?
ReplyDeleteHow populace get pragnent?
~
I hadn't realized the Abstinence School had made its way to Architecture.
ReplyDeleteTo be fair, it is not only the Republican mode of forcing down wages. Even with competitive wages, women working means more households have more to spend, which results in rising prices. This is most evident in the housing market; as double-income couples go home-buying, desirable neighborhoods quickly come to cost more, and shakier ones to gentrify faster, and single-income buyers get priced out to an extent that would not be the case were all buyers single-income buyers (as was the case 40+ years ago).
ReplyDeleteThe problem is that I have talked to and read stuff by Republicans who see women working as the entire game. There's no admission that women have to work because of declining male wages, etc, and there's no attempt to grapple with reality -- even as they see it. I mean look: Let's say you're right, the only reason housing costs too much is that women work. Super. What's your solution? They don't have anything, other than grumbling about women working. They are failing to understand the situation and then failing to offer a solution even to their halfwitted misunderstanding of it.
Which makes me think that this was a collaborative effort between Doughy and K-Lo, and K-Lo deferred to the stronger sex and did not insist on sharing the byline.
ReplyDelete"Whiffle ball intellectualism" FTW!
ReplyDeleteWell--they do also know that older, married, white women tend to vote republican so maybe jg thinks its a natural (you should excuse the word) evolution?
ReplyDeleteLedoux called it a "Temple of Pleasure" rather than a GFC, because that was how post-Revolution idealist architects rolled.
ReplyDelete"I guess what I'm wondering is how Jonah thinks this is a political program" - and totally NOT cynical!
ReplyDeleteOh, I dunno, there are worse Doobie Bros efforts
ReplyDeleteI must also note that over at LGM, bspencer treated (?) the masses to sex tips by J.C. Wright and in the comments I wondered when the conservatives would start yammering about immoral architecture. (I think in this same comment section there was a side discussion about Brutalism.)
ReplyDeleteI was joking about the architecture, but I left Jonah out of my calculations. Et voila! He talks sexual mores using bizarre architectural metaphors.
I guess I should just be relieved he didn't start in about groined arches or stately towers thrusting into the sky.
When a daddy government and a mommy government love each other. Ery much-- they hire a nanny state.
ReplyDeleteIt does not seem to be his style.
ReplyDeleteI suspect he's been watching "The Fountainhead" again, and Gary Cooper caused him to blow a couple of synapses.
ReplyDeleteI guarantee you more women prefer a modified version of the traditional process of wooing, courting, and dating before sex than the “modern” schizophrenic system of getting drunk enough for a same-day hook up but not so inebriated to forget to get a signature on the consent form.
ReplyDeleteJonah mansplaining what women like by including a rape joke will surely prove that conservatives really understand the ladies.
"Brother Love's Sniveling Gal Chasin' Show"
ReplyDeleteStill early here and I may need another cup of espresso before I can work out how Hayek comes into it. The idea seems to be that people have a basic psychological need for structure in their mating / pair-bonding, preferring some kind of ritual above the old-fashioned conservative key parties (a need forgotten by those liberals with their naive ignorance of human nature, hurr hurr); therefore these rituals appear spontaneously, in the same way as an ordered market emerges spontaneously in the absence of government market constraints; therefore Hayek.
ReplyDeleteTherefore conservatives should dictate the nature of these spontaneous rituals, because spontaneity is like sincerity, best imposed from above.
Are we sure he wasn't thinking of Selma Hayek and got confused?
ReplyDeleteIt's simpler to just presume at the outset that Doughy doesn't know what the fuck he's talking about.
ReplyDeleteMuch higher percentage of being right, and no wasted effort trying to understand nonsense.
Even with two incomes family wages have not kept pace with costs. House prices rose because people were buying more house as an investment with less money down. Two incomes had nothing to do with gentrification or the housing bubble.
ReplyDeleteIt's a common thread in a lot of the Right's propaganda: things were so much better back then, and we'll never be able to change them back. Frustrated nostalgia easily turns into bitterness, and then it's easy to sell the stupidest, most counter-productive tantrums--as long as whoever is on the receiving end is a member of the 'undeserving' class. Black, brown, hippies, women, poors, ungrateful students dodging the draft...whoever the right picks for the two minute hate.
ReplyDeleteI think you may have gotten closer than the rest of us.
ReplyDeleteWell, the point of those romantic walks was always get the woman far enough from population centers that no one would hear her scream for help, after all. Conservatives have always been big on allowing women to have nonconsensual sex.
ReplyDeleteThat's "populous," smart guy.
ReplyDeleteAll Doobie Bros. efforts are equally awful.
ReplyDeleteI think he meant 'spontaneous odor', because of Hayek's legendary penchant for farting when talking.
ReplyDeleteAs compared to Der Pantload's legendary penchant for producing writing as farting.
ReplyDeleteHe who spelt it, dealt it.
ReplyDeleteIf you read the whole thing, it bears one classic Jonah Goldberg hallmark - weak attempts at wit. That's why he claims he didn't do the Israel/Ukraine beat, because he couldn't make them funny. Yeah, blame the news, Jonah.
ReplyDeleteMan are you overthinking this. Remember: always read a Goldberg essay as though it was written by a clever college sophomore. He's name-dropping Hayek because Hayek once said something about how markets organize themselves. Modern social mores are assembled by consensus upon inherited traditional structures. Why, those are practically the same! In much the way a herring resembles a handbasket, but never mind! It's time for the next paragraph, wherein Jonah will say something one-half step away from obviousness with the import and gravitas of Moses with his stone tablets.
ReplyDeleteHe knows 97% of his audience knows even less about Hayek (lefties want us all to be serfs!) than he does, so why not wave some Hayek around?
Clearly you made the mistake of replacing those Baroque cathedrals of courting, not with a Jacobin Temple of Love or a Brutalist concrete slab, but with a design by Lebbeus Woods.
ReplyDeleteHe who spell-checked it dealt it.
ReplyDeleteBut the messed up part is that, from an economic perspective, things really were better back when. It's just that the social cons don't understand why. They've become convinced that it was social factors driving the economy, rather than the other way around. It wasn't that high wages and low COL led to large families with single earners, it was old-fashioned morals that led to high wages, etc. It's the same bad logic that leads to those stupid "marriage makes you rich" articles.
ReplyDeleteThat's "speel-checkered," smart guy.
ReplyDelete~
Yep, that Jonah, he's a regular Swill Rogers.
ReplyDeleteWTF?!?!
ReplyDeleteI guarantee you more women prefer a modified version of the traditional process of wooing, courting, and dating before sex than the “modern” schizophrenic system of getting drunk enough for a same-day hook up but not so inebriated to forget to get a signature on the consent form.
What planet is this taking place on? Not the one I'm living on. The "'modern' schizophrenic system of getting drunk enough for a same-day hook up" exists only in the conservative imagination.
But I guess it's progress of a sort that Jonah's not screeching about how women don't know what they want, or how they want it, and they should be letting many men like El Loado make their decisions.
This is, very much (as I think you observed down thread) a knock off version of the John C. Wright screed with a little less actual sex and catholicism thrown into the mix. But the Cathedrals thing is absolutely a tell that he copied this from someone else's work because its such a bizarre metaphor for sex and relationships.
ReplyDeleteI see the resemblance. Joberg's concept of Liberated Sex Morality -- in which frat-party-fucking libertinage is "more prudish" than the eternal verities of middle-class dating from the 1950s -- fits with J.C. Wright's claim that Absolute Orgasms are only available to married catholics who eschew contraception in accordance with god's will.
ReplyDeleteAll I know is those buttresses make his apse look HUGE.
ReplyDeleteLet's see: Strained metaphor that misses the point, confabulating desired reality with armies of strawmen and unbelievable caricature, invoking Hayek in a most inappropriate setting.
ReplyDeleteI can see Jonah the Fail's hand in this.
I want to wash this building's windows, if you know what I mean. And I think you do!
ReplyDeleteWhat's especially weird is that I'm willing to bet that (some) women prefer a more leisurely approach to gettin' in the sack and maybe might even like to be wined and dined and wooed and courted by someone fantastic rather than shacking up with whatever drunken frat boy is vomiting in front of their dorm room tonight.
ReplyDeleteBut the one thing that seems missing in this story is the guys--the guys don't seem to have any agency at all in this scenario. Because implicit in Jonah's argument is that the women might want to go back to the bad old days of courtship but the guys don't. Otherwise there is nothing at all stopping them from being courteous and genteel and generous and going out for long soulful walks on the beach while holding hands and only exchanging a few chaste kisses until the exactly right moment years into the relationship.
Honestly the whole thing reads like a weird mashup of politics, catholic sex hangups, and MRA hysteria about how "nice guys" can't get laid because women always go for jerks.
Its longer, if possible its denser, and it doesn't have any quick dashes to the bathroom or to take the dog for a walk. Plus: no blegs.
ReplyDeleteThe "'modern' schizophrenic system of getting drunk enough for a same-day hook up" exists only in the conservative imagination.
ReplyDeleteFrat keg parties are bastions of left-wing discussion. Any fule kno that.
Government Fucking Center.
ReplyDeleteUm, yeah. I was just wondering if you were hiring?
Post war spending boom. The rebuilding of Europe. Marshall Plan. Racism keeping African Americans out of the trades and out of good jobs in general. Forcing women back into the home after WWII to free up jobs for returning soldiers. GI Bill. Yeah. Things might have been better (for some) but not because of cultural factors.
ReplyDeleteThey might be, but I'm warning you--the civil service exam for this is a lot tougher than the one for the Post Office.
ReplyDeleteI threw out my spelt checker last Passover. Damn thing never worked right.
ReplyDeleteI would like to take this buttress for a little flight.
ReplyDeleteIf you do, you have my support.
ReplyDeleteI give you the Temple of Great Exhibitionism: http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-YuQjHSe3BRY/UrQZ1GVx0NI/AAAAAAAAOQY/mW6ShXavg-o/s1600/palace2.JPG
ReplyDeleteAw, did somebody get an architecture book for his birthday?
ReplyDeleteI'm sorry, but I can't even finish reading the post without commenting on Goldberg's dreadful phrase "almost surely far more important." In his constant effort to fudge and hedge, Goldberg comes up with incomprehensible gibberish. If something is "far more important," there's no "almost" about it. So which is it, Jonah? Pick a side already!
ReplyDeleteI know he's just churning out his drivel for wingnut welfare, but ye gods, this is even lower than phoning it in. It reminds me of Oscar Wilde's quip: "Mr. James writes fiction as though it were a painful duty." So too with the Pantload's columns — though James, at least, could actually write.
The only flaw in your argument is that far too many of the families suffering in this economic trap don't have a clue as to which party promotes what policies.
ReplyDeleteAll they know is what they skim from the soundbites: Republicans favor tax cuts and making [that bad] big government smaller while getting "those people" to stop living off welfare; Democrats, well, Democrats aren't really in favor of anything identifiable, are they? Maybe higher taxes and big intrusive government with lots and lots of regulations.
Any wonder why Joe Average votes with disturbing regularity for politicians who implement policies that directly hurt Joe?
Umm, to Jonah's mind, that fudging and hedging is edging up to the point, a way of being sly and clever.
ReplyDeleteAs you say, though, the competent reader understands it to be gibberish.
And believe me, gibberish is Jonah's oeurve.
The irony is that it got a rise out of you.
ReplyDeleteLike I said: What he depicts isn't taking place on this planet--at least for the vast majority of people. I think Jonah get all of his info about what the current sexual zeitgeist is from reading Penthouse Forum and watching Girls Gone Wild.
ReplyDeleteHis magnum derpus.
ReplyDeleteOh, that's the yeast of my worries.
ReplyDeleteYou need big spandrels for a wide stance.
ReplyDeleteMost frat keggers are genuine sausage fests. They may not be bastions of left-wing discussion, but they're also not Roman orgies, either.
ReplyDelete"Hey Bruh, toss me another Bud. And while you're at it, could you write an eco-feminist treatise on the benefits of national health care?
ReplyDeleteNow you've got me wondering what the safe cruising altitude is for a cathedral.
ReplyDeleteCheck for orangey smudges on the manuscript, or the unmistakeable whiff of Cheeto-dust. That, more than style, is Jonah's telltale fingerprint.
ReplyDeleteThat is, unless writing can FAAAAARRRT.
I submit that if Johan had written the piece unaided, the title would be
ReplyDeleteThere are nine and sixty ways of consuming Frito-Lays, and every single one of them is right.
What I guess I don't get is why guys who aren't good at the whole extended courtship thing (the MRA crowd, in this case) pine for that era so desperately. If you want sex, or even a relationship*, without having to worry about a bunch of socially-constructed rules and pitfalls, now's a pretty good time to be alive.
ReplyDeleteI guess what they want is, as Mae West put it, a virgin who acts like a whore. Only difference is that she wasn't dead serious about it. Or more to the point, they want a girlfriend who will also be a mommy/maid/life coach.
I mean, I don't begrudge people their wildly unrealistic sexual fantasies, and if you can actually find a partner willing to do all that, then more power to ya. The problem arises when they start convincing each other that said wildly unrealistic fantasies are the natural order of things, that they've been taken away by a conspiracy of feminism, and the only way to get them back is to force women everywhere into that role.
Agreed, the wages/cost pacing is a disaster, and agreed, the Bush-era bubble was almost entirely a product of the zero-down buying spree that created a widespread culture of house-flipping. But, also, two incomes is a participating factor; before the bubble, the upward pricing trend was enabled, in part, by families having two incomes rather than one. Maybe in 2000 the double income was only worth 150% (I'm making up these numbers) of what a single income was worth in 1980, but that still enables price increases that almost certainly would not have been as steep had families remained single-income so that their purchasing power in 2000 was 90% of what it was in 1980.
ReplyDelete(You could argue that double-incomes didn't so much enable increased purchasing power as mask decreased purchasing power, but either way you argue it, the point I was hoping/failing to make in my earlier post was that conservatives are missing this argument altogether; they are too busy grabbing one part of the elephant and shouting "It's a rope! Woven of feminism!")
(Lots of other stuff impacted home prices; the building style of the late '80s, early '90s meant a lot of McMansions, featuring BS like 300 sq ft foyers; they increase the physical footprint of a family of 4, and that made land scarcer faster than necessary and drove up prices as well.)
I think it's more an issue of making on opinion safe for himself to hold. "Can I even think this? Is it too lefty? Well, Hayek would have probably approved, so I'm good."
ReplyDeleteLike Gromet said downthread, someone who feels obligated to use Hayekian market theory as a parallel to understanding sex and romance doesn't really have any business telling anyone else that their view of the topic is abnormal or wrong.
I would like to nuzzle this comment's blind arcade.
ReplyDeleteAutobiography comes with a sticky clutch and a very small shift stick.
ReplyDeleteDoing it in the apse is a good way to avoid getting pregnant... Cloister? I hardly know her!
ReplyDeleteYou're not one of those transeptuals, are you?
ReplyDeleteIf you'd said "shaft" I'd have thought you a nave.
ReplyDeleteYou've heard the phrase "a dumb person's idea of a smart person," right? That nonsense you quoted is a never-gets-laid person's idea of what a gets-laid person is like.
ReplyDeleteDo cathedrals fly? I thought they were largely ambulatory.
ReplyDeleteI would like to retrofit this Baroque cathedral of a comment into a condominium.
ReplyDeleteIf you modernize it too much everyone will wonder "was ist Loos?"
ReplyDeleteYeah, it's pretty awful.
It's the principle that Michael Bérubé observed, the one about "since 9/11, I'm outraged by Chappaquiddick." Wingnut is all or nothing.
ReplyDeleteGraham Nash seems to think they do.
ReplyDelete"I'm here to read you some pastorals."
ReplyDeleteShirley you mean preorals.
Nonsense, they started rhymin' and went from bad to verse.
ReplyDeleteNothing says "romance" like "modified version of the traditional process." Jonah Goldberg's pickup routine: Now ISO 9001 certified!
ReplyDeleteThe beautiful cathedrals of traditional manners and customs involved sundown towns, picnics where lynchings were the entertainment, and non-criminalized domestic violence. Tearing them down is no loss.
ReplyDeleteThe best thing to happen to the Austrian economy is when Hayek left. Unfortunately, he went to London.
ReplyDeleteWhich also reinforces my belief that ISO9001 was simply a way of pushing quality control onto the customer. That's what Jonah's been doing his entire career.
ReplyDeleteI think this is more about class anxiety and loss of class status than anything else. One of the chief MRA complaints is that men still have to pay for shit--like houses,cars, clothes in order to date and that their incomes don't keep up with their expectations or what they think of as the woman's expectations or the family's needs. Why do they need to "pay for stuff" during dates? Because (they think) women are still checking them out as good providers, as generous people, as potential husbands and fathers. Rather than thinking: yeah, that's right, everyone should kick the tires before they get into a long haul relationship they see this as yet another mountain they have to climb that they can't climb. Unlike their fathers they don't have high paying jobs--or not high enough for their dreams.
ReplyDeleteAnd yet they are committed to a relationship with women in which the women don't earn more than them and don't have the power in the relationship that they believe money should grant (to men). To live the life they want to live they have to be able to earn a good middle class salary or the former high blue collar salary and they also want to control their dates/women/and children through the power of the purse but the two income trap means that this can't really work. Both husband and wife are both enslaved to the mortgage and the kids needs.
Please do not ever ever ever put "Jonah Goldberg", "Penthouse Forum" and "Girls Gone Wild" in the same sentence again, because ew.... just ew.
ReplyDeleteAnd too convoluted and abstract, as has been said. My question is, Does anybody on earth believe this swill? It reads like a person describing a dream. NO examples. NO citations. Just "My Big Theory" unspooling on and on. I can't believe he (or whoever wrote it) didn't get to the end and say, out loud, "Jesus Christ, even *I'm* sick of this shit."
ReplyDeleteI think this came up in a dissection of some other ladies-stop-sluttin column: they think that getting married makes you turn conservative, not that conservatives are more likely to marry.
ReplyDeleteUnaddressed by Jonah is the implicit issue: if women "really" like romance, but "liberals" now only offer drunken hook-ups and consent forms, how bad must Republicans be as an alternative, that they're being rejected?
ReplyDeleteewww...stained glass.
ReplyDelete"Dummies Guide to The French Revolution", too
ReplyDeleteThe Temple of The Crystal Chicken Foot.
ReplyDeleteSure, in the herstory of political correctness there have been womyn and cis-men who have taken their seminal ovulal ideas too far, but we should not render ourselves visually challenged to the fact that something more fundawomyntal is at work here.
ReplyDeleteSay what you will, but no one can top Jonah for fart jokes.
Jonah is "sly and clever" in the same way my cat is when he thinks he's invisible in that grocery bag with his tail poking out.
ReplyDeleteI dunno about the Mores War, but I know Jonah lost the S'mores War...
ReplyDeleteAh, but in Doughy's imagination, they're bathed in soft light and they sort of hum with an electric vitality. He's like a real estate agent when the customer hears beams cracking in the basement, says, "don't worry, it's still settling a bit."
ReplyDeleteI'm kind of gobsmacked; this is actually an incredibly good point:
ReplyDelete"I wish more conservatives recognized that at least some of what passes for political correctness is an attempt to create new manners and mores for the places in life where the old ones no longer work too well..."
Unusual gender-neutral pronouns or trigger warnings are very similar to spoiler warnings or taking your hat off in church.
The rest of his article is pretty much gibberish, though. I mean, come on man:
I guarantee you more women prefer a modified version of the traditional process of wooing, courting, and dating before sex than the “modern” schizophrenic system of getting drunk enough for a same-day hook up but not so inebriated to forget to get a signature on the consent form.
Neither of those are things that actually, you know, exist. Look, there's billions of people out there, so I'm sure that somewhere a couple of people got drunk before signing their stack of consent forms, while meanwhile somebody else read his lady romantic poems while hoping she'd grant him her favor for the SFCA tourney on the weekend.
But not only have most of us never fit either of those stereotypes, most of us have had aspects of both. Big city liberals go on romantic dinners. Small-town conservatives get drunk and have one-night stands.
I legitimately have no idea why this is hard for people to understand; all you have to do to understand is look at the people in your life.
It might be more productive to talk about and criticize actual behavior instead of made up codes.
JG Smoove
ReplyDeleteI would like to invite this part of the comment back to my 10th-floor penthouse, because Damn.
things were so much better back then, and we'll never be able to change them back.All we can do is kick the darkies and sluts as hard as we can on the way down the crapper.
ReplyDeleteProgressives are steadily dismantling the beautiful cathedrals of traditional manners and customs, arguing that they’re too Baroque, too antiquated.
ReplyDeleteYou want to win voters? Give up on gay marriage and get angry about gender reveal parties.
"My theory, which is mine, is this." —Ann Elk.
ReplyDeleteThe little red squiggly lines always get caught in your teeth too.
ReplyDeleteI don't see why - it's still all about delivering to the correct pigeon-hole.
ReplyDeleteI hadn't heard the term "gender reveal parties" before.
ReplyDeleteI was hoping it'd be a college fad where everybody goes to a party wearing masquerade masks and baggy unisex jumpsuits and then at the end everybody takes off their masks and you find out the gender of the person you've been dancing with.
The real thing is kind of disappointing, in comparison.
I think it's only courteous for the wife to pretend that she isn't really earning half the money in this house so why the hell am I still the only one cleaning the frickin' toilet here?
ReplyDeleteDear Penthouse. As the proud owner of a 9-inch
ReplyDeletepensé...
"Why is this rewrite different from all other rewrites?"
ReplyDeleteI think the real worry they have is that as they, themselves, are going down the shitter the blacks, the browns, the gays and the women may be climbing out. And to the extent that they comfort themselves with the galtian/teenage fantasy that "one day you'll all be sorry! Nothing will work right anymore if I'm not in charge!" they are really worried they won't live long enough to see all of us get our comeuppance.
ReplyDeleteImagine my disappointment on discovering that Gothic architecture does not wear black lipstick and torn fishnet stockings.
ReplyDeleteDoes it have ... groin vaults? Nudge, nudge, wink wink!
ReplyDeleteAgreed! This is a major opening, not that it will ever be followed up: A conservative recognizing that acting like a dick isn't always attractive.
ReplyDeleteThat would be possible, if the French Revolutionaries had in fact demolished any cathedrals. IIRC, the Jacobins were more inclined to retrofitting Ancien regime architecture to new objectives -- exactly as Johan calls for -- which is where his "sexual liberation = Jacobins = sledgehammer-swinging vandals" architecture / morality metaphor breaks down.
ReplyDeleteActual wholescale demolition is more of a conservative middle-class preoccupation (merci, Baron Haussman).
Because in the grand old days of yore, no one had drunken pickups.
ReplyDeleteYet at the same time, a common anti-feminist screeds involves the termagant who insists on paying her half of the cheque or worse yet, the whole thing.
ReplyDeleteWomen who insist on paying for their half of a date are castrating shrews who do it on purpose to make men feel bad because it pushes the fact that the woman is independent and has a job in the poor man's face.
Also, every MRAan knows that women have to put out if a guy pays for the entire date, so going dutch is cockblockage of the worst sort.
Also some dumb bullshit about holding doors.
Really, whatever women do, they will bitch about it, because in their eyes a woman's chief crime is that she wasn't born with a dick.
I don't think he READS these things, just flips through and randomly writes down any shit that strikes his fancy.
ReplyDeleteYes, the stench of desperation is afoot in the land.
ReplyDeleteCornered rats not a good thing, however.
A woman's chief crime is that she isn't available when they want to fuck her, and that she hangs around when they don't want to fuck her.
ReplyDeleteUh, does it make me a bad person if I'm a little bugged (not "really worried," but irked enough) that I may not live long enough to see all of them get their comeuppance? (Esp. as their comeuppance is pretty much guaranteed.)
ReplyDeleteSo. Looks like a giant chicken footprint from the air.
ReplyDeleteHope there's a "No stone throwing, please" sign inside somewhere.
I thought our avian friends had but one orifice.
ReplyDeleteIt's like Jonah had all these metaphors just lying around, and he had to do SOMETHING with them. Like when you make zucchini bread because Christ, the garden just won't knock it off with the damned zuchinni, and you don't know why you planted so much, but it seems a shame to let it spoil or have liberal moochers sneak in and eat it.
ReplyDelete"Surprise! DICKS!"
ReplyDeleteAlso, bringing up Hayek is a hell of a panty dropper. The chicks, they dig a man that digs Hayek.
ReplyDeleteReally, whatever women do, they will bitch about itAh, yes, the proverbial "Snatch-22."
ReplyDeleteOr, as the MRA types might state: You don't need eyeshadow if I give you two black eyes.
ReplyDeleteOddly enough, other great minds thought the same.
ReplyDelete"They use the sledgehammer of liberation rhetoric to destroy the old
ReplyDeleteedifices, but their fidelity to liberty is purely rhetorical."
So when did Goldberg start talking about the Founding Fathers?
"They use the sledgehammer of liberation rhetoric to destroy the old
ReplyDeleteedifices, but their fidelity to liberty is purely rhetorical."
You mean like the Founding Fathers?
Jonah wishes his train of thought was that long.
ReplyDeleteBwok bwok! Keep pluckin' that ....
ReplyDeleteOr that women will just make up tales of rape--I guess because they really like going through the entire process just to have the college administration not take them seriously.
ReplyDeleteMaybe he 's assuming that once women get married to conservatives, the women will let the men do all the thinking and they'll just do/think/vote the way the men tell them to.
ReplyDeleteForget the blind arcade. After this comment, it's under-the-sweater action in the clerestory.
ReplyDeleteJust ask Lord Byron. Or... anyone in Greek mythology.
ReplyDeleteHe's so full of shit. He's just dropping names and hoping nobody will ask him what the hell he's talking about.
ReplyDeleteYet another variation of "smarty pants liberals were right but for the wrong reasons," which, of course, makes them the real fascists, racists, and/or sexists.
ReplyDeleteWhich is an assumption never before made with such detail and such care.
ReplyDeleteDrat, ya beat me to it!
ReplyDeleteEach of the Conservasphere's Holy Trinity (gag!) has his own acolyte/prophet:
ReplyDeleteHayek -> Goldberg
Oakeshott -> Sullivan
Burke -> Brooks
Each of these overpaid hacks regularly invokes his favorite "Conservative Intellectual" as a go-to talisman for perceived gravitas that he thinks will fool the rubes. A/k/a "waving Hayek (or Oakeshott or Burke) around."
"I hate the fucking Eagles, man!"
ReplyDeleteOops, wrong thread. Sorry.
Eh, it's a living. -shrugs-
ReplyDeleteU mad, bro?
ReplyDeleteYeah, McArgleBargle does that a lot, too. It's part of that "clever sophomore" syndrome that they never grew out of
ReplyDelete(hell, managed to parlay into a goddamn career).
But "punching down" just feels so good, even if it doesn't do any actual, you know, good.
ReplyDeleteThat's why he claims he didn't do the Israel/Ukraine beat, because he couldn't make them funny.
ReplyDeleteWell he's right, but I don't think he wants to follow that line of reasoning too far.
His crowd tells us that marriage will make you rich. I guess the newly-married, newly-rich will just spontaneously grow a "Fuck the poors" philosophy. Joined with "But don't give them your real number."
ReplyDeleteEverybody wave your Hayek in the air,
ReplyDeleteAnd shake it like you just don't care!
Their last collaborative effort was in a Howard Johnson's, and as related by a Sadly, Nosian who shall remain forever cursed, resembled "two brillo pads fighting over a hot dog - and not just fighting - but fighting to the death."
ReplyDeleteOr Ben Franklin, from what I understand.
ReplyDeleteThe problem here is you're trying to suss meaning from bullshit.
ReplyDeleteConservatives in the media, and in general, are not concerned with the veracity of any statement, argument, etc. Furthermore, they are not concerned that what they are saying can also be heard by people who are not stupid and who know it's bullshit. Being accurate is beside the point. Knowing your ass from a hole in the ground is beside the point. The only point in anything they say is that it helps them convince people who don't know any better and/or who are too lazy to check for veracity, or who also don't care whether what they have heard and now repeat is true or not. They are fundamentally unconcerned with reality or facts; their sole focus is on achieving a specific objective and convincing others to help them achieve it.
How is babby Government Fucking Centre formed?
ReplyDeleteFunny you should ask: I'll form the head.
See my screed re: bullshit, above.
ReplyDeleteI can picture Yossarian warmly embracing this comment.
ReplyDeleteYeah, you have to audition with Heather Graham in front of Burt Reynolds.
ReplyDeletePlease. The right has already been on about man on dog and man on turtle; we don't want to get them started on cloaca play.
ReplyDeleteYes - the Big Pop-Up Book of Architecture!
ReplyDeleteNo, that was The Crying Game.
ReplyDeleteMy money is on the large-print edition of "From Bauhaus to Our House".
ReplyDeleteGoldberg is exactly the person who would read Tom Wolfe and come away convinced that he was now an expert on the topic.
ReplyDeleteWhich actually may help to explain this week's drivel - didn't Wolfe write some crap about "kids these days" and their casual hookup culture? Jonah read it...skimmed it, anyway, and came away convinced that he was now an expert on modern dating culture.
"I guarantee you more women prefer a modified version of the traditional process of wooing, courting, and dating before sex than the “modern” schizophrenic system of getting drunk enough for a same-day hook up but not so inebriated to forget to get a signature on the consent form."
ReplyDeleteI'm guessing this this deeply stupid person's wife caught him playing in the meet-market with his brylcreem, cheap cologne, pick-up poetry books, whisky and consent forms, and he claimed in his defence that he was conducting some bizarre journalistic research into the mating habits of the 'traditional woo-women' and 'drunken schizophrenic' demographics.
His next article will presumably be about how 'some glory-holes are too low, and others are juuust riiight...'
.
Jonah talking about respect for women? Wonders never cease. Not that I believe it for a nanosecond.
ReplyDelete" 'When the rockets go up, who cares where they come down?
ReplyDeleteThat's not my department,' says Werner Von Braun." Who "aimed for the stars and hit London." So, pretty much the same thing, huh?
Not sure how this works: Do the upvotes mean you think I am a bad person?
ReplyDeleteWhoever wrote that should be forced to watch videos of the NR's Conservative Cruze Crisco Party until his or her head melts.
ReplyDeleteUndead, undead.
ReplyDeleteWhoops, wrong Bauhaus.
See for example the Bloom County strip in which Original PUA Steve Dallas tells a woman that he feels trapped in their relationship and wants out because he has to be free. He asks her how long they've been together. 20 minutes, she replies.
ReplyDeleteSteve sprawls over the bar and gasps for air.
The intended takeaways are a)Democrats are lying about a war on women to get women to vote for them. b)Republicans never lie and are sincere in their goals. c)Therefore, no war on women! d)Yeah, things may have changed, but women are still women.
ReplyDeleteIt doesn't make a lot of sense (and personally I'd prefer someone who cynically votes on my behalf to someone who sincerely votes against me) but it sounds sort of logical if you don't think hard.
Or as they call it over at LGM, his dumbprints. Which do not seem to be all over this.
ReplyDeleteYes. The tipoff is the "Unsportsmanlike Hayek"--a fifteen-yard penalty
ReplyDelete