Sunday, September 21, 2014
NEW VILLAGE VOICE COLUMN UP...
...about the Rice and Peterson NFL scandals, and how conservatives have turned the relevant issues from corporal punishment and domestic violence to femmie liberals versus butch real Americans. These celebrity controversies are not very good teaching tools and, as I've said before, I'm sick of these guys attributing decisions made by risk-averse corporations to liberalism, but at least this time the psychological twists kept it amusing.
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Rich Lowry: "It may be that these cases are ways to express a deeper discomfort with the NFL, which sacrifices men's bodies and minds for our viewing pleasure every week."
ReplyDeleteApparently it hasn't occurred to him that it's entirely possible to be appalled and outraged by domestic & child abuse while at the same time, being concerned that thousands of men are subjecting themselves to long-term brain damage for the viewing pleasure - and profit - of others.
At Hot Air Jazz Shaw
ReplyDeletesaid the "dog pile on the NFL in general and Commissioner Roger Goodell
in particular" was "not dissimilar to the general gang mentality which
has so many broadcasters ready to pile on the police in every nook and
cranny of the country in the wake of the Ferguson case."
-------------------
And Jazz is playing against someone with DeSean Jackson in fantasy football, so there you go.
~
'sports journalists,' the majority of whom are decidedly left of
ReplyDeletecenter, are much less guarded about their hostility to conservatives
than their fellow progressives on the political beat
True, as witness, say, the restrained deliveries of such people as Rachel Maddow and John Stewart.
general gang mentality
ReplyDelete*dogwhistle*
Look at this lieberal, just piling on:
ReplyDeletehttp://mbouffant.blogspot.com/2014/09/this-week-in-local-law-enforcement.html
~
Golub was about one outrage away from rhapsodizing about Aryan racial characteristics. I understand a little better now how easy it was for Germans to become partners in genocide.
ReplyDeleteApparently the default setting for anything and everything conservatives don't like is "LIBERAL BIAS!!!!!"
ReplyDeleteRains on your golf day? The weather has a liberal bias.
Too much starch in your shorts? The dry cleaner has a liberal bias.
Dentist finds two cavities? Tooth decay is a form of liberal bias.
What an odd and disabling way to go through life.
McCarthy's quote is what struck me the most. We're all familiar with the Right's ability to pivot instantly from one thing to another, and it's ability to forget what was being said mere femtoseconds before. But this is a work of staggering genius: "All those liberal TV people I've been complaining about aren't nearly as liberal as all the TV people I haven't been complaining about until right now!"
ReplyDeleteHave pity on Rich. He finds it impossible to hold more than one thought at any given time, and his Manichean worldview means everything must be one thing or another entirely separate thing. Thus, you can either decry domestic abuse, or you can worry about footballers' scrambled brains. But not both--that would be hypocrisy.
ReplyDeleteIn the same way that Cons take every admirable human action, label it "conservative", and conscript it into their little culture war, so is "...the breakdown of
ReplyDeletethe family, the scorn heaped on chivalry, the disappearance of manners,
and the general coarsening of our society [the] result from relentless
progressive attacks on traditional values and institutions." If they're not projecting, they're deflecting.
"... in one study churchgoers self-reported less domestic abuse than non-churchgoers. Libs hate God, so case closed!"
ReplyDeleteIt's nice when, before you report it, you get to define it first.
".. Corporate America is prone to roll over (up to a point) for liberal
ReplyDeletepressure groups. They do so in part because corporate American is,
itself, liberal..." That explains all those diversity programs -- and
now they're going to teach married people not to beat each other up!
What is this, Russia?"
Actually, it seems like the current crop of wingers would be quite happy in Russia...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Domestic_violence_in_Russia
If you need more, Duke said, "just consider feminist dogma. Liberals assert that men will treat women better if we scrap antiquated ideas such as chivalry, thought to be condescending, and passionately embrace notions of equality, which, liberals insist, means teaching boys to treat the sexes the same. Let's translate this: so we're telling little boys to treat girls the way they would other boys. And how might that be?"
ReplyDeleteIt's funny - most of the men I've known have gone their whole lives without cold-cocking anyone of either gender. The ones who have usually ended up leaving the building in handcuffs. And yet, I'm to believe from social cons and MRAs that this is normal behavior, and only chivalry stops every man (brutish and violently impulsive as we apparently are) from going on a face-punching frenzy.
I guess my parents raised me weird.
Maybe you didn't read the Peterson kid's Facebook page. Suspended from pre-school for farting in class ... pulled a girl's hair TWICE ... takes selfies in a darth vader suit ... the kid was one no-good little asswipe. Peterson is the true victim here.
ReplyDelete"The problem with this particular cultural conversation," said Lowry's colleague Nancy French, is "it's hard to conduct it rationally while looking at the photos of a little boy's legs. Peterson said he went overboard in his spanking that day. He didn't do it right."
ReplyDeleteFrench probably has a point there. When it comes to child abuse, it's so much easier to discuss hypothetical children being abused by their hypothetical parents. How are you supposed to talk about the philosophical concepts and discipline and obedience when some non-imaginary kid is getting the shit beaten out of him? I swear, nothing ruins a good abstract argument like concrete suffering.
It occurs to me that, within the last year or two, we've have extensive discussions about brain injury in professional sports. One group roundly mocked this as "sissification" and "nanny statism." Not naming any names, I'll just point at Lowry's employer and whistle.
ReplyDeleteThat litany really stood out to me, too. Because as usual, conservatives are great at defining what the REAL problem is, while short on providing any idea on how to correct it. So McCarthy pooh-poohs the idea of teaching young men that domestic abuse is not OK, and replaces it with...no solution.
ReplyDeleteAlso, too, there's *never* been a case of religious people deliberately not reporting crimes by their co-religionists or anything like that. ;)
ReplyDeleteWhiskey Fire should get a prize for the most epic headline:
ReplyDeletehttp://whiskeyfire.typepad.com/whiskey_fire/2014/09/like-scooping-live-maggots-out-of-your-bellybutton-catching-steve-doocy-sniffing-your-underpants-or-.html
"Like Scooping Live Maggots Out of Your Bellybutton, Catching Steve Doocy Sniffing Your Underpants, Or Tasting a Rush Limbaugh Sausage Burp, Only Much, Much Worse"
The thing being described above? Lanny Davis defending Goodell...
We're an onion of EVIL - you just keep peeling layer after layer, more and more EVIL, and we make wingnuts cry.
ReplyDeleteAnd we're delicious battered & fried.
They make sausage from Limbaugh?
ReplyDeletetakes selfies in a darth vader suit
ReplyDeleteOH THE HUMANITY
Good grief
ReplyDelete"Chivalry." That's about as far as it goes for McCarthy. It's a variation on the classic theocon argument, which basically boils down to "If people would agree to stop doing X, then X wouldn't be a problem anymore." Well...yeah, is that your entire plan?
ReplyDeleteNancy French:...it’s hard to conduct [the conversation] rationally while looking at the photos of a little boy’s legs... I could tell you a hundred cases of people spanked as children who turned out quite fine. (I’m one example, yes — with welts and all.) But stories of spanking administered carefully and lovingly are honestly not that interesting. The Left, of course, knows the art of spinning a tale, and their story doesn’t even have to be true to be effective.
ReplyDeleteExactly. Take away the prejudicial photos and you're left with a neat set of unbiased facts that the Left can't spin no matter how hard they might try: A 300-lb. football player whipped a 4 year-old boy badly enough for the kid to end up in an emergency room where a doctor reported the injuries to the police. See? When you lay it out like that, you deny the Left the chance to paint it as something more than a spanking administered carefully and lovingly.
They do so in part because corporate American is,
ReplyDeleteitself, liberal..."
Sooooooooooo, lemme see. Schools? Liberal. Media? Liberal. Courts? Liberal. Government agencies? Liberal. Europe? Liberal. Asia? Liberal. Medicine? Liberal. History? Liberal. Women? Liberal.
And now corporations are liberal. Sure sounds like conservatives have a genuine problem: Everyone and everything rejects what they believe. I wonder why that might be happening?
They always euphemise the unthinkable, Pere.
ReplyDeleteThey do so in part because corporate American is,
ReplyDeleteitself, liberal
Is it just my faulty memory, or was there a time once when words actually had meanings?
Firm Biblical discipline in line with god-given gender roles is not domestic abuse.
ReplyDeletean onion of EVIL
ReplyDeleteAllies of allium!
Shapiro: "the name of the Washington Redskins matters far more to Native-Americans than the nearly half of Native-American youths who drop out of high school".
ReplyDeleteThis must be what the latest edition of The Playbook of Wingnut Voter Outreach advises since 'the only good injun is a dead injun' has inexplicably failed to work for them.
.
Peterson "went overboard"? Too bad he didn't drown. I feel sure that Ms. French thinks she is defending Peterson by pointing out that he could have done the whipping so much better if he'd done it "right."
ReplyDeleteOn our side, I think the phrase "beating the shit out of" the kid is actually a little too general (or generic). "Whipping a 4-year-old until his legs and genitals were bleeding" is not only accurate, it's also more vivid. It also should shut up the concern trolls who fall onto their fainting couches, whining about "civility," when you utter a naughty word like "shit."
More like "battered into nonexistence".
ReplyDelete*brain shuts down*
ReplyDeleteCommissioner Goodell is tall, handsome, white, male and married to a beautiful blonde wife. He also has perfect hair. He is everything the liberal media loathes
ReplyDeleteIs this an accusation of reverse-racism?
An expression of Freudian homoerotic envy?
A projection of Freudian homoerotic envy onto progressives?
Anything?
Also Roger Goodell's hair is like a bad comb draw away from becoming Donald Trump's.
Shorter Shapiro: This thing liberals are complaining about is . . .LOOK!!! at this completely unrelated thing.
ReplyDeleteI think this goes along with the Right's inability to understand the concept of consent. It's all just points on a continuum, so what's the big deal? A spanking is no worse than a whipping that produces injuries requiring an emergency room visit is no worse than beating the child until it dies. Some people come out from that quite fine!
ReplyDelete"I don't even mind you screaming that it's my fault. I'm used to it, and anyway we both know the truth."
ReplyDeleteIt's why we love the big lug.
Dead squirrel!
ReplyDeleteI think Humpty Dumpty had an opinion on that.
ReplyDelete"What about NOW's indifference toward, if not acceptance of, the late Sen. Ted Kennedy's sordid record of disgusting behavior toward women?"
ReplyDeleteYes, whenever there's a national story about someone mistreating women, I always immediately ask myself, why don't we talk about something a guy who's been dead for five years did thirty years ago?
(And, just as a matter of curiosity because I'm too lazy to google - did Teddy in fact have "a record" of disgusting behavior toward women? I mean, yeah, Chappaquidick, but I don't recall that he was a habitual offender or sexual harassser - feel free to correct me if my memory is wrong.)
Unless they die.
ReplyDeleteAnd then they're with Jesus!
Flashing gang signs, too, I hear.
ReplyDeleteWell of course they see themselves as history's heroes, standing bravely against the moochers and looters and "low-info voters" who they regard as basically worthless. And that's their fellow-Americans; foreigners barely rate as subhuman. Don't underestimate the utter contempt that many conservatives have for actual people. It's apparent in so much that I read online every day. In fact many are compulsive contrarians who would find fault with anything supported by the majority, just to demonstrate how superior they are to the common herd.
ReplyDeleteAnd transforming nursery rhymes into rap. Check his YouTube page. A Michael Brown in the making and his daddy was doing society a favour.
ReplyDeleteWhile Packwood would be a goddam Blue Dog nowadays, when he was busily frenching the unwilling he was an even more goddam Pubbie. (/pedant)
ReplyDeleteConservative King Canutes, commanding the sea of progress to recede even as it laps up around their ankles.
ReplyDeleteThe thing I don't get is all the cable networks bending over backwards to put child abuse and domestic violence apologists on the air. What the fuck is that all about?
ReplyDeleteWhy, they have to have "both sides" of the issue, gag barf.
ReplyDeleteL.A. School Police Dep't. will return grenade launchers but keep rifles, armored vehicleThe most depressing thing about that headline is that it's partly good news.
ReplyDeleteAnd, yet, these are the same people who are convinced that the "knockout game" is a dangerous national phenomenon. I guess that violent attacks are only acceptable when wealthy people inflict them.
ReplyDeleteThat's almost exactly how Buckley described it.
ReplyDeleteThere's nothing more in line with God's policy than some old-fashioned smiting.
ReplyDeleteI could tell you a hundred cases of people spanked as children who
ReplyDeleteturned out quite fine.Why, thank you, Nancy. However, I think that in many of our cases it's despite the spankings, rather than because.
(I’m one example, yes — with welts and all.)Uh, Nancy, you're not actually helping your point here.
Its the usual authoritarian preference for what they see as bright lines/strict rules over confusing themes or goals. So what he mesns by chivslry is "dont hit girls ever." But feminists have pointed out that there are lots of wsys to abuse people that are not a punch in the face, and that the ptohibition has never in luded "non ladies" or " unimportsnt/unprotected" women and that its voluntary not mandatory so doesnt always work. So a better solution yo the problem is to expand the consciousness of potential abusers to include empathy and concern for everyone around them and to strengthen legal prohibitions against violence. But somehow we are the dreamers who dont understand how the world works.
ReplyDeleteIf you need more, Duke said, "just consider feminist dogma. Liberals
ReplyDeleteassert that men will treat women better if we scrap antiquated ideas
such as chivalry, thought to be condescending, and passionately embrace
notions of equality, which, liberals insist, means teaching boys to
treat the sexes the same. Let's translate this: so we're telling little
boys to treat girls the way they would other boys. And how might that
be?"
How about not teaching little boys to inflict physical harm on other boys? And I'm a guy who actually teaches little kids how to fight.
Ironic, considering Golub is not only Jewish, but received his B.A. from an institution called the University of Judaism.
ReplyDeleteSelf-hate is an even cushier gig than hate of others.
If I'm writing like William Buckley, it's time for me to gut my fingers off & feed 'em to the cats.
ReplyDeleteSorry for the terrible typos. On my phone and editing is possible.
ReplyDeleteYes, this "If hte Librulz like it, we don't" reflexive gear-grind of theirs seems to have become entirely brainstem.
ReplyDeleteLike a crocodile, but with worse breath.
.
Yep, if there's anything I hate more than a man with...perfect hair? Oh, FFS, dude, Romney lost. Get the fuck over it.
ReplyDeleteI got out of the boat and swam to Andrew C McCarthy Island. Wow. His read of the NFL domestic violence scandals as being an elaborate plot by "the Obama left" can't even be considered paranoia. His real fear, the one that he can't even acknowledge, is that something out there might not be about him.
ReplyDeleteI'm both appalled and amused that whenever I read posts about equality on reddit, the one statement I always seem to see made by guys in support of it is then they'd be able to hit women, seemingly without consequences. Nothing else is more important than to be able to hit women, I guess, just like guys can knock each other out during an argument and it's just boys being boys.
ReplyDeleteCommissioner Goodell is tall, handsome, white, male and married to a beautiful blonde wife. He also has perfect hair. He is everything the liberal media loathes.
ReplyDelete*cough* tortured homosexual longing *cough*
Is it because Rice's victim was black herself?
ReplyDeleteThat's probably a part of it. There's also the fact that while they might see Rice as a thug, he's a monetized thug. Makes all the difference.
There's definitely a race / class angle at play here. It's interesting to note the conservative response to the "culture of violence" arguments being put forth. Some of them are acting like "culture" is just some figment, which is hilarious. These are the same guys who, mere weeks ago (or on any given week in some precincts) were going on and on about the corrupted African American culture - you know, that singular black culture that we have. For that matter, some of them are the kind of social cons who can't pass two weeks without rambling on about oversexed television or the hippity-hop music or the murder simulators. Yet all of a sudden, we talk about people a bit farther up the socio-economic ladder, and suddenly it's "What is this 'culture' of which you speak?"
ReplyDeleteWhat's changed is that now we're talking about elements associated with middle-class white America - you know, "boys being boys" or "rough and tumble play" or whatever the current euphemism for young men assaulting weaker individuals is these days. Sadly, in many places, that is a part of the middle-class experience - and there are always going to be assholes like this who actually defend it.
He had a younger relative who was probably a rapist and an even more distant relative who probably didn't kill his girlfriend but got convicted of doing so. So I guess the principle is that you're responsible for whatever anyone in your family does. You know, like George W Bush can be blamed for his grandfather doing business with the Third Reich.
ReplyDeleteFrench is upset that we're talking about Peterson at all and not some Platonic ideal of spanking - with love, not in anger, as described in any of James Dobson's astonishingly detailed child flogging manuals. Interestingly, I've seen some discussion as to whether Peterson was following those guidelines, and it looks like he was - Dobson says you have to hit your child until he cries, and Peterson said he had to hit his child harder because he wouldn't cry. Incidentally, Dobson also advises parents to resume striking their children if they cry for too long, and I can't imagine why some people have a negative view of evangelicals if this is their leadership.
ReplyDelete"He proposed instead that we focus on 'the breakdown of the family, the scorn heaped on chivalry, the disappearance of manners, and the general coarsening of our society that result from relentless progressive attacks on traditional values and institutions.' If only boys opened doors for girls again, there'd be no need for this reprogramming!
ReplyDeleteWell, if you want to get technical about it, Ray Rice did carry his fiancée over the threshold. (He just didn't stop to pick her up first.) Who says that good manners are a thing of the past?
The man knows his audience. Which is a punishment in itself when you think about it.
ReplyDeleteAs long as we're having the conversation, Ms. French, we might bring in what research has shown for some time now: spanking delivered carefully and lovingly and honestly leaves traces as well:
ReplyDeletehttp://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/the-me-in-we/201202/how-spanking-harms-the-brain
Of course, a relative paucity of gray matter might explain Sean Hannity.
Have you ever read any books by right-of-center child experts? For reasons I won't get into now, I've actually read a bunch of them. All of them emphasize techniques that are supposed to reduce violence in boys and young men, but the key is how they define "violence." They'll often describe physical altercations that are considered acceptable, and they use plenty of euphemisms to describe fistfights - "Rough and tumble play" being a personal favorite (That one roughly translates as "The recess monitors aren't going to help me today"). Read between the lines, and you'll see that what they're claiming to stop is felonious violence - stabbings, shootings, bone-shattering battery. While they aren't necessarily pleased with fistfights and similar violent acts, they seem to view them as a natural part of being male and offer minimal advice on how to stop it.
ReplyDeleteGranted, I'm bitter and hardly objective here, but for some of these guys it seems like being an asshole is a selling point. I recently tracked down a book by one conservative-leaning expert whom I first heard about over a decade ago. For one of his case studies (and I'm still not convinced that he didn't make these things up), he described a boy enduring some truly awful bullying - and taking it surprisingly well. The guy suggested that it was the kid being bullied who had the problem - namely, that he liked reading and music, and if his parents had forced him into sports when he was a kid and "disciplined" him more (for excessive reading I suppose, since the case study claimed he never got in trouble), he wouldn't have turned out to be a sissy.
I've only read excerpts from those exercrable "train up a child" books. I'm a judo player, so a lot of what we do is teaching little kids to tumble, then we throw them for a while on "crash pads" to acclimate them to falls. The instruction comes eventually, with an emphasis on etiquette and safety. If you hurt your partner, you can't play- it takes two to practice. It may sound weird, but we fight out of love, for fun and camaraderie.
ReplyDeleteI had one father of an eight year old tell me about how the local bully, an older, larger kid, was pushing down the local kids until he got to his son. His son was able to throw him consistently. First time, the bully thought it was a fluke, so he tried it a couple of more times. He was unhurt, but he was confused and had suffered a serious diminution in status, so he left, perplexed and embarrassed. The best part of it was that our little hero wasn't even mad or flustered at the bully, he looked at the whole fray as a game, one which he won.
Dobson says you have to hit your child until he cries
ReplyDeleteI am SHOCKED to learn that the goal of Dobson's pedagogy is to teach children to fake their emotions if they don't want to be hit.
He is everything the liberal media loathes.
ReplyDeleteAnd everything little Andy McCarthy wanted to be.
If only Peterson had consulted John Yoo.
ReplyDeleteCan i hit Dobson until he cries? Please? Or have him arrested for publishing child porn? I guess Jesus is too busy to let him know he's missed the whole point....
ReplyDeleteIts practically foreplay--with the right verses.
ReplyDelete"Carrying women across the threshold?" Would that be tbe custom honoring the rape of the Sabines?
ReplyDeleteCan't think of Dobson without being reminded of this infamous excerpt from his book, Bringing Up Boys about how to nip any homo leanings in the bud.
ReplyDeleteMeanwhile, the boy's father has to do his part. He needs to mirror and affirm his son's maleness. He can play rough-and-tumble games with his son, in ways that are decidedly different from the games he would play with a little girl. He can help his son learn to throw and catch a ball. He can teach him to pound a square wooden peg into a square hole in a pegboard. He can even take his son with him into the shower, where the boy cannot help but notice that Dad has a penis, just like his, only bigger.
There ya go. Healthy beatings and frequent ganders at Dad's bigger penis. It's all good. What a great way to bring up boys without scarring them for life. Okay, maybe a little scarring, but that's what therapy is for.
Maybe Cleek's Law plays into this. Liberals were not as freaked by the knockout game as conservatives were, but we condemned it just the same. But domestic violence and child abuse get us squishy libtards all upset, so that means conservatives have to come out in favor of those things.
ReplyDelete". . .drinking a pina colada at Trader Vic's
ReplyDeleteAnd his hair was perfect."
And of course, knocking out your opponent in any argument means that you are right. As we all well remember, after Einstein told Schrodinger that "God doesn't play dice with the universe," the two of them went five rounds before Schrodinger knocked Einstein out cold, thus conclusively proving quantum probability.
ReplyDeleteIt starts by lapping around your ankles and finishes by ankling around your lap.
ReplyDeleteAs events remind us far too frequently, SDCs (self-described conservatoids) really do have no concept of consent; it is utterly irrelevant in their authoritarian tribal worldview.
ReplyDelete"Chivalry" is good while simple respect is not, because chivalry is a condescending attitude from one in power to those without power. It is one of the carrots in the "stick-and-carrot" strategy for keeping underlings in line.
Decent respect for another human being is something that SDCs know to be invented by outsiders bent on destroying their lovely hierarchy. They really do live in a world of unceasing competition and struggle in which individual power and tribal security are the only things that matter. Understanding that goes a long way to understanding the bizarrely violent and barbaric practices of many SDCs.
She's turned into an adult that views the beating of small children by relative giants as a justifiable thing.
ReplyDeleteFor sure those childhood beatings fucked her up.
knocking out your opponent in any argument means that you are right.
ReplyDeleteNot to mention threatening visiting lecturers with pokers.
He can teach him to pound a square wooden peg into a square hole in a pegboard.
ReplyDeleteIYKWIM&ITYD.
Before you know it, it knees up Mother Brown.
ReplyDeleteI think that, to the extent that liberals were not "freaked out" by the Knockout Game, it was because as bad as it was, we saw instances of it as isolated, rare occurrences, whereas Cons, as usual, wanted to blow it up into a spreading, far reaching commentary on how the Blahs were infecting civilized White society with their corrupt, degenerate culture. Given that we haven't seen any evidence that incidents have been increasing in frequency , I think that we can conclude that, once again, the Cons are full of shit.
ReplyDeleteJustice Dumpty in Alice et al. v Red Queen et al., 1872
ReplyDeleteChappaquidick is kind of a big deal. The woman died. And even if Kennedy's story is 100% true, it's still an awful situation.
ReplyDeleteBut I don't know that NOW is indifferent to it.
He also seems to have had a drinking problem for a while, but I don't know that he was a habitual harasser.
Let's just call that a "rule of thumb."
ReplyDelete"People with weak stomachs. . ."
ReplyDeleteOf course they're for corporal punishment (and capital punishment) for other (mud) people. To them, punishment is the reward.
ReplyDeleteThe Grand Unified Theory that indexes and explains the entire right wing is one phrase: "Show of Force." Private issues, public issues, applies to both evenly.
ReplyDelete"Show of force" was at the heart of the "shock and awe" strategy that was supposed to cow the countries of the Middle East into becoming democratic. Still working on that one, I guess.
ReplyDeleteYup. Lesser beings understand nothing but force, you see. Arabs, children, girls, Negroes... gotta teach 'em what their place s'pose' to be.
ReplyDeleteWait... wasn't "Fifty Shades of Grey" one of the Lost Verses that didn't make it into the Bible?
ReplyDeleteI think that's exactly right. It's all about the hierarchy.
ReplyDeleteBTW, the progenitor of modern conservatism, Edmund Burke, pulled the "chivalry" maneuver in 1790. Basically this: oh yeah, you believe in equality, French revolutionaries? Well, you didn't seem too upset when poor Marie Antoinette was arrested in her underwear! Now "the age of chivalry is gone." Traditionalists believe in _protecting_ women. Um, queens, in nighties, at least.
ReplyDeleteThis, from the PBS series on the Roosevelts:
ReplyDeleteIn 1901, after President Theodore Roosevelt dined in the White house with Booker T. Washington,
Senator [Ben] Tillman [of South Carolina] said, “The action of President Roosevelt in
entertaining that nigger will necessitate our killing a thousand niggers
in the South before they learn their place again.”
Not saying Chappaquidick isn't important in Teddy's history, but I was just curious how in right wing world, one truly horrible incident turns into a habitual record of ongoing offenses.
ReplyDeleteIt's weird that they could have such a profound sense of persecution by everything and everybody, since they also believe that they represent some kind of silent majority.
ReplyDeleteIt boils down to "we outnumber our enemies, yet they outnumber us."
As for the bleating about chivalry, I'm not sure why they think having a personal code forbidding beating women and children is not compatible with having laws against it. They don't seem to find laws enforcing their personal code incompatible on other issues, like abortion.
ReplyDeleteDon't get me started, but every aspect of American life these days seems increasingly punitive - harsh punishment is everywhere for everyone except (of course) the 1%, and punishments are 'way out of line for what they're punishing. One is almost tempted to use the "f" word.
ReplyDeleteYou'd think I wouldn't be surprised by these folks anymore, but I'm still a little stunned that "don't beat women and children" is shrugged off as "political correctness."
ReplyDeleteI thought they were all supposed to become democracies when we "liberated" the Kuwaitis back in '91.
ReplyDeleteSee also: charity vs. social service programming. The ostensible saintliness of the charity-giver masks the desire both for the gratitude of the needy and the implicit power to withhold.
ReplyDeleteYes, if NOW had just addressed this single incident, they wouldn't have had to deal all these years with domestic abuse, equal pay, sexual harassment, and women's health, snerk.
ReplyDeleteAnd now DWI is considered a big deal and a crime, and public opinion is unanimous about it being bad. Shouldn't domestic violence receive the same zero-tolerance approach?
ReplyDeleteI'm kinda getting the feeling that South Carolina isn't one of the "stay and let's organize to make it better" states.
ReplyDelete"All these gubmint regulations are makin' it impossible for the white man! Except for that one, it's special."
ReplyDeleteJack Cashill:
ReplyDelete"Had Ferguson's Michael Brown -- all 6'4", 295 pounds of him -- grown up in a halfway functional household"
Michael Brown was set to go to college, you loathsome shit.
We're talking about people who's last presidential candidate took it upon himself to shove a sharp object in the face of a kid for looking to queer.
ReplyDeleteFor these people, using terror to induce masculine conformity isn't just acceptable, it's a noble calling.
Mark Levin is a middle-aged Eric Cartman. MEEEEHM! OBAMA ATE MY CHEESY POOFS MEEEEEEHM!
ReplyDeleteGood lord but the goyim have some strange idea's about men's hair.
ReplyDeleteAre we sure that this wasn't a pull quote from "Rassenkunde Des Deutschen Volkes?"
ReplyDeleteThanks to the threading I thought you were still talking about South Carolina and I was like 'ha ha, no'
ReplyDeleteEveryone[below me] should be beaten, but virtually "dog-piling" on Goodell is a bridge too far.
ReplyDeleteBingo. All the people who were raised by Dobson's techniques say that the trick was to learn how to fake anguish so it wouldn't last very long.
ReplyDeleteYES! See, 'cause violence is okay, as long as you're beating poors or blahs, but criticizing a rich white guy is beyond horrible.
ReplyDeleteI wasn't denying Brown's upbringing, my point was that- hi, Cashill, he *was going to college*. He *had made something of himself*.
ReplyDeleteBefore he was murdered, of course.
I think Tigrismus was trying to amplify your point by showing that if either person's background was to be examined and questioned, it should have been Wilson's.
ReplyDeleteMost peoples opinions are correct. If you don't believe me, just ask THEM.
ReplyDeleteConservative response: "Blah blah low blow blah blah water under bridge blah blah behind him now argle foofaraw."
ReplyDeleteJust look at the corporal punishment God inflicted on his own son.
ReplyDeleteHa, oh wow. Monday reading comprehension. Comment deleted.
ReplyDeleteNot when you're "represented" by Nikki Haley, Huckleberry Graham, Trey Gowdy, Jim DeMint, Joe Wilson...
ReplyDeleteI found this part of the VV column interesting:
ReplyDeleteJack Cashill at American Thinker also had a Ferguson angle: "For all its controlled violence, football provides young men, many of them from troubled homes, with all the discipline they will ever know," he wrote. "Had Ferguson's Michael Brown -- all 6'4", 295 pounds of him -- grown up in a halfway functional household he would likely be alive and playing offensive tackle for some college today." Probably would have gotten out of some traffic tickets as well, unless liberals have ruined that for us too!
What is the evidence that Michael Brown's parents didn't engage in the corporal punishment that Adrian Peterson and his family did? That is so common in the US that 70 percent of the people surveyed said they found nothing wrong with it? Does Jack Cashill seriously want to argue that the only thing keeping Michael Brown from attending college on a full football scholarship was a lack of parental physical abuse? Why assume his parents didn't beat him? By all accounts he was, in fact, a rather gentle, docile person--perhaps they beat that into him? What about littler, skinnier, kids from ferguson whose parents did beat them? Didn't that magically produce some kind of college prep and income that would have impelled them into college?
Adrian Peterson's parents apparently beat him and yet he came from a pretty dysfunctional family, as far as I can tell--one of its forms of dysfunctionality was violence. Just because he found a job through it doesn't mean that it was functional.
That was the upbringing of the cop that killed him.
ReplyDeleteConsensual affairs = sexual predator. See also Clinton, William Jefferson.
ReplyDeleteSame as one sign at a Occupy protest gets turned into the entire philosophy of every liberal everywhere.
ReplyDeleteWell, we are kind of shrill.
ReplyDeleteDidn't mean to imply anything, there - The above chunk of text is merely my attempt to explain why it is that so many conservatives don't seem to be bothered by boys injuring each other. To summarize, what differentiates conservative child-rearing manuals from those aimed at other groups is an emphasis on what they claim are immutable gender differences in behavior. Among boys, the main one is competition as resolved through physical aggression. Per most of these books, stopping fistfights is not just futile, but potentially harmful. The most you can do is prevent your naturally combative boys from using weapons in those fights.
ReplyDeleteOnce again, I regret only one upvote per customer.
ReplyDeleteI see all the right bloggers are fuckin the Alinsky chicken again today.
ReplyDeleteI saw the knockout game as another aspect of toxic masculinity mixed with despair and adolescent, unformed, brain development. My recommendation for the knock out game was the same as it is for every form of toxicity in this society: less violence in the home, better education for parents about parenting and better education in every way for all children, an empathy based/child led curriculum, jobs for everyone who wants them, universal headstart, pre-k, and kindergarten, subsidized meals at school, extensive free afterschool activities for kids right through adolescence, anti-violence and anti-rape and anti-racism education. Did I leave anything out?
ReplyDeleteWhere conservatives and I part company over the "knockout game" is that 1) I doubted that it was ever limited to a single racial group or reflected some kind of essentialist race pathology, 2) I didn't think it was of epidemic proportion or nearly as dangerous as plenty of unremarked forms of violence against other people including workplace conditions and violence towards children and the homeless, and 3) I don't spend any of my time shrieking at the top of my lungs that someone else should DO SOMETHING ABOUT THE CURRENT OUTRAGE DU JOUR.
football provides young men [...] with all the discipline they will ever know
ReplyDeleteI thought that was why they were supposed to go into the Army.
That, and the lack of jobs which is not no-how the fault of redlineing corporations, nu-huh.
Remember that in righty world bad things happen to people who deserve it. And workers, in general, are seen as absolutely freely accepting all risks of death or dismemberment associated with their jobs. So it does, indeed, strike them as improbable and unnecessary that liberals ever advocated for football players qua workers. And at the same time in righty world if one member of class X is bad, then all members of class X must also be treated as bad. So if one football player is abusive to his wife--feminists logically must consider all football players to be the enemy and thus rejoice in their suffering. Are you following yet? Because I can try to repeat that...allthough I'm getting a little dizzy and might have to sit....down....and...uhhhhhhhh....
ReplyDeleteOf course it is. In our decreasingly prosperous society, people with money and power have to work harder and harder for reasons not to share. Did drugs once? Looked suspicious to a racist police officer? Publicly protested? Got too close to a riot? Didn't get a good education? Any reason at all is good enough for HR managers to take a pass, for the police to take a closer look, for all the gatekeepers on the road to prosperity to decide to slam the door of opportunity shut.
ReplyDeleteThe first week I was at college, the college paper reported that a certain star football player (on an otherwise shitty team, I should mention) had been arrested for the fourth time for a violent offense. It seems he was an ugly drunk, and at parties he was known to fly into a rage and attack people with little provocation. Incidentally, one of those four offenses was for punching his girlfriend.
ReplyDeleteWe may never know why the discipline didn't stick in his case. What, you think he got used to powerful people covering up his offenses? Shut up, Commie.
Its an absolute cliche of online comment forums that "kids these days" aren't disciplined and that is why they are "so much trouble" and "so noisy" unlike any kids, ever. But I never see any evidence of this at all. The pro-beating AA story is that white kids are badly behaved and talk back to their parents but that good, well raised, black kids are disciplined and know how to behave. Meanwhile white people believe that black kids are undisciplined and noisy and dangerous because their "families" (or whatever they call them since obviously there's no such thing as a family in the non white community) don't discipline them enough. Discipline also is a code word for "strong male authority figure" since when you dig down into comment threads gay parents, single parents, or female headed households are always believed to "lack" a "strong male authority" capable of correctly terrorizing kids.
ReplyDeleteBut one of the things that puzzles me about these accusations is that they are often leveled by people in their fifties and sixties--people who claim to have disciplined and even beaten their own children. So they are complaining about the grandchild generation--what happened to all that good discipline and its good results? Either there were always people who didn't whup enough or whupping wasn't enough in many cases.
What I really meant to say is that there is also an enormous, obvious, difference between the kinds of discipline that the Sean Hannity's and the Peterson's are talking about and the kind which sane people want to see in their kids. Hannity and Peterson's form of discipline is all about instantaneous obedience and fear of specific authorities (Parents). But it isn't supposed to extend--and doesn't extend--to people outside that rank. Hannity learned to fear and avoid/respect his father but he's an obviously shitty person to everyone else who isn't "in authority" over him. Peterson expects instant obedience from his four year old but probably also expects obedience and respect from a lot of people and is used to trying to get it through threats of violence.
ReplyDeleteI guess what I'm saying is that you can beat your child into docility and compliance with you and your whip--but the kinds of people who do that accept a very high level of violence in their families and in societies as natural. And the chief virtue which they inculcate with these "daddy beatings" is respect for age/race/masculine authority. That leads younger males to seek the same power, through the same means: violence. Beatings are part and parcel of what anthropologists and students of southern culture see as a touchy, honor based society in which some kinds of individuals (men, white people) must always protect their honor through violence and through forcing lower members to submit to violence.
I think it was from "The Boy From Impanema."
ReplyDeleteTillman's role in the Hamburg Massacre established him as a leading
ReplyDeletefigure in the white supremacist movement. His involvement, about which
he boasted constantly in future years, was the cornerstone upon which he
would build his political career, first as governor of South Carolina
and then, for 24 years, as a United States senator
I suppose we should at least take solace in the fact that they can't brag about such things anymore.
Or, is it only projection until you get to the turtles?
ReplyDeleteMy favorite part was that Davis wasn't getting paid for it. Coming to the aid of rich clods is Lanny Davis's hobby. That or he's working on spec.
ReplyDeleteI know what you mean, but I can't get worked up about that kind of thing unless there are actual Sabines around. I have to worry about so many things that I haven't got any energy to spare to worry about the Sabines — I'm pretty sure they are a thing of the past.
ReplyDeleteI could tell you a hundred cases of people spanked as children who turned out quite fine.
ReplyDeleteThings that hundreds of children survived and turned out quite fine: pretty much every horrible thing that has ever happened to humanity. If kids were not as astonishingly resilient as they are, the world would be in basically a permanent state of violent anarchy. This is not an argument for the many, many things that a substantial percentage of children can live through and turn out "quite fine."
No, that's what Jesus is for. Gotta create your market.
ReplyDeleteWell, most of them do live in places where almost everyone in the county has been fed the same opinions. They can't fathom how their entire non-TV experience might be slightly skewed.
ReplyDeleteI think it's taken from the scene in "Triumph of the Will" where the commissioner of Germany's downhill skiing federation heroically stumbles through a press conference.
ReplyDeleteKoch Industries, Inc., is totally liberal.
ReplyDeleteRelative paucity?
ReplyDeleteIt's so much easier and more profitable than programming, say, news.
ReplyDeleteI kind of feel sorry for anyone who turns every goddamned thing that happens into some kind of political ideology.
ReplyDeleteThe authoritarian need for bright lines and strict rules. It's why in Conservative Bizarro World, liberals are tyrants for pointing out shades of gray.
ReplyDeleteWingnuts, being totalitarians at heart, must view everything through ideology.
ReplyDeleteSo let me get this straight. People who decide to make a career of writing about politics are usually left-leaning… and people who decide to dedicate their working lives to writing about football, hockey, and the PGA are the most blatantly leftist people there are?
ReplyDeleteHis assertion that sports journalists are all raving lefties is so crazy that, as you say, it can't even be considered paranoia. In years of reading right-wingers ranting about "the liberal media" I've never seen the idea floated that sports journalists are all raving lefties.
ReplyDeleteSports journalists are ridiculously moralistic and traditional as a rule; eventheliberal Keith Olbermann sounds like a John Birch Society member when he's talking about steroids or free agency in baseball.
Of course, sometimes the bright line is IOKIYAR, it's not OK if you aren't.
ReplyDeleteI see what you are saying, and don't entirely disagree, but honestly I think for most participants in ChivalryWorld, it is less a power play and more a sort of panic button attached to a fully loaded resentment gun. "I held the door, I pulled out the chair, I picked up the check, so I did all the things I am supposed to do as a worth male; now I get laid… wait, what?? She thought my conversation was dull, with shades of assy, that I didn't really listen, and she couldn't see a future?! BUT I DID WHAT I WAS SUPPOSED TO DO! WHY THAT NO GOOD--" Having a clearly delineated set of tasks to perform is a huge asset for a guy who is maybe not that adept at navigating unclear waters. And of course, having an automatic resentment defense ready to go when the date doesn't work out is a lot easier than spending years meeting a bunch of different kinds of women, and being a friend to some and dating others, so that you figure out how to be decent enough and interact well enough that it doesn't matter who opened the door.
ReplyDeleteGreat, thanks for the "Seven Brides for Seven Brothers" earworm. Oh well, I guess it's better than yesterday's "New Zoo Revue" earworm.
ReplyDeleteTall, and white, and handsome and male
ReplyDeleteThe Boy Named Roger Goodell comes where
You can see his pretty blonde wife and
His perfectly coiffed hair....
Shorter whetstone: a hundred cases? Do you fuckers have any idea how many people are in a humanity? Get back to me when you can show me a billion people who turned out fine after repeated beatings.
ReplyDeleteYou know who else killed someone in a car accident? Laura bush.
ReplyDeleteWasnt meaning to criticize you--just pointing out that one man's romantic chivalry is another man's droit du seigneur.
ReplyDeleteJust don't cross the Savannah river. It's just as bad over here.
ReplyDeleteSay what you will about "boys will be boys," but at least its an ethos.
ReplyDeleteYup to all of what you said.
ReplyDeleteAbuse is not discipline. it doesn't teach kids the difference between right and wrong, or enable them to develop some self-control and judgment. All it does is teach kids that they have the right to express their anger by hurting someone else, and then blame the person they hurt.
I love you guys.
ReplyDeleteAlso: this is exactly the attitude they have towards gun control. Sure: Newtown was a horrible massacre (or Gabby Giffords and a bunch of people were shot dead/injured) but why start down that slippery slope and start talking about preventing horrible massacres or random shootings? Why won't you confine yourself to only discussing my gentle hypotheticals about grandmothers protecting themselves from carjackers and elderly veteran sharpshooters who protect the neighborhood from maraunding injuns?
ReplyDeleteThis is a very profound observation for someone whose avatar is a goofy looking tiger--not that I'm one to talk.
ReplyDelete"Protip: next time try the rubber hose."
ReplyDeleteI'm partial to the old bag of oranges, myself. Jim Thompson's The Grifters is chock full of great parenting advice!
"Here, wrap these oranges in this towel."
ReplyDelete"Sure, Dr. Forrester. What now?"
"Just call me 'Bobo', Frank."
Thank you so much for reminding us of this fact--I had forgotten in in the torrent of shit and disinformation that the right wing dropped on the people of Ferguson, Michael Brown and everyone in the country.
ReplyDeleteOK, sure, and you know I love you Gromet but for fuck's sake just as feminism is not a dating service neither is Chivalry. In fact you have to be chivalrous (theoretically) to lots of people you don't intend to fuck. You have to open doors for *old ladies* and you have to be nice to children and puppies too--not just hot babes you want to induce into bed.
ReplyDeleteI actually can remember dating prior to dating and marrying Mr. Aimai and being nice and generous to the person you are dating is pretty much a universal requirement of the job, performed by both men and women who want to get into each other's pants. Its not a fucking favor that somebody does for your unworthy, awful, disgusting, self its just the way normal people behave when they are around people they want to please, whose company they enjoy, whose company they want to pursue. If its too much trouble to be a mensch to the person you are dating perhaps one ought to shift gears and go into raising mushrooms in the basement, or subscribing to porno magazines, and not get tangled up with real, live, people.
I notice that none of the examples provided by Roy are making the very, very British upper class assertion that sport builds character. Even that one, in the context of Rice and Peterson, is a bridge too far.
ReplyDeleteUltimately, this is what the NFL is trying to preserve--something that was probably never true, but the mythology of it is essential to the authoritarian, that physical discipline is a force for good. One sees it in virtually everything the right wing espouses--the military, the family, the nation-state, domestic and foreign policy. So, when it seems that real life intrudes on the myth, puts the lie to the myth, there's an immediate response, a need to prop up the myth (in these cases, by blaming some other group, some other philosophy, for the bad behavior).
But, then, defending myths is what conservatives do, and do rather well.
Right--as workers have become increasingly superfluous to modern capitalism society is more and more willing to see people thrown away or pushed to the margins. Right from the get go--children of the upper classes are given innumerable chances to make mistakes and muddle through while everyone else is simply discarded, marked down, jailed, or killed.
ReplyDeleteTo paraphrase (not by much, though) the one Indiana GOP candidate: "Why won't the poor just wither and die?"
ReplyDeleteAs a minor aside, Micheal Brown DID play football as a sophomore, and was in jr ROTC as a freshman. He followed a course people like Cashill approve of, yet they still can't help but vilify him. Ah well, if only he'd lived to beat his kids.
ReplyDeleteYeah, I reckon it is.
ReplyDeleteThere ARE some differences, though. South Carolinians are more likely to make their barbecue with that mustard-based sauce, for example. (Personally, I like it either way.)
The "coulda been playing football" thing only makes sense if you realize that anyone below the rank of very highly paid superstar is not given the exemption from the "die ordinary sucker" clause. I was recently reading the (pathetic) news factoid that a young firefighter was killed when he participated in that stupid ice bucket challenge from on top of his firetruck's ladder (in other words with the complicity of his fire team/leaders). Unfortunately the aluminum ladder was too close to high voltage wires and the electrical current jumped and fried him. Here is a 1) firefighter, 2) young white husband and father, 3) engaging in a charitable act and yet many of the comments were unutterably cruel and basically said "who gives a fuck, he was an idiot who was also unionized and sucking off the government teat so what is the big deal?"
ReplyDeleteOnce Michael Brown was killed he fell into the single most hated and feared category of all in the US: people who have suffered a tragic death which make other people uncomfortable and cause them to wonder whether it may not be true that death comes to everyone, not just losers? This idea has to be pushed aside by assigning blame to the victim, so that the viewer can be assured that he/she can never fall into this category: mortal.
The law is for the lower classes who need it, and No True Conservative would ever behave that way towards a Lady because of the Code.
ReplyDeleteThe word villain originally came from an Old French word for commoner, and was used as a perjorative for any noble seen as behaving in an unchivarous way. Same principle here working as well.
There is a contiguous region of the state where that's not true, where they use a tomato-based sauce, thus leading to a little intrastate rivalry there.
ReplyDeleteShorter: "as long as our Christian boys don't kill each other with this "rough and tumble stuff", let them fight. It will make them better soldiers for Jesus".
ReplyDeleteHuh. I seem to have miscommunicated. I wasn't endorsing anything less than polite behavior. I don't even have anything against actual chivalry; I meant only that maybe for some people, polite behavior is not just the decency you extend to everyone, but is or is also a specific, codified set of protocols written into the way courtship should be conducted.
ReplyDeleteTo be clear, I don't imagine these people are so pathetic as to think "I will use door-holding to bed her," but I suspect they will collapse back onto chivalry's alleged evaporation from agreed-upon social mores as an explanation for why a date maybe didn't go well. I've heard a small handful of guys (2-3 over 20+ years), rant to the effect that they are great catches who were not appreciated by the girl they just took out because the girl didn't appreciate the correct things (such as, in these 2-3 cases, chivalry). We all know dating has its low points, of course; but I have the impression that chivalry's death can make a nice salve for certain lonely guys when they hit those low points. "It's not overly noble me who failed on that date; it's society." I could be way off, but we've noted here a million times that a perception that the Old Ways Are Dying is integral to the conservative/paranoid mindset, and that martyrdom and projection and lack of reflection are among their favorite best things.
So, I was not suggesting that chivalry = a good way to seduce. I also wasn't even trying to say most conservatives are bad at dating (or that us commies are always a lot of fun to go to dinner with). But there's more caught up in the concept "chivalry" than basic consideration (on dates or generally), and there's more to conservative rants about the loss of it than a simple wish that people were nicer. I am not always as clear as I think I am, but it seems to me that whether "chivalry" still exists or really is dying is beside the point. For me -- maybe the only person I can semi-effectively speak for -- well, to quote myself, the point is "to be decent enough and interact well enough [with all people] that it doesn't matter who opened the door [because you're consistently looking out for each other in so many ways]."
Crazy irony - I first found my love for mustard-based BBQ at a soul food diner up in Riverhead, NY.
ReplyDeleteMustard BBQ and limeades at Sonic are a couple of the few things that keep me sane down here.
HEATHENS.
ReplyDeleteThere oughtta be a moral rule!
ReplyDeleteI suspect what you two are aiming at tangentially is that the righties tend to use the tut-tutting about the End of Chivalry as one more brickbat to aim at feminism generally, and at their inability to gain vaginal access individually. They want a simple set of rules to follow that always pay off in a jackpot of getting laid, no trying to negotiate tricky emotional waters where the woman might get to say "no" even after all proper Chivalrous rules are followed.
ReplyDeleteMy "enhancing the contradictions" anarchist friend has recently gotten heavily into Men's Rights crapola, trying to convince me it is true egalitarianism. I guess I should have expected it after his explanation that the only reason he can live as he does (no car, shack of a house, part-time work at age 62) is because he never married. I'm thinking the "never married" thing has less to do with his perpetual desire to stick it to The Man than to the women he's known saying "eh, no thanks".
none of the examples provided by Roy are making the very, very British upper class assertion that sport builds character
ReplyDeleteHard to pull that argument off in a society where "sport" is something you watch, performed for your entertainment by a tiny class of well-remunerated but disposable gladiators.
Luckily, bad apples are so soft the bit goes in real easy.
ReplyDeleteyou have to be chivalrous (theoretically) to lots of people you don't
ReplyDeleteintend to fuck. You have to open doors for *old ladies* and you have to
be nice to children and puppies tooAimai, you seem to be accepting the implicit claim that 'chivalry' / 'traditional morality' extended its sheltering umbrella of protection-in-exchage-for-ownership to children as well as the ladies. But I don't think that's really part of the Unwritten Code. As noted above, violence against children is an integral part of 'traditional morality'.
If conservative bloggers are to be believed, high-profile cases of child abuse stem from the decline of an olde-worlde morality that encouraged child abuse.
Nu?
ReplyDeleteWell...I'm accepting, arguendo, Gromet's claim that opening doors and generally acting like a modest Superman (truth, justice, and the american way) is a "thing" that young men experience themselves as offering up. I don't mean that it ever existed as a real thing. Chivalry, in the sense of "things that knights did" was pretty creepy, violent, and immoral by any of our modern standards and not to be confused with Chivalry in the sense of a "courts of love" sense.
ReplyDeleteThe beating of children, raping and killing of non "ladies" and beating and killing of non-nobles is a component part of real martial culture even if some deference was occasionally shown to some members of the aristocracy (male and female).
That's what tigrismuseses do BEST!
ReplyDeleteHa, well, the way you're characterizing it is not exaaaactly what I meant to claim about chivalry, Aimai, but it's closer to what I meant, and I'm realizing now perhaps I haven't thought through well enough what "conservatives" mean when they decry the loss of chivalry; I do like StringOnaStick's post above, and maybe today is just one of those days where I can't seem to speak except tangentially.
ReplyDeleteAs to your point about knights here, hell yes: I've read enough of the old medieval tales to see that in the original Middle English they were a lot more fuuuUUUuuucked up than the "Tales of Brave Sir Knight" as they've come to us today. I remember in particular an uber gory description of a horse cut in half by a cleverly timed portcullis drop, and a respected hero dragging his lady across the courtyard by her long blonde hair because [reason not remembered, just story's assumption that she had it coming]. At best, chivalry lifted that world above Relentless, Chaotic Terror one measly notch to Systematic, Seasonal Terror.
And even so there was probably some traditionalist grumbling in Old English, "Ach, these damned new regulations are killing us."
I always assumed that conservatives' lament at the loss of chivalry was based on the South's pretensions of having a chivalrous culture. And that their chivalrous culture was an attempt to whitewash, so to speak, their horrendous behavior to slaves. Because they were so dishonorable they had to pretend to have honor, because they treated women so badly, both black and white, they had to pretend they treated them literally with kid gloves.
ReplyDeleteAnd when I see a guy complain that he's a nice guy, a chivalrous guy, I have to wonder if he is compensating for they way he feels about women inside.