The Proverbial Broken Clock

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Richard Cohen of the Washington Post is one of the worst newspaper columnists in America, or perhaps the world, and I usually try to avoid reading him, which only makes me angry. But the damned thing about Cohen is, about twice a year, he writes something sensible, and then I hate myself for agreeing with the old fool, as in his using the Steubenville sex-assault case to contextualize Miley Cyrus:

I run the risk of old-fogeyness for suggesting the girl’s a tasteless twit — especially that bit with the foam finger. (Look it up, if you must.) But let me also suggest that acts such as hers not only objectify women but debase them. They encourage a teenage culture that has set the women’s movement back on its heels. What is being celebrated is not sexuality but sexual exploitation, a mean casualness that deprives intimacy of all intimacy.

You can read the whole thing and see how Cohen manages to be annoying even when he’s right. Why invoke “the women’s movement” here?

It’s not as if, prior to the arrival of Betty Friedan and Gloria Steinem on the scene, American culture was all about twerking. Conservative opponents of feminism have never “celebrated . . . sexual exploitation.” You can’t blame Phyllis Schlafly for Miley Cyrus.

This is the kind of cultural confusion that makes “SlutWalk” such an exercise in feminist folly. Framing the issue in terms of “rights” and angrily demanding that the victimization of women be blamed entirely on men, the “SlutWalk” mob insists that women’s bad behavior — even prostitution — should never be seen as undermining the general dignity of women. Meanwhile, without any sense of irony, the rhetoric of “SlutWalk” tends toward the collective demonization of all men for the criminal wrongdoing of a comparative handful of thugs.

Strangely, the New Yorker magazine article about the Steubenville case that Cohen cites as context — “Trial by Twitter,” by Ariel Levy — basically vindicates Lee Stranahan’s reporting and arguing about the case: Alexandria Goddard led an online lynch mob on the basis of conspiracy claims for which there was no evidence, wrongly stigmatizing as members of a “rape crew” teenagers whose only real involvement was their presence at a party where a drunk teenage girl was certainly abused, but not actually raped. Levy writes:

One afternoon, I met Jane Hanlin in her office, around the corner from the police station, where she sat at her desk underneath a poster of Snoopy standing with an American flag. She told me that she had watched with increasing frustration as the story spun out of control. “Here comes Goddard, here come the bloggers, and we’re sitting here watching this, knowing that we can’t respond,” she said, because the case was still open. But by the norms of social media there is little difference between confidentiality and obfuscation; if something isn’t broadcast, it must be furtive. “If you do anything to say, ‘Wait until we get to the truth,’ you are ‘pro-rape’ — whatever that means,” Hanlin said. “You are part of a conspiracy, a cover-up.”

This was the basic problem: A hysterical witch-hunt fueled by Goddard’s ax-grinding and by rhetoric about “rape culture.” If you can read the entire article and still think the result was justice, you have an alarming deficiency of skepticism. Discerning the real truth of what happened that night, when everyone involved was hopelessly drunk and the victim herself had no clear memory, is perhaps ultimately impossible. But merely to admit the ambiguity of the situation is to risk the accusation of being “pro-rape,” as Hanlin said — “whatever that means.”

Some people are more interested in “winning” an argument than they are in getting the facts right. Finding myself compelled to agree with Richard Cohen isn’t as bad as rape, but it’s still pretty bad.

I’m a victim. Don’t blame the victim, haters.

UPDATE: Well, this is very interesting. Cohen’s column is now a Memeorandum thread with Gawker, among others, deliberately misrepresenting the whole point, e.g.:

Richard Cohen Thinks Miley Cyrus
Raped That Poor Girl In Steubenville

See? This is how the Left nowadays turns common sense into thoughtcrime. What Cohen was saying — perhaps not clearly enough — was that the youth culture in which Miley Cyrus ostentatiously sexualizes herself on national TV is the same youth culture in which two buddies take turns with the drunk girl at the party and her naked photos get passed around as cell-phone souvenirs.

Degradation of women transfers from pop culture to the basement of a house in Steubenville, Ohio, and the Left expects us to believe that the one phenomenon has nothing to do with the other.

God forbid anyone should express the common-sense view, but then again, the Left has also made mention of God off-limits.

 

58 comments

  4. I’m not sure what caused you to engage in self abuse this morning. Bored spitless?
    OTOH, Cohen is wrong about the “women’s” movement. It was all about sexual exploitation from the get go.

  5. They encourage a teenage culture that has set the women’s movement back on its heels.
    Actually, such things are the culmination of the “women’s movement.” It is/was about destroying the dignity and power of womb and substituting for it the tyranny of the vagina–indeed reducing women’s role as custodians of the future of Mankind to nothing more than some pleasure glands.

  7. “Degradation of women transfers from pop culture to the basement of a
    house in Steubenville, Ohio, and the Left expects us to believe that the
    one phenomenon has nothing to do with the other.”

    Started with Clinton not counting a blowjob as sexual relations.

  8. “God forbid anyone should express the common-sense view, but then again, the Left has also made mention of God off-limits.”

    Not only that, but common-sense has been relegated to quasi criminal behavior. I wouldn’t be surprised to see legislation introduced to make it a Federal crime, with severe penalties for the smallest of infractions.

  9. “with Gawker, among others, deliberately misrepresenting the whole point, e.g.:”

    “Richard Cohen Thinks Miley Cyrus
    Raped That Poor Girl In Steubenville”

    What the nitwit who wrote that Gawker headline in particular and the left in general lacks is intellectual discipline not to mention a sense of proportion. As luck would have it I’ve got some thoughts on the subject.

    One obvious solution would be to re-popularize the venerable “Colt’s Dragoon” chambered in caliber
    44.

    Carrying this pistol concealed might present a significant challenge but carrying a Dragoon “open carry” style wouldn’t be as difficult as one might suppose. First, most people wouldn’t even recognize the Dragoon for what it is and would assume it was some kind of toy or a prop. Not carrying it “holstered” has some advantages as well. Switching this “weighty firearm” from one hand to the other as one went through the day would provide a beneficial workout as well as accustoming one to handling it. If one were concerned about dropping it, having an attached lanyard solves that problem.

    Despite being mid-19th century technology the Dragoon still “packs a wallop” at close quarters even when compared to some modern firearms. The other redeeming characteristic of the Colt’s Dragoon is that it is an excellent tool for whacking those who do not, at the moment “need shoot’in”, an admittedly short list to be sure.

    It’s the combination of wallop and whacking that gives the Dragoon it’s particular utility in solving our civility/political discourse dilemma. For instance when some nitwit from the FBI is testifying on the hill, an individual who is supposed to be in “charge” of investigating the IRS but has no idea who or how many investigators are “working for him” or who has been interviewed…whack! When some random idiot uses the term “carbon pollution” in any forum…..whack! Senator Santorum, if elected president do you intend to abolish all forms of contraception?…Wallop.

    One might wonder how to utilize the Dragoon outside of the hearing room or press conference where most interactions are from multiple remote locations? Proxies! I’m thinking new personal service industry for the 21st century!

    I don’t mean to suggest that whacking Cohen would lead to Stacy agreeing with him more often but it could reduce how often one had to disagree with him.

  10. The current state of feminism: “We intend to behave in any way we choose with absolutely no restrictions, not even those of common sense, and any adverse consequences we meet are your fault!

  12. A little boy playing cops and robbers or cowboys and Indians (oops native Americans) runs the risk of becoming an assault weapon wielding mass murderer.
    BUT………………………….
    Thousands and thousands of hours of ‘Miley’ and others never, ever has any effect on the culture.
    There easy leftist logic.

  14. “God forbid anyone should express the common-sense view, but then again, the Left has also made mention of God off-limits.”

    Yeah, well, they’ve made common sense off limits, too, so there’s that….

  15. It’s taken 50 years of concerted leftist efforts, but we’ve now arrived back in Old Testament-type depravity, when the God of the Old Testament was unleashing floods and sweeping away Sodom and Gomorrah for exactly these sorts of things. It’s back, as I believe it is prophesied. No one talks about it, but there it is.

  16. Great minds think alike. I named my .44 Uberti “Civility” and my black powder First Model Dragoon “Discourse” (Because if you use it properly it resolves the argument, improperly it just clouds the problem up worse.)

    I’ll be naming my Tokarev “Comity.”

  17. What is sad, and I don’t know if you’ve seen is this, is five-year old girls imitating raunchy MTV music videos and the parents clapping, thinking it’s all fun

    What a heart-braking thing to see these kids being fed all this trash from the earliest age

  18. Now you’ve got that point wrong! The vote, education, work, more egalitarian personal relationships with men and within the family, and fighting against violence, especially related to domestic violence and sexual violence, were some of its primary goals.

  19. This is what is sad about current society: the liberal education system, the public system, is such a failure in forming adults that are not sexually perverted and perverse. The vacuum that was created by destroying the role of religious institutions in teaching morality was replaced by a liberal ideology that preaches sexual degradation and depravity, irresponsibility and crudeness as not only normal, but as liberation and progress.

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