MSNBC: How Long Until Phil Griffin Offers Keith Olbermann Fellatio?
Posted on | February 5, 2015 | 71 Comments
As much as we hated the King of Bombastic Liberal Self-Righteousness, it cannot be denied that MSNBC’s rating have spiraled downward since the network let Keith Olbermann walk out in 2011.
Hate him as much as you want — and I certainly do hate him — Olbermann was a franchise personality, and none of MSNBC’s moves since his departure have compensated for the loss of that evil bastard. Now we learn that a bloodbath is looming:
When President Obama was reelected in 2012, MSNBC was “leaning forward” and smiling wide as Obama 2.0 propelled it to record ratings and a firm grasp on the No. 2 spot in cable news.
Over two years later, the network has fallen backwards. January ratings revealed double-digit declines compared with January, 2014 in all ratings measurements. During the day, MSNBC was down 20 percent in viewers and 37 percent in the advertising-coveted 25-54 demo. In primetime, it fell 23 percent in viewers and 39 percent in demo. . . .
In January, [Chris Hayes] finished third behind Fox News’ “The O’Reilly Factor” and CNN’s “Anderson Cooper 360? in both total viewers and the demo. Among MSNBC shows, he finished third, behind Rachel Maddow and Chris Matthews. But Hayes’ struggles haven’t only impacted the 8 p.m. timeslot. Maddow’s 9 p.m. program has also slumped partly due to its weaker lead-in. In January, “The Rachel Maddow Show” was down 50 percent in the demo year over year. . . .
Ronan [Farrow] and Joy [Reid] — something has to change there,” another insider told TheWrap, adding that many within MSNBC believe one of the two — Farrow at 1 p.m. Reid at 2 p.m. — will see their shows canceled soon. The duo, who debuted on Feb. 24, 2014, have been major contributors to MSNBC’s daytime woes.
Last week, Farrow, 27, attracted just 26,000 viewers in the demo on Wednesday — finishing fourth behind HLN, CNN and Fox News. Reid’s program . . . has also struggled, partly because of the Farrow lead-in. On Thursday, it attracted just 36,000 demo viewers.
John Nolte at Breitbart comments:
Griffin is hoping to stop the bleeding when the dying patient is really MSNBC itself. The format of left-wing talk radio with pictures mixed with confirmation bias is tired and boring.
Morning Joe is in big ratings trouble. Ed Schultz is imploding. Since losing Chuck Todd to “Meet The Press” and replacing him with Jose Diaz-Balart, the impact of the “The Daily Rundown” on the day’s news cycle has vanished completely.
MSNBC is also dealing with CNN president Jeff Zucker’s decision to steal MSNBC viewers by turning his failing network even further to the political left than MSNBC.
Actually, I disagree with Nolte’s analysis of CNN. Most days recently, I’ve had my home office TV tuned to CNN and what they’re doing — very clever, actually — is picking one story (usually non-political) and hyping it hour after hour. Although wall-to-wall coverage of plane crashes and murders may seem dull to us political junkies, it has a wider appeal than the kind of fanatical partisanship that passes for “news” on MSNBC.
Grant that CNN is still a liberal operation, but they’re beating MSNBC with news, not politics. Or, to put it another way, MSNBC is losing with politics, not news. MSNBC has never been a news network. It’s a politics network and, six years into the Obama Age, the appetite for angry progressivism has been sufficiently sated that shuffling around personnel in the talking-head lineup isn’t going to fix what’s wrong.
What can Phil Griffin do, short of offering oral sex to Keith Olbermann in a desperate bid to bring back the old MSNBC magic?
- Give Rachel Maddow the 8 p.m. ET slot. I profoundly despise Maddow, yet my abiding hatred for her doesn’t prevent me from recognizing her unique market value as The Second-Most Famous Lesbian on TV (obviously, Ellen Degeneres is first). Make her the “face” of MSNBC the way Olbermann was back in the day. This would be a high-risk move, but when your ratings are as bad as MSNBC’s, risk is necessary.
- Make better use of NBC’s reporting assets. Instead of having your anchors do issues analysis and commentary with a bunch a pundits, start tapping into the local news-gathering mechanisms of NBC affiliates across the country. Look for stories out there in “flyover country” — Albuquerque, Akron, Allentown — that you can “nationalize” and rely on news reporting by NBC affiliates as a cheap and ready resource. Instead of having your anchors interviewing writers for Mother Jones or the Nation, have them doing live exchanges with an on-the-scene reporter in Wherever, USA, about an actual news story. Of course, your audience would prefer stories with a political angle, but the market for pure politics is finite.
- Expand your travel budget. Wherever else you have to cut corners to do it, you’ve got to start sending your marquee talent out on the road more often. Not just for the quadrennial political conventions and other “event” situations, but also to interact with your audience where they live. Find an excuse, a pretext, to have Maddow spend a week broadcasting from San Francisco or Seattle or Miami. Send Chris Matthews to Boston, Chicago, Philadelphia. Employ online social media to gather live audiences for these broadcasts, and make autograph-signing sessions part of the schedule before and after the broadcasts. A small network can benefit by these exercises in building ‘brand loyalty” among core viewers.
- Fire Ed Schultz. The World’s Angriest White Man has never been a real asset to MSNBC. He is a turn-off for your core audience of vegetarian bisexual anarchists with purple hair.
That’s my advice, Mr. Griffin. You’re welcome. Good luck.
The only alternative is to do whatever it takes to bring back Keith Olbermann, and I’m pretty sure that would involve you serving him breakfast in bed after he’s had his way with you.
“Affirmative consent,” the feminists call it.
I Played The Blues So Hard, Both Stevie Ray Vaughan And The Sky Cried #BrianWilliamsMemories
Posted on | February 5, 2015 | 13 Comments
by Smitty
I probably shouldn’t be such a mocker, but to have such a public figure as Brian Williams completely debase their integrity merits having abuse heaped about the head and shoulders.
I put on the spandex & platform heels and subbed for Gene Simmons for a few shows on the Love Gun tour. #brianwilliamsmemories
— IGotOverMachoGrande (@smitty_one_each) February 5, 2015
Is it true that I was Racer X back in those Speed Racer cartoons? Yeah, guilty. #brianwilliamsmemories — IGotOverMachoGrande (@smitty_one_each) February 5, 2015
Could Williams be as fake as BHO’s college transcripts?
I was in class at Columbia in ’83 with this Barack dude. I’m all: “Genius! This guy is totally Presidential timber.” #BrianWilliamsMemories
— IGotOverMachoGrande (@smitty_one_each) February 5, 2015
“You’re So Vain”
Yeah, Carly Simon wrote a song about me once. That strumpet. #HumbleBrag #brianwilliamsmemories — IGotOverMachoGrande (@smitty_one_each) February 5, 2015
Let’s not forget that Her Majesty likes her some stolen valor:
#brianwilliamsmemories So, Hillary Clinton and I are landing in Bosnia, dodging sniper fire so thick that Chris Kyle was all like: “Dude!”
— IGotOverMachoGrande (@smitty_one_each) February 5, 2015
Richard Simmons started to flex, so I took him down. #brianwilliamsmemories — IGotOverMachoGrande (@smitty_one_each) February 5, 2015
Jim Croce is always a good reference:
“…And then I said to Leroy Brown: ‘Pardon, sir: the missing pieces are over there in the corner.'” #brianwilliamsmemories
— IGotOverMachoGrande (@smitty_one_each) February 5, 2015
Cool Hand Luke is immortal.
“I ate 50 eggs.” #brianwilliamsmemories — IGotOverMachoGrande (@smitty_one_each) February 5, 2015
. . .as is Pulp Fiction.
“Yes, as a matter of fact, I do speak English,” I said to Jules Winnfield. #brianwilliamsmemories
— IGotOverMachoGrande (@smitty_one_each) February 5, 2015
I just love this one, with the avatar, handle, and tweet forming a trifecta of “Get stuffed, you blow-dried loser”:
Well, SOMEBODY had to get over Macho Grande. . . #BrianWilliamsMemories — IGotOverMachoGrande (@smitty_one_each) February 5, 2015
Replicating Failure
Posted on | February 4, 2015 | 102 Comments
The other day, we encountered Jillian Dunham, the 37-year-old who had her eggs frozen because she can’t find a husband.
Who is to blame for men’s unwillingness to become husbands and fathers? Could it be the phenomenon of “frivorce”? This portmanteau of “frivolous” and “divorce” was coined by Men’s Rights bloggers to describe situations in which a woman leaves a marriage that is not objectively bad, but which she perceives as failing to satisfy her emotional needs. The Douchebag Credo: “I gotta be me.”
One of the best books about the disastrous decline of the American family is Barbara Dafoe Whitehead’s The Divorce Culture. To summarize briefly a very complex argument, marriages are falling apart because people have forgotten what marriage is about, replacing traditional beliefs with what Whitehead calls the “love family ideology.” The decline of marriage is also part of what Christopher Lasch analyzed in The Culture of Narcissism as “a society that has lost interest in the future.” How does this manifest itself in everyday life? At Jenny Chancey’s Ladies Against Feminism blog, a commenter named “David J.” explains:
Ladies, here’s one of the biggest reasons, if not THE biggest reason, that Christian young men are leery of marriage: the behavior of their mothers — your Christian sisters.
My wife and I were married at age 21, two days after graduating from a conservative Christian college. We have three sons, ages 23, 20, and 16. The oldest graduated from a Christian college last year and is a 6th grade teacher. He is tall, good-looking, brilliant, fun, heavily involved in a very good church, and has many friends of both genders. But he is not even dating, let alone looking for marriage. My second son is a junior at a Christian college and will be going into law enforcement. He is also tall, good-looking, smart, hard-working, and very popular. He is playing the field, not dating seriously. The youngest is obviously not of marrying age, but he is seriously estranged from his mother.
The reason? Their Christian mother filed for divorce, without biblical grounds and contrary to our pastor’s and Christian marriage counselor’s advice, 4.5 years ago, after 26 years of marriage. She later withdrew that filing but then re-filed two years later. The divorce was final a little over a year ago. She immediately began dating online, then met, “fell in love” with, and married a twice-divorced man who lives 400 miles away — all within a span of 13 months. She has now relocated, taking our 18-year old special needs daughter with her.
My sons are shell-shocked, both by the unbiblical divorce (commonly referred to in the “manosphere” as a frivolous divorce, or a “frivorce”) and by the rush into an unbiblical remarriage. They are asking themselves why they should even contemplate marriage when their primary example of Christian womanhood and wifehood has demonstrated that nothing protects them from a unilateral, frivolous divorce at any time — not the law, not the woman’s profession of faith, not the input of Christian counselors, not the church (which is afraid to step in or “take sides”), not the length of the marriage, not even the interests of the children. Perhaps most importantly for this audience, my sons also saw that other Christian women will do nothing to protect them from a frivolous divorce.
I’ve learned that mine is not at all an isolated situation. In fact, two-thirds of all divorces today are initiated by wives, and only rarely for non-frivolous/biblical reasons.
So, if you really want to raise the level of interest in marriage for Christian young men and/or increase the number of potential suitors for your daughters, (1) don’t divorce their fathers and (2) don’t sit silently by while your Christian sisters initiate frivolous divorces.
Parental behavior communicates a powerful message to children, and how parents treat each other is part of that message. Bail out after four kids and 26 years of marriage? Why? Do you really think you’ll be happier as someone else’s third wife? You think he’s Mister Perfect, but his first two wives just weren’t good enough for him?
Many people see remarriage as a fresh new chance at happiness with a partner whom they should have chosen in the first place. But the statistics reveal that second or later marriages are much more likely to end in divorce.
Not only does marital failure replicate in this way — people who have divorced once are more likely to divorce again — but it also replicates in the subsequent generations:
The National Opinion Research Council conducted a survey of adult children of divorce that spanned more than 20 years. Here’s what they found: In 1973, adult children of divorce were 172% more likely to get divorced than adult children from intact homes. In 1999, adult children of divorce were only 50% more likely to get divorced than adult children from intact homes . . . which sounds like good news.
However, the bad news is that the survey also found a 26% lower rate of marrying in the first place among adult children of divorced parents. . . .
Children of divorce often experience expectations of failure, fear of loss or abandonment and fear of conflict throughout their lives. These anxieties are reflected in their romantic relationships by poor partner or behavior choices, giving up too quickly when problems arise or avoidance of any perceived level of commitment.
People see statistics like that and say to themselves, “Well, my choices won’t follow the trend,” but exactly where the hell do you think trends come from? Trends don’t cause human behavior, human behavior causes trends. Your choices, your decisions, your actions inevitably have far-reaching ripple effects on others, and yet narrow-minded selfishness causes people to think they can live according to the Douchebag Credo — “I gotta be me!” — without consequences. These are the same people, of course, who blame “society” for their problems without pausing to look in the mirror and realize they are part of “society,” too.
You can’t outsource personal responsibility. And failure replicates.
The Rape Culture …
Posted on | February 4, 2015 | 24 Comments
. . . no feminist can ever be bothered to notice:
Prosecutors allege Qayed Shareef, 39, pretended to be a teenage boy named Jeremy Stevens when he used an app called Tango to contact a 9- and 10-year-old boy, two brothers in Virginia.
“He basically just started it off, ‘Hey what’s your age?’ And within an hour, took it sexual,” said prosecutor Vanessa Woods.
“He sent photos and videos of himself, as well as pornographic videos.” Authorities say the 39-year-old then gave instructions to the boys to record each other and to him send the photos and videos.
“He was very specifically asking them to do various sexual positions, acts, show sexual body parts,” Woods said. . . .
Lt. Jeff Hallock of the Orange County Sheriff’s Department said Shareef likely had more knowledge on how to evade law enforcement because he “has an expertise in computers and IP addresses and Internet.”
Shareef, who has pleaded not guilty, is expected to return to court on March 27. He is being held on $2 million bail.
Should we lock him in a cage and set him on fire?
(Hat-tip: Eric Dondero at Libertarian Republican.)
In The Mailbox, 02.04.15
Posted on | February 4, 2015 | 2 Comments
— compiled by Wombat-socho
OVER THE TRANSOM
EBL: The Mattress Girl Saga Continues
Doug Powers: Obama Still Unclear On ISIS’ Ideological Motivations After Latest Act Of Barbarism
Twitchy: Gawker Writer Worries Execution Of ISIS Terrorist Might Get “Spun Badly”
Kipling Society: The Grave Of The Hundred Head (Does anyone doubt that Jordan’s King Abdullah knows his Kipling? – WS)
RIPPED FROM THE HEADLINES
American Power: Jordan Executes Prisoners In Retaliation For ISIS Burning Pilot Alive
American Thinker: Islam And Appeasement
BLACKFIVE: Book Review – Blood Infernal
Conservatives4Palin: The Big Lie – 5.6% Unemployment
Don Surber: Obama Was Also Anti-Vaccine. EVIL.
Jammie Wearing Fools: Draft Of Arrest Warrant For Argentine President Found In Dead Prosecutor’s Apartment
Joe For America: Don’t Want To Vaccinate Your Child? Then Maybe You Should Do This.
Pamela Geller: “Just Wait” – Islamic State Reveals It’s Smuggled THOUSANDS Of Jihadis Into Europe
Protein Wisdom: So.
Shot In The Dark: Saint Paul Republicans, It’s Go Time
STUMP: Causes Of Childhood Death (And Dickens)
The Gateway Pundit: Homeland Security Secretary Threatens Sheriffs – Obama Will Cut Their Grants If Congress Doesn’t Fund Amnesty
The Jawa Report: King Abdullah To ISIS
The Lonely Conservative: Will The Media Call The Democrats The Party Of No?
This Ain’t Hell: Not Balancing The Budget On The Backs Of Veterans
Weasel Zippers: White House Says Obama’s Upcoming Summit On “Violent Extremism” Will NOT Focus On Radical Islam
Megan McArdle: Government Blinks Again On Obamacare
Mark Steyn: Islam, Europe, And Free Speech
Lesbian Police Officer Accused of Illegal Sex With 17-Year-Old High School Girl
Posted on | February 4, 2015 | 84 Comments
Make her a “school resource officer.” What could go possibly wrong?
SEATTLE — A Bothell police officer accused of having sex with a girl she met while serving as a school resource officer has been charged with sex crimes.
Detective Dione Thompson is alleged to have first had sex with the girl when she was a 17-year-old student at Bothell High School. Thompson, now 45, has been charged with sexual misconduct with a minor, a charge meant to punish authority figures who have sexual contact with older children.
According to charging papers, Thompson had sexual contact with the girl in her patrol car, at the Bothell library and outside an Ivar’s restaurant during their months-long liaison. Thompson persuaded the student to move in with her for a time. . . .
Writing the court, a King County Sheriff’s Office detective said Thompson’s ex-partner reported the claims in August after the former student contacted her. Police then contacted the former student, who detailed the allegations.
Thompson first chatted with the former student by Facebook, then began seeing her outside of school in the summer of 2010, the detective said in charging papers. Thompson ultimately persuaded the student — who was facing “a lot of turmoil” personally — to move into the Shoreline home Thompson shared with her partner. The former student apparently lived there for some time. . . .
The former student told investigators Thompson broke off the relationship in February 2011. Recounting an interview, the detective said the student only recently realized the harm Thompson caused by misusing the power and trust given her.
You may be wondering why this teenager had “a lot of turmoil.” The young woman is under the delusion she’s a young man:
According to charging documents, the alleged victim identified as female in 2010 and 2011, when the alleged sexual misconduct occurred, but now identifies as male. Male pronouns are used throughout the charging papers to refer to Thompson’s alleged victim.
The allegations against Thompson came to light in August when the alleged victim emailed Thompson’s former domestic partner and wrote that Thompson had sexually manipulated him, the papers say. The domestic partner wrote the alleged victim, now 22, and told him she is mandated by law to report allegations of abuse, though the charges don’t indicate her profession.
She then contacted police in Shoreline, where Thompson once lived, the charges say. Shoreline contracts with the King County Sheriff’s Office for police services.
Detectives interviewed the former student, who was 17 and 18 when he had sex with Thompson in her unmarked patrol car, her personal vehicle and her Shoreline residence as well as at [Thompson’s] parents’ home in Arlington, charging papers say. They also once had sex in the woods off the Burke-Gilman trail between Woodinville and Bothell, say the charges.
The lesbian cop’s domestic partner is “mandated by law to report allegations of abuse” — perhaps a teacher or a health-care worker — yet thought nothing of Thompson’s idea of having this profoundly disturbed teenager move into their home?
A society under pressure to accept deviant sexual behavior as normal — the “Emerging Awareness” Doctrine that was the crux of the landmark 2003 Lawrence v. Texas ruling — finds itself unable to make necessary judgments. Decisions about who should be entrusted to supervise vulnerable young people are among the most important decisions in any society. The vast majority of people (more than 97%, according to federal research) are heterosexual, and the vast majority of sex offenders are also heterosexual. But for many years, our society has been under pressure to accept homosexuality as normal, so that anyone who objected to a lesbian policewoman being appointed as school resource officer would have been condemned as a homophobe.
“Discrimination! Hate! Prejudice!”
So, hey, here’s a teenage lesbian –a young butch who subsequently decides she wants to be a man — having personal “turmoil” at home, and she’s becoming unusually friendly with the lesbian cop. Maybe the tolerant and enlightened staff at Bothell High School viewed this as a sort of beneficial mentoring, but if anyone suspected anything was wrong with this situation, what could they say? If this had been a male cop who seemed to be getting too friendly with a teenage girl, no one would hesitate to raise an alarm, but how dare you suspect a homosexual of inappropriate interest in a minor?
Some things are predictable and some things are not, but when you destroy moral tradition, don’t be surprised by the unhappy results.
Ideas Have Consequences, and bad ideas have bad consequences.
BONUS IRONY: Powerpoint slide show about “Sex Offender Community Information” produced by . . . Detective Dion Thompson.
Harvard Sluts and the Thought Police
Posted on | February 3, 2015 | 60 Comments
Badger Pundit called my attention to a column in the Harvard University student newspaper by freshman Nian Hu:
I am a feminist. I believe in the equality of the sexes. For me, feminism means freedom: freedom to dress the way I want, freedom to choose whether or not to get pregnant, freedom to say no to unwanted sexual interaction, freedom to have as many sexual partners as I want without being looked down on, freedom to be an engineer or lawyer or nurse or stay-at-home mom — basically, freedom to live my life.
Whoa. Never mind whatever point Miss Hu thought she was making. The “freedom” she demands involves prohibiting others from having their own opinions. If you disapprove of promiscuity — and most people do, whether or not they openly express their disapproval — then you have somehow infringed Miss Hu’s “freedom” to be as slutty as she wants to be. That is to say, Miss Hu believes she is entitled to your approval.
How will this “freedom” she demands be enforced? How can these Harvard sluts be sure that they are not “being looked down on” while they’re putting out for every random guy in Cambridge?
And this won’t stop at Harvard. Next thing you know, those tramps at Princeton and floozies at Cornell will be demanding that everyone also approve of their notoriously rampant fornication. Ivy League girls, with their high SAT scores and low morals, have a basic human right to know that they are not “being looked down on” while they’re hooking up with any dude who is willing to risk a case of chlamydia.
What percentage of them are Harvard girls, huh? These vile hussies are a public health menace, but you’re not allowed to look down on them.
The Thought Police are everywhere now, monitoring our minds to make sure we aren’t harboring forbidden beliefs and impermissible opinions. We must think only what the progressive elites want us to think, or better yet, not even think at all. Thinking is dangerous — although perhaps not as dangerous as having sex with a nasty Harvard slut.
In Which a Grumpy Lesbian Offers Her Feminist Understanding of Men
Posted on | February 3, 2015 | 49 Comments
You know, just once, it would be nice if we heard a married grandmother’s analysis of male psychology, sharing insights from her happy life with her husband, raising sons and daughters, observing their experience of dating and marriage and so forth.
Grant that men are always irritated by female criticism — it injures our pride and puts us on the defensive — but we might be willing to heed such criticism if it came from a woman who was successful in her own relationships with men. Instead we get lectured by emotionally unstable graduate students and various professional ax-grinders who have made careers of proclaiming their oppressed victimhood.
“The personal is the political,” and so feminist analysis nearly always emerges from the experiences of maladjusted misfits.
But why bring up Laurie Penny again?
No, let’s consult the amateur feminists of Tumblr.com. Here is Lost Princess of the Lizard People (“40 .. . gay, female . . . geek”) attempting to analyze Men’s Rights Activists (MRAs):
One of the funny things about MRAs is, many of their ideals seem self-contradictory — for example — not wanting to compete with women in the workforce, but at the same time, angry about female freeloading (I’ve even heard arguments that resent women for having sex work as an alternative to homelessness — totally ignoring the existence of men who do sex work — and that argue that women even take traditionally female dominated jobs away from men), They also tend to scream pretty loudly about their resentment of the traditional male role. They call women prudes on the one hand but sluts on the other.
It would seem this doesn’t make any sense. This is not what your chauvinist grandpa from Texas would’ve ever said; this is not the sexism we’re familiar with. It seems so ridiculous. Is anyone really this stupid??
Most seem like they’re espousing some kind of progressivism out of one side of their mouth and traditional chauvinism out of the other, and it seems so self contradictory …
What I am realizing is that no, these guys aren’t actually stupid. Many MRA attitudes are part of a larger, self-consistent world view. Let’s look at the things so many are into: a particularly radicalized form of atheism (rejection of traditional religions). Your chauvinist grandpa was all for organized religion. Objectivism, though strangely, from the other side of their mouth, they sound like they want a weird form of communism wherein they are just given accolades and raises and bonuses and kudos without ever earning them. Your chauvinist grandpa was too proud for that and even had a sense of fulfillment in hard work. And then there’s all the Libertarianism and anti-statism. Your chauvinist grandpa was an old school patriotic man, all for the military-industrial complex.
Instead of looking at MRAs only in terms of their misogyny facet, why not examine the entire picture?
They want to be aristocrats. They’re under the impression that this is the birthright of all white men. They don’t SAY this, but … it’s the only way their worldview makes sense, because from that point of view, the views that seemed contradictory, actually make sense. The “alpha/beta” (heirarchies), “Return of Kings” (an MRA site) brand aristocratic or even royal branding (this language pops up a lot) … it’s the only thing that makes this whole thing make sense.
This is a reason why arguments against them fail, because most people can’t figure out what their stand actually is, and get caught up in the vacillation. They listen hard to what’s being said but miss what was actually NOT said.
This is the only way that their superficially contradictory views make any sense. . If they were — they wouldn’t be competing with women, let alone other men, except very high status men. Any women they partnered with would come with their own wealth and *born* status (but low-status women of course would be sexually used and disposed of). They wouldn’t personally have to deal with the labor involved in running a household and they would be awarded kudos and pay without having to work overly hard for it.
Taken this way, their views about women become logically consistent, and fall into a consistent and logical frame work that accommodates their other views.
Thanks for your analysis, Lizard Princess.
As I’ve said before, I’m ambivalent toward the “Men’s Rights” movement. On the plus side, A Voice for Men consistently and directly opposes feminism, per se. This is very important.
For too long, the established Right has offered a neoconservative opposition to feminism that tries to win the argument by ceding the premise (i.e., that “sexual equality” is either desirable or possible) and offering women an ersatz “me too” Republican feminism. This is not the original (and successful) anti-feminism of conservative women led by Phyllis Schlafly. Nor is it even the anti-feminism of Jeanne Kirkpatrick, a real neoconservative who rejected the feminist movement because of its hostility to marriage and motherhood. While I appreciate the valuable work of Christina Hoff Sommers, her attempt to rescue the “feminist” label from the feminist movement was doomed from the start. The title of Dr. Sommers’ most famous book poses a question: Who Stole Feminism? And the answer is, “Nobody.” Marxist radicals, abortion lobbyists and lesbian man-haters did not “steal” feminism; they were in control of the Women’s Liberation Movement from its very inception in the 1960s. Trying to re-define “feminism” for conservative purposes is futile and perhaps even dishonest. Our proper goal is to oppose feminism, and MRAs are willing to do so without apology.
On the negative side, however, the phrase “Men’s Rights” implies that males and females are necessarily antagonistic in their interests, an idea I reject. The problem, as I see it, is that feminists have wrongly intruded the political language of “rights” into a private sphere. Remember that the title of Kate Millett’s 1970 book (the first book produced by the Women’s Liberation Movement) was Sexual Politics — which is the problem of feminism summarized in two words.
FEMINISM IS ABOUT SEX!
POLITICS CAN’T SOLVE YOUR SEX PROBLEMS!
Excuse me for shouting in ALL CAPS there, but after more than four decades of failing to solve the basic problem they set out to solve, I think people need to wake up to the truth. Human nature is not infinitely malleable. Attempting to re-arrange society to accommodate the permanent discontent of professional ax-grinders has not solved their problem, because their problem is an inability to adjust successfully to normal adulthood. Instead, feminism has only created new problems for women, problems that did not exist before the Women’s Liberation Movement began its futile attempt to bring about an egalitarian androgynous utopia.
Is anyone surprised to learn that our Lizard Princess (“40 . . . gay, female . . . geek”) failed in heterosexual relationships — she speaks about an ex-husband, a marriage that apparently lasted less than two years — and has since experienced failure in her lesbian relationships? Valentine’s Day was always unhappy with her most recent partner:
This is the kind of sh*t my ex pulled about nearly all “special days”.
me: “So what do you want to do?”
ex: “Anything you come up with will be great” (note that it was always up to me to do the romancing; I was basically cast into the traditional male role in a lot of ways)
The day rolls around.
me: “How do you like it?”
ex, starry eyed and smiling: “Oh it was wonderful! I love it when you do that.”
Six months later:
Ex picks fight seemingly out of nowhere.
ex: “I knew you’d forget about ___ (insert random thing), you didn’t even remember what I liked for [Valentine’s Day].”
me: “Wait, I asked you what you wanted to do.”
ex: “there you go, you never remember our conversations, because you weren’t paying attention. I TOLD you.”
-or-
ex: “You did, but if you’d actually paid attention to what I like, you would’ve known. But you didn’t, and never do.”
me: “Well, I can’t read your mind.”
ex: “You didn’t have to read my mind, you just didn’t know me.”
Lizard Princess elsewhere complains:
Basically, my associations with relationships and [Valentine’s Day] are memories of painful awkwardness. It only tended to highlight how bad the relationship actually was, it was something we had to grin and bear until we broke up a week later. Seriously, most of my relationships have broken up a week or two after [Valentine’s Day] . . .
So yes. I F–KING HATE VALENTINE’S DAY AS A COUPLE HOLIDAY.
Every single [Valentine’s Day] I have is a day I count my blessings that I am not in a f–ked up situation and it feels like *fresh air*. And dammit, I do want to be healed and whole enough to love someone again, but I have really bad associations around [Valentine’s Day].
This is the woman, you see, who presumes to provide objective analysis of the “self-contradictory” ideals of Men’s Rights activists. She couldn’t succeed in heterosexual marriage, but she can’t sustain a lesbian relationship, either. It’s almost as if . . .
UNHAPPY PEOPLE ARE UNHAPPY
There’s your real bottom line. Do I claim to know why all of Lizard Princess’s relationships have been such hopeless bummers? No. As I said of Jillian Dunham, maybe it’s just bad luck or maybe it’s bad judgment.
Finding a good relationship requires either (a) an ability to recognize good character, or (b) an ability to cope with the particular character flaws of the imperfect partner you have chosen. Maybe also (c) a bit of both, because very few people are of such excellent character that their partner never has any cause for complaint. What you must avoid is situation (d) — being a flawed person who attracts other flawed people and yet is unable either to admit your own shortcomings or to accept your partner’s shortcomings.
The Lizard Princess’s complaints about her partners are not necessarily wrong, nor do I doubt that she might have identified something important about the mentality of many MRAs, in their ideal of an atheist libertarian aristocracy of Alpha males. The problem, as with most feminist analysis, is that we have unhappy misfits telling us what’s wrong with “society,” rather than having successful people telling us how to succeed and be happy in society as it exists.
Alas, the unhappy misfits are so full of envy and self-righteousness that none of them would listen to good advice if it were offered, nor can we expect them to ask happy successful people to share the secrets of our success and happiness. (Hint: People used to tell me I acted like I was God’s gift to women. I seldom bothered to explain that it’s not acting.)
And what’s with this site calling itself “A Return of Kings”? When were we ever deposed and overthrown? Our reign has been continuous, no matter what that chattering rabble may say.
Speaking of A Voice for Men, Pierce Harlan reports that a New Jersey grand jury has declined to indict five students at William Paterson University who were accused of gang rape.
The accusation was false? But . . . I thought women never lie about rape.
"Romance is rape embellished with meaningful looks." — Andrea Dworkin, 1979 pic.twitter.com/I1x50oclJi
— Robert Stacy McCain (@rsmccain) January 30, 2015
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