The Other McCain

"One should either write ruthlessly what one believes to be the truth, or else shut up." — Arthur Koestler

Rule 5 Monday

Posted on | August 4, 2014 | 8 Comments

— compiled by Wombat-socho

Unusually this week, Rule 5 got a shot in the, er, arm thanks to the Israeli punitive expedition into Gaza. A patriotic group of ladies (and a few men) bared their bodies, often inscribed with “I (heart) IDF” on the Standing With IDF Facebook page, which after a brief takedown by the libtards at Facebook returned with a big splash. Many of the photos are borderline NSFW – much like some of the links posted below, which is as much of a disclaimer as you’re getting this week.

Goodstuff leads off this week with Alien Morgan Fairchild and ComicCon Thailand, followed by Animal Magnetism with Rule 5 Friday and the Saturday Gingermageddon. Ninety Miles from Tyranny checks in with Morning Mistress, Hot Pick of the Late Night, and Girls with Guns; Blackmailers Don’t Shoot adds ComicCon 2014 Rule 5, and First Street JOurnal has the very topical Fighting For Their Flag.

EBL began the week with Rock & Roll Lifestyle (featuring Lyda Loudon), and followed that with ComicCon, Gal Gadot, Disney’s Princess Jasmine, Jennifer Rubin, Blake Lively, Fifty Shades of Gray trailer, Crazy Eyes, and Dana Loesch: Separated by Sanity.

A View from the Beach offered Isla Fisher – Dying for an Acting Job (Almost), Go Pro!, Eat Your Veggies – and Die, Jealous Old Crone Resents Competition From Lovely Young Rival, Butterfly du Jour, The Pole Dancing School, Foxes and Go Pros, “Hideaway”, and Cuties Dance. No cavegirl content this week, but too much Frazetta goodness would only spoil us anyway. 🙂

Soylent Refuge brought us coffee without dessert first, followed by a new linky-love contender, Monday Motivationer At The Beach, Evening Awesome String of Pearls, Tuesday Titillation With Tongue, Overnighty Window Dressing, Humpday Hawtness Hillary, The Wrong 4th Of July Celebration, Fursday Fiery Fantastic, Afternoon Aaaargh, Must Be A Southern Hemisphere Thing, Corsets Strings and Things, T-GIF Friday Scissors, Overnighty Awesome, WeekEnder Tinna, and Bath Night Buoyancy.

Proof Positive’s Friday Night Babe was Jasmine Walz, his vintage Babe was Linda Purl, and Sex in Advertising is covered by Coco Ho. Also, Sexual Harassment at ComicCon! At Dustbury, it’s Jessica Williams and Charli XCX.

Thanks to everyone for their linkagery! Deadline to submit links to the Rule 5 Wombat mailbox for next week’s Rule 5 roundup is midnight on Saturday, August 9.


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Category: Rule 5

Can Mitch McConnell Survive?

Posted on | August 4, 2014 | 108 Comments

Sam Youngman of the Daily Beast has a feature-style article about the annual Fancy Farm barbecue in Kentucky that is the traditional kickoff of the campaign season there, focusing on the Senate race between Mitch McConnell and Alison Lundergan Grimes:

U.S. Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell rolled up his sleeves and walked to the podium on stage at the brand new pavilion at Kentucky’s annual Fancy Farm picnic.
As McConnell geared up to rail against President Barack Obama and his “Kentucky candidate” Democrat Alison Lundergan Grimes, he began by noting that, “Fancy Farm is fun, but there are serious problems facing our country.”
“YOU!” someone in the crowd shouted for all to hear.

The real political analysis is way down in the story:

Grimes has struggled since Kentucky’s May 20 primary, and while the race is a dead-heat, McConnell has edged into a slight lead, claiming momentum but still falling short of 50 percent in almost every poll. . . .
[O]ne reason McConnell is ahead and still favored to win this race is that both he and the outside groups supporting him have run a relentless campaign to tie coal and President Barack Obama’s unpopularity (the Bluegrass Poll released last week showed the president at 28 percent favorable) to Grimes.
In Eastern and Western Kentucky, where coal fields are pitching in to supply 43 percent of the nation’s electricity and both Democrats and Republicans believe that Obama is trying to murder their industry, livelihood and culture, Grimes’ numbers are down as McConnell appears at this stage in the game to have found the right vehicle for his anti-Obama message.

You can read the rest, but this is the baseline in Kentucky: McConnell is consistently polling below 50 percent, an indicator of trouble for any incumbent. His Democrat challenger, however, has been unable to take advantage of McConnell’s weakness because Democrat Party policies are so far to the left — not just culturally out of touch with Kentucky voters’ values, but directly opposed to their economic interests.

So a weird sort of stalemate grips the campaign, and we await the turning point that will decide the election. The lamentable part of this situation, from the GOP perspective, is that McConnell and the National Republican Senatorial Committee have spent the past 18 months crushing the enthusiasm of grassroots conservatives, waging a campaign to exterminate the Tea Party. The arguably criminal — certainly dishonest and unethical — conduct of the Mississippi primary campaign to re-elect Thad Cochran was witnessed by every Tea Party activist in the country, Kentucky included. Every deceitful smear against Chris McDaniel in Mississippi was a deliberate “f–k you” to grassroots conservatives, courtesy of the D.C.-based Republican political establishment of which Mitch McConnell is the official leader. If it weren’t for this factor — the transparent selfishness and corruption of McConnell and his GOP Senate cronies — the Senate race in Kentucky would not even be close. The major obstacle to McConnell’s re-election is not the usual problem of wooing undecided “swing” voters; his problem is that many thousands of Kentucky conservatives have little motive to vote for him in November.

As a conservative who profoundly despises Mitch McConnell and everything that unprincipled swine stands for, I feel guilty offering his campaign good advice, but the crisis facing our nation requires me to transcend my personal animosity to the man.

Therefore, I advise this: Get evil.

It’s time for McConnell, the NRSC and the Kentucky Republican Party to unleash against Alison Lundergan Grimes the kind of sneaky underhanded Nixonian dirty tricks that the GOP establishment used against Chris McDaniel in Mississippi:

  1. Racism — You can play this both ways. First and most obviously, circulate anonymous e-mails to rural white voters insinuating that Grimes is not only politically involved in promoting miscegenation in Kentucky schools, but is secretly engaged in an interracial affair herself. Meanwhile, you target black Democrats with anonymous e-mails that accuse Grimes of betraying civil rights and secretly harboring white supremacist tendencies. If the Grimes campaign finds out and blames Republicans for the e-mails, you say this proves that Grimes is a paranoid extremist.
  2. Anti-Semitism — Again, your dirty tricks squad will want to play the hate card both ways. Jewish voters will be targeted with messages claiming that the Grimes campaign is funded by wealthy Arabs and staffed by Muslim Brotherhood members who are working to elect Grimes, a fanatical Hamas supporter, to the Senate. Meanwhile, you assign a few operatives to troll neo-Nazi and 9/11 “Truther” Internet forums, claiming that Grimes is not merely a neocon warmonger, but is actually a Jew. “What kind of name is ‘Lundergan,’ huh? She made that up. Her real name is Lunderberg.”
  3. Homophobia — Here’s where you really pull out all the stops. You cover your bases by sending out anonymous messages to LGBT voters that Grimes is a hateful homophobe, but your main effort is to convince religious voters that Grimes is a radical lesbian, and you need to micro-target this message for maximum effect. For evangelicals, you tell them Grimes is having a gay affair with a black woman. You tell orthodox Jews that Grimes’ secret lesbian lover is a Palestinian Arab (one of her Muslim Brotherhood staffers). On neo-Nazi and 9/11 Truther forums, of course, your trolls claim Alison Lunderberg’s secret lesbian girlfriend is a Jew.

A dishonest smear campaign like this would be unethical and perhaps even illegal, but considering what the GOP establishment did to Chris McDaniel in Mississippi, why not do it to a Democrat?

 

Category: Election, Kentucky, Mitch McConnell, Senate

LIVE AT FIVE: 08.04.14

Posted on | August 4, 2014 | 2 Comments

— compiled by Wombat-socho


TOP NEWS
Israel Plans Cease-Fire In Parts Of Gaza

Ceasefire would allow displaced Palestinians to return home

Truce does not apply to Rafah; IDF will return fire if attacked
Israel begins withdrawing troops
IDF says missing soldier Hadar Goldin is dead




First Of Two Ebola Patients Arrives In Georgia For Treatment
Ebola vaccine possible, but doubts persist

Narendra Modi Wins Hearts And Minds In Nepal
Uses Nepali language in gripping speech to Nepal’s parliament



POLITICS
McConnell, Grimes Trade Jabs At Kentucky Political Picnic

The Senate Minority Leader waits to speak at the Fancy Farm picnic

Snark and pointed remarks flowed freely at St. Jerome’s

Pols Bash Administration’s Handling Of Israel-Hamas Ceasefire

CA Battle Over Right To Concealed Carry Could Be Headed For Supreme Court

FL To Begin Redrawing Unconstitutional Election Maps Thursday

Rubio Defends His Immigration Plan, Calls Obama’s Policy A “Lure”

Air Force Academy Superintendent Calls For Probe Following Reports Of Rape, Drug Use, Cheating

Teacher Tenure A Likely Presidential Issue In 2016?

Sen. Chambliss Defends Enhanced Interrogation Measures Post-9/11

Rep. Pelosi Confronts GOP Congressman In Rancorous Debate



THE ECONOMY, STUPID
Asian Crude Up Slightly, Capped By Weak Demand: WTI $97.93, Brent $105.01
Portugal Splits Banco Espirito Santo In $6.6 Billion Rescue
Asian Shares Pressured By Wall Street, Geopolitical Tensions
Trucks, SUVs Boost US Auto Sales
P&G To Divest Over Half Its Brands
Colorado’s Edible Pot Facing Tighter Rules On Packaging, Potency
Iliad May Face Tough Battle Cutting Costs At T-Mobile
Google Sells Mystery Barge For Scrap In Portland
Austrian Student Launches Class Action Suit Against Facebook
Microsoft Sues Samsung
USB Security Flaw Lets Hackers Hijack PCs



SPORTS
Beckett’s Struggles Continue As Dodgers Fall To Cubs Again

Hanley Ramirez makes an over-the-shoulder catch

Can’t finish five innings as Cubs pound Dodgers 7-3


Tribe Edges Rangers In Extras, 4-3

Dale Earnhardt Jr. Surges To Late Victory At Pocono

Bumgarner K’s 10 As Giants Blank Mets 9-0

Twins Pound Pale Hose Bullpen In 16-3 Rout

Reds Take Series From Fish With 7-3 Win


Buchholz Struggles With Everything As Red Sox Fall To Yankees

Tillman Outduels Iwakuma; O’s Top M’s 1-0

Feldman Goes The Distance At Home As Astros Beat Jays 6-1

Braves Skid Extends To Six As Padres Win 4-3

Royals Hang On To Beat A’s 4-2

Tigers Blank Rockies 4-0 For The Sweep

Angels Top Rays 7-5

Cards Rally To Make Lackey A Winner Over Brewers

Strasburg Returns To Form As Nats Own Hamels, Phillies 4-0



FAMOUS FOR BEING FAMOUS
Jennifer Garner Pregnant?

Sure looks like a baby bump…

Would be child #4 for Garner and Ben Affleck

“Guardians Of The Galaxy” $160.4 Million Breaks Records But Not Summer Slump

“American Idol” Alum Michael Johns Dies, 35

“Transformers: Age Of Extinction” Passes $1 Billion

“Ghostbusters 3” Targets Paul Feig As Director; Reboot Will Focus On Female Ghostbusters


Cheryl Hines Marries Robert F. Kennedy Jr.

“Wire” Actor Anwan Glover Stabbed At DC Nightclub

Unspeakable Armenian Reunites With Paris Hilton

Sia Furler Marries Erik Anders Lang

Remy Ma Released From Prison After Six Years

Lionsgate Sues Over “Expendables 3” Leak

“Gray’s Anatomy: Star Ellen Pompeo Developing ABC Family Drama

25 Things You Don’t Know About John Stamos

Jennifer Lawrence And Nicholas Hoult Split

Dolce & Gabbana Demand Anna Wintour Kill Expose

David Gregory Meets With CNN



FOREIGNERS
China Quake Death Toll Hits 381
Investigation Team At Malaysian Airliner Crash Site Finds Personal Belongings But No Human Remains
In Flanders Fields – 100 Years Since The Great War
Booming African Lion Economies Gear Up To Emulate Asian Tigers
Kosi Flood Alert: Bihar Evacuates 50,000 People
Somali Firing Squad Executes Three Jihadis
Chicoms Claim Nearly 100 Killed By Terrorists In Sinkiang
Japan Inc. Seeks To Recover Influence In Brazil
Guamanian Convicted Of Knife Attack On Tourists
Lawyer Says American Imprisoned In Cuba Has Said Goodbye To Wife, Daughter



BLOGS & STUFF
American Power: Communists, Hamas Solidarity Protesters In LA Demand Israel’s Extermination
American Thinker: Three Ninnies And A Jackass – This Week In Gaza
BLACKFIVE: B-1 Bomber For Sale (Visa, Mastercharge Accepted)
Blackmailers Don’t Shoot: Young Man Beclowns YouTube Feminist
Conservatives4Palin: Full Battle Rattle Comforts Vets Through Music
Don Surber: Listen To Our Industry Advocates, Too
Joe For America: Jackie Mason Goes Off On Anti-Israel Celebrities
Protein Wisdom: Study Says Hundreds Of Obama Administration Rules Are Technically Illegal
Shot In The Dark: The Host I Wanted To Be When I Grew Up
STUMP: Following Through – When There Is No “There” There
The Gateway Pundit: Turkey Caught Exporting Ball Bearings To Gaza As “Humanitarian Aid”
The Jawa Report: Confused Democrat Thinks Israel’s Iron Dome Defends Against Tunnel Terrorists
The Lonely Conservative: July Job Report Disappoints, Unemployment Ticks Up, White House Claims This Is Good News
This Ain’t Hell: 550 Army Majors To Get Pink Slips
Weasel Zippers: Rick Perry Says Record Numbers Of Illegals From Syria, Pakistan, And Afghanistan Being Caught At The Border
Megan McArdle: What We’ve Forgotten About Obamacare


Category: Live at Five

Sex Trouble: #DearFeministMen Illustrates a Fundamental Problem

Posted on | August 3, 2014 | 63 Comments

“You can never please a feminist woman. And even feminist women despise men whom they can push around.”
— Charlotte Allen

“That’s what’s wrong with you. You should be kissed and often, and by someone who knows how.”
— Rhett Butler, Gone With the Wind (1939)

Let’s begin by explaining something that should be obvious, but which is seldom stated explicitly. Feminism is a movement of women, by women, for women. Men may support feminism, but they cannot participate in feminism. It’s an exclusive all-girls club.

From this premise — which, as I say, should be obvious — several conclusions may be drawn. For example, we realize that there are financial rewards to be reaped by the female author or journalist who can gain recognition as a “feminist writer.” There is a ready-made market for her books, a readership for her columns, an audience for her lectures/book signings at colleges and conferences. To become that kind of Feminist Celebrity (e.g., Naomi Wolf) is the career objective of many college girls with literary ambitions, most of whom will fall far short of their goal. However, in the process of striving to achieve their Feminist Celebrity aspirations, many of those young wannabes will publish innumerable feminist blog posts, columns, articles and essays. Among these young feminist writers, there is a ferocious competition for that coveted reward, the book contract that will entitle them to call themselves “author,” no matter how small the advance payment, or whether their book actually sells.

This is all part of the Feminist-Industrial Complex, mostly parallel to but sometimes overlapping the campus Women’s Studies grievance factories, and the important thing to remember – returning to our premise — is that it is an exclusive all-girls club.

Knowing this, is it even necessary to explain why “male feminist” is a category that makes no sense whatsoever? Even if a man were willing and able to explain feminist ideology, to apply it to contemporary social problems in columns and blog posts and books, any success he had in this endeavor would be fiercely resented by the women writers whose aspirations were thwarted by his success. If you understand feminism as a career field exclusively for women, you see why there is no market for the male feminist’s work. The college girls majoring in Women’s Studies, who attend lectures and book signings for feminist authors who visit their campuses, are there not just to absorb the Feminist Celebrity’s wisdom, but to gaze in admiration at a role model who represents their own aspirations. The male feminist is never going to be invited to give such lectures, nor are his books going to be included in the syllabus of assigned readings in Women’s Studies classes, not merely because he lacks the requisite personal perspective — “the authority of experience” — to speak of women’s grievances, but also because any success he enjoyed would be viewed (and perhaps rightly so) as having been subtracted from the fixed-pie/zero-sum-game quantity of success available to women authors. A male’s success as a Feminist Celebrity would actually be oppressive to women.

Quod erat demonstrandum.

No matter how much he may sympathize with women’s plight, no matter how adept he is at articulating feminist ideology, no man can ever expect to be accepted in the all-girls club of feminism. John Stoltenberg, a gay man who was the male companion of radical feminist Andrea Dworkin, was one of the few men ever to write books — Refusing to Be a Man (1989) and The End of Manhood (1994) — that are occasionally included in Women’s Studies curricula. Yet even Stoltenberg (who also has the necessary radical feminist credential of being a very bad writer, incidentally) was never more than a peripheral sideshow to the Feminist-Industrial Complex, tolerated rather than celebrated by the movement, a sort of carnival freak-show exhibit: “Come one! Come all! See the Amazing Feminist Man, a bizarre one-of-a-kind creature with a penis, yet capable of cohabiting with the Dreaded Dworkin!”

Stoltenberg was deservedly viewed with contemptuous pity, by contrast to Jeffrey Masson, the millionaire womanizer who bedded radical feminist Catharine MacKinnon, tricking her into believing for a while that he actually wanted to marry her. Handsome, wealthy and brilliant, Masson briefly inspired mystification and envy as the ideal feminist Dream Man. The fact that there was no Happily Ever After ending to their engagement was little remarked by feminists, except to nod at each other and say, “See? I told you there is no such thing as a feminist man.”

‘Feminist’ Date Rapists and Porn Addicts

The Twitter hashtag #DearFeministMen arose as a spontaneous online expression of what Professor Glenn Reynolds calls “shrew culture,” i.e., feminism as a perverse and sadistic desire to humiliate males. Perhaps a psychology graduate student could write a master’s thesis or doctoral dissertation on this phenomenon, were it not for the fact that anyone who expresses overt hostility to feminism would never be able to gain employment in 21st-century academia. But the #DearFeministMen hashtag was swiftly hijacked by conservatives — including the #WomenAgainstFeminism brigades, God bless ’em — who used it to remind these would-be male “allies” of feminism that men are at best irrelevant to the women’s movement and generally viewed with contempt by the feminist rank-and-file.

Amid this burst of hashtag activism, one anti-feminist woman quoted a 2006 blog post by feminist author Janice Erlbaum:

Lately, there’s been a spate of “male feminists” posting at the [Internet bulletin boards] where I lurk. At first I saw them and I thought, great! I mean, I like feminists, and I like men, so you’d think I’d love this purported hybrid of the two. And yet, no, not so much, not so much at all.
As a matter of fact, it’s caused me to realize that most of the men I’ve personally known who have made a huge hairy point of identifying as feminists have been either date rapists, mom fetishists, porn addicts, or bear daddies inflicting their frustrated pseudopaternal tendencies on women. They are some of the most passive-aggressive, patronizing, out-dishing without it-taking twerps on the planet, and they are poisoning the women’s movement from the inside by sapping the hell out of everyone’s goddamn energy.

Preach on, sister! Insofar as feminists want male “allies,” they want male allies who will shut their mouths and nod their heads in mute acquiescence while women get paid to proclaim to the world what wretched and despicable creatures men are. Erlbaum’s perception that many soi-disant “male feminists” are “date rapists” and “porn addicts” was amply vindicated by the 2013 meltdown of Professor Hugo Schwartz. The so-called “porn professor” was exposed as a dangerous psychotic and a compulsive womanizer who had more or less habitually engaged in sex with his female undergraduate students, some of them mere teenagers. Schwartz was emblematic of the kind of male “allies” feminism attracts. It is impossible to imagine any psychologically healthy man supporting a movement devoted to demonizing men, and so we automatically suspect the worst of men who claim to embrace feminism. High-profile “progressive” perverts like Bill Clinton, Elliott Spitzer and Anthony Weiner are by no means anomalous examples.

Why, then, does Janice Erlbaum call herself a feminist? She is heterosexual — describing her live-in boyfriend as her “domestic partner” — and we might therefore expect her to reject feminism’s anti-male ideology. But notice how she describes her boyfriend Bill Scurry:

Now, I’m not saying that every man who believes in the equality of the importance of women and men is secretly a douche; I’m not saying that at all. I’m lucky enough to be domestically partnered to a guy who does half the housework, yields 50 percent of the remote, rallies and marches with me, and writes the appropriate outraged emails to Congress when needed.

This is a huge clue. If control of the TV remote is such a source of strife in your relationship that you consider it a political necessity to achieve “equality” this way, you’ve got a problem that can never be solved through politics. And if having a man do half the housework is such an important issue for you, why not live by yourself? Sure, if you lived alone, you’d be doing 100% of your own housework, but at least you wouldn’t feel that you were being oppressed in the process. If what a woman most desires in a man is a servant to wash her dishes, mop her floors and fold her laundry, she could simply hire somebody to do the job. Maybe her domestic servant would even agree to join her at protest rallies, for an hourly fee, but such a commercial arrangement probably wouldn’t satisfy the feminist’s psychological needs, would it?

Janice Erlbaum and Bill Scurry in a 2009 YouTube video.

This is not to say that I dislike Janice Erlbaum. She is in fact a very funny and surprisingly sane person, especially when one considers the horrific background of her youth. Her mother was evidently the type of divorceé who just has to have a man around all the time, without regard to the consequences for her children:

Her mother’s string of abusive boyfriends and husbands had left her with no choice; after her mom kicked her last stepfather out, Erlbaum told her, If you take him back, then I’m leaving. When she was 15, she left her Manhattan home after her mother once again reunited with the man. She spent several weeks in a shelter and eventually ended up in a group home.

That’s from a review of Erlbaum’s 2006 memoir, Girlbomb: A Halfway Homeless Memoir, and here’s an excerpt of another review:

Erlbaum . . . left her Manhattan home at 15 after her mother reunited with Erlbaum’s abusive stepfather. Landing first in a shelter and then a group home, Erlbaum — shattered by her mother’s choice — embarks on a treacherous course of self-destruction. Casual sex with a series of brutally uncaring boys coupled with daily drug and alcohol abuse become her antidote to the violence and racism in the child-welfare system housing her. Her isolation and loneliness threaten to swallow her whole. Yet when Erlbaum’s mother invites her home (the dreaded stepfather gone for good), things don’t improve. Erlbaum has more freedom, which allows more opportunity for trouble. At 17 she leaves again (this time to live with an older boyfriend), becomes addicted to the cocaine so plentiful in the 1980s New York club scene and nearly dies from an overdose.

There are many insights one could glean from this tale, although they are perhaps not the lessons Erlbaum herself learned. For example, the common liberal claim that the so-called “homeless epidemic” of the 1980s was a result of Ronald Reagan’s policies — which even at that time was recognized as a partisan falsehood by any honest person who examined the problem — clearly doesn’t describe Erlbaum’s plight. Bill Bennett or any other conservative analyst might cite Erlbaum’s story as Exhibit A in the case for how the breakdown of the traditional family has contributed to the problem of homelessness.

Janice Erlbaum with her book ‘Girlbomb’ in 2006.

One might further conclude from Erlbaum’s tale — just reacting to the reviews, without having read the book — that the nut doesn’t fall too far from the tree. That is to say, Janice Erlbaum seems to have spent her adolescence and young adulthood in “got to have a man” mode, which pattern continued long after her stint as a homeless teenager ended. She reproduces at her blog a journal entry from 1995, when she was 23 or 24, breaking up with one boyfriend and haphazardly hooking up with another male acquaintance:

The day after Richard and I broke up, I woke up at 8 and put on my clothes and went over to his house and crawled into his bed. “I’m almost ready to go,” I announced. “Just one more hug.” He pulled my arm over him and gave my hand a kiss.
I went home and called Nathaniel. My voice was about six octaves lower than usual.
“We broke up, of course.”
“Oh, kid,” he said, very sympathetically. “It’ll be okay.” . . .
“I’m going to meet my dealer. Tonight I’m going to Biblios, from where I’ll probably take home my friend Ward.”
“You’re so dramatic and tragic. I just love it.” . . .
Ward delivered the line, “You’re too beautiful to have to cry” . . . He is a lowercase poet. Really it was comic. The sex part was cursory, in the morning, idiotic grappling in the lowest sense. So why am I on my way to meet him now? Maybe this is just the perfect aversion therapy. . . . Ward is so obvious.
Nathaniel wonders why he spends so much time groping his female friends, and why we only put up with it to a point. It was wrong of me to refer to him at the party as my auxiliary boyfriend. I was showing off and it was mean.

There is a word for this condition: Psychologically damaged.

Of course, thinking back on myself at age 23 or 24, I realize that if anyone would pay me money to write a memoir of my reckless youth, I’d be exposing myself to the same kind of armchair analysis. But nobody pays male conservative writers for stories of their youthful misadventures, so my kids won’t have to endure the embarrassment of Dad’s tell-all memoir, All Girls Named Tonya: Strippers, Psilocybin and Other True Tales of My Life as a Teenage Democrat.

The Implausible Fictions of Liberalism

The publishing industry is liberal, so unless you’re a big-name professional athlete or some other bankable celebrity, your memoir is only of interest to the industry if it somehow dramatizes the liberal worldview. In fact, there have been a couple of examples of such morality-tale memoirs that were exposed as works of fiction; if you can write a story that makes an editor say, “Wow, Oprah’s gonna love this one,” they won’t even bother to fact-check your story.

We have no reason to doubt the veracity of Janice Erlbaum’s memoir, however, and its truth seems verified by the street-smart cynicism with which she sees through “male feminists” whose purported devotion to equality conceals an ulterior motive:

[L]et’s post a handy checklist for the symptoms of Male Feminism.

  1. Name drops bell hooks (making sure to drop the caps), or has sig quote by Rigoberta Menchu. Will suggest that you read such and such essay by such and such feminist before you discuss the topic at hand further, as it’s a “must read.”
  2. Feigns sympathy for the rigors of the menstrual cycle. “Oh, cramps, bummer; I getcha, sister. By the way, most men are really put off by talking about cramps, but not me, I’m used to your crazy gross moon blood vagina ritual, because I’m evolved.”
  3. Is smarter than you, and more “rational” (i.e., not ruled by terrifying and psychotic mood swings), but doesn’t hold that against you. Understands that women are more “emotional” than men, and therefore susceptible to “simple misinterpretation.” Smirks, smarms, provokes, and blathers until you go crazy, then calls you crazy.
  4. Loves porn, even if he pretends to hate it. As a matter of fact, the more he professes to hate it, the more hardcore and specific the porn is.

Like I said, Preach on, sister!

No self-respecting bullshit artist would ever dabble in that particular brand of bullshit. “Yeah, baby, after I went to the moon on Apollo 19, I was a covert operative for the CIA running arms to the Contras in Nicaragua — and also, a male feminist.”

Yet is it possible that some of these men are sincere, and under the delusion that they are feminists? Well, there are all kinds of crazies running around in the world — 9/11 Truthers, Commies for Hamas and so forth — as a result of the shortage of treatment facilities for the mentally ill, so we can’t lock up all the “male feminists” in the lunatic asylums where they belong. Nevertheless, we can try to persuade these deranged nutjobs that their worldview is unrealistic.

Here’s a hint, guys: Women who like men are not feminists.

Oh, sure, there are heterosexual women who for one reason or another describe themselves as “feminist,” but the more she studies feminist theory and embraces feminist ideology, the more she is compelled to the belief that all men are violent predatory oppressors. Feminism is a journey to lesbianism and any woman who tries to reconcile this ideology with a normal female life — men, marriage and motherhood — is condemning herself to disappointment, while creating needless misery for those around her. It would be better for such a woman simply to avoid this exercise in futility; the minute she decides to major in Women’s Studies, a young woman could adopt radical lesbian separatism as her creed and avoid all the harms she would otherwise inevitably suffer herself or inflict on others in pursuit of an ideologically consistent “heterosexual feminism.” But some people are so profoundly unhappy that their only source of satisfaction in life is to make other people unhappy, and some heterosexual women embrace feminism as an excuse for taking out their resentments on the men in their lives, an ideological rationalization for their weird sadistic love/hate relationships with men.

Why do you think Hillary Clinton refuses to divorce Bill?

Feminism’s war against human nature means that, insofar as any man internalizes feminism’s critique of masculinity — abjuring those qualities of assertive confidence which feminists condemn as “male domination” — he thereby becomes less attractive to women, even those feminists who routinely complain that men are oppressing them.

No matter how hard you try to be a latter-day Ashley Wilkes, any woman worth having will always prefer Rhett Butler.

So please, guys, don’t embarrass yourselves by atttempting to appease feminists, becoming a Vichy collaborator with the feminist regime. Whatever you might hope to gain by being a “male feminist” can never compensate for your loss of dignity and self-respect.





 

 

THE ‘SEX TROUBLE’ SERIES:

 

Category: Feminism, Sex Trouble

FMJRA 2.0: Disappointed

Posted on | August 3, 2014 | 8 Comments

— compiled by Wombat-socho


Rule 5 Sunday: Mind The Gap

The Gaza War Continues

Israel/Gaza Ceasefire Collapses, Along With Joe Scarborough’s Credibility

Headline of the Day


AND NOW, A BRIEF MUSICAL INTERLUDE

Just Relax In Your ‘Fundamentally Transformed’ Country, Americans

The Amnesty Fine Print

FMJRA 2.0: An Extra Girl (Ape)

Death by Misadventure

Feminists Against ‘The Unnatural, Yet Universal Roles Patriarchy Has Assigned’

LIVE AT FIVE: 07.28.14

“Sorry, Barack: I Can’t Give The Israeli People ‘The Stevens’,” Said Bibi

Crazy People, Crazy Times

LIVE AT FIVE: 07.29.14

John Walsh Keeps Nabbing Bad Guys; Molester Killed in NYC Shootout

An Ill-Advised Apology

Woman’s Harassment Lawsuit Claims Yahoo Executive Is Lesbian Predator

Being an Atheist Is Bad. Being an Obnoxious Atheist Is Worse.

Missing Teen Found Alive; Was Kidnapped by ‘Sexual Deviant’

Head ‘Sploding Tweet Of The Day

LIVE AT FIVE: 07.30.14

Nina Burleigh: #WomenAgainstFeminism Is for ‘Pedophiles … Dirty Old Men’ UPDATE: ‘Perverted Rightwing Spite’

It’s a Man’s (Virtual) World, Baby

Stuff You Can’t Make Up

A Thank-You Note

Millionaire Transsexual Bankrolls PAC for Son’s Florida Democrat Campaign

LIVE AT FIVE: 07.31.14

LIVE AT FIVE: 08.01.14

Commies for Abortion

Atheist Creep @RichardDawkins Destroying His Own Reputation

Dear Vloggers: Please Learn to Type

Top linkers this week:

  1. Batshit Crazy News (28)
  2. That Mr. G Guy (21)
  3. Regular Right Guy (11)
  4. A View from the Beach (5)

Thanks to everyone for their linkagery! Deadline to submit links (and, please, the posts to which those links point) is noon Saturday, August 9.


Category: FMJRA Award

The Pro-Hamas Mob in L.A.

Posted on | August 2, 2014 | 51 Comments

Two weeks ago, Professor Donald Douglas of American Power covered a Communist anti-police rally in Anaheim. Today, Donald took his camera to the streets of downtown Los Angeles, where the same crew — the Stalinist splinter sect known as A.N.S.W.E.R. — helped organize an anti-Israel march and rally that was full of vile and hateful sentiments expressed by vile and hateful people.

The news from Israel today is good: Having destroyed most of the tunnels used by Hamas terrorists, the IDF is preparing to withdraw from Gaza. Peace through complete victory.

As soon as Professor Douglas gets home, I’m sure he’ll start posting more photos, videos and commentary at his American Power blog.

Good work, Donald!

 

Category: American Power, Israel

How to Become a Lesbian, Step One: Watch Cable TV While Depressed

Posted on | August 2, 2014 | 105 Comments

Shane and Cherie from Showtime’s The L Word.

Have you ever heard of “medical student syndrome”?

It’s a type of hypochondria, “a condition frequently reported in medical students, who perceive themselves or others to be experiencing the symptoms of the diseases they are studying.” Human beings are suggestible, so that minor itch or cough or ache you have may suddenly appear to be a symptom, if you consider the possibility you might have an actual disease. Medical students spend a lot of time thinking about diseases, and thus may become obsessed with the fear that the rash on their leg is a potentially fatal disease, when the actual cause is the poison ivy they brushed up against while hiking in the woods.

So . . . are you gay?

For the vast majority of people throughout thousands of years of human history, this wasn’t a question to consider. They grew up, got married, had kids, raised goats or whatever and hoped they didn’t die from disease or famine or attacks by hostile invaders. Merely trying to survive a life of toil and hardship — the fate of most people at most times in most places — was sufficiently difficult that people didn’t sit around wondering about their “sexuality” or “identity.”

Welcome to middle-class America in the 21st century, where sexuality and identity are all some people have to worry about:

How To Leave Your Husband (Because You’re a Lesbian)

 That’s the headline on an interesting — excuse me, I meant to say weird — column at the lesbian blog Autostraddle:

I got pregnant and married, in that order duh, while I was in high school! I stayed married, got pregnant again, and kept staying married for something like eight years — I lost count. Then we moved to Virginia, into a house I hated, in a neighborhood I hated . . . My husband was in the military and he’d be gone for months at a time. I was perpetually in a bad mood/depressed. Then there was free Showtime and a Season Three marathon. I watched Shane fuck Cherie Jaffe by the pool over and over and spent the next month googling ALL THE THINGS + FEELINGS.

Had to Google “Shane and Cherie” to realize she was describing the 2006 season of the Showtime series The L Word. Anyway . . .

Everything — every last fucking thing ever — finally made sense. I made sense.
I came out, we separated.

“For richer, for poorer, in sickness and in health — unless one of you eventually decides you’re gay, and then all bets are off.”

How do stories like these happen? I mean, besides getting knocked up as a teenager, then moving to Virginia while your husband is serving his country, becoming perpetually depressed and watching Showtime? How is it that somebody can be married with two kids and then one day — cable TV gay epiphany! — chuck it all overboard?

The converted apostle has her rationalizations:

I’m often asked, not necessarily outright, how I kept up that husband thing for as long as I did. It’s not an easy question to answer, both because it involves summoning a state of mind I can no longer relate to and because I’m scared of being judged. . . .
Where I grew up, it wasn’t uncommon to be young and pregnant and married. Birth control was available but not really discussed or supported, and no one talked about homosexuality or feminism. This was the 80s and early 90s, so there wasn’t any internet or gay people on television.

Which is to say, she was a normal girl who grew up in a normal family with a normal life in a normal town. But did you notice this?

. . . no one talked about homosexuality or feminism.

Gee, why do you think these two topics are connected in her mind? I mean, she could have said “no one talked about homosexuality or vegetarianism” or “no one talked about homosexuality or Buddhism,” but instead, it’s “feminism” — why?

Anyone who has been reading my “Sex Trouble” series about radical feminism will instantly understand the connection:

According to feminist theory, this woman’s problem was (as every woman’s problem is) heteronormative patriarchy:

Heterosexuality, these authors argue, is never a woman’s own free choice, nor is female heterosexuality the result of natural instinct or biological urges. Rather, according to radical theorists whose works are commonly taught in Women’s Studies courses at universities everywhere, women who are sexually attracted to men have been indoctrinated — brainwashed by “hetero-grooming” — to believe that male companionship is desirable or necessary to their happiness.

In other words, heterosexuality is imposed on women. Once she divorced her husband and became a lesbian — thanks to cable TV — this woman revised her memory with the benefit of hindsight. She suddenly realized she never really liked men anyway:

It never occurred to me that being “in love” could feel like anything more than kindly agreeing not to be mean to each other. And attraction? Actually wanting sex? I mean, what must that be like?? Women aren’t socialized, like men are, to think they deserve sexual satisfaction. Maybe it’s different now, but at the time, I interpreted sex as a thing that made boys happy, but for which women shouldn’t set their sights too high.
That part — the sex part — is hands-down the most difficult thing for me to talk about, process or explain. Not just because of how personal sex is, for everybody, but also because of the terrible sad vacant feeling that comes with discussing a thing that I never related to and now can barely fathom ever doing. At that time, sex was how I could get someone to like me.

Again, this is rationalization, informed by feminism. She blames the way women are “socialized” for her failure to realize she was a lesbian until she was a depressed married mom watching cable TV. She now refers to her years of heterosexuality as “a thing that I never related to,” which she was only doing so she “could get someone to like” her. She insists she never wanted it or felt attraction to men, never really had the feeling of being “in love” with a man.

Let’s not mince words: This woman is a failed heterosexual.

Being successfully heterosexual is not as easy as it may seem. Sure, some of us are so good at it, we make it look easy, but this apparent ease is simply the result of years of practice. It’s not as if the problems involved have never been considered.

“In everything on this earth that is worth doing, there is a stage when no one would do it, except for necessity or honor. . . . If Americans can be divorced for ‘incompatibility of temper’ I cannot conceive why they are not all divorced. I have known many happy marriages, but never a compatible one. The whole aim of marriage is to fight through and survive the instant when incompatibility becomes unquestionable. For a man and a woman, as such, are incompatible.”
— G.K. Chesterton, 1910

Considerations of “necessity or honor” are alien to the 21st-century mind, so that husbands and wives don’t think of the honor involved in upholding a sacred vow. If nothing is sacred, no vow can really be binding, and the sense of honor one should derive from being true to one’s word — to say, “I do,” and really mean it — can play no part in our considerations. If the grass is greener on the other side of the fence (or if the sex is sexier on cable TV), why let something as silly as a marriage vow stand in your way?

The important thing, we are nowadays told, is just to be yourself. Find the real you. Get in touch with your feelings. And, amid all these gooey emotional hymns to the Happy Self, at some point the children have to hear The Talk: “Mommy and Daddy are getting a divorce, because Mommy watched a cable TV show and now she knows she never really loved Daddy, because she’s a lesbian.”

Hey, what’s that rash on your leg? Probably ebola virus . . .





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Category: Feminism, Gays, Sex Trouble

Paul Alan Levy on Brett Kimberlin, Defamation and the ‘Streisand Effect’

Posted on | August 2, 2014 | 19 Comments

“I have filed over a hundred lawsuits and another one will be no sweat for me. On the other hand, it will cost you a lot of time and money . . .”
— Brett Kimberlin, Oct. 10, 2010

“It looks to me as if Brett Kimberlin is digging himself a deeper hole with every paper he files . . . He may well be at the point that he is the one who needs to get out of the litigation as quickly as possible, lest he make matters worse for himself and his family. Whether he has the self-restraint, and the good judgment, to seek that way out remains to be seen.”
— Paul Alan Levy, Aug. 1, 2014

Everybody knows what the “Streisand Effect” is, right? In the Internet age, attempts to suppress information usually have the opposite effect, calling widespread public attention to whatever fact it was that someone tried to conceal from public view.

This is what happened to Brett Kimberlin: When bloggers began calling attention to Kimberlin’s notorious criminal history, Kimberlin first sued one of them — progressive blogger Seth Allen — and threatened to sue both Patrick “Patterico” Frey and Mandy “Liberty Chick” Nagy. That was in fall 2010, and set in motion a chain of events that led to a courtroom conflict between Kimberlin and Aaron Walker. When Walker published his 28,000-word account of that conflict in May 2012, I started reporting on the activities of Kimberlin and his associate Neal Rauhauser. Four days later, Kimberlin contacted my wife’s employer, ranting about how I was “harassing” Kimberlin. As a result, I departed Maryland for an “undisclosed location” and relocated my family.

These events raised a general alarm among conservative bloggers, which resulted in “Everybody Blog About Brett Kimberlin Day” on May 25, 2012. At every step, Kimberlin’s effort to suppress reporting and commentary about him had the opposite effect of what he evidently intended. Then, in fall 2013, Kimberlin filed two lawsuits: The Maryland case Kimberlin v. Walker, et al. — against five defendants — and then a federal RICO lawsuit against two dozen defendants, which John Hoge dubbed Kimberlin v. the Universe, et al.

These cases have been proceeding through the preliminary stages for the past several months and, knowing that I have myself become bored with all the legal back-and-forth — motions, replies to motions, orders from judges, yadda yadda yadda — I’ve been remiss in keeping readers updated, not wanting to subject y’all to the tedium. Both John Hoge and Aaron Walker have been blogging regularly about the proceedings. We may be just days away from seeing the Maryland state suit either thrown out on summary judgment or going to trial. Obviously, I’d prefer the former to the latter, but having no doubt of my innocence, I have the serenity of a Christian holding four aces, either way.

The federal case has become rather interesting. Kimberlin sought Judge George Hazel’s permission to file a “sealed” motion for a preliminary injunction, and was quite briskly spanked by the judge who, among other things, referred to “Plaintiff’s checkered past with representations to the Court” — a polite and euphemistic way of saying that the Perjuring Pro Se Pipsqueak is a proven liar.

Given that Kimberlin’s July 22 letter to Judge Hazel is now a matter of public record (ECF No. 165) let’s quote some of it, eh?

Several of the unrepresented Defendants, including Walker, Hoge, McCain and Akbar, have not only failed to remove content, but they collectively use every opportunity to use this case to engage in a continuing campaign to defame and harm me and my family.  Virtually every single day, Defendant Walker and Hoge post defamatory statements on their blogs and on Twitter and use titles with defamatory adjectives calling me a terrorist, forger, perjurer, pedophile and other invectives.

Can you believe it? This lying scoundrel has the effrontery to sue us for $1 million in state court and $2 million in federal court and then — adding insult to idiocy, as it were — claims that it is “a continuing campaign to defame and harm” Kimberlin for us to inform the public of proceedings in this case! By God, the man has no shame, but even that pales in comparison to this claim by Kimberlin:

Every day, I am under siege from a barrage of false and defamatory attacks on me. Several of the Defendants, including Defendants Walker, McCain and Thomas, have attacked my teenage daughter to such a degree that she has been bullied out of two high schools. . . . Everyone knows the devastating effect of bullying on young people, especially girls. And the Defendants are directly responsible for the bullying of my daughter.

Kimberlin’s claim that I have “attacked” his teenage daughter is simply false. Somebody on Twitter once sent me a message about her singing career (which Kimberlin has promoted with tax-exempt funds from his non-profit Justice Through Music Project) and I replied that she can’t carry a tune, or words to that effect.

Once. End of story.

But can it be possible that Brett Kimberlin really wants to discuss what is harmful to “young people, especially girls”? A dead grandmother can have a “devastating effect” on a girl, I guess.

You see that the infamous liar Brett Kimberlin is making these false claims against me in court documents, in an effort to convince the judge that where there is so much “smoke” of allegations, surely there must be some “fire” of actual tortious damage. The judge’s reaction would seem to indicate that he is not deceived by Kimberlin’s mendacious game, but excuse me for burning with indignation that Kimberlin is permitted to engage in such heinous abuse of the justice system. He is a convicted felon who was sentenced to 50 years in federal prison in 1981 and yet he thinks the court must protect him from “defamatory adjectives”?

Maybe you understand why I’ve tried to ignore this case to the greatest extent possible. Every time I think about it, I get angry.

It is helpful, therefore, to read Paul Alan Levy’s thoughts on the case. Levy has volunteered pro bono, to represent Ace of Spades in a limited manner, to defeat Kimberlin’s effort to deprive Ace of his anonymity (trying to “dox” Ace, incidentally, was a project that Neal Rauhauser ineptly pursued for many months). Levy talks about Kimberlin’s motion for an injunction in the federal case:

Moreover, it does not seem to me likely that submitting affidavits about claimed harm are going to be enough — the defendants he seeks to restrain are entitled to be confronted by their accusers face-to-face, and to have the chance to cross-examine; and given the intense hostility between the parties that the courts have previously noted, there is no reason to think these pro se defendants might not want to take their pound of flesh. Indeed, considering that the judge has indicated that Kimberlin needs to make specific showings about the harm caused by the specific statements against which he wants relief, the defendants might well start asking questions about exactly why parents won’t let their daughters have sleepovers at the Kimberlin household. Is it because they learned that he used to be a major drug dealer, importing large quantities of drugs from Mexico? Or because he was convicted of a series of bombings that left some people severely injured? Or is it because they learned that a newspaper article in Indiana reported on the murder of the grandmother of a pre-teen girl who was worried that Kimberlin was going out with a daughter she considered irresponsible so that he could get access to the grand-daughter? Or maybe because, after he got out of jail, and already in his forties, Kimberlin was allegedly singing rock and roll songs about the joys of sex with teenage girls, and because a DC-area publication that interviewed him about the songs praised him for his honesty about how older men feel about attractive teenagers.  Or, was it some more recent, post-Second Amended Complaint statement that is depriving his daughter of sleepovers?
If Kimberlin seeks relief, he is going to have to show through the testimony of some person with personal knowledge just what the reasons are that his daughter’s friends parents are giving for getting in the way of his daughter’s social life. Presumably, that would be the daughter herself. The pro se defendants against whom relief is sought might choose to cross-examine her.

You really should read the whole thing, because Levy points out how Kimberlin’s lawsuit — his attempt to use the federal courts to silence his critics — is exposing to public scrutiny the very aspects of Kimberlin’s sordid past that he most wishes to conceal.

Even while I was writing this article, John Hoge noticed that the Washington Post‘s Eugene Volokh is now covering the case:

In this instance, it’s very hard for me to feel sympathy for Kimberlin. He has repeatedly demanded unconstitutional restrictions on his critics’ speech (see, e.g., the posts discussed here; I consulted with Aaron Walker’s lawyer on the case). His past crimes make it hard to know when he is telling the truth today. And beyond this, his litigation behavior in this very case has apparently been less than candid at times . . .

Yeah, Brett: So now you can sue the Washington Post and claim you were defamed by a constitutional law professor, OK?

Meanwhile, you just keep on telling lies about me, and I’ll keep telling the truth about you, and we’ll see who wins in the long run. I’ve got good people praying for me, and I have no fear.

Readers: This is still a Shameless Capitalist Blog. Please keep in mind The Five Most Important Words in the English Language . . .

HIT THE FREAKING TIP JAR!

 

 

Category: The Kimberlin Files
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