The Other McCain

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

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

Posted on | July 28, 2014 | 13 Comments

by Smitty

You can almost forgive #OccupyResoluteDesk for wanting the Israelis to pull their punches, given Obama’s oblivious non-command of leadership:

President Barack Obama phoned Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu late Sunday, demanding that he agree to an immediate ceasefire “that ends hostilities now and leads to a permanent cessation of hostilities, based on the November 2012 ceasefire agreement.”

I don’t know, the last time Bibi met a U.S. Administration official, it looked like he was about two show ol’ Three Purple Hearts a fourth one, red, still beating, albeit briefly:

If I was Bibi, I’d put up a brief YouTube clip in reply to the rodeo clown, simply saying “AIN’T NOBODY GOT TIME FOR THAT!”

Category: Barack Obama, Israel

LIVE AT FIVE: 07.28.14

Posted on | July 28, 2014 | 9 Comments

— compiled by Wombat-socho


TOP NEWS
Gaza Truce Efforts Go Up In Smoke

Burn Gaza Strip Burn

Hamas allegedly accepts UN truce, continues rocketing Israel
UNSC calls for immediate ceasefire
Kerry’s unique artistry: he came, he saw, he muddled



Two Americans Stricken With Ebola In Liberia
Doctor, aid worker test positive for deadly virus

Westerners Urged To Leave Libya As Country Descends Into Civil War (Again)
British, US embassies both closed



POLITICS
Congress Reaches Tentative Deal To Help Fix VA

The Phoenix, Ariz. VA medical center

Getting some help for vets’ health care before recess


DC Seeks Stay On Judge’s Order Striking Down Public Handgun Carry



Virginia’s Ex-Governor, Wife Go To Trial On Corruption Charges

Sarah Palin Begins Own Internet Channel

FLOTUS Complains About Money In Politics, Then Asks For “Fat Check”

Former Seattle Mayor Paul Schell Dies, 76

Border Agents Say Violent MS-13 Gang Recruiting In Arizona Detention Facility

House Ethics Panel Investigating Reps Rush, Whitfield



THE ECONOMY, STUPID
Asian Crude Drops As Truce Breaks Out In Gaza: WTI $101.57, Brent $107.89
Red China’s Food Crisis Spreads To Foreign Brands
Amazon Loss Widens As Bezos Alarms Investors With Spending
“Ace” Greenberg, Wall Street Titan, Dies At 86
Danone Reportedly In Talks To Sell Medical Unit To Hospira
Gold Slips On Stronger Dollar But Holds Above $1300
JD.com Launches XBox One Sales In Red China
Bose Sues Beats Over Noise-Cancelling Patent
Google’s Next Smartphone, “Shamu”, Could Be Gigantic
Inventions-based Maker Faire Celebrates 5th Anniversary
Watch Ubisoft’s New Parkour-Powered Promo for “Assassin’s Creed: Unity”



SPORTS
Flood Of Emotions As Six Greats Enter Cooperstown

From left to right: Bobby Cox, Tony La Russa, Tom Glavine, Frank Thomas, Greg Maddux, Joe Torre

50,000 look on as three great managers and three great players enter the Hall of Fame


Jeff Gordon’s Drive For Five Gets Boost With Brickyard Win



Braves Cap Hall Of Fame Day With 8-3 Blowout Of Padres

Machado, O’s, Beat M’s In Extras

Phillies Top Snakes 4-2

Ozuna, Jones Lead Fish To Victory And Sweep Of Astros

Tribe Administers 10-3 Beatdown To Royals

Big Papi Carries Red Sox Past Rays, 3-2

Fister Handcuffs Slumping Reds As Nats Win 4-2



FAMOUS FOR BEING FAMOUS
Stephen Bauer (57) Dating Lyda Loudon (18)

Involved with Tea Party Youth

“Scarface” actor and self-described wild child stepped out together at “Magic In The Moonlight” premiere

Weekend Box Office: Lucy Tops Hercules

“Fury Road” Director George Miller Talks “Mad Max” Prequel, Mel Gibson


Comic-Con Crapfest: Movies

Sources Say Kendra Wilkinson Is Done With Hank Bassett

Homeless Man Stalked, Threatened Rihanna At Her $14.6 Million SoHo Apartment

Jenny McCarthy Says She Never Criticized Cousin Melissa Over Her Weight

Mark Hamill: Star Wars Return “A Gift”

Adam West Shares His Thoughts On Ben Affleck As Batman



FOREIGNERS
Fighting Intensifies Near Malaysian Airlines Crash Site, Police Cancel Visit Over Security Concerns
Boko Haram Kidnaps Wife of Cameroon’s Vice-PM
Pope Francis Pleads For Peace In Gaza
Sri Lankan Asylum Seekers Arrive In Australia After Weeks Held At Sea
Norks, ROK Mark 61st Anniversary Of Armistice
Surveillance Photos Show Russia Supplying Ordnance To Ukrainian Rebels
Student Survivors Of Korean Ferry Disaster Testify Against Crew
Aruba Releases Former Venezuelan General Wanted By US On Drug Charges
Philippine Congress Opens With Calls For Greater Government Accountability
India Threatens To Derail WTO Deal, Stands Firm On Food Security



BLOGS & STUFF
Doug Powers: Eleanor Holmes Norton Vigorously Defends Obama Administration’s Right To Privacy
Twitchy: Paul Ryan Posts Pic From Goat Milking Contest, Liberals Outraged
American Power: Think Progress, Karoli Punk’d By Parody Claiming Michele Bachmann Wants Illegals In “Camps”
American Thinker: Moses The Unaccompanied Minor And The Ten Plagues
BLACKFIVE: A Tribute Long Delayed
Conservatives4Palin: Stephen Moore – A Future Without Electricity
Don Surber: Guillotine Climate Change Skeptics?
Jammie Wearing Fools: “I Have Not Entered One Home That Did Not Have Weapons, Suicide Belts, Or Booby Traps In It”
Joe For America: NYT Declares War On Christians, Moslems
JustOneMinute: State And Federal Exchanges – Gruber On Both Sides
Protein Wisdom: Earth To Feds – It’s Called Camping
Shot In The Dark: The Kill Cult
STUMP: Pension Watch – Followup On UC Borrowing
The Gateway Pundit: Mexican Immigrant With Drug-Resistant TB Goes Missing In California
The Jawa Report: Total Sluts For IDF
The Lonely Conservative: Democrats Tie Funding For Israel’s Iron Dome To Immigration Bill
This Ain’t Hell: Real Warriors And PTSD
Weasel Zippers: Iraqi Christians Chant For Help In Front Of White House – “Obama, Obama, Where Are You?”
Megan McArdle: Obamacare’s Smoking Gun Fires Again


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Category: Live at Five

Rule 5 Sunday: Mind The Gap

Posted on | July 27, 2014 | 13 Comments

— compiled by Wombat-socho

Yes, it’s time once again for us to take a break from the misery of politics and the cesspool of popular culture (well, except for this, of course) to contemplate the glory of God’s creation, especially as it’s expressed in the female form. As the Loyal Readers should know by now, some of the links below are to pictures of attractive women, frequently with few (or no) clothes, and if viewing these where you are would cause problems, you may want to exercise discretion in your clicking.

First Street Journal is an exception to the warning above, since he’s all about women in uniform. This week: On Active Duty. Ninety Miles from Tyranny chips in with Morning Mistresses, Hot Pick of the Late Night, and Girls with Guns; Laughing Conservative introduces Ella Milano, while Animal Magnetism serves up Rule 5 Friday and the Saturday Gingermageddon (includes hi-rez bonus!) and Blackmailers Don’t Shoot offers Rule 5 In Honor Of Comic-Con 2014, which includes plenty of tasty links to go with the cosplay pics.

EBL’s herd this week includes Feminist Fashion (and Catherine Zeta-Jones), Rip Tide, and Bill Clinton’s Energizer.

At A View from the Beach, it’s Z is for Zelyaeva, Northern Lights, Secret of Happy Marriage Revealed, Midnite Music, Drained! (Again), Did “Girly” Cave Men Lead to Civilization? (has cave girl content), Luck Was the Lady That He Loved the Best. Berlusconi Beats the Rap, and Little Surfer Girl Take On the Sharks.

Soylent Refuge serves up your Morning Coffee Creamer, Sunday Seduction, I Love Rock & Roll, Overnighty, Tuesday Titillation Twofer, Humpday Hawtness, Happy Hour Hawt, Falconsword Fursday Fillet, Corsets Etc., T-GIF Friday Gisele, Overnighty Adrienne, Weekender Hayden, and Bath Night Bubblicious.

Proof Positive’s Friday Night Babe is Coco Ho, his Vintage Babe is Mariette Hartley, and Sex in Advertising is covered by Adriana Lima this week. At Dustbury, it’s A.J. Cook and Mindy Kaling.

The DaleyGator’s DaleyBabes this week included Barbara de Regil,Amanda Seyfried, Samantha Cutaran, Claire Coffee, Camille Chen, Meisa Kuroki, and Women that make you say DAYUM!.

Thanks to everyone for their linkagery! Deadline to submit links to the Rule 5 Wombat mailbox for next week’s Rule 5 Sunday is midnight on Saturday, August 2.


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Category: Rule 5

Death by Misadventure

Posted on | July 27, 2014 | 56 Comments

Brooke Slocum (left); Charles Oppenneer (center); Brady Oestrike (right).

You meet the creepiest people on Craigslist.

That’s probably the only lesson to be learned from the tragic deaths of Brooke Slocum and her boyfriend Charles Oppeeneer. Slocum, 18, was eight months pregnant when Oppenneer posted an ad to Craigslist offering to let other men have sex with her for money while Oppenneer watched. Brady Oestrike, 31, responded to the ad.

Oestrike was a crazy weirdo who collected guns and swords and was into some kind of strange medieval stuff. His former roommate, Rachel Morris, said she moved out two years ago after Oestrike told her he was having fantasies about killing her:

“Knowing what tormented him, knowing the bad dreams and bad things he saw in his dreams and the depth of pain in his poetry, I wasn`t surprised that something traumatic and violent like this happened in his life,” she said. . . .
“He described a lot of bad dreams,” Morris says. “He described a lot of thoughts that were dark and disturbed him.” She says Oestrike was very intelligent and worked a lot.
Though the house was filled with guns and swords, Morris says she wasn’t frightened of him until he made a horrific confession one day.
“He told me that he was having thoughts about killing me and that he was warning me,” she said.
“He’s like, ‘These thoughts are happening to me.’”
Morris says she prepared to move out and encouraged Oestrike to see a mental health professional. “He had said he studied it and believed that he was schizophrenic,” she said.

So this was the psycho who responded to the ad in which Oppenneer offered his girlfriend Slocum for sex. You have to figure the guy who sells his pregnant girlfriend on Craigslist is a certain kind of crazy, but the guy who pays to do it with a pregnant woman while her boyfriend watches? Yeah, he’s operating at a higher level of crazy.

Oppenneer and Slocum went missing. Four days later, on July 16, police found Oppenneer’s headless body in a park. Police found e-mails between Oppenneer and Oestrike, and staked out Oestrike’s house July 17. When he drove away, there was a high-speed pursuit that ended when Oestrike committed suicide, shooting himself in the head. Police found Slocum’s body in the trunk of Oestrike’s car. Police say they believe that after Oestrike beheaded Oppenneer, he then held Slocum captive for days before strangling her. And now the saddest part of the story:

As the details emerged, the slain woman’s father revealed that he knew about the couple’s schemes and said that his daughter was desperate to do anything her boyfriend insisted so that they would stay together to bring up their child.
Greg Slocum said that his daughter was going to move in with her mother two weeks before her disappearance because she had broken up with Oppenneer – but instead, they got back together.
His daughter was desperate to get back with her child’s father ‘no matter what it took – and she paid the ultimate price for it’, Slocum told WOOD-TV.
‘Even to meet men on Craigslist to make some money because her boyfriend was manipulative,’ he said. ‘She would put herself through hell just to make sure her family didn’t get divorced.’
He added that she had written letters to her unborn child about why she met men for sex, and explained that she simply wanted to be loved.
The devastated father said he had warned her against meeting strangers for sex but that she was a teenager with a mind of her own, WOOD-TV reported.

Police still have not found Charles Oppenneer’s head.

 

Category: Crime

FMJRA 2.0: An Extra Girl (Ape)

Posted on | July 26, 2014 | 17 Comments

— compiled by Wombat-socho

Daily Kos Founder Markos Compares Arizona to ‘Apartheid South Africa’

Rule 5 Sunday: Electric Avenue

LIVE AT FIVE: 07.23.14

VIDEO: The Brilliant @EvanSayet Explains How Liberals ‘Think’

FMJRA 2.0: Big Mess

Andrew ‘The Nailgun’ O’Hehir Calls Israel America’s Frankenstein Monster

Progressives Cheer: Sterilizing Poor People Is Totally Awesome!

Sharia Schools in England

Commies in Anaheim?

Tales of the Mission Gone Wrong

‘I Got Him in a Bloody Puddle for You’: Father Beats Gay Teen Molesting Son

LIVE AT FIVE: 07.21.14

Is MSNBC Too Pro-Israel?

The New Feminist Fashion

The Gaza Jihad Is on Twitter

Ditch Mitch?

Canadian Candidate Drops Out After Masturbation Video Surfaces

LIVE AT FIVE: 07.22.14

‘This Is How Bullies and Abusers Function. … They Will Stop at Nothing to Silence Their Victims’

Did ObamaCare Just Die?

Schools of Privilege

Trannies Keep Harassing Feminists

Feminist Prostitution in Canada?

ObamaCare: Fake It and Take It

Radical Lesbian Feminism: Coming Soon to a Public School Classroom Near You?

LIVE AT FIVE: 07.24.14

Democrats: The Party of Theft

Bring Back the Firing Squad

HORROR IN IRAQ: Islamists Order Genital Mutilation for All Females

‘Splatter From an Execution’

Where Feminism Comes From

LIVE AT FIVE: 07.25.14

Police: Lesbian Molester’s ‘Multiple Acts of Digital Penetration’ of Girl, 8

Multimedia Hijinkery

Top linkers this week:

  1. Batshit Crazy News (29)
  2. That Mr. G Guy (21)
  3. Regular Right Guy (12)
  4. A View from the Beach (7)

…and as usual, a couple of folks who just missed the cutoff. Thanks to everyone for their linkagery!


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Category: FMJRA Award

Sex Trouble: Feminists Worry That Disney Movies Are Making Girls Heterosexual

Posted on | July 26, 2014 | 115 Comments

Jasmine was a victim of Aladdin’s magic patriarchal carpet.

Is your daughter a victim of male oppression? Blame Aladdin — as well as The Little Mermaid, Pocahontas, The Lion King and Toy Story 2.

Disney cartoons and other G-rated children’s movies are full of “gendered sexuality,” subjecting women to the male “objectifying gaze,” as “heterosexuality is constructed through hetero-romantic love relationships as exceptional, powerful, magical, and transformative.”

These were the conclusions of Women’s Studies professors Karin Martin and Emily Kazyak in their 2009 research paper, “Hetero-Romantic Love and Heterosexiness in Children’s G-Rated Films.” The sociologists examined “all the G-rated films grossing $100 million dollars or more between 1990 and 2005” and found that these movies convey what feminists call “heteronormativity”:

Heteronormativity includes the multiple, often mundane ways through which heterosexuality overwhelmingly structures and “pervasively and insidiously” orders “everyday existence” . . . Heteronormativity structures social life so that heterosexuality is always assumed, expected, ordinary, and privileged. Its pervasiveness makes it difficult for people to imagine other ways of life. . . . Anything else is relegated to the nonnormative, unusual, and unexpected and is, thus, in need of explanation. Specifically, within heteronormativity, homosexuality becomes the “other” against which heterosexuality defines itself. . . .
Heteronormativity regulates those within its boundaries as it marginalizes those outside of it. . . .
Heteronormativity also rests on gender asymmetry, as heterosexuality depends on a particular type of normatively gendered women and men.

The feminist critique of heteronormativity and gender roles dates back to the earliest years of the Women’s Liberation Movement (so-called “second-wave” feminism) of the 1960s and ’70s. Radical lesbian manifestos by Artemis March (“The Woman Identified Woman,” 1970) and Charlotte Bunch (“Lesbians in Revolt,” 1972) denounced heterosexuality as part of a “sexist society characterized by rigid sex roles and dominated by male supremacy,” which “denigrates and despises women,” where women’s “subordination” as inferiors is central to a “sexist, racist, capitalist, imperialist system.” (For more, see Part One of this series, “Radical Feminism and the Long Shadow of the ‘Lavender Menace’.”)  Feminism’s anti-male theories were further advanced by Adrienne Rich’s influential 1980 essay, “Compulsory Heterosexuality and Lesbian Existence”, which has been so widely cited that lesbian scholars like Professor Judith Butler invoke Rich’s phrase “compulsory heteorsexuality” without bothering to credit its originator. (See “Reading ‘Heterophobia’: Adrienne Rich and ‘Compulsory Heterosexuality’.”)

Martin and Kazyak’s critique of heteronormativity and gender roles in children’s movies relies on the work of radical feminists, including Gayle Rubin, a controversial lesbian activist whose treatise “Thinking Sex: Notes for a Radical Theory of the Politics of Sexuality” is cited as authority for how heterosexuality is part of a system of “inequalities, like race and class, [that] intersect and help construct what Rubin calls ‘the inner charmed circle’ in a multitude of complicated ways.” Readers of Rubin’s 1984 essay may be shocked to learn that she favorably cited the pedophile group NAMBLA (North American Man/Boy Love Association) in opposition to laws against child pornography:

For over a century, no tactic for stirring up erotic hysteria has been as reliable as the appeal to protect children. The current wave of erotic terror has reached deepest into those areas bordered in some way, if only symbolically, by the sexuality of the young. . . . In February 1977 . . . a sudden concern with ‘child pornography’ swept the national media. In May, the Chicago Tribune ran a lurid four-day series with three-inch headlines, which claimed to expose a national vice ring organized to lure young boys into prostitution and pornography. Newspapers across the country ran similar stories, most of them worthy of the National Enquirer. By the end of May, a congressional investigation was underway. Within weeks, the federal government had enacted a sweeping bill against ‘child pornography’ and many of the states followed with bills of their own. . . .
The laws produced by the child porn panic are ill-conceived and misdirected. They represent far-reaching alterations in the regulation of sexual behaviour and abrogate important sexual civil liberties. But hardly anyone noticed as they swept through Congress and state legislatures. With the exception of the North American Man/Boy Love Association and American Civil Liberties Union, no one raised a peep of protest.

It is perhaps unnecessary to point out the ironic contradiction: In 1984, Gayle Rubin was citing NAMBLA to denounce a “child porn panic” as a menace to “important sexual civil liberties”; twenty-five years later, Rubin’s radical treatise was cited by two university Women’s Studies professors who see G-rated children’s films as a menace.

“Don’t worry about perverts and kiddie porn, Mom. It’s those heteronormative Disney movies that are the real danger!”

The “erotic terror” Karin Martin and Emily Kazyak want to protect girls from is heterosexuality and normal gender roles portrayed in movies like Aladdin, Pocahontas and Beauty and the Beast:

These films repeatedly mark relationships between cross-gender lead characters as special and magical by utilizing imagery of love and romance. Characters in love are surrounded by music, flowers, candles, magic, fire, ballrooms, fancy dresses, dim lights, dancing, and elaborate dinners. Fireflies, butterflies, sunsets, wind, and the beauty and power of nature often provide the setting for — and a link to the naturalness of — hetero-romantic love. For example, in Beauty and the Beast, the main characters fall in love frolicking in the snow; Aladdin and Jasmine fall in love as they fly through a starlit sky in Aladdin; Ariel falls in love as she discovers the beauty of earth in The Little Mermaid; . . . Pocahontas is full of allusion to water, wind, and trees as a backdrop to the characters falling in love. The characters often say little in these scenes. Instead, the scenes are overlaid with music and song that tells the viewer more abstractly what the characters are feeling. These scenes depicting hetero-romantic love are also paced more slowly with longer shots and with slower and soaring music.
These films also construct the specialness of hetero-romantic love by holding in tension the assertion that hetero-romantic relationships are simultaneously magical and natural. In fact, their naturalness and their connection to “chemistry” and the body further produce their exceptionalness. . . . These formulations include ideas about reproductive instincts and biology, and they work to naturalize heterosexuality. We see similar constructions at work in these G-rated movies where the natural becomes the magical. These films show that, in the words of Mrs. Pots from Beauty and the Beast, if “there’s a spark there,” then all that needs to be done is to “let nature take its course.”

Translation: “Damn those patriarchal oppressors and their hateful heteronormative ‘ideas about reproductive instincts and biology’!”

This kind of gender-theory deconstruction of popular culture is now ubiquitous in Women’s Studies programs, and it is certainly no accident that the most widely used anthology of feminist literature is edited by three lesbian professors. Academic feminists are hostile to any claim that heterosexual attraction is natural, as I observed three months ago:

If you consider sexual desire and romantic love between men and women to be natural and healthy, you are not a feminist. . . . There is nothing natural about sex, according to feminist ideology, no biological urge that causes women to be attracted to men.

Because feminists view heterosexuality as intrinsic to  “male supremacy,” they argue that women’s romantic interest in men is “socially constructed” — a delusion imposed on them by patriarchal brainwashing — and Karin Martin blames mothers for encouraging girls to be heterosexual. In the anti-Disney screed she co-authored with Kazyak, Martin cited her own research from another 2009 paper titled “Normalizing Heterosexuality: Mothers’ Assumptions, Talk, and Strategies with Young Children.”

Obviously, mothers are letting their daughters watch Disney movies as part of these “strategies” to teach their girls how to be victims of male heterosexual oppression. Being beautiful, so as to attract “the male gaze” as sex objects, is what Martin and Kazyak condemn as the “heterosexiness” of female cartoon characters:

Heteronormativity requires particular kinds of bodies and interactions between those bodies. Thus, as heterosexuality is constructed in these films, gendered bodies are portrayed quite differently, and we see much more of some bodies than others. Women throughout the animated features in our sample are drawn with cleavage, bare stomachs, and bare legs. . . .
[In the 1996 Disney feature The Hunchback of Notre Dame] Quasimodo accidentally stumbles into Esmeralda’s dressing area, and she quickly covers up with a robe and hunches over so as not to expose herself. She ties up her robe as Quasimodo apologizes again and again and hides his eyes. However, as he exits, he glances back toward her with a smile signifying for the viewer his love for her. A glimpse of her body has made her even more lovable and desirable. . . .
[W]omen’s bodies become important in the construction of heteronormative sexuality through their “sexiness” at which men gaze. Much of the sexuality that these gendered bodies engage in has little to do with heterosexual sex narrowly defined as intercourse or even behaviors that might lead to it, but rather with cultural signs of a gendered sexuality for women.

So, for all these years American parents thought their daughters were just watching kiddie cartoons, when instead these Disney movies are actually part of how “heterosexuality is constructed” by the patriarchy to impose “gendered sexuality” on little girls. Please, professors, tell us more about this animated misogynistic oppression:

The best example of the representation of sexiness appears in The Hunchback of Notre Dame. Esmeralda, the Gypsy female lead, is drawn with dark hair, big green eyes, a curvy body, cleavage, and a small waist. She is also drawn with darker skin than other lead Disney characters like Belle (Beauty and the Beast) and Ariel (Little Mermaid). Darker skin and hair and “exotic” features are part of the representation of heterosexual sexiness for women. Moreover, Esmeralda spends much time in this film swaying her hips and dancing “sexily” while men admire her.
Not all scenes with the signification of sexiness are so elaborated. When the candlestick and duster are turned back into people in Beauty and the Beast, the now-voluptuous maid prances bare-shouldered in front of the chef who stares. Throughout Aladdin, especially in fast-paced musical scenes, sexy women prance, preen, bat their eyelashes, shake their hips, and reveal their cleavage. When Genie sings to Aladdin, he produces three women with bare stomachs and bikini-like outfits who dance around him, touch him, bat their eyes at him, and kiss him. He stares at them sometimes unsure, but wide-eyed and smiling. When Prince Ali comes to ask Princess Jasmine for her hand in marriage, his parade to the castle is adorned with writhing, dancing women with bare stomachs and cleavage. Later, Jasmine sees Prince Ali as a fraud and tricks him with similarly sexy moves. Heterosexiness in Aladdin is delivered through the bodies of women of color who are exoticized.

Translation: “Those heteronormative Disney oppressors aren’t just sexist, they’re racist, too! How dare they ‘exoticize’ women of color!”

Esmerelda gets exoticized in The Hunchback of Notre Dame.

This is perhaps a good place to mention that Christian conservatves — despite our hateful enthusiasm for patriarchy — have frequently criticized the messages embedded in Disney products. Often, the same “hetero-erotic” themes that offend feminists offend conservatives, but for different reasons. Youthful rebellion against parental authority by the pursuit of forbidden love is fairly common in these movies. Ariel’s romance in The Little Mermaid is a rebellion against her father Poseidon, and forbidden romances are also central to the stories in Pocahontas and Aladdin. The use of magic — which Bible-believers must condemn as sorcery and witchcraft — is another common Disney plot device. (Did you say “Magic Kingdom”? And do we know who rules this kingdom, boys and girls? Satan!) Pocahontas is particularly egregious to conservative sensibilities, depicting English colonists as violent, greedy predators, while portraying the natives as peaceful proto-environmentalists who live in harmony with nature. Any conservative Christian theologian would see the “mystical” elements in Pocahontas as a celebration of pagan nature-worship.

Likewise, the “heterosexiness” that Martin and Kazyak view through the prism of gender theory is offensive to many conservative parents, although for different reasons. Conservatives don’t think their daughters should have to bare their cleavage or make “sexy moves” to attract male interest. Nor, for that matter, do conservatives think that our daughters are apt to find healthy relationships by becoming slaves to “chemistry” and acting on every magical “spark” that might persuade them to “let nature take its course.” Mature adults understand that “chemistry” — especially wild hormonal impulses of adolescence — often leads young people to irresponsible and reckless behavior. Whether we are Christians who oppose fornication on moral grounds, or rationalists who wish our children to learn responsible restraint on their potentially harmful erotic impulses, conservative parents reject permissive attitudes about letting children pursue their “feelings” and “instincts” in romance.

Paradoxes abound when comparing feminist and conservative critiques of popular culture. Martin and Kazyak condemn the heteronormative “gendered sexuality” expressed by the costumes and gestures of female Disney characters. Most traditionalist parents would be appalled if their daughters dressed and behaved like the Hunchback‘s Esmerelda, Aladdin‘s Jasmine or The Little Mermaid. (“If you think you’re leaving the house dressed like that, Ariel, you’ve got another think coming! Wearing those seashells like a little beach tramp! Now march yourself back upstairs and put on a sweater, young lady!”) While it is acceptable for two Women’s Studies professors to condemn the “heterosexiness” of Disney princesses, however, any conservative who criticized these characters’ cleavage-bearing outfits would be denounced by feminists for engaging in “slut-shaming.”

Ariel shows off her half-fish “heterosexiness.”

The question of whether Disney cartoon features are entirely “family friendly” in one that thoughtful conservatives have often discussed. Yet the parts of these G-rated movies that are most wholesome, from a conservative perspective, are predictably singled out for criticism by the feminist professors Martin and Kazyak:

[T]here is much explicit heterosexual gazing at or ogling of women’s bodies in these films. . . .
When the main characters refrain from overt ogling and sexual commentary, the “sidekicks” provide humor through this practice. For example, in Toy Story 2, Rex, Potato Head, Slinky Dog, and Piggy Bank drive through aisles of a toy store and stop at a “beach party” where there are many Barbies in bathing suits, laughing and dancing. As the male characters approach, a jackpot sound (“ching”) is heard, and all four male characters’ jaws drop open. Then “Tour Guide Barbie” acrobatically lands in their car and says she will help them. They all stare at her with open eyes and mouths. Mr. Potato Head recites again and again, “I’m a married spud, I’m a married spud, I’m a married spud,” and Piggy Bank says, “Make room for single fellas” as he jumps over Potato Head to sit next to Barbie. They remain mesmerized by Barbie as she gives them a tour of the store.

Barbie was objectified by the male potato gaze.

Anyone who has seen Toy Story 2 — at least, anyone except lesbian Women’s Studies professors — knows that this is one of the funniest scenes in the whole movie. The reactions of the four male characters are so funny because they are so true-to-life. And the reaction of Mr. Potato Head, reminding himself that he is married when unexpectedly finding himself seated next to vivacious young “Tour Guide Barbie,” is exactly what any Christian pastor — or any wife, for that matter — would expect a married man to do in such a situation. If only Bill Clinton had remembered he was a “married spud,” the Monica Lewinsky scandal and Clinton’s impeachment could have been avoided.

Marital loyalty requires that both husbands and wives strive to resist the temptations of “heterosexiness,” but this obligation — a sacred duty, as Christians would say — is most often breached by men. Bill Clinton certainly wasn’t the first middle-aged married man to discover that career success could be leveraged as sexual access to misguided young women for whom male power had the effect of an aphrodisiac. This is not to deny that the reverse scenario occurs, as when female teachers like Mary Kay LeTourneau and Debra Lafave engage in illegal sex with underage males. However, for every sex-crazed female “cougar” stalking young male prey, there have always been many more married men willing to take advantage of foolish young women. In fact, this was the subject of one of the most famous musical quarrels in history. Hank Thompson had a Number One country hit in 1952 with this lament:

I never knew God made honky-tonk angels.
Should have known you would never make a wife.
You have lost the only one who ever loved you,
And went back to the wild side of life.

To that, Kitty Wells famously replied with her own Number One hit:

It wasn’t God who made honky-tonk angels,
As you wrote in the words of your song.
Too many times married men think they’re still single.
That has caused many a good girl to go wrong.

Amen, sister! Complaints about double-standards and an endless finger-pointing blame game in the War of the Sexes long pre-dated the rise of the feminist movement, and there is more wisdom in those Grand Ole Opry classics than in all the “gender theory” treatises ever published by Women’s Studies professors. The true classics in our popular culture endure over time precisely because they reflect important truths about human nature. Take it away, Elvis:

Well, a hard-headed woman,
A soft-hearted man,
Been the cause of trouble
Ever since the world began. . . .
Samson told Delilah
Loud and clear,
“Keep your cotton pickin’ fingers
Out of my curly hair!”
Oh yeah, ever since the world began
A hard-headed woman been
A thorn in the side of man

Is that song an example of patriarchal heteronormative misogyny? Certainly. Why do you think they called him the “King,” huh?

We laugh as we imagine the feminist critique of old rock-and-roll songs, but Ph.D.s in Women’s Studies expect to be taken seriously when they tell us Disney cartoons are part of a male-supremacy plot to brainwash girls into becoming heterosexual. But nothing would horrify parents more than if their daughter were to become “heterosexual” in the generic sense — that is to say, becoming sexually available to all men.

Strippers, porn performers, and prostitutes are “heterosexual” in that sense, and yet it is conservatives, not feminists, who most frequently criticize women’s degradation in what is euphemistically called “sex work.” Conservatives are condemned for “slut-shaming” — and Republicans are accused of waging a “War on Women” — when they criticize the reckless promiscuity defended by many feminists.

Duke University Women’s Studies major Miriam Weeks (“Belle Knox”) insists it is an “empowering” expression of her “sexual autonomy” for her to perform oral sex, let men ejaculate on her face, and be penetrated every possible way in the teen porn videos where she is paid to endure sexual humiliation. Miriam Weeks is not strictly heterosexual, and has enacted numerous lesbian scenes in her brief porn career. She describes herself as bisexual and has said she started watching porn videos when she was 11 or 12. By the time she was a college freshman, the Duke feminist told one interviewer, she was already so jaded she could only “get off” watching videos in which females perform oral sex on men.

Like the old song says, it wasn’t God who made honky-tonk angels. And whatever academic feminists may theorize, it isn’t Disney movies that turn girls into pathetic creatures like Miriam Weeks.

 

 

* * * * *

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Category: Culture, Feminism, Movies, Sex Trouble

The Amnesty Fine Print

Posted on | July 26, 2014 | 16 Comments

by Smitty

Mickey Kaus, emphasis mine:

Cautionary note for hopeful Latino activists: A legislative compromise always seems within reach. There is vast DC lobbying/media complex that depends for its survival on “comprehensive” reform always seeming within reach — to keep the corporate clients paying the bills, to keep the grantmakers granting, to keep reporters on their beats writing easy denunciations of DC dysfunction, to keep the whole capital consensus from unnecessary introspection (in which Republicans might have to rethink parts of their platform other than the immigration plank, while Democrats might have to consider what low-skilled migration, expanded in the service of cheap ethnic politics, is doing to their former working class base).

Amnesty hopefuls are dealing with a sort of bureaucratic Penelope, then.

Every night for three years, until one of her maids reveals the secret, she unravels the piece that she has woven by day so that she will not have to give up hope for the return. . .

It’s a good scam, I guess.

Category: Immigration

Just Relax In Your ‘Fundamentally Transformed’ Country, Americans

Posted on | July 26, 2014 | 17 Comments

by Smitty

Pres’ent Obama has simply carried through:
In the pre-transformed America, it was understood that the Commies had infiltrated Hollywood and academia. No one really expected subversion of the IRS:

To summarize: The IRS (famed for nitpicking and prosecuting the tax law), chose to authorize hundreds of billions of illegal subsidies without having performed a smidgen of legal due diligence, and did so at the direction of political taskmasters. The agency’s actions provided aid and comfort to elected Democrats, even as it disenfranchised millions of Americans who voted in their states to reject state-run exchanges. And Treasury knows how ugly this looks, which is why it initially stonewalled Congress in its investigation—at first refusing to give documents to investigators, and redacting large portions of the information.

These dots on the financial rigging side connect just as we hear that, on the drafting side, the shenanigans were just as wretched:

The New Republic’s Jonathan Cohn reached out to Jonathan Gruber to get his reaction to the emergence of the Nobilis video in which the architect of ObamaCare explains that the restriction of subsidies to states with their own exchanges was a rational attempt to coerce states into creating those exchanges, rather than shifting the burden back to the federal government. Gruber calls that “a speak-o — you know, like a typo”

In defense of the Democrats, we have tolerated and permitted our politics to reach this sordid state. The sovereignty of We the People is being migrated over to the executive branch in two ways:

  • initially burying decision making in a series of multi-ream legislative reamings, of which the Affordable Care Act is merely the most infamous example, and,
  • subsequently rewriting those words as required either through regulation or, in the unusual case of the ACA, at the SCOTUS.

It’s a cliché to say that the impending election is the most important of our lifetimes. It’s no longer about avoiding the disaster; it’s about mitigating the effects and minimizing the recover time.

Category: Barack Obama, Democrats, Health Care
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