The Other McCain

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

RadFem: ‘No Woman Is Heterosexual’

Posted on | February 12, 2014 | 157 Comments

How many times have I explained that feminism is an ideology of man-hating Marxist lesbian baby-killers? This is what feminists themselves say, if you bother to study feminist theory:

[University of California-Santa Cruz Women’s Studies] Professor Bettina Aptheker is the daughter of a famous American Communist, the late Herbert Aptheker . . .
Professor Bettina Aptheker is by her own proud admission both a Communist and a self-described “lesbian activist.” . . . Aptheker’scourse syllabus describes lesbianism as the “highest state of feminism” . . . In other words, change in sexual orientation is an inevitable final stage in the development of the socially conscious individual.

Allison Jaggar is professor of philosophy and a former chair of the Women’s Studies Department at the University of Colorado, Boulder  . . . Integrating Marxism and feminist theory, Jaggar describes herself as a “socialist feminist” and “activist,” who seeks to combat “the male-dominant structure of everyday life.” . . .
“The political economy of socialist feminism,” writes Jaggar, “establishes that, in contemporary society, women suffer a special form of exploitation and expression. . . . The distinctive social experience of women generates insights that are incompatible with men’s interpretations of reality . . . The validity of these insights . . . must be tested in political struggle . . .”

Are we clear about this? Lesbianism is the “highest state of feminism” and feminist insights “are incompatible with men’s interpretations of reality.” This isn’t what I say about feminism. This is what feminists say about themselves. And if you think they don’t take themselves seriously, you’re not paying attention.

OK, so last night — I blame you, Kim Jossfolk — I was compelled to pay attention to the radical feminist (radfem) blogger who says all heterosexual intercourse (penis-in-vagina, PIV) is rape, and that when men read her blog, “they view it with the intent of harming radical feminists and women in general.”

One of my women-harming readers pointed out that the aforesaid radfem blogger has commenters on her blog who are equally crazy, if not more so. And I noticed this comment:

The first paragraph in your second post on heterosexual grooming is one of the best quotes I have ever found.

Oh, really? Let’s quote the first paragraph of “Grooming / pimping into heterosexuality: politics of love pt II“:

No woman is heterosexual. What men call heterosexuality is an institution where men make women captive for PIV, to control our reproductive functions and steal our labour. Heterosexuality, or sexuality with men does not exist, because the only relationship to men that exists is men’s violence, physical and mental invasion — one that men have so well crafted and disguised for so long that we can mistake it for attraction, sexual urges or love. All women’s “attraction” to men is 100% eroticised trauma bonding / stockholm syndrome. There is no other form of attraction to men possible than that. None. Any woman “sexually” or “sentimentally” attached to a man is ONLY trauma-bonded to him. This is a universal rule under patriarchy.

If any of you women think you are attracted to men, this can only be because you have been brainwashed, the radfem explains:

Men know how we react to their violence and deliberately manipulate our responses to increase their control over us, and to decrease the efforts it takes them to do so. It’s in men’s interest to disguise their violence as much as possible. It’s not for nothing that modern western patriarchy has perfected “psycho” and “behavioural” (brainwashing and mind-control) sciences for centuries as a powerful anti-women’s liberation tool, and that men rely so heavily on it to keep us at their knees, or rather, below their dicks. It’s part of the global male infrastructure that ensures men a constant supply of ready-tamed and pre-possessed women to effortlessly stick their dicks in, impregnate and abuse. The more it grows, the easier it is for each individual man to break any woman’s will and trick her into PIV and being owned by him — and maintain submission level with the help of men’s institutions.

Men “deliberately manipulate” women’s responses, to provide a “constant supply” for the “global male infrastructure.”

Read the whole thing — she’s got an entire theoretical infrastructure to explain all her zany assertions. And yes, there is a Part III:

When we define an act of violence and a system of oppression, we look at what the abuser or oppressor class does to the victim that qualifies as violence or oppression in any form. . . . When we define patriarchy we look at the structure, the pattern of what men do to us. All this is always external to us, outside of the victims. It doesn’t have anything to do with women and our individual choices as free beings but with men, patriarchy. Their violence is about them.
The very purpose of violence is to inflict something on you that you don’t want and that’s against your interest: the point is to harm, destroy you or go against your will. . . . The only reason we seem to be drawn to subordination to men is because men’s violence functions in a way that turns our survival impulse against ourselves . . .
Consent is meaningless and irrelevant with regards to defining men’s violence and describing the objective reality of it. The only ones to choose and want are those who do the violence: men. They choose to resort to violence because they want to obtain something from us that they wouldn’t otherwise be able to obtain (using us as their dick receptacles, control our reproduction). Will, calculation, intent and choice of means to achieve their end are all on their side. Saying that we choose and want it is a reversal and lie. The illusion of our choice protects men not us, because deception and reversal is in part how they maintain their rule.

You can read the entirety of that, too. To summarize radfem’s beliefs:

  1. All acts of male-female sex are inherently violent.
  2. All women are naturally lesbians.
  3. Patriarchy manipulates women into thinking they want to have sex with men; women’s feelings of “love” toward men are actually the psychological side-effect of violent trauma.
  4. Women’s “choice” in the context of heterosexual relationships is an illusion; the patriarchal system of oppression means that women are always victims of male violence.

This is what feminism is all about: Defining men as rapists, defining women as helpless victims, and promoting lesbianism.

Roses are red,
Violets are blue.
The heteronormative patriarchy
Is raping you.

 

Category: Feminism

LIVE AT FIVE: 02.12.14

Posted on | February 12, 2014 | 8 Comments

— compiled by Wombat-socho


TOP NEWS
Tea Party Loses As House Passes Clean Debt Increase

Speaker Boehner

Bill passes house 221-201, with only 28 GOP votes for; list of Republicans supporting bill here

Yellen: Bad Jobs Reports Won’t Change Tapering
Fed’s stimulus program will continue

Little Progress In Syria Talks
No agreement on agenda, much less anything else




POLITICS
Conservative Support Divided In Crowded Georgia Senate Primary

Clockwise from top left: Rep. Jack Kingston, Rep. Paul Broun, Rep. Phil Gingrey, and former Secretary of State Karen Handel

Will divisions in the primary cost the GOP a seat?

Governor Inslee Suspends Executions In Washington

Obama Defends Repeated Tweaks To Abominable Care Act

Marijuana Remorse

Holder Urges States To Restore Voting Rights To Ex-Cons

House Votes To Cancel Cuts To Military Pensions

Lawmakers Accuse Administration Of Flouting Law By Releasing Asylum Seekers

Navy Yard View Finds Local Cops Often Block Feds From Doing Full Security Clearances

House GOP Fighting Treasury Decision To Limit Political Activities Of Tax-Exempts

John Walsh Sworn In As New Senator From Montana, Replacing Baucus



THE ECONOMY, STUPID
Brent Edges Toward $109 On Strong PRC Trade Data: NYMEX $100.32, Brent $108.72
TreeHouse Sues Green Mountain, Keurig For Blocking Competition
Feds Use Emergency Powers To Put More Propane In The Pipeline
Big Lots Steps In As Hostess Thrift Outlet
CVS Caremark 4Q Profit Jumps More Than Twelve Per Cent
Chick-Fil-A Goes Antibiotic-Free
Microsoft Addresses Critical IE Vulnerabilities On Patch Tuesday
Mozilla To Sell Advertising In Firefox Browser
Twitter Reportedly Working On Facebook-Like Site Redesign
With $100 Million Buyout Deal, Klout Suddenly Popular Again
“Flappy Bird” Creator Dong Nguyen Pulled Game Because It Was Too Addictive



SPORTS
With Astros Addition Of Nolan Ryan, Rangers Rivalry Not A Joke Any More

Then-Rangers CEO Nolan Ryan and Astros President Reid Ryan at Rangers Ballpark, July 5 2013

“I think the future is bright for Houston, and I’m looking forward to my involvement.”

James Scores 33 As Heat Beat Suns

Matt Lauer Takes Over For Ailing Bob Costas, Is Immediately Ridiculed

Joakim Noah Has Triple-Double In Bulls’ Defeat Of Hawks

Yankees’ Newest Star Welcomes Biggest Stage

Salukis Fall To #4 Wichita State 78-67

Michigan Gets First Win At Ohio State Since 2003

Deng Scores 22 As Cavs Avenge Loss To Kings

Browns CEO, GM Leave Team In Stunning Shakeup

Releford’s Three-Pointer Lifts Alabama Over Ole Miss

Nationals Top Five Spring Training Storylines: Fifth Starter?



FAMOUS FOR BEING FAMOUS
Shirley Temple Black Dies At 85

Good night, sweetest princess.

Hollywood’s biggest little star

Child star turned diplomat died Monday at her home


Tom Brokaw Diagnosed With Multiple Myeloma

Kristen Stewart Shuns The Married Director She Once Dated

Unspeakable Armenian’s Sister Assaults Dance Floor With Blunt Object



Cops Say Justin Bieber Jail Video Shows Him Pissing In Cell

David Cassidy’s Wife Files For Divorce

Famed Photographer Refuses To Do Vogue Shoot Of Unspeakable Armenian

Selena Gomez Thanks Fans For Rehab Support With Wine Photo

Fox’s “Gotham” Casts The Penguin, Alfred

Liam Hemsworth, Nina Dobrev Atlanta Bar Sighting Sparks Romance Rumors

Soleil Moon Frye, It’s A Boy!

Bieber’s Vandalism Conviction Could Make Him Persona Non Grata In U.S.



FOREIGNERS
PRC Exports Jump, But Markets Cautious On Data
Pentagon Unconcerned Over Iranian Warships In Atlantic
Obama Honors Hollande At Lavish State Dinner
At Norks’ Suggestion, Koreas Reopen Dialogue
Triple Explosions Kill Eleven In Peshawar Cinema
Penguin India To Recall, Destroy Noted American Scholar’s Work On Hinduism
Rival Cyprus Leaders Resume Peace Talks
Modi To Brew Bonhomie With Voters At Chai Pe Charcha Today
Australian Police Find $163 Million Worth Of Meth In Kayaks From PRC
Canada Charts Comfortable Course To 2015 Surplus
Italy, U.S. Team Up To Crack Down On Mafia Drug Smuggling
Ford Nation: Toronto Mayor Rob Ford Launches Own YouTube Channel
With UK Flood Waters Rising, Politicians Bicker Over Who’s To Blame



BLOGS & STUFF
Dead Republican Party: Final Post
Blackmailers Don’t Shoot: Spiral Galaxies From The Hubble Telescope
Proof Positive: Barack Obama, Economic Genius
First Street Journal: Economics 101 – The More Government Tries To Run Businesses, The More It Fouls Up
Doug Powers: Obama Administration – Employers Aren’t Getting Rid Of Workers Because Of O-Care, And They’ll Have To Sign Papers To Prove It
Twitchy: “F*ck Shirley Temple” Lefties Bash Late Republican Star, Smear Her As “Roaring Racist”
Best Of Cain: Redskins Respond To Senators’ Name Change Demands – Why Don’t You Do Your Actual Job?
Tammy Bruce: Happy Birthday, Korematsu v. United States!
American Power: Obama Rewrites Obamacare
American Thinker: Obama Twerks America
Conservatives4Palin: Governor Palin Thanks Supporters And Friends For Birthday Wishes
Don Surber: Daily Scoreboard, February 11
Jammie Wearing Fools: Di Blasio Intervenes When Friend Is Arrested, Spares Him Time Behind Bars
Joe For America: What Do Liberals Say To A Black Conservative?
JustOneMinute: Don’t Cry For Me Argentina
Pat Dollard: Intel Chiefs Say Al Qaeda’s Not On The Run
Protein Wisdom: Over The Past Few Weeks…
Shot In The Dark: What Would It Take To Lose Tenure In The University Of Minnesota System?
The Jawa Report: Science! Ancient Egyptian Landspeeder
The Lonely Conservative: Radical Environmentalists Carry Torches To Oil Executive’s Home
This Ain’t Hell: Why This Stuff Matters
Megan McArdle: Facebook Puts A Downer On Upworthy


Megan’s The Up Side of Down is out!


Category: Live at Five

Anonymous, Paranoid and Unverifiable: Radical Feminism’s Anti-PIV Madness

Posted on | February 11, 2014 | 52 Comments

Six weeks ago, a “remarkable uproar” was inspired after some conservatives discovered a radical feminist blogger’s bizarre denunciation of heterosexual intercourse as “PIV” (penis in vagina).

As I pointed out at the time, the blogger’s anonymity made it impossible to verify her narrative — we don’t know her age or her circumstances and only by a careful reading is it possible to determine that she is evidently British, was raised Catholic, attended university and has experienced nothing but disappointment with men:

I never “fell” in love with anybody when I was young, and was always wondering whether I was normal or not. . . .
Anyway, a few rapes / PIV / abusive relationships later, as I was still adolescent, I “fell in love”, or so I thought. . . .
The guy was something like 13 years older than me, I was still a minor, and my “love” to him would be all the more strong that he was very fleeting, would contact me only every now and then when he needed to fuck (rape) me. I was too grateful for him paying any attention to me to be even aware of his abusive behaviour, or understand what it meant. I was confused that he only wanted to see me sporadically, instead of starting a relationship, which is the way in which this love is supposed to be expressed. If he liked me enough to “desire” me, why didn’t he want a relationship?

Careful reading is necessary to analyze this narrative which, as I say, cannot be verified because of the author’s anonymity. But if we take her account at face value, she had a series of loveless adolescent relationships before — “while still a minor” — she “fell in love” with a man who was about 30 years old. And from this we can learn . . .what?

Teenage sexual promiscuity is a bad idea.

Why was she, as a teenager, so willing to engage in loveless sex with these guys? We don’t know. We might guess or theorize, but we can’t really know, and yet this vague and unverifiable tale is what she offers as the justification of her anti-male ideology.

Keep that in mind, because last week Maetenloch at AOSHQ included this headline in the overnight open thread:

Anti-PIV RadFeminist Very Unhappy
That Men Read Her PIV=Rape Blog Post

Maetenloch commented:

Scrolling through page after page of angsty driven man-hate I can’t help but think that some therapy would lead to a much, much happier life for her.

Well, that’s a huge part of the problem, isn’t it? Feminism provides an ideological interpretation of women’s unhappiness which — just coincidentally — tells them that they are never responsible for anything that goes wrong in their lives, because all of their misfortunes and discontents are the fault of the patriarchy.

Rather than seeking therapeutic help with their personal problems, feminists instead seek scapegoats to blame. Because blame is not a solution, their problems never get better, and the worse their problems are, the more radical their feminism becomes. Let’s briefly  examine the radfem blogger’s screed, shall we?

When men view our blogs in such large numbers, it’s a threat. They’re not just looking at it, they view it with the intent of harming radical feminists and women in general. They do it to collect information so they know what next to do to prevent women from going there. They batter radfem work in public for all women to see and show the result of their verbal and written battering as an example of what will await women if they do, think or say the same. . . . All this is gaslighting and bullying, men’s lies are meant to sound convincing. They convince with the use of force, ordering me to comply to their view by using an authoritarian, terrorising tone. ‘How dare you see otherwise. You’re crazy. You’re a bully. Etc.’ Which is why it works so well to instil self-doubt because it’s a mindfuck, it’s thought-blocking, it’s also an assault and it creates fear and willingness to appease to avoid further assaults. Brainwashing works through a mix of mind assaults, terror and constant repetition of a same message until it’s hammered into our brain, which is psychological violence. 85,000 views and hundreds of trolling comments is in effect a blitzkrieg brainwashing attack by men and male-colonised women. Hundreds of men and their pawns attempting to reprogram the minds of deviant female bloggers, women who don’t comply and who break through men’s myths and lies.

Translation: “How dare you call attention to my insane rantings?”

OK, I was going to ignore this, but then Kim Jossfolk linked it and more or less insisted that I take a whack at this radfem piñata.

Why is anonymity so crucial to Radical Wind‘s feminist project? Why does she feel so threatened by criticism, which she denounces as “harming . . .  battering . . . bullying . . . mindfuck . . . assault . . . brainwashing”? I don’t have an answer to these questions, but I think this attitude has a lot to do with the fundamental indefensibility of the radical feminist worldview.

Feminism simply does not connect with the experiences of most women, who have a normal pleasure in heterosexual relationships and who do not view men as the oppressive enemy. Whatever their misfortunes and dissatisfactions, normal women do not resort to the scapegoating ideology of radical feminism, for the simple reason that they recognize that scapegoating won’t solve their problems.

Radical feminists are not normal women, however.

They are psychologically and emotionally damaged in some way which makes it impossible for them to cope with their disappointments and, rather than try to repair the damage, they seek instead to console themselves by striking exaggerated postures of victimhood and engaging in extremist hate-talk against men. And this — feminism’s function as a substitute for psychiatric treatment — explains why they can’t stand to have their narratives scrutinized or contradicted.

It is not just Radical Wind who cherishes the anonymity that protects her narratives from critical scrutiny. One of the blogs that Radical Wind links most often is Fact Check Me, aka Femonade or FCM, whose writing is typified by jargon and a lack of capitalization and punctuation. Here is FCM explaining her anonymity:

ive been doing this awhile now, and i can report that i have been a target from day one or thereabouts, when the fun fems and sex-pozzers first tried to silence me. . . . in the beginning — notably, before i had even found my voice or gone anywhere near the ends of my thoughts — in order to amass currency and credibility, i was invited to “check my privilege” to the point of nearly (even clearly) identifying myself publicly. (i declined that invitation.) in the same vein, accusations were lobbed at me of various “privileges” (and continue to this day) inviting me to reveal details of my life as a “rebuttal” lest i encounter negative outcomes (like losing currency and credibility, due to all the privilege). or to, you know, ignore it. this is no accident BTW. this “privilege checking” business mirrors doxing and outing exactly. the outcome at least is identical, where the result is to make radical feminist bloggers more vulnerable to violent men in real life, in order to silence us, or cause us to self-censor out of fear. this outcome — womens identities and personal information being revealed in order to silence radical women or original, female-centered thought — is what men want, and this is what men get. handed to them on a silver fucking platter. by us, via “privilege checking.”

In other words, FCM would have us believe, if she told us who she is, she would be “more vulnerable to violent men in real life.” Never mind the fact that other radical feminists — including  authors and academics she cites in her own blog — have no problem publishing under their own names. No, if we knew who FCM was, she tells us, she would become “vulnerable” and be silenced.

Why is this? Again, I have no answer, but you see the inherent contradiction: FCM’s feminism claims radical authenticity as “female-centered thought,” and yet she offers no biographical data by which we can verify her authenticity. Is it possible that FCM’s fear-oriented ideology is a manifestation of paranoia? Let’s read a little bit more about her radical feminist philosophy:

radical feminists point this whole time has been that womens sex role as fuckholes, breeders and slaves has been forced on us by men, and that this role is wholly unnatural to us. . . .
whats compelling to me about this recognition is that it implicates men as a sexual class and takes that concept and discussion further. . . . in other words, when analyzing how and indeed whether what is known as “masculinity” is forced on men, if we add a fourth-dimension to the class-model, which is time, we see that men have always done this. that there was never a time (that we know about) that they didnt. and importantly, there was never a time when we (females) did.

This manichean dualism — men as the source of evil in the world — is not just any garden-variety craziness, it’s paranoia. Here’s more:

note how the big-3 of the patriarchal institutions — medicine, religion and law — all attach to womens bodies and womens lives at the moment of conception, and that this does not happen to men at the moment of conception or ever. its literally a trap, baited and set by men and producing an outcome intended by men that benefits men — control of women, and control of reproduction, including the terms and conditions of intercourse, pregnancy, birth, and childrearing.
this is what our oppression consists of and what it is. men get to name it (sex, fucking, knocked up, mother, father) men get to execute it (intercourse, impregnation) and men get to enforce it (rape, heteronormativity, marriage, and legal remedies and lack thereof for sexual and reproductive offenses). note that i am considering rape to be the violent enforcement by men of womens sex role as fuckholes and breeders.

Is there more? Yes, of course, there’s more:

we see male violence — and mens sexual and reproductive control of women enforced with male violence — as a global phenomenon that transcends social conditioning, and men across time and place embracing it and manifesting it in various ways. even the “good guys” and men in less violent and “less patriarchal” cultures do this in their own way and we fucking well know it.
and even as we see women, globally and throughout time, dissonating with, negotiating within and around, and ultimately rejecting our sex (not gender) role as mens fuckholes and slaves. equating women with men — against all evidence — is a false equivalence and simply is not rigorous, logical analysis or honest intellectual labor.

To put it as bluntly as possible: This woman is not sane.

And if I had to guess the reason she refuses to put her name on her work, my guess would be that if we knew who was writing that gibberish, everyone who has ever known her in real life would tell us what a notorious lunatic she has always been.

It is not my argument that all women must enjoy PIV to be sane. There are plenty of crazy women who are into PIV, trust me.

But when women start ranting that men are trying to enslave them as “fuckholes” and “breeders”? That’s insane.

Paranoid schizophrenia is not a political philosophy, and delusional psychotic word-salad is not an argument.

UPDATE: RadFem: ‘No Woman Is Heterosexual.’

 

Category: Feminism

Crazy People Are Crazy

Posted on | February 11, 2014 | 15 Comments

Because I so often highlight criminal wrongdoing by people associated with the Left, it behooves me not to ignore criminality by people associated with the Right, the latest example of which is a 58-year-old Seattle man once considered a pro-life hero of sorts:

The tips started coming in shortly after authorities released surveillance photos of a man suspected of groping an 11-year-old girl at a Fred Meyer store in Snohomish.
The callers were certain the thin man in glasses was Curtis Anton Beseda, who once served 12 years in federal prison for setting fire to abortion clinics in Western Washington in the 1980s.

Crime is crime, arson is arson, sexual assault is sexual assault and — not to put too fine a point on it — crazy is crazy:

The person who knew Beseda from college described him as having “unique mannerisms” and a condition that apparently compels him to hover at doorways, entering and exiting several times, before finally going in or out, court documents indicate. . . .
The neighbor . . . provided police with Beseda’s license-plate number and a short video she’d taken of him walking to get his mail, according to prosecutors.
The woman told police she took the video because he “had an odd way of walking, counting his steps and avoiding cracks,” according to charging documents. . . .
He served 12 years of a 20-year sentence and was released in 1996, according to court documents.
In 1997 he was taken back into custody on a parole violation and rereleased in 2003, court documents show.
Since then, he has accrued three misdemeanor convictions for criminal trespassing and fourth-degree assault, according to court documents.
The (Everett) Herald reported that Beseda was accused of attempted arson in Snohomish and ordered to undergo a mental-health evaluation in 2004 . . .
Beseda was banned from the church and school grounds of the Immaculate Conception Church in Everett after he was accused of trespassing and obstructing, according to The Herald.
Three years ago, he was arrested in a harassment case in Puyallup, convicted and sent to one of the state’s mental hospitals.

It would now appear in retrospect that the 1983-84 abortion-clinic arsons — which made Beseda seem heroic in the eyes of some pro-lifers — were actually symptomatic of an underlying chronic personality disorder that has gotten progressively worse.

There’s a lesson to be learned here, and I’d probably be able to figure it all out, but I’ve been kind of distracted lately . . .

 

BOMBER SUES BLOGGERS





 

 


Category: Crime

Shirley Temple Black, R.I.P.

Posted on | February 11, 2014 | 20 Comments

Before there was Dance Moms, before the Disney Channel became the incubator of young show-biz talent, there was Shirley Temple:

Shirley Temple Black, who as a dimpled, precocious and determined little girl in the 1930s sang and tap-danced her way to a height of Hollywood stardom and worldwide fame that no other child has reached, died on Monday night at her home in Woodside, Calif. She was 85. . . .
Ms. Black returned to the spotlight in the 1960s in the surprising new role of diplomat, but in the popular imagination she would always be America’s darling of the Depression years, when in 23 motion pictures her sparkling personality and sunny optimism lifted spirits and made her famous. From 1935 to 1939 she was the most popular movie star in America, with Clark Gable a distant second. She received more mail than Greta Garbo and was photographed more often than President Franklin D. Roosevelt. . . .
After marrying Charles Alden Black in 1950, she became a prominent Republican fund-raiser. She was appointed a delegate to the United Nations General Assembly by President Richard M. Nixon in 1969. She went on to win wide respect as the United States ambassador to Ghana from 1974 to 1976, was President Gerald R. Ford’s chief of protocol in 1976 and 1977, and became President George H.W. Bush’s ambassador to Czechoslovakia in 1989, serving there during the fall of Communism in Eastern Europe.

Shirley Temple ended her acting career at age 22 after her marriage to Black, who was in fact her second husband. At 17, she married John Agar, with whom she appeared in John Ford’s 1948 classic, Fort Apache.

The New York Times asserts that Shirley Temple’s movie career ended because the “public had lost interest,” yet her appearances as a teenager (I’ll Be Seeing You, The Bachelor and the Bobby Soxer) and young adult (Honeymoon) showed promise.

Her basic career problem was two-fold: As a child, she had been a superstar, a phenomenon, whereas as an adult, she was just another actress; furthermore, while she had won acclaim for her precocious performances as a singer and dancer, her singing never became the kind of asset that would have qualified her for leading roles in musicals. So it would have been difficult for her ever to have replicated her childhood stardom as an adult, which is not the same as saying she could not have continued working as an actress. One wonders, for example, whether she might have enjoyed a career in a 1950s sitcom (a la Lucille Ball), but this is speculation, because it seems she was simply tired of Hollywood, and her second husband was happy to have her as a wife and mother.

Shirley Temple’s biography is also interesting for what it illustrates about the role of marriage as a defining social institution in the era before the Sexual Revolution of the 1960s. She was a teen bride and a teen mother, still only 19 when she gave birth to her first child Susan in 1948. John Agar, an Army veteran seven years older than his wife, had difficulty adjusting to the role of “Mr. Shirley Temple” and developed a drinking problem. Shirley Temple filed for divorce in 1949 and thereby became what we would now call a “single mother.” But she didn’t stay single long, marrying Charles Black only a few months after her divorce was finalized. Her second marriage lasted 55 years, and she became the mother of two more children — “Happily Ever After.”

We have a lot fewer fairly-tale endings — and a lot less happiness — nowadays because the decline of marriage has changed our culture’s entire system of beliefs and behaviors regarding sex, love and parenthood. The most significant indicator of this cultural shift is the median age at first marriage which, in 1950, was about 21 for women and 23 for men, but is now nearly 27 for women and over 28 for men. Explaining what that shift means in terms of any young person’s prospects for marriage has been the subject of extensive research by Maggie Gallagher (The Abolition of Marriage), Barbara Dafoe Whitehead (The Divorce Culture), and David Popenoe (Families Without Fathers), among others. The fact that 40% of U.S. babies are born to unmarried women is the most obvious statistical result of this shift. What is less easy to document as a sociological phenomenon is the increased prevalence of loneliness and misery among young people. However, the causes and effects of the decline of marriage are deliberately obscured by liberals in media and academia who scarcely bother to conceal their contempt for the traditional culture of marriage-based families. But I digress . . .

Charles Black was fortunate to marry “America’s Sweetheart,” and he praised his wife’s good sense and emotional stability: “Over 38 years I have participated in her life 24 hours a day through thick and thin, traumatic situations, exultant situations, and I feel she has only one personality. She would be catastrophic for the psychiatric profession.”

In an era where tabloid headlines are full of the latest starlet misadventures — is Selena Gomez in rehab or out of rehab today? — Shirley Temple Black’s wonderful life story reminds us that it was not always thus, and that the old-fashioned culture of wholesomeness and decency she represented was not a myth, but a reality.

 

Category: Celebrities, Culture, History, Marriage

What This Economy Needs Is Another Stab In The Heart

Posted on | February 11, 2014 | 9 Comments

by Smitty via Drudge

The river of lies is gearing up for a Spring flood, according to the Washington Free Beacon:

The Obama administration has yet to finalize 28 additional regulations under Obamacare that could lead to an “avalanche” of regulatory burden on the economy, according to an analysis by the American Action Forum.
A report released Monday by Sam Batkins, director of regulatory policy at American Action Forum, details the billions in cost and millions in paperwork hours that will result from the pending regulations, including the individual mandate, which has yet to be finalized.

Swing lowwww,
Regulatory chariot,
Coming for to
Liberate me from the tedium of labor. . .Needs some polishing. But that’s what this river of lies is all about, right?

Category: Health Care

FMJRA 2.0: High Energy Protons

Posted on | February 11, 2014 | 3 Comments

— compiled by Wombat-socho

The Pervert Rights Movement

The Needle and the Spoon

Rule 5 Sunday: All Hail The Superb Owl!

#IStandWithDana Gun-Control Freaks Try to Bounce @DLoesch from ‘The View’

Obama: ‘What IRS Scandal?’

Another IRS Stonewall

LIVE AT FIVE: 02.04.14

Could Jamie Casino Find ‘A Smidgen’ Of Corruption At The IRS?

Whose Children Are They?

How Much Do You Hate Commies?

The Renegade Jesse Myerson

Is #FreeBleeding a Hoax? UPDATE: Hoax Came From 4chan

My Brother Shut Down Atlanta?

FMJRA 2.0: Waiting For The Superb Owl

‘A Genius in France,’ IYKWIMAITYD

Amanda Bynes Returns to Sanity?

#OccupyResoluteDesk Gives O’Reilly 10 Mins Of Variations On ‘Shut Up, Peasant’

This Should Not Be Necessary

Illinois Taxpayers Lose Super Bowl

Bill Schmalfeldt Continues His Insane Investment in Brett Kimberlin’s RICO Suit

Hoffman Planned Heroin Binge?

Lesbian Teacher Could Face Life Sentence for Molesting Two Girls in California

#BlogBash Nominations Are Open

Failure Is Not a Public-Relations Problem: The Brutal Economics of ObamaCare

‘The Court Should Dismiss … With Prejudice in Favor of All Defendants’

LIVE AT FIVE: 02.05.14

Unemployed Magazine Executives

Boycott Abortion Cookies

‘A National Political Celebrity’

Teach Your Children Well

In The Mailbox: 02.06.14

The Glorious All-American Hamburger

ObamaCare’s Compulsory Race Question

In The Mailbox, 02.07.14

Meanwhile, Elsewhere In The Culture War…

Top linkers this week:

  1. Rick’s Rants (29)
  2. Regular Right Guy (20)
  3. EBL (9 +8 Batshit Crazy News)
  4. Dead Citizens Rights Society (6 +1 Dead Republican Party)
  5. (tied) A View From The Beach and Political Rift (6)

Thanks to everyone for their linkagery and patience! I’ll be off the internet next weekend, so unless Smitty chooses to take up the FMJRA cudgels again, the next deadline will be noon on Washington’s Birthday, February 22.


Category: FMJRA Award

‘L’Etat, C’est Moi’

Posted on | February 11, 2014 | 31 Comments

President Obama is a law unto himself:

“ObamaCare” is useful shorthand for the Affordable Care Act not least because the law increasingly means whatever President Obama says it does on any given day.

He has once again delayed the employer mandate. The timetable for implementation of the law — which was written into the law — turns out to have been meaningless, and our latter-day Sun King has granted so many exemptions to the law that it has no meaning beyond his royal will. Everybody made fun of Nancy Pelosi for saying that Congress had to pass the bill (which neither she nor any other Democrat member of Congress had read in its entirety) so we would know what was in it.

Now we see her point, however: It didn’t really matter what was in the law, because Democrats don’t believe in the Rule of Law, and ObamaCare was essentially carte blanche: “That’s the good thing about being president, I can do whatever I want.”

 

Category: Barack Obama, Health Care
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