The Other McCain

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

In The Mailbox: 10.26.17

Posted on | October 26, 2017 | Comments Off on In The Mailbox: 10.26.17

— compiled by Wombat-socho


OVER THE TRANSOM
EBL: Sexual Harassment? Really?
Twitchy: Iowahawk Sums Up Hillary Clinton’s Year In Two Perfect Pictures
Louder With Crowder: FBI Informant In Obama/Russian Uranium Scandal Cleared To Testify


RIPPED FROM THE HEADLINES
Adam Piggott: All Your Masculinity Are Belong To Us
American Power: Harvey Weinstein And The Myth Of “Toxic Masculinity”
American Thinker: Uranium One – Will Justice Be Done?
Animal Magnetism: Hunting Season Totty IV
BattleSwarm: Clinton Corruption Update – Clinton/DNC Backing Of Fake Russian Dossier Confirmed
Bring The HEAT: HIMARS At Sea
CDR Salamander: NATO Wakes Up And Asks – Who’s Guarding The SLOC Again?
Da Tech Guy: OK, Now I Know Why They Went All Out Against Trump From Day 1, also, Sin City Is Getting A Whole Lot Hotter
Don Surber: Media Bemoans Lost Credibility, also, Border Jumping Hits 45-Year Low
Dustbury: Alphabet Commands
Fred On Everything: Anti-Togetherness – The Virtues Of Disunity
The Geller Report: Vogue Model Spent Years In Muslim Billionaire’s Harem As His “Pleasure Wife”, also, Austria Implements Law Against Burka In Public
Hogewash: Fortunately, The Science is Unsettled, also, Team Kimberlin Post of The Day
Jammie Wearing Fools: Five Women Accuse NBC Hack Mark Halperin Of Sexual Harassment
Joe For America: Trump Opens Up 76 Million Acres For Offshore Drilling, Largest In History!
JustOneMinute: The Trump Dossier And The FBI, also, Cheap Irresponsible Bonus Speculation
Legal Insurrection: IRS Apologizes For Targeting Conservative Groups, also, The Silly Sexual Assault Allegations Against Bush The Elder
Power Line: Six Seconds To Live, also, The War On Standards – Illiterate Teachers Edition
Shot In The Dark: Why Johnny Can’t Read
The Political Hat: Opposing Social Unjust Institutions – Food, Fighting, And Faith
This Ain’t Hell: John McCain And The USS Forrestal Fire, also, Those Islands In The Pacific
Weasel Zippers: ABC Developing Sitcom About Muslim Superheroes, also, Dem Rep Adam Schiff Claims Uranium One Probe Part Of A White House Distraction Pushed BY Fox, Breitbart
Megan McArdle: Soaring Premiums Mean Soaring Risk For Obamacare
Mark Steyn: A Night Of Intrigue


Today’s Digital Deals
Amazon Warehouse Deals
Amazon Coupons

Category: Linkagery

‘Unwanted Sexual Advances’: Harassment Bonfire Torches NBC’s Mark Halperin

Posted on | October 26, 2017 | 1 Comment

 

The number of his alleged victims is at least seven now:

The morning after five women accused veteran journalist Mark Halperin of sexual harassment while he was in a powerful position at ABC News, two more women came forward with their own allegations.
Those initial five accusers recounted sexual misconduct ranging in nature “from propositioning employees for sex to kissing and grabbing one’s breasts against her will,” CNN reported. “Three of the women who spoke to CNN described Halperin as, without consent, pressing an erection against their bodies while he was clothed.”
Halperin denied some of the allegations listed in Wednesday evening’s story, but added, “I now understand from these accounts that my behavior was inappropriate and caused others pain.”
And then another set of accusers emerged the following day.
“#MeToo,” conservative author and reporter Emily Miller wrote Wednesday night on Twitter, directly responding to the CNN report. . . .
Without specifically describing her encounter with the pundit, Miller elaborated: “I did not report Halperin to ABC because I thought I was the only one, and I blamed myself, and I was embarrassed and I was scared of him.” . . .
Another journalist, who currently appears as a commentator across multiple networks, joined the chorus on Thursday, telling The Daily Beast that the accusations against Halperin rang familiar to her own experience. She said he made unwanted advances at her while they worked together at ABC News more than a decade ago. . . .
According to numerous sources at NBC, MSNBC, ABC, and Bloomberg—who previously spoke to The Daily Beast on the condition of anonymity in order to speak freely—the private allegations of Halperin’s sexual misconduct were an open secret, particularly in New York City and D.C. political media, for many years.

(Via Memeorandum.)



 

PREVIOUSLY:

 

Category: ABC, Celebrities, NBC, Scandal, Sex Trouble

Violence Against Women Update

Posted on | October 26, 2017 | 1 Comment

 

Feminists have not commented on this trial:

Surveillance video footage shown in court Wednesday shows the man charged in the fatal shooting of Kate Steinle at San Francisco’s Pier 14 throw something in the water and then leave the scene immediately after she is struck, according to prosecutors.
CBS San Francisco reports jurors in the trial of Jose Ines Garcia Zarate, 45, who faces charges including second-degree murder and assault with a deadly weapon in the July 1, 2015 shooting, were shown surveillance footage of the shooting taken from a fire station located about a quarter of a mile away. . . .
Steinle, a 32-year-old Pleasanton native who lived in San Francisco’s South Beach neighborhood, was walking on the pier with her father and another family member following a meal at the Ferry Building at the time of the shooting, according to previous testimony. . . .
Garcia Zarate’s trial has drawn national attention because of its ties to controversy over Sanctuary City policies used by San Francisco and other cities that limit the cooperation of local law enforcement with federal immigration authorities.
San Francisco officials had released Garcia Zarate, a Mexican citizen with a history of deportations, from jail months before the shooting after a minor drug charge was dismissed without notifying federal immigration authorities, as is the city’s practice for most cases.

For some reason, this story doesn’t fit the feminist narrative.

 

Category: Crime, Immigration, Sex Trouble

The Case of @radicalbytes and the Suspiciously ‘Progressive’ Male

Posted on | October 26, 2017 | Comments Off on The Case of @radicalbytes and the Suspiciously ‘Progressive’ Male

 

 

 

In the wake of the Harvey Weinstein scandal, “male feminists” everywhere are understandably nervous, wondering if one of their ex-girlfriends or female acquaintances might be the next to jump on the #MeToo hashtag and accuse them of harassment or sexual assault.

Let me call your attention to Jonathan McIntosh (@radicalbytes on Twitter) who was once a partner in Anita Sarkeesian’s Feminist Frequency project until . . . Well, nobody knows why Sarkeesian kicked McIntosh to the curb, but he exited Feminist Frequency at some point after the #GamerGate controversy erupted. McIntosh then launched his own project, the Pop Culture Detective Agency.

 

Here is one of McIntosh’s videos, in which he criticizes “misogyny” in the popular sitcom The Big Bang Theory:

 

“Leonard, Sheldon, Howard and Raj all lack most of the traits traditionally associated with leading men in Hollywood. They’re not conventionally handsome, they’re not confident, and they’re definitely not athletic. What they are, are dorky insecure fanboys who are plagued with a wide variety of anxieties, illnesses and awkward personality quirks. . . . ‘Adorkable Misogynists’ are male characters whose geeky version of masculinity is framed as both comically pathetic and endearing. . . . And it’s their status as nerdy nice guys that then lets them off the hook for a wide range of creepy, entitled and downright sexist behaviors.”

Well, maybe so. But the whole thing about a situation comedy is that it is based on a particular situation from which comedy emerges. For example, The Beverly Hillbillies — backwoods simpletons find themselves suddenly rich, and relocate to a mansion among the Hollywood elite. Ellie Mae has her critters, Granny is making lye soap in the backyard, Jethro with his eighth-grade education is pursuing some improbable career — these are the situations within which the show finds its comedy, see? The situation in The Big Bang Theory is about four scientific geniuses who, while spectacularly competent in their career fields, are hopelessly inept in terms of their social skills, particularly in regard to the opposite sex. Are their behaviors “creepy, entitled and downright sexist”? Well, how else do we expect uber-nerds to behave? Insofar as the entire premise of the show (its title being a double-entendre on the word “bang”) is about geeks trying to get laid, isn’t the basic subject matter more or less inherently “creepy”?

Jonathan McIntosh turns this into a 20-minute Gender Studies lecture, using the methodology by which Anita Sarkeesian did the same thing to videogames, and his video sermonette about “misogyny” has gotten 1.7 million views on YouTube. As an exercise in Third Wave theory, it’s quite a success, but what’s the payoff of this critique?

“The Hollywood nerd is almost always positioned in opposition to the expected norms of macho manhood. This is usually accomplished through juxtaposition with the jock archetype. When contrasted with hyper-masculine guys who perform a crude, aggressive form of manhood, our geeky hero gets to be framed as the better, smarter, more sensitive alternative. He’s the misunderstood nice guy. . . . He was unfairly bullied and mocked by his peers. . . . He’s presented as the clear underdog in the manhood competition.”

Right — the underdog who overcomes his disadvantages to win is the theme of so many movies that we could scarcely begin naming them all. This particular “trope,” the Nerd who outsmarts the Jocks, is just one variation of a classic theme. Rocky Balboa, the hard-luck working-class guy who achieves immortal glory as a boxer, is another variation. Richard Gere’s character in An Officer and a Gentleman is another. But whereas Rocky is about athletic achievement, and An Officer and a Gentleman is about military achievement, what Jonathan McIntosh targets in the Hollywood nerd “trope” is the underdog’s quest for sexual achievement. As he points out, some of the behavior played for comic effect in The Big Bang Theory (and in other movies and TV shows about nerds) is arguably harassment, stalking or even sexual assault.

“Just because the performance of a geeky version of masculinity is markedly different from traditional Hollywood archetypes, that doesn’t necessarily mean that geeky guys are any less invested in sexism. The bottom line here is, there’s nothing cute or harmless about misogyny.”

Yeah, but the whole point of The Big Bang Theory — the situation that provides the comedy — is about nerds trying to get laid. McIntosh’s rhetoric about “sexism” and “misogyny” is about nerd-shaming, i.e., humiliating geeky guys for even wanting to have sex. McIntosh seems upset that the writers of The Big Bang Theory have succeeded in making audience sympathize with these geeks. Which is kind of weird, given that McIntosh is quite geeky himself — pudgy, pale, ill-shaven, and the kind of nerd who uses words like “norm” and “archetype.” Also, McIntosh appears to suffer from a severe humor deficiency. Everything is always political and serious to McIntosh, who is evidently obsessed with the idea that “social progress” is endangered by “reactionaries.”

 

 

 

 

 

Does this mean you’re a Nazi if you laugh at The Big Bang Theory? Trying to connect the dots, to comprehend Jonathan McIntosh’s “progressive” worldview as a systematic vision, leads to some bizarre implications. If the “hyper-masculine” jock is unacceptable as a model of hexterosexual male behavior, and the nerdy “misunderstood nice guy” is also unacceptable, is there any form of male heterosexuality that McIntosh approves? Good luck finding an answer to that.

 

 

 

 

 

Jonathan McIntosh seems to conflate heterosexuality with violence and “male dominance,” as if there is nothing that separates “straight men” in general from the Las Vegas shooter. The “patriarchy” is to blame!

Whenever we see this kind of rhetoric, which blames “society” for the criminal actions of an individual, we are witnessing a propaganda tactic I call the atrocity narrative. It’s the way the shooting of a robbery suspect in Ferguson, Missouri, was leveraged to create a false narrative of police “racism” so widespread as to be ubiquitous. Deliberately fomenting hatred of police for political purposes, the Black Lives Matter movement was false from its inception (the “Hands Up, Don’t Shoot” myth) and false in its larger claims as well:

Contrary to the Black Lives Matter narrative, the police have much more to fear from black males than black males have to fear from the police. In 2015, a police officer was 18.5 times more likely to be killed by a black male than an unarmed black male was to be killed by a police officer.
Black males have made up 42 percent of all cop-killers over the last decade, though they are only 6 percent of the population.

You’re not going to see those numbers reported on CNN, however. The amount of black-on-black crime so vastly exceeds incidents of police violence against black suspects that the latter problem can only be portrayed as a major social issue by completely ignoring the former problem. Yet this is exactly what the liberal media did in promoting the Black Lives Matter narrative, which dishonestly smeared law enforcement officers as a threat to the safety of black people, and also demonized whites as complicit in this alleged police “racism.”

Likewise, by turning mass murderers into demonized symbols of “patriarchy” and “male dominance,” Jonathan McIntosh implies that all men are complicit in the crimes of such monsters. Yet while implicating all “straight men” in the Las Vegas massacre, McIntosh has never offered any explanation for the routine violence in Chicago, where more than 500 people have been shot to death so far this year, including 56 women. If violence is caused by “patriarchy,” what is Jonathan McIntosh’s explanation of Chicago’s murder epidemic? What kind of situation comedies are they watching in Chicago?

 

There is something suspicious about Jonathan McIntosh’s obsessive effort to obtain recognition as the ultimate “male feminist.” What motivates this kind of virtue-signaling “white knight” posture? Feminists have become increasingly critical of their progressive male “allies,” in large part because so many of these “allies” have been exposed as sexual predators. While I am not aware of any such accusation about Jonathan McIntosh, his departure from Anita Sarkeesian’s Feminist Frequency project is still somewhat mysterious. Was there a problem? Has Sarkeesian vouched for McIntosh’s bona fides as a “male feminist”?

No one should be surprised if Jonathan McIntosh’s crusade against “toxic masculinity” turns out to be a boomerang of psychological projection.



 

 

Category: Sex Trouble

In The Mailbox: 10.25.17

Posted on | October 25, 2017 | Comments Off on In The Mailbox: 10.25.17

— compiled by Wombat-socho


OVER THE TRANSOM
Ninety Miles From Tyranny: The 90 Miles Mystery Box, Episode #54
Blackmailers Don’t Shoot: RIP Goodstuff
EBL: Fats Domino RIP
Twitchy: Epic Reactions To Journalist’s Anti-Trump Meme
Louder With Crowder: Fake Trump-Russia “Dossier” Was Funded By Clinton Campaign & DNC


RIPPED FROM THE HEADLINES
Adam Piggott: The Noble Art Of Shaming
American Power: Poll – Majority Of Whites Believe Whites Suffer Discrimination, also, Andrew Lipman, The Saltwater Frontier
American Thinker: Mueller Investigates Podesta
Animal Magnetism: Hunting Season Totty III
BattleSwarm: NEWSFLASH – Texas Speaker Joe Straus Retires
Bring The HEAT: Agincourt
CDR Salamander: AFG – A Dozen Years Of…Well…Something
Da Tech Guy: Oh, You Mean THAT Honor Killing of My Daughter, also, Dirty Drawers
Don Surber: Apocalypse In The Swamp
Dustbury: I Give It Seven Weeks
The Geller Report: Jihad Germany – Police Seize Huge Muslim Weapons Cache In Berlin Raids, also, UK Christian Brutally Beaten By Muslims For Displaying Cross
Hogewash: RICO Remnant LOLSuit Appeal News, also, Fall Colors & Rule 5
Jammie Wearing Fools: Now Democrats Have A Russia Problem
Joe For America: Obama’s HUD Misplaced $500 Billion – Enron Scandal Was Over Just $63 Billion
JustOneMinute: Colluding With Russian Intelligence
Legal Insurrection: Goodlatte – “Smoking Gun” E-Mails Show Obama’s DOJ Steered Settlement Money Away From Conservative Groups, also, Federal Judge Refuses To Force Payment Of Obamacare Subsidies
Michelle Malkin: The Lib Enablers Of Perv Photographer Terry Richardson
Power Line: A Word From Victor Davis Hanson, also, Civil War On The Left, Part 51 – Sierra Club Vs. Sierra Club
Shot In The Dark: Lie First, Lie Always – Folding, Spindling, & Mutilating Statistics
STUMP: Kentucky Pension Battle – Reform Proposal Announced, And Nobody’s Happy
The Jawa Report: Jawa Hero Fats Domino Passes
The Political Hat: Governor Moonbeam’s Stopped Clock
This Ain’t Hell: 34th Anniversary Of Operation Urgent Fury, also, Mike “Doc” Simpson On Niger
Weasel Zippers: Alert The Social Justice Warriors! White QB Signed Before Kaepernick, also, Former Navy SEAL Cries When Recounting Death Of Military Dog During Bergdahl Search
Megan McArdle: Police Cameras Had No Effect. Why?
Mark Steyn: An Impostor For The Profit Of Another, also, Collusion Exclusion


Featured Digital Deals
Amazon Warehouse Halloween Shop
Certified Refurbs On Amazon Renewed

Category: Linkagery

Late Night With Rule Five Tuesday:
Rebel Girls

Posted on | October 25, 2017 | 2 Comments

— compiled by Wombat-socho

Another difficult weekend, but not without its compensations; it looks like I’ll be heading back to college in the new year, starting to finish my accounting degree at UNLV. Therefore, some Rebel Girls for your delectation before we get into the links. Insert the standard disclaimer here.

UNLV Rebel Girls dance team

Ninety Miles From Tyranny leads off with Hot Pick of the Late Night, The 90 Miles Mystery Box – Episode #48, Morning Mistress, and Girls With Guns; Animal Magnetism follows up with Rule Five Power of Tears Friday and the Saturday Gingermageddon.

EBL brings us National Pasta Day, Dee Dee Sharp, Bob Menendez’ Corruption Trial Rule 5, Eleanor Tomlinson, Heida Reed, and Evan Rachel Wood.

A View From The Beach has Kim Basinger, Fish Pic Friday – Pike, The Chick Takes On the Chief, “Johann Sebastian Bach, Sonata II BWV 1003, Fuga”, But What About Polanski?, “When I Get Low, I Get High”, But There’s No Institutional Bias Against Conservatives at ESPN, Your Morning Rise and Shine and Hollywood is for the Birds.

Proof Positive’s Friday Night Babe is Sasha Alexander, his Vintage Babe is Anita Colby, Sex in Advertising is covered by Victoria’s Secret Bralettes, and there’s also the Women of NCIS. At Dustbury, it’s Yvonne Craig and Marina Sirtis.

Thanks to everyone for their linkagery!

Visit Amazon’s Intimate Apparel Shop
Amazon Fashion – Jewelry For Women
Amazon Personal Bra Boutique

Category: Rule 5

In The Mailbox: 10.24.17

Posted on | October 24, 2017 | 1 Comment

— compiled by Wombat-socho


OVER THE TRANSOM
EBL: The Architect Speaks
Twitchy: Apple Or Banana? Sarah Palin Calls Out CNN On Fake News; Tapper’s Weak Response
Louder With Crowder: PLOT TWIST! Black Man Arrested For Racist Klan Graffiti At University


RIPPED FROM THE HEADLINES
Adam Piggott: Piggott Farm
American Power: In Paperback – Volker Ullrich, Hitler
American Thinker: Honor Killing Victim Jessica Mokdad’s Mom Leaves Islam, Apologizes
Animal Magnetism: Hunting Season Totty II
BattleSwarm: Scenes From The Continuing Democratic Suicide
CDR Salamander: Trumpism, NeverTrumpism, And Their Discontents
Da Tech Guy: Cop Killers, also, It’s Time To Vote Barry Bonds Into The Hall Of Fame
Don Surber: Flake Off, Flake
Dustbury: Quick Feedback
The Geller Report: SCOTUS Kills Refugee Ban Challenge, also, Trump To Kill Boeing Sale To Iran
Hogewash: NGC 4993
Jammie Wearing Fools: Michael Moore’s Dopey Broadway Show Dies In Darkness
JustOneMinute: Flake Out
Legal Insurrection: Kid Rock – “F*ck No, I’m Not Running For Senate”, also, Did Fauxcahontas Exaggerate Her “Me Too” Story?
Power Line: And Now for Some Real “Fake News”, also, Collusion Clinton Style
Shot In The Dark: Friends In Low Places
STUMP: Waiting For Hartford To Default While State Legislators Throw A Little Cash Around
The Jawa Report: Islamic Snuff-O-Gram Losing
The Political Hat: Modern Venezuela – Electoral Shenanigans, Bitcoin, And Hookers
This Ain’t Hell: Valor Thief Drops Out Of Mayoral Campaign, also, Florida Man Attempts Mall Bombing
Weasel Zippers: Professor Claims Math, Algebra, & Geometry Promote “White Privilege”, also, Number Of Americans On Food Stamps Plummets By 1.5 Million After Trump Takes Office
Megan McArdle: Be Careful Who You Call A “White Supremacist”
Mark Steyn: The Rubber Hits The Road


Ends Today – Hans Schantz’ The Hidden Truth Just 99 Cents!
Amazon Warehouse Deals
Outlet Deals

Category: Linkagery

The Sexual Harassment Bonfire Continues in the Wake of the Weinstein Scandal

Posted on | October 24, 2017 | 2 Comments

Famed fashion photographer Terry Richardson has been banned from working for Condé Nast publications including Vogue, GQ and Vanity Fair. Richardson “has been dogged for years by allegations of sexual exploitation of models,” according to the Telegraph.

Last week, one of Hollywood’s top talent agencies fired Tyler Grasham, who had represented many child stars, after he was accused of sexually harassing and/or assaulting young men. Also last week, Nickelodeon fired Chris Savino, creator of the animated series The Loud House, over allegations of sexual harassment, with at least 12 accusers referencing “unwanted sexual advances as well as threats of retribution after the end of consensual relationships.” The Los Angeles Times published a long article Sunday about a long history of alleged sexual harassment by writer/director James Toback. Meanwhile in Silicon Valley, multiple women have made accusations of harassment against Robert Scoble, a well-known commentator on the tech industry.

In London, British GQ correspondent Rupert Myers was fired in the wake of a woman’s accusation of sexual harassment:

Myers, who deactivated his Twitter account after [Karen] Leaver started tweeting her story, is a known feminist who has written stories such as, “Men’s rights activist are cave dwelling idiots.” In the 2015 story, Myers wrote, “There is a new, global group dedicated to undermining significant social change. They wear the mask of an online avatar and use technology to harass, threaten and silence their targets. Their cause? To prevent steps towards the equality of men and women. They are the ‘Men’s rights activists.’”
Daily Caller reporter Ian Miles Cheong had harsh words for Myers, tweeting, “Male feminists who claim the moral high ground, who turn their noses up at the ‘misogynists’ below, are the very demons they claim to fight.”

Amid this inferno of career-ending accusations touched off by the Harvey Weinstein scandal, Professor Ann Althouse sounds a note of caution:

What are the rules for going out for drinks with a co-worker? . . .
Let’s not fling ourselves headlong into a new era of sexual repression. . . .
Without knowing more [about the accusations against Myers], I can’t think of what else to say except that conservatives who’ve been crying out about the lack of due process for men accused of sexual assault should not be gleefully enjoying this man’s loss of a job. That would be hypocritical, and your glee is based on the notion that Myers is a hypocrite. That’s double hypocrisy!

This is an important point. The destruction of Harvey Weinstein was a consequence of feminist rage over the election of Donald Trump, whose words and alleged behavior in this regard were so offensive to so many. There was also apparently a “boys will be boys” environment at Fox News. Certainly, there are many Republicans who have not been paragons of virtue, and there is a clear line between (a) conservatives enjoying some schadenfreude at the downfall of liberals who claimed to be champions of “women’s rights,” and (b) self-righteous hubris.

Professor Althouse’s mention of conservative concerns over due process rights in campus sexual assault cases gets right to the point, because many of those cases involve a “he-said/she-said” situation between two drunk students, where it is impossible to know what actually happened. Furthermore, as I pointed out after Vox Media executive Lockhart Steele was fired, we may be witnessing an incipient witch-hunt:

When a witch-hunt hysteria takes hold, differences between minor and major forms of witchcraft soon cease to matter. Amid a paranoid climate of suspicion, any accusation of witch-type behavior will suffice to have the target burned at the stake before sundown. . . .
A witch-hunt has no statute of limitations, nor any standard of due process and, as for evidence, who needs evidence? If a woman says her ex-boyfriend did awful things to her in 2007 or 1997, feminists will applaud her for her “courage” in “breaking the silence,” and nothing that the targeted scapegoat says in his own defense will save him.

In the case of Lockhart Steele, there was allegedly a pattern of bad behavior that had continued for many years, but Steele was reportedly protected by Vox because he “had too many shares” in the company to be fired. This parallels the Weinstein saga, where the Hollywood mogul abused his power as a serial harasser of women, a perpetrator with a well-established modus operandi that involved inviting women to his hotel rooms, soliciting massages, exposing himself, masturbating, etc.

Habitual offenders, abusers of power, and institutional protection of such behaviors — this is the proper focus of sexual harassment concerns. The way the BBC covered for Jimmy Savile, the way the Catholic Church dealt with pedophile priests by reassigning them to new parishes, the way Arkansas State Troopers were employed to protect Gov. Bill Clinton’s womanizing escapades — these were all newsworthy scandals.

There is a danger, as Professor Althouse points out, that a witch-hunt hysteria could obliterate the distinction between such serious abuses and comparatively trivial incidents. Nevertheless, as we watch this bonfire immolate the careers of the famous and the obscure alike, everyone is put on notice that there is a zero-tolerance policy now in effect regarding “unwanted sexual advances.” As a father of teenagers, I’ve been cautioning my kids for years about this, especially when it comes to their online behavior. The Internet is dangerous. Online dating? No, never, period. “Sexting”? No, never, period. The fate of Anthony Weiner should serve as a scarecrow to warn young people against this stuff. And smart young people, now as always, should be instructed to pair up. Find a steady partner and avoid the hook-up carousel. My eldest three children married in their early 20s, and I expect my younger three to follow the same path. Whether or not our society is headed into “a new era of sexual repression,” as Professor Althouse warns, parents in every era have a duty to protect their own children — sons and daughters alike — by warning them against the perils and pitfalls of hedonism. Selah.



 

Category: Celebrities, Hollywood, Media Bias, Sex Trouble
« go back — keep looking »