This shit needs to stop.

I saw this on Twitter the other day attributed to a professor at George mason University:

One might plausibly argue that those with much less access to sex suffer to a similar degree as those with low income,

No, one mightn't.
Lack of access to sex is annoying. It's frustrating. It's discouraging. It really isn't comparable to worrying whether you will be able to make the rent. It isn't really akin to having to choose between food and medicine. Lack of sex will not result in homelessness or malnutrition. They aren't similar.

. . . and might similarly hope to gain from organizing around this identity, to lobby for redistribution along this axis and to at least implicitly threaten violence if their demands are not met. 

 

WHAT????

What the hell? Redistribution? And you're positing this as if it is part of a reasonable worldview? You can not be serious.

As with income inequality, most folks concerned about sex inequality might explicitly reject violence as a method, at least for now, and yet still be encouraged privately when the possibility of violence helps move others to support their policies.

What? Seriously? You think that violence "helps move others to support their policies?" You think that when some pissed-off virgin drives a van into a crowd trying to kill as many women as possible that normal people see this and think "gee, that vile little murderer makes a good point?" I mean, do you think that Tim McVeigh helped bring new recruits into the anti-government militia movement? You think a lot of people converted to Islam after 9/11?  Acting out violently when things don't go your way is pretty much the worst way imaginable to get people to see things from your point of view. As it should be.

. . . the possibility of violence helps move others to support their policies. (Sex could be directly redistributed, or cash might be redistributed in compensation.)

Cash might be. . . um, that's called prostitution and  I don't know how to break this to you, but that's already a thing.

You ever see these ladies?

That's what they're doing. They're getting cash redistributed to them in exchange for redistributing sex to some sad loser. It's a valuable public service and it goes on in every town in the world. This isn't an idea you invented.

 Strikingly, there seems to be little overlap between those who express concern about income and sex inequality.

Wow, that is so odd! How can that be? How can people care about something that makes life extremely fraught for a lot of people and not care about something that is annoying and could be solved with a quick personality transplant, a call to an escort service, or a bottle of Jergen's and a box of Kleenex?  It's mystifying!

Strikingly, there seems to be little overlap between those who express concern about income and sex inequality. Among our cultural elites, the first concern is high status, and the later concern low status. For example, the article above seems not at all sympathetic to sex inequality concerns.

Yeah! Imagine that! Because one concern can literally be life and death, the other is a bunch of whiny little man-boys who think that it's completely unfair that women would rather date attractive men. Or smart men. Or men with decent personalities. Or men who don't live in their moms' basements. Or men who don't have facial hair that belongs in Whoville.

Or even men who are not under the impression that a certain amount of hours put in as a "nice" guy entitles them to vagina access.

Okay, I seem to have gotten a bit off-track. Where was I going with this?

Oh, right.

I assume that Professor Robin Hanson probably doesn't really agree with the "incels" about sex re-distribution. Although, he is someone who looks like this:

so I could see where he might feel a certain kinship with them. But that's not the point.

The point is, we have to stop humoring these kind of people. We have to stop pretending that people like this might have some kind of point. We for some reason decided to humor the gun nuts post-Brady Bill, telling ourselves that maybe they had legitimate concerns and not to dismiss their feelings out of hand and now we have a bunch of Dale Gribbels strutting around Target stores with assault rifles and gun massacres are just a part of the fabric of everyday life in the good ol' USA.

We* decided to humor the Teabaggers. We decided to pretend that they were just concerned about government overreach and taxation rates, and sure they might be a bit misguided and misinformed and racist as hell, but that doesn't mean they don't deserve to air their grievances in public. Now we have King Birther in the White House steadily dismantling every positive aspect of out Federal system.

This shit needs to stop. When you have maladjusted men who think that a reasonable response to being turned down for a date is to murder a bunch of women, the last thing we need is a tenured professor putting a pseudo-academic spin on their rage and trying to make it seem as if they might have some sort of point. Remember during the GW Bush administration, when everybody was worried that any word coming out of a Democrat's mouth was going to "embolden the enemy?" Robin Hanson is emboldening the enemy. And this shit needs to stop. Now.

*and by "we," I mean American society in general, not you and I, dear reader.

Douche of the Day -- A two-way tie

At first I thought David Brooks was going to be an easy winner.

A Renaissance on the Right

By David Brooks

Opinion Columnist

via GIPHY

Sure. That's gonna happen. Any minute now.


All right, you do have me curious, though. Let's hear it.

What’s bad for the gavel is good for the pen.

                       

What is that even supposed to mean?
Never mind, let's just plow through.

What’s bad for the gavel is good for the pen. The Republican Party is in the midst of a cataclysmic transformation. But all the political turmoil is creating a burst of intellectual creativity on the right.

Ahahaha. . . oh, good one. "Intellectual creativity!" "On the Right!" Ahahahahaha!!!

Young, fresh writers are bursting on the scene: Sohrab Ahmari, Helen Andrews, Charles Cooke, Mollie Hemingway, Jason Willick, Michael Brendan Dougherty, Gracy Olmstead, James Poulos, Oren Cass, Matthew Schmitz and many others.

And the one thing they all have in common? That no one has heard of any of them. Meanwhile the op=ed pages are still populated by the same right-wing schmucks they have been filled with for years - your George Wills, your Charles Krauthammers, your David Brookses. . .

Other conservatives are rising to defend that order, including National Review’s Jonah Goldberg, who later this month comes out with his epic and debate-shifting book, “Suicide of the West.”

.                   




Yeah. . .no. Nothing that has ever been produced by Jonah freaking Goldberg has ever been realistically described as "epic" or "debate-shifting."
"Stupid" and "shitty," yes. "epic" and "debate-shifting?" not so much.

Goldberg points out that for eons human beings were semi-hairless upright apes clumped in tribes and fighting for food. But about 300 years ago something that he calls “the Miracle” happened. It was a shift in attitude. For thousands of years, societies divided people into permanent categories of race or caste. But, Goldberg writes, “the Miracle ushered in a philosophy that says each person is to be judged and respected on account of their own merits, not the class or caste of their ancestors.”

 

WHAT?!?!?

Three hundred years ago?

Three hundred. . . so the early 1700's.

Goldberg's thesis is that in the early 1700's, mankind decided to stop judging people by their background or heritage and instead evaluate each individual on his own merits. In the 1700s.

When slavery of African people was at its peak. When European aristocracies held sway. When every nation on Earth was ruled by a monarch whose entire claim to authority was that he was the descendant of his ancestors. This was when the "Miracle" happened. Seriously.

So humankind decided to end tribalist conflict in the early 1700s. The era in which the Hapsburgs and Stuarts were fighting over the thrones of the United Kingdom. When Louis Quatorze was trying to exterminate the Hugenots in France. When Catholics and Protestants were slaughtering each other all over Europe, that was the time that the human race outgrew primitive tribalism.


Somehow, even though in the early 18th Century, humanity had decided to judge each individual on his own merit, not by the group to which he belongs, the Holocaust still happened. And the Armenian genocide. And Jim Crow. And lynchings. And the Yugoslavian civil war. And the Tutsi-Hutu war in Rwanda and all the other horrible atrocities of the 20th Century that can all be flung, bloodied and disfigured, onto the doorstep of unrelenting tribalism.

 

And this is the guy David Brooks is touting.

It's a 2-way tie for Douche of the Day.

Douche of the day - Richard Cohen

Why do newspapers even bother having op-ed columnists. If this is the best they can do, who needs 'em?

- Whose privilege? • Mon, 16 Apr 2018 04:56:01 EDT
RICHARD COHEN


I am the child of privilege -- or so I am being told. I am white, I am male. Put them together and you would think I've been sitting on a trust fund -- unearned, unappreciated and unjustified. There are people who think that being male has historically been an unalloyed privilege. The many dead of our national cemeteries suggest otherwise.

Oh my God! Did you know that if you are a white man, even the whitest of white men, you can still die? I has no idea! And here I was thinking how lucky I was to have been born white and male. What a fool I was!

Also, yes. That is exactly what the concept of white privilege and male privilege is. It's an assumption that every white male is a spoiled ingrate trust-fund kid, and if any white men are not born with a silver spoon in their mouths the entire concept is proven to be invalid. Well played, Cohen!

Let me concede right at the top that it was always better to be white in America than black. Let me further stipulate that in the workplace, it has usually been better to be a man than a woman. Let me further stipulate -- or possibly assert-that the situation is finally, belatedly improving. Hallelujah.

Okay, usually? In what instance was it ever preferable to be a woman in any workplace? And also, are we seriously going to pretend that the only facet of life in which men are granted an unfair advantage is in the workplace? The fact that I can walk through a dark alley at night knowing that the worst case scenario is I am relieved of my wallet says to me that I have it better than any woman in everyday life. The fact that I can travel to any country in the world and not have to worry that I might be arrested for having my hair or skin exposed speaks volumes about the ways in which men have it better than women in multiple facets of life. And the fact that I will never have to worry that a bunch of religious fanatics may decide that they know better than I what kind of medical procedures I might need. . . well, you get the idea.

My first real job was with the New York office of a national insurance company. Sexual harassment was a problem, for sure. But the term did not yet exist and the problem was not formally recognized.

We had no acknowledged diversity problem, either. In fact, we simply had no diversity. African-Americans, Hispanics -- you name it: None. Our office was exclusively white and not by accident. When I asked my boss why we had no black employees, he told me directly that it was his policy not to hire any. And when once, by accident, a temp agency sent over an Asian file clerk, she made the mistake of using the common ladies room. Women from the office next door demanded she be fired. She was.

I'm not really sure what point you think you're making here. Are you saying that because newsrooms can no longer overtly refuse to hire black people or fire Asian ladies for Asianing up the restroom, that privilege is a thing of the past?

When my mother died, I wrote that had she been born in a later era, she could have been president of the United States. Her competence was awesome and her drive was remarkable, but she was kept in her place by discrimination and tradition. Now her place has been taken by my sister. If Donald Trump is limited to one term, it will be because my sister has organized most of New England to oppose him. When it comes to warnings, Paul Revere has nothing on her.

So I didn't know who Richard Cohen's sister is. I decided to Google her to see if she was someone famous. This is what I got:







So when Cheeto Mussolini fails to win re-election, it will not be due to his stunning incompetence, his remarkable level of corruption or his astonishing lack of mental acuity, it will be because of Richard Cohen's sister who is either Peewee Herman, a burly bearded black man, or Eric Clapton. Hell of a family tree!

Although I'm not sure how much credit we should give the woman who is organizing the #Resistance in New England which went almost entirely for Hillary Clinton in 2016.




So why bring up your mom and sister anyway?

All this is by way of saying to women: I'm on your side. But when I see op-eds, such as the one recently in The New York Times that states in the headline that the Metropolitan Museum of Art should not have appointed "yet another white, male director," I recoil. That's just another way of saying that white and male is a disqualification.

Oh my God, no it isn't!
Saying "hey, you know what, every director you've ever had has been a white male, maybe give someone else a shot at it" is not the same thing as saying "you should not hire any white males. White males are bad." You have to know this. You can't possibly be dumb enough to not know this.

Diversity in the workplace is an overdue goal, but it can amount to a quota by another name. Choose a woman because she's a woman and you've eliminated a man because he's a man.

Oh Heaven forbid!
Heaven forbid a man should possibly not get a job!
You know, just a paragraph ago, you were saying:

When I went into journalism, it was mostly a guy's thing. It was rare for a woman to be a foreign correspondent, rarer still for one to cover a war. My career surely benefited from that. There are women around today that I am glad I didn't have to compete against when I was starting out.

So you acknowledge that you happily took advantage of the bias against women to advance your career, but God forbid that a woman might get a similar break (although in the real world, there are no quotas and women are still less likely to be offered prestigious jobs.) It's fine for you to do it, but if a hypothetical woman were to hypothetically do the same thing, well that would just be grossly unfair!

 It's not that anyone is fooled by obfuscation. Some of the resentment in the white, male electorate is based on the conviction that the deck is suddenly stacked against them. That's Trump's constituency, right there. (He got about 63 percent of the white male vote.) Someone has to tell those guys how deceived they are, how they have benefited all these years from being male and white. Forgive them, if they do not understand.

I'm sorry. Do you think this column is helping? Do you think your pitiful whining about white men being disqualified on the basis of white man-ness is helping to disabuse them of this false notion? Do you think that complaining " Choose a woman because she's a woman and you've eliminated a man because he's a man.

Once I was passed over for a newsroom position I very much wanted. "We needed a woman," an editor told me. I said nothing, although I seethed.

 

Seriously? You didn't see the irony in that? You didn't see the karma? You got to where you were by being favored over women, then once ONCE! a woman gets favored over you and you seethe? (That's if I believe you. I can't imagine an editor would open himself up to a lawsuit by being that candid about hiring/promotion practices.)

I said nothing, although I seethed. In short order, I was made a columnist, so I didn't even get a chance to cry. But the instant rush of utter unfairness lingers. The woman chosen was qualified, but her qualification had nothing to do with her sex. I was told she was just a needed statistic.

Waaaah!!! It's so uinfair! That mean qualified lady got the promotion and all I got was this lousy job being an extremely well-paid columnist for America's most prestigious newspaper which has made me rich and famous and makes people take my dumb opinions seriously! Waaaahhhh!!

The way women have been treated in the workplace is wrong -- everything from pay disparity to sexual harassment to outright discrimination. But the past does not obliterate the solemn obligation to treat people as individuals, not primarily as members of a sex or race. Fairness demands it. Democracy requires it

Okay, so. . . first of all, you're saying that pay disparity, sexual harassment and discrimination are in the past? Try saying that to any working woman with a straight face. I dare you!
And also you're saying that in that benighted past when workplaces used to be hostile/unfair/unwelcoming to women (whew! Glad that's over!) we weren't a democracy?
Or are you just saying that you know, it was not really cool for women to be discriminated against, but let's forget about that, it's ancient history. Now that whiny little douchebags like Richard Cohen think that they might somehow be the ones getting the short end of the stick, that NOW all forms of discrimination must be eliminated post haste!


Congratulations, Richard Cohen, You are the douche of the day!

Disturbing News

So this is unsettling.
11 House Republicans have sent a letter to Jeff Sessions, the head of the FBI and, for some reason, the US Attorney for Utah to refer several people for investigation/prosecution. (https://desantis.house.gov/_cache/files/8/0/8002ca75-52fc-4995-b87e-43584da268db/472EBC7D8F55C0F9E830D37CF96376A2.final-criminal-referral.pdf )

Who are the nefarious evildoers they want to see get arrested? Well, the rogues' gallery includes.

James Comey

Hillary Clinton

Loretta Lynch

Andrew McCabe

Pretty much a most-wanted list of supervillains.

Just look at the crimes these magnificent 11 are alleging that these ne-er-do-wells have committed.

James Comey: Charged with not prosecuting Hillary Clinton when she totally did e-mails. Also with keeping memos of his meetings with Donald Trump.


via GIPHY

 

Seriously, check out the letter. It's a pdf, so I can't cut and paste any excerpts and the screenshots are getting screwed up, but click on the link and you'll see I am not making this up!

Hillary Clinton: Charged with having paid for oppo research.

Hmm, weird. 

I guess they decided to give her a pass on murdering everyone in Benghazi! Benghazi!! BENGHAZI!!!

Anyway, there are very serious charges levied against everyone on the list, including "lacking candor" and a thing that some nutter on FOX claimed that Loretta Lynch did.

I don't know which is a more disturbing possibility. That these eleven menebers of Congress - not 11 guys standing on milk crates with bullhorns on Los Angeles street corners, but eleven actual, honest-to-God members of Congress -- The US Congress!-- actually believe in their Alex-Jones-addled brain-like objects that Comey, Clinton, et al are actually guilty of these made-up "crimes," or that these eleven members of Congress are so committed to turning the United States of America into a tin-pot dictatorship that they are actively trying to drum up spurious charges against anyone they perceive as one of Il Douche's political enemies. Either way, it's awfully frightening.

Here is the list of the eleven either super-corrupt or super-crazy reps who signed this insane letter.

Look for your rep here. Remember these ppl. #Virginia NO@DaveBratVA7th @vademocrats @womensmarch pic.twitter.com/yW9AsYR3C5

— smol🐣🐇 (@1line2line3) April 18, 2018

On Vacation

Jetting off to the left coast!

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  Okay, I'm going to visit my sisters. Still, though. . .

  
  

  Be back next week.