Thank God We Have White Guys To Explain How Women And Black People Should Act

I don't have enough time (though I certainly have sufficient vitriol) to tear apart this horrendously inaccurate and occasionally creepy National Review article on the subject of Herman Cain's recent troubles over multiple charges of sexual harassment  Fortunately, Charles P. Pierce has done a lot of the work already, with his characteristic flair.  It's particularly impressive to watch someone argue that contracting a disease with a 30% chance of survival should count against five women alleging sexual harassment or sexual assault against them.  Presumably, if that number had fallen to 10%, he could have gotten away with chasing them into the bathrooms and slapping their faces with "little Cain".

One thing I did want to pick up on, though, was this quote here:

Cain, who has not as of yet actually been accused of engaging in sexual intercourse with a female subordinate, finds himself in the "sexual harassment" labyrinth, from which there are few paths out in the present era.

This is indicative of the confusion that lies at the heart of much of the white noise that endlessly hisses away throughout these free-for-alls: the Puritanical inability (or refusal) to comprehend that sexual harassment and sexual intercourse aren't remotely the same thing.  Indeed, it's pretty difficult to manage both of them at the same time with the same person.  The majority of this article - when it isn't busy trying to persuade us that it's actually the people in power who are the victims of all those hot little pieces of pert young ass - is the lament that for some reason, it's harder to get away with telling women they won't be hired if they don't put out than it is finding people who want to sleep with you, and then sleeping with them.

It's almost as if in Hanson's deranged mind Cain deserves credit for the fact that he's too unattractive to have managed to commit adultery.  "Sure, he kept trying to get his subordinates to fuck him, but no-one's even suggested he was ever successful."  Of course, the true giveaway as to what's really going on here is this:

Monica Lewinsky[s] ... subordinate status in an asymmetrical relationship with her putative boss should, in terms of doctrinaire sexual harassment, have made her a victim and the president a predator, irrespective of her eager consent. 

Let's take a moment to let that sink in: "doctrinaire sexual harassment" shouldn't take into account whether both parties were eager to get their freak on.  I'm not particularly interested in defending Clinton's actions in general, but the above quote is a flashing warning light - this is an article about how extra-marital sex and sexual harassment both have "sex" in their names, and sex is icky.

Until these people pull themselves together and start making distinctions between behaviour they find appalling as observers, and behaviour people find appalling as victims of it, we're going to have to face this nonsense every time. Moreover, until they reach enlightenment, Hanson and his ilk are going to continue to remain hilariously unaware of their implicit sexism: "Why is horndoggery more acceptable just because the woman's into it"?

The Hypocrisy Two-Step

I read Steve "The Machine" Benen's defence of Elizabeth Warren against some typically unhinged conservative attack lines this morning, and it got me thinking.

A narrow and pedantic point, first: I don't think Rick Manning actually is using the word "hypocrisy" incorrectly.  To be sure, the charge of hypocrisy he is levelling against Warren is total bullshit, but that's because he's straight-up lying about what Warren has actually said and done.  If I called George Osborn a hypocrite for decrying domestic violence despite him holding his extended family captive in a windowless basement so he can drink deep from their arteries in strict rotation, it wouldn't be the word itself that would be the problem, but the invention of a mode of behaviour out of whole cloth.  I'm not saying Osborn doesn't have an underground lair filled with emaciated thralls kept alive merely to provide him with an alternative to consuming back-benchers live on camera, I just assume they'll be no-mark peasants, rather than members of his Secret Barony of the Ebon Heart.

However, both Benen (and Krugman before him) are right in the wider context that any attempt by a wealthy American to actually suggest wealthy Americans should use that wealth to stop the country falling apart and all the peons starving to death is immediately condemned as being a hypocrite.

Obviously, this is a feature, not a bug.  It's the second stage of Operation: Plutocrats Uber Alles that's always and everywhere underway, but is close to total success over in the States.  Stage one, of course, was to ensure that meaningful political participation in the US is all but impossible without being a millionaire oneself (or being close friends with a whole mess of them). Stage two is to ensure any millionaire with interests outside their economic bracket is labelled a hypocrite, and hence discredited.  Watching media outlets like Politico pretend not to understand this as they help out their obscenely wealthy overlords is endlessly frustrating, but it's not particularly difficult to work out what's going on.

Supernatural Supreme

So I heard tell that various peeps across the internet were dissin' up Supernatural Season 6 during the first half of its run, and I decided to jump right on that and offer a full-throated defence a mere three months too late.  Punctuality is not how I roll!

Well, there's that, and the fact that the sixth year of the show is really something that has to be viewed as a whole. Frankly, I'm not sure I'm particularly happy about that fact: I'm on the record (so, so many times) as feeling a little disappointed that this series has become so wrapped up in its year-long stories that the only time we take a break for something different it's invariably a "comedy" episode, which don't always work as well as people think ("The French Mistake" isn't funny, it's just several dozen people shouting "We can take a joke!" straight at the camera), and can become rather irritating in bulk.  Like the X-Files before it, this show needs a string to its bow besides "mythology" episodes and taking the piss (though admittedly Supernatural does both significantly better than its spiritual antecedent).

In any event, I might not necessarily be entirely happy with the direction the show took somewhere around Season 3, it is what it is, and that has to be recognised.  And, viewed in its entirety, I think Season 6 is probably the best year the show has put out since Jeffrey Dean Morgan stopped showing up for work.

From this point on, spoilers are abroad.

Walking In Circles

It's been a little while since we talked about any comics over here, so let's fix that with a look at The Walking Dead.  Specifically, Volume 13: "Too Far Gone", since I've finally gotten hold of the seventh hardback volume this weekend.

Spoilers for the entire run up to this point - and likely by extension, the TV show - after the jump.

Friday Compare-And-Contrast

Further proof today that those claiming the Tories and Lib Des have become indistinguishable now they're in power together have gotten it badly wrong, Animal Farm quotes notwithstanding.  Yes, they're both willing to throw away confidential documents without reference to security or basic common sense, but only the minority partners will recycle whilst they're doing it.

(Much as I've recycled this "joke", in fact).

This calls for another Friday song, naturally.  Something nice and relaxing, and tangentially related.  Emphasis on "tangential", I assure you, but if we can't agree that we should be recyling air, then who would be?

(Maybe conservative white males, actually).

Valid Comparisons

Just a brief (well, not really) note on one aspect of the struggle for gay rights in America, because once MGK is missing the point [1], then it's a fair bet other people are as well, and an interesting signal is getting lost in the noise.

George Takei is in MGK's sights for sarcastically noting that the ten weeks Kim Kardashian managed to be married before filing for divorce is clearly proof that what would really demean the entire institution would be letting gay people get hitched. MGK's stance is that since KK is pro-gay marriage, calling her a hypocrite over this is spectacularly unfair.  My stance (along with several other people) is that Takei's point has nothing to do with whether Kardashian is a hypocrite, and everything to do with hypocrisy in general.

And that's what needs to be focused on.  How can a society which is willing to allow two people to get divorced after less time married than "Umbrella" was at number one also hold that marriage is so sacred an institution, so foundational to society, that it needs to be legally protected from people not treating it the "right" way?

That's a question I'd like to ask every single American politician who stands opposed to gay marriage (as, presumably, would this guy). Would they favour a legal minimum on the amount of time between tying the knot and filing for divorce? (One might already exist, of course, in which case you could ask whether they'd favour it being longer than the average HBO season).  How long a period of time would be necessary to avoid demeaning marriage to the same extent as allowing two people of the same gender to devote their lives to each other? Ten weeks?  Ten days?  Ten minutes?

For that matter, would they favour making adultery illegal?  I'm pretty sure Newt Gingrich has slept with more women than Portia de Rossi since their respective wedding days.  I've not seen much support for putting playin' away back in the statute book.  We'd rather just tut about it and get back to our lunch, thanks.

It would be nice to force politicians to take stances on these things.  Much like abortion, these incoherent positions can only come about by pretending to not understand the logical endpoint.  If two men getting married damages marriage as a concept, then so does cheating on your wife whilst she's dying of cancer.  If abortion is murder, then women who have them are accessories and co-conspirators, and need to locked up.  Let's see how those ideas poll, shall we?

We can go further, and link this into another desperately aggravating argument regularly trotted out by those in power: "what we did wasn't technically illegal, so what's the problem?", as though legal and illegal were the only measures of one's behaviour in society. The truth, of course, is that (very roughly speaking) behaviours fall into one of six categories: encouraged, approved of, shrugged at, disapproved of, discouraged, and illegal [2].  Leaving aside the fact that not everyone will agree on what goes where, and what should go where, and the fact that society itself is more clear on some issues than on others, all of these arguments are based around the idea that anything they want discouraged should be illegal, and anything legal they do should be approved of. 

Justice by solipsism, basically.  Everything else that comes out of their mouth is just a smoke-screen for that fundamental fact.  Why they want it is irrelevant.  What would logically follow from what they want is irrelevant. 

All that matters is that what they want, they must have.  And if they can't have it all, because no-one is going to get elected by promising to bring back jail sentences for cheating on your wife is going to get themselves elected outside of Georgia (and maybe Utah; I've never completely understood the exact circumstances in which it's permissable to double dip your flesh celery over there), then they'll at least make sure the groups they can beat up on without consequence are going to feel their wrath.

Why else do you think they bristle when you call them bigots?  It's not about their bigotry, it's about society's bigotry allowing them to be insufferable fuckers selectively on issues for which they'd rather be insufferable fuckers across the board.

[1] Actually, to be fair, I'm sure he does get the point, he's just focussing on defending one celebrity over a snark attack by idiots on Twitter by pretending they're aping another celebrity, who in fact hasn't said what MGK thinks he has.  I don't have any problem with "people are idiots on the internet!" posts, but I think they should be fairly labelled as such, rather than conflated with other, more intelligent positions.

[2] If people wanted to argue that "approved" and "encouraged" are essentially the same thing (and the same with their opposites), then I might not argue too hard.

Crazy Like A Fox!

This is interesting.  I had no idea Fox had links to ALEC.  Certainly shifts the balance still further away from "compassionate Conservatism" and towards "labour-hating wannabe plutocrats [1]" as regards Cameron's crew, huh?

[1] A word I got wrong last week due to being so drunk I confused it with autocrat.  Let this be a lesson: only play Cranium on at most one bottle of wine.