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Music and music history? Could things get any more “awesomer” here on the Friday Interlude? :)
We see you, and just look what you did!
And the nominee for Ministry of Truth goes to, you guessed it Fox News. The bullshite truly runs free on this fetid gem of an article featured on Faux News. (ed. sorry folks missed the link on first go around.)Yes, the War has come home. The War on MEN is ON!!!!11!1!!!
This article ranks highly on the coveted “Departure from Reality Scale”, but then again Faux News has never been a stickler for facts, or accuracy or unbiased reporting or…
“The battle of the sexes is alive and well. According to Pew Research Center, the share of women ages eighteen to thirty-four that say having a successful marriage is one of the most important things in their lives rose nine percentage points since 1997 – from 28 percent to 37 percent. For men, the opposite occurred. The share voicing this opinion dropped, from 35 percent to 29 percent.
Believe it or not, modern women want to get married. Trouble is, men don’t.”
As we all know, Pew Research speaks for all men and all women. Go read the report for yourself, drawing the conclusion that women want to marry and men don’t seems hasty and ill-advised as other factors contribute to this statistic and should also be taken into consideration.
“The so-called dearth of good men (read: marriageable men) has been a hot subject in the media as of late.”
The much over-hyped male hysteria needs a media cycle or two to shake out and then, along with Faux News, come plummeting back down to reality.
“Much of the coverage has been in response to the fact that for the first time in history, women have become the majority of the U.S. workforce. They’re also getting most of the college degrees. The problem? This new phenomenon has changed the dance between men and women. “
The dance being women now have to compromise less because they have the economic means to support themselves. What? You mean men will have act less like the entitled patriarchal douche-buckets that we all know and love. Say it ain’t so, Joe.
“During this time, I’ve spoken with hundreds, if not thousands, of men and women. And in doing so, I’ve accidentally stumbled upon a subculture of men who’ve told me, in no uncertain terms, that they’re never getting married. When I ask them why, the answer is always the same.
Women aren’t women anymore.”
The author makes the whiny self-exclusion of fail from the gene pool sound like a bad thing.
” To say gender relations have changed dramatically is an understatement. Ever since the sexual revolution, there has been a profound overhaul in the way men and women interact. Men haven’t changed much – they had no revolution that demanded it – but women have changed dramatically.”
Notice how the sexual revolution tended to be most rewarded when it was all about the free sex and consequence free slap n’tickle and less so for little things like women’s rights, anti-pornography initiatives and tougher rape laws. Sexual revolution indeed.
The dramatic change the author is attempting to misinterpret is the notion that women are full fledged, honest to goodness, people and not there just for their fucking and the birthing. Heady stuff, I know.
“In a nutshell, women are angry.”
Being on the short end of the stick since forever tends to do that to people.
“They’re also defensive, though often unknowingly. That’s because they’ve been raised to think of men as the enemy. Armed with this new attitude, women pushed men off their pedestal (women had their own pedestal, but feminists convinced them otherwise) and climbed up to take what they were taught to believe was rightfully theirs.”
Unknowingly defensive. Wow. Another checkmark in the strong supporter of female autonomy column please. This is the gleaming kernel of corn in this turd of piece. The notion that somehow Women have displaced Men from their lofty status as the rulers of western society. Strangely though, the standards in society are still based on white male preference and white male privilege still remains supreme, but for the first time it has been excised from the notion of “it’s just part of how society works”, thank you very much Feminism.
“Now the men have nowhere to go.”
Except to all the places of power and dominant roles in society. Oh Dear Lard, what about the menz!
“It is precisely this dynamic – women good/men bad – that has destroyed the relationship between the sexes. Yet somehow, men are still to blame when love goes awry. Heck, men have been to blame since feminists first took to the streets in the 1970s.”
The dynamic of women being treated as people, is definitely at fault.
“But what if the dearth of good men, and ongoing battle of the sexes, is – hold on to your seats – women’s fault?”
Lolsob *forever*. Those damn women wanting to be treated like people… unbelievable what these women will do, is there no justice in the world?
“You’ll never hear that in the media. All the articles and books (and television programs, for that matter) put women front and center, while men and children sit in the back seat. But after decades of browbeating the American male, men are tired. Tired of being told there’s something fundamentally wrong with them. Tired of being told that if women aren’t happy, it’s men’s fault.”
Riiiight. We definitely have a Gynocracy here now. Did you see all the media adds objectifying men as objects, or all the huge majority of leaders in our societies being women and thus promoting a pro-woman agenda. It is just amazing how anti-men our society has become. The strict rape laws, the violence against women act, the evidence is overwhelming.
“Men, say, the so-called rise of women has not threatened men. It has pissed them off. It has also undermined their ability to become self-sufficient in the hopes of someday supporting a family.”
Because whiny entitled men should be our concern. Those damn women now that we’ve taken the boot off their necks…they are starting to compete with us, and we have to treat them like they were people….*eek*.
“Men want to love women, not compete with them. They want to provide for and protect their families – it’s in their DNA. But modern women won’t let them.”
Naturalistic fallacy combined with the notion that the 1950’s were just absolutely fucking amazing! You would think that men being the take charge and responsibility types that they “are” would not have to blame someone else for all their problems.
“It’s all so unfortunate – for women, not men. Feminism serves men very well: they can have sex at hello and even live with their girlfriends with no responsibilities whatsoever.”
Feminism is a hydra with soooo many heads. It spends so much time castrating men and their desires, but yet, it is sexy-times for all. Alarmingly, it all happens at the same time. Feminism must involve some dark sorcery just you menz wait I just haven’t got my tome o’ spells in the mail yet.
“It’s the women who lose. Not only are they saddled with the consequences of sex, by dismissing male nature they’re forever seeking a balanced life.”
WTF is “male nature” and why does it seem like a likely synonym is douche-canoe? Embracing the subordination of traditional marriage seems a long way from “seeking a balanced life”, but seeking a balanced life sounds a lot better than reaching for the stars as a premier object of the the sex class.
“So if men today are slackers, and if they’re retreating from marriage en masse, women should look in the mirror and ask themselves what role they’ve played to bring about this transformation.”
Lol, the role is “game on, dudes your free ride is almost over”. Rise to meet the new higher standard or join the whinging masses(?) of men going their own way and male rights activists. Makes differentiation *much* easier.
“Fortunately, there is good news: women have the power to turn everything around. All they have to do is surrender to their nature – their femininity – and let men surrender to theirs.”
Yes you can win by losing!! Awesome. Marriage should be about equality not a dominate and subordinate role, please note that masculine and feminine stand in for said roles. There is no winning for either sex in heading back to traditional roles, not now, not ever.
Let’s all congratulate Fox News for hosting this amazingly progressive work that women everywhere will adore.
As long as someone is making money it is win, right?
I think the trick is going to be finding a way to make vegetables cheaper than a McBurger. Then watch out people, the next vegetable uprising shall being!
Noam Chomsky is considered a rogue commentator in the United States. His critiques of power illustrates the gross realpolitik that runs the US government and its foreign policy. Traditionally, we tend to think of ourselves as the “good guys”. In reality though, we seldom have that role. A look at the recent history of the Middle East confirms this hypothesis, excerpt from Alter.net.
Q: Does the United States still have the same level of control over the energy resources of the Middle East as it once had?
NC: The major energy-producing countries are still firmly under the control of the Western-backed dictatorships. So, actually, the progress made by the Arab Spring is limited, but it’s not insignificant. The Western-controlled dictatorial system is eroding. In fact, it’s been eroding for some time. So, for example, if you go back 50 years, the energy resources — the main concern of U.S. planners — have been mostly nationalized. There are constantly attempts to reverse that, but they have not succeeded.
Take the U.S. invasion of Iraq, for example. To everyone except a dedicated ideologue, it was pretty obvious that we invaded Iraq not because of our love of democracy but because it’s maybe the second- or third-largest source of oil in the world, and is right in the middle of the major energy-producing region. You’re not supposed to say this. It’s considered a conspiracy theory.
The United States was seriously defeated in Iraq by Iraqi nationalism — mostly by nonviolent resistance. The United States could kill the insurgents, but they couldn’t deal with half a million people demonstrating in the streets. Step by step, Iraq was able to dismantle the controls put in place by the occupying forces. By November 2007, it was becoming pretty clear that it was going to be very hard to reach U.S. goals. And at that point, interestingly, those goals were explicitly stated. So in November 2007 the Bush II administration came out with an official declaration about what any future arrangement with Iraq would have to be. It had two major requirements: one, that the United States must be free to carry out combat operations from its military bases, which it will retain; and two, “encouraging the flow of foreign investments to Iraq, especially American investments.” In January 2008, Bush made this clear in one of his signing statements. A couple of months later, in the face of Iraqi resistance, the United States had to give that up. Control of Iraq is now disappearing before their eyes.
Iraq was an attempt to reinstitute by force something like the old system of control, but it was beaten back. In general, I think, U.S. policies remain constant, going back to the Second World War. But the capacity to implement them is declining.
I’d like to make the Disservice your point of contact for identifying and mercilessly mocking all of the whigged-out religious tom-foolery that exists out there. The idea that a cloth has the power to cure cancer is ludicrous on its own. Worse, mated with crass commercialism that some churches have instituted, make the whole church based prayer – cloth industry morally repugnant on just about every level.
Profiting by selling false hope to dying people is just wrong. Just another shining example of what jebus can do for you…for a price. Yet another fine example of unethical behaviour on the part of some christian churches.
Most of what Rand has to say about economics and politics is complete bunk. The idea that we should not restrict the wealthy classes in their endeavours strikes me as the fast forward button on the decline of Western Civilization. Altruism and empathy are the qualities that will save our civilization, their antithesis, aka much of what Rand proposes, will not. Alter.net has a great article about Rand and what it is doing to our societies, I reproduce the section dealing with corporations and what they are actually mandated to do, as opposed to what they do now.
“Ayn Rand envisioned a world without governments – a world where the super-rich are free to do as they wish.
We tried that during the so-called Gilded Age of the late 19th Century – before Ayn Rand was alive. If she’d watched the ruthlessness of the Robber Barons like she did the Bolsheviks, she may have reached different conclusions.
She may have realized that American Presidents like Teddy Roosevelt, Franklin Roosevelt, and Dwight Eisenhower were right when they made sure that wealth was more evenly distributed and the Billionaire Class was held in check.
Or she may have come to understand that corporations and billionaires owe their wealth to the state and not the other way around. Without favorable patent and copyright laws, a court system, an educated workforce, and an infrastructure to move goods about the country, then no one would be able to get rich in America. We’d be like the Libertarian paradise of Somalia.
As Harry Moser, the founder of the Reshoring Initiative, argued in The Economist, “Corporations are not created by the shareholders or the management. Rather they are created by the state. They are granted important privileges by the state (limited liability, eternal life, etc). They are granted these privileges because the state expects them to do something beneficial for the society that makes the grant. They may well provide benefits to other societies, but their main purpose is to provide benefits to the societies (not to the shareholders, not to management, but to the societies) that create them.”
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