That whole Invisible Children/Kony 2012 campaign is the worst case of “what these people need is a honky” style of activism. It’s overtly simplistic, revolves more about the activists’ egos than about the supposed cause they’re supporting and it all looks a lot like a scam to get money out of idealistic but gullible people. That the director of the video is an Evangelical Christian fits with the m.o.; Evangelical Christians are masters of the fake charity.
Numpties
How to raise your daughter right
Let this insecure, borderline psychotic manchild with anger issues explain. Soon you too can gain the respect of your daughter your big gun entitles you to.
The real wtf is how many people agree with/excuse this douchenozzle.
If they give him an enema they can bury him in a shoebox
As Christopher Hitchens himself once said about Jerry Falwell. Which is really all you need to say about Hitchens’ death as well. I’ve been a bit disappointed about the response to the news of his death, far too respectful and admiring of him. He has always been a douchenozzle, a bully boy who was full of his own courage, unsupported by the facts. He was a leftist when everybody was a socialist, then turned rightwing contrarian when fashions changed and finally turning himself in a professional atheist for the American market. But at all times he remained an asshole.
It’s just that this was easier to live with when his targets were a Henry Kissinger then when he used his talents to support the War on Iraq.
If the Twilight series is your idea of a feminist text…
So somebody at The Hairpin thinks she’s at Slate and writes a contrarian article that praises the Twilight series for its supposed insight into what teenage girls are “really like”. In the process she let’s out the following sneer towards the Stieg Larsson Girl Who… novels:
Lisbeth Salander, the heroine of the popular The Girl With a Dragon Tattoo series, is emotionally stunted but, damn it, she actualizes herself! She punishes the people who hurt her, she sleeps with whomever she wishes, she zips around on a motorcycle, and she’s a master computer hacker. In other words, our actualized female heroine might as well be a tiny man.
It’s a weird sort of feminist critique that sees revenge, an active sex life, computer hacking and riding a bike (!) as inherently male and a woman engaging in them as “a tiny man”. Wasn’t the whole idea of feminism that women should be able to do the same things as men, should be able to seek revenge, have sex, play with computers and even feel a throbbing engine between their legs if they want to? Sure, there has been a backlash agains the idea that this is all feminism should be, that women should turn themselves into surrogate men to be taken seriously (something Joanna Russ already addressed back in 1975), that traditionally female-coded activities are unimportant and engaging in them is unfeminist. There’s even a point to make about how male-written action girls/heroines can sometimes become men with breasts.
But.
This article isn’t the way to do that, considering it’s written to praise the Twilight series for its supposedly true to life portrayal of what it feels like to be a teenage girl, when for all intents and purposes this series actually offers a reactionary view of what womanhood should be about, viz that a girl is only fulfilled if she’s married and preggers weeks after finishing high school. No need for motorcycles, computers or revenge, though some room for properly married but somewhat creepy sex.
In short: before you can argue about the relative worth of “feminine” and “masculine” pursuits, you have to have people who agree that these are not inherent to your gender.
Occupy Frank Miller
James Nicoll takes a sadistic pleasure in inflicting reactionary crybaby rants by once respected writers on his readers, so it’s no wonder I first Frank Miller’s grandpa Simpson’s rant about Occupy Wall Street there. It’s bad:
The “Occupy” movement, whether displaying itself on Wall Street or in the streets of Oakland (which has, with unspeakable cowardice, embraced it) is anything but an exercise of our blessed First Amendment. “Occupy” is nothing but a pack of louts, thieves, and rapists, an unruly mob, fed by Woodstock-era nostalgia and putrid false righteousness. These clowns can do nothing but harm America.
The only thing missing there are the whores, whores whores.
We really shouldn’t be surprised at Miller’s sentiments. He’s not just another supposed liberal driven loony by the September 11 attacks, but somebody who has built his career on writing increasingly outlandish rightwing revenge fantasies. Daredevil, Elektra, Batman: Year One, Ronin, The Dark Knight Returns, 300: none of these are leftwing stories are they? Not that they weren’t good rightwing revenge fantasies, but they did sort of indicate a mind not welcoming to leftwing shenanigans like the Occupy movement.
Therefore, should this rant matter for your enjoyment of Frank Miller’s …unique… brand of comics? Of course not. You knew what you were getting with Miller before: to get outraged now is a bit too late. Apart from that, this Randy Milholand Something Positive strip has it covered.