Author: VD

That your public-schooled kid won’t be abused by an adult:

A US Department of Education study released last year found that 7 per cent of pupils were victims of physical or sexual abuse by teachers or other school employees. Of those, 22 per cent were abused by a woman.

The odds are quite good that your kid won’t be abused by an adult at school. But if you factor in abuse by fellow students – which would be perhaps three times as likely, just to make a rough guess – then you’re looking at nearly a quarter of kids being forced to deal with this sort of thing. Suddenly, those odds don’t look so great.

You can certainly defend rolling the dice with the “that which does not kill me makes me stronger” theory, but then, I suppose homeschooling parents could always hire someone to swing by once a month and punch their kids too. I wonder what Child Protective Services would make of that?

Another splash for the absinthe-deprived:

Apparently, women can be “partially responsible” for being raped. Since Vox says date rape doesn’t exist, I guess that dating is in and of itself a damning activity that might give rise to this partial responsibility. This is the problem with the notion that women can be blamed for, even “partially,” for rape, is that there is absolutely no limit to the demands that rape apologists will put on women if women want to absolve their responsibility. If a woman can be responsible for rape, that means women can’t drink. They can’t walk anywhere at night. They can’t ever enter the apartment of another male. They can’t ever allow a male to enter their apartment. They can never wear skirts above the knee. They can never wear any tight-fitting clothing. They can never have consensual sex with someone they are not married, to, since apparently having consensual sex with one or two men means you want to have sex with them all. They can never kiss a man (“why did you kiss him if you didn’t want to have sex with him?”), flirt with a man, make obvious eye contact with a man, talk to a man they don’t know, allow a man to walk her home, be alone with a man. They can’t take public transportation in any city where crime is common. They must always be under the watchful eye of a brother, father or husband. Oh, but wait, let’s not forget that women are raped by their brothers, fathers, and husbands every day.

As Camille Paglia points out, you’ve got your freedom now, baby! At least, you do with regards to this subject. And what that means that you’ve got all the risk that is inherent with sexual liberty. If you want to cliff-dive, you can do it, but do so in the recognition that you just might break your neck. Sure, the chances that going to that nice fraternity boy’s room means that you’ll end up with your skin decorating a lampshade are slim, but you just bumped them up a notch. Here’s a question for OOA: is it possible for someone to be partially responsible for their purse getting stolen? If so, then how is it impossible for someone to be partially responsible for getting raped?

Assigning women responsibility for rape is a game that always, always end in a further perpetuation of the rape culture.

As I pointed out in my column today, there is quite a bit of evidence that suggests refusing to assign women responsibility for their actions not only perpetuates rape, but increases the number of rapes committed per 100,000 population.

So, what are women to do, then? Hope and pray that neither Vox nor any of his legion of worshipppers ever get ahold of any political power.

Yes, because libertarians are just ITCHING to get at the reins of central government power in order to rape, pillage and plunder the masses. Need another example of the female tendency towards fascism? It appears that OOA can’t even contemplate the notion of having political power and not using it to force your views on others.

Sometimes I feel like a wild animal standing outside a cage, looking at the tame animals within. There’s enough of them there to force the cage door open, but they just stand there, looking at me as if I’m insane.

“Open the damn door!” I tell them. “You can leave.”

“But, but, but what would we do then? No one would tell us what to do! No one would make the bad ones behave!”

“No one makes them behave now. Anyhow, so what, you’d be free. You should be free!”

“But what if something bad happened. What if someone raped us?”

“You’re getting raped now! At least if you were free, you could run away. You could defend yourself!”

“No… I can’t… you’re crazy!”

Perhaps. Aber die Gedanken, sie sind immer frei.

10x 44kg
08x 48kg
06x 52kg
04x 56kg
10x 40kg

What was that you said, mate? I can’t hear BECAUSE MY ARMS ARE BLOCKING MY EARS!

Don Banks writes on SI:

Boomer Esiasion on CBS’s pre-game show Sunday actually said if the Vikings make the playoffs, head coach Mike Tice should have his salary quadrupled and “don’t be surprised if he’s coach of the year.”

Coach of the Year? Tice couldn’t even win Coach of the Year in his division. Ever hear of Lovie Smith, Boom? And yes we know you and Tice hail from the same neck of the woods on Long Island, and both went to Maryland, but how about a little objectivity?

I am going to go upstairs, remove the purple Vikings sweatshirt I am currently sporting, and take a shower. A long, hot one. I shall do my level best to forget that I ever read anything to this effect. Should I fail, I shall then go about seeking psychiatric help before I snap and am found frozen to death in the process of making naked snow angels to spell out FIRE MIKE TICE in giant letters outside Winter Park.

ARE YOU OUT OF YOUR FREAKISHLY BLOND GOURD, BOOMER? ARE YOU EVIL OR ARE YOU MAD? DO YOU PARTICULARLY HATE THE VIKINGS OR JUST MINNESOTANS IN GENERAL? AAAAAAAAGGGGGHHHHH!!!!

UPDATE – okay, I am feeling calm now. I am at peace, I am at one with the world in all its vicissitudes, with the NFL and with the Vikings. Now that I am capable of thinking soberly about this, I have concluded that Boomer Esiason is in the pay of Matt Millen, who realizes that his only hope of winning the NFC Central – yes, I know, shut up, I still haven’t accepted the 16-game season – is to encourage even greater incompetence than he can muster. He’s already done the Packers in with Sherman, the Vikings with Tice, and Lovie Smith was a devious plot that went horribly wrong due to Millen’s racist miscalculations.

By the way, there are few individuals I hate in the world, but Matt Millen may top the list. I still remember every single Packers-Vikings game wherein he would spend the entire game slagging the Vikes under the nominal guise of a color commentator.

How does he still have a job anyhow? Hey, maybe Millen can hire Tice!!! Now THAT would be perfect!

Derbyshire dislikes Irving Kristol’s elitism:

“A year ago, I asked Kristol after a lecture whether he believed in God or not. He got a twinkle in his eye and responded, ‘I don’t believe in God, I have faith in God.’ Well, faith, as it says in Hebrews 11:1, ‘is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen.’ But at the recent AEI lecture, journalist Ben Wattenberg asked him the same thing. Kristol responded that ‘that is a stupid question,’ and crisply restated his belief that religion is essential for maintaining social discipline. A much younger (and perhaps less circumspect) Kristol asserted in a 1949 essay that in order to prevent the social disarray that would occur if ordinary people lost their religious faith, ‘it would indeed become the duty of the wise publicly to defend and support religion.'”

Here we have a guy who plainly doesn’t believe in God, but who thinks that well-padded intellectual elitists like himself ought to evade the issue in public for fear of demoralizing the proles and perhaps jeopardizing some padding thereby. I can’t think of anything nice to say about that; and in fact, the only things I CAN think of to say would not be suitable for a family website.

I’m no neoconservative. But I do note that Kristol’s position is of a long and distinguished lineage, dating back to Socrates and including Voltaire, Joyce, and more recently, Eco among its adherents. And, as was implied in today’s column, there is something to be said for doing one’s best to remain on the side of that which has proven to build civilization instead of tearing it down, regardless of one’s private doubts.

Derb adds:

To your question: “And Derb, why is it wrong for atheists and agnostics to believe that religion can be a force for good?” If you can point me to anything I have ever said or written that suggested such a thing, I’d be obliged.

If you were to start a list of people who, while themselves atheist or agnostic, believed widespread religious belief to be a social and/or personal good, you would have to block out a weekend to get the job done. Confucius, Plato, the emperor Augustus, Ben Franklin…. This has been such a commonplace intellectual position that if you DID think it wrong you’d have to cross half the great thinkers & doers of history off your Christmas card list.

I always find this interesting, given how so many modern atheists and agnostics sneer at religion and will often even go so far as to insist that as a cause of war and general evil, should be stamped out. And yet, the brightest lights IN THEIR OWN CAMP would vehemently disagree.

From the Wall Street Journal:

Arnold Schwarzenegger stunned California last week by selecting the former deputy chief of staff to Gray Davis, the Democratic governor ousted by the recall that brought Mr. Schwarzenegger to power, to be his own chief of staff.

Conservatives are furious that Susan Kennedy, a 45-year-old former acolyte of radical activists Tom Hayden and Jane Fonda, will be Gov. Schwarzenegger’s top administrator, with power to hire and fire staff. Some liberals are angry at her joining a GOP governor; others are bemused. This Wednesday, 450 Gray Davis alumni will fill the state capitol for the unveiling of Mr. Davis’s portrait. Ms. Kennedy will be reunited with David Zingale, another former top Davis aide, who is now chief of staff to First Lady Maria Shriver. Jason Kinney, a Davis speechwriter, quips that Mr. Schwarzenegger has decided to “finish the second term of Gray Davis.” Mr. Davis, for his part, notes that “imitation is the sincerest form of flattery.”

I tried to warn starry-eyed Republicans of this in a column during the post-recall election, but the Hewittian-led pragmatists won over the ironically more realistic idealists.

You can’t always get what you want. You won’t always get what you need. But you usually get what you deserve.

Todd is puzzled:

Do you have any idea where many of today’s women are getting fed their daily feminist bread? As a single man I keep running into women that keep describing themselves as “independent” in conversations. Men never need to qualify themselves this way because we are naturally more independent.

These women make it a point to stress their “independence” which gets me wondering whether they are reading it in Cosmopolitan or some other rag that this is what men want out of women.

The concept is pushed most heavily in college, although it has trickled down to the high schools, especially the private schools, to some extent. It is also pushed via entertainment; one can look at nearly any movie or television show and see that a woman dependent on a man is nearly always portrayed as frustrated, embittered and dowdy, whereas a woman who supports herself is portrayed as being happy, confident and more attractive to men.

The movie True Lies was an example of this, as Jamie Lee Curtis does not bloom until she becomes a secret agent in partnership with her husband, Arnold Schwarzenegger. (If you haven’t seen it, do, it’s much better than you’d think and single-handedly reversed my previous opinion of Tom Arnold as being entirely unfunny.) The movie Mr. and Mrs. Smith is perhaps a good example of the SIW’s (strong independent woman)ideal, where the woman’s independence and equality is asserted to be an intrinsicly sexy thing. One can trace this theme back to Hepburn and Tracy, but while it is true that snappy repartee can be briefly entertaining, it is a horrible basis for a relationship.

It’s important to understand that women tend to think in images. This is why they are so susceptible to visual propaganda; while many men’s magazines are nothing but text and even Playboy usually features lengthy and in-depth articles, you can go through a stack of women’s magazines without finding more than a few pages that contain more than two paragraphs worth of text. Even many intelligent women who are perfectly capable of it don’t really like to think, they find it more interesting to express and explain themselves. You, on the other hand, may find the topic somewhat less fascinating.

Following the overt (college) and the covert (Hollywood) propaganda, this independence theme is powerfully reinforced by other women. As most of you have probably noted from visits to feminist-oriented blogs, external and critical input is seldom welcomed by female-dominated circles. Whereas competitive men welcome and feed off negative energy – think of Michael Jordan manufacturing perceived slights to motivate himself, Reggie Miller’s habit of walking around New York in a Pacers jersey on game day or the “we get no respect” theme echoed by every NFL team, including the home field advantage holder in the playoffs, (I don’t know about you, but I’m looking forward to hearing how a potentially 16-0 Colts team that is nearly every sportswriters’ pre-season Super Bowl pick is going to complain about how they get no respect), – most women shrink from it. This is why many women develop a habit of verbal aggressiveness, on the reasonable grounds that the best defense is a constant offense.

But the toughness is an illusion. They’re like tank destroyers, all gun and no armor. At college, I found that the most verbally aggressive women were the most easily reduced to tears, even if one didn’t bother to get personal. So, since the Strong Independent Woman theme is almost always a front designed to mask an inherent insecurity, so you need not take it too seriously. The key is to determine how tightly the mask is bonded to her self-perception; if she responds warmly to masculine assertiveness and takes it off within a week or two, there’s no problem. If she clings to the illusion and continues to hide behind it, write her off and move on even if you are able to see through it.

Never waste any time with anyone who makes a habit of lying to themself. They will all too easily rationalize justifications for lying to you.

Last week: 10-6. Fantasy 9-3.

W-Indianapolis Colts over Tennessee Titans
Seattle Seahawks over Philadelphia Eagles
W-San Diego Chargers over Oakland Raiders
W-Chicago Bears over Green Bay Packers
W-Minnesota Vikings over Detroit Lions
W-New England Patriots over New York Jets
W-Miami Dolphins over Buffalo Bills
L-Denver Broncos over Kansas City Chiefs
L-Dallas Cowboys over New York Giants
W-Cincinnati Bengals over Pittsburgh Steelers
W-Baltimore Ravens over Houston Texans
W-Tampa Bay Buccaneers over New Orleans Saints
W-Jacksonville Jaguars over Cleveland Browns
W-Washington Redskins over St. Louis Rams
W-Carolina Panthers over Atlanta Falcons
L-San Francisco 49ers over Arizona Cardinals

And speaking of why Mike Tice should have been fired around this time last year, please note that even an NFL linebacker is capable of outthinking the man who is still mysteriously the Vikings head coach. Miami had the second worst run defense in the league last year, giving up an average of 143.9 yards per game, and Minnesota had three decent running backs who were healthy. Naturally, Tice ran the ball a grand total of TWELVE times, if I recall correctly, thus managing to provide the Dolphins with one of their four victories that year.

Here, it’s just a matter of how bad the Houston run defense is. Houston linebacker Antwan Peek said it best – “if you don’t run on us, you should be fired.”

She’ll probably be appalled that I linked to her, but Bellatrys has some interesting commentary on a relatively obscure play by Thomas Ortway called “Venice Preserv’d”. As I’m a great fan of Venice and used to be somewhat of a theater buff before it went All Gay All The Time – back when I had season tickets, the Guthrie had a fantastic season that I still remember fondly – I found her post to be well worth the reading:

This obscure Restoration play by the tragic Thomas Otway (who just about embodies every cliche of the Great Romantic Artist you can think of, no less than the Byron-Shelley-Keats crew of a hundred-plus years later) is something I’d never encountered until I dowsed up a book of Restoration Drama at the secondhand store and found it there.

Whereupon I could instantly see why it was both a) obscure, and b) popular whenever it was put on. It’s a strange play, and you can see why – if it’s typical of Otway’s work – that he never attained the role of guys like Congreve or Dryden in the Canon of English lit. He’s just too bloody weird. It’s not exactly realism that he’s doing, any more than Puccini’s Tosca or La Boheme are “realistic” – but it’s a damn sight closer to naturalism-in-art than the highly ritualized and poetry-for-poetry’s sake Tragedy of Dryden’s All For Love, the classic neoclassical Shakespeare fanfic rewrite of Antony and Cleopatra.