Vox Popoli

JV doesn’t have a particularly strong handle on that whole “libertarian” thing:

You got your loyals that are moral, upright, pro-life types. And then you got your loyals who get off by posting erotic comments which cause slobbering idiots to do likewise and a thread devolves into disgusting voyeurism. And you got your alchoholic losers who brag about in what manner they’re going to get drunk. And you link to bloggers who spin the glories of fornicating with multiple women.

And you just sit back and yuk it up, and none of it bothers you. Your columns and many posts are interesting and shed some light, but all the extra baggage?

I wouldn’t think that I’m enough of a comedian to qualify as one who “yuks it up”, but yes, the sitting back and being largely indifferent is accurate enough. I don’t like every comment made by every commenter here, in fact, I don’t like every commenter. But so what? The comments aren’t for me, they’re simply my way of providing readers and critics alike with a forum. There are very few rules and the vast majority of the time, everyone abides by them.

Sure, most of the communication is trivial, but then, so is the vast majority of all communication. I’ll never forget what an English friend of mine who had learned Italian before me once said. He told me how much he’d wanted to understand what the people around him were saying when he first moved to Italy, and how disappointed he was when he was finally able to understand them and realized that they were just babbling about inconsequentialities like everyone else, the only difference was that they tended to repeat themselves by saying the same thing three different ways.

I’m responsible for my own words. JV is responsible for his, and no man can be held liable for those that belong to another. If you don’t like the comments, then don’t read them. They won’t pop-up at you, and in any case, they don’t change the posts or the columns one jot or tittle.

Sixteen Volts makes some cogent points about the likeliness that dating abroad will increase with the Internet and inexpensive international travel. He also raises the interesting idea that this may lead to cross-cultural conflict over time:

I thought a little bit more about the issue of Western men going to find wives from aboard, in the spirit of the post “Sexual Poverty” by Bulletproof Pimp and “Foreign Affairs” at Feministe. Since the numbers of men and women are for all practical purposes equal in West, there can’t possibly be two girls for every guy, let alone ten. In addition, pretty much everybody agrees on what is attractive, and especially on what is unattractive, which leads to a harsh zero-sum competition for the desirable partners within both sexes. There simply is no solution to this equation, and blaming either men or women for this situation is useless.

The vast majority of Western men therefore have to live under a severe sexual scarcity in which their choices of both short-term and long-term partners are severely constrained. The men in the bottom third or so have to settle for women who are in many ways deficient and worse than those men would ideally want to marry. This is pretty weird when we remember that these men easily belong to the richest 5% of all humanity. It would truly be strange if the richest 5% of people had to wear tattered rags and live in hovels, instead of being able to use their wealth to buy themselves a wider range of options. In every other aspect of life we take it for granted that the richest 5% get to have the best choices available to them, so why do these rich people tolerate this situation when it comes to sexual choices?

That’s an insightful way to consider the situation. Right now, it’s only the social equivalent of the “early adopters” who are taking advantage of their attractiveness advantage vis-a-vis the men in Malaysia, the Ukraine and so forth. It’s the curious, the adventurers and those who simply have no alternative. But like Ilkka, I can see the pattern evolving, particularly as sites like MySpace and technologies like Skype explode with popularity and it becomes as easy to communicate with someone in the Czech Republic as the next suburb over.

Ilkka also brings up a point that I have made before on an individual basis, but he shows how it is even more meaningful on a wider one as well. I think he is correct to see this as being conceptually related to the global outsourcing phenomenon, and likely to have similar results:

Of course, the Western men who currently marry foreign women also tend to be highly despised by the women back home. The highly emotional arguments and putdowns are humorously analogous to the “arguments” that the progressives sling against Wal-Mart and the people who shop there. But this matters less than it perhaps should, for the simple reason that these men are usually already despised by women even before their proactive little trip (just like most people can’t afford to shop at Saks, in this analogy), so it’s not like it’s a huge loss for these men.

(Here’s a free hint to women: once you make it explicitly clear that sex with you is not a realistic future possibily for some man, you also lose your power of affecting his choices and behaviour with a possibility of sex.)

Indeed, it’s interesting how so many intelligent and educated women fail to grasp something that provides so many less intellectual women with a living. Once a woman explicitly rejects a man, in most cases she ceases to exist for him as a woman and therefore possesses none of the female influence on him which she is accustomed to exerting over the men around her. (This does not hold true for psychopaths and stalkers who are capable of concocting their own realities, of course, I’m talking about your average guy.) Such rejecting is a self-neutering act, which can certainly be useful or even necessary in some situations, but usually is rather more than the woman bargains for. Aging creates a similar effect, the reason so many older women complain about being invisible is that they have lost an influence that they have long taken for granted. The fact that they are finally being judged solely on the basis of their intelligence, accomplishments and personal character is apparently cold comfort to many of them.

The irony is that in proclaiming their own independence from Western men, Western women have relieved Western men of their own sense of dependence on and responsibility for Western women. Precisely how this will play out, I do not know, but as Ilkka suggests, it could easily become a flashpoint of sorts, both here at home as well as those third-world countries where the women perceive a value in Western men that their more affluent sisters do not.

It’s okay to murder a baby, as long as you don’t murder a baby for a disapproved reason:

Sex selection of babies for non-medical reasons is set to be outlawed in the UK under Government plans for a shake-up of embryology regulation. Health Minister Caroline Flint told MPs she was minded to introduce a “clear and specific ban” on the use of new techniques to choose one gender of baby.

Allowing parents to pick sex for reasons such as “balancing” the make-up of their family could be the start of a “slippery slope” to designer babies, she warned.

Never count on logic or consistency from a feminist, much less a group of them. The fact that she may be capable of it is no indication that she won’t abandon it the first time it happens to get in the way of what she wants at the moment.

You would think that free access to abortion would be the one thing that would never compromise on, until, of course, it became clear that those damnable Patriarchists* were capable of seducing strong, independent, but falsely conscious women into killing girl babies.

So, now that we’ve established that it’s acceptable to ban killing a baby because it’s a girl, how about we simply ban killing babies because they are human beings?

*I previously proved that feminists are anti-semitic, you may recall. There’s nothing they hate as much as a Patriarch.

Daniel asks for an update

You wrote about trying to get published in another genre a while ago. Did anything ever come of that?

I don’t think Daniel realizes just how slow the process is when you’re not A NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLING AUTHOR!!!! But actually, it’s been going pretty well, although ironically it doesn’t look like I’ll be able to go quite as far afield as I’d intended.

I began writing a mystery set in Italy, which I think is promising. The only publisher with whom I’ve spoken about it is very interested, but they’re a European publisher and they don’t sign books based on the usual synopsis and three sample chapters. I figured I could have the first book done by this fall and was working towards that, but then I received an email from an American publisher last week who liked the EW stuff and was interested in receiving a proposal from me.

So I threw a few ideas together over the weekend, sent off the proposal and was pleasantly surprised to learn yesterday that the publisher liked it and is considering offering a three-book deal. It looks like they’ll make their final decision by the second week of August, so hopefully it will be a go. I’m also doing another article for a forthcoming Ben Bella anthology.

The most astounding thing about feminists is not how they believe the personal is political, it’s how they regard the aggregate as personal:

I would add to Raza’s excellent observation that Materazzi employed the art of the practiced oppressive taunter, which is to create a aura of plausible deniability around himself while provoking his victim to react in a public way that’s sure to bring the criticism on the victim. I’m white and haven’t been on the receiving end of much racist taunting but I’ve been the victim of tons of sexual harassment in my time and 95% of it happens in just this fashion—the assailant creates a sense of privacy in some fashion, either by getting chummy or taking advantage of a situation where there’s either no witnesses or it’s so crowded that your reaction will disturb the peace, and then he drops the taunt, gropes or at worst rapes his victim.

From the Mondiale to rape in two sentences, while slipping in personal victimhood almost effortlessly along the way. Che forza! You have to hand it to her, she is the Ferrari of feminism. The most amusing thing is the way in which Amanda conveys her envy of those who have been the target of more racist taunting than her, (so sadly handicapped by her unfortunate Caucasian ancestry, oh, to be black!) and how she is quick to establish her cherished victimhood despite that sad dearth of desirable experience.

I am thinking of designing a game wherein women draw a card which contains a random subject. It’s like the Kevin Bacon game, except the object is to connect the subject drawn to oppression, or personal victimization (2x points) or rape (3x points) with the minimum number of links. Bonus points for relevant quotes from Friedan, MacKinnnon, Steinhem or Dworkin or tying it in with a “near-rape experience”.

It will be right up there with my classic design for Strippers: the card game. Oh, so Lexus got breast implants? Well, now she’s got a coke habit too, how do you like that, my friend?

I also found it interesting how she believes physical violence is a more effective response to groping than verbal confrontation. Does that mean that men whose butts and pecs get patted by strange women, or whose biceps and triceps are groped with both hands are now approved to punch women in response? I daresay the average male weightlifter has been groped by women he doesn’t know more often than the average feminist has been groped by men.

China’s Lui Xiang has smashed the men’s 110 metres hurdles world record by clocking 12.88 seconds at the Athletissima meeting in Lausanne on Tuesday night…. Liu, the Olympic champion, jointly held the previous world 100m hurdles world best with Britain’s Colin Jackson, who ran 12.91 seconds in 1993.

Now, what was that about Spacebunny and how everyone on the Internet was laughing at her crazy comments about speedy Asians? That’s the benefit of actually paying attention to the IAAF instead of making ignorant assumptions based on the fact that some random black kid ran faster than you in eighth grade.

And by the way, I still haven’t received that thousand dollars for proving that Asians can run 10 flat.

These ads are pretty funny. I’m not a Windows fan, but I loathe the iLosers that believe Macintosh is some sort of techno religion that mystically conveys coolness on them anyhow. As Neal Stephenson once pointed out, the irony of a bunch of deluded, lock-stepping self-proclaimed freethinkers patting themselves on the back and buying into the image of technological freedom while passionately subscribing to a closed hardware system is deep indeed.

And for all of you Mac freaks, I had the original Macintosh, so by your own lights, I’m cooler than you anyhow.

One explanation for Zizou’s violent response:

As L’Equipe summed up the moment of madness with a headline of “Regrets Éternels”, a day of endless questioning began. With many conflicting versions of events circling on the internet and in the world’s media, The Times enlisted the help of an expert lip reader, Jessica Rees, to determine the precise nature of the dialogue that caused Zidane to react in such a manner.

After an exhaustive study of the match video, and with the help of an Italian translator, Rees claimed that Materazzi called Zidane “the son of a terrorist whore” before adding “so just f*** off” for good measure, supporting the natural assumption that the Frenchman must have been grievously insulted.

I don’t think simply quoting the old “sticks and stones” canard will serve terribly well when you’re dealing with a culture that encompasses honor killing. I’m not saying that Zidane subscribes to honor killing, only that it is unreasonable to expect him to ignore such an insult to a woman of his family in the same manner that a properly educated American individual of the male gender who doesn’t even recognize the concept of family, let alone honor, would disregard it.

I have no doubt that Materazzi purposefully tried to set off Zidane – who besides being a great artisan of the sport, also happens to be a notorious hothead as all of his former teammates at Juventus well knew – as Materazzi’s ludicrous insistence that he doesn’t know what the word “terrorist” means is a dead giveaway of his own culpability. Zidane deserved the red, as no doubt even he agrees, but if Materazzi is proven to have attempted to incite him in this way*, his despicable practice of furbo on FIFA’s greatest stage should be punished harshly with a one-year ban from international football for the good of the game.

Anything less is simply asking for trouble in a sport that features teams from many Islamic cultures. It’s well and good to say that players shouldn’t react to provocation, but I see no reason why such intentional provocation should be permitted in the first place.

*I suspect there is a good chance that the lip reader is probably correct. Zidane played in Italy for six years and speaks Italian, and “figlio della puttana terrorista” is not only short enough to have been said during the brief exchange, but would not be particularly difficult to discern on the video. It is also similar to the “dirty terrorist” reports that first surfaced after the game. Keep in mind that the word translated as “dirty” is actually “sporco”, which is much more offensive when used as an adjectival insult in Italian than it is in English. A less literal, more accurate translation of the reported phrase would be “motherfucking terrorist”.

UPDATE: The Corriere della Sera has it differently:

Quello che è accaduto al terzo minuto del secondo tempo supplementare non è però un mistero. Almeno secondo i brasiliani di Tv Globo. Loro hanno scoperto in fretta la verità consultando alcuni esperti che hanno letto il labiale del difensore italiano. «Prostituta» per due volte, avrebbe detto Materazzi a Zidane riferendosi a Lila, la sorella del giocatore. Non contenti, i brasiliani hanno aggiunto che Materazzi avrebbe insultato Zidane con «alcuni epiteti non riferibili». Il difensore avrebbe confermato la versione dell’insulto alla sorella del campione francese a qualche suo compagno. «Qualunque cosa Marco abbia detto a Zidane è meno grave della reazione del francese», fa sapere il capitano Fabio Cannavaro.

Translation: “That which happened in the third minute of the second half of extra time, however, is not a mystery. At least not according to the Brazilian TV Globo. They quickly discovered the truth after consulting with some experts who read the lips of the Italian defender. Materazzi said “prostitute” twice to Zidane, referring to Lila, the sister of the player. Unhappily, the Brazilians added that Materazzi then insulted Zidane with “other unprintable words”. [Most likely “va fanculo”, or “fuck off” if the English got that right – VD.] The defender has confirmed that version of the insult to the sister of the French champion to one of his friends. ‘Whatever Marco said to Zidane is less serious than the reaction of the Frenchman’, said [Italy] captain Fabio Cannavaro.”

I still suspect the English have the correct version, as Materazzi’s silly-sounding comment is fairly typical of an Italian confirmation by denial. But regardless, we’ll find out from Zidane himself soon enough.

It’s not often that I agree with Jill at Feministe, but I certainly can’t take issue with anything she says here:

Releasing the private personal information of someone you have an online disagreement with is wrong. Threatening someone’s children because you don’t like their politics is wrong. “They started it” isn’t an excuse. Knock it off….

The left should act like it has a spine — but having a spine doesn’t mean not having a soul. And emulating right-wing blow-hards doesn’t exactly give us credibility or the moral high ground. Threatening and making sexual comments about peoples’ kids and families doesn’t give us the moral high ground. Similarly, attacking someone’s sexual orientation or physical appearance doesn’t give you the moral high ground. Stick to the issues at hand.

That sounds reasonable enough to me. And I am quite happy to criticize any on the right who would engage in such tactics as well, although I think my encounters with Mr. Medved, Mr. Shapiro and Ms Malkin probably serve to demonstrate that I’m not exactly disinclined to look the other way where the sins of the right – or at least, the nominal right – are concerned.

Dennis Prager wonders where the African-Americans went:

I was recently shown a videotape of people reacting to radio talk shows. Organized by a firm that specializes in analyzing radio talk shows, the members of the listening panel were carefully chosen to represent all major listening groups within American society. But I quickly noticed something odd – I saw no blacks among the selected listeners. I asked why. And the response was stunning.

Blacks had always been included, I was told, but no more. Not because the firm was not interested in black listeners – on the contrary, blacks are an important part of the radio audience. They were not invited to give their opinion about various radio shows because in its previous experience, the company had discovered that almost no whites would publicly differ with the opinions of the blacks on the panel. Therefore, once a black listener spoke, whites stopped saying what they really thought, if what they thought differed from what a black had said….

So I posed this question to my radio audience, and, sure enough, whites from around the country called in to say that they are afraid to differ with blacks lest they be labeled racist.

I don’t think this is a conservative or liberal thing any longer, I think it’s become a cultural problem. In fact, I saw the phenomenon at work during a soccer tournament not too long ago. When the black girlfriend of one of my black teammates ludicrously began shouting that our team had been disqualified due to the racism of the tournament directors and the other teams, a few people went so far as to shake their heads but no one dared to say otherwise in front of her.

And this was despite the fact that her cluelessness was apparent to everyone. The problem wasn’t that we had three times more Africans than all the other teams combined, it was that my blond Dutch friend rightly admitted that he wasn’t properly eligible when asked about it by another team’s captain. (We weren’t trying to bring in ringers, we simply didn’t have enough players to field a team without drafting a few friends.) The tournament director and I worked out a compromise where we would compete and play all our games, but voluntarily give up our place in the championship game should we qualify for it. It was a good compromise; the other teams were satisfied while we went undefeated and finished by beating the eventual tournament winner in a very hard-fought game.

This was, of course, unacceptable racism of the highest order to the black girl. She was convinced that no one wanted to see a team with six blacks win the trophy and that was all that she needed to know. At the time, I found it difficult to understand how anyone could be that blitheringly stupid in the face of conclusive evidence, but in light of Prager’s column today, it is pretty obvious. That girl, like so many blacks in America, had been intellectually stunted by an absence of criticism. (Needless to say, I provided her with an abundance of that with which she had hitherto been unacquainted.)

As much as you might mislike hearing others tell you that you are wrong, you should keep in mind that it is actually a vital service they are providing you. If one never hears criticism, or if one refuses to listen to it, one will never develop the ability to refine one’s thinking. Over time, this means one’s thinking will be left to decay in the juvenile morass of one’s early intellectual development. Think on that and shudder!

Sheer cognitive incapacity is largely hereditary, but willful stupidity and reliable buffoonery requires development. The less that an individual, or taken in the collective, a group, allows itself to be criticized, the more surely it guarantees its descent into buffonery and cognitive dysfunctionality. This is precisely why so many black leaders remain popular and powerful despite repeatedly demonstrating that they are intellectual clowns.

When our elegant, but surprisingly dirty Ghanaian midfielder commits a violent foul at the edge of the penalty area, I don’t refrain from chewing him out because he’s – horrors, black! – I tell him not to be such a freaking moron and not to do it again, at the very least not there. Modern white society, on the other hand, would look the other way and pretend not to see it, say nothing, then quietly sit him on the bench where he can’t do any harm at the first opportunity. But how, I wonder, does that do anyone, black or white, any good whatsoever?