feminist blogs

Alright, while I'm trying to liven shit up below with a really unnecessary infight amongst leftists, I can't resist taking a potshot at Dennis Prager again today. After writing a series of definitive columns on what the exact moral beliefs of all Americans (from here on known as the "Judeo-Christians") are, and a couple of definitive columns on how to have a happy marriage that he published directly before ending his own no doubt deliriously happy marriage, Prager is taking on his biggest task yet.

Explaining Jews, part one: What is a Jew?

Apparently, Prager has correctly assessed that his target audience may need a lot of help in this department. Some topics he plans to address:

Do Jews control Hollywood?

Why do Jews shun "Jews for Jesus"?

Sadly, he doesn't ask the question that's really burning on the mind of your average Townhall reader. Possibly because Prager could deny that Jews have horns and tails in one swift sentence, which is no fun for a blowhard like him.

Most of us, I'm sure, perceived Dennis Prager's recent two-part series telling us how to make a good marriage to be his run-of-the-mill bloviating, your standard bullshit written in a such a way that it's clear he hopes that you'll mistake his authoritative tones for actual words of wisdom. Well, we were wrong. It was actually a thinly disguised lament for the end of his current marriage. (Via Tbogg.)

I was totally going to gloat about this, quote the lyrics to "Schadenfreude" or something, and then my conscience got the better of me. I mean, I'm going to bask in the glow of schadenfreude, make no mistake, but I'm going to keep the tone down a little, but only because I'm sure that Prager wasn't actively trying to fuck up his marriage. So I can't actually say he's an out and out hypocrite.

But damn, that two-parter was straight up gasbaggery, which makes me wonder about 8 million parter about "Judeo-Christian" values--does that mean we're fixing to hear that Dennis Prager is actually an atheist and he thought he'd pop that one off before the entire transistion was complete?

Ugh, sorry about the lack of posting. Apparently, manipulating speaker wire with part of your left hand in a splint is a lot more time consuming than you might think. Anyway, a reader sent me this essay by a conservative writer on the "values" of King Kong, "values" being a code word meaning "my sexual fantasy that I assume all men share". It's about how if women could just unlearn how to act competent and strong and instead shake in fear like Chihuahuas, we too can when a monster movie monster of our very own to love.

Naomi Watts is perfect in the Fay Wray-role. As Ann Darrow, she projects a waif-like vulnerability and innocence, combined with gritty determination and a sweet empathy with the 50-foot title character.

When we’re introduced to her in Depression-era New York, she’s an aspiring actress who has just lost her gig as an acrobatic dancer in a vaudeville show.

Hungry and discouraged, she turns down a chance to perform semi-nude in what used to be called a girlie show.

Ah yes, back in the old days when even sexual displays for money were more innocent because they had a different name for them. Sure, they were still women getting naked for crowds of drunk men and often prostituting themselves after the show, but there was different slang for them then, which makes them more innocent. Because change always spoils.

This perception is reinforced in Watts’ meeting with the director who wants to cast her in the lead of his “jungle movie.”

“Can you fit into a size-6 dress?” director Carl Denham (played by the hammy Jack Black) asks Watts, who assumes he’s interested in a more personal relationship, gets up to leave. In reality, the director wants to know if she can wear the clothes of the actress formerly cast in her part.

Early on, we sense a purity and principle in Watts’ Darrow. Therein lies her charm and her appeal for males of all species.

Males of all species can only be aroused by women who radiate pure virginity. It helps if they look like they'd break in half if you hugged them, much less did anything more strenous. We know this is true because "girlie shows" where women flaunt their bodies get no male audience at all, since those men are all out seeking out someone virginal and breakable to do god only knows what with. Stare at her, I guess.

Like courage, Hollywood seems capable of portraying feminine virtue only at a safe distance--at least a half-century in the past.

That or conservative writers who follow the principle that you can tell how good something is by how far in the past it is can't imagine that anyone in modern times would show something like virtue. How could they? They have modern clothes, which automatically disqualifies you from the gates of heaven.

Feminism supposedly having liberated us from gender stereotypes, today’s heroines are emotionally androgynous. They compete with men, pursue them sexually--essentially, they are men (and not the better sort) with breasts and vaginas.

Men with penises are the better sort, I guess, but you already knew that. But I love the notion that in the past in order to be androgynous, compete with men, and pursue men sexually, you had to have a penis. Good god, if men were so busy pursuing each other, how did our species reproduce itself? Don here should be grateful women have decided to pursue men--with men only pursuing each other, there would be a serious chance that our species would die out altogether.

By being what she is, Darrow sends out subtle signals to the males around her: here is a lady who must be respected and protected. By exhibiting feminine virtue, she elicits masculine virtue--even in the scruffy crew of a tramp steamer.

When Darrow is kidnapped by Skull Island’s bestial natives--who behave like congressional leftists pushing a spending bill--the men on the ship (including the screenwriter who falls in love at first sight of her) mount a rescue mission.

Even the ship’s seemingly callous captain (who threatens to strand the rescue party when their time-limit expires) in the end breaks out the Tommy guns to save “Miss Darrow.”

Members of the film’s and ship’s crews die battling the island’s fauna, but her survival--as the woman who must, at all costs, be protected--outweighs their own.

Wow, those guys sound great. If female vulnerability elicits this sort of reaction all the time, I wonder why this group of feisty rescuers doesn't appear in the real world when women are suffering beatings at the hands of abusive partners or getting raped. A shitload of sailors who adore you is just the sort of thing a woman needs when getting punched or thrown around or even raped by a man who feels entitled to control her. Would it help the rest of us who aren't movie characters get this rescue treatment if we just wore 30s-style fashions?

Kong reacts the same way.

At first, Darrow is just a pretty toy. The hirsute brute demands that she constantly entertain him. Gradually, a bond forms between them. It’s not just that the diminutive creature (so fragile in his world) fascinates him. She manages to touch his soul.

So, in other words, keep putting on a show, ladies, and any day now all your exertions will result in being pampered and spoiled. Any day now. Shortly after the hoardes of sailors show up to rescue you.

Back in New York City, the captive Kong is on display as the “Eighth Wonder of the World.” The smitten beast breaks his bonds, examines and discards the blonde playing Darrow in the show to which Black has subjected him. He will accept no substitute for authentic femininity.

God only knows why this woman isn't authentically female. Probably because she accepts a paycheck for work instead of busting her ass for intangible rewards that never come. The lesson is clear, ladies. If you give into the temptation to make your own money, next thing you know, you won't be hauled off by the first monster that looks at you sideways. I know. I can hear your hearts breaking.

Kong rampages through downtown Manhattan searching for the real thing. When he finds Darrow, he carries the not-unwilling actress (who cried when he was captured) to the top of the world’s tallest building. Together, they stare in awe as the sun rises over a jungle of concrete.

You know the rest.

Let me guess: They then retreat to her apartment and discover that because his cock is bigger than her entire body, there's no consumating their strange love. Biology forces her to retain her "purity", but for some reason, they're frustrated and annoyed. But don't let that turn you off on the erotic appeal of "purity".

In a way, all men are King Kongs: powerful, brooding, potentially destructive creatures waiting for a woman to touch their hearts and tame them.

All men? What about the endless stream of cultural warriors I read, who strike me as self-righteous, domineering assholes who want everyone to obey them unquestioningly. Are they not men? I'm confused--aggressive women are men, but male bullies aren't men? And we're supposed to figure out how to ban same sex marriage in this enviroment?

And all women are Ann Darrow, simultaneously fragile and compelling, possessor of the magic to transform primitive males (monsters-in-waiting) into protectors and the builders of families and civilizations.

I'll admit, I haven't seen King Kong, but I'm going to go out on a limb here and guess that the monster doesn't actually turn into Ward Cleaver at the end. If he did, well, that certainly would be an ending I didn't anticipate.

But, the movie seems to say, modernity can be the undoing of both. It seeks not to civilize but to shackle male instincts. It turns love into a sideshow attraction. It pulls men and women apart.

A whole lotta bullshit to cover up the same old conservative male complaint--if women aren't forced by society into subservience to men, how will men even get women to tolerate them? For some reason, being pleasant and desireable never occurs to them as a solution to this condundrum.

Is it wrong that I'm jealous of World Net Daily for coining this term? Of course, the downside of the term is it's just one more step towards the WND/V*x D*y attempt to redefine rape as bad only because Teh Sex is Satan's work.

U.S. teacher sexpidemic spreading across planet Long list of American rapists joined by female Australians

As you probably guessed, this is in reference to the recent media interest in teachers who sleep with male students. World Net Daily falls on the correct side of the fence this issue, which is that teachers sleeping with students is wrong, but I'm afraid that their reasons might be just a tad off as to why this is wrong. They provide a long, long list of cases from around the world, and for some reason the only time they seem to think it's noteworthy that a teacher has sex with a student is if the teacher is female, leaving one with the strong impression that they think that the major crime committed is women taking an interest in sex.

Between that and V*x D*y's assertion that rape is mostly wrong because it's extra-marital sex, one has to wonder what other moral positions the folks at WND take for the wrong reasons. Suggestions for future articles:

Murder is wrong, because getting bloodstains in the carpet is wrong.

The war in Iraq is wrong, because having men and women in the same military units is wrong.

Prison rape is wrong, but only because some wingnuts find sodomy to be so icky.

Lying is wrong, because they can't come right out and impeach a President for adultery. (Oops, that one actually happened.)

Denying a woman her birth control pills is wrong, because you should be allowed to call the cops on her fornicating ass.

Think of your own in comments!

Townhall is a mind-boggling doozy of weirdness and horseshit today, so I'm swiping the "shorter" thing, because really, I can't decide who to mock.

Shorter Mike Adams. Because students are distributing pornography, we have to battle them by putting up a Christmas trees, though we won't forget to condescend a little to the unbelievers Jewish students on campus.

Shorter Star Parker. Screw it--today I'm just going to tell young black men to do what rich white people tell them to do.

Shorter Jeff Jacoby. I'm advising the Democrats to give up on defending women's rights because I, as a writer for a Republican propaganda outfit, have nothing but the Democrats' best interests in mind.

Shorter John Leo. When we said that the church should intefere with people's private sex lives, you should know we only mean women's sex lives, which are not private because, duh, they're women.

Shorter Jennifer Roback Morse. I figure a good marketing strategy is to vaguely threaten professors to use my shitty book in their classes out of their nonexistent fear I'll accuse them of conspiring against conservatives.

Reader Anne sent me the marvelously bull-headed rant from Jared Wilson, who is absolutely sure that his homophobia is so universally shared that I get the impression that he thinks even gay guys think gay sex is gross. He's predicting that Brokeback Mountain is going to bomb in theaters, not because it looks like it's kind of a slow-moving drama that drives shallow people who don't want to think when they go to the movies (people like me), but because gays are Teh Icky.

For all of our modern cultural "enlightenment," and despite the pervasiveness of gay characters and stories all over American media, and regardless of the success of shows like "Will & Grace" and "Queer Eye," by and large Americans -- blue state, red state, Christian and non -- innately find homosexuality repulsive.

Not that there's anything wrong with that.

I love naked bigotry, since it's just so much easier to deal with than cloaked bigotry. I find the idea of Republicans fucking inherently disgusting, but you don't see me agitating to ban Republicans from marriage, though I could easily demonstrate that there's a very public good to be had from that, which you can't really demonstrate with bans on gay marriage.

It's part of our makeup. It's biological, it's conscience-born, it's part of the imago dei. It's part of a "moral aesthetic" most everyone bears latent.

Which doesn't do much to explain the enthusiasm for lesbian sex scenes in porn aimed at straight men, the majority of whom in this country who vote "red". What's nice about this guy is he doesn't even try to remember that lesbians exist.

To be blunt, we know anal sex is gross, and we especially know anal sex between men is repulsive. Even for most of those who have no basis for which to call it a sin find the act itself "gross."

Who you calling "we", motherfucker? What planet did they beam this guy down from? At this point in history, I'm guessing a lot more Americans rightfully think Big Macs are a hell of a lot grosser than anal sex, and you know how many Big Macs they sell.

It's there in all the jokes about prison or "dropping the soap" in a locker room. It's there in the undiminished shock of that infamous Deliverance scene or the one in Pulp Fiction, which continue to provoke nervous laughter and revulsion even while heterosexual rape scenes occur almost weekly on the countless crime shows on television.

Translation: Rape is A-OK so long as the victim's female.

It's even there in the homosexual community itself, which, in my (admittedly unprofessional) sociological opinion, compensates for the grotesquerie of male-male intercourse with the ubiquitous and stereotypical "thin, single, and neat"-ness.

Wait a minute! I'm thin, single and neat! And I'm compensating for something else entirely, which is my love of mud wrestling. So there.

Americans like to believe they are tolerant.

Indeed, to the point where you'd never hear anyone brag about something like being "politically incorrect". Or name a TV show that or something.

Even the convervatives in our country play liberal (or at least libertarian) on this issue, so as long as homosexuals play nice, we are fine with them.

Besides using their civil rights as a political football by creating moral panics and using them to solidify their power so they can start pointless wars to make money for their friends. But other than that, conservatives love gays. Actually, I'll bet they do. I'll bet George W. Bush gets on his knees every night and thanks god for gay men, because without the fear that two men might be doing it in your hometown right this very minute, he'd be cooling his heels in Crawford instead of looking for more ways to channel public funds to Halliburton.

And by "play nice," I mean "play funny." Like Homer Simpson, we like our homosexuals flaming. So they can joke about sex and they can swish their way from the silver screen to the TV screen, they can even pontificate about their rights and move us to tears with their experienced repression and persecution. We'll sympathize with them on "Oprah" and laugh at them on "Will & Grace" and appreciate their good fashion sense on "Queer Eye" and nod our heads with the "Seinfeld" gang that there's not anything wrong with that.

Nothing much to say here, except that he actually has a point. There's a long history in this country of using oppressed minorities as clowns in our entertainment, so long as they never do anything threatening and stay safely disempowered and desexualized on screen. Gay men aren't the only ones treated this way, as any cursory glance over the long history of racist stereotypes that pass for "comedy" in entertainment will demonstrate.

Though this whole thing makes me wonder if this was the 50s, if he'd be ranting about how "Amos and Andy" is part of an insidious plot to dismantle his cherished racist beliefs.

But almost none of us want to see them doing the thing that really distinguishes them.

Anal sex makes you a gay man! Who knew? I guess Kurt Cobain was right when he said everyone is gay. This is exciting news indeed. For one thing, gay men are probably a majority now, or close to it. This should change to political landscape significantly, I'd think. For one thing, it's going to be hard to drum up a moral panic about gay men having sex when such a huge percentage of us are now gay men.

While waiting for another movie to begin a few weeks ago, the trailer for Brokeback Mountain played. At the moment Jake Gyllenhaal, on the verge of tears and bursting with frustration, cried to Heath Ledger, "Why can't I quit you?", there was a palpable explosion of tension in the theater. It got dead quiet (which used to be customary in movie theaters). When subsequent scenes showed the two men embracing as lovers, there were gasps, snickers, and tsks-tsks.

Yeah, I've been in theaters and witnessed audience reactions like that. The proper reaction to those reactions is to want to die of embarrassment that you're breathing the same air as these dipshits. I will point out, though, that by Jared's description of what makes someone "gay", there's no reason at all to think that anything gay happened on that screen. Embracing, exclamations of love--these aren't the magical thing that "distinguishes" gay men I thought. I don't see that any anal sex happened in that preview, therefore there was no gayness.

Brokeback Mountain may win awards, but it will not have an audience who is not attending either out of perverse curiosity or some sense of liberal duty. The young ladies who are fans of Gyllenhaal and Ledger do not want to see them making out.

Boy this asshole couldn't be more wrong. The reason I wasn't planning on seeing the movie is it sounds like there's a lot of tedious plot and characterization and not nearly enough of Gyllenhaal and Ledger making out. Now if they put out a movie that was basically an hour of that, I'd probably go so far as to pay full price to see it.

The young men who are fans of these actors for other reasons will be naturally repulsed.

Well, maybe some will be. But more and more straight young men are wising up everyday to the side benefits of taking your girlfriend to a movie that has hot young actors naked and panting. (I'm probably hoping for way more than this movie is going to provide, aren't I?)

And the vast majority of all moviegoers will not sympathize in the least with two married men who must "live a lie" because their "true love" is forbidden.

Yeah, that's a plot that never goes over well with audiences. It especially is known to do poorly with teenage girls. When will Hollywood learn that people want movies about young Christian couples whose parents approve of their marriage having tepid sex for the first time on their wedding nights and then wondering what the fuss was all about before becoming bitter and writing blog posts about all the hot anal sex that everyone but you is getting to have?

America likes her gay cowboys standing on stage with others in costume, singing "YMCA." Beyond kitsch, beyond sentimentality, the reality is yucky.

Wow, that's so hateful it's hard to really make jokes about, but the one thing that's really killing me is the idea that only gay sex is coated over with a thick layer of sentimentality to distract from the awkward physical reality of it. Now I don't got to the movies as much as I used to, but if I recall, most straight sex scenes in them have about as much bearing on reality as one of Bush's speeches on Iraq. Well, unless I'm crazy. Maybe everyone else does have the music swell and the sheet stay miraculously stay in in place to cover all the goodies while they move in slow motion with the lighting always perfectly glinting off their flawless skin. If so, please let me know your secret. Or not, because that actually sounds kind of boring.

Inspired by his inadvertantly revealing musings on the cut-off age for women being considered sexually desirable, a Cole Porter song I hope doesn't get ol' John too excited.

"My Heart Belongs to Daddy"

While tearing off a game of golf
I may make a play for the caddy
But when I do, I don't follow through
Cause my heart belongs to Daddy

If I invite a boy some night
To dine on my fine food and haddie
I just adore, his asking for more
But my heart belongs to Daddy

Yes, my heart belongs to Daddy
So I simply couldn't be bad
Yes, my heart belongs to Daddy
Da, Da, Da, Da, Da, Da, Da, Da, DAAAAD

So I want to warn you laddie
Though I know that you're perfectly swell
That my heart belongs to Daddy
Cause my Daddy, he treats it so well

Out of all the perverted noxious fumes coming off Derbyshire's revealing of his criminal desires, though, this might be my favorite--all you guys and gals who thought Jennifer Aniston's boobie shot on GQ's cover was hot are unnatural freaks, you know.

Did I buy, or browse, a copy of the November 17 GQ, in order to get a look at Jennifer Aniston's bristols?** No, I didn't. While I have no doubt that Ms. Aniston is a paragon of charm, wit, and intelligence, she is also 36 years old. Even with the strenuous body-hardening exercise routines now compulsory for movie stars, at age 36 the forces of nature have won out over the view-worthiness of the unsupported female bust.

It is, in fact, a sad truth about human life that beyond our salad days, very few of us are interesting to look at in the buff. Added to that sadness is the very unfair truth that a woman's salad days are shorter than a man's — really, in this precise context, only from about 15 to 20.

As the president of the Austin chapter of the Itty Bitty Titty Committee, Derbyshire’s admission that he finds breasts to be gross troubled me. We Ittians are proud of our flat-chested ways, but only in the interest of diversity, because certainly we don’t find larger breasts to be anything but lovely. In fact, many of us joined the group in hopes of actually overcoming a lifetime of messages that our itty selves were somehow inadequate.

But I do adore that Derbyshire is so confident in his assertion that his repulsion to breasts is something shared by all men. I don’t find it so adorable that I’m giving him the IBTC’s meeting address, of course. In fact, I find it adorable sort of the way that a used condom in the middle of the road is adorable—touching and yet gross at the same time. Touching in his Humbert Humbert-style assuredness that he has some access to True Beauty, though it's a little more comically touching when it's a fictional character making such myopic statements. Gross for the obvious reasons.

Kathleen Parker is bemused.

What a funny world. Where once it was scandalous to be unmarried and pregnant, now it is scandalous to disapprove of another's being unmarried and pregnant.

That is an amusing fact! Here's some others:

Where it was once scandalous to marry someone of another race, now it is scandalous to disapprove of interracial couples.

Where it was once scandalous for women to demand equal pay for equal work, now it is scandalous to automatically pay your female workers less than your male workers doing the same job just because they're women.

Where it was once scandalous for men to refuse to hand their new brides over to be raped by their lords by right of the first night, now that sort of passing women around like they are property is considered scandalous.

Think of your own forms of progress thta sound amusing yet somehow wrong in comments!

Anyway, she has a point.

The latest episode in these morally confused times occurred in New York recently when a Roman Catholic school fired a teacher because she is single and pregnant. The Roman Catholic Diocese of Brooklyn claims that teacher Michelle McCusker violated "the tenets of Catholic morality" and thus could not be employed by the school.

For her part, McCusker claims she was discriminated against and on Monday filed a wrongful dismissal complaint with the federal Equal Employment Opportunity Commission. McCusker, 26, a well-respected teacher, according to the school's own principal, said in a statement that she didn't "understand how a religion that prides itself on being forgiving and on valuing life" could fire her for deciding to have a baby.

Silly rabbit! Abortion is only wrong if you get caught. Flash your rosary next time and they'll let you in the back door at the abortion clinic for sure next time.

So what's the answer? Do schools have any say-so when it comes to how teachers comport themselves in their private lives? Do parents have a right to voice objections when a teacher's private behavior contradicts the moral values they're trying to teach at home?

The answer is obvious: The teacher should have told the students that premarital sex is wrong and simply gotten an abortion to cover up the evidence while telling the kids that abortion is also wrong. Also, lying and hypocrisy are wrong. As is double parking, even if you leave the keys in the ignition and are only running inside for a minute.

My immediate parental reaction to both questions is "but of course!" Then more reasoned thought reveals the murkiness of such issues. At the same time I don't want teachers advocating behaviors that are potentially harmful, my other reaction is: This is nobody's business. A person's sex life shouldn't be held up for public scrutiny and, as the discrimination suit points out, such policies unfairly target women.

*cough* Something didn't get by the editors.

Ultimately, these concerns will be determined by courts along legal rather than moral lines. But the moral questions beg open debate in a culture that increasingly denies the importance of marriage as a prerequisite to childbearing.

Well, as I mentioned earlier, the world started to go to hell in a handbasket when the culture started denying the importance of letting your lord have first crack at your bride before you got to try out your new property's sexual talents.

The problem of the single-and-pregnant teacher also has been tackled in a fictional treatment with the 1989 TV movie "Cast the First Stone." The movie's plot thickens the stew when a do-gooder teacher picks up a hitchhiker, who later rapes her at knifepoint and impregnates her. School officials assume "moral turpitude" and fire her.

The teacher, a victim who is also unaccountably stupid (when the hitchhiker fails to get another ride after she lets him out - in the rain just beyond her motel room - she invites him in), fights back and wins. Moral of the story: Judge not lest you be judged. Before I plod on, please forgive this brief interruption for a public service announcement on behalf of all teachers, especially women: Do no pick up hitchhikers. Do not let them in your motel room.

So I don't see the problem, as far as Parker is concerned. After all, if you have sex and get pregnant, it's your fault. Even if you were raped, since, as we all know, rape is the victim's fault. I personally don't see the problem with firing and shaming rape victims in order to teach young girls not to indulge themselves in the decadent, immoral practice of getting raped. In fact, it might help to have a coding system for women that get publically shamed to help the young girls learn their lessons well. I suggest scarlet letters--A for adulterers, F for fornicators, and R for rape victims.

In other observations, we note that if unwed maternity is going to be a criterion for teachers, we're going to have to start hiring more men.

The pleasant part of that is that while a good number of those men are just as responsible, they don't have to go through the difficult decision of getting an abortion to achieve denability, which is all that matters.

The larger moral issue, meanwhile, isn't that yet another young lady didn't get the marry-first memo, but that the culture-at-large has decided fathers aren't necessary.

Well, if fathers were suddenly necesary, then wouldn't they have to own up to knocking up women, thereby destroying the brilliant plan to replace single mothers who are fired from teaching jobs with men?

When we celebrate single motherhood, as we have since Murphy Brown made out-of-wedlock birth a glam option for busy women, we can hardly pucker in disapproval when the next generation doesn't know any better.

Actually, I found that my ass-puckering skills have improved considerably since I quit blaming single mothers for everything wrong in the world and found that a simple diet that's high in fiber and a regular exercise schedule relieved all worries about my puckering abilities, meaning I have more time for long baths that was previously taken up by giving a shit if some woman had sex in a way that I don't like for reasons I don't completely understand.

Look around at cultural signposts, from television to movies to magazines, and you see a consistent message that men are nonessential to woman's higher reproductive prerogative.

Most of the ones I know aren't too worried that "sexual outlet" and "companion" are somehow lesser roles than "sperm donor" and "source of much resentment", but then again, they might be getting their fiber, too.

I wouldn't worry so much that children might infer a premarital sexual liaison between teacher and boyfriend.

No, thanks to abstinence-only education, they think her belly bulge is a tumor. (Insert Ahnuld joke.)

Far more offensive and morally dangerous is the cultural patricide taking place in America today.

The teacher killed her father?! And they fired her over the pregnancy?! I'd say we have a problem with morals if this was in fact the case.

"Killing dad" may not be a crime, but it is surely a sin.

Holy shit, where I come from, killing anyone is a crime, much less your father. Parker, I see, lives in South Carolina, and maybe they do shit different there, but I think that we can all agree that if there needs to be a law specifying that murder of anyone is wrong, even if it's your father, then let's make that law. I'm sure it won't come up against any 2nd Amendment problems.

A friend sent me a link with this headline:

CNN Employee On Tape: Cheney "X" Is "Freedom of Speech" - "Tell Bush And Cheney To Stop Lying"

I'll admit, my first thought was, "Cheney is changing his name to "X" as a demonstration of freedom of speech? And here I was thinking he was going to his grave having done nothing worthwhile during his time on earth." Unfortunately, Dick Cheney has not suddenly become extremely cool. No, he just happened to be on TV when this big black X popped on CNN's screen, creating an image that was admittedly appealing.

And the right wing bloggers were off! Here it was, certain proof that the second most powerful person in the entire fucking world is the victim of oppression by the Librul Media. Not of course that you need any proof. After all, if the VP meets with anything less than ass-licking admiration, then we know for a fact that he's being oppressed and so are those out there who know that any media that's not administration-run propaganda is traitorous. Oppression, I tell you.

Luckily, some website no one's ever heard of was on it and has "proof" that it was a CNN attempt to undermine the VP. Buried in their news release is roughly eveyrthing you need to about the accuracy of their report.

CNN was caught off-guard at the company's headquarters in Atlanta by the recording. The statements that were made through their Headline News desk are not acceptable and there are calls on the Internet for investigation by the FCC, the FBI and the Trilateral Commission.

Some of the powerful paranoids called for investigations by the Illuminati, but others suggested that since the Illuminati and the Freemasons own CNN, they are most definitely behind this blasphemous attack on Christianity, which is currently residing in the person of the snarly Vice President. But how exactly is a quick, seemingly accidental flash of a black X over the VP's face really supposed to be an act of oppression against all that's pure and holy to Jesus, like Halliburton and bombing civilian targets?

Subliminal messaging, motherfuckers. That's how.

I guess this means that despite the technical message that appeared below the desk, the X itself was intentional. This violates laws against subliminal messages, and casts a grim shadow on CNN. This is a strange story, but if it proves to be true, CNN has some explaining to do.

Oh, the humanity! CNN has done a great disservice to our nation! By flashing an X on the screen that appears to be accidental, they have managed to infect the minds of the 10-15 people watching Cheney's speech on CNN that day. And now those people believe, totally against their wills no less, that Vice President Dick Cheney's face spontaneously erupts into a black X while speaking in front of think tanks geared towards hoodwinking the public into supporting conservative causes. Do you think it's likely that those people will vote for Cheney if he runs for President now? Yeah, I didn't think so. Not even if he promises to invade Syria next. Probably not even if he plans to invade France. Yes, clearly CNN has some explaining to do.

Unfortunately for the eager beaver tinfoil crowd, explain they did.

NEW YORK Nov 23, 2005 — CNN has apologized for a "technical malfunction" that briefly flashed a black "X" mark over the face of Vice President Dick Cheney during the network's coverage of a speech on Monday.

The "X" flashed twice, on the air for a total of one-seventh of a second, CNN said Wednesday....

The "X" is something used by a computer to mark a space where one visual element is to segue into another, and is normally not seen by a viewer. The network likened its appearance to a computer that inexplicably freezes.

Dear Chris Muir,

I used to think no one had more contempt for your audience's intelligence than me. I was wrong. Apparently no one has more contempt for your audience than you do.

I'm gonna bet that even Jonah Goldberg knows who Garry Trudeau is.

At what point do you admit to yourself that it's really pathetic to commandeer images that are reminiscient of the "liberals" you profess to dislike so strongly because you think you'll be able to obtain coolness by proxy? Jesus Christ, today's comic reminds me of the cartoon with the little yipping dog following the bigger one, "What's it gonna be today? Are we gonna beat up some cats? Huh? Are we?"