I don’t know if hazing is one of those things that’s always served as some absurd, sadistic faux rite of masculinity or if it’s become more prevalent in recent years. It’s not something I heard a lot about as a kid; I went to a tiny high-school that couldn’t field an eleven-man football team, though.
I kind of figured, though, that much of the right-wing believes hazing is an important part of being a man and that it’s a shame the communist lesbian feminazis want to take it all away. Sure enough, Rush Limbaugh:
Everything we do is geared for the female vote, the female fan, or the female customer, the female this. And something has to give in that circumstance. And you look at news, divisions of networks and newspapers. You look at college enrollment and graduation, all of these things dominated by women now, and women have their own culture.
[….] [T]here’s something — you know, masculinity ain’t hip. Masculinity isn’t cool. Metrosexual and that stuff is. Masculinity is brutish, it’s predatory, it’s all kinds of rotten, bad stuff, mean. The other kind of men aren’t. But in this story, I have never, ever in my life heard of players in a locker room being bullied. […..]This is unbelievable. Just now on CNN they had some typical left-wing sportswriter talking, “Oh, yeah, bullying in the NFL takes the form of a rookie tax.” And that’s a player being forced to spend 15 grand for the offensive linemen to go to Vegas, a rookie tax. So they’re politicizing this in a sense, at least in the way that they’re trying to convey what this is. But I’m telling you, folks, there’s still way too much that we don’t know about this to be able to arrive at an informed opinion on this. There’s still too much that we don’t know on this Dolphins thing. ‘Cause I don’t know how you bully a 320-pound, six five offensive tackle.
And this is shameless nutpicking, I know, but so good:
I’m so old that I remember a time when NFL players could actually hit/tackle without penalty or fine and when “bullying” was something encouraged in linemen.
This new feminized NFL should wear the pink “awareness” gloves and shoes all season. Why limit the girliness to just October?
You know who isn’t a feminized, self hating, quivering vajayjay mess of a culture? The Muslim world…and I’m concerned that they’ll be our rulers within two generations.
Baud
Real men don’t whine.
ronin122
Despite being on his own a huge (no pun intended) waste of space, oxygen, and other finite resources, I feel El Rushbo serves a great purpose, albeit unintentionally: anyone who admits to or is caught listening to him can be immediately dismissed as someone who hasn’t enough clue for his or her words to be relevant. Other goofballs like Glenn Beck try to serve that purpose but have more limited appeal and frankly teabaggers are easy to spot as it is. It’s the less-obvious-but-more-dangerous mainstream wingnuts you gotta watch out for.
Brian R.
Tell me more about masculinity, Guy Who Weaseled Out of Vietnam Due to a Cyst on His Fat Ass.
Tell me more about how women are oppressing us, Guy Who Got Busted Taking a Suitcase Full of B*ner Pills to a Noted Underage Sex Tourism Site.
Please, tell me more.
Villago Delenda Est
@Baud:
Which leaves Limbaugh in the lurch, for sure.
Because all the disgusting tub of goo does is whine.
NotMax
Super Bowl 2055:
Mecca Maulers, 72
Los Angeles Limpwrists, 2
Hawes
@Brian R.: I think this thread is pretty much won with that.
Which won’t stop me…
Hazing is about power relationships. Rookies, newcomers… they have to submit before the power of the veterans. Sometimes it’s mild and goofy: rookies have to wear stupid uniforms or carry the bags. But it can quickly turn cruel and demeaning.
And for what it’s worth, in our school, the worst hazing has been on the girl’s sports teams.
Amir Khalid
I’ve always heard that line as “In the days of my youth …” Rush Limbaugh knows perfectly well that physical power isn’t the only power that others can have over you, or even the most significant one. Anyone can have the power to bully you if they have the means to fuck up some aspect of your life, and some will use that power — even if only to remind themselves, and you, that they have it.
geg6
@Baud:
Yup, this. Which is why every wingnut I ever knew was, deep down, a coward. They have no idea what a real man acts like.
I’m so sick of these guys unknowingly flaunting their inadequacies in order to pump up their even more inadequate followers. The only good thing about them is that I know to immediately discount anything said by anyone who professes to be a fan. FOX News watching is the same signal to me.
And talking about wingnuts who are totally inadequate, McKay Coppins’ take down of The Donald is pretty epic. I recommend it:
http://www.buzzfeed.com/mckaycoppins/36-hours-on-the-fake-campaign-trail-with-donald-trump
bemused
So did Rush share how hazing made him a man?
Redshift
Okay, so Rush wants America to be more like Muslims?
Good to know…
MikeJ
I think you mean rite, not right in the first graf.
Chris
Bullying (I don’t differentiate between hazing and bullying) is one of those behaviors that’s always struck me, as you say, as “faux” masculinity (insofar as “masculine” is supposed to mean “ass-kicking badass who doesn’t take shit from anyone,” which is the image they like to cultivate, at any rate). You’re intentionally zeroing in on a weak and isolated person that you know you can pick on without the risk of them fighting back successfully, or having friends who can do it for them. And that makes you pretty much the opposite of a badass. You’re admitting that you have to scrape the absolute bottom of the barrel before finding someone you’re “man enough” to take on. In the vernacular of people who think like Rush Limbaugh, it should make you a “pussy.”
But that’s not how it’s usually seen – and when you grow up, the same behavior happens all over society. Politicians are showered with praise about how “brave” they are when they cut food stamps and unemployment insurance from people who already have nothing – not when they take on people with enough money to make or break their election campaign. Businessmen who fire a bunch of workers or throw them off the health insurance rolls are thought to be showing the courage necessary to make tough decisions – but oddly enough, none of them is expected to have the “courage” to make “tough decisions” that affect their OWN lifestyle, e.g. cutting their own paycheck in tough times. People who march into town hall rallies with automatic weapons threatening violence are considered to be boldly speaking truth to power, but people who protest unarmed in front of rows of SWAT teams despite long experience in exactly what those SWAT teams are prepared to do to them are just entitled and spoiled brats. And so on, and so forth.
The concept of “manliness” is like “patriotism” or “Christianity” – it may or may not have any value in and of itself, but regardless, it’s been used for so long to designate the people who so blatantly deserve it least, that even on its own terms it’s become absolutely meaningless in our society.
Chris
Repost, in moderation for having used bad word.
Bullying (I don’t differentiate between hazing and bullying) is one of those behaviors that’s always struck me, as you say, as “faux” masculinity (insofar as “masculine” is supposed to mean “ass-kicking badass who doesn’t take shit from anyone,” which is the image they like to cultivate, at any rate). You’re intentionally zeroing in on a weak and isolated person that you know you can pick on without the risk of them fighting back successfully, or having friends who can do it for them. And that makes you pretty much the opposite of a badass. You’re admitting that you have to scrape the absolute bottom of the barrel before finding someone you’re “man enough” to take on.
But that’s not how it’s usually seen – and when you grow up, the same behavior happens all over society. Politicians are showered with praise about how “brave” they are when they cut food stamps and unemployment insurance from people who already have nothing – not when they take on people with enough money to make or break their election campaign. Businessmen who fire a bunch of workers or throw them off the health insurance rolls are thought to be showing the courage necessary to make tough decisions – but oddly enough, none of them is expected to have the “courage” to make “tough decisions” that affect their OWN lifestyle, e.g. cutting their own paycheck in tough times. People who march into town hall rallies with automatic weapons threatening violence are considered to be boldly speaking truth to power, but people who protest unarmed in front of rows of SWAT teams despite long experience in exactly what those SWAT teams are prepared to do to them are just entitled and spoiled brats. And so on, and so forth.
The concept of “manliness” is like “patriotism” or “Christianity” – it may or may not have any value in and of itself, but regardless, it’s been used for so long to designate the people who so blatantly deserve it least, that even on its own terms it’s become absolutely meaningless in our society.
Amir Khalid
@geg6:
I knew it! I’ve always said, no self-respecting wigmaker would ever produce something that ugly.
scav
@MikeJ: Right, rite, probably works either way. Ah! for the glory days when real men could slap their wives and kids and other underlings around a bit to underline the god-given hierarchy in a in a fine masculine display of family values and economic free-agency, or something like that.
Suffern ACE
Yeah. No Fun League. If only someone would come up with a new league where all those rules were removed. I’m sure it would be popular. We can call it the Xtreme Football Leauge, or something like that
Baud
Hey, anyone remember when Monday Night Football thought Rush would be a good choice as a gametime broadcaster? Sometimes we forget how crazy the world used to be.
Suffern ACE
Also “hazing” is what we can do to immigrants so theyll be inculturated. Who was who took that tack a few years back? Wasn’t that chunky bobo?
Anton Sirius
A real man would enjoy a quivering vajayjay instead of fearing it.
Splitting Image
Off-topic, but I was just re-reading The Alchemist by Ben Jonson, which was written in 1610. Two of the characters are Puritans who are trying to get someone to make the Philosopher’s Stone for them so they can corner the market on gold.
They also want the alchemist to mint them some Dutch money, which they justify by hairsplitting the difference between coining money and casting it, and by the fact that the old counterfeiting laws used to apply only to English money, and they don’t recognize the recently-passed law which made it illegal to make counterfeit foreign money. Of course, they don’t recognize the temporal government anyway, since they are members of God’s Elect, have his seal on their forehead, and don’t need to answer to anyone who can’t see it.
The con artist pretending to be the alchemist tells them that he is happy to help them make the Philosopher’s Stone because, once they can make their own gold, they won’t have to badger old, uneducated people to hand over their savings, foreclose on properties a day after a payment is due, or denounce women for wearing clothes that are too mannish or too sexy.
Maybe this wasn’t so off-topic after all.
Anton Sirius
@Amir Khalid: When I saw American Hustle, I thought the opening scenes of Christian Bale making himself “presentable” were awfully similar to what Trump must do every morning.
ThresherK
@Baud: Everything we do is geared for the female vote, the female fan, or the female customer, the female this. And something has to give in that circumstance.
I guess he counted everyone calling for ABC to fire his bigoted ass off of MNF “the wimmenz”, too. Cos there’s no way any manlyman would have put up a fuss over what he did there.
slag
Yeah. We all know that real men want nothing to do with women.
Anton Sirius
@Baud:
I think Rush was just an in-studio commentator for Fox (for all of about 20 seconds until he said something stupid and got yanked) not actually part of a booth crew.
MNF did give Dennis Miller a mic, though.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@Baud: and before that David Brinkley brought him on ABC as a Very Serious Person
I guess we just went through it with Dumbya, but the most interesting thing about the Christie phenomenon is how much Village types are invested in an ideas of masculinity and ‘toughness’ that to my mind belong in a junior high cafeteria
Amir Khalid
@Anton Sirius:
If I’m not mistaken, Bale said he based his character’s hair on Manchester United legend Bobby Charlton.
Baud
@Anton Sirius:
Thanks. I might be conflating the two.
smith
When I was in high school, a very long time ago, hazing was very common and generally winked at by teachers, coaches, etc. Then a kid who joined the band was hazed (given what they called a “pink belly” and suffered internal bleeding as a result) and died. One of the guys responsible was in my English class. He and a couple other kids were charged with manslaughter, but the charges were later dropped. The thing is, he was not at all the type you’d peg for a bully — quiet, unassuming, rather geeky. Apparently he was just going along with the accepted custom of the time and place.
My lifelong question about this and other bullying incidents involving kids is, where were/are the responsible adults? Too many adults then and apparently now look on hazing and bullying as normal rites of passage, and encourage the perpetuation of nasty power games that leave kids scarred, whether they are assigned the role of the victim or that of the bully. Reading commentary like Limbaugh’s, I wonder if we aren’t frequently looking at bullying of a second degree, with psychologically crippled adults going on power trips with the kids as surrogate actors.
Baud
I for one welcome our new Pajama Boy overlords.
Citizen_X
Hazing’s not masculine, it’s sadistic and creepy.
Jeez, Rush, why not just say, “Remember what a pathetic clusterfuck I was as an NFL commentator? Because you really ought to think about that right now.”
Temporarily Max McGee (soon enough to be Andy K again)
@Baud:
It was ESPN’s pregame show, “Sunday NFL Countdown”.
Comrade Luke
Isn’t this pretty much how we feel about the south/Real America?
? Martin
Yeah, in the good old days you could lynch a black man for looking at your wife and nobody would pay you no mind. You could whip your kid for peeing the bed. You could have your way with the teenage girl down the lane.
Hazing is just another form of establishing dominance. White male privilege is taking far too long to die, but thankfully it’s dying.
kwAwk
This is so stupid. How do you bully a 320 pound six feet five offensive tackle? Starting with three other six feet five inch 320 offensive lineman is a good start.
Jay S
I believe you meant nut picking. The quote is from a commenter, not the post author.
Anton Sirius
@Temporarily Max McGee (soon enough to be Andy K again): That was it!
I was trying to remember which former players were sitting there looking shocked when he all but called Donovan McNabb an affirmative action hire and couldn’t.
Redhand
What’s really striking about these el Rushbo quotes is the relentless misogyny. The old fuck is just terrified that women are “dominating” society, upsetting “the natural order of things” so to speak. Not surprising from the Sandra Fluke “slut” ranter, but still telling evidence to me how deep his pathology runs.
Botsplainer
The best part is that Limpball’s audience is the demographic most apt to be in your movie theater while strapped…or maybe in line behind you at Starbucks, packing heat and irritated at your lack of deciding….or maybe is the guy angrily visiting his divorce lawyer, trigger finger itching.
Villago Delenda Est
@Anton Sirius:
A real man knows how to get a vajayjay to quiver.
It takes a lot of denial of his own immediate gratification, but it’s well worth it in the long run.
? Martin
@kwAwk: It’s even easier than that. If the target of the bullying has a different set of priorities (for example, keeping their career in the NFL) than the bullies (who may not be worried about that) then you have a power differential that doesn’t require physical size or numbers to dominate. That’s why people out of power are so easy to bully – they’re already disadvantaged in society. Women are less likely to be believed regarding an assault. Minorities less likely to be believed that they are the victim of a crime rather than the perpetrators of it. Kids less likely to be believed are victims of an adult.
Rush could never understand. He’s a drug addict that benefitted from his privilege in a way that a black person never could have.
Temporarily Max McGee (soon enough to be Andy K again)
@Anton Sirius:
The former players were Tom Jackson, Steve Young and Michael “Asshole” Irvin.
Diana
this is an ancient problem with American football, and, for that matter, with American culture. I believe the “flying wedge” formation was banned because it resulted in too many broken bones on the football field:
http://library.la84.org/SportsLibrary/JSH/JSH1993/JSH2001/jsh2001f.pdf
notice the same obsession with a “masculine” sport in a feminizing culture … and women didn’t even have the vote yet.
WaterGirl
@Jay S: I grew up with the word “nitpicking”, so maybe it’s a regional thing? On the other hand, I just looked up nitpicking in an on-line dictionary:
“nutpicking” came up with no results found.
Citizen_X
Because when anyone says “paragons of masculinity,” the most common response is, “You mean like Rush Limbaugh?”
Temporarily Max McGee (soon enough to be Andy K again)
@Diana:
I don’t even have to read it- the Flying Wedge led to deaths, not just broken bones.
Matt
FFS, can somebody just get all the pig bottoms on the right the dommes they so desperately need? They’re getting pathetic with their “pining to be brutally ruled” nonsense.
kdaug
Rush Limbaugh, paragon of masculinity.
DougJ
@Amir Khalid:
Yeah, I fixed it.
DougJ
@MikeJ:
Thanks.
Steeplejack
@WaterGirl:
Nutpicking is blogspeak for “the practice of sifting through the comments of blogs, email threads, discussion groups and other user-generated content in an attempt find choice quotes proving that the advocates for or against a particular political opinion are unreasonable, uninformed extremists.” (Urban Dictionary)
DougJ
@Jay S:
Thanks.
catclub
@WaterGirl: ““nutpicking” came up with no results found. ”
Nonetheless, it is finding especially crazy posts in the comments of the opponents blogs and news websites.
Not the same as nitpicking.
Jay S
@WaterGirl: Nut picking is a term developed for grabbing a stray comment in a post and using it as if it was representative of the poster or blog. Nitpicking is a whole other activity, derived from picking lice eggs out of hair. ETA Maybe not so different after all.
Arclite
@NotMax:
There’s no way the Limpwrists would have 2 points. That’s a safety. It’s too masculine for a team like that. It *might* be 72 to 3, as they might kick a field goal, since manly men always go for it on fourth down.
dmsilev
@WaterGirl: ‘Nutpicking’ is the act of going through the comments section of a blog, or whatever, and selecting a few to quote based on how bat-shit insane they are. Not sure who coined the term.
Steeplejack
@Steeplejack:
I did a little more Googling, and this may be Ground Zero (Kevin Drum, 2006):
WaterGirl
@Steeplejack: Obviously, they are not the same thing at all! I just assumed it was like the “standing in line” and “standing on line”, just depends on where you live.
Your definition of nut picking is the definition of “cherry picking” that I grew up with.
Edit: and now I see from further comments that nutpicking is not the same as cherry picking, either. Okay, then.
Steeplejack
@WaterGirl:
I would say nutpicking is a subset of cherry-picking. The former is always negative; the latter can be positive or negative.
trollhattan
Hard to imagine the jocks in Limbaugh’s high school (did he graduate?) didn’t pick on the pasty boy with the funny name. So now he’s their spokesman, that’s something I guess.
WaterGirl
@Steeplejack: If nutpicking is a subset of cherry picking, and always negative, then maybe it should be called “sour cherry picking”?
JGabriel
Rush Limbaugh:
Well, given that women still make less than 77% of men on average, that’s obviously untrue.
But even if it were true, why would that be a problem? Women make up more than half the population. Why does Rush Limbaugh hate democracy?
a hip hop artist from Idaho (fka Bella Q)
@WaterGirl: It’s actually a bit more narrowly defined than cherry picking, which – were I grew up – means sifting though data to find something, often taken out of context, to support your point. Nut picking is more specific – as Drum describes in the excerpt Steeplejack posted.
ETA: Or, what Steeplejack said.
NotMax
@Arclite
Could go into a riff based on benefiting from the dropping of a ball into an end zone, but shall refrain.
Steeplejack
@trollhattan:
For what it’s worth, Limbaugh was a football player in high school—allegedly! [Kathy Griffin voice]
Alex S.
Limbaugh: “Where are the cocks?”
JGabriel
Rush Limbaugh:
And yet conservatives still wonder why we call them the Christian Taliban.
lamh36
OT: But I just need to know, is the value of a young Black life so low in Florida. The jury deliberations in the trial of that white man who shot and killed the unarmed teen because of playing loud music is approaching 27hours!!!! I have a heavy heart about this and I feel an acquittal I hope I’m wrong, but I don’t expect to be…Damn SYG.
For comparision:
https://twitter.com/msnbcDisrupt/status/434770752890343425
Baud
@lamh36:
I hope you’re wrong too. I suppose if they were gung ho on complete acquittal, they wouldn’t need this long. But who knows?
WaterGirl
@a hip hop artist from Idaho (fka Bella Q): Yeah, I think I have it down now. Finally!
JGabriel
Comrade Luke:
Not exactly, the primary distinction being that women compose the majority of both the general population and the voting population.
The South does not.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
I seem to recall Rusty played baseball in HS. Rush Limbaugh III was the son and grandson of prominent local judges, and Daddy died when he was still (IIRC) a twice-divorced college drop-out journeyman radio guy, mostly broadcasting minor league baseball games around MO and KS. Two marriages and a couple of hundred million dollars later, there is still no Rusty IV. I imagine that gnaws at him even as the servants light scented candles fifteen minutes before the very macho regular guy master is due to arrive home to Miami mansion that looks like it was decorated by the set designer off the Golden Girls.
BGinCHI
I did not read this whole thread, so I might not be the first to point this out, but was Rush ever in a locker room?
Because if he was he would have seen hazing and bullying. It happens everywhere. It can be intense or petty, but it is a feature of the American male sports locker room. Period.
Maybe Rush didn’t play sports. By the looks of him I doubt it. Those of us who did know better.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
Hey, Chris Christie was an athlete! Just ask him.
Jibeaux
I had a college friend on the swim team. Their hazing rituals involved absurd things like swallowing a goldfish and having amorous relations with a pumpkin. I’m just a girl and don’t know from masculinity, but is there something particularly masculine or traditional about that, because to me, a girl, it seems stupid as shit.
Also, who is aroused by a pumpkin? I’m sure Rush has his boner pills on his person at all times, but I doubt most 19 year olds do.
Death Panel Truck
You didn’t fix it enough:
In the days of my youth, I was told what it means to be a man.
NotMax
@Jibeaux
Google makes it a snap. (NSFW)
Jay S
@lamh36: http://www.reuters.com/article/2014/02/15/us-usa-florida-shooting-dunn-idUSBREA1E0MR20140215
The jury may end up with a split verdict, reading the tea leaves from their questions to the judge. Based on his answers it would be hard for them to acquit on attempted murder for shooting at the car as they were leaving, but they might be hung on murder.
Jibeaux
@lamh36: that sounds like they have a holdout. My brother was on a jury for what he saw as an open and shut, very disturbing, case. Took many hours and resulted in a hung jury because they had a nullifier (who believed in no more black men going to prison, even for raping elderly black women.) retrial had a jury deliberating for 45 minutes.
fuzz
Mark Schlereth has written about this for espn and says it depends on the team. He played for the Gibbs Redskins teams and the Broncos in the 90s, two winning teams, and things this far over the line were not tolerated at all. Winning teams will often not produce this.
Also, on a personal level, I think this is true. I played high school football for a while. My freshman year I was at a school that was pretty good, took the whole ‘football program’ idea seriously and was well coached at both the head coach and assistant level. There were assholes but for the most part things were ok. Sophomore year, new school with a bad team. Completely different atmosphere. This was before ‘bullying’ was a thing but there was a level of hazing, abuse and insanity that in hindsight was pretty bad, and was encouraged from the top down. The coach was a yelling screaming lunatic who abused players, the seniors went after the young guys, the young guys went after each other, etc. We hardly ever won games and were barely competitive in most.
A team that not only tolerates a guy like Incognito or Pouncey but encourages them will usually be an awful one. At least based on my limited experience.
JPL
@lamh36: Someone in an earlier thread provided this link
The judge is answering a question.. not able to reach a verdict on the first charge
Baud
@Jibeaux:
IIRC, a couple of the Trayvon Martin jurors wanted to convict for murder, but they gave in rather quickly to the acquitters.
JGabriel
Jibeaux:
About 40% of men, according to the Smell and Treatement Center.
Men iz weird.
ruemara
@WaterGirl: I think time might be better spent cherry or nut picking, because at least at the end, you have cherries & nuts with no loss of faith in humanity.
JPL
The jury has to spend more time on the first charge but it appears that it will be a mistrial on count one. Of course, the prosecution could retry.
Jebediah, RBG
@Amir Khalid:
Somewhere there is a picture of that elaborate combover being blown in the wind. It looks as silly as you would expect.
Litlebritdiftrnt
@ronin122:
I listen to Limbaugh because if you don’t know what he is saying then you won’t know how to counter it. I was listening Friday and his current meme is that POTUS is a lawless dictator. This is what his millions of listeners hear and then they regurgitate it. They then call into the local radio show during drive time and repeat it to listeners who may never listen to Limbaugh. He also convinces his audience that they are the only informed people in the media. They are the “smart ones” (despite all studies to the contrary). His audience live in a bubble, immune to the truth, and yet they follow him. I consider it a duty to listen to his bullshit, because if you don’t, you have no way of combatting it.
Baud
@JGabriel:
I’m never eating out again.
Dudeman
Thanks for the Zeppelin quote in the title, Ive got it stuck in my head now… happily.
the opening lyrics in case anyone is interested says a lot too;
In the days of my youth, I was told what it means to be a man,
Now I’ve reached that age, I’ve tried to do all those things the best I can.
No matter how I try, I find my way into the same old jam.
NotMax
@Baud
Um, dining out?
Don’t stiff the waiter.
/30 lashes with a wet noodle
Tokyokie
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: My understanding is that at the University of Oklahoma, the hazing of the football players was pretty severe until the Selmon brothers came along. When Lee Roy and Dewey were freshmen, and the hazing was about to commence, older brother Lucious said, in effect, “If you’re going to do that to my little brothers, you’re gonna have to come through me,” and Lee Roy and Dewey stepped up and said, “If you’re going to do that to the other freshmen, you’re going to have to come through us.”
So who would you say has shown more character throughout their lives, that trio of brothers from a pig farm in Oklahoma, or the loudmouth spawn of the brahman caste of his hometown?
Liberty60
Greenwald isn’t the most popular guy around here, but he said it well, that none are more sadistic when they hold the whip handle, and none whine so piteously when it is taken away from them.
I was just at the bookstore, and some twit from Fox (hosts a show called Redeye, or something like that) wrote a book whining and sniveling about how whiny and sniveling our pussified culture is.
ETA- oh, and if you really want a sniveling whinefest, wish one of them “Happy Holidays”.
WaterGirl
@ruemara: ::chuckle::
how’s your trip to the city going?
Amir Khalid
@Jebediah, RBG:
Have we ever seen a photo of The Donald emerging from a helicopter? I am not thinking so.
Anoniminous
Since being a “manly man” requires being a sociopath I’ll stick to my limp wrist-ed “girly man” ways.
CASLondon
You know who’s in a good position to talk about manliness? Rush. Cause nothing is more manly than this overcompensating bag of opiates and bacon grease’s bedroom. Check it out.
That’s a MAN’s bedroom
From NPR’s story about Interior Design 101 With Rush Limbaugh
http://www.npr.org/blogs/waitwait/2010/03/interior_design_101_with_rush.html
shelly
How many times has Limbaugh been married? Oh, yeah, he has a real bead on male/female dynamics.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@geg6: Oy. That’s even hard to read. i can’t tell where the delusion stops and the fraud starts.
Not to ruin anyone’s appetite, but I’m trying to imagine what Trump looks like un-coifeed. I imagine a fatter version of Riff-Raff from Rocky Horror, with that hair going down to his waist.
catclub
@CASLondon: nothing says man’s room like gold leaf covered, fake candleabras.
In every room – especially the bathroom.
gian
my dad tells the story, now decades old about the “prop blast” hazing for people who had decided to jump out of airplanes for the US Army
it officially stopped when there was an alcohol poisoning death.
hazing, when it’s fairly small stupid stuff can be a psychological tool for cohesion, and all, but people seem compelled to push it past the levels where it can make some sort of sense. (and the unpaid interns buying donuts for the office is bull-fucking-shit)
I mean the new hire opens the door for everyone else, or parks in the furthest spot for a week or a month. But it should have no threat or use of violence and needs to be basically light hearted. I mean for the love of parents everywhere, a frat hazed a kid to death this week, and the FAMU hazing beating death…
heck, maybe I’m just an asshole and there should be no hazing. Back when sears didn’t totally suck, I worked in hardware and I got “hazed” by people who I worked with calling as fake customers and asking for fake tools – and I teased a co-worker (who used to work in a movie theater) by calling movie-phone and transferring the call to him.
I mean really, I’m so disappointed in the human race that it can’t figure out that jokes about gang-raping your sister aren’t the same as having you carry a bag.
At least JM didn’t try to cut in front of Michael Irvin for a haircut.
During a training-camp melee within the team’s facility at Midwestern State University in Wichita Falls, Texas, wide receiver Michael Irvin stabbed a teammate in the neck with a pair of scissors. The victim, an offensive lineman named Everett McIver, had refused Irvin’s demand to rise from the barber’s chair during a haircut. Following an exchange of shoves and punches, McIver found himself grasping his neck, blood shooting from a two-inch gash. “The whole scene was crazy,” said Cowboys cornerback Kevin Smith. “I couldn’t believe what I was seeing. I mean, we were on the same team.”
Having already been on probation for an incident involving a motel room, drugs and strippers, Irvin was all but guaranteed jail time after this episode. So instead of letting the legal system run its course, Jerry Jones and the Cowboys’ front office stepped in. McIver was paid handsomely to never report the stabbing, and when everyone involved later spoke of “horseplay” gone awry, McIver nodded and moved on with his life. (A word of wisdom for the kiddies: Don’t get into an argument when the other guy is holding scissors. It rarely ends well).
http://sports.espn.go.com/espn/page2/story?page=pearlman/081016
gnomedad
@Litlebritdiftrnt:
Your bravery is admirable (my ears would bleed in about a minute), but since
why put yourself through it?
Villago Delenda Est
@CASLondon:
Does the guy think he’s a fucking Bourbon or something?
Obviously, the French Solution is for the likes of Rushbo.
gnomedad
Rush was likely bullied, and his only response has been to want his turn.
Citizen Alan
@Hawes:
The worst hazing I ever had to put up with was when I joined my high school’s Math & Science Club. Nothing painful or overly humiliating. Just a week worth of stupid shit — wear a custom on Monday and sing a song during lunch, wear an onion around your neck on Tuesday and take a bite whenever an upperclassman told you to, etc. But I was always struck by the fact that the adviser (who was a female chemistry teacher) always seemed to take it more seriously than the students, to the point of being openly contemptuous of “pledges” who didn’t want to put up with it. It was enough to make me decide against pledging a frat in college because I was worried about putting myself at the mercy of people who had even less accountability than a public school teacher.
Omnes Omnibus
@lamh36: The jury is stuck on the murder charge. It could well be that they are having trouble deciding between first and second degree murder or possibly voluntary manslaughter. The time and the potential deadlock does not by any means indicate that they are thinking of letting him walk.
That being said, I thought Zimmerman would be found guilty.
Villago Delenda Est
@JGabriel:
The other problem is that “the Muslim world” isn’t monolithic about anything..it’s every bit as varied as “Christendom” is. A lot of local cultural values are called “Muslim” because Islam is the prevalent local religion, when Islam doesn’t have anything to do with it on its own.
Wally Ballou
To guys like Rush, you can be the hammer or you can be the nail. No other option is available.
See also Paul Harvey’s infamous “sugar candy” rant.
Cheryl from Maryland
@Villago Delenda Est: My husband suggested Rushbo is going for the brothel look.
WaterGirl
@Cheryl from Maryland: It was the guest bedroom that creeped me out the most. Looks like Rush has his very own fantasy island.
gnomedad
@Wally Ballou:
Hadn’t seen this before. Ho. Lee. Shit.
#monstersfromtheid
Chris
@Villago Delenda Est:
To them, Christendom isn’t “varied.” There’s True Believing Real Christians, and there’s Everyone Else who’s just a poser and/or a plot by the enemies of Christ. (“Social justice” and “liberation theology” churches, which are communist plots, “black nationalist” churches, which are communist and political correctness plots – the Catholics or the Protestants, depending on which of them you are, which are heretics and Antichrist – etc, etc).
Their view of Islam is a twisted mirror of their view of Christendom. To them, there’s also only One True Islam – violent, expansionist, totalitarian – and all the others are just posers who aren’t “really” Muslim (hence their idea of a complex analysis, “there are moderate Muslims but there is no moderate Islam.”) It’s why they’re so adamant that We Are At War With Islam.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@WaterGirl: My late grandma, bless her heart, born on a rocky farm in Ireland at the turn of the last century, would have thought El Rushbo’s apartment was lovely, but I think even she would have found that guest room pretty bad.
I like the bathroom snark
Pogonip
I feel the last person from whom a gentleman should take advice on manliness is Rush Limbaugh.
I don’t understand hazing either–it’s a young-man thing, and I’m neither–but I do understand that threatening to rape your sister, or anyone else, is not hazing as it’s generally understood. I think the proper response to such a threat would be a stern talking-to in the back of the parking lot or some such other dark place. (I don’t think calling the police would do any good when the miscreant is a professional football player.)
WaterGirl
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: That’s pretty funny.
Jager
In Jr. High football three of us 8th graders made the 9th grade Varsity team. There was a custom called black-balling. Basically you got your balls painted with shoe black. The three of us stuck together and never got black balled during practice or the first 4 games and we relaxed. Mistake on our part, my pal Bill got black balled in the shower after a practice. A couple of days later we caught the biggest of the bullies on the team alone after Jr. High Y. We took his pants and shoes and left him in the alley behind the Y. His parents went nuts and called our parents and the school. The principal (who I thought was a dick) covered our skinny little asses. The coach got his ass ripped over it. My old man (who I thought was a bigger dick than the principal) said, “Good for you.” Black balling was stopped for good.
Mayur
Ah yes. Doublespeak at its finest.
Our centrist President is somehow a “Communist” and “Islamofascist.”
Simultaneously, Putin and the Taliban, the icons of those ideologies, are to be admired as “manly men” and the opposite of this fearful “quivering vajayjay” entity.
And THEN you add in the hypocrisies of a blubbering, cowardly tub of lard (who is probably also a child molester) trying to stake out a claim as a defender of “masculinity.”
I used to think the Right was trying to drive all us libs to outrage fatigue. Now I think they’re aiming for the even lower bar of inconsistency/incoherency fatigue.
Useless bastard.
moderateindy
Hazing and bullying have nothing to do with masculinity, nor is it, as someone said, “a young man’s game”. The nastiest bullies I’ve ever known were teenage girls. Also, some of the most brutal hazing I’ve heard about were on women’s sports teams.
And there is a distintion between hazing, and bullying. The problem is that bullies use hazing as an extra outlet to let their demons loose.
We hazed rookies on our college lacrosse team. Made them put the nets on the cage, and take them down before and after practice. Made them clean up the field etc. It was technically hazing, but it also served the purpose of having them “earn” being part of the team.
We would even have an initiation night at the end of the season, which consisted of lots of drinking, and juvenile boot camp type activities. It was meant to be fun, but also, both a bonding experience with their fellow rookies, as well as an acknowledgment that they put in their time, and had earned their spot on the team. Of course, inevitably there would be one jack*ss veteran that would have to prove what a bad*ss he was, and would always try to take things too far. Luckily, when I was there, the other vets usually shut the bullies down in pretty short order. And that is the problem with hazing. Even things that start out as innoccuous, can turn ugly if the wrong personalities are in charge, and eventually the wrong types of people will be in charge. Of course once that happens, the bullying and cruelty become entrenched as “tradition” with the people that endured the crappy treatment. They in turn perpetuate it.
TerryC
@Baud: “Thanks. I might be conflating the two.”
I once had a glass of water thrown on me in a board room while the thrower yelled that I was the biggest asshole she’d ever worked with.
It was because I had used the word “conflate.”
Enhanced Voting Techniques
When Rush, the man with the girly French Louie XIV house, accuses another man of being feminine, Rush is projecting.
Anyway, how does participating in homo-erotic D/S rituals show you are a mature male? Speaking as a mature male, I would tell any group that demanded that of me to go look for bottoms elsewhere. That’s pretty much what I’ve done the two times in my life they tried to haze me.
Steeplejack (tablet)
@TerryC:
Somehow I doubt it was just that.
Bruce Baugh
Digby wrote something years ago that I continue to think explains a lot.
She commented that the Vietnam war presented a challenge to young men of all views. Some were opposed to the war and did something about it, from protesting to emigrating. Some were in favor of the war and either enlisted or took their chances with the draft. In either case, their actions matched their talk. Everyone took risks, whether imprisonment for resisting or having to go off and fight, and got on with their lives.
The chickenhawks are stuck in the position of refusing to do what they told everybody it was essential to do. She thought that as a group, they’re stuck emotionally and unable to move on until they come to terms with their failure there as young men. There are a lot of ways they could honestly adjust actions and words to match, but they’ll do none of them. So they end up lashing out at everyone else with a big dose of fear and hatred for everyone who lives more honestly.
She nailed it down good, I think.