Half the damn Commonwealth is underwater after what may end up being the rainiest month on record. I spent my day getting the preliminary work done for three more crowns and a replacement, so both my jaw and my credit card are sore. And Andrew Sullivan has decided to defend homosexual marriage by quoting Bobo Brooks and front-paging a reader whining about how feminism these days is just lazy gold-diggers rejecting ‘nice guys’ in pursuit of their own selfish desires.
As TBogg would say: This is why we can’t have nice things.
Yutsano
Okay, just because I’m in a random mood:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gK8rHqddU4w
Somehow I got this song stuck in my head today. I choose to share it with y’all. You can shoot me later for it.
BethanyAnne
@Yutsano: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qrO4YZeyl0I
mu ha ha
fucen tarmal
i have a confession, i am a prick who went all agent provacateur undercover as a nice guy, to piss off the feminists, and turn them against all the nice guys with their(mine actually) passive agressive bullshit.
now i don’t claim to know what wave of feminism it was that i was working to counter, but i’m a prick so that is to be expected, but the result i was seeking was that all the feminists would say, hey, lets go for the prick, at least he’s honest….
then, naturally i shift out of my nice guy persona, and into all that sweet feminist poon i seeded the clouds to fall, all over pricks like me….
go on “feminists” blame the nice guys, turn to us pricks in exasperation instead, do you think we care why you want us instead of some other guy? we’re pricks.
—————————————————
ok, question about the nice guy rants, what about the non-feminists? surely they have to be somewhere in all this? maybe go get some of that. or are all women feminists?
Yutsano
@fucen tarmal: . . .
DougL (frmrly: Conservatively Liberal)
Now this is a college prank for the record books (via Wonkette).
I laughed my ass off at this, kudos to whoever came up with it.
Bnut
So this guy’s main problem is that he works too much and doesn’t get enough play? Jesus, welcome to your mid-20s idiot. And try moving away from LA if you want some non vapid ones. What a putz.
Yutsano
@DougL (frmrly: Conservatively Liberal): That is seriously all kinds of win. Couldn’t have happened to a nicer set of folks either. Ahh the things I wish I could have dreamed up back then, I guess that’s what I get for going to an ag school. I can cowtip with the best of them though.
Mark S.
Who says you can’t learn useful information from a David Brooks column?
I can’t wait for their next study: Do Super Bowl winning QB’s live longer than losing QB’s?
He’s okay with it, but he’s still going to bitch about it for twelve more paragraphs. He seems pretty emotionally stunted right now; I’m sure he’ll be a peach of a guy ten years down the road. My advice to ladies: Run like hell.
JackieBinAZ
I wonder if anyone over the age of about 40 who grew up in southern New England escaped hearing about the floods of 1955. Or, if you were in the Worcester area, that damn 1953 tornado.
Yutsano
@Mark S.:
Dear God I hope not. At this rate Favre’s going to be playing with a walker and artificial everything as it is.
Anne Laurie
@JackieBinAZ: Seriously… the weatherpods here in Massachusetts are trying to keep the glee out of their voices as they tell us that this March is the second-rainest month evah, behind August 1955 “and that was after TWO hurricanes!” Probably won’t quite break the record, but the pictures of flooded neighborhoods, overtopped dams, and buckled roadways have broken the schadenfreude meters. Thank FSM, she said piously, that global warming is all Fat Al Gore’s prankish fibs!
DougL (frmrly: Conservatively Liberal)
@Yutsano:
The tow truck operator had a good day…lol! It took him over eight hours to tow 53 vehicles but raking in $6,600 really makes up for the hard day of work. I hope he buys the frat boys a keg for rounding up the customers for him. You just know that the GB supporters were looking for free parking…lol!
I am all for people coming up with creative ways to stimulate the economy and these frat boys should be lauded for their creative idea.
Tattoosydney
As I mentioned in the other thread, it was such a bad day and there was so much venom in the last GG thread that it summoned myiq2x0 from whatever shit smeared circle of hell he currently haunts….
If you can’t play nicely, he will appear.
Lesley
I’m really mean to men.
I take care of myself.
Mark S.
Geez, the UConn women’s basketball team has won 76 games in a row. Congrats.
fucen tarmal
@yutsano in other words
generally, i find generalizations far to general, particularly when people aren’t consciously trying to conform or not conform to the categories listed.
RedKitten
Holy shit…Nana Mouskouri. Now there’s a blast from the past. My mom and her best friend used to listen to Nana ALL the time.
MinneapolisPipe
I’ll give props for Sullivan to equate marriage as being a subset to the pursuit of happiness. While BOBO is silly most of the time, he does occasionally come up with something.
During Lincoln’s presidency, he made a rather revolutionary interpretation of the meaning of this country. Instead of going to the Constitution, he framed and implied the Declaration of Independence being the birth of our country. He used “that all men are created equal” to argue for expanded rights beyond what was enshrined in the then-Constitution. The founding fathers probably never intended for that to mean current/former slaves/women, but that’s what it ultimately meant thanks to Lincoln’s interpretation.
“The pursuit of happiness” is the freedom to live one’s life without the constraint of state religion or state-sanctioned monarchy. Sullivan is right to give props to the Declaration of Independence. Even though the generations that produced it and some generations afterwards never lived up to it, it is still an aspiration worth striving for as modern citizens.
I believe it’s right for our fellow gay/lesbian citizens to be able to achieve what we can also achieve… and if Bobo contributes to that discourse, then so be it.
Xenos
@RedKitten: Tom Jones is still doing the nightclub circuit in Europe, too.
And since there is enough male chauvinism in the air at the moment I won’t go linking the Benny Hill spoof of poor Nana…
kid bitzer
that whiner in the letter to sully really was nauseating. oh, the mean feminists. oh the ungrateful womenz. oh the poor menz.
as an old white hetero male, let me be the first to say: stfu. with that kind of empathy for others, it’s a really good thing you’re focusing on your job and not relationships. now just help us pass a 90% income tax on wealthy single jerks so that society can reclaim some of the surplus you’re ripping off from it. yeah, i know, your huge salary just reflects how hard you work. tell that to the guys hauling garbage cans at 4 in the morning.
and also, quoting the advice of mark s. @8: ladies, run like hell.
stuckinred
The April Fools issue of the Athens Music rag The Flagpole is out:
geg6
I read that whiny, passive aggressive, assholish reader email at Sully’s last night. Pissed me off so bad, I just shut off the BlackBerry and went to bed in disgust. Dickwad seems to think that if women are paid equally then it behooves the country to force women to date him in return. Because, you know, women who can take care of themselves are too uppity to date him. Or they date other men who are more successful than him. Gee, I wonder why they REALLY don’t want to date him? Couldn’t have anything to do with his misogyny or anything, could it? He should get together with BOB and they can spend their time lamenting all those castrating bitches with their “equal pay” and fork lift driving. I hope neither of those assholes ever laid for the rest of their lives.
WereBear
For some reason, jerks never get that they are, and that’s why.
Nethead Jay
Owwww, my head hurts now from reading that idiot’s screed at Sully’s. Talk about passive-aggressive. Sounds like room full of cheese wouldn’t be enough to dampen that whine. There’s so much wrong there I don’t even know where to start, but as a man it’s extremely embarassing to see that sort of nonsense promulgated.
I mean seriously, he wants somebody to blame after “leaving a wonderful relationship” to go spend insane hours on what sounds like some sort of Hollywood career? Fuuuuuuck man, try taking a look in the mirror instead of lashing out at some imaginary caricature of “feminists”. I doubt he’d know a feminist if one up and jumped on his raging dick.
Mary
@fucen tarmal:
Well, obviously all women who won’t go out with this “nice guy” are feminists. Ergo, I guess all women are feminists.
lukor gypsy howell
Bitter whiner doesn’t realize he’s on the path to becoming that older guy with more money and a nicer car whom all those nasty attractive women are going to be dating? Just wait a few more decades and they’ll be falling all over you, dude!
slightly_peeved
As someone who was a bit of a nice guy, but learned better before becoming all resentful and shit (note to potential nice guys: if you like her, ask her out. If she says no, that’s life, you’ll meet someone you like who will say yes sooner or later), it’s extremely fucking angering. I mean, if he doesn’t get along with the women he deals with in his job, maybe he should go out and meet some other women.
And not be so obsessed with his job.
And stop writing emo letters to Andrew Sullivan and go out and meet people.
And stop blaming society for him not getting laid.
And stop blaming society for him choosing an unfulfilling career over a good relationship.
And stop blaming society for all the other shit that he probably blames it for, like how his boss is being mean to him or how the Duke results didn’t go how he predicted in his bracket.
Just throwing it out there.
pika
I was going to warn Sullivan that he just front-paged a likely future shooter, but I figured it was fruitless. I know: hyperbole. But my antennae just go up when I hear/read that “i can not haz yr women” bs because it sounds like the precursor to a misogynist threat.
R-Jud
@geg6:
Yeah, I got halfway through it and decided to save my remaining molars from being ground to powder.
That could have been written by my college boyfriend, who’s in LA and in entertainment and who would say things like “But I’m a nice guy; I let you see your friends!” (And still says them, judging from news I’ve had of him recently.)
Those kinds of viewpoints and behaviors are understandable, if not excusable, when a person is 18 and completely self-centered.
When he’s 25 or 30? Not so much.
Xenos
The ‘nice guy’ stage seems to be something immature but relatively well-intentioned men go through. Getting through it to the other side usually requires a girlfriend to dump you, then you feel sorry for yourself, then you grow up and realize you have not been a nice guy at all – just a passive-aggressive schmuck.
There are a few who never appreciate their schmuckiness, though, and it is an ugly thing to see men in their 30s who are stuck in that stage.
low-tech cyclist
Half the damn Commonwealth is underwater
Which one? From my nearby perch, Virginia looks OK. If I recall, the other states that call themselves ‘commonwealths’ are KY, MA, and PA.
Viva BrisVegas
@low-tech cyclist:
What’s the difference between a Commonwealth state and the other states?
SGEW
Yuck. Dental work is never fun; hope it isn’t too much of a tribulation.
Bill Rutherford, Princeton Admissions
Sully hates women, posts woman-hating e-mail. Film at 11.
SteveinSC
Well, since this is an open thread, Obama is just about to shit in the punch bowl again. Offshore drilling and nooclee-ar power. Jesus, how could you piss the envrionmental community off any worse? And, just like giving away the public option before the repukes offer anything, Obama gives away something before there is anything even presented on green energy and cap and trade legislation. How many times does Obama need to be kicked in the balls before he gets the message there is no bipartisan anything. If he thought by playing namby-pamby to the repukes was how he won HCR, he or his advisors are idiots.
R-Jud
@Viva BrisVegas:
Nothing, legally speaking– it’s just an antiquated term from colonial times, referring to a government founded by consent of the people, rather than one founded by the monarch (I think).
Three of the commonwealth states had governments in place prior to independence and kept the title after ratification. The fourth, Kentucky, decided to call itself a Commonwealth when it separated from Virginia in the 1780s.
/nerd
Terry
I disagree. That letter was part of a series about why women make less money and the idea that perhaps much of it is because of different life choices. And that perhaps some people (especially women) choose a personal life over making more money and are happier for it.
Sure, that guy made some asinine whine about women being golddiggers in the middle of his letter. But mostly, he was admitting to be a dislikeable asshole who dumped a nice girlfriend for a career and and reluctantly has accepted the consequences. Considering that his career is in Hollywood, he might be accurate about the golddiggers in his set of acquaintances. That group is probably self-selected for selfish behavior just as he was.
And who cares that Sullivan quoted David Brooks. The quotes had truth to them, no matter who said them.
Svensker
Thanks for reminding me to go visit TBogg. I forget sometimes now that I don’t read FDL.
fucen tarmal
@mary
you make an inarguable point.
my guess would be, this guy is just assuming, and not even trying.
i mean you can be a real douche, or a genuine nice guy, or a combination of the two, as most of us are, if we are real honest about it, and find someone. also, lowering the standard, if the standard is beauty…trophy wives are for closers.
slightly_peeved
Accepting the consequences of your actions, and complaining that you don’t get sympathy for the results of your actions (see the last paragraph of the letter), are two tastes that don’t go great together. Especially coming from 20-something guys who are making lots of money in the entertainment business.
SGEW
@Svensker: Obligatory mention of “Attackerman is great too, and Emptywheel has done extraordinary work!” Really, those two don’t get enough props.
Suicidal Zebra
@slightly_peeved:
I think this is all a part of his commentary on (his interpretation of) societal attitudes to women in work, i.e. women having to choose between long working hours (and commensurately higher pay) or a family is a big fucking deal but it just sucks to be you if you are a man. He’s kinda got a point.
He then goes on to say effectively he’s not up for the whole casual sex scene which seems to be all the rage amongst 20-somethings, which is fair enough if it’s not his bag. However, feelings of inadequacy for not engaging in it isn’t a problem stemming from feminism, but rather the bullshit machismo principle of your worth as a human being measured by the notches on your bedpost, which like hard drinking has been adopted as a lifestyle choice by the same women.
There’s plenty of whine in the letter, it’s just a shame that letters like this can be dismissed out if hand because of the tone rather than the arguments. Not that his arguments are that compelling.
Bill Rutherford, Princeton Admissions
“He then goes on to say effectively he’s not up for the whole casual sex scene which seems to be all the rage amongst 20-somethings, which is fair enough if it’s not his bag.”
Yeah but I think he can do say that without effectively calling the women who are into it sluts. If I want to read that kind of pearl-clutching, I’ll go read Ross Douthat.
Mark
Yeah, the guys was a real douche, but I think there’s a valid but tangential point: how exactly does sexism manifest itself these days, particularly for people under 40?
I think back to elementary school – the girls all had shirts that said “Anything you can do, I can do better.” (My shirt said “Question Authority.” I think my shirt selection skills are better.)
As we continued on, girls were encouraged to be interested in “non-traditional” subjects. They got higher grades than the boys. In college, there were women-only scholarships and research positions. In grad school, women-only fellowships and organizations devoted to the retention of female, and only female, students. Women make up the majority of college students, med students and law students. They get the majority of medical residencies. According to the piece Sully linked to from 2006, women get paid more for equal work. Hell, as sad as it is, even an incompetent woman can now be a candidate for president.
So where’s the gender discrimination? What, Larry Summers once said something mean about female engineers? People said mean things about Hillary, and we assumed they would never say such things about Barry?
I would never deny that I benefit from my white male privilege. But the white female privilege may very well be stronger today.
Cris
The NYT says about Obama’s upcoming offshore-drilling proposal:
In exactly what way is this a compromise? The fact that it protects Bristol Bay?
liberty60
I have been hearing this whine since I was in high school- “Nice guys don’t get laid”
Trouble is, the “nice” guys saying that are really just douche bags who struck out.
SapphireCate
@Mark: Cue: HUMOURLESS FEMINIST!
Echidne on the gender gap: “It may not all be due to sex discrimination. But it’s unlikely to be all due to some miraculous measure of job flexibility that isn’t reflected on how flexible a job is in allowing people to work part-time or in the actual occupation the person has! Bangs head against the wall in frustration.”
Some feminism 101:
Why we still need feminism
Female privilege
Reverse sexism – ie, selecting for women
tokenism and affirmative action
SGEW
It’s anecdotal, but from my life’s experience I feel comfortable in saying that this is total bullshit.
But it all depends on how you define “nice,” I suppose.
(ETA: Or, possibly, how you define “laid,” now that I think about it.)
Scamp Dog
@MinneapolisPipe:
Actually, “Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness” was a downgrade from Locke’s “Life, Liberty and Property”. The founders weren’t all that comfortable with the plebs owning land, etc. But you do need to mention things in threes, making it read nicely, etc.
MinneapolisPipe
Agreed, Scamp Dog.
I know they did leave out property. However, I think the pursuit of happiness could still fall into liberty.
Mark
@SapphireCate
Spare me your patronizing tone and your retrograde freshman gender studies class with words like ‘phallocracy.’ It’s not 1971 anymore. I am not your oppressor. I’m not even telling you that bad things happen to men.
A tremendous effort has been made to equalize opportunities for deserving women over the last three decades and I’m not convinced that there’s a pay and opportunity gap in the last decade for young women w/o children. I don’t think we have focused studies on that yet – you linked to a study from 2000.
Let me give you a simple example: women make up more than 50% of medical school graduates (they were under 30% in 1982), do you really believe that they get paid less for working the same number of hours in the same specialties?