political commentary
t's tempting to ignore the shenanigans of the denizens of the toilet bowl that we
call our culture, the latest example of which is some video of an angry feminist walking
for ten hours through New York City, during which time a hundred people spoke to her,
saying things like “How are you doing today?”
I know. What's the world coming to? Even conservatives felt the need to emphasize that they would never say such a thing to a lady.
And yet, she never answered. California stepped in with a new law: no means no, yes means yes. Thanks for clearing that up. Do ya feel lucky punk means maybe. A .45 ACP round through the forehead means probably not. But what does no answer mean? We need more laws! How else can we know what we're supposed to do?
Andy Warhol could have done it better, and did it without needing to edit it down to fit on YouTube, but apparently this video surpassed its goal of achieving its fifteen minutes of fame. Conservatives enjoyed the Left's feeding frenzy of conflicting priorities. Apparently only blacks and Hispanics harassed her, and so the video means they are the oppressors. Saying so makes her racist for complaining about it. See here if you're interested.
Maybe this is just another bizarre example of primate behavior. Since then we've had a bunch of copycat walkings, mostly staged, as this one probably was.
Maybe I watched too many cartoons as a kid, but I half expected a grand piano to fall on her at any moment. It didn't happen.
The subtext, of course, is not anvils, pianos or other gravity lessons, but a tedious lesson about the so-called rape epidemic the Left is making up to keep us guys in line. Conservatives have different ideas on how to cure rape. But as much as I support the right of any adult to carry a firearm for self-defense, provided they're properly trained, I'm afraid I have to admit that Katie Kieffer's solution of arming what we used to call college girls (and no doubt my use of that term marks me as a colonialist patriarchal oppressor) is probably impractical.
Even if they could find a Dirty Harry-style .45-caliber magnum revolver that matched their outfit, carrying it around as they walk from Introduction to Lesbian Literature to Colonialist Patriarchal Oppression 101 is impractical. I work on a college campus. Female college students don't carry purses—nowadays they have backpacks which hold their Ipads, their laptops, probably a couple of Kleenex boxes, and God knows what else. Maybe even, down at the bottom, covered with lint, scratched up by paper clips, yellow highlighters and pens, a textbook.
If they stuck a firearm in there they'd look like that scary little girl in Intruders who goes around murdering people with a razor. Let's face it. Kids live in a world largely of their own construction. It has its own rules, its own social mores. Their sense of judgment is only partially developed. Blasting a potential rapist between the eyes might sound like a good solution to us adults who want to keep them safe. But the first time some student whips out her Uzi when a guy asks for her number her popularity on campus will drop like a rock.
That's not to say women shouldn't carry an AR-15 if they feel the need to ward off all those horndogs coming out of Calculus III and hitting on them in physics lab. But even Time Magazine sees the problem. We have government by rachet effect. It's is full of people who got criticized for sitting around and having sex with their interns, so now they think it's their job to do something else, like make up new rules for everybody. Only the citizens who want something done speak up, so they think we all approve of that. It's not just silliness like Joe Quarterback now needing a notarized affidavit before he can get a blow job, and having to make sure that there's a preponderance of evidence the girl really said “yes, you may boink me” and got a duly stamped, notarized affidavit certifying her acquiescence therewith lest he find himself Dukelacrossed.
The main effect of this law is to provide fodder for 22nd-century standups making fun of our stupidity.
It's tempting to feel schadenfreude that the same feminists who gave us sexual libertinism are finally revealing they were really just puritans all along. But the government is telling us what we can and cannot say, and what we must say, in order to avoid being arrested. Even if the only penalty for now is for the school to lose state funding, it's a dark road to start down. Maybe the kids have an instinctive need to learn what those of us who lived through the Cold War already knew. But why can't they just read Gulag Archipelago like everyone else?
nov 15 2014
