Women and Guns

Ilana Mercer quotes Sarah Palin appreciatively:

"Hollywood needs to know: We eat therefore we hunt."

While I agree with what this quip is supposed to convey, (as I perceive it), namely that meat does NOT come out of the deep freeze and that we, as a society, have to kill to eat, there are several things that can be (and ARE) said about it. One of them is that animals ought not to be killed for fun and that farm animals is all we need to supply us with meat. Wildlife numbers, members of that faction argue, can be controlled by professionals. Of course, the stench of the Puritan surrounding this statement, who will sniff out if anybody anywhere on the globe has fun and will try to stop it at once, is overpowering. I just quoted it to show that we do NOT have to hunt to eat and that Palin's statement stripped to its bones, catchy as it may be, is simply wrong.

Of course, everybody who knows the first things about animals and wildlife will prefer game to meat from domestic animals, for both, animal welfare and reasons of edibility. Wildlife had had a good life in its natural surroundings when it finally meets its maker. It doesn't know what has hit it, it hasn't been raised on "hygienic" concrete floor, hip to hip with other poor critters, without a look at the blue sky ever, possibly even in the dark, fed with doubtful, chemically "enhanced" food. It isn't beaten into a butchery where it will be forced to smell the fear and the blood of all the animals slaughtered before. I'll gladly grant the guns their fun in exchange for providing me with meat that is not like that. Hey, I even know a farmer/butcher who shoots his free-ranging beef in the field, so that they'll never know what hit them. Meet from animals that haven't experienced stress before they died tastes better as well, a simple matter of chemistry.

I realize that German shooting and American hunting are very different. While I'm known to be a scourge of my own people, and while the eternal and spiritual values Germans tend to foist on that sport (ooops... of course it's no sport, it's a semi-sacred endeavour to better the world) go sometimes seriously on my nerves, at least our pork chops aren't tormented to death over a longish period of time and we don't see a point in chasing a terrified tame animal within a manageable enclosure while blowing holes into it. If that makes us leftist pinko commies or treehuggers -- so be it.

But I digress. The question I'd like to answer is: Now we know that "we", the members of a post-modern society, do indeed NOT "need" to hunt to eat meat, does a hunting woman really convey the proper image for a traditional, conservative society? Ilana Mercer seems to think so:

Palin is a terrific specimen of a woman. Would that there were more disciplined, gun-toting, hunting, energetic local leaders like this lady in my state. She’s not a philosopher or a thinker; but she should be the Gold Standard for the all-American archetype of a woman (and not the vacuous California toothy booby bimbo).

And while I largely agree with her assessment of Palin's good qualities, I once again challenge Palin's qualities to represent truly conservative and traditional values. It may be a matter of taste, but I don't think that the demonstrative wearing of weapons for other purposes than self-defense, befits a woman. I don't think, either, that women, on a large scale, can handle the responsibility that comes with it, and while it is the height of hypocrisy to revile Palin because she kills wildlife but not her unborn child, it is not very wise to promote a gun-toting Palin as a female role model fit for emulation.

Did you watch "El Dorado"? It can be seen, I think, as somewhat emblematic for women and guns. Where does the trouble come from? From a gun-toting, irresponsible girl who refuses to listen to her father. (I wonder whether they wore jeans that looked as if the wearer had been poured into them and such carefully dishevelled manes in the old West, but that's beside the point here.) And nothing will outline the nature of feminism better than her quip: "They haven't gotten around shooting women yet," when a man offers to escort her in a town highly charged with hostility. So it is alright for HER to tote a gun (and shooting men in the process) while she takes it for granted that no man will shoot her. Sheer and undiluted feminism. American men, you've brought it all upon yourselves!

If you look at the scene where that girl "Joey" comes to the prison with her sister-in-law whose husband has just beed kidnapped by the bad guys, the difference between a woman carrying a gun in self-defense and one who does it aggressively becomes quite obvious. There is nothing boastful, warchick-y about the other woman. She just does what she has to do.

I shoot as well, although I haven't killed anything yet, I am the holder of a shooting license, to be precise. Shooting in Germany is a largely all-male affair and I have yet to meet a woman who complains about it. I like to attend the annual general meeting of the regional guns' association because I and another woman of my age are usually the only ones present and among the youngest attendees to boot. I can't think in a hurry about any other venue where that would be the case. I know quite a few women who have, like myself, undergone the lengthy and expensive process to acquire a shooting license and who will reply, when asked why they have done it, to help their husbands, or to be licensed to lead dogs at gundog trials. I know very few who actually enjoy the stalking and killing bit. Not that I blame those who do, it just doesn't seem to be the norm and I think that tells its own story.

So this German challenges the lippy American "war chick" and "gun toting women" culture as something that may be very American but can in no way be called "conservative".

Like Sarah Palin, really!

Sarah Palin and No End

Over at Webster's, Terry Morris asks:

There's a pretty good discussion on the topic at VFR in which several posters posit their own theories on what is the source of this irrational visceral hatred of someone as real and genuine, and non-threatening (personality wise) as Sarah Palin.

So, what do you think? Why do the Sarah-haters hate her so much?

It triggered off a very interesting discussion, part of which I put up here:

The_Editrix said...

Palin is both, reviled and revered for the wrong reasons. All that was discussed at VFR as well when she entered the political stage. But the hatred with which she is met now is not simple run-of-the-mill inflated criticism of a political opponent. I think it is very simple. Months ago, after the lost elections, I wrote: "Did they really think a woman like Palin would get them the women's votes? Don't they have the first idea about the female mind? Specifically about the American female mind? Could they really assume that an American female voting public, raised in a culture of sexual envy, a voting public that has undergone the gruelling experience of proms and "beauty pageants", would vote for a slim, pretty and markedly FEMININE looking woman like Palin? Couldn't they anticipate that everything about Palin, her looks, her relative youth, her husband, her children (HER FERTILITY!) would be the cause of intense jealousy? ... That Palin comes across as (at least to me) totally unbitchy, may have added to all this." Also, her good looks are not of a sort I (as a foreigner) would easily associate with AMERICAN looks. She hasn't got the blonde, toothy, big hair good looks of the American beauty queens who look (to me) all the same. She is SPECIAL. If I see that another strikingly goodlooking woman, Ilana Mercer, who has criticized her politics harshly, is justifiedly praising Palin's looks, I see that as a case in point for my theory that there is mainly simple, sheer and undiluted grudge behind that hatred. Whatever one may think of a woman and mother of X children in politics, Palin is a feast for the eye, seems happy, radiant and healthy and that is too much for only too many (mainly women) too bear. Grudge, jealousy, envy and spite should never be unserestimated when women are around.

I'd like to write about it at my anti-feminist blog, but as a foreigner I feel a bit out of my depth here.

July 22, 2009 1:31 PM

chiu_chunling said...

I have to agree that a pretty good chunk of Palin-envy has to do with her unabashed femininity. But it's not just women who hate her over it. The fact that she's married to her (almost ridiculously manly) high-school sweetheart, while it can't do much to assuage the feelings of inferiority among women, also doesn't leave a lot of room for most men to view her as remotely 'attainable'.

Or even unattainable. She's a woman who's already been attained by a real man. Ouch.

July 23, 2009 12:58 AM

The_Editrix said...

"The fact that she's married to her (almost ridiculously manly) high-school sweetheart, while it can't do much to assuage the feelings of inferiority among women, also doesn't leave a lot of room for most men to view her as remotely 'attainable'.

Or even unattainable. She's a woman who's already been attained by a real man. Ouch."

Exactly! I couldn't agree more. From whatever angle we look at it, it's a strongly sex-charged topic. Thus the fascination. It just occurs to me and maybe I am overdoing it now: Such a sexually attractive couple together with the infant on stage was BOUND to evoke thoughts of how it came into being. Maybe that is the reason for the ridiculous accusations that the baby (I seem not to be able to remember the fatuous names of the Palin-children) was the eldest daughter's, and not Palin's, child. Women of both sexes can't STAND the thought of Palin having sex.

I'll say again what I've said before may times, although probably not here: I am under the impression that there is an unhealthy preoccupation with sex within American society. I don't think we have less sex in Germany, but it is taken as a fact of life, not something around which the world revolves. Why that is so would be a good topic for an entirely different thread. But it is so and it does a lot of damage, at least so I think.

July 23, 2009 2:21 AM

Terry Morris said...

Nora wrote:

I am under the impression that there is an unhealthy preoccupation with sex within American society.

From my point of view that statement qualifies to be among the top five or so understatements of the year. But thanks for showing reserve in your criticisms of American society at an American owned blog.

In my neck of the (American) woods, we tend to keep the bedroom stuff, well, inside the bedroom more than does the larger American society as a whole. But we still have our sex related problems here nonetheless. I hear tell, for instance, that certain 'ministers' of the gospel make it an occasional point to 'instruct' their congregations on the proper and acceptable ways of having sex, to include positions and whatnot. I won't go into any more detail on that particular point.

Anyway, so the consensus is that Sarah Palin is a sex object to most Americans, and because she's not a slutty sex object engaged in all manner of self-destructive, debasing behavior, Americans are insulted by her? Hmm. Yeah; I can see that to an extent.

Nora,

After reading your comment about not recalling the Palin childrens' names, I wondered how many of them I could recall. Here's what came to me:

Trig is the name of the baby. Piper is the little, self-confident cutie that spit-shined his hair on national tv at the RNC. Bristol is the eldest daughter who was pregnant with Levi's child during the campaign. The other two I can't recall offhand. One is a son who is a military member as I remember, the other is a daughter of about 13 years old I think.

July 23, 2009 6:57 AM

The_Editrix said...

"But thanks for showing reserve in your criticisms of American society at an American owned blog."

Thank YOU for acknowledging it. As I said, it would make an excellent topic for further discussion, however, it doesn't quite fit into any of my blogs and it isn't really up to me to start anything like that.

Yes, the names of the Palin children! I remember "Willow" because it's such a pretty word, but I always thought that the cute little one was called that and now you say she's Piper. Since the advent of the grandchild I remember Tripp and Trig. I think this confusion is only natural and part of the problem. Do you think we'd suffer the same amnesia with names like David and George, Caroline and Victoria? By giving them such oh-so-original names they have rendered their children, in a way, faceless, and that when their goal was clearly the opposite.

July 23, 2009 12:37 PM

chiu_chunling said...

"Women of both sexes"...heheheh.

I guess that a peculiar obsession with sex is the natural result of the increasing disjuncture between sex and love.

It is (probably) not the case that Americans have too much sex, but that they suffer from a lack of love, both given and received. Of course, one cannot overstate the role of birth control, both prophylactic and abortive. When the sex act becomes inextricably bound to some expression of contempt and rejection towards one's own progeny, it is certain to diminish love rather than increase it.

This has its fallout in the increasingly brutal objectification of the sexually attractive. They exist in the popular mind to be denigrated and abused, stripped of fertility and personality. Americans, fed on an anti-progenerative idea of sex, are inclined to feel disgust at the thought of having children.

The same thing happens in societies where children are valued only for their utility, of course. To think of one's children as nothing more than slaves is just as exclusive of love as to think of them as...tumors. Either tendency will serve to make sexual interaction an expression of contempt for weakness and vulnerability.

Humans instinctively seek after sex to feel love, love for and from children and a mate. A society fundamentally deprived of both these primal sources of love will seek sex all the more aggressively, but when the sexuality which society promotes is inimically hostile to such affection...it's vodka to a man dying of thirst.

July 23, 2009 7:20 PM

The_Editrix said...

"It is (probably) not the case that Americans have too much sex..."

Oh Chiu, you've got me wrong! I do not think Americans have too much sex, I think they are obsessed with it because they have too little. And although your theory regarding loveless sex (and the rejection of one's own progeny by birth control) is excellent and certainly worth further discussion, it is beside my point. I was talking about sex and sex only, without the love aspect. The sniffing in bedrooms by certain clerics (Terry mentioned it) or, even more influential, more vicious and more damaging, feminism, are answerable to that. Now to the differences: German husbands and fathers have "men's rights" websites as well. However, it's more about their children and their right to be fathers, not so much about being blackmailed by the owners, controllers and peddlers of sex (women) with their merchandise, which suggests that they are getting it at least somewhere.

Then you have the intensely sex-conscious prom- and beauty pageant culture, which is designed to breed jealousy and contempt between women. And again, we have that ridiculous (and I think dangerous) contradiction: On one hand, those girls, a lot of them very young, are strutting their stuff like expensive hookers, on the other hand it is emphasized that they are "honest", even chaste. If I'd show you pictures of the beautiful, lively, spirited teenage daughters of my friends, you wouldn't think that they come from the same breed.

"An amusing "Demotivator" reads "No one can make you feel inferior without your consent...but you'd be a fool to withhold that from your superiors." A comical statement, but also a fundamental truth recognized by all rational beings. If someone is really better than you in some way, the obvious logical response is to acknowledge one's inferiority."

So true! Everybody is inferior to somebody in some respects and not to acknowledge it is a sign of deep-rooted insecurity. Don't we all know the sad nitpicking losers who obsessively dissect those who are OBVIOUSLY better in every respect than the nitpicker? Another female (although not exclusively female) trait. By the way, Ilana Mercer, who is very critical of Palin's political persona, has a lovely appreciation of Palin's looks somewhere at her blog. It's related to that article in the running magazine Auster quoted at VFR too. Well... Mercer is no dog either, which I consider a case in (my) point.

July 24, 2009 4:13 AM

The discussion then went astray do a different (interesting) topic.

Should my theory why Sarah Palin is disliked so over-proportionally be true (and I think it is), how much substance remains to support women's suffrage?

Fat Is A Feminist Issue Indeed

This is one of those little essays I wrote after I first hit the Internet and discovered, the proverbial babe in the woods, feminist message boards more than ten years ago. I have edited it a bit to get rid of the worst smell of naivité.

For women, as much they'd like to appear as being above it, there is one central topic: other women's looks and discussing women's looks is, as every man has to learn the hard way, a volatile topic at best, a snake pit at worst. The following is not a verbatim transcript of message board discussions, but an overview of some of the worst clichés with which a bunch of brainwashed whiners bores us stiff on a regular basis. However, there are different approaches to tackle the problem of one's own inadequacies:

The "It's Conveniently All The Men's Fault" Approach

I feel sorry for these girls that have allowed society to manipulate their minds into believing this is desirable and is in their best interests, but gees..... what do you do to wake women up that they don’t have to take this type of dictates from society, and there is no need for them to flip flop the opposite extreme direction when they wake up and want to become equal and human. I have had my share of manipulations, abuses, and dictates as a female and I realize its not easy for a female who sees very little value in their selves to break loose from those feelings especially when there is always going to be SOME men in society that are going to promote women in negative, unhealthy, or demeaning ways like the modeling and fashion industry.

Well, for starters there are certain unwritten customs governing conversation and the regularity with which they recur among otherwise noticeably different people is first truly amazing and second an indicator that something seriously stinks. For example, if somebody says "..and if you'll forgive me for saying so…" it's invariably the opening for something absolutely unforgivable. Likewise, if somebody says "I am no antisemite but…" one can be 100% sure an antisemitic rant will follow and if, in the course of a conversation covering women's looks, somebody (invariably female) says "I feel sorry for … " [insert models, slim women, generally all non-frumps and -slovens] one can wager one's right of primogeniture against a stale bun that she damn well isn't.

Which brings us right on topic!

Now what IS that obscure entity "society", which is to blame for each and every evil, iniquity, injustice and superfluous kilo? WHO, for heaven's sake, IS "society"? People are not brought up by some nondescript "society", or are they? They are not even brought up by parents but, even in those ever-dwindling cases that there IS a father, and one who is allowed to oppen his mouth, present, by women. THEY shape the young woman's mind.

Men, apart from those who are hell-bent on having a clothes rack to impress their fellow social climbers, like their women soft and rounded and more often than not don't even notice clothing in detail. "The hand that rocks the cradle rules the world", as the feminists are fond of saying, an insight baffling in its simplicity, accuracy and insight, albeit only taken seriously when it suits the feminist agenda. Women, with the only exception maybe of the truly desperate ones, give a flying fornication about what men think about their looks, it's other women they want to impress.

Now WHO gives Barbie Dolls to little girls? Certainly not the fathers. Men tend to find Barbie Dolls rather silly and I have yet to meet a father who wants his daughter to look like that. That said, it is conveniently overlooked that Mattel, the Barbie-makers, offer quite a lot of exercise options for Barbie, which is certainly a better incentive for girls than teaching them that being fat frees them from male oppression.

Whose idol was the pathologically self-centered, bulimic clothes rack Princess "Di"? Women's or men's? I know only a very few men who were smitten by her, but I know hardly a woman who was not, and from WHOM got poor old Charlie all the flak when he dared to settle for the more homely, but obviously truly devoted, Camilla? Other men? You must be kidding!

But let's assume, for argument's sake, that an anorexic figure IS a male dream and IF it shapes the minds and self-esteem of girls and women, then WHY does obesity outweigh anorexia in real life by far?

It is my firm belief that behind all that shrill obsessing about "dictates from society", "men ... that are going to promote women in negative, unhealthy, or demeaning ways" and the (totally male dominated, of course) "modeling and fashion industry" are two ulterior motives: First, it serves as an instrument of power for Dworkin (ever seen a picture of her?), McKinnon and other vicious hypocrites to reach their ultimate goal, i.e. making women's (and men's, for that) lives miserable. The strategy taps into a potential conflict between men and women. It encourages women to resent men for feeling concerned about their growing weight. And we all know that men never feel real concern or compassion. Hell they hardly feel much at all, or do they? Second, for the majority of women, it serves as an excuse and an ideological underpinning for the simple thing of letting themselves go, namely to go grossly fat. Feminists have a perverse agenda, which glorifies fatness.

Why don't those clay-footed philanthropists "feel sorry" for the poor, pathetic, disorientated female misfits who insult our sense for aesthetics, take two seats in the bus and one and a half in the plane, burden our health system with their cardio-vascular disorders, circulatory disturbances, respiratory and worn-out joint complaints and are just a general pain in the proverbial, and don't even BEGIN telling me they aren't because they damn well ARE. And PARTICULARLY so, because they wouldn't need to be that way. We are not talking about cripples here.

So nobody tells them (or DARES telling them) that it is nothing but their own responsibility to seek therapy and general help and that they might -- just might -- try to eat less and start some exercising. No, they are told they are "victims", a common outlook, which is widely sanctioned by the politically correct psychotherapist mafia and societal mainstream. There is no more viciously malevolent and anti-social sentence than "There there, I can relate to you" because anybody who isn't that fat damn well can't. After Holocaust survivors, cancer survivors, rape survivors, abuse of various sorts survivors, we now have -- obesity survivors! The terminology reveals the agenda: "Something bad has happened to me, it must be someone else’s, preferably the men's, doing". By standing up for fat women, feminism creates a perverted system of female solidarity. Fat women get encouragement, support and even acclaim for an unhealthy lifestyle. Feminists WANT women fat. They want to proselytize women who feel that they are ugly or potentially rejected by men. These are the first and easiest prey for an ideology that fosters men-hating. It's not men who force their views on women; it's a women-shaped society that forces its views on women and it is not beyond feminists to fish even at the very bottom of that foodchain.

But let's change the object. I don't share the condescending attitude of many gestagen-type, naturally slim women towards their less fortunate sisters and their definition of "fat", a definition that quite often starts at wearers of more than a size 8 at a height of 6'10". As somebody who is constantly fighting a, mostly successful, but sometimes grueling, battle against age- and hormone-induced weight gain, I do, however, resent the victimology mentality that is slowly creeping in everywhere and which has taken over the fat-women-community long ago.

Here we have, and I guarantee those quotes are authentic, a different specimen among those brainwashed losers, this one, rather refreshingly, at least without any pretensions at empathy or analysis. This approach is not so much about blaming one's own misery on the men, but to vent one's frustration about one's fat- (although probably not JUST fat-) induced low social status mainly on other women, which shows that sheer and undiluted grudge can sometimes render better results than phony analysis.

The "I'm Absolutely Desperate But Can't Stop Eating" Approach

"sounds to me like you are afraid of the idea that big can be beautiful...why are you afraid?"

"And big men DO LOVE big women because they know that big women, unlike skinny little sluts, will 1) treat them right...ie: not use them for money, not abuse them, not cheat on them and 2) will take care of themselves..ie: not do drugs, etc."

"And, more and more statistics are coming out that say that more men love big women than we know but will not admit it because assholes like you will degrade them for it."

"And statistics today show that big does not equal unhealthy nor unattractive nor lazy nor stupid...in fact, all the stats show just the opposite…"
"…but you, of course, will deny it because you are afraid...you are afraid to open you mind, go against what society and your parents say and to think for yourself."

"…and BBW magazine and Dimensions and Mode would not be selling millions of copies a day and men would not be buying those magazines and would not be writing to the editors of those magazines raving about how they love big women and there would be no men putting ads in those magazines and in newspapers all across the country looking for BIG, BEAUTIFUL WOMEN and the larger size women's fashion industry would not be a multimillion dollar industry.

"BTW, I have seen some really nasty skinny women so I'd shut up if I were you because you do not know what you are talking about. I have seen skinny women who don't shave, don't care about what they wear (they will wear ripped, stained and ill-fitting clothes), will have a cigarette hanging out of their mouth, guzzling beer or vodka, popping pills, throwing up in the streets and passing out."

"At least the so-called "nasty" fat women will shave, shower, be clean and sober and disease-free, will fix their hair nice (as opposed to the rat's nests of the skinny women), will have manicures and pedicures done and be smelling of Georgio instead of stale smoke and alcohol." "Yeah, big women are so nasty, right? So, go ahead. Go after the crab and lice and aids ridden skinny women. If that is what you are into!!!!"

The amount of raw enmity was baffling and left many questions to ask. What does an aesthetic judgment have to do with fear for example, (by the way, it's an old leftist mantra to denounce the conscious, well-founded and reasonable rejection of something as "fear), or what decency and character, cleanliness and grooming have to do with a person's dress size. Or whether the increasing XXL market has less to do with a wishful-thinking-induced sudden preference of men for fat women, instead of an ever growing number of fat women anyway. I asked all this, but to no avail.

Of course, and everybody who has but only one eye to see will have noticed that slovens and frumps are more widespread among the fattie-faction, presumably because they've given up long ago anyway or because they didn't care all that much to begin with, but I was good and refrained from mentioning it.

My take on all that? Simple! Telling women that fat is beautiful is like prescribing tranquilizers to a person who suffers from the squits so that he (or rather she) doesn't mind anymore what she's doing to her pants.

A Little Too Obviously Jealous

What we have here is based on an old entry from my other blog. Although it, or rather the event that triggered it off, is dating more than three years back, I consider it still topical. It, too, has a strong style-aspect, which merits a publication here. It is about a nasty little bit of racism that went largely unnoticed for obvious reasons, but after having bellyached about it, the question remains what children ought to wear at a dignified public occasion, so here it goes:

An Image A Little Too Carefully Coordinated
By Robin Givhan
Friday, July 22, 2005

It has been a long time since so much syrupy nostalgia has been in evidence at the White House. But Tuesday night, when President Bush announced his choice for the next associate justice of the Supreme Court, it was hard not to marvel at the 1950s-style tableau vivant that was John Roberts and his family.

There they were -- John, Jane, Josie and Jack -- standing with the president and before the entire country. The nominee was in a sober suit with the expected white shirt and red tie. His wife and children stood before the cameras, groomed and glossy in pastel hues -- like a trio of Easter eggs, a handful of Jelly Bellies, three little Necco wafers. There was tow-headed Jack -- having freed himself from the controlling grip of his mother -- enjoying a moment in the spotlight dressed in a seersucker suit with short pants and saddle shoes. His sister, Josie, was half-hidden behind her mother's skirt. Her blond pageboy glistened. And she was wearing a yellow dress with a crisp white collar, lace-trimmed anklets and black patent-leather Mary Janes.


Even the clothes are conservative: Judge John G. Roberts, left, and his wife Jane, right, with their children Jack and Josie listen to President Bush's announcement.
(Pool Photo By Shawn Thew)
[...]

The wife wore a strawberry-pink tweed suit with taupe pumps and pearls, which alone would not have been particularly remarkable, but alongside the nostalgic costuming of the children, the overall effect was of self-consciously crafted perfection. The children, of course, are innocents. They are dressed by their parents. And through their clothes choices, the parents have created the kind of honeyed faultlessness that jams mailboxes every December when personalized Christmas cards arrive bringing greetings "to you and yours" from the Blake family or the Joneses. Everyone looks freshly scrubbed and adorable, just like they have stepped from a Currier & Ives landscape.

In a time when most children are dressed in Gap Kids and retailers of similar price-point and modernity, the parents put young master Jack in an ensemble that calls to mind John F. "John-John" Kennedy Jr.

Separate the child from the clothes, which do not acknowledge trends, popular culture or the passing of time. They are not classic; they are old-fashioned. These clothes are Old World, old money and a cut above the light-up/shoe-buying hoi polloi.

[...]

Dressing appropriately is a somewhat selfless act. It's not about catering to personal comfort. One can't give in fully to private aesthetic preferences. Instead, one asks what would make other people feel respected? What would mark the occasion as noteworthy? What signifies that the moment is bigger than the individual?

But the Roberts family went too far. In announcing John Roberts as his Supreme Court nominee, the president inextricably linked the individual -- and his family -- to the sweep of tradition. In their attire, there was nothing too informal; there was nothing immodest. There was only the feeling that, in the desire to be appropriate and respectful of history, the children had been costumed in it.

Well, nobody in his right mind would accuse Ms. Givhan of looking "freshly scrubbed and adorable" or, for that, like a fashion icon with the right of being condescending on the strength of her own self-consciously crafted perfection, and frankly, it is beyond me why the Washington Post (or ANY newspaper, for that) would make such a frump fashion editor. Or why this sort of fashion drivel is allowed to take up a lot of perfectly good space in a "serious" newspaper in the first place, even if it were NOT as politically prejudiced, sneering and vile as it is, but that is not the point.

Neither is the point that this piece of jealous media flotsam has obviously not the slightest compunction about abusing children to vent her well-calculated, class-ridden rants. Yeah, GAP has got ist SO right! X billion flies and hordes of idiot parents can't be wrong, eat more shit and buy more GAP. Who wouldn't just LOVE to see one's little girl clad like an underage prickteaser? Everything (but EVERYTHING!) not to appear "classy".

The real point is, that, had a white journalist written about the appointment of a black man to a major public position and referred to his family's hairdo as "too self-consciouly ethnic" with "their nappy heads standing out too much" we would have had a major earthquake in the media, whereas a not-so-sly dig at a blond pageboy's is quite okay for the self-hating whites in the media.

So now the bellyaching is over and done with, what would be the right choice of dress for children at such an occasion? I personally, think that they ought to be left at home anyway, but then, I am not American and the entire "human touch"-aspect in politics bores me, to put it politely. As it is, I think the Roberts made an excellent choice.

The selective politically correct perception of who makes victim fodder

The North British Person has got an excellent didactic play on political correctness for us:

TV contestant's racist views leave parents on a tide of bad PR
FERGUS SHEPPARD MEDIA CORRESPONDENT (fsheppard@scotsman.com)

IT WAS simultaneously a nightmare for any parent and a demonstration of the extraordinary power of reality TV in modern Britain.

A middle-class Edinburgh couple yesterday found themselves forced into the unfamiliar world of public-relations spin control as a row over their daughter's racist remarks on television came to the doorstep of their Georgian home.

David Buchanan, father of 18-year-old Lucy Buchanan, enlisted Edinburgh PR firm Profile Plus to issue a statement which amounted to a "wholehearted" apology for their daughter's conduct.

Lucy, a former pupil of the £19,662-a-year St Peter's School in York, won a place on a Channel 4 reality show in a gap year before going to Bristol University.
[...]
Lucy - who lists her hobbies as lacrosse and shooting - gave her fellow contestants camped on the South Pacific islands of Motoraku and Rapota a crash course on her views on society.

She said Britain was home to "way too many cultures", adding: "Britain is a complete mess. I just don't appreciate people coming into our country and taking over our culture." In another aside, the teenager declared: "I'm for the British Empire and things. I'm for slavery, but that's never going to come back."

The Buchanans were forced into defending their daughter as journalists descended on the family home. Mr Buchanan is understood to be an IT executive while his wife, Nicola, is a former model.

In his statement, Mr Buchanan said: "Lucy has been brought up in a loving and caring home, she has been privately schooled, as is already known.

"By definition, she has had advantages in life, which mean that she has been cosseted in a way that for most children is simply not available to them. It is our firm belief that Lucy, as a naïve teenager, made these silly and very unfortunate remarks on the back of her excitement at being on Shipwrecked."

The statement claimed Lucy had been "challenged" by teammates on the show, a process which had altered her views over five months of filming.
[...]
Mr Buchanan added: "We hope that on Lucy's return she will be afforded the opportunity to use this life experience in a positive way to demonstrate that she can act as an ambassador for change and moderation."

Lucy's trenchant views have extended to more than race. She has also described fat people as "disgusting", calling for them to get their stomachs stitched, and branded lesbians "sinister".
[...]
The Commission for Racial Equality said it was monitoring Shipwrecked.

Campaign group Anti-Slavery International actually backed Channel 4's decision to screen Buchanan's remarks, arguing they illustrated how little slavery was understood.

Group spokeswoman Beth Herzfeld said: "These sorts of comments and the cavalier attitude to slavery clearly show a lack of recognition that slavery does continue to exist, as well as an understanding of what the transatlantic slave trade involved."
[...]

We are living in a culture of envy. If Lucy'd attended, say, the local comprehensive, nobody would have given a damn. The fact that the article revels oh-so-subtly in the details of her privileges ("Lucy - who lists her hobbies as lacrosse and shooting...") makes it a perfectly vile bit of journalism.

The parents are spineless morons,
1) because they apologised for their daughter's opinions,
2) because they let their daughter, whose education they obviously intended to be elitist, prostitute herself at such a crappy TV show,
3) because they are using politically correct lower-middleclass-isms like "caring" and "privately schooled", which, so I suspect, are anathema at the school for which they forked out all that money.

So The Thought Police Commission for Racial Equality is monitoring Shipwrecked. What sort of importance do they grant the bimbos in a pathetic travesty like Shipwrecked? Besides, apart from the slavery bit, which was pretty brainless (Yeah! Too bad about all those school fees...!) Lucy didn't say anything about race and made perfectly good points and I doubt that her views extend to her duskier class mates at St Peter's from the former colonies, which would prove that it's really about culture and not about "race". (I may be wrong.)

Did it ever occur to those moronic parents that their "cosseted" daughter who, according to her father "made these silly and very unfortunate remarks on the back of her excitement at being on Shipwrecked" that she made these remarks not out of "excitement" but PRECISELY BECAUSE SHE WAS FOR THE FIRST TIME IN HER LIFE EXPOSED TO THE REALITY OF YOB-LIFE?

I have been at the receiving end of quite some aggro for similar views to those Lucy espressed on fat people.

That is, I can understand that it is vile and unfair to discriminate against people who can't do anything about their condition, be it colour, handicap or whatever. Fat people CAN. At least the vast majority of them. Why are they still mollycoddled and protected as "victims" by the politically correct brigade? To quote myself: After holocaust survivors, cancer survivors, rape survivors, abuse of various sorts survivors, we now have - obesity survivors! The terminology reveals the agenda: "Something bad has happened to me; it must be someone else’s, preferably the men's, doing".

By standing up for fat women, feminism [incidentally another ideology of envy] creates a perverted system of female solidarity. Fat women get encouragement, support and even acclaim for an unhealthy lifestyle. Feminists WANT women fat. They want to proselytize women who feel that they are ugly or potentially rejected by men. These are the first and easiest prey for an ideology that fosters men-hating.

It's not men who force their views on women; it's a women-shaped society that forces its views on women and it is not beyond feminists to fish even at the very bottom of that self-made foodchain.

Thank you for your acclaim. I think that was rather good, too.

And lesbians... who would care what they are doing if it were behind closed doors. I wouldn't and, so I presume, Lucy wouldn't either. Hell, I don't even WANT to know what sort of activities people prefer behind closed doors. It's the fact that so many of them are aggressively flaunting their sexuality, which makes them (and homosexuals) so unpalatable. They are cramming their sexuality down our throats, and we, who don't share such proclivities, are supposed to like it -- and AGAIN in the name of the new tin god political correctness.

Not to mention the disgusting hypocrisy of all those who are now appalled that a yobbo-programme, designed to be sensationalist, turned out to be just that and are targeting the young woman instead of the makers of that cynical bit of taste- and soul-corrupting dirt.

All that said, the article, in all its political correct righteous outrage, misses entirely the probably most crucial point, namely that Whites were rather gifted amateurs when it came to enslaving people and the professionals were (and, worse still ARE) people of various Middle Eastern and North African extraction who enslaved Whites as well.

But to say all that is, of course, racist. And it might, mind you, hurt the overdeveloped sensitivities of the followers of the "Religion of Peace".

The politically correct perception of who makes victim fodder and who doesn't is pretty selective.

A list of titles at amazon.com for further education:

Christian Slaves, Muslim Masters: White Slavery in the Mediterranean, the Barbary Coast and Italy, 1500-1800 (Early Modern History) by Robert C. Davis

White Gold: The Extraordinary Story of Thomas Pellow and Islam's One Million White Slaves by Giles Milton

They Were White and They Were Slaves: The Untold History of the Enslavement of Whites in Early America by Michael A. Hoffman

White Slaves, African Masters: An Anthology of American Barbary Captivity Narratives by Paul Baepler

Race and Slavery in the Middle East: A Historical Enquiry by Bernard Lewis