Bobo Want Know! What About Teh Menz?
Bobo metal heart fear gynocalypse. Feel will erase all aristocrat cock from history. Then who will Bobo go to for filthy organic craving?
Bobo Brooks, The Motherfucking New York Times:
Honor Code
All right, before I start, I have to get one thing out of the way. Yes, I have read Charles Pierce’s epic takedown on this post. And yes, it truly is epic.
So why am I covering it here again after such a thorough fisking? Well, frankly because mangos this rotten deserve a thorough beating less they reform themselves into the dreaded Mango-shoggoth and destroy the world.
Shorter (or the last port before Jungle):
- Holy shit, girls now do as well as boys in school thanks to decades of fighting discriminatory practices. So I’m going to join the current right-wing freakout about it, which argues that since women are inherently inferior, the schools must be conspiring against boys to artificially lower their performance. Also I’m so out of touch, I don’t even know which Shakespeare plays most resonate with people. I may in fact be an evil robot posing as a lecherous old man who dyes his eyebrows.
Yeah, about that Shakespeare line…
Henry V is one of Shakespeare’s most appealing characters.
What planet are your space robots from, Bobo?
Henry V? Henry the fucking Fifth? Yeah, he definitely ranks above Macbeth, Lady Macbeth, Hamlet, Puck, Romeo, Juliet, Shylock, and pretty much every character in every other play.
I mean, who besides giant Shakespeare nerds even bothers reading Henry V? (Yes I did and yes I am, in this and many other respects). Not only is it one of the phoning it in hagiography scripts he needed to send to the queen and her nobles in order to keep performing the plays that people bother remembering these days, but it’s not even the best of those.
At least Richard III has that great “A horse, a horse, my kingdom for a horse” line. Hell if it wasn’t for the line “once more unto the breach, dear friends, once more” and of course the St. Crispin’s Day speech, it would have been remarkable as one of the only Shakespeare plays to produce no memorable lines.
It’s like Bobo, setting to type his next magnum opus, thought, I should add some humanity to disguise my cold metal heart like when I talk about the Applebee’s salad bar. And then just opened a Complete Works of Shakespeare book to a random page and decided to use it as the central metaphor.
Fuck, I’m gonna use the same method. Ahem (ruffle ruffle ruffle).
Truly, The Tinderbox by Hans Christian Andersen best demonstrates how cogent and thoughtful Bobo’s random style is!
He was rambunctious when young and courageous when older.
Well, his main contribution as a character and a king was winning the Battle of Agincourt, so I’m not sure why this is surprising. What? Somebody violent as a kid was violent as a man and turned out to be better at war than the hard thinky duties of running a country. Shock and consternation!
But suppose Henry went to an American school.
…Well, I believe the main difference is he probably wouldn’t be a prince and so wouldn’t be able to just waltz into a position of power no matter what he did as a kid.
Fuck, why bother pretending, he’d probably just spend his days bullying queers and blind teachers, be handed a CEO position in a company his daddy took over and promptly drive it into the ground before running as the Republican nominee for President.
And I’m not sure the rambunctious or the American school would be at all responsible for that shit.
But honestly? Really? This is the central conceit? What if Henry V went to American public school?
Yes, what if Puck went to British reform school? What if Hamlet went to a Dutch seminary? What if Shylock went to a Nigerian nunnery?
Let’s get wacky with this bitch!
By about the third week of nursery school, Henry’s teacher would be sending notes home saying that Henry “had another hard day today.” He was disruptive during circle time.
I know we’re supposed to follow this fantasy with a “oh noes, his manly man energy is being sapped by feminazi union members robbing his mighty staff in order to give it to idiot females so they could cheat their way to victory”, but I’m already being kicked out of the metaphor on this first bend.
I mean, fuck, has their ever been a single era where disruptive kids who were fucking up everyone else’s learning time not been looked down upon? The big difference is that now the parents might get a letter or a private talk whereas before their kids were beaten with a leather strap until they learned how to plot revenge.
Fuck, “Henry” didn’t even get away with this shit in the play, with Henry IV worrying his ass off about his drunk highway robbing wastrel of a son. Fuck, if it wasn’t for the fact that this was a hagiography for the kings, that whole subplot probably would have ended with Henry getting killed off by one of the hero’s sidekick characters.
By midyear, there’d be sly little hints dropped that maybe Henry’s parents should think about medication for attention deficit hyperactivity disorder. Many of the other boys are on it, and they find school much easier.
Maybe. But overdosing that occurred in the early 2000s on behalf of the pharmaceutical companies aside… ADD and ADHD are real medical phenomena that require real medical solutions.
It’s not like some evil feminist invented them to turn masculinity into a sin. It’s a really unfortunate condition that can really fuck up one’s life without medication. I had a friend with very strong ADHD and without medication he literally could not prevent himself from fucking up his life in easily preventable ways.
And skipping ahead a bit. All of this is setting up a “boys are doing poorly in school because they are being destroyed” BS point later on.
As such, I gotta point out… Um, ADD and ADHD medicine helps concentration. Makes one better at school work. Even when it’s mistakenly given to someone, it makes it easier for that kid to focus on school, in terms of lectures, test taking, homework, and so on.
In other words, taking it should make students better at school work and thus having “artificially” improved scores over normal.
But hey, it wouldn’t be a wingnut essay if one’s bullshit point didn’t prove the opposite of one’s intentions.
By elementary school, Henry would be lucky to get 20-minute snatches of recess.
Yeah, it is a shame that liberal teaching reforms, especially for primary education, are rejected in favor of overburdening the kids with standardized tests and other methods with poor teaching results for that age.
What?
Oh, this is supposed to be part of the feminazi conspiracy, isn’t it?
Yeah, no. Sorry, Bobo, but your robot alien army can’t just pretend like the factory teaching style you’ve fought tooth and nail to preserve is somehow on those mean old nasty liberals and their cootie monster teacher leaders. We’ve pointed out again and again the fact that kids don’t perform well during mornings, the importance of multiple recesses for younger kids, and other reality-based solutions to real-world problems.
You instead decided to rant about giving government funds to charter schools and how much teachers are overpaid.
What I’m saying is there’s a credibility gap and you’re stuck on the side with all the fire.
During one, he’d jump off the top of the jungle gym, and, by the time he hit the ground, the supervising teachers would be all over him for breaking the safety rules.
Ha! As if! You’re usually lucky to have a single teacher on recess duty and they’re usually running around so much preventing kids from doing something fatal that it’d probably be only a 5% chance they’d even fucking see it.
Fuck, it’s parents whining about that so much that made it so every modern Elementary school playground would gladly let a kid leap off the the top of the jungle gym. What with it being at best a foot high over soft foam padding and all.
Oh, sorry, this was another thinly veiled “bitches are preventing proud manly boys with their firm buttocks from leaping into the arms of balding older men” type thing, wasn’t it?
Sorry to stomp on your erection with reality. Won’t let it happen again.
He’d get in a serious wrestling match with his buddy Falstaff, and, by the time he got him in a headlock, there’d be suspensions all around.
Wrestling match, beating up Falstaff for his lunch money, same difference.
And not to bring original work too much into Bobo’s fanfic here, but in the play, Prince Henry commits public drunkeness, plans a major robbery loudly in public, and harasses the equivalent of a police officer. If he wasn’t the heir to the throne, he would have been in gaol (it’s extra British) so fast, his head would have spun.
And suddenly I see why he didn’t go with any of those other better known characters for his Shakespeare analogy. Oh, Bobo, your endless erection for the return of the monarchy is truly a delight for both young and old!
First, Henry would withdraw. He’d decide that the official school culture is for wimps and softies and he’d just disengage.
Yeah, then he’d call them pussy faggots and he’d flip his cool rebel hair back and punch that stupid queer kid with the colored hair. And then he’d totally pull me up on his motorcycle and we’d have like a billion babies but not gay faggot babies. And we’d talk all night about how much we hate women for having all those cooties and trying to remove our raw masculine energy with their feminazi ray beams. And he’d tell me that robot aliens are the keenest and then he’d hold me in his strong arms and I’ll just die! SQUEE!
On a completely separate note, I wonder how many problems with our current mainstream media could be solved by just buying every national pundit a male prostitute to work out their daddy issues and repressed worship of “manly shows of power”.
In kindergarten, he’d wonder why he just couldn’t be good. By junior high, he’d lose interest in trying and his grades would plummet.
So, this is supposed to be the big “reasonable centrist” explanation for why boys are doing as well as they always did, but now girls are doing slightly better in statistically insignificant ways?
That boys are just too busy “rebellin'” and being all James Dean to “care about school”? Cause, A) no. And B) heh heh, boy are you going to be backing up at Warp Factor 9 when you realize that you stumbled onto one of the big reasons that black test scores tend to drag.
And no, you don’t get to steal B for the boys. Blacks view education as the enemy because their schools are deliberately underfunded, they are looked upon by their culture as uneducable, and the entire curriculum centers around white history, white authors, and white grammar.
Seeing as how the history is nearly 100% male, the authors are nearly 100% male, and the structure of the class favors male participation… well, I don’t think you get to argue that because the English class once featured a female author, it explains all male test scores ever.
Then he’d rebel.
Well, of course, he’d rebel. Of course, he’d be moody. Of course, he’d be all emo and view minor drama as the be all end all of his entire life.
Cause that’s what a teenager IS!
I was more cynical as a teen. I was more emo. I tuned off to the “official channel” man and was gonna “fuck the system”.
Cause I was an overdramatic punk going through the same high school angst that every other fucking kid in high school goes through.
Fuck, at least the poor over-structured straight boy doesn’t have to worry about how they’re going to sneak that abortion past their parents because they didn’t learn about condoms until after they and Joey did the deed. Or having to group up with the other queer kids so you can cover all the angles if the footballers decide they want to get out some aggression on an acceptable target.
If the official high school culture was über-nurturing, he’d be über-crude.
Or… kids are “crude” because social standards evolve and thus the next generation is less likely than the last to view certain words as “off-limits” simply because some fundies decide to have fainting spells about them.
Cause they actually are smarter than the average conservative adult and thus ask simple questions like “since when did ‘you just don’t’ become an acceptable reason to artificially limit my vocabulary?”
If it valued cooperation and sensitivity, he’d devote his mental energies to violent video games and aggressive music.
Yes, the feminazis gone wild culture of our school is definitely the reason that kids listen to the hippity-hop and play those violent vidjeo games.
Or… maybe, just maybe, every popular youth culture is viewed as “the great evil brainwashing our kids away from Jesus” by the old fogies. It’s not like this same argument has been recycled about rock music, D&D, computers, the internet, metal, punk, hip-hop, etc…
I look forward to joining the fogies in COUGH COUGH years ranting about how these new hologram doohickeys is the reason that those young punks don’t respect their elders any more, dagnabbit! Also, GET OFF MY LAWN you whippersnappers!
If college wanted him to be focused and tightly ambitious, he’d exile himself into a lewd and unsupervised laddie subculture.
Yeah, if those mean evil feminazis didn’t want him to succeed on his own merits and give him the skills to survive in the real world, he’d… become Scottish?
Sorry Bobo, but you lost me on that one. It’s like you reached a point where you knew you’d actually have to use a concrete example of something that kids actually do and realized you had nothing. So you called up 1-900-SCOT-NOW and just transcribed the first word you heard after the bit about peeking under kilts.
He’d have vague high ambitions but no realistic way to realize them.
Wow, if only there was some sort of mean old group that could provide a structured but engaging setting to present potential options to discover ambition and the skills necessary to realize them. They could interact with the kids from a young age, building different skills as they went to cover a wide variety of subjects.
That’d be great.
Cause then we could overburden them with bullshit testing statistics that ensured that school was boring and uninteresting and kids immediately checked out.
Take that liberals!
Day to day, he’d look completely adrift.
I’m strongly resisting the urge to throw back the “personal responsibility” malarkey back in their faces.
Cause every time some filthy mud person, poor person, queer, or woman was legitimately fucked over by the school system or a hostile corporate culture and felt abandoned and adrift, you fuckers are first in line to argue that they should have pulled themselves up by their bootstraps and started a Fortune 500 with their lunch money in the third grade.
Fuck, as if. You fuckers are first in line to say it’s just how the world works and we mean liberals are just trying to deny reality by assuming that women could do as well as men, blacks could do as well as whites, and poor people could do as well as the children of the rich when given equal attention, resources, and care.
Shock of shocks that the first time men do slightly worse than women, you’re instantly searching for proof that every whiny teenager’s emo rant about bitches keeping him down is yet another brick in the wall of the feminazi conspiracy.
It’s almost like those excuses were thinly veiled sexism, racism, etc…
Who could have known?
This is roughly what’s happening in schools across the Western world. The education system has become culturally cohesive, rewarding and encouraging a certain sort of person: one who is nurturing, collaborative, disciplined, neat, studious, industrious and ambitious.
Gosh, with those thinly veiled dog whistles, I couldn’t possibly guess what sexist cliche you could be talking about there.
So I’m gonna go with… native americans? Queer latinos? Ooh, Lumberjacks! Got to be lumberjacks!
On a separate note, they’re ceding “industrious and ambitious” to female stereotypes now? So, what’s supposedly left for men in this not at all anti-male view of the world? Being lazy, filthy violent cavemen that can’t co-habitate the same space as other people?
And yet you still insist that feminists are the man-haters? It’s almost like I have a regular meme I use to describe moments like this. I think it’s Space Cake Robot.
People who don’t fit this cultural ideal respond by disengaging and rebelling.
Only applies to MENZ, the most oppressed of dominant groups!
Excuse offer does not extend to queer kids, kids from broken homes, kids struggling with addiction, vulnerable kids seeking external reinforcements of self-esteem, non-white kids, or uppity feminists and proto-feminists criticizing dominant culture.
Far from all, but many of the people who don’t fit in are boys.
Well naturally… except, not in the slightest bit. Oh sure, boys get the most attention about it, cause boys are still seen as the only ones who matter.
Fuck, the performance of boys hasn’t changed a fucking inch and people are clutching their pearls to break our already fucked up education system even more just to re-give them an unfair artificial advantage.
But yeah, that phrase way more describes… well, every minority group known to man. People legitimately excluded in the forced-interaction culture that is school, especially with how power structures tend to come down on the side of bullies against those being bullied. Fuck, for a lot of minority groups, the school itself participates in the bullying, like with the crackdowns on gay couples at proms or fucking with the trans kids.
And as far as the “don’t fit in” thing, way more women suffer from that. What with things like tampons, pads, and pain medication for cramps being viewed as dangerous foreign objects. Not to mention the way female sexuality, female health, and so on are treated by schools. And I’m not even going to get into the horribly inadequate awareness and responses by schools to problems of rape, stalking, sexual harassment and so on. At least the male bully victims have some genuine recourse and options reliably available to resolve things.
A decade or so ago, people started writing books and articles on the boy crisis. At the time, the evidence was disputable and some experts pushed back.
Yes, a decade ago, when girls were, when given the same resources and a culture that was less hostile to the idea of female scholarship and accomplishment, catching up in test scores even in “male subjects” like math and the sciences.
Then, a bunch of disingenuous hacks started sounding the alarms because it disproved decades of useless pseudoscience about how test scores proved the inherent inferiority of women and the uselessness of educating them.
And they haven’t shut up since, hoping that loudness would make up for actually having a legitimate point beyond, “bu-bu-but wimminz is supposed to be teh stupid ones. Unfair!”
Since then, the evidence that boys are falling behind has mounted. The case is closed. The numbers for boys get worse and worse.
Get used to seeing the words “falling behind” a lot as we go forward from here. Never just “falling” or “dropping”. Or other words that would demonstrate say a legitimate “decrease” below what was suspected or a real drop in male test scores below what they’ve always been.
That might be because no fucking research shows that. Not even the wingnut wishful thinking “research papers”. The best they can do is men falling behind in “relative scores”. Because the “problem” isn’t so much men failing as women succeeding.
Now, if I believed in the fulfillment of ironic destiny, I’d use this to argue that maybe women are just naturally smarter than men and said whiners should just deal with it and stop trying to rewrite science.
But then, I’m not a complete asshole who is ignorant of what the studies actually say. And sadly, the truth is rather mundane. Women are doing slightly better at non-significant levels and a lot of the slight gap is caused by the fact that girls in school push themselves harder because low test scores mean more psychologically thanks to cultural sexism.
What I mean is if a boy scores a C in math, then who the fuck cares? It’s a passing score. But if a girl scores a C in math, then it’s proof that women just aren’t as good at math and why is she even bothering.
It means higher stress levels, more effort put into studying and performance, and sadly increased onsets of premature surrendering on subjects if it seems like “they just don’t get it”.
Real science.
It’s like weedkiller to dramatic narrative.
By 12th grade, male reading test scores are far below female test scores. The eminent psychologist Michael Thompson mentioned at the Aspen Ideas Festival a few days ago that 11th-grade boys are now writing at the same level as 8th-grade girls. Boys used to have an advantage in math and science, but that gap is nearly gone.
Yes, because it turned out all the sexists were wrong and women weren’t “inherently inferior” in those subjects and are starting to demonstrate that by well, doing just as fucking well as the boys have traditionally done.
It’s almost like Bobo and his fellow masculinity worshipers are unable to handle this basic feminist truth and are desperate to discover how Poison Ivy is managing to seduce the boys into deliberately using girl names on their tests to make girls look better.
Also, that’s the worst issue of Gotham City Sirens EVER.
Boys are much more likely to have discipline problems.
Well, yes, boys are more likely to be bullies. Heck, we can get even more specific and note that nominally straight white Christian boys are more likely to be bullies.
It’s almost like bullies tend to view themselves as guardians of “normal culture” against perceived slights against the “natural order”. And thus seek to enforce a narrow range of life options by targeting those who are seen as deviant.
NOT.
Just joshing ya, it’s actually that the mean bulldyke hall monitors deliberately target men who are busy looking super cool and sexy to randomly drag to the principal’s office for no reason.
And no, I don’t at all feel the need to point out that wingnuts such as Bobo usually cite disciplinary numbers to argue that education is wasted on those jungle people from the inner cities.
An article as far back as 2004 in the magazine Educational Leadership found that boys accounted for nearly three-quarters of the D’s and F’s.
And before girls started proving sexist assumptions wrong through their performances, “scientific” sexists argued this was explained by the fact that men have a wider range than women do. And so are more likely to be represented at the extremes of accomplishment, i.e. that they have the most morons and the most geniuses. And that said “scientific” fact explains why men seem to be over-represented in halls of power and at the top of companies and why such over-representation was totally natural and not at all due to sexism. Oddly enough the “moron” side of the argument was instantly dropped later on in arguments in favor of arguing that every man is stronger, better, faster, smarter than every single woman because that .01% performance difference between the sexes is proof of inherent superiority and whatnot.
I guess now that even that has been demonstrated as complete wishful bullshit, we’re moving on to arguing that said Fs are just the result of vindictive female teachers who just can’t handle their white male students’…
MAN FURY!!!!!!!!
Yeah, you bitches can’t step to the octuple exclamation point! It’s the MANLIEST of MAN POINTS!
Some colleges are lowering the admissions requirements just so they can admit a decent number of men.
So… men are receiving affirmative action then?
Well, okay, no they are not. The “colleges” skewing the numbers because OMG WHAT ABOUT TEH MENZ are basically fundie wingnut clown colleges and a handful of others run by sexist morons that believe this nonsense about “oh noes, teh wimminz iz taking over”.
Mainly because it’s an insult that makes a joke of the very real purpose affirmative action serves.
But hey, why waste the opportunity to note that conservatives are suddenly behind infamous dog-whistle “affirmative action” when they think it can be used to artificially give an advantage to the dominant group.
It’s almost like they view all of culture’s job to be enforcing artificial hierarchies or something.
Even so, men make up just over 40 percent of college students. Two million fewer men graduated from college over the past decade than women. The performance gap in graduate school is even higher.
And yet TEH MENZ proportion of enrollees and graduates from undergraduate and graduate schools hasn’t changed more than a stastically insignificant amount of percentage points in 50 years.
Actually I tell a lie, it’s actually gone up a little bit as more people in general have been enrolling in college.
It’s almost like disingenuous sexists are trying to turn women doing well into an artificial problem so they can try and bring back more ardent sexism in the classrooms to try and force women back into their roles as broodmares for the Republic.
And that’s going to fail. Miserably. Women have gotten used to academic accomplishment. Most young girls expect they will have the same options for a career that boys do. You lost this battle… forever.
So weep, my little alien robot. Weep into your underaged kidnap victim’s lap. Cause those hollowed days when you could pretend your edifice of sexism proved the inherent superiority of those sexy male forms you masturbate to every night are well over.
Some of the decline in male performance may be genetic.
Ha ha ha ha! Go fuck yourself.
Seriously, your bullshit “genetic differences” is burning to death on the living room rug and you’re still trying to sell it like it was fucking gold.
I’m sorry, but I believe you are now officially out of excuses. Men and women aren’t meaningfully different.
DEAL WITH IT.
The information age rewards people who mature early, who are verbally and socially sophisticated, who can control their impulses. Girls may, on average, do better at these things. After all, boys are falling behind not just in the U.S., but in all 35 member-nations of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development.
Of course, that darn internet… somehow erased how learning and information has worked for decades upon centuries… because women don’t spend all their time surfing for gay porn? Except for the ones who do in order to get material for their Edward/Jacob slashfic?
Any more straws you’d care to grasp for?
But the big story here is cultural and moral.
OF COURSE!
Wait? What? How?
Praising Jesus more in the classrooms will somehow trick girls into sucking again so the natural order will be restored?
If schools want to re-engage Henry, they can’t pretend they can turn him into a reflective Hamlet just by feeding him his meds and hoping he’ll sit quietly at story time.
Again with the meds.
You know what Bobo, fine, I’m going to take a classroom full of ADHD sufferers, deny them medication and put you in charge of educating them. I’m then going to give them all a standard timed test, which is of course the best way to determine teacher ability and if you score lower than the average set by the best schools, we’ll put about 70,000 volts through your testicles.
I’m sure, with your respect for the natural rambunctious spirit of our fine youth, you can avoid that shock way better than some overpaid union thug of a teacher.
If schools want to educate a fiercely rambunctious girl, they can’t pretend they will successfully tame her by assigning some of those exquisitely sensitive Newbery award-winning novellas.
What the fuck is your problem with the Newberry award? Did they give one to a non-white author or something? Cause it looks like the 2012 award went to a white guy.
Also, not to put the knee in the “Applebee’s salad bar”, but the Newberry medal is only given to full children’s books, NOT novellas. Sure, a children’s book may be as long as a novella, but it still counts as a full fucking book.
But hey, it’s okay. We don’t expect you to know things like that with your tiny male brain. Hey, don’t get so hormonal about it! It’s just what science says.
Social engineering is just not that easy.
With all the IT’S ALWAYS PROJECTION wingnut essays about evil liberal social engineering rewriting our DNA or whatnot, it just makes me wish it were true.
Imagine if liberals made a collective conscious effort to legitimately change culture for the better. I mean, sure, we all do our small parts, fighting our small battles to make tomorrow suck slightly less than yesterday. But imagine if there really were a global social engineering effort on the levels that wingnuts like to pretend we have.
And yeah, that’s quickly becoming the default reaction to ever wingnut scare story as of late. Fuck, if we just strung together every wingnut’s idea of Hell on Earth, we’d be pretty fucking close to a genuine utopian society.
Schools have to engage people as they are.
NAH! REALLY?!?
Gawrsh, if only there had been some tireless group of education reform activists fighting for decades to try and turn this into a reality!
Heck, I bet said people would have instituted a whole platform of minor improvements. Like say trying to reduce the impact of sexism and racism so that women and minorities could start demonstrating their actual abilities and prove the assumptions of their inferiority wrong! Or heck, maybe even getting kids who physically couldn’t concentrate on lessons and tests some sort of medical aid in order to be able to demonstrate their abilities and potential and thus have a chance of making it to college and beyond! Why they might even try and find new and interesting ways to engage students of all different backgrounds and try and encourage everyone to give it their all and not to give up.
Sadly, such people do not live on the cold metal planet of Sirius 6 where Bobo spends his hibernation periods. And thus they must not exist here.
QED liberals, QED.
That requires leaders who insist on more cultural diversity in school: not just teachers who celebrate cooperation, but other teachers who celebrate competition; not just teachers who honor environmental virtues, but teachers who honor military virtues; not just curriculums that teach how to share, but curriculums that teach how to win and how to lose; not just programs that work like friendship circles, but programs that work like boot camp.
Noooooo.
That would require cultural diversity; varied teaching styles that also encourage cooperation versus the usual style of throwing everyone into competition over grades; introducing environmental values into the usual rigmarole of reciting famous battles of history. It would require emphasizing teamwork and sharing instead of the usual blank divisions of winner and loser, high grades and low, cool kids and outsiders, and smart and dumb. And…
No, wait, sorry, what was that last one? You want schools to be more like boot camp?!?
What the flying fuck on a pogo stick?
What possible malfunctioning diode could ever have compelled you to include that?
I mean, leaving aside the fact that gym classes are already run like boot camps, complete with making fun of the out-of-shape and associating health exercise with shame, degradation, and cruelty. Not to mention the apparent assumption that schools are actually run like episodes of My Little Pony. It’s just insane. “Like a boot camp” is a bad thing.
And deliberately so. Boot camps are deliberately terrible because they are designed to create such an abusive twisted environment that one is willing to kill another living breathing human being rather than suffer ever having to go back.
I mean, sure, all of this might as well have been BLAH BLAH BLAH anyways. What with it being the bullshit filler to argue for rolling back the reforms away from diversity of teaching methods and towards the sexist, racist, brutal methods that were in place before.
But fuck, have some damn standards Bobo and don’t literally argue that your side is in favor of Boot Camps, Lord of the Flies dystopias, and some sort of Battle Royale/Hunger Games thing.
I don’t think any amount of fear over the taint of “femininity” is going to get the organics to support that instead.
The basic problem is that schools praise diversity but have become culturally homogeneous.
I don’t think that word means what you think it means.
But hey, since you’ve been rapidly abandoning any remaining pretense that you aren’t a wingnut alien robot posing as a centrist, might as well try Jonah’s shtick of arguing that “liberals are the real Xs” in the face of reality and grammatical consistency.
The education world has become a distinct subculture, with a distinct ethos and attracting a distinct sort of employee. Students who don’t fit the ethos get left out.
…
Uh…
That was a Freudian slip if I ever did see one.
Shall we talk more about how those darn employees, the students, are being left out of the corporate culture of school?
Little Prince Hal has a lot going on inside. He’s not the unfeeling, uncommunicative, testosterone-driven cretin of common boy stereotype. He’s just inspired by a different honor code. He doesn’t find much inspiration in school, but he should.
So, what you’re saying is the Prince Hal is the Gary Stu of your new Harry Potter fanfic?
Cause, in the actual play, Prince Hal was a machiavellian fuck with a stupidly over-complicated bullshit story to cover up the “he was a spoiled rich brat who happened to be on the right side of a famous English victory”. And especially dramatize and cover up that said victory had a fuck a lot more to do with the importance of England’s longbows than anything else, including King Henry’s “manly gravitas”.
But hey, seeing as how Bobo’s robotic diodes go into convulsions if he goes more than a day without sucking the cock of the God-Kings he wishes were still around, I can see how he might have missed that shit.
Sigh.
If only there was some kind of drug that could help him concentrate through those difficult times.
‘Shorter’ concept created by Daniel Davies and perfected by Elton Beard. Thrusting my strap-on into Charles Pierce’s sloppy seconds is invented by me. We are aware of all Internet traditions.™
Me? Frist?
This is even more epic than Pierce’s takedown.
Then he’d rebel.
Kinda hard to do when you’re in succession for the throne.
Hal had one great line, and it’s not one calculated to make him likeable: “I know thee not, old man.” in context, it’s heartbreaking.
If girls don’t do as well as boys, it’s because girls are inferior; if boys don’t do as well as boys it’s girls’ fault…somehow. Also the female teachers and the feminization of schools, although teaching younger kids has always been a predominantly female-filled job. The mind boggles. Yes, even this soft, female brain.
Also, I like the “boys are just rough and tough REBELS who can’t be CONSTRAINED by your stupid rules, MAN!” refrain. THAT. IS. PRECIOUS.
My boy isn’t rough and tough. He’s rather squishable.
BTW, don’t read the comments if your opinion of the human race is already pretty low.
My boy is a fricking tank. Frankly, I’m kinda scared.
alrighty then…i found something today that is pissing me off beyond…just about anything…slightly on topic since it has to do with honor…well ‘conscience’ at least…k-lo really hits it out of the park with this one… and i may have to make my first comment ever on nro…
Henry V is one of Shakespeare’s most appealing characters.
in the production i saw, i would have to agree with bobo in that henry was played by adrian lester…rowr…
But suppose Henry went to an American school.
Dear God, that is the stupidest premise EVAR.
P.S. rowdy, spoiled kid doesn’t get as good an education as he might’ve, disrupts others so they can’t, either = not the kid’s fault, not the parents’ fault, but SOCIETY’S… hooray for personal responsibility, right? Offer only valid for rich white aristobrats.
omg, bbkf, the woman in the k-lo piece sounds like a blithering idiot. I would not pay for her contraception, but I’d be willing to pay for her to get more education, because DAMN that is weapons grade stupid.
I would not pay for her contraception
I’d pay for her contraception- don’t want someone that stupid raising kids.
My boy is a fricking tank. Frankly, I’m kinda scared.
Look on the bright side, there won’t be any stuck pickle jars in your life!
Which is a fear that kept me up nights.
This is roughly what’s happening in schools across the Western world. The education system has become culturally cohesive, rewarding and encouraging a certain sort of person: one who is nurturing, collaborative, disciplined, neat, studious, industrious and ambitious.
employer’s HATE this kind of person…
I’m pretty sure VS can take on any pickle jar in the world, without needing anyone’s assistance by using the single best pickle jar opener ever invented. The hammer.
i really, really want to make the comment over there that perhaps her conscience and missionary zeal would be better put to use by working to ensure that boys aren’t raped by their priests anymore rather than getting her knickers in a twist about ZOMG people take birth control!!! this is the second piece i’ve read today where obama=way too much government intervention in personal lives, but for some reason miss omaha stacy or whatever the fuck her name is thinks she and her church have the right to intervene in MY personal life? and see nothing wrong with micromanaging their parishioners right down to which spouse to choose and which career path to take?! and their religious freedom is being denied how?
also, should i point out to joyce in housekeeping that wearing capris is really pointless if you wear long socks with them?
If any of you do get around to commenting at NRO, be sure to point out that if omaha steaky does drop her insurance she will not only be stuck paying her medical bills out of pocket but will also have the added expense of the Obomneycare mandated penalty/tax to pay. That ought to stir things up over there.
That was…perfect. Exquisite. I’m in awe. Fuck, I’m jealous. Thank you for not shirking this job because Mr. Pierce broke the ground. I’ve seen Mr. Brooks get his ass kicked before. Hell, I’ve seen him stomped bloody and left for dead. No, this was surgical; calm, cool, methodical and precise.
It won’t affect his Brook’s bottom line, of course. He’ll keep getting paid for brainfarts. Top People will invite him to dinner, and listen raptly to his patter. He’ll die rich as fuck.
You will have to be content with my admiration. I can’t afford to give you any money, and it’s 24/7 Ramen noodles at my house just now, though you are cordially invited (bring beer). One hopes you won’t die completely penniless.
But I’ll remember this one for a long time. When I need to give someone an example of “how to properly deconstruct a bullshit argument”, I’ll show them this.
Bravo, Cerberus. Bravo.
You might also point out that if her insurance premiums weren’t also paying for Viagra there might not be as much need for it to pay for birth control.
Hate it when Bobo appears to be on my side even just a little bit . There are real problems with public schools and our society in general being rigid, conformist, authoritarian, and linear beyond all reason. If I were King, children would not be herded strictly by age and would not be evaluated by a single set of developmental guidelines by age and grade and measured as wanting when they don’t fit the profile of what the corporate ideal for their economic and social class is.
Check this out:
http://psycnet.apa.org/journals/ccp/63/6/1032/
Six months is a LONG time in the development of a child. I have noticed myself, adults being particularly hard on physically big four and five year old boys as if they should behave according to their size. Many of those four and five year old boys are very sensitive emotionally t oo and I hate seeing them being expected to “buck up”.
Everybody is where they are at, and the more we treat a person— especially a child— as deviant or defective for not meeting a mean, the more damage we do.
Also there are generally developmental differences between boys and girls. By high school, all the girls have started menstruating and stopped growing, all that’s left is maturing and boob biggening. The body I had in high school, was not dramatically different from the body I had in the sixth grade. Anyone could have picked it up out of a line-up. Boys will keep growing physically for years and often this growth is consuming enough to require a temporary culture of couches and calories. Even their voices change significantly. They get hair on their FACES that is fuzzy like a faux mustache, as if to mock them!
At times, though kids may be in the same grade, their experiences of themselves and adult reactions to them may be wildly disparate. The simple fact or being more or less in line with sexist stereotypes by preference and temperament has an impact on us all and always will for us, but that doesn’t mean that we shouldn’t curb the extremes of what is considered “masculine” or “feminine” according to the personal toxicity or anti-social nature of it.
20-minute snatches of recess.
I do miss those young ladies.
Henry V is one of Shakespeare’s most appealing characters.
In reality, Henry V was a great general but a rather shitty king.
Hell if it wasn’t for the line “once more unto the breach, dear friends, once more” and of course the St. Crispin’s Day speech, it would have been remarkable as one of the only Shakespeare plays to produce no memorable lines.
“O for a muse of fire…”
From Charles’ piercing of Bobo:
I hope Judy Blume beats the crap out of him at recess.
My vision of the future is Judy Blume’s boot stamping on Bobo’s face. Forever.
reform themselves into the dreaded Mango-shoggoth and destroy the world
Okay, so no sleep or fresh produce for a while. Thanks for that.
To see hope and progress, one only need to compare the difference between the way American boys and girls were treated in grade school in the sixties and seventies to the way they are treated now to see that there has been much improvement.
One look at my hero— the little girl who had the controlled meltdown over pink toys at Walmart— demonstrates how much of the yoke of sexist identification we’ve thrown off, though it still tries it’s damnedest to yoke us with stupid shit like a nauseating preponderance of pink toys for girls.
Had I been in the sixth grade this year, instead of feeling oppressively embarrassed and ashamed of dirty old men leering at me in the donut shop, I and similar girls could say, WHAT THE FUCK ARE YOU LOOKING AT, PERV! YOU HAVE A THING FOR TWELVE YEAR OLD GIRLS?! Pointing, laughing, and shooting them the evil eye would be all that was needed for a follow up.
And little boys similarly projected into the future would not have to listen to themselves being denigrated for not wanting to physically fight and win every conflict as if that was a useful skill to have as an adult and being an asshole was a good thing, and wouldn’t have to live in mortal fear of being labeled “a pussy” so much for not wanting to go through lives all fisty all the time.
We do treat children a bit better than we used to, generally speaking and in many ways, it’s panning out well. Recently, while watching some television shows on Netflix, I’ve noticed that “dude” is now unisex. It may sound silly, but it took a lot of time and energy to overcome gender stratification to the degree that “dude” could become unisex. Anyone who remember what a controversy it was to not use “he/his” reflectively or to use “person” instead of “man”, knows what I’m talking about. “Bitch” is also unisex. It’s the little things.
Well, Brooks created two straw men and sent them into battle and all he has to show for it is a pile of straw covered in horseshit. You’d think it not too heavy a lift, like finding out if Applebees really has salad bars, to brush up on late Medieval education systems to determine what kind of education the real Henry V may have actually had instead of relying on a fictional account that doesn’t concern itself with that subject. Of course, that also ignores that the individual education given to a pampered royal prince almost a millennium ago would have little relevance to a modern educational system designed for everyone. He doesn’t even bother shaping his medieval straw man. It’s just a wad of grass to throw at the one he creates out of rightwing talking points and assumptions which is supposed to represent a modern educational system owned lock, stock and barrel by the liberal elites. The “back in my day” angle on this whole non-issue has been done and debunked a thousand times so Brooks treats us to some really pointless wankery disguised as highbrow conservative analysis, because y’know analogizing anything to Shakespeare means he’s really smart and probably wears a bowtie and knows what turning boys into manly men is really about.
And those wussified French won the Hundred Years War, so nyah!
And those wussified French won the Hundred Years War, so nyah!
Only after they let a skinny little girl lead them, so there’s that.
Jesus Christ, is this guy lazy. He can’t even be bothered to quote anybody beyond one vague paraphrase, much less remove his butt from that no doubt quite comfortable NYT office chair and stick his head into, you know, a school. Instead he just barfs up a lot of recycled stuff from Christina Hoff Sommers and some other people I don’t give a fuck about, sprinkles in some utterly inane Shakespeare allusions, and congratulates himself on a good day’s work.*
*If you recognized any phrases from my last comment on this subject, congratulations. You have even less of a life than I do.
I wouldn’t write anything like the Brooks column, but medicating kids for ADD and ADHD does make me uncomfortable. I don’t doubt it helps them to meet societal expectations, or that such expectations are reasonable, given that meeting them is the path to functional adulthood.
I just can’t understand how those kids have disorders. We didn’t evolve to sit in chairs and study for hours on end. We aren’t made to read endlessly — it ruins our eyes, regardless of how we’re raised or whether we enjoy it. Yet here we are, in societies where going half-blind in pursuit of an education is a viable choice, as opposed to traipsing around out-of-doors learning to hunt and identify edible plants (which would constitute a proper education under different circumstances, and would place considerable demands on our minds; who’d be labeled as having a disorder then?).
By nature and nurture, we manipulate symbols and abstractions, and I’d like to see those capacities developed in all children. The particular ways we educate children, however, are generally so imperfect, so obviously ill-suited to childrens’ individual needs, that it seems grotesque to label the kids as disordered. We have social institutions and expectations that are disordered. (I realize the one type of disorder is only roughly analogous to the other.) So fine, medicate your kids. Maybe it’s for the best, and it’s not my decision. I just think the disorder lies between human nature and our social structures, not to mention between structures (family/school/work etc.), and not in some portion of the children. Alternately, if these settings cause the disorders IN children, we might best change the settings, the way we’d remove lead paint from their nurseries.
I agree. If they had Ritalin when I was a kid I would have been the first one on it.
The particular ways we educate children, however, are generally so imperfect, so obviously ill-suited to childrens’ individual needs, that it seems grotesque to label the kids as disordered.
As Cerebus pointed out in her post, conservatives have done more than anyone to fuck up public education, with No Child Left Behind and the whole standardized-testing-is-everything culture. It’s ludicrous and infuriating for a useless windbag like Brooks to take up space in the New York Times pontificating that the problem with education is that feminazis won’t let kids wrestle on the playground.
This is roughly what’s happening in schools across the Western world. The education system has become culturally cohesive, rewarding and encouraging a certain sort of person: one who is nurturing, collaborative, disciplined, neat, studious, industrious and ambitious.
Okay, I can understand why some of these things are regarded as faggy and liberal, but… really? “Disciplined,” “neat,” “industrious” and “ambitious” are considered evil things by conservatives now? WTFITS?
Well, those traits are now considered feminine, I guess. And who wants to be like a fucking GIRL?
Also, I like the “boys are just rough and tough REBELS who can’t be CONSTRAINED by your stupid rules, MAN!” refrain. THAT. IS. PRECIOUS.
Wait. Adolescent rebellion is now considered a wingnut virtue? So, all those “kids these days” with the hair and the clothes and the doing drugs and the drunk driving and the rebellion against all authority figures and the listening to violently themed rap music and wearing Che Guevara shirts, those are the new conservative icons? I’ll be a monkey’s uncle.
Well, those traits are now considered feminine, I guess.
Discipline? What does he think they’re beating into those new recruits at “boot camp?” What does he think “the military virtues” are based on? Ambition? By all the gods of Olympus, AMBITION? I thought ambition was what drove Mitt Romney and Herman Cain and Donald Trump and all these other Job Creating Captains Of Industry to become Job Creating Captains Of Industry?
Bobo, you dumb motherfucker…
From Raw Story
Just let me have the weed, assholes. There is no law or moral code that says these bastards have to profit from my pain.
I am disturbed to find that the required link to Booboos in Paradise is missing. Such slackery is due, no doubt, to the author having been treated as a boy when younger and hence having rebelled and shit.
And who wants to be like a fucking GIRL?
Speaking only for myself, I like fucking girls. YMMV.
I am disturbed to find that the required link to Booboos in Paradise is missing. Such slackery is due, no doubt, to the author having been treated as a boy when younger and hence having rebelled and shit.
I just can’t help it.
Curse you genetic destiny!
“Speaking only for myself, I like fucking girls. YMMV.”
This is a case where a bit of punctuation clarifies alot. A fucking girl is different than a fucking-girl. Not that that’s all any one of them is good for.
An AIDS baby is just sad. But try lustily exclaiming: AIDS, BABY!
I find it infectious.
This is a case where a bit of punctuation clarifies a lot.
My favorite: The penis, mightier than the sword.
Oh yeah. But you don’t want a direct face-off.
The penis must move amongst the people as a fish swims in the sea.
What is the sound of one penis
clappingfapping?Golem Heart said,
July 10, 2012 at 2:40
I heart Golem Heart – said it better than I ever could.
Thanks, Alison!
Also too, doesn’t he know that teenage boys are all fighty and shit because of the waves of unaccustomed testosterone flooding into their systems? Hormones can be hell, folks, and there’s nothing to make a body less want to study, boy or girl, than having a rush of hormones and finding the room is suddenly full of bonkable bodies.
All right. Just read Brooks’s piece. Deep breaths…
…I’ve discovered in recent years that nothing makes me lose respect for someone faster than the phrase “David Brooks makes a good point.” No, he doesn’t. He never makes a good point because he doesn’t actually know anything – he just knows how to fake it. I still can’t believe that they let him write about small-town Midwestern schools as though he’d ever actually been in one. Seriously, that crap about how us rural folk are cool with vulture capitalism because we “can afford just about anything that is for sale”? I could spend a thousand words dissecting that one statement.
But back to the point at hand. I suppose that, in some sense, I fit the mold of Brooks’s teen-drama Henry V. I was nurtured in a touchy-feely Montessori preschool, and I would go on – in my high school years – to end the school day by blasting Battle of Los Angeles in my car as I drove to Dillon’s to rent The Suffering. That’s not the mark of a lost male, as Brooks seems to think – it’s just what teenagers were like in the early Aughts. It certainly wasn’t because the schools were too “nurturing” or “collaborative.” They weren’t like that at all.
I never understood where this right-wing delusion of the touchy-feely school comes from. I would have loved it if it were like that. My high school was typical, in that it was very much like the world of Henry V – stratified to the point of being feudal. I got through it reasonable unscathed because I was smart, and that was a skill I could market to the popular kids and the administration. But then there were the kids who were not similarly skilled, who stood out because they were poor or came from broken families or simply behaved in an unusual, unacceptible way. Everyone assumed they would fail, everyone treated them like failures, and after enough time, they began to act like failures. It certainly wasn’t because they read too much Madeleine L’Engle.
Were these kids mostly boys? I suppose, but then again there would be. My tiny town contained the “boy’s home”, the last stop for juvenile offenders whom even their families assumed were beyond help. Some of these boys were outright sociopaths, but others were fundamentally decent kids who just had some bad breaks. The schools didn’t fail them, society did.
But enough about that.
As to Brooks’s comments about “military virtues” and “boot camp”: I suspect he just heard a talk about gender-segregated schools. I saw a report on those when I was in middle school. The girl’s classroom was decorated in the style of any other classroom of the time, with desks placed together so that the students could work together. The boy’s classroom was a bare-walled box with no desks, save the teacher’s. The teacher yelled at the students for a while, then they’d take a break for “activity time”, in which the boys beat the shit out of each other for a few minutes. It looked a little like prison. I was mortified, because I realized that had I been born a few years earlier, I might have ended up in a place like that. At an inch shorter and a good five pounds lighter than even the next smallest kid, I had enough trouble with normal recess, let alone a class setup that had “rough-housing” breaks. Given that situation, my only options would have been to either grow my hair long and tell the school that my name was “Diana”, or keep a sharp No. 2 tucked up my sleeve at all times, just in case shit went down.
So in conclusion: Fuck you, David Brooks.
Yes, Alison. The room needn’t have anything in it. A stiff wind can distract a boy measurably, let’s say, but it doesn’t take a breeze. It’s the hormones.
We should challenge kids at that age, but to sort them as we do is just senseless. Sorting for college is largely a test for social class, from what I see. It does weed out some upper-class kids, while weeding almost all the lowers, and virtually anyone who had a tough time of it growing up.
Looking at our govt. leaders and captains of industry, the sorting is not working for the greater good.
Very interesting, D Johnston.
Very interesting, D Johnston.
i find d.j.’s description of small midwest schools to be correct…and in these smaller towns and schools, your last name ALWAYS fucking matters…
Heh heh, he said ‘stiff wind’.
But you’re quite right – kids need all the challenging we can give them, because while they’re young they soak up learning like a sponge, and actively enjoy it if it’s done right. That’s probably why a number of futuristic sci-fi books postulate different systems of dealing with kids – I’d name a couple, but they’re refusing to spring to mind. Oh, there’s “Rite of Passage” by Alexei Panshin, and “Woman on the Edge of Time” by Marge Piercy.
… high ambitions but no realistic way to realize them.
My all-time primary example of the former is, “wants to live in a republic governed by reason,” and my current primary example of the latter is, “junk-punching Bobo so hard he starts making sense.”
(Also, “realistic way to realize” would earn an F- in composition at my American high school. Just sayin, Bobo.)
Shorter Bobo: False analogies will continue until the lads’ scores improve! Keep that aspidistra flying, boys!
As Bill Hicks noted as being the most appropriate denouement in regard to the bipedal cultural colonic cyst that is Jay Leno, I find myself wishing that Brooks would just stop dead in the middle of yet another “Meet The Press” chin-wag, declare himself a total waste of good proteins, & suck on a Glock.
Making the suicidally stupid look reasonable by wrapping it in warm soft layers of homespun treacly bonhomie – perhaps the worst single skill a person can obtain & exploit. By any lucid result-centered standard of ethics, the way David Brooks got rich makes a child-pimp who’s moonlighting as a hit man look like Horatio Alger.
Run naked through the thread painted blue, in honour of my Pictish heritage?
Okay … but I’d rather be clickin’ it oldschool over at http://www.111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111.com/ ……… just because.
Sounds like the next thing Bobo’s Henry is going to do is don a snuggie, knock back some white wine, and start screaming “Stop raping people!!” at random crowds.
As a fellow Shakespeare student, I think you’re being terribly unfair to Henry V, even if it does work better as part of the first Plantagenet Tetralogy than it does on its own. It’s not as if David Brooks cited As You Like It for its rich plot or anything.
i see jim has stepped over to nro and commented on k-lo’s noxious isn’t-omaha-stacy-so-amazing-the-way-she-lives-her-faith piece to add a little reality and common sense to the comments…imma now get my feelings about it out on my blahg…
okay…i commented over there:
dang…i should have added: ‘and what jim said…’
I wonder if there’s competition and discipline in punditry. Who competes? Who has discipline? Who loses?
Bobo is a lucky lucky slob who has found paradise in a place that is nothing like his ideal school.
Oh, the stupid “counslers” and “therapists” at my son’s school suggested medication for him. So I simply started sharing my weed with the boy, and things improved all around. And this summer he started his first job, so he can buy his own.
Ah, the signs of coming manhood, gets me all sentimental.
jim and bbkf got me curious to look in on K-Lo’s post at NRO. I noticed in the sidebar under the heading “Newsmax Headlines” these two gems:
Stand Up, Turn Off TV, Live Longer
Is Exercise Our Fifth ‘Vital Sign’?
It looks like Michelle Obama has even managed to infiltrate NRO. Our evil plan is working.
you know what i find kind of amusing? whenever i go to nro, my computer always blocks content w/security errors…i never get that when i come s, n!…i think we can all reasonably speculate as to why…
also, blogwhore…i beleive the last paragraph may be my finest…
We have no content?
Also, too
Just fucking wow.
Fuck these people.
We have no content?
ha! i didn’t even think of that…i was thinking more along the lines that even my computer knows that any ideas floated by nro and their advertisers are dangerously unsound…
We have no content?
Whereas NRO has malcontent.
Hey, come on, wingnuts, you’re missing the very large and obvious loophole. This only applies to foreign workers. Hire American goatherders, and you can make them sleep on the ground and eat cold goat turds in the dark. That’s if you’re enough of a commie liberal to allow your employees to eat and sleep in the first place.
this wonkette comment made me laff…i’m sure this is something my mother, miss ‘the government isn’t good at taking care of people…it should be left up to private individuals to help the poor and oppressed’…real life story: while we still had our beekeeping operation in town, the owner (who is marginally a good guy who i know does some charitable things) would *hire* either nicaraguans or south africans to do the shit work…it was some sort of program where he could pay them shit wages and they would get visas and valuable work experience…anyhoo, the nicaraguans are the ones i felt the most sorry for…two dudes who couldn’t speak a lick of english, dropped off in a podunk town where they knew absolutely NOBODY…hubbkf used to take them out to eat or into town to help them eat and shop and just to get out of the shithole they had to live in…my college freshman level spanish was quite inadequate, but we somehow managed to communicate…they left as soon as they could…he had a couple of different batches of south africans…they of course, had a bit of an advantage being as they could speak english, but hooboy! they learned not to mock american football in the presence of rabid vikings fans! anyhoo, by the time the last two or three were here, their *accomodations* were a fricking hazard…the owner owned the hotel in town (no longer used and built in the 1800s without much updating) and so that’s where they stayed…out of his largesse, lol…anyhoo, by the time they left, they were scared to death to even look at the outside stairwell that led up to their apartment since it was at a 45 degree angle going sideways…they also showed us the beams down in the basement that were holding the place up…cinder blocks with various bits of wood stacked up…not to mention where walls were heaving away from the upper floors…everybody always offered them their spare rooms to stay in, but they were a bit too manly for that…”feck, dave!” they would say…they stuck around for a while, although one went into well drilling someplace in nebraska and has found his true love and the other one ended up going back home to the wife and kids noone knew about…least of all the one young lady he impregnated while here…ahhhhh, good times…
oh, yeah…and point to that rambling diatribe, you may or may not guess is that SOMEBODY HAS TO MAKE SURE THAT WORKERS AREN’T GOING TO DIE BECAUSE THEIR EMPLOYER ARE CHEAP AND EVIL MOTHER FUCKERS!
also, i’m taking off for the rest of the afternoon…i am being selfless and going over to babysit our neighbor girls…the fact that they have a pool is completely besides the point…
“This captures what is wrong with government,”
Well, it captures what’s wrong with capitalism, anyway, in that people will do the unconscionable in the name of profit, and because “it’s just business!” rather than personal they will consider their characters unspotted. I’ve been thinking about this a lot since reading the Vanity Fair article about Mitt’s finance and business practices, in which it was stated he was quite comfortable operating in legal gray areas even if they were clearly unethical and immoral. Apparently there’s no sin so great that saying “it’s just business!” doesn’t absolve you of it.
Apparently there’s no sin so great that saying “it’s just business!” doesn’t absolve you of it.
As long as you put a small percentage of the profits gained at the pain of others into the collection plate you will still get into heaven.
The seething hatred of boys in your post speaks volumes about you.
“This captures what is wrong with government,”
Wingnuts Furious:
Nanny Obama Coddles Goatherders With Cots And Lanterns, If You Can Even Believe ItFixed it. They’re pretty much always furious about something. It’s their default setting.
The seething hatred of boys in your post speaks volumes about you.
imma hazard that you are speaking of cerb….
that you perceive her hyperbolic sarcasm that bobo is up in arms over the very idea that boys may not be doing as well in school as girls (which apparently doesn’t matter if the reverse is true?) as ‘setting hatred’ speaks volumes about you…
Speaking of furious, the Anita Sarkeesian fallout keeps getting “better”.
I don’t think I can do a fisking of an entire dark unbelly of a subculture, but maybe I should.
“Highlights” include the large number of men who seem to not grasp that escalating to death threats, threats of violence, and trolling every single site that dares mention the issue over a woman “daring” to notice the sexism in the gamer community, kinda sorta demonstrates her point without her even needing to make a single episode.
But I think the best is in the follow-up. I mean, they are still mad, months later, trying to prevent her from doing anything online and trying to flood the comment sections of anyone who notices their hard-line tactics, but in true wingnut fashion want to be seen as the victims.
For instance, they argue that they are only doing this sustained month-long assault because “Anita was all greedy”. Evidence? She started a kickstarter. All the guys needed to do was not give her money. But because other people gave her money (mostly in response to the trolling she received), then that money is money stolen from them by the wingnut principle of “all money is my money” and they have a right to be eternally pissed off about it and justify any behavior including murder against such an unthinkable action.
There’s also the morons on the second link who scream to the heavens that the death threat is a meme, despite A) it not being used ironically as a meme, B) the meme being a death threat, and C) it not being funny.
I might have to devote a full post to it all at some point.
bbkf-
No, it’s true. Every night I loom in my feminazi Dread Fortress plotting with all the other feminists on how best to destroy the raw perfection that is pure boy energy with our evil feminizing rays.
I can’t get to sleep unless some little boy somewhere is forced to play with a doll until he’s too broken to cry anymore.
I’m just that evil.
Even so, men make up just over 40 percent of college students. Two million fewer men graduated from college over the past decade than women. The performance gap in graduate school is even higher
I went to a school that had a definite female majority amongst the undergrad population (although it didn’t help with getting a date: all the young ladies seemed to have boyfriends at home). So where were their boyfriends, brothers, etc?
Well, you see the school I went to was populated with immigrants from strongly patriarchical societies: the girls were sent to school pretty much to get their mrs. degree (“find a nice pre-med or pre-law student to marry”) while the boys were kept at home (maybe they went to community college) to work in the family business.
Of course, it never did work out for the parents of these girls as they would have wanted: “how come you aren’t dating a nice boy of our ethnicity?” “um, maybe because all of those boys’ parents aren’t sending them to college”; “how come you aren’t dating a college boy?” “um, maybe because, as I know you’d like, I’m dating someone whose parents are from the same country as you, so he’s working in the family business … just like you are having my brother work in the family business”
Does anybody who uses the “more girls go to college than boys” statistic consider that boys are often guided away from college educations for reasons that have nothing to do with some non-existant gynocracy but which reflect a continued patriarchical view of gender roles?
I’m so glad that when we post here at S,N! our identities are hidden so that Cerberus has no way of knowing that some of us are actually boys.
It’s been a very long time since I would be considered a “boy”, but hey it’s never too late to have a happy childhood.
bbkf :
*slitty Clint Eastwood-style eyes*
You dissing SAfricans, kid?
Heh. Indeed. Read the whole thing. More bad news for Obama. Heh. Indeed. Read the whole thing. More bad news for Obama. Heh. Indeed. Read the whole thing. More bad news for Obama. Heh. Indeed. Read the whole thing. More bad news for Obama. Heh. Indeed. Read the whole thing. More bad news for Obama. Heh. Indeed. Read the whole thing. More bad news for Obama. Heh. Indeed. Read the whole thing. More bad news for Obama. Heh. Indeed. Read the whole thing. More bad news for Obama. Heh. Indeed. Read the whole thing. More bad news for Obama. Heh. Indeed. Read the whole thing. More bad news for Obama. Heh. Indeed. Read the whole thing. More bad news for Obama. Heh. Indeed. Read the whole thing. More bad news for Obama.Heh. Indeed. Read the whole thing. More bad news for Obama.Heh. Indeed. Read the whole thing. More bad news for Obama. Heh. Indeed. Read the whole thing. More bad news for Obama. Heh. Indeed. Read the whole thing. More bad news for Obama. Heh. Indeed. Read the whole thing. More bad news for Obama. Heh. Indeed. Read the whole thing. More bad news for Obama. Heh. Indeed. Read the whole thing. More bad news for Obama. Heh. Indeed. Read the whole thing. More bad news for Obama. Heh. Indeed. Read the whole thing. More bad news for Obama.
Howdy folks!
I just cant take another Brooks column. I have read too many and then too many takedowns ala Driftglass (who has been on the beat the longest), Doghouse Rielly, Pierce and others. I think if there is one pundit I would enjoy tripping the most, it would have to be his smarmy ass. I think he is the worst of the bunch as he is more ubiquitous than Freidman or Kristol (caught his mug on some PBS show the other day, having completely forgotten that he has access to that vector).
The guy is wrong about everything all of the time and is as much a warmongering fool as any of them but plays the roll of milquetoast moderate with elan.
Apologies to Cerb and I know how much work goes into one of those, and I know how well you do it (very, very, well indeed) but imma gonna give this one a pass.
/deep breaths
…
Apparently there’s no sin so great that saying “it’s just business!” doesn’t absolve you of it.
That line is Puzo’s greatest gift to Plutocracy.
…
I think we do need to address the concerns of children who can’t concentrate, can’t sit still and are disruptive. I think forcing kids to sit still for six hours a day to prepare them for adulthoods where they get to do it for 8 or 10 or 12 hours a day is nuts.
But the problem with that is twofold. First, we need to provide schools that can engage and challenge all students regardless of ability levels or learning style. But since this means not shoving 30 rambunctious kids together with an underpaid under-qualified teacher in Lord of the Flies elementary school, conservatives aren’t interested. One size fits all is a fantastic way to miseducate a large fraction of kids.
The other half of the problem is our work culture which is also broken as hell. In a world with massive unemployment, we still consider 40+ hours a week a ‘full time job’ entitled to all the benefits and perks thereof, while entire industries depend outsourcing completely to Mexico or Asia or denying their workers full-time status and accompanying benefits in order to trim labor costs. All of the gains in efficiency of the last century have only gone to getting more and more labor out of fewer and fewer laborers, with the vast hordes of un- or under-employed serving only as a counterweight to demands for higher wages.
But mention shortening the work week and giving people vacations and national health care to open up jobs for the un- or under- employed and suddenly you’re a freaking communist. Allowing peope to have an easier time making their way in the world isn’t disincentiving success, it’s alleviating real suffering. What full time worker wouldn’t want a few extra hours a week to spend with family, or take some classes or even work on their fucking golf game? What part time worker wouldn’t want health care and to be able to contribute to a retirement plan? Add in subsidized higher education, and bring back the CCC and you’d see a new American golden age. With the increase in security caused by these reforms, consumer confidence would explode, discretionary spending would go up, business would pick up, and banks would start lending again.
Except the whole time, Republicans would be screaming at the top of their lungs trying to sabotage the whole thing because taking the time and money to something right is communist. They’d be making money hand over fist, their portfolios would grow like weeds, and they’d cry all the way to the bank because somewhere someone who wasn’t a rich, well-connected white guy got a second chance.
Well put Helmut.
…
Interesting that you should mention that, DAS. When I taught overseas, there was a definite gender imbalance among language learners – usually at least two-to-one in favor of women. No one could ever adequately explain this to me, but I think part of it is based on employment segregation. In the PRC, women who work are directed towards service or clerical jobs, where they are highly visible and have an above-average rate of contact with foreigners. The local staff in the teaching centers is almost 100% female – the IT guy is typically male, as are drivers and other support staff. The same is true in hotels, especially high-end ones.
I don’t know what this says about the college gender imbalance in this country (I never noticed such an imbalance among the foreign students in my university), but it could explain something.
Sheesh. I figured the Anita Sarkeesian situation was going to lose steam alot quicker. Guess I underestimated the malice and stupidity of these fellows.
We are glad the Dauphin is so pleasant with us….I will keep my state, and show my sail of greatness when I do rouse me in my throne of France.
I disagree with you about the play. Not about Bobo. Someone should infect him with hep C.
bbkf :
*slitty Clint Eastwood-style eyes*
You dissing SAfricans, kid?
NO!!! we really liked gareth and corney and leon and brendan and hendri! especially brendan because he made us some awesome chicken pot…and i also still has a sad because shortly after returning home to the family farm, brendan was killed by a herd of cattle…:(
Even so, men make up just over 40 percent of college students.
Going to a college where the majority of people are of the
breastifiedfemale persuasion is a problem??I’m pretty sure that, at this point, that IS what his side’s in favor of. Between the buzz in the nuttier parts of the wingnutosphere about repealing the law that requires emergency rooms to provide service and things like the Ryan budget, the GOP utopia currently appears to be one part Handmaid’s Tale’s Gilead and one part Lord Of The Flies brutality…
BROOKS, D: “Honor Code”
GRADE: D
David:
“Henry V” has been parsed by experts for over four centuries, and your conclusions are nowhere near any critical opinion any of them has ever expressed. The reasoning in this piece makes it obvious that you haven’t been paying attention in the classroom discussions. Did you even do the reading?
Please see me after class. I’d like to arrange for tutoring for you, but would like to do so on a schedule convenient for Cerberus.
Ms. Quickly
So I’ve been reading Brooks’s latest column, about how poor parents don’t invest as much time and money in their kids as rich parents (gee, I wonder why?) and the man still won’t shut up about the Aspen Ideas Festival. I just realized that I have no idea what that is. From what I can assemble, it’s basically TED for people who think David Brooks is a deep thinker.
It made me aware that the people at this conference get paid exorbitant sums to pontificate about things that, very often, they don’t really understand. For the first time, this celebration of upper-crust hucksterism didn’t disgust me. It inspired me. “How can I get a piece of this action?” I wondered, as I can certainly bullshit as well as any of these people.
Clearly, there’s something wrong with me. I believe the technical term is “unemployment.”
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