Twerking Tweeting Twits

You made me defend Miley Cyrus. I will never ever forgive you for that.

Richard Cohen, The Motherfucking Washington Post:
Miley Cyrus, Steubenville and teen culture run amok”

You know who we haven’t checked in on in awhile? Richard Cohen. I mean, he was every back in the day, coming up with elaborate justifications for torture and all sorts of other inhumane projects. But of course, that was back in the day when the security fascist state was being run by white people and before all the neocons started being buried in the closet less they give away the game on the faux outrage machine about Obama’s “unique” transgressions.

And I mean, you just can’t manage the same level of complete inhumanity and what the fuckery on such a sparse budget, right? Right? Um… why are you just staring at me?

… how bad could it poss-

Shorter (or the last port before Jungle):

  • Miley Cyrus retroactively caused Steubenville.

Oh for the holy loving of fuck.

Miley Cyrus twerked.

And apparently with that one action, empires have fallen, volcanoes have erupted, the sea has become boiling blood, and the very moon threatens to bury itself somewhere amidst Vladimir Putin’s colon.

Or at least that’s the impression I have taken from the entire fucking internet swarming over this non-event like it was Obama publicly declaring himself to be the Antichrist sent to institute the One World Order or something else that actually deserves to be news (like say which financial players are responsible for funding the continued sabotage of any attempts to fix the economy or any of the sneaking shit conservatives have been trying to pull with regards to voting or education).

And I guess by extension I have to throw my two cents in like every other intertron hack out there. Because somehow I am supposed to maintain outrage and shock at yet another blond southern Disney-factory cookie-cutter going through the same awkward record-studio-executive scripted “Girls Gone Wild” parody of “burgeoning teenage girl sexuality” carefully market-tested for the “I swear I’m not a predator” market with the same lack of sensitivity to issues affecting actual women, especially women of color. Oh how very unlike Brittney Spears and all the other blonde vapid child stars pushed through the Disney uterus of bought-and-sold “pop stardom”. Let me push the glasses up my nose and tut-tut about “these kids today” as if this resembled anything more than record-executive guesswork at what “those crazy kids are like” in service of the tabloid racket.

Oh wait, no. Because who fucking gives a shit?!?

I had to look up the word since my indefatigable spell checker had no idea what I meant.

Seriously…?

There are two right-wing pundits earning more than I’ll ever see in my life who have picked fights with their spell-check software and lost?

Sigh. Our meritocracy in action, ladies, gentlemen, those outside the binary gender system, and fluberts of all ages. Ain’t it grand?

Also, P.S. protip from the underground, as it were. Spell checkers suck. Like a lot. Like, even terms that have been floating around for a good century still don’t seem to find their way in there and with regards to any slang or cultural idioms that have been invented since the late Jurassic? Well, learn to google, my ignorant friend. And just to emphasize that point, “google” just got highlighted by the site’s built-in spell-check.

I discovered from Wikipedia that twerking “involves a person, usually a woman, shaking her hips in an up-and-down bouncing motion, causing the dancer to shake, ‘wobble’ and ‘jiggle.’?”

Oh no, not “shaking that ass”. Clearly the world has ended now that spoiled white girls are “shaking that ass”. Hide your appropriately blonde-haired and ivory-skinned children inside your suburban mansions and shoot all the unarmed black kids. Society has collapsed and anarchy reigns!

Or… might I suggest politely that this is just one more of a long history of white people co-opting black “fashion” and trends. And ironically enough that association with “black girl” dancing is at least half of what’s driving the moral panic of yet another VMA performer doing a shock performance.

Hint, moral guardians. MTV is desperate for your canned outrage. It’s the only thing they’ve got to try and stay relevant. It’s the same reason that a previous VMA had the most tepid passionless kiss in history between Madonna and Brittney Spears.

That’s precisely what Cyrus did at the recent MTV Video Music Awards, for which she has been amply and justifiably criticized.

You know, somehow I don’t believe that the unspoken second half of that sentence is “because it fetishized and exploited black women’s bodies in a way that reveals the epidemic of casual racism rampant in the recording industry” or “because it’s sad internalized misogynistic parody of female sexuality reveals a rot in our culture that only allows depictions of female sexuality when it fits a pre-scripted narrative of ‘out of control party girl’ who will ‘get her comeupance’ usually in the form of a sexually abusive ‘panty shot’ that will allow everyone to get a charge of sexually shaming all women in the guise of upholding ‘moral values'”.

I don’t know why. I’ve just got a feeling.

She’s a cheap act, no doubt about it,

As much as we could hope that anything even loosely associated with Billy Ray “Why Bob Do You Hate Our Eardrums So?” Cyrus would be confined to a hidden corner stall in Nowhereville’s county fair for “pass around the hat” money, I fear that the All-Mighty Mouse’s empire of cookie-cutter blonde starlets means she’s making considerably more than that per “concert”.

Also, you know he really wanted to use the word “floozy” somewhere in here but his editor woke up from his Sleeping Pill Attempted Suicide long enough to catch and delete it.

but for me her performance was an opportunity to discuss one of the summer’s most arresting pieces of journalism

This is going places. None of which I feel entirely comfortable with.

— a long New Yorker account of what became known as the Steubenville Rape. Cyrus should read it.

… Ah ha ha… You’re completely serious aren’t you…? Fuuuuuuu-

The first thing you should know

Is that things are going to start getting… yeah. A bit rape apology…ish, if that’s a word.

Let’s just say Trigger Warnings apply from here on out.

about the so-called Steubenville Rape

Yes, the “so-called” rape when “so-called” human beings “so-called” filmed themselves “so-called” performing a variety of “so-called” sex “so-called” acts” on a “so-called” girl to “so-called” drunk to “so-called” consent before a “so-called” town and a variety of “so-called” media personalities (oh wait, that one actually might apply without the random scare quotes) “so-called” decided to “so-called” sympathize with the “so-called” rapists because they “so-called” play FOO-BAH and we have a “so-called” deep and “so-called” abiding “so-called” rape “so-called” culture that “so-called” excuse that “so-called” shit (“So called”).

Yes, I nearly “so-called” forgot. Please “so-called” don’t let me “so-called” stop you. “So-called” Go “so-called” on.

is that this was not a rape involving intercourse.

Neither was mine, fuckweasel.

Sigh. It continually baffles me that people insist on denying that there is no such thing as a rape culture when prominent fucking opinion writers for nationally read newspapers are trading in bullshit minimizations like this as if it were water and they had been stranded in the Sahara for a week.

Oh wait, no it doesn’t. There is pretty much no rape that can’t be minimized, dismissed, and summed up as the rape victim’s fault by those who interacted with it. Hell, I had someone tell me of how they had been raped, beaten, and nearly killed by a fucking serial killer and still the cops and prevailing culture were wondering if she wasn’t just a kinky bitch looking for a cheap lay. There is literally no bottom to this shit.

The next thing you should know is that there weren’t many young men involved — just two were convicted.

I’m sorry…? I wasn’t aware that there was a minimum number required for rape prosecutions these days.

Or rather I always assumed it was one. Seeing as how all rapes usually have at least one rapist. But I guess, by new Calvinrapeball (worst party game, EVAH) rules, anything under a baker’s dozen might as well never have happened. I’m sure having been raped by only two (who were prosecuted at great personal cost to her safety and psychological well-being) will spare her the flashbacks, massive triggers, PTSD, uncontrollable panic attacks, body memory horror, and so on that pretty universally haunt rape victims for years to follow. What with it only involving two (that could be prosecuted, barely) rapists and all.

The next thing you should know is that just about everything you do know about the case from TV and the Internet was wrong. One medium fed the other, a vicious circle of rumor, innuendo and just plain lies. It made for marvelous television.

Which part? The part where people were collecting and noting the video and twitter evidence the rapists themselves posted online of them raping an unconscious girl who clearly had no ability to consent. The part where the police and residents of Steubenville revealed that they considered football so sacrosanct they didn’t want to even fake pressing charges without external pressures (which I’m sad to admit was probably a considered factor from the die-hard racists in Sandford). Maybe the part where the national news media painfully demonstrated just how ubiquitous the rape culture truly is by producing endless fawning tributes to how the “poor boys” lives were “ruined” for having to go to jail for a pitiful handful of years “just for” repeatedly raping a teenage girl in a manner that left zero doubt as to her ability to consent because they were so assured of protection from society they didn’t feel shame providing the corroborating details in their attempted slut-shaming of her for being “dumb enough” to pass out in their rapey little presence.

Oh… right, right-winger having a stroke over latest blonde pop-starlet doing something “shocking” and “lewd”. You must mean the part when uppity bitches not even “from ’round here, y’hear” got their snooty little feminazi noses in every body’s business and used some “good ol’ boys” just having fun like boys do to point out the deep and abiding rape culture that allows this to play out unimpeded in billions of other parties, public spaces, private spaces, and homes.

Aww, poor baby, did the people pointing out that this shit is rape and should have consequences make your poor pee-pee too scared to be hard anymore?

The New Yorker piece was done by Ariel Levy, a gifted writer.

Ariel Levy… why is that name raising alarm bells for me?

Oh, right. Yeah, her really problematic writings on “boi culture”, which admittedly contains about 70 different cultures of young gay man, butch lesbians, baby butches, transmen, and transmaculine non-binary individuals and more all smooshed together by common language, but still. The fact that she identified all the bois she interviewed as “lesbians” and used female pronouns regardless of what they preferred to try and argue that “lesbians were mutilating themselves” because transmen who identified as “bois” wanted to get top surgery even though at one point they identified or still wish to identify with lesbian culture (it’s a whole… thing, largely built by the number of natural alliances between the two groups largely caused by a lot of those pioneering members of the movement who assumed they were just “butch” belatedly realized they were actually trans* and, yeah, there’s a dissertation there about that whole thing).

Yeah, it’s kind of a mess, and her “magnum opus” is one of those “sigh, yeah, but” works that tend to be the only “feminist” works to ever get popular. A kind of anti-third-wave piece that makes some very valid points about how porn expectations are sold to women in the name of liberation… mixed with some kinda slut-shaming bullshit insinuating that women being expected to put up with unrealistic sexual performance demands from society and partners is some “new” phenomenon and…

Okay, I’m getting way too inside baseball here. Let’s just say, she’s sometimes on, sometimes an archaic throwback to a version of feminism that’s been mostly abandoned.

And I guess, having stalled long enough, I should cover her “New Yorker” ,piece.

It’s a slopping pile of horseshit. It’s written in my number one pet peeve of modern journalism, the “he-said, she-said, who could possibly tell” style where you string together interviewed words of “both sides” as if it isn’t a journalist’s job to actually analyze information. And to make it worse, she uses most of her sparse words to lionize the rapists and those who minimized the rapes and demonize the “crass” bloggers who dared bring it to national-attention.

Honestly, if I didn’t know better, I would assume it wasn’t written by a supposed feminist who should know better, but rather by one of the endless hordes of victim-blaming, rape-diminishing anti-feminist fuckheads who were pouring out of ever media hole surrounding the case.

Even if this was a desperate ploy to remain in good with the type of slime merchants that pay to write for venues like the New Yorker, it’s a disgusting sell-out that adds another black mark in my internal shitlist.

And if you needed any further proof of that, you can cite this rape-apologizing fuckwit quoting her as if she was Phyllis Fucking Schaffley. Note to those who ever want to wear the mantle of feminism. If the fuckwits are quoting you approvingly instead of trying to smear and silence you?

YOU’RE FUCKING DOING IT WRONG!

When I finished her story, I felt somewhat disconcerted — unhappily immersed in a teenage culture that was stupid, dirty and so incredibly and obliviously misogynistic that I felt like a visitor to a foreign country.

Oh right, this fuckhead. I nearly blissfully forgot.

Yes, indeed, that teenage horror show that all good old fucks are supposed to treat as some foreign and unnatural upswelling of vileness the likes of which the world has totes never seen before.

Or maybe, just maybe, Steubenville is just one obvious example in a sea of unending examples. Some totally hilarious numbers for all of you:

There was an article. Or rather several articles looking into this whole “rape culture” thing that uppity feminists are always going on about. And instead of asking women, because y’know, those bitches are always lying, they asked sets of men. They asked these men straight up whether they had ever raped anyone. Now, to be fair, they didn’t use the evil “rape” word, they just described acts that were unmistakably rape, right down to the level of straight up asking about sex without consent. Those men admitted to rapes equivalent to around 22% of women. To be fair, “only” about 6% of them were doing the self-admitted raping, with 4% of the total doing extra shifts with upwards of 5 rapes each, but hey, to-may-to, to-mah-to.

And simple informal collections of people reveals that number to be pretty damn close to a full 100% of women, trans* folks, and queer individuals reporting at the very least one sexual assault or sexual harassment. And a really high number of men as well. I know people who literally do not know intimately a single person who has never been raped.

This misogynistic culture? This culture that diminishes rape? That speaks crudely about rape victims? That views “defenseless” female bodies as “fair sport” and consent as something weird that feminists make up to “punish” people for “bad sex”?

It’s all cultures. It’s all places. It’s deep in our jock culture. It’s deep in our nerd culture. It’s everywhere in between.

Misogyny and rape apologies are our drinking water that we have all been fed from birth and without awareness it can be easy to fall back on them when we feel uneasy or frightened. I mean, it does make sense that people shouldn’t drink to excess and yeah, it makes it easier to go out if you assume that “being smart” and avoiding the wrong things is the ticket to being safe and hey, maybe people shouldn’t be so provocative and no, wait, I’m not saying, why are you looking at me like that?

Or maybe I’m talking horseshit and the internet single-handedly invented misogyny and rape (ignore what the lies of Mad Men and history textbooks would say).

That country, such as it is, exists on the Internet — in e-mails and tweets and Facebook, which formed itself into a digital lynch mob that demanded the arrest of the innocent for a crime — gang rape — that had not been committed.

Oh wait, sorry, I didn’t mean to say it invented rape, because apparently rape doesn’t exist in Cohen’s world. Instead “rape” is just what uppity feminazis use to jail innocent FOOBAH! players who were just trying to spread peace and love to the world in the form of slightly homoerotic mansports.

All those bloggers who were just noting the existence of actual self-filmed rape footage from the rapists themselves (which in our broken ass system was pretty much the only way any rape case can even make it to that nail-biting step, not that it seems to have dissuaded the various rape-denialists their fantasies of “fictional” rapes), pfft. Just a well organized lynch mob, digitally recreating in this modern age the exact culture of celebration around the slaughter of a black youth for transgressing an informal “social law” and… err… I mean it strictly in the Clarence Thomas sense of the term.

And yeah, this paragraph just makes me look back at that preceding paragraph with a sense of portent and dread. If he thinks that the rape was fictional and that the meany poopyhead bloggers were the ones who were committing the real crime against an innocent, then exactly what did he think the “appalling misogyny” was…

Oh.

This is one of those “the only real racism is when Al Sharpton, who is aparently all black people now, dares critique something incredibly fucking racist that we did” kind of things, isn’t it?

Fan-fucking-tastic.

It also turned the victim into a reviled public figure, her name and picture (passed out, drunk) available with a Google query.

Yes, but luckily, we have brave articles like this one, to comfort her. By telling her the traumatic rape experience that was video taped and passed around the entire internet in order to “shame” her was not really rape and in case it didn’t happen and why was she trying to smear those poor innocent men with her “digital lynch mobs”.

Gosh, I wonder why more rape victims don’t try and prosecute against their attackers. It’s a goddamn fucking mystery.

And yet what indisputably did happen is troubling enough.

Oh was it, really? Cause, I guess after three fucking paragraphs of minimizations of a months old trial that the media is still nursing a grudge over and probably will continue to hold until long after the pair are released, you can forgive me for thinking it might not have been “troubling’ for you.

A teenage girl, stone-drunk, was stripped and manhandled. She was photographed and the picture passed around. Obviously, she was sexually mistreated. And while many people knew about all of this, no one did anything about it. The girl was dehumanized.

Dehumanized, mistreated, one might even dare say ra-

As Levy put it, “[T]he teens seemed largely unaware that they’d been involved in a crime.” She quoted the Jefferson County prosecutor, Jane Hanlin: “?‘They don’t think that what they’ve seen is a rape in the classic sense. And if you were to interview a thousand teen-agers before this case started and said, “Is it illegal to take a video of another teenager naked?,” I would be astonished if you could find even one who said yes.’?”

…Yeah. That’s called rape culture. I mean, for fuck’s sake, I find it hard to chide teenagers as some specifically morally bankrupt isolated culture, when we here in America made a fucking rape anthem our number one pop song for over 10 weeks.

As noted above, 6% of men admit to raping an equivalent of 22% of their target populations. And not borderline shit, either, shit described straight out as sex without consent, including violent coercion. You lower that bar to all the “blurred lines” shit that we measly little rape victims experience far too often. All those “little” rapes that don’t fit the right “formula” and those already terrifying numbers start to look like the overly conservative “best case scenarios” they are.

And again, I find it hard to join Team Douchebag in tsk-tsking about the “kids today” when he and the rest of the National Media spent most of Steubenville weeping over the horror of being accused of rape and how that totally ruins lives in the way it never does (not at least for the rapists, the rape victim can look forward to having their lives destroyed in a number of ways for “daring” to make such a “heinous” and “extraordinary” accusation).

And especially when this “Get Off My Lawn” FUCK tries to pull his “how could they not have known it was rape” shtick after spending Bob knows how many words trying to argue that the rape that was video taped (and is in fact the same rape he is chiding them over) didn’t happen because nobody got triple penetrated and there were only two of them and besides Twitter made the whole thing up.

I mean, there is disingenuous hypocrisy. And several hundred stories underneath that there is right-wing smug disingenuous fuckwittery. And then there is this shit all the way down, ice-skating somewhere in between Satan’s toes.

Illegal is sort of beside the point.

Not really.

Illegal is exactly the point. That cops do not prosecute these cases even when it is open and shut and spend most of the investigation antagonizing rape victims and using them as foils to get out their own issues with regards to women, coercion, and sex. That society does not believe survivors and insists on a fantasy that rape is not a common occurrence and which believes a fantasy about it being worse to be “accused” than to suffer the hellish mental aftermath of assault.

That rapists feel confident and protected to the point that they do not even bother to hide it like a regular criminal would.

I was raped in the middle of a crowded, well-light convention hall. I am not the only person I know personally who has been raped in a room full of people who did nothing at the time and certainly did not react with disapproval to the assailant. I am having a hard time imagining any other crime that is so utterly normalized and without fear of consequence. Fuck, even when people jaywalk they give a look around to make sure no one with actual civil authority is nearby.

Making rape something with as much consequence as all the “his life was RUINED by that accusation” fucks pretend it has would go a long fucking way towards fixing this goddamn nightmare we are trapped inside.

Right, proper, nice, respectful, decent — you choose the word — is more apt.

It is more apt to describe rape as “indecent” than “illegal” or “fucking reprehensible, you immoral rapist fuck”?

Ah yes, truly I regard my rapist as a brute savage, lacking in the decorum a more civilized gent would have. Or maybe he was just some fucking guy. Could have been ritzy hoity toit. Could have been hick from hickville. Doesn’t really fucking matter.

And on that note. “Proper”? “Decent”? Yeah.

I think we understand you completely. It’s not the rape. It’s the “crassness” of public displays of sexuality. It’s that they put the “party game” online instead of privately passing it around the courtyards, sneering at the foolish girl who dared to drink around them as if she had a right to party like a high-schooler while in the possession of ladybits. It’s why Miley Cyrus is unnecessarily tacked on to this rape apologizing piece of shit.

It’s the public acknowledgment that “sex” happens.

Even when that sex isn’t sex, but rather rape. Because rape in your eyes, as transphobe Andrea Dworkin pointed out in her oft incorrectly maligned work (not that there isn’t plenty to malign in her collected works (my disabled peeps are nodding in the background)), is sex. And the sins of rape are the same sins of all sex.

Which is kinda the big problem at the center of all of it. That you and your ilk sell this ideology where anything even remotely related to sex is bad. And equally so. So having a fully consensual hot make-out session is equally terrible as raping a 2 year old child and if they are one and the same and all bad, why bother do all the work of making sure your partner actually wanted to. I mean, it doesn’t carry the same thrill of power and destruction and just makes you feel bad after anyways and besides people seem really hesitant to try out consensual sex with you for some reason.

It’s the same reason every few months, we get a new elected official reacting to the concept of consent as if somebody just created a flubert in front of them.

This is what got me: a teenage culture that was brutal and unfeeling, that treated the young woman as dirt. “?‘She’s deader than O.J.’s wife. She’s deader than Caylee Anthony,’?” one kid exulted in a YouTube posting. “?‘They raped her harder than that cop raped Marsellus Wallace in “Pulp Fiction.”.?.?. She is so raped right now.’?”

It’s Youtube.

It’s fucking Youtube comment sections.

It’s like judging the whole of teenagerhood from the voice over chat of an XBox Live shooter game. Which on both counts is something that often gets unfairly called out as a “teenager” problem than what it is, a misogynist problem. I mean, look at those references. Not many teenagers are going to go to Pulp Fiction as their go-to reference. Just like outing of death threat dealing “kids” on services like Twitter or XBox Live have revealed much older men who should know better, it is not teenagers who are dominating this hate. In the case of Steubenville, the ones stating the most horrendous defenses of the act were plenty old enough to know better and an unending number of adults have swarmed out of their holes to be counted. You included.

So unless you’re including yourself in the “teenager” culture gone wild, you might want to fix that to a general culture of acceptance and vileness. And not of language, but of thoughts and ideas. Of a toxic masculinity where making spaces hurtful and frightening for women is a socially rewarded activity rather than treated as what it is.

A casual form of terrorism.

Yes, I know, they were all drunk, woozy and disoriented from a tawdry cable TV and celebrity culture.

Thank you. No truly, THANK YOU. From the bottom of my heart. Cause see, I was here thinking “would it be possible to hate you any more than I currently do” and you answered it. Oh holy fuck, did you answer it.

I mean, wow. Just WOW. Did you think you could fit any more levels of victim blaming into that one single sentence? Or did you fill it to the literal breaking point. I mean, we’ve got the “oh, the floozy tried to escape with the ‘I was too unconscious to give consent'” dig. We’ve got the inherent victim-blaming coupled with that by the rest of the sentence. And then we’ve got the “oh how dare the teenagers reflect the culture we adults have been drowning them in and reinforcing with all of our cultural narratives” and I’m terribly sorry, but I seem to have gone quite literally blind with rage.

You could compare what happened in Steubenville, Ohio, to the notorious 1964 murder of Kitty Genovese, 28, who was stabbed many times while her horrified neighbors in Queens, N.Y., allegedly watched and did nothing.

Yeah, that’s not really rare, especially with regards to rape. Of all the people I know who have been raped (and they are many), not a single one of them haven’t had at least one rape where someone could have intervened and done some good if they had cared. In fact, in one very specific instance, someone did in a way that quite literally saved them from further violation (though admittedly for reasons of the roofies they were slipped made them look “too drunk” to be complying with the drinking rules of the establishment).

The banality of evil has never been truer with regards to the rape culture, except for possibly the existence of neocon fuckwits like Richard Cohen.

Maybe. But the neighbors were scared or confused, not sure of what was happening. They were not taking pictures and having a jolly good time

Well, no. But if she was being raped, they sure as hell would have. Just like if she was being lynched as a black person in the Segregation South they would have. Or if she was being beaten as a visibly queer or trans* individual (especially pre-2000s).

Some crimes are taken socially seriously before applying the “not my problem” group dynamics. Some are not. The results as you can attest are horrifying to witness.

But you know what, I got to at least give credit for occasionally recognizing that these are bad horrible thin-

— and, besides, subsequent reporting greatly reduced the number of inert witnesses from an astounding 38 to far fewer (maybe none) who heard screams and did not actually see the killing. This was an urban legend that arose out of fear of urban living.

OH MY FUCKING BOB! Are you fucking addicted to minimizing horrible things?

I mean, did you get so fucking addicted to minimizing the horrors of torture and pretending it was all peachy-fun bathtime fun and besides they liked it and besides it wasn’t that many and besides it didn’t happen that you literally CANNOT stop minimizing horrible things and trying to pretend them away.

You neocon fucks AREN’T actually space wizards. You can’t just make all the consequences of the nasty edges of the society you help maintain- POOF- go away because you wish hard enough at it.

REALITY IS. It will endure beyond you and damage and destroy REAL lives.

You can have the fucking decency to accept that. At the very least.

So now back to Miley Cyrus and her twerking.

Fuck you.

I run the risk of old-fogeyness for suggesting the girl’s a tasteless twit — especially that bit with the foam finger. (Look it up, if you must.)

Yes. Yes, you do. Because you are an old fogey. But that’s not your problem. I mean, it could have been your problem. You could have just been an old fogey ranting about kids on your lawn, but instead, no, you are something much much worse. In fact, I’d hesitate to say your complete inability to understand consent is one of your lesser problems. At this point, your “old fogeyism” is like the cherry on top of a giant bucket of deep seated emotional issues.

But let me also suggest that acts such as hers not only objectify women but debase them. They encourage a teenage culture that has set the women’s movement back on its heels. What is being celebrated is not sexuality but sexual exploitation,

I will kill myself before I agree with you, so let’s just fast-forward to the next fail and I’ll just pull a neocon and pretend this section never happened.

(Though if I did admit it happened, I’d note that it is a deliberate capitalist marketing push that sells this culture and limits female sexual expression, at least on the big stage, to this parodying performance of sexuality as commodity. No one’s going to sell their pop star having multiple fulfilling poly relationships and healthy sexual expression with a variety of different bodied and gendered people, but they will sell a “shock” moment where they mock rim a black girl’s ass. Because selling the notion that women are the sex class is where capitalism and rape culture collide and that is the closest this comes to a legitimate parallel. In the way that this mock sexuality is sold as “what is” in order to help justify cultures that celebrate the “punishment” of “party girls” for being “whores” and thus signal to rapists that raping women who transgress in these ways are “fair game” and thus all victims are “fair game” because only whores get raped, so if you get raped, you must have been a whore.)

a mean casualness that deprives intimacy of all intimacy.

And I’m right back in.

No, fuckwad. The “casualness” is not what deprives “intimacy” of intimacy. It’s the fucking capitalist disingenuous salesmanship of the whole farce. It’s inherent artificiality that views intimacy as a distant alien to whatever it is selling as “normal teen girl sexuality” to fat old perverts like you who get off on pretty blonde jailbait “debasing” themselves and performing this lie and collapse.

Casual sex can be intimate. It can be tender and hot, even when brief, and be something to be treasured and remembered. Rape might be remembered to. But it is not treasured. It is not hot. And the only way its “casualness” is mean, is the raw fact that it is in fact, a casual occurrence, unsurprising in each iteration.

Cyrus taught me a word. Now let me teach her one: She’s a twerk.

I…

Words… Not space wizards… can’t just make up… what does that even… too much stupid… brain overheating… will I dream?


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Comments: 183

 
 
 

They encourage a teenage culture that has set the women’s movement back on its heels.

Nice to know that they’re suddenly all about the women’s movement. The last 40 years or so had me wondering.

 
 

First time reader, took me a while to read that.. pausing for laughs, nods and a well-deserved wow. Being a 23 year old male who began reading material “pick-up” material at the age of 16, the concepts you talk about are way too prominent in this culture. The saddest part, is the slut shaming of this entire miley cyrus and how it was top news for a while in north america.. as normal teenage girls watch as their parents, their role models, or just the random die-hard news anchor shame Miley for her twerking it will no doubt confuse the hell out of them as to what exactly is acceptable concerning sexuality. It promt’s this type of duality, like either your a slut or your a good girl.. and if your a slut your want sex whether you say so or not.

My question, is whether you have any additional readings that explain AND/OR provide alternatives to the rape culture, slut shaming, shock sexuality and the general CNN ‘minimalist’ focus and explanation of these events.

It is my personal belief, that our society needs to undergo a large amount of decentralization in terms of where we get our authoritative information from especially in terms of what we focus our attention on. The lack of tribal group responsibility (i.e. it takes a village to raise a child), is too obvious of a joke that I cannot even laugh, just grudgingly wince at this blame-game victim mentality, like a believer of true magic yet forced to watch a parlor-trick-magician use sleight-of-hand to wow the audience, while deep down it sets the frame that magic is for entertainment, only usable by a select few, and has no place for the ordinary man.

Anyways, being a little sleep deprived I’ll cut myself short as not to ramble. I took a lot from your article, especially in terms of being critical of the simplifications and generalizations of a deeper subject, so thank you and if you do have any recommendations of reading it would greatly be appreciated.

 
 

I’m curious when Selena Gomez is going to get the Britney/Christina/Miley treatment from Disney.

They’ve been pushing her as the “not slutty” pre-fab pop star for a while now. I give her maybe a couple more years.

 
 

Anyways, being a little sleep deprived

Welcome to my world. Have you considered a career in cargo aviation?

 
 

Alternate Shorter Richard Cohen: “When I saw Miley Cyrus’s trite and tasteless dance performance, it made me think that the Steubenville gang rape really wasn’t a rape after all.”

That makes you something much worse that an “old fogey”, Mr. Cohen.

 
 

Temporal causality, how the f*ck does that work?

 
 

I actually had a dream last night about the Steubenville Rape. I dreamed the rapists woke to find pictures of them being raped everywhere on the internet.

 
 

Temporal causality, how the f*ck does that work?

Gimme two contraceptives and a piece of fairy cake and I’ll show you.

 
 

I have actually heard before that it’s an urban legend that ALL of Kitty Genovese’s neighbors perfectly witnessed her murder and did nothing but watch. Don’t dismiss the idea just because Richard Cohen had to add it in with his rape apology.

 
 

The Kitty Genovese murder narrative isn’t accurate, it seems:

As it turned out, there were two attacks, not three. The prosecutor in the case later said only a half-dozen witnesses were ever found. Others have suggested that calls to the police were made (and ignored), and that the fatal second assault occurred in a location visible to almost no one.

Joseph DeMay, a New York historian and attorney, used the killer’s own description of the events to question the accepted version in a recent Internet recounting of the case.

In the American Psychologist article, psychology professors Rachel Manning of the University of the West of England and Mark Levine and Alan Collins of Lancaster University suggest the oft-repeated narrative of the Genovese murder is “not supported by the available evidence.”

 
 

After being murdered Kitty Genovese got up, brushed herself off and went straight to work. Why can’t you?

 
 

I don’t want to twerk
I just want to bang on me drum all day.

 
 

@thread bear: HA! Nice.

How about I grab my trusty rusty chainsaw and perform a “so-called” rape on your ass, Mr. Cohen?

Whoa–nobody has ever said yes to that. Um….k.

 
 

When I finished her story, I felt somewhat disconcerted — unhappily immersed in a teenage culture that was stupid, dirty and so incredibly and obliviously misogynistic that I felt like a visitor to a foreign country.

Funny. Except for the “teenage” part, that’s exactly how I felt when I read about Cohen asking young women who had the misfortune to work near him at the WaPo creepy questions about their sex lives.

 
 

unhappily immersed in a teenage culture that was stupid, dirty and so incredibly and obliviously misogynistic that I felt like a visitor to a foreign country.

This is so much closer to the US military than a stupid awards show where a bunch of fame whores are vying for the attention of a bunch of other fame whores and teenagers with short attention spans who, unlike every teenager in history, loves the idea of shocking their parents.

Why obliviously? Those people know exactly what they’re doing.

 
 

Who pays Dickhead Cohen to write victim-blaming apologies for rapists? It’s his scumbag paymasters that I want to see publicly tarred and feathered.

 
 

Richard Cohen is indeed a dick. I would say he should stick to writing about what he knows, but I’m not sure he would then be able to write at all. Quelle dommage I know.

Meanwhile, I’m still trying to figure out (as much as possible without actually having to watch the miserable thing) what Miley did that hasn’t been done on MTV since just after The Buggles killed the radio star (figured it out yourselves young whippersnappers). I mean unless there was actual, non-simulated sex on stage how was it sooooo much different from Madonna or Britney or any other woman dancer ever shown on MTV. Pundits these days…

 
 

I mean unless there was actual, non-simulated sex on stage how was it sooooo much different from Madonna or Britney or any other woman dancer ever shown on MTV

It wasn’t any different from every other pop star that has used shock as a marketing tool.

We really need to get back to the good old days when music was about shooting a man in Reno just to watch him die, and then whining about being stuck in Folsom Prison while time keeps draggin’ on. Or shooting that bad bitch down. Wholesome entertainment.

 
 

The LGM posts about it eventually got around to the racist angle. So: reprehensible performance, but not because women shouldn’t admit to liking sex.

 
 

Exactly why is the female the focus of the story instead of the horrible, ugly males? Hmm I wonder why?

 
 

Think of what Cohen’s saying.
He gets it wrong and still he thinks that rape’s alright.
Think of what Cerb’s saying,
We can twerk it out and get it straight, or say good night.
We can twerk it out,
We can twerk it out.

 
 

Because who fucking gives a shit?!?

I read this as “Who fucking gives a shirt?”. Prolly because it came so soon after the Girls Gone Wild ref.

(We now return you to intelligent commentary.)

 
 

Exactly why is the female the focus of the story instead of the horrible, ugly males? Hmm I wonder why?

Indeed. Apart from Miley Cyrus being the product of a whole bunch of people interested in making money, there were other people on the stage, behind the camera, planning the show…BUT MILEY IS THE WHORE OF BABYLON.

 
 

Life is very short
and there’s no time
for fisting and fighting, my friends.

 
 

The first thing you should know

Also, I read this as ‘the fist thing you should know”. Prolly because it seemed to echo Pup’s questions about lube in the last thread.

Or it could be I’m still working on my first coffee.

(Back to your regularly-scheduled intelligent commentary.)

 
 

I mean unless there was actual, non-simulated sex on stage how was it sooooo much different from Madonna or Britney or any other woman dancer ever shown on MTV

I blame the Benny Hill Show and the Hill’s Angels.

 
 

she identified all the bois she interviewed

Talking to the trees? I better get another cup.

 
 

Eight o’clock in the evening
My twerk day’s just begun
When my four minute twerk is over
Ride my limo out to have some fun

Twerkin’ in the cash mine
Goin’ down, down
Twerkin’ for the ratings
Ooooh don’t want to slip down (the charts)

 
 

Exactly why is the female the focus of the story(?)

Because
Women: SLUTS
Men: STR8 BALLIN

See?

 
 

Exactly why is the female non-penised person the focus of the story instead of the horrible, ugly males penised persons?

Fiksted by way of explanation.

 
 

Should that be “explainitized by way of fiksing”?

 
 

That would be double-fisking, and I do not know how much lube is required.

 
 

I know how much is required – quant. suff. It’s WHAT KIND that’s the issue.

 
 

set the women’s movement back on its heels.

“Heels” because wimmenz are all about high heels or round heels or both. Richard Cohen invites you to laugh at his careful choice of words.

 
 

That would be double-fisking, and I do not know how much lube is required.

Only two 55-gallon drums of personal lubricant left in stock!

 
 

How about I grab my trusty rusty chainsaw

Tsam is ELIMINATIONIST. Also give that chainsaw back to VDHanson.

 
 

Mucho laughter in Albuquerque at all of Thread Bear’s lyrics!

 
 

Only two 55-gallon drums of personal lubricant left in stock!

And at 49% off!!! Tempting, but I think it’ll be cheaper if I can buy it in bulk. I’ll search around and see if anyone sells them in a five pack.

 
 

Also noticed that they don’t have the usual “Frequently Bought Together” sales pitch with the 55 gal lube. I suggest this:

http://www.amazon.com/Barry-White-All-Time-Greatest-Hits/dp/B000001E58/ref=sr_1_1?s=music&ie=UTF8&qid=1378759959&sr=1-1&keywords=barry+white

 
The Very Reverend Battleaxe of Knowledge
 

I know how much is required – quant. suff. It’s WHAT KIND that’s the issue.

Tell the truth—you learned that from Alfred Bester, like I did, didn’t you?

As for “twerking”…I don’t even…just speaking in my male piggy mode, if Miley Cyrus had anything to “twerk”, I might be interested, but seriously:

Like Cerb said, I think the racial thing is first and foremost—if a black girl had done the same thing, nobody would have batted an eye, because they’re all over-sexed supah-slutz, amirite? White girls are supposed to emaciate themselves into anorexic skeleton figures with no identifiable female characteristics except tacked-on silicone implants like an Aston Martin grille tacked onto a Ford Fusion, just so they can’t possibly be mistaken for one of those girls, but then rattle around the bony points of their pelvises while guys don’t dare not be seen to visibly drool over this memento mori display.

 
 

Just want to reiterate, twerking has nothing to do with sex.

 
 

Top review by George Takei. Which lead me to his review of the Accoutrements Inflatable Unicorn Horn for Cats. I just thought I’d mention it for all you catspipples.

 
 

Tell the truth—you learned that from Alfred Bester, like I did, didn’t you?

Actually no. I do recall my glee upon running across it in whichever Bester story that was.

 
 

The CEO of Amazon, Jeff Bezos, recently bought the WaPo, so you can direct your hate on him. Maybe he’ll fired Richard Cohen for this article hahaha no he won’t.

 
 

> Temporal causality, how the f*ck does that work?

I’m pretty sure the Eschaton (1) will get him for that.

(1) See Charlie Stross: “Thou shalt not violate causality within my historical light-cone. Or else.”

 
 

Also noticed that they don’t have the usual “Frequently Bought Together” sales pitch with the 55 gal lube.
On the other hand, there is the “People who viewed this also viewed…” list, which includes “Body bag / Disaster bag”, and the semen cookbook.

Top review by George Takei.
That’s just the most recent one. All the reviews are good but Takei is late to the party.

 
 

Also on the racism angle, it’s a statement about the music industry, not Hannah Montana. The use of background dancers to emphasize the star’s presence? That’s what background dancers are there for. That they happened to be women of colour and BMIs over 20 is definitely an issue, but I really doubt that it was Miley what said “get me some ‘fat’ black chix”.

As to the accusation of “appropriating” black culture, uh yeah sure. The boat for “keep twerking black” sailed a decade ago when they started letting white boys on to high school twerking teams. Besides, it was the effing VMAs. “Appropriating black culture” is basically what the entire music industry has been about for at least half a century. There’s better outrages to hang that complaint on then Miley Cyrus’ ass.

 
The Very Reverend Battleaxe of Knowledge
 

Actually no. I do recall my glee upon running across it in whichever Bester story that was.

Ha! I wanted to quote The Demolished Man or The Stars My Destination, but I was too lazy to look it up, and they tend to run together in my mind, like most of the stuff I read during the Johnson administration.

 
 

Also too, On Topic. Fuck. That Richard Cohen has not been struck dead by lightning is definitive proof of the non-existence of a loving God.

What a fucking crapweasel. What I wish most for him is a sudden attack of self-awareness, such that he immediately dies of shame.

 
 

PS. I am twerking right now. My fellow train commuters are trying to ignore me. Probably out of jealousy.

 
The Scientific People
 

Quant Suff!

 
 

One final observation on twerkgate. And also to emphasize the whole twerking has nothing to do with sex angle.

When I first saw the video, I honestly thought it was Bieber. Which would have been awesome. And is also explained by the huge overlap in Justin and Miley’s fan base – preteen girls.

 
 

Tsam is ELIMINATIONIST

I wasn’t gonna KILL him. Just shred his sphincter a little. He’ll live.

 
 

Just shred his sphincter a little.

In tsam’s defense, eliminationist doesn’t apply since the bulk of the shit that emanates from Richard Cohen doesn’t come from his sphincter.

 
 

PS. I am twerking right now. My fellow train commuters are trying to ignore me.

Oooh, maybe you could do a variation on the Harlem Shake, maybe call it the Toronto Twerk.

 
 

Just wanted to give him a so-called grievous injury.

 
 

I doubt I could twerk without doing irreparable harm to my back.

Plus it gets really messy when the onlookers all start trying to gouge their eyeballs out.

 
 

Oooh, maybe you could do a variation on the Harlem Shake, maybe call it the Toronto Twerk.

A twerk of art, surely.

 
 

Well actually, since I live in the suburb known as Scarborough, it’s called the Subway Extension.

 
 

Leaf Shake
Hog Flog

Tuque Juke

 
The Very Reverend Battleaxe of Knowledge
 

Great White South: “Mount, Eh”

 
The Scientific People
 

Rump parliament.

 
 

As I think on it, I’m pretty sure I first learned what “q.s.” meant. Ever since reading Bester I have always rendered it as “quant. suff.”

Also, Etobicoke Hustle.

 
 

LEAFS SUCK SHAKE

 
 

On a related note (trigger warning), there’s YET ANOTHER “sportsball jockos rape unconscious person, pass around video and then coach tries to cover it up” story building, this time at Vanderbilt:

http://thinkprogress.org/health/2013/09/09/2590771/vanderbilt-rape-case/

Clearly, the threat of firing and possible jail time simply isn’t sufficient motivation for the assclowns that get hired as sportsball coaches to choose “behaving like an ethical human being” over “winning some ball”. So new rule: sportsball coach gets caught doing this, sportsball is now not being played at that school. Forever, full stop.

 
 

So new rule: sportsball coach gets caught doing this, sportsball is now not being played at that school. Forever, full stop.

Good lucking fuck with that. Couldn’t even do it at Penn State, and that involved underage boy-rape.

 
 

That it’s Vanderbilt is a surprise to whom? Anyone?

 
 

You’ll often see q.s. ad (quantity sufficient up to) when making a dilution in a volumetric flask. Lately I’ve noticed the ad starting to disappear replaced by “q.s. to 100mL” or whatever.

 
 

well, aside from cohen being a reprehensible twat (please pronounce with the short a not schwa), my burning question about the whole miley cyrus twerkopalypse is wtf with the teddy bears? uh…major creepy…

and it’s a good thing teh twerking is not about teh sexy because miley sticking her tongue out and trying to be sexy is totes the opposite of sexy…

 
 

You’ll often see q.s. ad…

Where values of “you” = hardly anyone outside the chemistry/pharmalogical sciences. Just to be clear.

 
 

PRE hoc ergo prompter hoc?

Yeah, that makes perfect sense … if you’re a tachyon.

#subbingmyownreality4yrs
#cranialcolonicinterfacing

 
 

You gotta question the intelligence (and maybe the sanity) of a guy who thinks that a woman rapidly moving her derriere up and down causes men not to understand what rape is…

 
 

So, a formerly squeaky-clean Disney child star shocked people by wearing revealing outfits and shaking her butt. Now, fifty years later, things sure have changed, haven’t they?

 
 

Just a quick question. The Bieber-Cyrus thing, was that only me? It’s not as ridiculous as it sounds.

 
 

I ain’t gonna twerk on Maggie’s farm anymore.

 
 

How about “one”?

 
 

It occurs to me that Miley Cyrus is unfairly scrutinized.

This girl never had a childhood. She had full time, stressful job at an age that she should have been going to school, discovering her own sexuality, becoming her own person instead of hybrid of a media creation and the person who endures the struggles and triumphs that other kids face while coming of age. The fact that she is exploring her sexuality (in a way many of us don’t quite understand) really just goes to show that missed out on way too much in her life.

So I’m gonna quote Charles Barkley: “Hey America, get off Miley Cyrus”.

 
 

Hey America, get off Miley Cyrus

See? It always comes back to rape.

 
 

See? It always comes back to rape.

Sooner or later–the PENIS rears it’s ugly head.

 
 

The fact that she is exploring her sexuality (in a way many of us don’t quite understand) really just goes to show that missed out on way too much in her life.

Interestingly, the person this comment brings to mind is Michael Jackson. I recognize he suffered (alleged) abuse beyond just not being allowed to grow up normally but Cyrus is arguably on a similar sort of trajectory and following in the tracks of Brittany Spears. Which both makes me shudder and wonder why it took such extreme (alleged) behavior by MJ to raise eyebrows.

Could it be because he was a PENIS-American? Nah, no way!

 
 

As usual, I seem to be more interested in language than in human welfare. Case in point: news re: Kenya:

Karim Kahn, defense atty. for the Deputy President of Kenya: “The prosecution slipped on a few banana skins on the way […] We say there’s a rotten underbelly to this case that the prosecution has swallowed hook, line and sinker, indifferent to the truth.” He then added something about checking all the boxes.

And: “Wilfred Nderitu, counsel for 628 victims in the case,” said “being a victim in Kenya today is a difficult task,” etc.

 
 

This girl never had a childhood.

True. I just hope there’s a trust fund set up for all the therapy she’s going to need in a few years.

 
 

I thought I would get more of a kick than I have been, watching Boomers turn into exactly the kind of hidebound stick-up-the-ass fogeys they so famously would rather die than become.

But then again, Cohen’s even older than that.

 
 

I still never trust anyone over 30, including myself.

 
 

Fuck no, we over-30s are a treacherous pack of bastards.

 
 

Fuck no, we over-30s are a treacherous pack of bastards.

word.

 
 

Fuck no, we over-30s are a treacherous pack of bastards.

Old age and treachery beat youth and skill every time.

 
 

Also noticed that they don’t have the usual “Frequently Bought Together” sales pitch with the 55 gal lube. I suggest this:

http://www.amazon.com/Barry-White-All-Time-Greatest-Hits/dp/B000001E58/ref=sr_1_1?s=music&ie=UTF8&qid=1378759959&sr=1-1&keywords=barry+white

^Dying in shame at the uninventiveness of my IRL sex life.

 
 

Fuck no, we over-30s are a treacherous pack of bastards.

you people forced us into it, though–if you weren’t so immature/narcissistic I could still be naive and earnest like I was in my 20s

I hate that I’m all responsible and shit. Life would be so much easier. I have a friend who works for Teh Eval Umpire, sleeps like a baby and plays Legos all day on her days off, now why can’t I just stop caring and live the good life too?!??!!

 
 

Trying to muster outrage over Pam Bondi putting off an execution for any reason … failing … failing.

Trying to muster outrage over Pam Bondi period … meh … meh … meh

please let the Dems sweep the next election, please let the Dems sweep the next election, please let the Dems sweep the next election–I’ll eat pasta every day, I swear!

 
 

So, a formerly squeaky-clean Disney child star shocked people by wearing revealing outfits and shaking her butt. Now, fifty years later, things sure have changed, haven’t they?

Word.

You know who worries me? Lindsay Lohan. There have been loud rumors for years that her mother pimped her out for “dates” with rich men. It would explain the shattered psyche, acting out, drug abuse, and her only relationship that lasted longer than the coke being with another woman. Her parents are massive tools and I’m kind of shocked she’s still alive.

Cyrus is laughing all the way to the bank. Her outfit and look is ripped off of Riri yet that “Disney” label made her HEADLINE NEWS wtf lameness is that. The media dances like monkeys, it’s incredible. Oh gawd, a teen girl has a sex drive. And, yeah, what others said about the race fail. I don’t blame her for that (yet) because she’s being surrounded by enablers instead of someone saying, Hey, that’s not cool. No, instead the “professionals” she hired were telling her it was going to be awesome.

 
 

please let the Dems sweep the next election–I’ll eat pasta every day, I swear!

Well that’ll surely get teh FSM’s attention.

 
 

http://www.tampabay.com/news/politics/national/execution-rescheduled-to-accommodate-pam-bondi-fundraiser/2140891

What’s interesting to me about this article is the tone. The author (and presumably editors) are clearly most outraged that the execution was postponed, that they have to wait to get their rocks off on another state sanctioned murder. The outrage!

Oh and it was delayed for fundraising too. Shame.

 
 

John Hawkins lists the 25 most influential people on the right.

Honourable mention: Ben Shapiro. Poor Ben. But at least he’s an honourable mention alongside powerless nobody Antonin Scalia.

 
 

I read Infl… and hoped the word was going to be inflammable. I would also have accepted Influenza-able.

 
 

I noticed that the “Fair and Balanced” Roger Ailes made the honorable mentions too.

Are they done trying, finally?

 
 

I guess inflatable is taken care of.

 
 

18) Mitch McConnell: He’s timid, a terrible communicator, and has played Elmer Fudd to Harry Reid’s Bugs Bunny for his entire tenure as Senate Minority Leader. If McConnell were an effective leader, he would be ranked much higher, but he’s so bad at his job that it’s a wonder Democrats aren’t deliberately trying to undermine their own candidate in Kentucky to try to keep him in place in the Senate.

Number 18 SUCKS AT EVERYTHING, yet made the list at number 18.

 
 

Ms. Cyrus seems to really want to escape her Hannah Montana past.

I predict further freakout, but at least this time there won’t be the whole racist angle.

 
 

Number 18 SUCKS AT EVERYTHING, yet made the list at number 18.

Makes more sense if you look at it as really a list of top suckage.

 
 

I should’ve known a video of mostly-naked Miley would kill the thread.

 
 

Makes more sense if you look at it as really a list of top suckage.

I just thought it was funny that the list is for “most influential”, while the author talks about how little influence he has in the senate.

 
 

I should’ve known a video of mostly-naked Miley would kill the thread.

Give us all about 3 minutes. Almost done…

 
 

the douchiest dudebro ever.

There seems to be a lot of competition for that title these days.

 
 

How did the guy get past the interview process?

 
 

How did the guy get past the interview process?

Hard to say. It’s very clear that he’s NOT gay.

 
 

Hey, guys. My dog was put down today. 17-year-old Jack Russell named Gertie. She will be missed.

 
 

My dog was put down today.

Man, that’s rough, sorry for your loss. It’s cruel that their lives are so short.

 
 

Spear, very sorry to hear that. Our Malamutt is ageing rapidly and I can see the end coming. I’m not looking forward to it.

Remember the good times!

 
 

It’s cruel that their lives are so short.

Coincidentally, that’s also what the parrots say about us.

 
 

Coincidentally, that’s also what the parrots say about us.

But hey, life with a parrot feels like a thousand years, so there’s that.

 
 

What is the rule-o-thumb about canine years to hooman years? Whatever the correlation, Gertie was old pooch.

“Betcha five dollars she was a good ‘un, too…”

I love most all critters … but I loves muttskis the mostest. Sorry for your loss, Spear.

 
 

I cried openly when Vasco left us after 17 years. Seventeen years is a very good run for a dog.

 
 

Coincidentally, that’s also what the parrots say about us.

Not, however, the tortoises.

 
 

The tortoises NEVER say anything nice about us. And who could blame them?

 
 

Oh and it was delayed for fundraising too. Shame.

Haters gotta hate.

 
 

Tortoises gotta tort.

 
 

Ms. Cyrus seems to really want to escape her Hannah Montana past.

I predict further freakout, but at least this time there won’t be the whole racist angle.

It’s not a bad song but the video seems a little … cheap. I mean in terms of production values. And creativity. Her performance is alright except when she’s getting sexy with the hammer because it’s not like she actually uses it in the video so it just comes off as “I’m a horny teenager who needs to get laid—wooooooo, hey world look at me I’m horny—wooooo!!!eleventy”.

She is totally ripping off glbt subculture erotica/art. Her hairstyle kind of screams boi and then in the video when she’s naked she looks like a twink or a butch lesbian (but more like a twink) rather than using typical visual media representations of girlish sexuality–you hardly see boobs and they’re not in a bra, the genitals are obscured (thus making gender ambiguous), the boyishness rather than girlishness of the body is emphasized, there are no feminine dance moves employed, she’s wearing high heel boots which could imply punk/alternative/lesbian/street kid rather than high heels for your typical sexy female pop star feminine signal. There’s a butch aesthetic simply in that you don’t see her run hands over her body (which implies sexual desire/autoeroticism), instead sexual desire is signalled by licking (an object not lips or skin) and humping. Even the use of all white yet scraggly clothing is so associated with twinks and to a lesser extent butch lesbians and ftms who probably picked it up from the boys. No red/pink, no shiny/flashy stuff (drag queens might wear this, but that’s not the act she’s stealing–that would be Nikki Minaj).

The whole thing can be quite glamorous (think Marlene Dietrich, and Pink, while less sexually ambiguous, would be a more modern example), and I don’t know enough to know if it’s all an act or just a good fit.

It wouldn’t be the first time a pop star/idol used visuals/presentation from something quite underground/subculturey while maintaining a public denial in interviews about the whole thing.

 
 

Makes more sense if you look at it as really a list of top suckage.

Wait, so CPAC doesn’t pick the top nifty conservatives of tomorrow based on a 10 point fellatio performance scale?

I am disappoint.

 
 

Taters gonna tate.

In the Tate Gallery.

 
 

Tortoises gotta tort.

It’s the terrorpins you have to watch out for.

 
bughunter, the engineer,
 

twerk : badonkadonk :: common mode : differential mode

if Miley Cyrus had anything to “twerk”, I might be interested, but seriously

Flat ass = low values of Twerk Q

(where Q==Resonance)

e.g., Q_beyonce >> Q_miley

Bughunter the armchair anthropologist hypothesizes that this may have something to do with the origins of twerking outside of Miley’s native culture.

Bughunter the ass man agrees — her choreographer should have taken this into account.

But bughunter the engineer realizes that, given the resonant mode in question, Q is also a function of f, in such a fashion that Q_miley can approach Q_beyonce if Miley applies a larger value of f

Where f is frequency, in twerks per second.

[A Wild Ass Guess at the value of f required — about 3 to 5 twerks per second.]

Keep practicing, Miley!

 
bughunter, the engineer,
 

More accurate values of f are possible, but will require careful and deliberate in situ measurements of a sample population of twerkers, including gluteal proportions, body fat proportions, a slap test, and high speed video recording of twerk dynamics.

Once such data is collected, the researcher shall retire to his bunk for a thorough analysis.

 
 

More accurate values of f are possible, but will require careful and deliberate in situ measurements of a sample population of twerkers, including gluteal proportions, body fat proportions, a slap test, and high speed video recording of twerk dynamics.

See tigris for reference material in re: measuring f via the quarter bounce.

 
The Very Reverend Battleaxe of Knowledge
 

See tigris for reference material in re: measuring f via the quarter bounce.

Maybe we need to adopt the British system: Semi-twerk, semi-hemi-twerk, semi-hemi-demi-twerk.

 
 

Maybe we need to adopt the British system

Metric is a lot simpler.

milli-twerk, centi-twerk, twerk, kilo-twerk

 
 

It’s the terrorpins you have to watch out for.

I run a safe haven for a terrorpin and provide him aid and comfort. Let me tell you, he is one ornery bastard. He’d probably relax a lot if he could just find a nice terrorneedle to settle down with, but to do that he’s gotta stop venting frustration by ripping the filtration pumps off the wall.

 
 

the douchiest dudebro ever.

JESUS.

It’s the terrorpins you have to watch out for.

L’il salmonella-infused bastards, it’s biological warfare!

See tigris for reference material in re: measuring f via the quarter bounce.

I’ve been assuming that twerk-poor hard, muscular asses would bounce the quarter further, which would make bounce distance an inverse function of f, but I haven’t been able to enlist more than one test subject.

 
 

It’s the one year anniversary of the brutal slaughter of 4 Americans in Benghazi

Only 2,993 to go before he matches the previous administration. You know, the one that “kept us safe”.

 
 

Only 2,993 to go before he matches the previous administration. You know, the one that “kept us safe”.

Good thing there were no embassy killings under Bush, otherwise we might suspect someone of arguing in bad faith.

 
 

singing:
When danger reared it’s ugly head
He bravely turned his tail and fled
Brave brave brave president Bush.

 
 

Shit, I’m going to have to watch that stupid twerking video at some point, aren’t I?

Oh, and the latest Obama speech, but that’s not embarassing to watch in public.

 
 

Behind the snark about twerking is the serious issue of rape culture that’s sadly always relevant.

 
 

He’d probably relax a lot if he could just find a nice terrorneedle to settle down with

Well played.

And here I was picturing bowling pins.

 
 

not a gator said,

[LOGORRHEA ADVISORY] September 11, 2013 at 3:14 (kill)

She is totally ripping off glbt subculture erotica/art.

So I’m coming from a position of utter ignorance about how music videos are made, therefore take this for the expert commentary it obviously is. If I were Loadpants I suppose I’d ask one of you to do my research since I’m so busy.

Anyway, isn’t the video the product of the director? The singer writes a song, then some video director comes in and supplies their vision for what the video looks like? If that’s so, then none of the subtle visual clues not a gator describes can be attributed to the twerker of the first part but rather to the director.

I’m sure there’s got to be some buy-in by the “artist” but really what teenager wouldn’t want to create a transgressive, piss-off-the-olds nudie video if they could pull it off?

 
 

Shit, I’m going to have to watch that stupid twerking video at some point, aren’t I?

I thought the giant teddy bear was kind of cool. Other than that, there’s not a lot to recommend it.

 
 

At it’s simplest, Miley took advantage of her opportunity of to perform for the fraction of the US that watches the VMAs on MTV to shock the fraction of the USA that pretends to care about traditional gender roles and outdated ideas of modesty. Because she knew that if she could shock them, it would turn into a weeks long outrage orgy on the part of the conservative noise machine. Weeks of free publicity would translate into more youtube hits, more pandora and radio plays, higher album sales, more concert bookings, higher concert attendance, and ultimately more money for her.

Offending the religious right is a time honored American pastime. Most of the discussion on this site has been a critique of that effort. Is it art? Was it cultural appropriation? Was it well done or was it a cynical, half-assed attempt to cash in on a dance trend she didn’t understand fully, or even execute all that well?

What does it say about our culture that a fraction of the US is more outraged by Miley’s basic cable twerking than by the brutal murder of thousands by poison gas in Syria? To what extent is our national dialog manipulated in favor of manufactured outrage away from issues like ubiquitous dragnet surveillance and Syrian civil war?

 
 

What does it say about our culture that a fraction of the US is more outraged by Miley’s basic cable twerking than by the brutal murder of thousands by poison gas in Syria? To what extent is our national dialog manipulated in favor of manufactured outrage away from issues like ubiquitous dragnet surveillance and Syrian civil war?

But but 9/11!! Benghazi!!1! LLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLL!!!!!@#!1!

 
 

Oops.

Helmut, I think you nailed it there. Miley is obviously operating under the principle of “bad publicity is better than no publicity”.

 
 

our military does not do pin-pricks

I knew quite a few pricks in the military. Most of them were field-grade officers or above.

 
 

our military does not do pin-pricks

I knew quite a few pricks in the military. Most of them were field-grade officers or above.

And as that last prick* who resigned in disgrace proved, someone was doing him.

*General Petraeus

 
 

Helmut, I think you nailed it there. Miley is obviously operating under the principle of “bad publicity is better than no publicity”.

For her, its free publicity not bad publicity. The people who were offended weren’t going to buy her albums or go to her concerts anyway.

 
 

Miley’s native culture is similar to that of a guy back in the 50s. His name was Elvis Presley. Some of you may remember him.

Obscene dances and music, stolen from black people. Precisely the same response for both.

Plus ca change plus c’est la meme chose

 
 

I knew quite a few pricks in the military. Most of them were field-grade officers or above.

E8 and E9. Pricks also, too. First Sergeants always seemed to sawed off little runts with great big mouths and a sadistic nature.

 
 

I see someone had been twerping in here.

 
 

This thread needs fewer twerps and moar PENIS.

I wonder what Zardoz would think?

 
 

The saying useta be, “the only bad publicity is your own obituary”.
Ever since Elvis kicked, and then MJ, it’s basically been “there is NO bad publicity”.

 
 

Most extreme idiotic response to an obvious non-threat since that thing with the blinky space aliens or whatever it was.

 
 

JR, that reminds me of what Gore Vidal said when he heard about Truman Capotes’ death:

“Good career move.”

 
 

Moderators, thank you for your tireless efforts against the trolls here.

 
 

Damn, you kids are quick. I was just reaching for a shovel…

xoxox

 
 

These boots are made for stompin’ …

 
 

I love how the right is suddenly all about Putin. I thought he was the next Hitler when he invaded Georgia in 2008?

Reminds of how we used to watch the Kremlin trying to determine who was “in” and who was “out”.

 
The Very Reverend Battleaxe of Knowledge
 

I love how the right is suddenly all about Putin. I thought he was the next Hitler when he invaded Georgia in 2008?

Oh, it was worse than that—he used to head the…Oh, God, can’t stop the warm urine running down my leg!…<looks right and left><hoarse whisper>K…G… Oh God, I can’r even say it! It’s so scary! Ptui, ptui! <spits on floor>

Oh, what’s that you say? He gave asylum to a guy Obama wants? A guy we would have declared war if he’d sheltered five years ago? Oh well, never mind! <Emily Litella>

 
St. Trotsky, Pope-in-Avignon
 

To be fair, they’re ready to pivot on a dime now that Syria’s handing him their chemical weapons, and now America’s has been emasculated, just like Obama wants.

 
 

The fact is, America needs to be more outraged about Bengazi, Fast and Furious and the IRS interfering with elections using bias.

 
 

…so DADT doesn’t apply to the FBI then?

(think about it)

 
 

I love how the right is suddenly all about Putin. I thought he was the next Hitler when he invaded Georgia in 2008?

Which invasion came after GWB looked into Putin’s eyes and read his soul.

Also what the Rev said.

Reminds of how we used to watch the Kremlin trying to determine who was “in” and who was “out”.

God that was so much fun!

 
 

E8 and E9. Pricks also, too. First Sergeants always seemed to sawed off little runts with great big mouths and a sadistic nature.

Absolutely true E9 story for tsam:

The names and ranks of the Commander and Command Sergeant Major [E-9] were suspended from chains beneath the main sign of the 502d ASA Group. (That way, the whole sign didn’t need to be repainted after a change-of-command.)

Tsam painted an excellent word-picture of CSM Bernard C. Rector. Bernie was so disliked that some MP’s–possibly suborned–apparently turned a blind eye when midnight commandos armed with bolt cutters stole his panel hanging below the sign.

The sign was repainted with a suitable alteration of CSM’s Rector’s last name. Then, apparantly passed from one leave-taking individual to another, the sign began an odyssey around Europe, being photographed in front of landmarks and odd places…including the Arc d’Triomphe, the top of the Zugspitze, and a nude beach on the French Riviera. The photographs were always mailed to CSM Rector, of course.

The conspiracy’s security was air-tight. Though not privy to it, I greatly admired their inventiveness, secrecy, and skillful planning.

 
 

To take some the edge off tsam’s critique, I worked with two genuinely decent E8’s [Master Sergeants] in the Primary Control and Analysis Center.

 
 

Rector? I hardly know her!!

…………………I’ll come in again.

 
 

Nude Popes!

I mean, New Post!

 
bughunter, the engineer,
 

I did NOT need THAT mental image first thing in the morning.

/shudder

 
 

The OSX Mountain Lion spellcheck knows what twerked means, although it does it by linking to wikipedia.

 
 

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