Mad About You
Above: Conservative funnywoman Julia Gorin
It’s hard to know what portion of this clangingly narcissistic column by conservative funnywoman Julia Gorin is most repugnant, so let’s just skip all the way to the end:
Feminists heralded the proliferation of abortion as a tool by which to “empower” women and give them control over their lives and destinies. But power is being pregnant. Because it gives you control over other people’s lives. Embryos and fetuses get you treated like royalty. Not only do people cede the right of way to you; not only do people in line at the ladies’ room let you get in front of them; but if the man who impregnated you sticks around for just a few more months, you get to lie on the couch all day and just point to things, and they magically come to you. You just have to say, “Honey, I think I’m craving a —,” and the chocolate-banana-peanut-butter milkshake appears in your hand. What can be more powerful?
All I’m saying is, even though I don’t want kids, I still promote doing the right thing. It’s a win-win situation. Embryos give you an opportunity to act selflessly and selfishly at the same time. You can be generous and still keep it all about you.
I suppose life does imitate art for self-absorbed upper-middle class urbanites who try to land sitcom development deals, but thankfully I hang out with people who work for a living and drink beer when they’re finished. Maybe Gorin doesn’t actually believe she’s earned the right to sit on her ass and control the lives of everyone around her like some loathsome sitcom protagonist who makes her audience grateful for the woman pitching Hondas at the commercial break, but she genuinely seems to believe she’s crafted a set of circumstances so appealing that it would form the basis of a compelling argument in one of the world’s most prominent newspapers to convince women she’s never even met to get and remain pregnant, even when life scripts them a very special episode, and then give up their babies for adoption.
This is one of those times I wish I worked outside in the rain, miles away from a computer.
The word doublethink comes to mind.
But not the word, “‘”””funny””‘””.
Having experienced pregnancy first hand twice, here are my two cents:
a) Discovering you are pregnant when you don’t want to be is oodles of fun. My life just changed on a dime, oh my God, heaven!
b) Boyfriend of four fucking years leaves in a big hurry, couldn’t handle it. I soldier on alone – well, his parents shame him and support me, so there’s that.
c) Throwing up eleventybillion times a day for weeks on end is tremendous fun. There’s always that bright spot in the day when I’m craving pickles, frozen yogurt and sausage. What’s the harm, I’ll just barf it up an hour later.
d) Whoa, what happened to my waist already? I feel like a cow. Sooooooo attractive.
e) I have no energy, can barely crawl through each day. The bags under my eyes could carry groceries. If I wasn’t barfing constantly I’d be sleeping. (It got so bad I had to take leave from work.)
f) My breasts hurt, they really hurt. Oh god, love that.
e) Chivalry is dead. Few men give up their bus seat. More often than not it’s women who do. Women who’ve experienced pregnancy. I’d like to start a photoblog of that. Shame these fuckers.
f) The need to pee is uncontrollable, as one’s bladder is pressed by expanding uterus. A bathroom must be available at all times. It’s a whole lot of fun needing to pee and standing on the bus. Plus the nausea, and the exhaustion. Wow, what man wouldn’t want this experience?
g) Even when you want the kid, you’re bound to be ambivalent sometimes and you don’t feel empowered. It’s partly the hormones which rage up, down, and sideways.
From Gorin’s column:
I’ll be honest. I don’t particularly like kids. But I do have a thing for fetuses–and embryos.
That kind of sums up the entire conservative stance on abortion, doesn’t it?
This is one of the sickest things I’ve ever read. My first thought was, “This has to be a joke, right?” But, even at that, it’s the most disgusting things I’ve ever seen. Can someone really be that (fill in the blank, words fail me.)
And how very interesting that she doesn’t want kids.
Oh, yeah, preach to me sista….from someone who doesn’t want kids ansd was never pregnant. Hmmm….guess what? Doesn’t always buy yor the princess treatment. Day after I got home from giving birth to my over 10 lb. second child? My (now-ex) husband invites a colleague over for dinner to see the baby and I have to cook. But ya know, even so…I didn’t want special treatment while pregnant. It’s a fact of life, a natural occurance.
I may bitch about how all the parking lots have special parking spots now for pregnant women or women with babies, but having been there, done that between the perks of staying a week to ten days in the hospital after giving birth and the rad parking spaces, I have to say I was proud of myself giving birth with no drugs, no knock out pills and going home in 24 hours. You know what – I chose this – I challenged myself and I found out just how strong I am. Now that my kids are in their 20’s = having gone through the terrible twos, the teen years and everything else…I have 2 great kids who are not drug addicts, didn’t get into trouble in school or with the law, aren’t completely on their own yet because they are an artisit and a musician, but I love them – we have a great relationship and they are finding their way without screwing over other people. All I could have hoped for.
What a frivolous eejit. How can the Cons be so lightweight and still do so much damage to the Polity. More vodka please. And Travis do take the occasional rain break.
P.s. My partner is newly pregnant. I hope I’m up to the task.
Know what I like? I like when I stumble across something that gives me a chance to use a word I just don’t get to use all that often. A word like harridan.
I like that.
Mr. Mortician, I’m reminded of Virginia Woolf, who when challenged to use the word “horticulture” in a sentence…
Well, maybe that would be inappropriate.
In any case, the sheer jaw-dropping chutzpah of someone to decry reproductive freedom just before she admits she doesn’t want to become pregnant…
It’s breathtaking.
Gorin: “If I may, let me just point to the truth of an age-old cliché: Carrying is the easy part.”
She has no fucking idea what she’s talking about.
Gorin: “Because pregnancy is still ‘me time.'”
She has no fucking idea what she’s talking about.
I wonder what audience Gorin had in mind when she wrote this and what audience the Wall Street Journal had in mind when they decided to run it.
Mortician, how about “termagant”
I’m sure Gorin is single by choice because, as a female conservative, she knows it’s selfish and wrong to date or marry someone. Only a stupid feminist would ever date an icky man. Feminists are so liberated and wild and outta control. Gorin pities their intelligence and maturity…..uh, I mean selfishness and something something.
What a piece of work. Do the wingers buy this tripe?
Oh, shit, that was in the Wall Street Journal? Daaammmnnnn.
I didn’t know D-list wingnuts made into that paper. I knew that high profile guys from NR and Weekly Standard wrote op-eds, but Gorin?
Maybe Julia Gorin learned everything she knows about being pregnant from Ben Shapiro?
Y’know, next time she has a gig in manhattan, I’m gonna go heckle.
Been a while since I was able to put my ability to be a loud asshole to use for the forces of good.
Any big beefy types wanna join in?
I wonder if the right wing would be happy if we could invent permanent fetus farms, where embryos were grown in glass, woman-shaped bodies, and the fetuses would never fully develop, and never be born, and never talk back, and never let Daddy down, and never not turn out to be a doctor, just lie there growing, and yet not growing.
Wow, right wing world is awesome.
I wonder if the right wing would be happy if we could invent permanent fetus farms, where embryos were grown in glass, woman-shaped bodies…
Of course not. How would that exert any control over women’s lives, or serve as a punishment for having sex?
Grrr… The Gorin woman’s idiocy makes me terribly cranky.
Funny?
I’ll tell ya what’s funny: ten pregnant women kicking the shit out of Gorin. Goddammit, I’d pay to see that.
a different brad,
I’m sooo in. I ain’t that big, but by Jove, I’m beefy. And I can loudly and obnoxiously asshole with the best of them.
If we could just convert teh Right-wing stupid into gasoline, well, hey, free gas for everybody for ever!
Mr. Mortician, I’m reminded of Virginia Woolf, who when challenged to use the word “horticulture� in a sentence…
Ha. That was Dorothy Parker, I believe.
I may not have anything useful to contribute, but I can at least be pedantic.
She’s like a chickenhawk of pregnacy! (What would be the term for that?)
The one problem with my brilliant plan is she doesn’t seem to perform anymore.
Searches turn up lots of dead links with gigs from 04 and 404 pages. It’s almost as if there isn’t a market for her. Or she’s being blacklisted. That must be it.
“Embryos and fetuses?” No no no, it’s: “the unborn.” (Not to be confused with “the undead,” which is what that woman resembles.) And damn right she doesn’t want young goats. I suspect what she really means is that she knows the chance of anyone having the kind of sex with her that would lead to reproduction is highly unlikely. Finding her in the sack the next a. m. would lead to another kind of morning sickness entirely.
Conservative funnywoman my oxymoronic ass!
Mortician, how about ‘complete and total egomaniacal fuckwit’?
Hysterical Woman said,
April 20, 2007 at 4:49
She’s like a chickenhawk of pregnacy! (What would be the term for that?)
Well said. What she is isn’t an adoptive parent, one would assume, which is not the least of my problems with the usual argument. If you’re going to tell people how and when to reproduce, you’ll adopt those babies, then, correct? You’re on about this, so you’re going to help out, correct?
Plus, pregnancy is, like, the least amount of fun, ever, seriously, from what I understand. I do not get the cache that being able to sit down is better than not having to throw up for four months. Kids equal great, but really.
(fill in the blank, words fail me.)
I believe the word you want is “conservative”. Can’t get much dirtier than that.
but if the man who impregnated you sticks around for just a few more months, you get to lie on the couch all day and just point to things, and they magically come to you.
You know, I was one of those lucky ones with the doting husband, really easy pregnancy, accommodating boss, and wonderful child–but even I am well aware that my case is not universal:
–sometimes the man who impregnated you beats the shit out of you, and you get to spend the bulk of your pregnancy at a woman’s shelter, hoping to god that he doesn’t find you again
–sometimes your placenta starts to detach, and you have to lie around on the couch all day whether you want to or not–and sometimes when that happens, the man who impregnated you abandons you and your (and his) two kids so you get to spend the whole time worrying about where your next rent check is coming from because you can’t get a job on 24-hour bed-rest.
–sometimes you and the man who impregnated you get to wait anxiously in the hospital for five days while your OB tries to fight the premature labor long enough to give your fetus at least a 40% chance at surviving
–sometimes you and the man who impregnated you get to check your blood sugar four times a day and pray to god that the pregnancy doesn’t cause serious complications to your diabetes
Good god, this woman is the most offensive thing I’ve heard since Bill O’Reilley claimed that no woman dies from childbirth, ever. I’m so glad the right-wing fucktards are there to tell me that I never actually watched people I know go through these actual experiences.
What a relief!
Oh, it’s a blast being pregnant! Just like it’s fun being in a wheelchair all the time- such a blast to just roll everywhere, people push you sometimes, its like being on a bike all the time. And what about being bedridden? You just lay there and watch TV all day, people bring you food and presents…and don’t ge me started on the Joy of Shingles!
Oh, stop, Kathy, everyone knows that delivering babies is magical. Duh.
Another gross thing is shingles, which I don’t know what that is, but it already sounds problematic.
Wow. I don’t think I’ve heard something so stupid, superficial, suburban, vile and obviously written out as a stand-up joke that sucks so I just play it as a “commentary on life” — in my whole fucking life.
What is it with conservative “comix” ??? Their serious “commentaries” come across as slapstick — and their “jokes” come across as Hitler bunker humor or Pat Buchanan on Quaaludes and weed killer.
Herr Doktor Bimler:
Sie sind ganz Recht. Danke für die Nachhilfe.
Dorothy Parker it is. (Was?)
From the picture it looks to me like Gorin is already sitting on her ass on the couch and having someone bring her oodles of milkshakes.
Next time: ask for a salad.
Ummm… Hasn’t anyone here ever heard of satire? Julia Goren has certainly hit all the anti-choice talking points: the over romanticization of pregnancy by male Fundie preachers who’ve never been there; done that. The continuous weeping over the “innocent little babies” when what they really mean are zef’s, coupled with a near total disregard for children who’ve actually been born.
That was hilarious! Of course, the main problem with satire is that some won’t get the joke. Also, don’t make the mistake of believing that all conservatives think alike. Given that this is the Opinion Journal, these folks tend to be conservative so far as financial matters are concerned, but socially liberal.
She’s had “gigs”?
Have you seen her “material” online? This is like talent night at summer camp, where the girls’ camp counselors “have their turn” and do “bits.”
Which sociopath told this woman she was funny? I want names. Attention must be paid and persons must be held to account.
Seriously: when do these people become not worth our scorn? When are they so inept and wrong that it demeans us to even mock them? Doesn’t there have to be some lower limit? If an eight-year-old says “socialized medicine sucks!” are we bound to reply? Julia Gorin IS that eight year old.
I pause for a reply.
“And how very interesting that she doesn’t want kids.”
And how incredibly fucking fortunate for those particular embryos and fetuses.
Have you seen the Blue Collar Comedy Tour?
Or Larry the Plumber Guy?
Seriously, have you? I haven’t.
My point is some people need it to be excruciatingly dumb so they can get the jokes, and Jay Leno is retiring.
Most of her gigs seem to be token performances during the RNC’s takeover of midtown in 04, or in obscure venues in Ohio, also in 04.
Of course, the main problem with satire is that some won’t get the joke.
Okay, I get it. That whole “lucky duckies” thing must have been satire, too! Because no one, not even the WSJ, would be that revoltingly inhuman enough to say something like this in seriousness. Right? Right??
Given that this is the Opinion Journal, these folks tend to be conservative so far as financial matters are concerned, but socially liberal.
The WSJ’s op-ed writers are not “socially liberal”, not that it matters. They can think whatever they want. There’s nothing wrong with being conservative, but don’t try to claim Gorin isn’t one. I’ve been reading that paper for years. This is how most of their cultural commentary sounds.
Gorin’s article isn’t satire that makes fun of Christian fundamentalists (not that I want her to do that). She is doing the gold standard movement conservative schtick. They make fun of “liberals” by pretending we believe things we don’t believe. They “defend” some fantasy one-true-American-way-of-life that, conveniently, does not exist. When you call them on it, they chuckle and pretend they didn’t mean exactly what they said. This isn’t rocket science. They’ve been doing this for years.
From what I’ve heard of Gorin’s material, she believes this stuff. Unless her whole routine is to make fun of “conservatives” by making them look retarded. We might as well make fun of these people.
Gorin’s comedic schtick is deriding The Left. If this piece is poking fun at social conservatives, it would be a first for her.
For our further amusement and edification, here’s a sampling of her more serious, less satirical writing on abortion and other issues she relates to it.
Sample 1
Sample 2
Sample 3
Hilarious!
Sample 3 is particularly horrible. Abortion they always wanted but never had? Ugh!
Julia, honey, before you’re able to make a decision on whether you want to become pregnant and deliver a baby, you need to have a guy who’s willing to f**k you.
[Okay, I know that’s not technically true, but hey, how often do you get to recycle an old George Carlin joke?]
Oh, and the WSJ’s op-ed page is a jarring walk through Conservo-Wonderland. Am Bizzaro world newspaper.
I mean, paging through the paper, the reporting and articles are top – notch. Informative, accurate, a model of reporting, even if they are oriented towards business news and conservative supporting stories, the facts are reliable and clearly articulated.
Then you get to the Opinion pages, and it’s hold on to your hat buster, next stop Lulu-land. A non-stop barrage of Republican talking points, conservative fables, and Liveral straw men. I think they still maintian that WMD’s have been found in Iraq; Any typical WSJ editiorial would stand on its own at a Daily Townhall for sheer wingnuttiness.
Facts don’t dare show their faces there.
I can’t imagine the disconnect at an editorial meeting. The articles within the paper sometimes directly contradict the editiorials.
Liberal straw-men, I mean. Liberal
I won’t blame the Preview Button for my damn fat fingers.
x_eleven, since satire would mean she thought the ideas presented were foolish enough to ridicule, it’s more likely she’s kidding on the square.
#x_eleven said,
April 20, 2007 at 7:22
Ummm… Hasn’t anyone here ever heard of satire? … That was hilarious! Of course, the main problem with satire is that some won’t get the joke.
Ah, the Andrew Dice Clay defense: I was just playing a character who’s nothing like The Real Me. Never gets old, does it?
And how does her romanticization of pregnancy help prevent teen pregnancies? Why doesn’t she just point out that, after all the plush perks of being pregnant (I’ve done it twice, it sucks hard) girls then get to cuddle a cute little baby who will love them unconditionally, replacing the dudes they previously slept with to make up for the love they didn’t get from daddy (who was trapped into marriage by a pregnant teen, himself).
If I had a daughter, I would tell her at every opportunity how awful it is to be pregnant. As it is, I tell my sons how hard it is to have children, how it’s best to have a partner because of how hard it is, and how they want to wait as long as possible so they can have fun, travel, get a good career … and then hire a nanny to take care of their children. 😉
OK, I took a look at the links, and more besides that. Well, I’m not so sure now just what that’s supposed to be. It’s just plain nonsense.
Whether this was an attempt at satire or not, what a cnut!
Wow. A post that indirectly references abortion and a whole string of comments on the topic and NOT ONE person here is going to mention this weeks abortion of a SCOTUS decision?
Well, it’s only going to cause death and pain for women, so it’s just a women’s issue, right? Par for the course here lately, ever since your hissy-fit at Twisty.
This place seems a lot less fun lately.
I dunno, maybe it’s just me, but none of this (war, hatred, violence, corruption) seems funny anymore.
Later, dudes.
See Travis’ link to Fire Dog Lake, RobW. I can only speak for myself and my own readings, but for me the Gonzales v. Cahart decision was an important subtext for both the post and many of the comments. I didn’t need to see it explicitly mentioned to surmise it was on people’s minds. I know it was on mine.
Rob, it’s problematic, but I think that most are waiting. We’ve all got a lot of problems with this, one would think.
My suggestion for a fetus-worshipping woman who doesn’t want to go the distance and have children herself: Pullethawk.