Little Red Riding Hood
--Little Red Riding Hood
Hey there Little Red Riding Hood,
You sure are looking good.
You're everything a big bad wolf could want
--Little Red Riding Hood,
Sam the Sham and the Pharoahs
He asked me for a good night kiss
I said, it's still good day
I would have told him more except
His lips got in the way
--A Guy is a Guy,
Doris Day
I moved to another seat
--Jessica Leeds, 74, who alleges that Mr. Trump
groped her over 30 years ago on a plane
________________________
Hey there Little Red Riding Hood,
You sure are looking good.
You're everything a big bad wolf could want
--Little Red Riding Hood,
Sam the Sham and the Pharoahs
He asked me for a good night kiss
I said, it's still good day
I would have told him more except
His lips got in the way
--A Guy is a Guy,
Doris Day
I moved to another seat
--Jessica Leeds, 74, who alleges that Mr. Trump
groped her over 30 years ago on a plane
________________________
Why must we play these foolish games?
Is the story of Mr. Trump's alleged gropes really news we can use? If our nation's top priority in choosing our President were to achieve parity between the sexes, then, yes.
However, considering it has been 93 years and counting since the yet-to-be ratified Equal Rights Amendment (ERA) guaranteeing women full and equal rights under the law has stood before the chambers -- I'd say "No".
Ranger suggests that the press's recent fronting of several woman who allege that Mr. Trump groped them is, in fact, anti-feminist.
The implication is that these women do not know to avail themselves of the legal protection established since the 1960's Civil Rights bills. They live in the age of Girl Power, and yet we are to believe they are June Cleever, too?
Should we believe that they need to be protected by -- whom? Mrs. Obama and Mrs. Clinton?
--The Perils of Pauline (1947)
Mr. Trump is also the Wolfman, and little lady must be saved from his sharp teeth and hairy little palms.
Really?
Trump likes and hires pretty women over ugly -- ya say you hadn't heard of such things? Well, look at a few peer-reviewed studies to get your Homo sapien mind right. Woman judged as attractive gain more hires, more advancements, bigger raises.
Mr. Trump practices this and he is adjudicated a dog. Well, then Canis universalis.
Trump says what many think, and is demonized for it. He is the externalization of our id, and we cannot bear it. Hence we let the talking heads attack, and all smile smugly when his name is mentioned: "How can he BE?" we ask, in a disingenuous attempt to shuttle that part of ourselves.
"Ugh -- such a man cannot be President", we say, reflexively, knowing that scores of such men HAVE been presidents (many within the last 60 years). To hoist him on his petard on the basis of old secretly-recorded tapes of private talk and a few instances of alleged groping is skulduggery, and should shame a nation which has far bigger issues on its agenda.
Morality falls under the umbrella "religion", whose separation from matters of state is a hallmark of the United States. This is not Vatican City (thank God.) Sexual harassment falls under EEOC guidelines.
That is the end of the story, until you re-engineer the human. For now, the dance of the sexes plays on.
Tomorrow: Mrs. Obama on Mr. Trump
[cross-posted @ milpub.]
Labels: failed feminism, feminism amok, fright. fear, Little Riding Hood, Perils of Pauline, the little woman, The Wolfman, Trump as the repository of our cultural fears
posted by Lisa at 9:29 AM
7 Comments:
Well said.
Would add though, re; re-engineered human, that the re-engineering of humanity has been exactly the message and method of the left since there was a left. When it fails gulags and bullets in brains does what re-engineering cannot. It removes the irredeemable deplorables from being obstacles to the glorious promised utopia.
I'll take an outward wolf any day over one pretending to be a sheep.
avedis
Lisa - Interesting thoughts as always. Listening to Trump dissemble about whether he would accept election results last night, I was reminded more than ever of how good it would have been to have someone modestly more competent be the one to challenge the Clintons. Amusingly, Trump's rampant sexism receives greater play than his increasingly stringent comments about rigged elections, which under present conditions should be more newsworthy regardless of whether they are true or false, albeit for different reasons in each case. I suppose each culture eventually gets the leaders that it deserves.
My hunch is that it's largely irrelevant anyways. The people who are trumpeting the news of Trump's repeated sexual harassment of women are probably people who weren't going to vote for him anyways. The people who don't regard it as newsworthy won't be swayed to vote for Clinton simply because Trump has a pattern of sexual harassment. In the end it's a wash, although in the meantime the press and the Twitter people are drawn to sex scandals like moths to a flame. "Real issues"? What are those?!
avedis - labels are funny things. Not very long ago, if a candidate ran for president on the grounds that he was going to rip up international trade agreements and reinstitute national economic protectionism backed by a strong central government with obvious authoritarian tendencies, that person would be branded as a leftist. This year, that person is a right-winger. Perhaps in 2020 the poles will reverse again, depending on whose interests need to be served.
David,
Yes, fascinating how fungible labels are, no?!?
So today the Left is fulminating over how "horrifying" the prospect that Trump might counter an election loss. Yet, he never actually said that when Clinton posed the question.
In fact, were he to do so, it is this sort of robust questioning which is the hallmark of our democracy.
We were not horrified when Gore took the Question to the Supreme Court in 2000, were we?
(Ah, but he is a Democrat, so obviously acting within his rights.)
If I recall correctly, Gore did not claim, either before or after the election, that the election had been rigged against him by global elites, that that was why he lost, and that he would not accept the results of the election. Many of his supporters believed that, and many of them probably continue to believe that. I am not sure what would have happened had Gore joined in that.
Trump, in contrast, has declared that he would jail his chief political rival, that he is prepared to accept the outcome of the election only if he wins, and that there is a global conspiracy to defeat him through rigging the polls. No evidence has been presented, of course. He declares that he alone can defend Americans from this global conspiracy, provided only that Americans entrust him with the White House.
Personally, I'm prepared to write all of that off as meaningless political rhetoric. More inflammatory than average, perhaps, but meaningless rhetoric at the end of the day. All the same, I do think that people planning to vote for Trump should consider the fact that they are voting for someone who declares himself in such open terms to be an authoritarian leader, in the hopes that he either would not or could not follow through on such statements.
This is why, by the way, I think the sex scandals are so trivial. Perhaps Trump is right that the election is rigged. Perhaps this is simply the rhetoric of a would-be authoritarian. Surely resolving that point takes precedence over the question of whether he has a track record of harassing individual women, however unseemly that may be. Both rigged elections and authoritarian leaders are obviously more clear and present dangers to the republic than whether this president has behaved much like former presidents already did.
Also - sorry for double-posting, but that "anonymous" comment is mine, obviously.
David, Trump did not say he would just go and jail his political opponent, per se. He said he would have an independent prosecutor look into her affairs and that the investigation could lead to her being convicted and jailed. You're not suggesting that the legal system is rigged are you ;-) Presumably if Clinton was found not guilty she would not be jailed.
I keep hearing that Trump is authoritarian. I just don't see it. Explain? Clinton, otoh, is all about imposing Big Granny's utopian visions on people via executive actions, etc.
avedis
If you have to add "presumably" in front of the statement "someone who is found not guilty will not be jailed," it might just be time to re-examine your commitment to the rule of law.
What he said was that if he were president she would be in jail, not could. You're now trying to put words in his mouth to defend him. Why is that necessary, do you think?
Do you think America would be better if the White House was in a position to guarantee criminal convictions?
Trump says that he alone can fix the country's problems. He says that if he were president he would jail his chief political rival. When this gets him into trouble, he blames that trouble upon an international conspiracy. These are characteristics of authoritarian leaders.
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