AND: Back in the 1970s, beginning with the extremely influential book "Against Our Will" by Susan Brownmiller, feminist doctrine portrayed rape as an act of violence. I have been in the presence of feminists who would jump on you, quite harshly, if you said there was some sexuality involved. No, it was 100% violence. You were a heretic if you didn't accept that doctrine. I would challenge Maureen Tkacik with the proposition that if you don't think it's violence, then you shouldn't call it rape.
So they stayed in the realm of the internet and picked someone who more people can agree is a hero. It's straightforward and nice to celebrate Facebook and leave Wikileaks for more serious news analysis.
In less than seven years, Zuckerberg wired together a twelfth of humanity into a single network, thereby creating a social entity almost twice as large as the U.S. If Facebook were a country it would be the third largest, behind only China and India. It started out as a lark, a diversion, but it has turned into something real, something that has changed the way human beings relate to one another on a species-wide scale. We are now running our social lives through a for-profit network that, on paper at least, has made Zuckerberg a billionaire six times over.
Facebook has merged with the social fabric of American life, and not just American but human life: nearly half of all Americans have a Facebook account, but 70% of Facebook users live outside the U.S. It's a permanent fact of our global social reality. We have entered the Facebook age, and Mark Zuckerberg is the man who brought us here.
In a sense, identifying with the Tea Party movement was like catching Beatlemania in the 1960s. People were drawn in for different reasons — the beat, the haircuts, the lyrics — and great gulfs of taste divided the John fans from the Paul fans, the George fans from the Ringo fans.
There are two schools of thought about Hamid Karzai. The first is that he's a vain, incompetent, monumentally corrupt leader with serious mood-disorder problems that require medication....
A mother lode of luck and faith was involved. But the rescue also showcased a commodity even rarer today than the gold the miners were quarrying: leadership.
"... with the fact that actually, non-consensual sex is assault and should be recognized as such by law. Consenting to one kind of sexual act doesn’t mean that you consent to anything else your partner wants to do; if it’s agreed that the only kind of sex we’re having is with a condom, then it does remove an element of consent to have sex without a condom with only one partner’s knowledge. To use another example, if you and your partner agree that you can penetrate her, it doesn’t necessarily follow that she has the green light to penetrate you whenever and however."
"To say men are being like women when you want to say they're being cowardly and weak — I don't like it ... Also, some chickification is a good thing. Women have a lot to offer. Think about it."
Sissy says she's been saying it for a while: "postmodern, identity-politics 'feminism'" is not the same thing as "feminization." And that makes me want to remind Rush and everyone else that there are many different manifestations of the feminine. You have something in mind when you say "chickification" or "feminization." I get it. But if you want to be able to criticize the forms of the feminine that you loathe, don't sweep all women into a stereotype. If you do, you are, ironically, acting like a cartoon of a radical feminist — a woman who thinks of men as sexist brutes.
Now, I know that Rush Limbaugh isn't a sexist. I listen to the show. I know he doesn't think women are all alike, and I think he loves women. He's first in line to promote the women who embrace conservatism. That's his thing: He loves conservatism. He's enthusiastic about conservative women in politics and critical of those who try to drag down Sarah Palin (and, for example, Christine O'Donnell). He does the thing that I do: He points it out when a liberal says something about a female conservative that liberals would call sexist if it were said about a female liberal. He notices — as I do — the way liberals expect women to be liberal and discipline us harshly when we are not.
Also, Rush isn't exactly the model of stereotypical masculinity. And I'm not just referring to the fact that he hasn't kept his body in optimum shape over the years. I'm talking about the hours of show time he's spent telling us about the details of his wedding. The times he's admitted getting emotional over some movie. And just yesterday, he went on and on about his pets. He's got 2 dogs and a cat. And the dogs are because of his wife. When he was living alone, he was living alone with a cat. A pussy!
And let me invite Rush to go on Bloggingheads.tv and diavlog with me about the so-called chickification problems that plague our world today.
ADDED: Here's the show transcript including the text of what's in my video clip. Rush continues, with some talk about the Wikileaks leaks, a few paragraphs, and then:
And you have this little sissy, Julian Assange, thrown in the middle of it. Assange is a community organizer on the world stage, and who's his enemy? The United States of America.
... I mean, look, to those of you who are offended by my description of Assange as a sissy, would you want him in the foxhole with you?...
Look, the chickification of our culture and society is rampant. We've become defensive. We've become politically correct. We've been overly concerned with everybody's feelings about things...
Ironically, this sounds defensive. Keep thinking about it, Rush. (I want to live rent-free inside his head.)
Let's look at Julian Assange. In a contest between Janet Napolitano and Julian Assange, who do you think would win? Big Sis, there's no question about it. Now, if Janet Napolitano, Big Sis, can put her hands down our underwear at any airport in America she chooses, why can't she get her hands on the State Department leaker? Why can't she get her hands around the scrawny little neck of Julian Assange and all the other people at WikiLeaks? This little guy, this little waif, this little Peter Pan, Julian Assange, does anybody really believe that is his real name?...
I'm in the mood to listen to a sissy, and we have an audio sound bite here from Julian Assange, who looks like a sissy and is a sissy....
No, I just don't like the guy in general principles. I don't like the name. I don't like the way he looks. I don't like the way he sounds. He's a sissy; he's a waif, purely and simply an Internet creation.
Here's the graphic:
Limbaugh seems to have a general aversion to effeminate men (not to mention mannish women), and he's not processing this rather low reflex into much of anything but the repetition of the word "sissy." I like Rush Limbaugh and have defended him many times, in front of people who tend to hate you if you say anything good about him, so I think my opinion on the subject of Rush Limbaugh has special weight. I think this "sissy" business is beneath him.
There's something in the linked rant that was worth saying. If you read the whole thing, you'll see that Limbaugh was criticizing our government for not being able to catch Assange. In that context, the apparent feebleness of the man is relevant. If Limbaugh wants to say Assange is a weak little man and he's making us look weak, that's fine. What I don't like is the implication that in general men who look small, thin, and weak don't count as real men.
Now, Limbaugh's own critics frequently, gratuitously point out that Limbaugh is fat. I'm sure that creates a temptation for the big man to swing back at little men. I'm not saying he has to resist that temptation every single time, but process it into something better than saying "sissy" over and over. The subject, after all, was strength and weakness, and that was weak comic rhetoric.
