“Who can you trust most not to show you their penis in a professional setting? Is it the candidate who doesn’t have a penis? I’d say so.”
—-Detroit attorney Dana Nessel, a Democrat and a misandrist running for Attorney General of Michigan by suggesting that all men should be assumed to be sexual harassers and predators.
In another ad, Nessel says…
I want to tell you what you can expect me not to do. I will not sexually harass my staff, and I won’t tolerate it in your workplace either. I won’t walk around in a half-open bathrobe, and I’ll continue to take all sex crimes seriously just like I did as a prosecutor.
I wonder how feminists would react if a male candidate said,
I want to tell you what you can expect me not to do. I won’t try to influence judges to make bad rulings by wearing tight clothes and wiggling my hips. I won’t take says off because I have a period, or break down in tears under stress. I won’t try to win cases by sleeping with lawyers and judges, or not report sexual misconduct because I’ve exploited it to my own advantage.
Nessel should meet exactly the same fate as a male candidate who made those bias-promoting, sexist remarks.
She’s a bigot, promoting bias, selling fear and hate, encouraging bigotry. Any Democrat, and feminist, and woman who supports this kind of rhetoric and campaign is exposed as a hypocrite and vicious opportunist.
She’s also engaging in disinformation. Plenty of women harass their employees.
I also would point this out to the unethical Ms. Nessel. The American Bar Association’s new ethics rule 8.4 g, pushed through the ABA by its member feminists even though it appears to nick the First Amendment, says that a lawyer must not…
(g) engage in conduct that the lawyer knows or reasonably should know is harassment or discrimination on the basis of race, sex, religion, national origin, ethnicity, disability, age, sexual orientation, gender identity, marital status or socioeconomic status in conduct related to the practice of law.
Her statements breach this rule, for running for attorney general is undeniably conduct related to the practice of law. She should be asked directly how she squares her rhetoric with the principles articulated in that rule, which, as the comment to the rule explains,
“Discrimination and harassment by lawyers in violation of paragraph (g) undermine confidence in the legal profession and the legal system. Such discrimination includes harmful verbal or physical conduct that manifests bias or prejudice towards others…”
Being a lawyer, Nessel would probably counter that this rule has not been adopted by Michigan. That’s a dodge, and she should be asked directly if she agrees with the principle that lawyers should not engage in discrimination on the basis of gender, and if so, why is she advocating such discrimination?
Then she should be asked about Michigan’s rule 6.5, which requires a lawyer to take particular care to avoid treating any person discourteously or disrespectfully because of the person’s race, gender, or other protected personal characteristic. It also states that “A lawyer must take particular care to avoid words or actions that appear to be improperly based upon a person’s race, gender, or other protected personal characteristic. Legal institutions, and those who serve them, should take leadership roles in assuring equal treatment for all.”
Well? Square your campaign with that, you hypocritical bigotry huckster.
Boy, do I wish I were running against her.
Ethics Alarms 
“Nessel should meet exactly the same fate as a male candidate who made those bias-promoting, sexist remarks.”
Jack, once again you’re assuming false equivalence, equating an “ought” with an “is.”
The FACT is that women face different situations in reality than men do – and those differences are not going away anytime soon. No one is arguing the direction in which we should be moving – I certainly don’t argue with your ‘should’ statement – but this is the same SCJ Roberts flawed logic that says the way to eliminate prejudice is to act as if it doesn’t exist.
It DOES exist. The history of the world suggests there are differences between men and women, and ignoring them en route from one form of recognizing differences toward another is just utopian.
Personally I found her ad somewhat shocking, and very definitely funny. We’ll see how it plays out in the marketplace of voters. She is forcing people to admit their bias against an all-female ticket in Michigan, and rubbing their faces in it. That’s simply a form of creative speech. It shocks people into recognizing their biases; a form of satire, basically.
No different from Tracey Ullman doing a skit on a woman prosecutor grilling a man who was robbed by asking him if he was wearing provocative clothing, giving off ‘rob me’ vibes, and the like. Forcing people to face biases they somewhat unconsciously have.
This isn’t unethical in the least. It’s forcing people to recognize an innate bias, by way of getting to a point further along toward equitable treatment without denying some basic truths about the differences between the sexes.
You can take my name, but you’ve already got it, of course.
““Who can you trust most not to show you their penis in a professional setting? Is it the candidate who doesn’t have a penis? I’d say so.”
I too found this line to be very funny satire, charles.
The problem is that a political ad for someone running for this type of office isn’t the place for this type of satire; it’s the place for professionalism. Talking about exposed penises in a political ad for the purposes of a joke is unprofessional. It also carries the nasty implication that her male opponent(s) may show their penises in a professional setting, and absent any reason to suspect they would, this is unfair, and yes, misandrist.
I’d laugh if this were an SNL sketch. But real life? No.
Now this part wasn’t bad at all:
I want to tell you what you can expect me not to do. I will not sexually harass my staff, and I won’t tolerate it in your workplace either. I won’t walk around in a half-open bathrobe, and I’ll continue to take all sex crimes seriously just like I did as a prosecutor.
This ad, unlike the above, does not imply that men as a group do these things. It points to a recent problem that has been in the news and stresses that she will not perpetuate that problem. There is nothing wrong with it.
Jack:
I wonder how feminists would react if a male candidate said,
I want to tell you what you can expect me not to do. I won’t try to influence judges to make bad rulings by wearing tight clothes and wiggling my hips. I won’t take says off because I have a period, or break down in tears under stress. I won’t try to win cases by sleeping with lawyers and judges, or not report sexual misconduct because I’ve exploited it to my own advantage.
I have to agree with charles that this is a false equivalence. You’re equating criminal activity with manipulation, and harassment with…bad days?
“I have to agree with charles that this is a false equivalence. You’re equating criminal activity with manipulation, and harassment with…bad days?”
No… He’s equivocating negative gender stereotypes with negative gender stereotypes, the fact that the negative gender stereotypes against men happen to be criminal, I think, highlights more about the people disseminating the negative gender stereotypes than the people pointing out that it is, indeed, a stereotype.
“Equivocating” was the wrong word… equating.
I’m equating two examples assuming all members of a group are likely to engage in stereotypical conduct that is undesirable in a workplace, based purely on personal characteristics. Absolutely fair and correct. (I don’t see Charles’ comment saying what you say he is, either.)
Moreover, using bigotry to assume criminal behavior is WORSE than my reverse gender statement. (And sexual harassment isn’t criminal.It’s a civil offense.)
And this…I want to tell you what you can expect me not to do. I will not sexually harass my staff, and I won’t tolerate it in your workplace either. I won’t walk around in a half-open bathrobe, and I’ll continue to take all sex crimes seriously just like I did as a prosecutor.ABSOLUTELY imply that men as a group do these things. What do you think “expect” means? Because she is a women, voters should expect this conduct—if she was a man, they SHOULD expect it.
Christ, Chris. English.
And this…I want to tell you what you can expect me not to do. I will not sexually harass my staff, and I won’t tolerate it in your workplace either. I won’t walk around in a half-open bathrobe, and I’ll continue to take all sex crimes seriously just like I did as a prosecutor.ABSOLUTELY imply that men as a group do these things. What do you think “expect” means? Because she is a women, voters should expect this conduct—if she was a man, they SHOULD expect it.
I don’t know…I could see a man saying the same thing in a campaign ads. I might say it if I were running for office today. By itself, I don’t see it as casting aspersions on men.
That said, taken in context with the “candidate who doesn’t have a penis” ad, it is fair to assume she means you can expect male politicians to do this. So the other ad can fairly be called misandrist when taken alongside the “penis” ad, even though I don’t think it would be misandrist in isolation.
How does evoking bigotry and endorsing it do any of this? You’re twisting the ads clear meaning to justify the unjustifiable. And I am personally insulted that because of a bunch of assholes that women as well as men allowed to abuse their power, she is telling the public to be suspicious of ME. Fuck her.
Her argument is persuasive.
I find myself convinced that she will not display her penis in a professional setting.
You know, she IS pretty persuasive…I believe her…
How binary of you. How do you know she doesn’t have a penis? Did you just assume her gender?
”I find myself convinced that she will not display her penis in a professional setting.”
Interesting, she’s not even leaving a little…um…wiggle room for when she’s halfway through gender reclassification and wants to share some exceptional nether regional work that’s been completed?
Why do I believe that Lefties (most, not all) would deem that a bold, brave, & courageous act?
Anywho, from the under-rated and ever-quotable “Back To School”
Pretentious Ponytailed Hipster: ”Mr. Melon, your wife was just showing us her Klimt.”
Thornton Melon: ”You too, huh? She’s shown it to everybody.”
Hipster: ”Well, she’s very proud of it.”
Thornton Melon: ”I’m proud of mine too. I don’t go waving it around at parties, though.”
Words to live by!
Because you live in a bubble and are more comfortable imagining all your negative feelings to be true?
No bubble wrap here, pal.
And acknowledging a bold, brave, & courageous act by a subset of Lefty would be a negative feeling?
Sheesh, it’s hard to keep up. But to quote the inimitable Benny Hill:
“Learning all the time!”
Either way, all I see is a bald man trying to hide it with a hat.
Bear in mind, a “bubble” may be dispensed with (by?) just one prick…
It is only moral luck that she is that persuasive.
Dana Nessel core belief is obviously the ends justify the means. What’s sad is that she will get a LOT of votes based on that unethical core belief and her open bigotry.
Has she agreed to purge her closets of any Vera Wang accoutrement?
Jack:
“I wonder how feminists would react if a male candidate said,”
Irrelevant. You can’t just reverse a statement and then declare that if the OPPOSITE is bigoted, then so must the original. Satire and social commentary rely on using examples of “the world as it isn’t” to prove a point. I’m not suggesting this statement isn’t bigoted (it is), but your example does nothing to prove that.
Blazing Saddles wouldn’t have been funny if the the whole cast were black and the Sheriff were white.
Larry David’s Holocaust monologue could have been published by the Daily Stormer if he weren’t Jewish.
“Why do handicapped people get to be wheeled around sitting down while the rest of us are forced to WALK?!”
Wrongwrongwrong. Both statements are example of prejudice and bigotry. Per se wrong. Both. Equally. That they may resonate differently is part of the problem.
And your last statement is idiotic. There is no material difference between women denigrating men and men denigrating women, blacks denigration whites, and whites denigrating blacks. What the HELL does that have to do with “Why do handicapped people get to be wheeled around sitting down while the rest of us are forced to WALK?!” This appears to be the “blacks can’t be racist” crap. How convenient. I reject it completely and without exception.
Jack,
You can reject it “completely and without exception,” but that doesn’t change a thing Neil is saying.
A few more examples:
– Dave Chappelle’s famous “Clayton Bigsby: Blind Black White Supremacist” skit rests precisely on the fact that there is an historical difference between the races, and everyone knows which is which.
– Blazing Saddles: perfect example cited by Neill.
– Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner rests on pointing out preconceptions; the idea that you could cast Sidney Poitier as a white person in that situation is absurd.
– Steve Martin in The Jerk is blissfully unaware that he was adopted by a black sharecropper family; the running joke is he has no rhythm. It would make absolutely no sense for that movie to have been cast with Eddie Murphy and a white family (or, rather, it would be an entirely different movie, say Trading Places).
– On the gender side, I mentioned a Tracey Ullman sketch which points to two false equivalences at once: rape and robbery, and men and women.
– Try Chris Rock’s famous “There’s not a white man in this room who would change places with me – and I’m rich!” line with the roles reversed. (“There’s not a black man in this room….”. It’s absurd on the face of it.
Here’s one I remember from my own history. Two freshwomen at Barnard decided to have a contest to see who could sleep with the most guys. After 12 nights of 100% success by each of them, they sheepishly decided that maybe it was a stupid contest, i.e. no contest at all. What would make sense (sexist, but sense) for two guys doesn’t make any sense at all for two women.
Minorities and majorities ARE, in the real world, in different situations. Ditto men and women. Ditto black and white. Ditto kids and adults. Every pairing has some unique characteristics from which you can’t generalize to the others, but the one thing you can generalize is – you can’t simply say, “Well, if an X person said that, you’d never stand for it!”
It ain’t necessarily so…
Charles,
Well put and stated much better than I was able to. Thank you.
Again, so what? You can’t be seriously arguing that bigotry is acceptable based on who is the bigot. I hope. Those cites are comedy. This was a campaign appeal. It’s not comedy. THAT’s the false equivalence. You’re arguing for payback. That what her ads are, and again, fuck her. Don’t pay MR back for what people I have no control over do.
By the way, AMC showed Blazing Saddles last night, and when I realized that every “nigger,” “shit” and other vulgarity was bleeped out(The farts were silenced—I’ve seen this version before) I turned it off.
Comedy, as you well know, is insight pushed up to the edge of outrageousness. Knowing just where that line is, and stopping just short of it, is what makes comedians true social critics.
(And I agree with you about the turn-off reaction to the bleeping).
Imagine if Al Franken claimed that his bad press was just a “High-tech lynching of uppity Whites” …
Before the Weinstein disclosures, et al., this person’s ad would have been a great article in The onion. How far we’ve come in the last month or so.
And isn’t it transphobic for us to assume she doesn’t have a penis? Doesn’t that insult and discriminate against the TQ and others that now follow LB? I’m trying to stay up to date, but isn’t it verboten to assume anyone is a male or a female? Aren’t we all gender fluid? What’s this crap about assuming sexuality is binary? What’s wrong with this woman? Is she a troglodyte? A Republican?
I swear, I’ve seen this before….
Ah, here it is:
Terry Ferguson for Michigan Attorney General
http://www.nbc.com/saturday-night-live/video/terry-ferguson-for-senate-1/2870443?snl=1
http://www.nbc.com/saturday-night-live/video/terry-ferguson-for-senate-2/2870444?snl=1
–Dwayne
Oh, that is hysterical! I never saw that, thanks!