Ah, the good old days, when men were men and in charge, and women knew they were there to hug…
The question of the ages is, which is worse?
It’s a close call, but I vote for the conservative side.
It is true, transparent and pretty embarrassing (I hope) that so many progressives, the Walking Woke, and even feminists are tying their own brains and ours into knots by trying to defend Obama’s long-time happy-go-lucky serial toucher/ hugger/ kisser/ sniffer, nuzzler and groper. We’ve seen this integrity vacuum from them before, as when Gloria Steinem, after successfully selling the undeniable concept that when a man has superior power over a woman, that woman cannot meaningfully consent to being mauled (with love, of course) in the workplace or even boinked after-hours, changed her position so Bill Clinton could escape the consequences of his own sleazy and illegal behavior.
The hypocrisy,is especially egregious now, as I already discussed, because sexual harassment law has been around for over 30 years, because we are two decades past Monica Madness, because Al Franken is watching old Saturday Night Live videos somewhere in Minnesota, and because #MeToo was supposed to have made sure that America “got it.” How is the world can Biden pretend that this doesn’t apply to him? In a 2017 appearance at George Mason University, he defended the Obama “guilty until proven innocent” approach to campus sexual assault allegations, saying: “Guys, a woman who is dead drunk cannot consent — you are raping her! We’ve got to talk about this. Consent requires affirmative consent! . . . If you can’t get her to say ‘yes’ because she wants to, you ain’t much.” And Joe, a woman who is within feel-up distance of a Senator or Vice-President can’t give affirmative consent to touching, hugging, kissing, sniffing, nuzzling and groping, either. This isn’t hard.
Yet now we see the Washington Post, the Ladies of the View, and Mika Brzezinski and Nancy Pelosi and so many others desperately searching for excuses, rationalizations and euphemisms for what was understood as a firing offense in corporate America when Pac-Man was new. Here’s the New York Times:
Biden’s Tactile Politics Threaten His Return in the #MeToo Era“
…But the political ground has shifted under Mr. Biden, and his tactile style of retail politicking is no longer a laughing matter in the era of #MeToo. Now, as he considers a run for president, Mr. Biden is struggling to prevent a strength from turning into a crippling liability; on Tuesday alone, two more women told The New York Times that the former vice president’s touches made them uncomfortable.”
This is beyond shameless. For “tactile politics” read “entitled sexual assault.” Joe has been touching, hugging, kissing, sniffing, nuzzling and groping women all these years because he enjoys it, and assumed he could get away with it, being a Big Shot. Why is that a “strength”? It was never a strength. I teach this stuff, and Biden’s act has infuriated me for a long time: he is a walking, touching, hugging, kissing, sniffing, nuzzling and groping advertisement for sexual assault and harassment.
Can we all agree that the progressives and Democrats defending Joe now are shameless and obvious hypocrites? Good. Moving on…
Republicans and conservatives are delighted to see Biden get cannibalized by #MeToo, but it is increasingly clear that this is because they don’t like Biden and enjoy seeing major Democratic figures hoisted by their own woke petard, not because they really think he’s been doing anything wrong. A huge swathe on the right , and a lot of prominent people on the Left too, especially men in power, don’t get sexual harassment and never did. Forty years, and the concept eludes them. Again, this shouldn’t be hard, but it’s both a guy thing and a Neanderthal thing. I have noticed that the most outspoken mockery of the attack on Biden have been conservative women: the men are letting them do their dirty work. Here’s Heather McDonald at the right wing Spectator:
Conservative pundits and Republican politicians are joining the Democratic outcry against former vice president Joe Biden, accusing him of inappropriately touching females. They are making a serious mistake. Conferring legitimacy on this latest and craziest flare-up of #MeToo hysteria will further weaponize females to take out any man of their choosing, based simply on their feelings…In 2015, Gawker posted a characteristically snarky article that exhaustively gathered all the allegedly damning video evidence about the way Biden ‘creeps on women.’ So what do we see? An elderly man who instinctively uses his hands to reach out to people in greeting, empathy, or alliance, and who occasionally plants a kiss on the top of heads or even lips. To read a sexual agenda into these moments of physical contact, as the Gawker article and its contemporaneous imitators did, is lunatic.
“Sexual agenda” has nothing to do with what’s wrong with such conduct, and never has had, though no one, including MacDonald, has any idea whether Joe or millions of other men get a rush from being “friendly.”Stopping Biden-style discrimination and assault isn’t “insane.” It’s basic decency and common sense:
- Men don’t have the right to touch women without consent in the workplace
- Women do not consent to such touching simply by existing.
- Men who do so are demonstrating dominance and signaling to onlookers that women are subordinate.
- The fact that many women have been conditioned to accept this demeaning treatment doesn’t make the conduct any more right.
This…Isn’t…Hard.
From Andrea Peyser at the New York Post:
“Weird Joe, who’s been showing keen affection to members of the fairer sex since before he became a big Democratic macher, has done the unforgivable in this humorless age. He’s shown genuine human warmth of the male variety to females in the scary era of #MeToo. And he’s demonstrated that the vast suspicion, bordering on hatred, of men — even dudes on the political left — is a force so powerful, he has only one choice: Pack in your presidential hopes, Joe, and repent. The feminists of America are coming for you with torches and pitchforks.”
Oh! It’s humorless for us to frown on entitled, powerful men who believe that they are immune from the law and the requirement of basic respect for women and can touch, hug, kiss, sniff nuzzle and grope women any time they feel like it. Without the strictures against this behavior, workplaces become dating bars where men (and sometimes women) use their power to make every work day a stressful challenge in avoiding being treated like a sex-object and mating target. This is no longer even a matter of debate; it’s just a matter for denial, for two many conservatives who can watch “Mad Men” and say, shrugging, “What’s the matter with that?”
On this basic ethics topic, the Left is hypocritical, but the Right is stupid and hypocritical.
Ethics Alarms 
(shrug) I have zero sympathy for Joe, he brought this on himself. He was in the Senate when Clinton’s tawdry behavior was exposed two decades ago for all the world to see. Even if he’d been getting away with misbehaving up to that time, that whole affair should have set off some serious “alarm bells” that he’d better change his ways, or next time it might be him on the chopping block. He didn’t, and now it is his ass on the chopping block.
There IS a certain amount of schadenfreude in seeing Biden, who I consider a jerk, a liar, and a scold, get his own words about how to treat women thrown back in his face. He’s feminism’s Robespierre, who set up as many men to fall as Robespierre sent to the guillotine for flimsy reasons or no reason. He’s feminism’s Michael Collins, who changed the rules so his side could win. However, Robespierre finally got the chop when others tired of his excesses, and Michael Collins died with a bullet in his head from one of his former men who was unhappy at a compromise.
There’s also a certain amount of schadenfreude in seeing the left and the Democratic Party tie themselves in knots, realizing that their divide and conquer tactics and borderline misandry have finally painted them into a corner from which they will be unable to escape, and may have lost them their best shot at unseating Trump. The fact of the matter is that at this point the hypocrisy that is the left is fully exposed to view. Someone like Trump is a pig, but someone like Biden is just being friendly, or “just that way” (the biggest non-excuse for bad behavior I’ve ever heard) for pretty much the same behavior. Someone like Clinton may well be a pig, but he was all in for abortion rights and women avoiding the consequences of opening their legs for whoever they wanted, so women should be more than willing to service him as a thank-you.
We on the right really don’t have to do much, just stand back and watch the left’s candidates who might have half a chance destroy themselves or get destroyed by their own people. Who will they be left with who could actually be elected? Booker? Uh-uh, too close to Obama 2.0. Sanders? The man would be almost 80 and his ideas wouldn’t play anywhere but the college towns. Elizabeth Warren? When last did we hear from her? Her time has come and gone. Kamala Harris? Don’t kid yourselves. Trump is getting close to being guaranteed a second term.
“Don’t touch” isn’t hard.
Great idea for the GOP to simply keep its mouth closed and let the Democratic circular firing squad continue apace. As Jack would say, res ipsa loquitor, or signature significance.
Doesn’t one put one’s neck on the chopping block, not the other end of his torso? Fairly gruesome image.
Steve and Glenn sum up my feelings on this. Great job, guys!
Did I ever hate “Mad Men.” If kids today think that’s what the ’50s and ’60s were like,this explains why comic book movies are so popular. I just don’t remember out parents being involved in a non-stop fuck fest at work, or anywhere else. I find the show offensive, actually.
On a slightly related issue, what’s the thinking on Mike Pence’s refusal to meet one on one with women without a third person in the room. I can’t blame the guy. It seems a tad over the top but if I were a conservative person in power, I might implement the same plan.
Funny, I always thought it was “hoist” by one’s own petard, not “hoisted.” But I see either is correct as past perfect of “hoist.”
Chico Marx, a warm, lovable guy, is readying to announce his candidacy for the Democrat nomination:
https://video.search.yahoo.com/yhs/search?fr=yhs-itm-001&hsimp=yhs-001&hspart=itm&p=Chico+Marx+leg+gag+youtube#id=2&vid=4f8562c7941e88026cf996ae73a0e927&action=click
I’m male and I don’t like anyone touching me. This not a male on female issue.
I’ve been subjected to idiotic sexual harassment/assault training for nearly 40 years. Those that get it don’t need the training and those who don’t will never get it.
I learned the rule of three in scouting. Never be alone one-on-one with anyone. Always have a witness.
Mrs. OB probably hasn’t heard of the rule of three (I hadn’t and was a Scout), but I doubt she’d be in favor of it, at least not around the house.
Those that get it don’t need the training and those who don’t will never get it.
Sadly, that’s about right.
This approximately describes where I’m at. I actually don’t particularly dislike Biden, but I am happy to see the Left destroy itself and am happy to shut up and get out of their way.
I also confess to considerable schadenfreude at seeing the “woke-ish” Dems engage in self-cannibalism, although part of me regrets it’s Biden on the menu. He’s misguided, but not nearly as badly as most of the Left these days. Unfortunately, he’s also seen his position as license to touch women in public in ways that I’d never even publicly touch my wife, let alone a stranger.
That’s weird, and I have a hard time being too critical of the “woke-ish” Dems for realizing it. I do have a problem with the ones who think that they can make an exception for creepy uncle Joe, but it doesn’t surprise me.
I can’t speak for anyone else, but for me, I’m happy to let the women have their say. Men on the right piling on Biden would be roundly mocked by the Left as hypocrisy, there would be another round of Anita Hill interviews and a general effort to smear conservative men opening their mouths when their hands aren’t totally clean. I don’t personally know any man on either side who’s totally without “sin” when it comes to the modern definition of sexual harassment, including myself, especially considering the pre-1980’s years.
The men on the right seem to think it’s better to gloat in silence than make themselves a target that will distract the Left from eating their own, and I’d be hard pressed to disagree. Politically, it’s the right move.
Glenn, I don’t think Joe is any better than, oh say, Aleandra Ocasio-Cortez. Once president, he’d do anything it took to placate any sector of the Dem base. And he’d say any such think to get the nomination. He’s a lifetime pol. He doesn’t need a weather vane to tell which way the wind’s blowing.
Oh, I’m pretty sure he’d be better than AOC. He has a functioning, if misguided, brain. While he’s a typical pol, he’s far more pragmatic than she is on his worst day.
Michael Moore wants to lower the age to run for president so AOC can run next year. That should tell you all you need to know.
About who? Michael Moore?
I think I know more about him than I ever wanted to already. I know that’s true about AOC. 🙂
Our local paper (Hagerstown MD) the Herald Mail ran a story this morning about how a young female city council woman was empowering girls from Internet trolls. She recounted a story about how a 60 year old man complained that he was uncomfortable when she routinely leaned in to him during interactions and how her breasts rubbed up against him. She replied she was a woman an had boobs and no man was going to troll her or something to that effect. In short her argument was I was born with these, I make no apologies for them and girls should have to adjust their behavior to make a man comfortable.
This woman is as far left as one can be.
In Hagerstown? A town that’s always had a halo around it, being the biggest town near my Dad’s birthplace and the ancestral family home, since the patriarch,a Hessian drum major, escaped from a Revolutionary War POW camp in Hagerstown (or Frederick) and settled in Berkeley Springs, formerly known as Bath, West Virginia, formerly known as Virginia.
Bathtub ring around it maybe but I never saw a halo. The city has embraced power through victimization. This particular councilwoman carries an alarm to ensure the rest of us are woke.
Unfortunate. My Dad always thought people from that small part of West Virginia and Maryland (and Virginia) were just the greatest, common-sensical, good people. He left there as a sixteen year old and was sent off to a TB sanitarium and only went back on visits. So it was home to him and he missed it.
That should have been girls do NOT have to modify their behavior to ensure men are not feeling uncomfortable.
The point is that both sexes can feel uncomfortable when people get too close. I don’t think our illustrious council woman would accept the argument that a man’s physical attributes when pressed against her was something he cannot avoid.
That woman is weaponizing identity in a very, very nasty way. It’s the equivalent of people playing music too loudly from their car stereos. All she’s saying is “Why should I have to be considerate of others if I want to be an asshole? It’s my nature! I need to be me! I was born free!” I think Jack would call that woman a fick..
The left does not even see how they alienate common Americans (you know… Voters?) when they make such arguments.
All the better.