Gender and Sex

“Is Your Dog’s Halloween Costume Sexist?” No, It’s Just Cruel And Stupid…

/ Jack Marshall / 20 Comments

dog-costumes

In an article in its business section that screams desperation, the Washington Post examined the earth-shattering issue  of whether PetSmart sells sexist dog costumes for Halloween. I suppose an argument can be made that this really is newsworthy, since the fact that some feminists and those in the throes of end-stage political correctness mania have actually registered objections about this does confirm the theory, bolstered by our current Presidential campaign, that the nation is losing its collective mind, and not all that slowly, either.

Apparently PetSmart places gender labels on its Halloween dog costumes, so firefighter and police officer outfits are for male dogs, while the owners of female dogs must choose between “a pink cowgirl costume and pink loofah.” On the website BaxterBoo.com, female canines are pointed towards the “sweetheart nurse” garb or the ever-popular “French maid.”

Never mind that: who wants to be caught dead doing anything on a website called “Baxter Boo”?

Scott Lawrie, who co-hosts a gender-focused podcast called, “She will not be ignored,”’ told the Post,

“It seems silly on the surface, but this is part of a larger message we’re sending, that there are certain jobs for men, and certain jobs for women. The career options for women — and dogs — need to go beyond pink loofahs and pink cowgirls.”

No, Scott, it’s silly all the way down: Continue reading →

Observations On The First Trump-Clinton Debate

/ Jack Marshall / 41 Comments

first-2016-debate

It was as predictable as it was tragic: on Drudge shortly after the debate, his debate poll showed that over 90% of Matt’s readers—almost as high a percentage as that of black Americans who believe Barack Obama has been a great President—believed that Donald Trump won. At CNN, the percentages weren’t as lopsided, but still reversed: about 70% believed Hillary won. Confirmation bias rules supreme in such settings, and bias makes us stupid. Fortunately, as my analysis of these two awful candidates should have proven by now, I have no biases in this race. I would like to see both candidates lose,and badly. Indeed, as both are the political equivalents of virulent cancers on the culture and potentially the office they seek, I would like to learn that both have mysteriously vanished without a trace, like Judge Crater, Ambrose Bierce, Rick Moranis, or Gilbert O’Sullivan

Observations on last night’s debate:

1. The conservative websites are whining about Lester Holt serving as the “third debater” last night. In a word, baloney. Holt did all right, not great,  in an impossible role, primarily by letting the combatants talk; in fact, a heavier moderator hand would have been preferable.  The birther question to Trump and the “Presidential look” questions were undoubtedly moderator shots at Trump, but shots like that are opportunities too. Trump didn’t handle either well. Character is the issue with Trump, not policy, and those were character questions that he should have been prepared for. Maybe he was; maybe those pathetic answers were Trumps’ idea of good ones. Yes, Holt pressed Trump on the ultimately irrelevant issue of whether he was or was not in favor of the Iraq invasion and when, but that was also an appropriate approach for a moderator, and it gave Trump a chance to clarify his position, if one can ever use “clarify” and “Trump” in the same sentence.

As an aside, I wonder if “Sean Hannity can back me up” is the lamest defense ever uttered in a Presidential debate. It may be.

2. Trump was Trump, that’s all, and perhaps a slightly less offensive and more substantive version than usual. Hillary was smug, with a frozen smile and an expression that said, “Boy, is this guy an idiot!” all debate long. That’s a big mistake, for virtually nobody likes smug. Trump’s expression toward Hillary was usually one of a wary and respectful foe. He was listening, she was sneering. Her repeated call for “fact-checking” was weak, and appeared to be appeals for assistance. Continue reading →

California Decides It’s The Government’s Function To Help Actors Pretend They Are Younger Than They Really Are

/ Jack Marshall / 17 Comments

picture-of-a-birthday-cake-with-lots-of-candles

California increasingly appears to be hell bent on serving as the cautionary example of how the belief that government has an unlimited brief to meddle in everything leads to abuse and derangement.

Gov. Jerry Brown last week signed legislation that prevents  entertainment websites such as the Internet Movie Database (IMDb),from posting an actor’s age or birthday if the actor doesn’t want anyone to know how old he or she is.

The law, which becomes effective January 1, applies to entertainment database sites that allow paid subscribers to post resumes, headshots or other information for prospective employers. Only a paying subscriber can make a removal or non-publication request. The beneficial end that supposedly justifies  this unconstitutional and suppressive means is that age discrimination is allegedly rampant in show business.

“Even though it is against both federal and state law, age discrimination persists in the entertainment industry,” Golden State legislature Majority Leader Ian Calderon, D-Whittier, said in a statement. “AB 1687 provides the necessary tools to remove age information from online profiles on employment referral websites to help prevent this type of discrimination.”

Naturally the actor unions are all for this form of government censorship. “Gov. Jerry Brown today stood with thousands of film and television professionals and concerned Californians who urged him to sign AB 1687, a California law that will help prevent age discrimination in film and television casting and hiring,” said SAG-AFTRA President Gabrielle Carteris. You remember Gabby, don’t you? She was the brainy, non-sexy teen in the original “Beverly Hills 90210.” I’m sure she thinks the reason her career tanked as she edged into middle age was “discrimination.”

I’ve seen you act, Gabrielle. It wasn’t. Continue reading →

Presidential Debate Ethics: The “Have Your One Of Your Adversary’s Husband’s Former Mistresses Sit In The Front Row” Tactic [UPDATED]

/ Jack Marshall / 30 Comments
"Hi, Hillary! I'm back! Where's Bill sitting?"

“Hi, Hillary! I’m back! Where’s Bill sitting?”

It is being reported that Donald Trump has arranged to have Gennifer Flowers, Bill Clinton’s paramour from the years before his election, sit in the front row of the audience for Monday’s Presidential debate. If true, the objective is obviously to unnerve Hillary.

I hope it is just pre-debate psychological warfare, and that even Donald Trump has more class and couth than to actually do it. What am I saying? The man  has neither, nor any respect for basic decency or fairness, either.  Trump’s capacity to fall below even my low expectations regarding decent and professional conduct continues to amaze.

What adjectives describe this vile tactic of a Master Troll? Let’s see: Continue reading →

Unethical Quote Of The Week: President Obama…Again

/ Jack Marshall / 15 Comments
Too strong to be President?

Too strong to be President?

A sure sign of an ethics train wreck candidacy (we have two of them, you know) is that even campaigning for the candidates prompts unethical behavior. This malady has bitten the President hard, for on Sunday, at a Hillary Clinton fundraiser, he made his second unethical campaign pitch in a week (here was his first), arguing that Hillary Clinton  was the victim of sexism. Here was the section to revile:

“There’s a reason why we haven’t had a woman president.We as a society still grapple with what it means to see powerful women and it still troubles us in a lot of ways, unfairly…This should not be a close election but it will be, and the reason it will be is not because of Hillary’s flaws.”

First, let us all take a moment and have a good laugh over the President’s glaringly dishonest claim that if the election is close, it won’t be because of Hillary’s “flaws.” Does anyone, including Obama, believe that? If Hillary Clinton wasn’t a chilly campaigner, an abrasive speaker, a venal master of crony politics, a compulsive liar, didn’t risk national security to avoid public scrutiny and lie about it, hadn’t been a mediocre Secretary of State involved in a failed foreign policy, didn’t aid, abet, deny and excuse her sexual predator husband, and wasn’t going to turn 69 before the election and do so in dubious health—these are all flaws, by the way—is there any question that she would be heading for a landslide victory, instead of facing very possible defeat? PBS pundit Mark Shields told a Georgetown University audience last week that Massachusetts Senator Elizabeth Warren, who is less qualified for the Presidency than Clinton by far, who supports many of Bernie Sanders’ nuttier positions and who has some political baggage of her own, would have beaten Trump in a landslide, and he’s right.

Yet, oddly, Warren seems to be a woman too…. Continue reading →

Unethical Mother Of The Month: Feminist Writer Jodi Allard

/ Jack Marshall / 50 Comments
Send two of these to Ms. Allard's sons. Maybe add, "by my mother."

Send two of these to Ms. Allard’s sons. Maybe add, “by my mother.”

There’s nothing quite like using a nationally followed publication to declare your own sons misogynist, insensitive pigs because they have not properly absorbed the feminist cant they have apparently been fed their whole lives. Jodi got her revenge by publicly attacking them in a Washington Post column.

Allard writes in part…

I never imagined I would raise boys who would become men like these. Men who deny rape culture, or who turn a blind eye to sexism. Men who tell me I’m being too sensitive or that I don’t understand what teenage boys are like. “You don’t speak out about this stuff, mom,” they tell me with a sigh. “It’s just not what teenagers do.”My sons are right about that much. Teenage boys, by and large, don’t speak out about slut-shaming or rape culture. They don’t call each other out when they make sexist jokes or objectify women. It’s too uncomfortable to separate themselves from the pack so they continue to at least dip their toes into toxic masculinity. In their discomfort with action, they remain passive, and their passivity perpetuates the same broken system that sentenced Brock Turner to only six months in jail…No matter how often my sons remind me that they are good men, they don’t understand that being “good” is an action. You don’t earn the honor by simply shaking your head when you hear about Turner and other rapists being given lenient sentences. You earn it by acting to end rape culture, and by doing it even when it’s awkward and uncomfortable as hell.

The rest of her column proceeds accordingly. One of her sons, we learned in a previous article, is clinically depressed and has been suicidal in the past. I bet being called out by his mother in a newspaper read and quoted coast to coast is just what the doctor ordered. Both sons are teenagers—minors. To their mother, however, they are just convenient symbols of woman-abusing mankind, and fair game for shame and denigration. Continue reading →

Now THIS Is Hypocrisy…Well, To Be Accurate, This Is Rape, And It Will Help Elect Donald Trump

/ Jack Marshall / 4 Comments
Soon to be known as "The Hispanic Bill Cosby"...

Soon to be known as “The Hispanic Bill Cosby”…

As the director of Proyecto Latino de Utah, Hispanic political activist Tony Yapias led expressions of outrage over  Donald Trump’s statement in his speech declaring his candidacy that some illegal Mexican immigrants were rapists.He coordinated numerous protests against Trump including one in Salt Lake City that turned violent.

Now Yapias  has been arrested for rape, and his alleged victim is an illegal alien.

Fox13 in Salt Lake City reports:

Despite the woman’s fears concerning immigration issues, court documents state, she reported the assault the day after it happened. She was also examined by a forensic nurse who found she had multiple physical injuries consistent with her explanation of what happened.

Yapias apparently thought that his victim’s underground status would keep her from going to the police.

To be fair, Yapias has the defense—not to the rape charge, but to the charge of hypocrisy—that if a Mexican immigrant or illegal immigrant isn’t a rapist before he enters the country, then it is misleading and bigotry for Trump to claim that Mexico sends the United States its rapists.

After all, Yapias didn’t become a rapist—as far as we know—until long after Trump’s statement.

_______________________

Pointer: Instapundit

Source: Fox 13

 

Why It’s Unethical For Journalists To “Fact Check” Donald Trump—Especially CNN Journalists

/ Jack Marshall / 11 Comments

Donald Trump

In Donald Trump’s meaningless statement yesterday, which was covered by the news media as if it was the revelation of the millennium, he  officially conceded that Barack Obama is a natural born U.S. citizen. He also used the silly media attention to drag out his announcement into a long campaign infomercial for which he didn’t have to pay a cent. Nice, and it serves the broadcast media right for giving any significance to a five-year-long trolling exercise.

Trump used the phony controversy over President Obama’s birth certificate to get publicity five years ago, because he is shameless. That’s all. Did he really think Obama was born in Kenya? Oh, who knows? He is an idiot, after all. Then again, he is a skilled professional troll. Whether he believed it or not, Trump used the issue to get attention then, and now has used his 180 degree reversal to get attention now. Obviously nothing has changed that would justify this flip-flop if he believed what he insisted was true for five years. A more transparently cynical and insincere retraction I cannot conceive. Who cares what Trump says he believes at any point, about anything?

But I digress. What really seemed to enrage the journalists who have embraced Rationalizations #28. The Revolutionary’s Excuse: “These are not ordinary times,” and #31. The Troublesome Luxury: “Ethics is a luxury we can’t afford right now” to anoint themselves as full-time volunteer members of the Hillary for President campaign, was that Trump said this:

“Hillary Clinton and her campaign of 2008 started the birther controversy. I finished it.”

Quoth the thoroughly partisan news media,

“ARRGH!!!!:

Continue reading →

Ethics Quote Of The Month: Hillary’s “Basket Of Deplorables”

/ Jack Marshall / 64 Comments

basket-of-deplorables

“You know, to just be grossly generalistic, you could put half of Trump’s supporters into what I call the basket of deplorables. Right? The racist, sexist, homophobic, xenophobic, Islamophobic — you name it. And unfortunately there are people like that. And he has lifted them up. He has given voice to their websites that used to only have 11,000 people — now 11 million. He tweets and retweets their offensive, hateful, mean-spirited rhetoric. Now some of those folks — they are irredeemable, but thankfully they are not America.”

—-Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton during a fundraiser—just as Mitt Romney’s infamous “47%”  comment in 2012 was made at a fundraiser!—the LGBT for Hillary Gala in New York City on Sept. 9, 2016.

One of the consistent features of both Clintons is that they engage in so much problematic conduct that often one incident worthy of serious criticism will be knocked out of the headlines by another.

Hillary’s 9/11 “over-heating, well, dehydration, well, ok, since it’s on video, she has pneumonia” fiasco,  demonstrating that suspicions that she and her campaign aren’t being truthful about the state of her health are not “conspiracy theories,” effectively muted discussion about her “basket of deplorables” classic, complete with an imaginary word, “generalistic,” that if it had been uttered by George W. Bush would have been mocked far and wide.

I categorize this as an ethics quote rather than an unethical quote, because it is both ethical and unethical simultaneously. (The Clinton’\s seldom say things that aren’t adaptable to multiple interpretations; this allows them to leap from one to the other, like they are ice floes, when one meaning is justly condemned or found to be false.)

On the ethical side, it is completely fair and accurate to diagnose Trump supporters as deplorable, defined as “lamentable, or deserving censure or contempt.” This doesn’t apply to those conflicted potential voters who have reluctantly decided that in the terrible binary choice Americans have had shoved down their civic gullets by the two incompetent political parties, Donald Trump is preferable to Hillary Clinton. That is not the most responsible choice—it can’t ever be responsible to give such power to an unstable and ignorant boor—but it is an excusable mistake, given the horrible dilemma.

Supporting Trump, however, as in actively wanting him to become President, is as good a definition of “deplorable” as I can imagine. In this respect, Hillary was too generous. 100%, not merely 50%, of Trump’s supporters are deplorable. They lack the values, civic responsibility, understanding of their own nation and its history, or sufficient intelligence to be competent voters.

You know: deplorable. Continue reading →

KABOOM! Most Unethical Defense For Child Rape Ever…

/ Jack Marshall / 30 Comments

headexplode

If your head doesn’t blow over this one, it’s missing something.

Richard Keenan, 65, the former mayor of Hubbard, Ohio from 2010-2011 and a self-proclaimed devout Christian, confessed in a group therapy session to having sex with a little girl over three years beginning when she was four. He’s now facing life imprisonment for rape, if his statements are admissible.

Prof Jonathan Turley discusses the legal issues involved with using admissions made in a clinical setting, and you can read about them here. I am posting to commemorate the ex-mayor’s other defense position, which is why my head is on the ceiling and walls of my office. Are you ready?

Keenan says that the sex was consensual, because the four/five/ six /seven-year old was a“willing participant, ” and..

…she initiated it.

I think that’s all I want to write about this now, or ever.

I’ve also got to go get an armful of paper towels.

Oh—how’s your head?