Some nice staffers at The Advocate are reading Breitbart and other fascist publications, so we don’t have to feel all filthy clicking on those sites, but can still know what’s happening. It’s still a very nauseous trip, reading the excerpts, so be warned.
In the current political climate — well, in any political climate — it’s good to know who your adversaries are and what they’re saying. For this reason, we’re initiating a weekly roundup of the highlights and lowlights from Breitbart and other right-wing news and opinion websites.
Our inaugural entry (in more ways than one) takes note of these sites’ coverage and commentary regarding the ban on entry to the U.S. from citizens of seven countries, the Women’s Marches, and Donald Trump’s swearing-in as president.
[…]
Breitbart featured several other defenses of the Trump order, including a column by failed vice-presidential candidate Sarah Palin. She denounces “hysteria” over the order and says calling it a ban amounted to “fake news,” then concludes, “Trump’s executive action is a step in the right direction towards welcoming safe, loving, law-abiding, hardworking, patriotic people into our nation that was built on the backs of safe, loving, law-abiding, hardworking, patriotic people willing to assimilate into America’s exceptional melting pot.”
I, I…uh, oh fuck. For the life of me, I cannot figure out, at all, why anyone gives this person space to say anything. It’s nothing but word salad with shit dressing. uStates is a melting pot (not in the least exceptional) because of immigration. (After the genocide of those who were here first, natch.) FFS. All manner of safe, loving, law-abiding, hardworking people have been denied entry and re-entry into the Fascist States of America. What. An. Idiot.
The previous weekend was marked by Women’s March on Washington and sister marches all over the world. In case you think sexism isn’t alive and well, consider what the far-right sites had to say about the actions:
“Just another random protest march by the usual ragbag of leftist suspects, far too many of them blue hair, their whale-like physiques and terrifying camel-toes the size of the Grand Canyon.”
This isn’t from the comments section, folks. This sentence, grammatical problems and all, is from Breitbart contributor James Dellingpole. And wait, there’s more — after sharing his tweet saying men would probably have to fetch their own beers the night after the march, he writes:
“Very few of these shrieking munters — save the token celebrities — will ever find themselves in a position where they are able to fetch a man’s beer from his fridge because first they would have to find a man willing to share the same space with them.”
According to Urban Dictionary, “munter” is British slang for an ugly woman. Dellingpole finishes:
“Still, when all is said and done I think we owe those women who took to the streets across the world in their various pod groups a massive favour. They have reminded us what a Hillary presidency would have looked like every single day for at least four years. And they have swept away any reservations we may have had about the absolute necessity of having voted for Donald Trump.”
Ah yes, women, quelle horreur! Echoes from Euripides’ Hippolyta strike:
Go to hell! I’ll never have my fill of hating
Women, not if I’m said to talk without ceasing,
For women are also unceasingly wicked.
Either someone should teach them to be sensible,
Or let me trample them underfoot.
How little things change, literally, over centuries, when it comes to conservative authoritarians. In 195 bce, Cato the Elder declared:
If every married man had been concerned to ensure that his own wife looked up to him and respected his rightful position as her husband, we should not have half this trouble with women en masse. Instead, women have become so powerful that our independence has been lost in our own homes and is now being trampled and stamped underfoot in public. We have failed to retrain them as individuals, and now they have combined to reduce us to our present panic…It made me blush to push my way through a positive regiment of women a few minutes ago in order to get here. My respect for the position and modesty of them as individuals – a respect which I do not feel for them as a mob – prevented my doing anything as consul which would suggest the use of force. Otherwise I should have said to them, ‘What do you mean by rushing out in public in this unprecedented fashion, blocking the streets and shouting out to men who are not your husbands? Could you not have asked your questions at home, and have asked them of your husbands?
[…]
Woman is a violent and uncontrolled animal, and it is not good giving her the reins and expecting her not to kick over the traces. No, you have got to keep the reins firmly in your own hands…Suppose you allow them to acquire or to extort one right after another, and in the end to achieve complete equality with men, do you think that you will find them bearable? Nonsense. Once they have achieved equality, they will be your masters. – Livy, The Early History of Rome, translated by Aubrey de Sélin-court, Penguin Classics, 2002.
Cato’s speech failed, and the Oppian laws were overturned in 195 bce. This was the first recorded protest movement ever organized by women. It’s now 2017 ce, and we have not yet achieved equality, and still find ourselves needing to protest in the streets, much to the displeasure of misogynists everywhere, who still carry the attitude and mores of Cato the Elder.
There were more right wing comments on the Womens’ March:
“Commentators on MSNBC bragged about the crowd size of the women’s marches but, as a fellow female, I couldn’t help noticing the size of some of the marchers. There is a big difference between crowd numbers and crowd size.” — Townhall columnist Susan Stamper Brown
“Never have so many hotness-challenged crones so vehemently rejected being grabbed while simultaneously being at so little risk of it.” — Townhall columnist Kurt Schlicter
And conspiracy theorist Alex Jones’s Infowars site, which is one that really brings the crazy, approvingly posted a video of a conservative activist called Big Joe confronting a participant in the Women’s March in Los Angeles. “Planned Parenthood is a racist system,” he says. “Margaret Sanger [Planned Parenthood’s founder] thought very little of black people. She thought they were ignorant and shouldn’t exist and shouldn’t reproduce. … You want to be against racists? You should be against Planned Parenthood.” (Editor’s note: The assertion that Sanger and her organization were/are racist is a bald-faced lie, but many on the right believe it.)
Some things never change. The full article is at The Advocate.
Ceterum censeo patriam potestam delenda esse. (I wonder how badly I butchered the grammar.)
There’s so much to unpack here. First, notice how these shitwits just prove feminists’ point by insulting the protestors’ looks. First, shallow conservatives think that women who don’t fit into society’s standards of beauty are subhuman. Second, there are plenty of skinny, conventionally attractive women at these protests, so the stereotype doesn’t even fit. Women with all sorts of body types showed up to the marches.
Also, note what Breitbart considers to be quality journalism; brainless, vulgarian, badly-written shitposting that you would expect from sites like 4chan or Reddit. When your “journalism” lacks basic grammar and spouts shit off about Grand Canyon-sized cameltoes, you don’t get to present yourself as a news source worth taking seriously.
Ice Swimmer:
Doesn’t matter, I understand. That was one of Cato’s stern views and statements.
Emergence:
That’s a rethuglican tell though, they can’t ever manage to get their noses out of other peoples’ crotches. I could not possibly be less interested in whatever is in Dellingpole’s pants.
Caine @4
Dellingpole would probably be insulted to hear that.
Tough. :D
Well, as someone commented on the local article about the local Sister March: “I don’t see any women, only feminists”, with the implication that women are … I guess at home and subservient and quietly asking questions of their husbands (which they may or may not answer).
I wonder how powerful and oppressive women used to be that men are, thousands of years later, still so afraid of allowing them their rights…?
1. I am not conventionally attractive (though I was at a time, but not when Mr and I met*), yet I am married, moving toward our 10th wedding anniversary, having passed our 17 years together. That’s probably more than Trump ever managed.
2. My husband doesn’t have his own personal fridge (apart from the one in his flat).
3. If he had one, and if he had beer in it, or stored beer in our fridge, he’d be more than able to get his own beer, though I’d happily bring him some if I happened to go near the fridge anyway just as he happily asks me if I need something from the kitchen when he’s in it.
4. He doesn’t even get a “man cave” in the new house.
5. Their view of men is really a dim one, too. What would I want with a guy who’s so pathetic that he constantly needs to be served and put on a pedestal? Aren’t those the same people who think that men are stronger than women and that women are too emotional, yet they also think that a woman must always make herself smaller and look up to her man because obviously he cannot bear to have his equal at his side, let alone somebody who might even be more qualified in some aspects (and I don’t mean housework and diaper duty)? Thank goodness I have a man who is a fully grown person, secure in his accomplishments and personality that he can deal with a woman who’s the same.
*They really believe that any old woman was born at the age of 65, any fat woman was born at 200 lbs. Dear Dudebros, I’m really not protesting sexual harassment because I’m envious that conventionally attractive women in their 20s have their various body parts touched against their will and I don’t. I’m protesting it because
A) I’ve been a conventionally attractive 20 something woman who had her various body parts touched against her will and remember how horrible it was
and even if I hadn’t
B) I listen to all the women who tell me about how horrible it is.
“Stay, I’ll get it.”
“No, I can get it.”
“No, no, it’s fine, I’ll get it!”
Such is often heard Chez Caine, and I expect in most households. What Delingpole said, I don’t know how he reconciles that as a person with a wife and children. I don’t know that it even occurs to him what that says about them. He claims he’s a satirist, but he’s also known for: Delingpole has described himself “as a member of probably the most discriminated-against subsection in the whole of British society—the white, middle-aged, public-school-and-Oxbridge educated middle-class male.
Caine
Yeah, I always thought that being in a serious relationship meant looking out for each other and trying to make their lives better, not being in a luxurious all inclusive hotel.