I’ll never be able to read Matt Taibbi again

I’ve enjoyed his scathing, ferocious approach to political reporting, but I just learned today that he takes the same ferocious, scathing approach to women. He and Mark Ames were columnists writing for an expat paper in Moscow years ago, and they apparently had a grand time being outrageous. When I first read a few quotes, I thought for a moment that they had to be faked — that these were ginned-up accounts written up by political enemies, of which they have more than a few.

But no. These were their own words. They wrote them up in a book-length account of their adventures in Russia. They were bragging about these attitudes.

It’s not ironic–Ames and Taibbi explicitly scorn the bourgeois safety net of irony–and it’s not just a rhetorical stance. “You’re always trying to force Masha and Sveta under the table to give you blow jobs,” complains their first business manager, an American woman, in chapter six, “The White God Factor.” “It’s not funny. They don’t think it’s funny.” “But…it is funny,” replies Taibbi. They take particular glee in trashing several former female staff members in print, taking multiple potshots at the aforementioned business manager’s “gorilla ass.” They’re equally nasty to her replacement, who quit in disgust after they went on a four-month “brain-sucking speed binge.”

It’s OK if you want to stop there. It gets worse. Much worse.

[Read more…]

I’m going to be famous now!

I’ve been cited in Charisma magazine! Surely respect, honor, and glory will follow in the wake of this awesome acknowledgment.

I am mentioned in the context of explaining how octopus suckers work. Unfortunately, the rest of the article is about getting possessed by squid demons.

After this squid spirit attacked my friend, I went to her home to help her battle it. The attack was severe, but when I laid hands on her and commanded the squid to be bound, the most violent symptoms would cease. Of course, when you stand in the gap, you often take a hit. That squid spirit started stalking me. I ended up with a migraine during the battle—a manifestation of that mind control spirit—and was attacked in my mind for days afterwards.

Fear can open the door to a squid spirit. Of course, unforgiveness is an open door for the enemy. But let’s face it: The enemy doesn’t need an open door to attack. He can strike when we least expect it, which is why we’re to live in a battle-ready state and walk with the Spirit of God who can warn us of impending attacks.

The good news here is a squid’s tentacles do not grow back once severed. If you get discernment that a squid spirit is attacking you, repent for any known open doors, grab some intercessors, and get that sneaky stalker with its manipulating suckers off your mind! Sever the tentacles, in the name of Jesus, and walk free.

Dammit. Cancel the celebration, forget the promotion, I’m not moving to the corner office after all, and I guess I don’t have to hang around waiting for the phone call from my agent after all.

Please keep Louie Gohmert and Steve King apart

Whenever they’re together, the stupidity reaches criticality. Here’s Steve King making an argument for adding anti-transgender legislation to a bill,
because if we don’t, we’re all going to die.

This isn’t a civilization-killer, but an indication of a civilization-killer. I think of the circumstances in a little bit older history, back in the 16th and 17th century when the Ottoman Empire were sweeping across the countryside, they pressed [people] into slavery. They wanted to have their crack troops and other troops, too. But what they did to keep them from reproducing was that they did reassignment surgery on those slaves that they captured that they put in their troops. They took them from being a male and suitable to work in the army and they put them out in the field to do battle against the enemy and they didn’t have the testosterone to take on the fight and they figured out how to stop turning these men into eunuchs…None of the men had the will to fight. They decided that when they kept complete men in their troops, they fought well. So that’s a lesson from the Ottoman Empire…This is one of the most appallingly stupid things I’ve seen the Congress of the United States do.

Problems:

  • Reassignment surgery is not the same as castration. Castration is not the same as reassignment surgery.

  • The Ottomans did not carry out mass castrations. Historically, many men have been castrated in Europe, the Middle East, and Asia, but not as a mechanism of population control. As a punishment, yes; to produce individuals who could work in government or as servants who would not scheme to place offspring in positions of power, yes; to produce unique biological effects, such as the castrati who sang in European concert halls, yes. But it was also a crude procedure that killed a many of its victims.

  • There was no policy or pattern of producing castrated soldiers — perhaps he’s confusing reality for Game of Thrones?

  • There’s no evidence that the will to fight and live comes from our testicles. Women can also be aggressive. Historically, eunuchs have served in the civil service, and had a reputation for ambition. There were men who voluntarily became eunuchs as a path to advancement in the bureaucracy.

Here’s a brief summary of the historical role of eunuchs. They tended not to be soldiers, but I repeat: castration is not a synonym for reassignment surgery, nor do you need testes to be a good soldier.

Can Gohmert possibly exceed the stupidity on display by King? Challenge accepted!

Some people, they think we exaggerate, but my very good friend from Iowa and I have stood there on the mountaintop in Vienna where western civilization stood there in the gap and it was all at risk…If Vienna fell, then the rest of Europe would fall…and there’s a good chance we’re not even here in this fashion today…Perhaps we are headed into a new period of the dark ages and that Polish prince comes down and puts cannons in those mountains and nobody in two years seeking a sex-change operation and change reassignment, as they call it, could possibly help it…I can assure my friends here in the House that there was nobody who was out there defending western civilization who had undergone a sex-change operation in the previous two years.

I think he’s talking about the siege of Vienna in 1529, when the Ottoman Turks failed to capture the city. Maybe? I don’t know. Or possibly the battle of Vienna in 1683, when the Poles under John Sobieski defeated the Turks? I don’t see what his point is, since the first experimental sex reassignment surgeries were performed in the 1930s, and the first successful ones were carried out in the 1950s, so yeah, he’s right, there was no one in 1638 who had had a sex change operation in 1636. I doubt there was anyone at either Viennese battle who was taking Viagra, either. This is not relevant.

Can he get even more confused? He can!

When it’s advertised that the United States Congress is in favor of taking men and surgically making them into women with the money that they would use to protect the nation otherwise, or taking women and doing surgery to make them men, the United States Congress would rather spend that money on that surgery than defeating radical Islam, then it is an advertising bonanza for the radical Islamists because my Muslim friends tell me, the recruits, you’re right, if that’s how stupid they are, this society has no right to remain on the earth. We need to take them out. They are too stupid.

Uh-oh. Someone better tell King and Gohmert that being stupid removes your right to remain on earth is a personally very dangerous argument. I am tempted to agree that we need to “take out” a certain pair of legislators for being dangerously idiotic, but that would be wrong.

Will no one think of the eels?

Tragic. A truck full of hagfish overturned in Oregon, and all anyone is wondering about is the car repair and the dry-cleaning bills. What about the poor wonderful dead beasties?

The best succinct summary of the wondrous hagfish is at Southern Fried Science.

goop fights back!

I guess it was predictable: the quackery on display at Gwyneth Paltrow’s ridiculous goop site has been receiving a lot of well-deserved mockery, and you knew that they weren’t going to simply accept this threat to their credibility and profit by changing their approach and offering legitimate, evidence-based health claims — they’re doubling-down with an extra helping of indignation. So they’ve fished up some people with degrees (please, don’t dignify them by calling them doctors) to defend bullshit. So, for instance, they have a lengthy defense of homeopathy that is straight-up flagrant nonsense

In most countries outside the United States, homeopathics are the first line of defense against ailment, from the common cold to bruising to muscle pain. And since they offer such a gentle but effective path to healing, they’re a great starting point for anyone dipping their toes into alternative medicine—that, and the fact that they’re easy to find, safe to self-treat, and inexpensive. Dr. Ellen Kamhi, a long-time herbalist and holistic nurse (she also leads incredible trips that explore ancient healing arts in indigenous cultures), has been treating illnesses big and small with homeopathics for more than 40 years.

Homeopathic medicines are just water. Sure, they’re gentle, but they’re not effective at all.

But the real fun begins on their new page where they try to specifically address criticisms by deploying a series of statements from quacks. Oh, boy!

As goop has grown, so has the attention we receive. We consistently find ourselves to be of interest to many—and for that, we are grateful—but we also find that there are third parties who critique goop to leverage that interest and bring attention to themselves. Encouraging discussion of new ideas is certainly one of our goals, but indiscriminate attacks that question the motivation and integrity of the doctors who contribute to the site is not. This is the first in a series of posts revisiting these topics and offering our contributing M.D.’s a chance to articulate theirs, in a respectful and substantive manner.

They are very unhappy with Dr Jen Gunter, a real doctor who has made strong fact-based criticisms of the crap sold at goop. In particular, how dare she diss their magic jade eggs, nice porous stones which they recommend that women stuff up their vaginas.

Last January, we published a Q&A with Shiva Rose about her jade egg practice, which has helped her (and legions of other women who wrote to us in response) feel more in touch with her sexuality, and more empowered. A San Francisco-based OB-GYN/blogger posted a mocking response on her site, which has the tagline: “Wielding the Lasso of Truth.” (We also love Wonder Woman, though we’re pretty sure she’s into women taking ownership of female sexual pleasure.)

There was a tremendous amount of press pick-up on the doctor’s post, which was partially based on her own strangely confident assertion that putting a crystal in your vagina for pelvic-floor strengthening exercises would put you in danger of getting Toxic Shock Syndrome—even though there is no study/case/report which links the two—and also stating with 100 percent certainty that conventional tampons laden with glyphosate (classified by the WHO as probably carcinogenic) are no cause for concern. Since her first post, she has been taking advantage of the attention and issuing attacks to build her personal platform—ridiculing the women who might read our site in the process.

Oh, dear. Dr Gunter must hate women’s sexuality. How else to interpret someone who opposes stuffing random objects up one’s hoo-hah? Next thing you know, Dr Gunter will show how much she hates my masculinity by telling me I should stop eating 10 pounds of bacon a day, and that my practice of swinging a chainsaw from my penis doesn’t make me more manly.

Actually, if you read her post on the jade eggs, she isn’t complaining about women’s sexuality — quite the opposite — but is offering sensible advice, “jade is porous which could allow bacteria to get inside and so the egg could act like a fomite. This is not good, in case you were wondering. It could be a risk factor for bacterial vaginosis or even the potentially deadly toxic shock syndrome.”

That’s it.

She also does not endorse using glyphosate-soaked tampons up there. She does point out that the dubious report that tampons are full of glyphosate actually just shows that they have the same amount of glyphosate as the general background level, contrary to the absurd histrionics of goop.

But the best part is the tone trolling of Steven Gundry.

First, Dr. Gunter, I have been in academic medicine for forty years and up until your posting, have never seen a medical discussion start or end with the “F-bomb,” yet yours did. A very wise Professor of Surgery at the University of Michigan once instructed me to never write anything that my mother or child wouldn’t be proud to read. I hope, for the sake of your mother and child, that a re-reading of your article fails his test, and following his sage advice, that you will remove it.

No! The F-bomb? Quick, someone get Gunter’s degree retracted. She said “fuck”!

What’s funny about this is that, naturally, they don’t bother to link to the disgraceful doctor’s post where she inflicts that horrific word on her gentle readers. Here it is.

It’s a response to St Gwyneth saying If you want to fuck with me, bring your A-game. Gwyneth! Wash your mouth out with herbal soap! Your entire site is discredited in the eyes of Steven Gundry because you used a naughty word!

Of course, right there on the same page, there is a direct link to let you buy a jade egg for your crotch for $66. They’re still missing an opportunity to sell chainsaws with a crotch strap.

I think I’ll favor medical advice from real doctors, even ones who might sometimes use a four letter word, over that of pompous cranks trying to grift their way to profit with dangerous pseudoscience, hawked by a college drop-out actress.

Jen Gunter has written a response to goop. It’s a corker. You should read it.

Bees!

It’s sad that this has become a notable observation, but they’ve become so scarce that when I walked by the science building, which is surrounded by prairie grasses and flowers, I was surprised to see swarms of bumblebees everywhere. I had to take a picture.

I know it’s a bit blurry, but just think of it as like a photo of bigfoot or the Loch Ness monster — those are always out of focus, so I’m adding verisimilitude. Otherwise, when I’m dandling a grandchild on my knee 50 years from now, showing them this strange extinct insect on a strange extinct flower, they won’t believe me.

Die, yuppie scum

I reread David Brook’s horrible column, How we are ruining America, now that the red hot scales of rage over my eyes have cooled a bit, and realized it wasn’t quite as bad as I thought. It’s still oblivious and stupid, but the real issue is who he is talking about when he says “we”. Who is “we”?

It’s got a photo of a college grad up top, and he keeps talking about the “educated class”, but he seems to have confused that with the “upper middle class”, which is what he’s really talking about. I am a member of the “educated class” — you can’t get much more imbedded in that group than a professor at a liberal arts college — but his descriptions of those people look nothing like my experience.

I come out of a working class background. My colleagues come from a range of backgrounds. My students are similarly diverse; sure, there are some who come in with a free ride from their parents and drive fancy cars (and that’s fine), but others are scraping by on financial aid and are working long hours outside of the classroom to keep afloat. Universities are generally not elitist, but especially at the community college and state college levels are all about reaching all strata of society.

They can be a path to upward mobility — you generally will make more money with a college degree than without — but they’re more of a way to do what you want with your life. You do not become a sociologist to get rich. You do not become a college professor because you dream of owning a yacht someday.

That’s the lie behind his column, the part where he’s detached from reality. He uses “educated class” and “wealthy” interchangeably, and he just doesn’t get it. Extremely over-educated Ph.D.s with science degrees are more likely to be scruffy and dressed in jeans and hang out at the brew pub than to demand incessant frou-frou dining experiences (although we’re also likely to be more open to novelty, and aren’t averse to trying anything).

Nothing in his column speaks to the experience of educated Americans. It’s all about the bubble the rich live in.

The educated class has built an ever more intricate net to cradle us in and ease everyone else out. It’s not really the prices that ensure 80 percent of your co-shoppers at Whole Foods are, comfortingly, also college grads; it’s the cultural codes.

Status rules are partly about collusion, about attracting educated people to your circle, tightening the bonds between you and erecting shields against everybody else. We in the educated class have created barriers to mobility that are more devastating for being invisible. The rest of America can’t name them, can’t understand them. They just know they’re there.

It begins to sink in: the “we” who are ruining American is not the students who better themselves with an education — it’s pampered spoiled rich people who have more money than they deserve. The “we” is you, David Brooks. You are ruining America, along with all the other undeservedly wealthy people who contribute nothing to our culture. They’ve managed to substitute greed and a superficial desire for the trappings of the rich for real knowledge and a more human awareness.

The real targets of his complaints are people represented by the likes of Gwyneth Paltrow, product of a private girls’ school education, but a college dropout — someone who isn’t really well-educated, but has been groomed to fit into the parasitic class so well populated with people like David Brooks, who get well-paid columns in the NY Times while not being particularly bright or insightful or even interesting.

His column reads much better if you interpret it as a confession that he deserves to be lined up against the wall in the Revolution.