Like Dennis Prager, the avowedly cerebral Selwyn Duke is dismayed by the coarsening of our culture.  Unlike Dennis, he does not appear overly concerned that black people are using the F- through N-words inclusive, because that sort of thing just doesn’t go on in the tennis clubs and manicured fairways where he germinates his Deep Thoughts. However, he is worried that one of you ladies might confuse his genitals with non-biodegradable packing peanuts or the oily, moldering black petals of a discarded banana skin.

YOU CAN TOUCH MY JUNK, BUT NOTHING ELSE

Now that “Don’t touch my junk!” has become a rallying cry, I must ask a question: What’s with this youth-culture tendency to refer to male genitalia as “junk”?

And what’s with this tendency of Jazz musicians to address each other as “cat,” when clearly neither party to the conversation is a domesticated fur-bearing quadruped?

Since I keep my nose to the ground, I noticed this slang innovation long before John Tyner drew his line in the sand; it seems to be a phenomenon of the last five years or so.

Selwyn experiences language through the olfactory sense, which explains why his metaphors stink.  But he’s pioneered a powerful new technique for social order, and instead of invasive pat-downs, the TSA should take a leaf from his book and station slang-sniffing dogs in airports to detect kooky teen lingo.

And it’s one I’d like to put on the junk heap.

Here’s another neologism that might interest you, Selwyn.  Curdmudgeon — noun.  A callow pundit who aims to be a more butch version of H.L. Mencken, but whose work is like Velveeta cured in a semen-stiffened sweat sock.

I really don’t want to sound like the über-sensitive professional complainers who say that the term “black hole” (density-approaching-infinity-so-not-even-light-can-escape-it hole is a little clumsy, dontcha think?) is insensitive to blacks or, God forbid, like the harridan feminists who would have us supplant “snowman” with “snowperson” (Frosty the snowperson was a San Francisco soul….).

Those are some pretty lame hallucinations, Sel.  Have you considered zombies?

But something needs to be said about this, and if I don’t say it, perhaps no one will.

I don’t want to add to your burden, but it’s also possible that no one is going to run into the Lateran Palace, tear off his clothes and scream, “I’ve got a hanker for a chancre!”

Would you mind?

Does it strike anyone else as strange that we’re now referring to male genitalia with a word that means “garbage”?

Dude, have you seen a scrotum?

Oh, I know dictionaries indicate that this usage of “junk” can refer to female genitalia as well, but in the real world it seems to be used almost exclusively for the male variety.

Then what’s all this stuff in the trunk I keep hearing about?

Given the above, is it mere coincidence that this anti-male age sees a phenomenon whereby that which symbolizes manhood, at least physically, has come to be called “junk”?

Why can’t we go back to the days when polite society used that word only to describe Chinese sailing vessels, spit balls, and the previous sentence?

And what might we conclude about this anti-male environment’s psychological effect on recent generations of boys and young men when they will readily refer to that symbol of their manhood (in fact, a fellow’s privates are sometimes called “his manhood”) with a demeaning term?

Not sure.  What do you suppose is the result of these same young fellows referring to the female equivalent as a “gash”?  Whatever.  For the sake of our young men’s psychological health, we must urge them to address their organs of generation by the names their fathers and grandfathers used, such as “beaver cleaver,” “assmaster,” and “Ding Dong.”

My self-image has never been so bad that I wanted to characterize part of my body as garbage.

Nor should you, Sel.  That’s women’s work.

Moreover, given that feminist women don’t even like being called “girls” — when that’s just the equivalent of “guys” —

Exactly.  When I was young I joined the Guy Scouts, and never felt offended.  And when I was a little guy, I loved to read Batman comics and pretend I was Robin the Guy Wonder.

I can just imagine how the “womyn” at NOW would react

…if they met a lunkheaded failed tennis pro with his forefinger Crazy Glued to his chin who thinks it’s the 1970s.

…if the word “junk” was widely used to describe a female body part.

I’m sure they’d faint.  You know the ladies.

Oh, not that I blame this on them, or on normal women.

Don’t be condescending to the freaks, Selwyn.  Remember what NOW did to Olga Baclanova.

I also don’t expect men to do much about it. You could say that my sex rolls with the punches,

The donkey punches.

…that we really will take these things “like a man.”

Say no more, Selwyn.  I won’t ask, you don’t tell.

Respect Your Betters | 41 Comments »

A big thank you to s.z. for her analgesic posts of yesterday; it did my heart (if not my head) good to learn that John (Stash LaRue) Stossel is shoplifting his material from the likes of Dr. Mike Adams.  It does come as a bit of a shock, considering that Stossel was, within living memory, a credible reporter and the co-anchor of a major network magazine show, but he’s hanging around Townhall these days, and I suppose the peer pressure finally got to him.  It’s like my old granddad used to say — “lie down with dogs, get up with cupcakes.”

But if we’re footnoting Stash’s sources, this raises the question of where Dr. Mike gets his ideas from.  My guess is, it’s Barbara Bush.  Showing a teenager a Mason jar full of miscarriage just seems like the kind of thing Dr. Mike would threaten to do; in fact, I expect that any day now we’ll hear reports of a man, naked but for a raincoat and a sports bottle full of embryos stuck in his jockstrap, leaping out of bushes at the University of North Carolina–Wilmington and exposing himself to co-eds.  The campus cops will probably give him a snappy alias, like “The Fetal Flasher,” or “The Spontaneous Abortion Bandit.”

Speaking of unsavory characters darkening the doorsteps of the right blogosphere, R. Emmett Tyrrell is editor-in-chief of the American Spectator, although he is primarily famous for the circus midway-like assortment of Siamese consonants in his name.  Today, however, he has decided to drop his daily fundament-muffin on the front page of Townhall.

Hair from the Rand Paul Collection™

Hand-Wringing

WASHINGTON — The other day, I sat down to breakfast. It was a normal day. Five daily newspapers were laid out before me. As I went over the front pages, I downed orange juice and a bowl of oatmeal powdered with brown sugar and flaxseed.

And if that doesn’t turn his bowels into a log flume, nothing will!

Then I went off to my library with the newspapers and a cup of coffee. By then, incidentally, I was revolted.

Because my careless bibliothecary had shelved the several books of the Twilight saga in non-sequential order, with Eclipse preceding New Moon, while Breaking Dawn haunts some non-contiguous netherworld, between the non-fictional Twilight: The Complete Illustrated Movie Companion, and the non-canonical Twilight and Philosophy: Vampires, Vegetarians, and the Pursuit of Immortality (The Blackwell Philosophy and Pop Culture Series).

The New York Times carried on its front page a perfectly disgusting story. It was not a news story, for it broke no news. It was, rather, a feature story, meant to inform and, I presume, to move me to action.

Fat chance, broadsheet-borne bleeding hearts!

It was about the prevalence of suicide in Afghanistan by women who use cooking oil and matches to do themselves in, sometimes successfully, sometimes incompetently and all the more painfully. This was brought to my attention even before my matutinal coffee!

Fortunately, he was still slightly drunk from his crepuscular cocktails.

It is not the first time the Times — or, for that matter, The Washington Post — has put on its front page appalling stories that did not have to be there. Both newspapers run such feature stories on the front page rather regularly — but notThe Washington Times, not The Washington Examiner and certainly not The Wall Street Journal, my other three newspapers. They run repellent stories but usually inside. I think it tells you something about the biases of these newspapers.

For instance, the Examiner feature, “John Boehner’s Daily Ochering Ritual: Let a Smile Be Your Umber” was buried in the Lifestyle section.

The New York Times and The Washington Post share a liberal bias, and their preoccupations are increasingly morbid. The Washington Times, The Examiner and The Wall Street Journal are biased toward the conservative position. They do not shy from reality but generally keep it inside the newspaper, at least when they can. Whether they have my oatmeal in mind, they, for a certitude, have the dignity of the individuals covered in the story in mind, I hope.

One Afghan woman who attempted to immolate herself spoke these chilling last words:  ”I hope the morbid liberal media exerts enough editorial discretion that they don’t interfere with the laxative effects of their readers’ morning bowl of whole-groat porridge with slivered almonds and Goji berries.”

If the story had been breaking news, I would have expected all five newspapers to put it on the front page, but even then I would expect the conservative newspapers to desist from running pictures of corpses and mangled bodies. Certainly, the corpses would not be front and center — as they often are in the liberal newspapers — and faces would be covered.

In fact, when conservatives are in charge, the bodies are usually snuck into the country under cover of darkness, and no cameras are allowed at all.  I mean honestly — is this the kind of thing you want to see before your morning constitutional?

I don’t know how my grandparents choked down their Postum and Cream of Wheat with this crap splashed across the front page of the East Zimmerman Courier – Telegram.

As I say, liberals have become morbid. They are obsessive about the gruesome and the gloomy.

As a sign of the times, UC Berkeley School of Engineering has just endowed the Jigsaw Chair in Baroque and Ironic Deathtrap Studies.

She was rushed to the hospital with burns over 60 percent of her body, and after two weeks of excruciating pain, she died. In the course of telling us of her death, the Times talks about other suicides and their causes. It tells us of these women’s suffering. It is all quite pitiable, but what am I to do about it?

“Decline a second helping of organic corn meal breakfast pudding?  Why, this matutinal morbidity has turned my hair so gray I’m going to have to schedule an antemeridian application of Just For Men®!”

Presumably, not much. I cannot even talk about it, for what it tells us about Islamic culture is not very favorable. Life, particularly a woman’s life, is not cherished in Afghanistan. But we do not talk about it, even in America. It is not politically correct.

Sure, it’s on the front page of the New York Times, but who reads that bunch of oatmeal-spoilers?

So the Times wrings its hands about the fate of women in Afghanistan and goes on. Perhaps tomorrow the paper will be talking about the fate of women in Kenya or dogs in Indonesia or a fabulous new disease. It is all of a piece with the liberal preoccupation with the morbid.

“It disgusts me that we are so pusillanimous and politically correct that we as a nation lack the intestinal fortitude to honestly grapple with these issues that I don’t really want to talk about.”

Actually, two days later, the Times pictured on its front page a young woman lying on a floor on some kind of pallet. She is in an isolation tent, but it is not very sanitary. Supplies are piled around her. She is forlorn. The caption reads “Cholera Moves Into the Beleaguered Haitian Capital” and goes on to explain: “A woman suspected of having cholera, in an isolation tent in Port-au-Prince, Haiti. An outbreak has spread into the city.” Again, what are we to do?

Waste our Beautiful Minds?

Well, I suppose we can send money, more money. We certainly cannot help the victims in Haiti in any real way. Nor can we aid the women of Afghanistan.

There any Cinnamon Streusel muffins left?

We can share the liberals’ morbid preoccupations or do what I usually do: read the liberal newspapers last

“That’s when I make my ‘donation,’ so to speak.  Heh heh heh.”

Respect Your Betters | 30 Comments »

Hi, kids. Let’s check out Townhall and find out what Tea Party Command has on its mind today. (Yesterday’s topic was “We know that Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert are having rallies in D.C. to make fun of us, and while we don’t want to appear to be humorless nuts by complaining about them, we HATE THEM SO MUCH for making fun of us.”)

Hmm, it seems that today’s theme is: “You should be HONORED to pay a billionaire’s taxes for him, after all he’s done for you. So, make the Bush tax cuts permanent, even unto the next life.”

Here’s John Stossel to explain it all to even the most ungrateful of Americans.

Taxing the Rich

Progressives want to raise taxes on individuals who make more than $200,000 a year because they say it’s wrong for the rich to be “given” more money.

Granted, it is wrong to give money to millionaire pan handlers (instead, give them half-eaten sandwiches or some toilet paper, as they will just use cash for hookers and drugs). But I have never heard anybody talking about taxes say that it’s wrong to give the rich more money. Instead, they say stuff like, “The richest 20% of Americans own 85% of all the wealth in America, but they pay only 72% of the taxes. If they were contributing their fair share, they would be paying at least 85% of the taxes, instead of passing on their tax burden to the middle class.” (I don’t know why Stossel got it so wrong — do you think maybe he doesn’t actually know any people, or is he just stupid?)

As I’ve said before, a tax cut is not a handout. It simply means government steals less. What progressives want to do is take money from some — by force — and spend it on others. It sounds less noble when plainly stated.

And what Stossel wants to is force the middle class pay more for the government and its services, a goverment that benefits the rich more than it does them. What Stossel wants is to make the middle class forget about college for their kids so that the rich can buy another private island or luxury yacht. What Stossel wants is for YOU to pay a larger portion of your income on taxes than he does, even though he makes millions for being a jerk, while you have to work for your money. It sounds really wrong and immoral when plainly stated.

But Stossel claims that the rich aren’t in it for the Impressionist paintings or the Ferraris — no, they do it all for YOU, by, um, creating jobs for art forgers or Ferrari mechanics. And if we don’t show our gratitude to the rich by giving them tax breaks, they will just pack up their billions and go home to their private islands, or take their luxury yachts to shack up with their money in Aruba. If you don’t believe Stossel, just ask the revered Donald Trump.

Donald Trump, who knows something about making money, says of course the rich will leave when hit with higher taxes. “I know these people,” he told me. “They’re international people. Whether they live here or live in a place like Switzerland doesn’t really matter to them.”

Personally, it doesn’t matter to me either where they live. But if they make money here or have money here, they should pay their fair share of taxes here. And since America offers a much better environment for making money (and not just hiding money) than does Swizerland, I doubt they will be leaving any time soon. So, I call your bluff, Mr. Trump and Mr. Stossel!

You haven’t left, I told him.

“I haven’t left yet. …

Hey, don’t let the door hit you on your way out, Donnie.

“Look, the rich people are going to leave. And other people are going to leave. You’re going to end up with lots of people that don’t produce. And then that’s the spiral. That’s the end.”

Can we afford to live in a country where nobody produces Trump towers or “The Apprentice”? Look deep into your soul, and then vote to increase Stossel’s income (a stupidity tax?) until he is forced to leave the country.

Now, let’s hear from young Katie Pavlich, who screams Youth of America, Stop Drinking Obama’s Kool-Aid and instead start guzzling from the Townhall teats.

If America’s youth want any chance at having a stable economic future, free from total government control, I suggest they put down the Kool-Aid and start drinking some tea.

Those are your only choices, young people: Total Government Control or joining up with far-right nut jobs.

Katie is also here to speak up for oppressed and disadvantaged rich people, whom the President so cruelly defamed in a recent speech.

President Obama went on to slam big corporations and “rich” people while failing to mention that those evil people and corporations give recent college graduates jobs, a very rare thing this day in age.

College graduates finding employment is very rare “this day in age”? That is indeed troubling. I guess illegal immigrants from Mexico have stolen all the entry-level positions that the young people of other days in ages used to get, leaving today’s graduates no choice but to work for Evil, Inc. as an Assistant Editor (especially if their editing skills aren’t all that great).

Katie Pavlich, a May 2010 journalism graduate of the University of Arizona and former Townhall.com editorial intern, is Assistant Editor at Townhall.com.

But Katie does have statistics to support her claims about how rare it is for other recent college grads to find work.

According to the Economic Policies Institute, unemployment among people 16-24 years old is 18.9 percent

Personally, I will not rest until every 16-year-old has at least one full-time job, so that they can help pay the taxes of those billionaires who are counting on them.

But, hey, let’s look at Katie’s stats again: apparently over 80% of people 16-24 ARE employed. So, if Katie is telling the truth about how rare it is for college grads to get jobs, then once you graduate from MIT and turn 24, you are either fired or send to the Carousel from Logan’s Run, and then executed. And the news gets even worse!

. . . and on top of that, a majority of college graduates have been so discouraged looking for full employment that they have stopped looking altogether.

So, over 50% of college graduates not only don’t have jobs, they aren’t even looking anymore, due to clinical depression or something (their ennui undoubtedly caused by the knowledge that any day now Donald Trump will be fleeing the country, taking with him such jobs as “Toupee Maker For Dorks.” Things are much worse than I even imagined!

Youth fortunate to actually land a job after graduating may not have one on January 1, 2011, due to President Obama and Nancy Pelosi’s refusal to extend the Bush tax cuts, leading to the biggest tax hike in American history. More taxes equal less money to pay workers, especially in the middle of a recession.

Katie, if you had taken a job somewhere other than Evil, Inc. you might find that “More taxes equal less dividends for the share holders,” or “More taxes equal a million dollar pay cut for the CEO” or even “More taxes equal we fire a few Washington lobbyists.”

Without this tax-cut extension, employers will be forced to cut employees along with salaries, and lucky recent graduates will be first ones the chopping block.

Katie, is that what the Senior Editor told you? But here’s an idea you can pitch to the Town Hall Board: Instead of firing the recent grads who make the least, fire the senior employees, who make the most. That’s the evil thing to do. Or, just fire John Stossel, since he’s a douche bag.

Respect Your Betters | 31 Comments »

Thanks to reliable farm club WorldNetDaily, we have another rookie wingnut to scout today:  Meet Dr. Nancy Pearcey.  Dr. Pearcey “is editor-at-large of The Pearcey Report,” which seems to be a sort of Huffington Post for people who’ve had a tamping rod blown through their left frontal lobe like Phineas Gage.  A sample of articles gracing the front page at press time:

Prop 8 Ruling Could Criminalize Christianity, Leaders Warn

FAKE HOMELESS Rake in Thousands

Prop 8 judge called ‘tyrannical activist devoted to satisfying himself’

CAN Black People Think for Themselves?

‘Faggot’ Easy to Defend

So it’s not like they’re trying to push an agenda.  Come one, come all; if you’ve got a pierced frontal lobe, whether from an industrial accident, or that lobotomy your parents were talked into when you were a rebellious teen, then you’re welcome at The Pearcey Report.  By the way, when I say “Dr. Pearcey,” I’m following the form of address favored by Philadelphia Biblical University, Langhorne, Pennsylvania, in their press release announcing Pearcey’s appointment as “scholar for Worldview Studies at the Center for University Studies.”

Dr. Nancy R. Pearcey, Christian scholar, educator, author and speaker, has been named Scholar for Worldview Studies at the Center for University Studies at Philadelphia Biblical University.

Dr. Pearcey will teach, speak and write on the integration of Christian thought with scholarship and the application of Christian perspectives to the academy and across the culture.

The release wraps up with the good doctor’s academic credentials.

Pearcey earned a Distributed Studies Degree from Iowa State University and Master’s Degree in Biblical Studies from Covenant Theological Seminary in St. Louis. She then pursued graduate work in the history of philosophy at the Institute for Christian Studies in Toronto.

But it outran her.

In addition, she holds an Honorary Doctorate in Religious Education from PBU.

So PBU appointed Dr. Pearcey a scholar after appointing her a doctor.  Now that’s the kind of vertical integration that would have made Andrew Carnegie blush.  Meanwhile, her Wikipedia bio tells us that:

Pearcey is a senior fellow of the Discovery Institute‘s Center for Science and Culture, the center of the intelligent design movement. Pearcey has played a role in a number of controversies surrounding the institute’s campaign to challenge and ultimately unseat the teaching of evolution.

[She was] a contributing editor for the young-earth creationist Bible-Science Newsletter from 1977-1991

…which would suggest that, despite her honorary degree, she’s a moron.  But hold on a second!  According to Nancy’s much longer bio at The Pearcy Report, she was also:

Heralded as “one of the few female intellectuals in evangelicalism” (Evangelical Outpost), Nancy has ad- dressed staffers on Capitol Hill and at the White House; actors and screenwriters in Hollywood; sci- entists at labs such as Sandia and Los Alamos.

So even though she spent 14 years pushing the young-earth hypothesis, she’s not stupid enough to think the planet is 6000 years old.  She thinks it’s more like 6 million years old, but just looks really good for its age.

Anyway, now that we’re acquainted with the Honorary Doctor’s bona fides, let’s see how a female intellectual handles those flesh-dissing queers:

Who respects the human body? Not homosexuals

After a chilly reception from the crowd during a two-night stand in Key West, Abbott and Costello stopped doing this version of their classic Vaudeville routine.

The ruling by Judge Vaughn Walker to strike down Proposition 8 raises a host of issues that go far beyond the California case. Especially troubling is Walker’s view of gender. His ruling makes the sweeping assertion that “gender no longer forms an essential part of marriage.”

However, “gender remains a part of this complete breakfast.”

Respect Your Betters | 30 Comments »

Your exemplary new names for the gaggle of Gosselins made me nostalgic for the days when we came up with all those creative and vibrant monikers for the Gurdon Gang. And that made me wonder what Meghan and the kids have been up to lately. So, I made the effort to check out the latest exemplar of Meghan’s twice-weekly column at The Washington Examiner (Motto: “We’re not even the Washington Times, but we are a paper. Really!”). And it’s a good thing I did, because it seems that only son Trojan has become a teenager, and has begun to rebel. Sure, we all saw this coming, but when it did, it was more brutal than any of us could have imagined. So, let’s observe for a moment and then start the intervention.

How to be, like, incredibly boring

“Jonathan and me had less than the other guys!”

“Jonathan and I had fewer than the other guys,” I corrected automatically.

“Whatever,” said the 13-year-old, and if I didn’t know him to be above such gestures, I might have suspected him of rolling his eyes. The phrase in our family for this teenage reflex is “glancing up at the ceiling and back.” So far he’d resisted.

“No, really, it matters,” I insisted. “If you’re talking about something that can be counted individually, like dollars or pizzas, you say “fewer.” If you’re talking about material that comes in quantity, like sugar or fabric or money, you say ‘less.’”

The boy looked at me. He asked: “Do you seriously think I care?”

“Darling, you should,” I said.

“But I don’t,” he replied, his blue eyes betraying not a flicker of insolence. “Honestly, I don’t care. No one does.”

Egad, young Plato has not only used his eyes in an unapproved manner, but he has also declared that he doesn’t care about grammar! And we all know where this road is going to lead him: to an illpaid and unprestigious job at the NRO.

So, if you have any parenting tips or English useage rules to share, please, for the love of all that’s holy, do so now!

Oh, and here’s a photo of Meghan and husband Hugo (they’re the ones in front), courtesy of “The Frump Forum.” I don’t know what is going on here, but if you want to speculate, I would really enjoy it.

Respect Your Betters | 18 Comments »