Wednesday, December 10, 2008

Rant: why so serious?

Hi friends of LadyFaces,

As per usual these days, my apologies for my general lack of presence. These recession times hit us all in different ways, and for me it's been an increased workload, which I won't dare complain about, given the number of laid off friends I have these days. But I ran across a blog post recently that just begged for a response, and I felt the need to bring it here.

The post, from BettyConfidential, which is, as far as I can tell, some lady-mag style blog with no specific lady-mag affiliation, took on the issue of the Jon Favreau picture. What is the Jon Favreau picture, you ask? Well maybe you've seen it and maybe you haven't. It would have been way bigger news if it had come out during the primaries, but given the post-election times it's just not quite as big. Basically, the dude on the left in this picture, Jon, is an Obama speechwriter... a really young and obviously idiotic dumbass (albeit wordsmith and talented) speechwriter who got drunk, saw a Hillary Clinton cut out, and pretended to grab the boob of the obviously two-dimensional cutout while posing for a picture.

This, my friends, is a prime example of "really smart, no common sense" (which, on a side note, was my mother's favorite description for my high school friends, but that's another story). Needless to say he knew that this was a bad idea even when he was doing it. Fuck, I know better than to do something like that and I'm merely a member of the media, rather than a political opponent of the cutout in question.

But the picture alone is not what inspired me to blog. It was this post, again, on the aforementioned BettyConfidential, where the author felt the need to not only criticize the act, but then also the Clinton camp, for daring to be light-hearted about it.

The Clinton response was "Senator Clinton is pleased to learn of Jon's obvious interest in the State Department, and is currently reviewing his application."

And it is on this point that Ms. Mary Dixie Carter and I differ. I think this response by the Clinton folk is spot on. She does NO good by making a big deal of this. In fact, it is entirely in her interest to not care, because what good will come of her pitching a fit. He isn't some senior statesmen, he's a dumbass kid, and she shouldn't deign to offer him a serious response. It is for the feminists of the world to strike up in irreverent criticism, but even they shouldn't waste too much time on the subject, because men who are as stupid and piggish to demean women in this way don't deserve the time or attention of women.

1 comments:

annie said...

I totally agree about the Clinton response. Anything else would have acknowledged those involved as important. It's annoying that douchebags will be douchebags, but it's worse to make a scene about them.