There is a disturbing trend among well-off, liberal female writers. They appear to be writing the most obvious observations in the known world, but at a 3,000-word clip and healthy, healthy doses of navel-gazing. For instance, at one time — near when it started — Jezebel was a great alternative to a lot of women-centric blogs. Early Jezzies were funny, interesting and could run circles around Slate‘s slightly older XX crowd. But now the blog trades in a pedanticism born of a College Democrats group at Sarah Lawrence. It’s unreadable.
But Salon, which has been trading on borrowed time since Jake Tapper left and the initial “Salon Premium” paywall back in the day, has taken the cake as of late, and especially this week. The first story was, and we shit you not, a woman advocating for large penises. The blown way out of proportion, self-important piece could actually be boiled down to a fucking tweet:
Some say “motion in the ocean,” but on the whole, bigger is better. #sexytime
Oh, my. Thank you, Salon, for bringing that needed column to the world’s attention. We had no idea. The money shot:
Anybody who’s been around the block even a bit can acknowledge that penises, like snowflakes, are all different, and it follows that larger ones happen to feel different in the trenches. And the truth is that when women get together, they have been known to describe their partners in the universal language of holding their palms several inches apart and nodding appreciatively. Now you know.
Jesus. No shit, lady. Human beings have pretty much accepted this as reality for thousands of years, and we’re pretty sure cavewomen did the hands move between grunts, too. And the kicker is, the woman who wrote it is by any measure accomplished. And she got paid more money than I’ve ever seen — for a single article of that length — to do a defense of large penises from a heterosexual woman’s perspective. What.the.fuck?
And then Saturday comes a column from our favorite trope, which is women who are getting old and wondering what the hell happened between 30 and 60. The hed and subhed are, “The hot young teacher they hired instead: I have decades of experience in the classroom, but when I went up against Alex for a job, I knew how it would end.” Shorter, “Middle-aged woman threatened by younger woman.” We’ve heard this story? We’ve heard this story. Really, sometimes we see a hed and it looks so absurd, and the lede is insane, but the writer fixes it eventually. Halfway through this extended monologue to an analyst masquerading as a column, the writer goes deeper into the rabbit hole.
Early on, you know that the writer is about to be 59, her and her friends hate these mid-20s, in-shape, attractive women who dress well that get hired, and she’s obviously threatened by the appearance, quite literally, of your average female recent secondary education graduate. The whole beginning of the piece deals with appearance. If that’s what she’s leading with, that’s what she’s most concerned about. It’s even hard to tell whether she’s being sarcastic when she talks about doing the same thing, when she could.
I’ll be 59 in two weeks. Ten or fifteen years ago, I realized I could not remotely rely on my youth and looks to get by. I no longer had an Oil of Olay complexion or a size 6 figure. I couldn’t get away with wearing short skirts or tight sweaters or acting cute or coy. I’d have to depend on other qualities, the ones my grandmother said you could see in the dark: personality, intelligence and character.
Further down, she mentions leaving a husband and a good, tenured position to the once she has now, teaching high school English. And she moves on to discuss problems moving to another job. Bit it’s classic, reading between the lines. Her mention of her background is saying, “I have education and I have had a better job that I left voluntarily — I have taste.” It’s shorthand for saying, “I don’t shop at Wal-Mart.” Then the whole rigmarole about not finding another job:
I consider cutting years off my résumé. Maybe I’ll be hired if they think they don’t have to pay me so much. (Compensation scales based on years of experience allow me to make twice what first- and second-year teachers earn.) The recession isn’t helping; districts are paring activities and staff. Nationally, according to the New York Times, 150,000 teachers may lose their jobs this year. Some districts have already received more than 450 applications for each advertised position.
In the last few months, I’ve applied for dozens of jobs. No response — except for automated e-mails thanking me for applying and advising they will call if they’re interested. One school asked me to call to set up a pre-screening interview. When I called within 20 minutes of receiving the e-mail, the secretary said, “All slots are already taken.” And that was for an interview for an interview!
I think of the Hillary Clintons and Ruth Bader Ginsbergs — women over 60 who are still active and vibrant and employed at a level they deserve. I worry I’ll have to do what I did when I graduated from college: answer phones, make coffee, and type carbon copies that have to be retyped if there are mistakes. I imagine working as a proofreader — editing and correcting the grammar of my grown-up students. I imagine myself behind the counter of a coffee bar or bookstore. Or taping up signs with my phone number on little flaps offering to walk dogs or tutor.
First, she’s using the job thing to buttress her point about age, but she’s smart enough to know she can’t let alone the economy, though she basically discounts it without directly addressing the issue. Second — Clinton, Ginsberg? One’s a former senator and current secretary of state, and the other sits on the Supreme Court. Levels of expectation may need to be addressed. Also, she’s uttering the utterance of the uncool — “change scares me.” This is usually generational and always banal. The changing economy waits for no man, or woman. We live in a different world than the early ’70s, when she was last an undergraduate. Even for someone born in 1951, it might be time to recognize that.
And even if her underlying belief is true, that she’s having trouble because she’s older and no longer a candidate for “hot for teacher” fantasies, so what? We’re on the record saying that our two main choices of work, public relations and politics, were stacked against us because we weren’t a hot sorority girl that wanted to plan parties for a living. It’s why our first jobs shoved us in the direction of all other paunchy male degenerate writers — sportswriting. So, yes, if you’re young and attractive, you’re likely to have a better chance of getting a job at certain levels. This is not news. Especially it shouldn’t be for someone whose first vote for president was probably for George McGovern.
She says that she told herself that losing a job was not like losing a husband. But she gets it wrong — people come and go, but a good job you hold on to with both hands. James Carville, at the end of the documentary The War Room, mentions in a tear-filled speech how important one’s labor is, and for who or what it is for. At this point, everyone should be saying, “Yes, we know you’re laid off. Sucks. The rest of us have been in this position since 2006.”
After being told she was cut loose because the school had to eliminate positions and the object of her disaffection would be retained, she celebrates, and name-drops, with an expensive scotch and, call “Sex and the City,” chocolate. What, was there no ice cream in the freezer? Did you warp your “An Affair to Remember” DVD? So, yes, more shit we already knew long ago.
And she ends it with an optimistic upswing. But as an English teacher and a writer, she has to know the devices she used in her argument and how transparent they are as far as advancing her point while making her look good, using her intelligence to write around tropes so obvious that they burned our retinas. The writer seems more 69 than 59. Wolfe mère is 51 and we couldn’t imagine her writing such a thing. We’d like to think it would come down to basic things: Change happens. The young inherit. Act, do not be acted upon. Three basic tenants that would have allowed the writer of the column to get through, kick ass and own the situation.
But she plays the victim, which is pretty fucking sad for someone who came of age during the height of the women’s liberation movement.
Summer of an election year. Better than summer of an off-year, but last year we had the Sanford scandal to amuse ourselves with. Sure, there’s a couple interesting things worth talking about as it comes to state politics, but the pickings are pretty slim. Oh, man — the abject boredom. If only there was a big scandal to have some fun with.
It’s always this way after the primaries. It’s like the weeks after the conference championship games at the beginning of December. There are other games coming up, and some exciting moments, to be sure. But the real fireworks are over. Two more months until football season and when the general election campaigns really start going at it to any meaningful degree. Carolina baseball has been a nice diversion, but even that’s over this week.
How boring is it? We blew straight through the “Evil Dead” trilogy last night. And it sucked. That’s 4 1/2 hours, gone.
We’re uncertain where the Twitter meme #joepinnerfacts started, or how, but it took off and a friend of ours was on us for a while to start slinging ideas. We weren’t real big on the idea — despite being residents of Columbia multiple times in the past 21 years, the most we knew of Joe Pinner was that he’s been a WIS meteorologist and spent so much time on TV and involved in local matters that he’s become the sort of local celebrity that everyone knows. But after some more goading, the back-and-forth got our brain going and we put a few tweets out there.
Little did we know it was going to lead to a lede by Otis Taylor in The State.
On Tuesday, election day, Wes Wolfe posted this from @WolfeReports, a Twitter account: “Joe Pinner doesn’t need to go vote. The voting machines come to him. With breakfast.”
The post was followed by #joepinnerfacts, a hashtag that allows users to track tweets on the short message social Web site twitter.com. Posts about Joe Pinner, the gregarious local television personality, were recently a trending topic on Twitter.
Wolfe was wrong, though. Pinner goes to the polls. He was voting when we reached him, and he was unaware of his recent Twitter fame.
Oh, journalism — always there to take down a joke. Actually, and here’s the thing, we’ve been seeing some activity among the #joepinnerfacts twitterati that are considering making plans to mosey on down to Capital City Stadium, where Pinner will be recreating his role as Mr. Knozit before a Columbia Blowfish game on Saturday. Nothing like seeing the man in person to help generate more ideas.
We get a lot of weird emails over here, and this is the fruit of one of the weirdest, and most entertaining. Behold, the rhyme of the S.C. primary.
“We Got a Primary”
Jim Clyburn robo-callin’ me all day like a stalker ex
Vinny Sheheen sayin’ ain’t no runoff with Jim Rex
Kelly Payne damn changin’ the game for ed
Joe Wilson all “You lie” — oh, no, that’s what Haley said
What, what — it’s the primary down here in S.C.
What, what, got CNN, Chuck Todd, MSNBC
What, what, got Jakie Knotts, two more shots, burning crosses in Santee
What, what, know Wes Wolfe can only vote absentee
Callin’ all you Tea Party yellow coiled snake flag wavers
McMaster clowns got Will Folks doin’ Andre Bauer favors
Got emails, videos, private eyes out takin’ pictures
Bill Connor goin’ all “Too much of this” on Larry Richter
Everybody tweetin’ “Where the party at tomorrow evenin’?”
Bauer got a bus full of young chicks, cross the state line he leavin’
What, what it’s the primary down in Succa-lina
What, what, got national politicos sayin’ “Mmmmmm, nothin’ fine-uh”
What, what, got Gina Smith and her homeboy John O’Connah
What, what, got a primary down in Succa-lina
What, what, got a primary down in Succa-line
Sunday afternoon, we considered going for some cheap pizza and beer. Cheese, fatty meat and alcohol are not exactly unknown in these parts. Actually, they’re known as the three main food groups. But, after mourning the death of Wolfe Mobile Mk. II, we weren’t exactly up to mingling with the populace. Later in the evening, we swore we saw someone walk past the living room window.
Granted, we’re not given to paranoia. Very different, actually. So, we just explained it away and went about our business for the next couple hours until it was time to give in to our nicotine addiction. Upon stepping outside, and watching the storm coming through, we noticed what seemed to be a cat across the street, laid up between a couple parking spots. Unfortunately, it was. We thought some unthinking kid wasn’t paying attention and hit it.
If only that were so.
No, while we were chilling like villains, some wretched asshole took a chair and a broom from outside our abode, put a noose around the cat’s neck, and slung it over a branch of a tree in our yard. That, in the parlance of our time, is known as heinously fucked up. Neighbors, seeing the horrific display, cut down the cat and placed it out of the way, where the city could come and handle it.
Here’s the thing, though. The cat was an adult and overweight, like our own. It was obviously not an outside cat. Also, it clearly had to have been killed beforehand. Any cat worth its shit would rip someone’s face off before it allows them to hold it long enough to put a noose around its neck, get on a chair and throw it to its death across a tree branch.
While some people in this state think it’s funny to talk about killing household pets, we’re not among that number. It’s a damn good thing whoever pulled this shit did so without us seeing it in progress, because we don’t take kindly to that sort of thing.
Hey, how about that hiatus Wolfe Reports took? Well, we had to lay off for a few days to take care of a labor-intensive project that threatened to turn us into the most irritable curmudgeon of all time. Sort of like a state representative spending 22 hours on the budget, the majority of hours dealing with abortion restrictions. But, it’s a new day, it’s warmer outside, and there’s hours of basketball on television.
It is a little hard for us to care about this year’s tournament, since Alabama, South Carolina, UAB and VCU are all not dancing this year. It’s truly a down year. In 2007, we were in a pub in Richmond (Penny Lane, what what!) and saw VCU take down Duke. That was great. And in 2004 both Alabama and UAB made it to the Sweet Sixteen. But such years are few and far between. So here we are, picking a bracket and not really giving a damn, except to not want to see a ton of Big East or Big XII teams going deep.
As of right now, one of our Final Four picks, Vanderbilt, just fucking blew it when Murray State hit a jumper at the buzzer. So, behold, the worst bracket ever.
Oh, this is fun. MoveOn.org, Brave New Films and the Service Employees International Union went live with a Web site to have some fun with Fox News’ “crying man,” Glenn Beck. Turns out, he has it out for us. Oh noes!
We’ve got one thing to ask for, for our upcoming birthday (that is, beside tickets to the Alabama-South Carolina game this fall and a case of Ketel One). Famed sports painter Daniel Moore did it. It’s out and available, like a debutant. It’s “Maximum Block,” the artist’s depiction of Terrence Cody putting his massive paw in the air and blocking another of Tennessee kicker Daniel Lincoln‘s attempts, this time to win the game.
BIRMINGHAM — “Maximum Block,” the Daniel Moore painting that commemorates the game-saving play in the closest game of Alabama’s undefeated 2009 national championship season, was unveiled tonight during a reception at the Alabama Sports Hall of Fame.
[...]
A steady stream of people stood in line to get free prints of the painting autographed by Moore, a Birmingham artist whose paintings have captured big moments in Alabama football history.
Ah, beating Tennessee at the last second. That never gets old. Or coronary-inducing.
I can has?
A girl we dated once — it was in the recent past — said that we acted like an old man sometimes. We chalked it up to the fact that just bitching about things sometimes is cathartic, and that we listened to the “60 Minutes” podcast every week. Really — we’ve had a few minutes with Andy Rooney since we could watch television, so it was bound to take eventually.
Rooney has something going here that’s important. As in, to avoid losing it and violently destroying what irritates you, just complain for a few minutes and get it out of your system. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn’t (that train knows what it did, and deserved what it got — YOU KNOW WHO YOU ARE). In that vein, the old man that resides in the dark recesses of our noggin has something to say.
===
Old Man Wolfe takes the keyboard.
To that student with the loud goddamn motorcycle — you can just fuck off to the ninth circle of Hell. Maybe you just moved in, a few blocks away, for the spring semester. Maybe a thoroughly sadistic person gave you that machine for Christmas. Frankly, I don’t give a shit. You roll up and down the road outside my place half a dozen times a day, and your fucking engine rattles the walls. I’m easily 50 yards away, and it damn near shatters the eardrums.
It’s obnoxious and a total dick move to ride that thing around town. You must have a serious adequacy problem (like another self-promoter I know) to behave in such a fashion. You ride that fucking thing, decibel levels higher than a 747 at takeoff, with your backpack, no helmet and no jacket. So, not only are you an asshole, you’re an idiot, too.
By the way — keep it up, and you may have a quite sugary gas tank. Take your crap to North Florida — this ain’t the place.
Fin.
===
Wow. That was rough. Here we were, expecting something on shoes or how the waitress doesn’t keep the water glass full when you want it, but bothers you when you don’t, and, well, damn. Hate to see what happens when he opines about the kids down the street, acting like fools with their pants on the ground.
Well, isn’t this interesting. It appears that Rep. Nikki Haley is still hanging on to an unfounded, unproven and to the best of our knowledge, untrue rumor regarding her Web site. Remember when all that happened? It was in those fine times of the mid-Summer, when Columbia feels like the ninth circle of Hell. Our own apartment averaged 80 degrees at night. It was fun.
Yeah, so it was rumored that we were receiving inside information about Haley from Under The Power Lines, which had run Haley’s site before she announced for governor. Actually, no — it wasn’t so much rumored. The Haley campaign just went to their lackey, Will Folks, to put a hit on us and UTPL for something that had absolutely no evidence, except for the fact that the Haley campaign was then, as is now, dead in the water and leaking like a rotten wooden-hulled ship. That was piggy-backed on an earlier post of dubious repute, which led to what happened today.
Haley sent a Facebook message to Nancy Mace, the woman who took over Folks site and had a chance to operate Haley’s site.
Around here, we have a phrase for such nuttery: total fucking bullshit. Really, if there was any, and we mean absolutely any, truth to this allegation, it would have hit the papers and local TV stations months ago. But, it’s not true, ergo there is no evidence, except for a blog post written by Haley’s Internet boy.
Just another example that Haley’s a decidedly second-tier gubernatorial candidate that would have been better served by staying in the House and serving her friends at S.C. Club for Growth, South Carolinians for Responsible Government, the S.C. Policy Council and the last few remainders of the Sanford crowd.
