Some Odds And Ends At The End Of A Odd Year

It's funny how often Dr. Helen can write something we find important while her husband, Glenn Reynolds, will write things that annoy us. Like today, she's got a post (that, to his credit, Reynolds linked to) about sexual double standards (regarding women abusing boys) that ain't all that, but she ends it with words this blog has echoed from the start:

It is amazing how few people understand the damage that boys who are abused by women can suffer. However, given how little our society cares about the psychological lives of men in general (and thus, most men and boys don't care either), it's amazing these women were arrested at all.

It's been an unforgettable part of our life's experience that women can do anything - even kill - and society, especially it's stupider men (the stunted ones, always hoping to get laid at any price) will still run to women's defense, happy to further the abuse of any male accuser.

As Dr. Helen said, it's "amazing', but it's also wrong, and our entire country has been paying an awful price for it.

There are so many things that have been taken for granted lately, things the average person barely processes, that it's a wonder most of them consider themselves "thinking people" at all. Consider a list, by Oleg Atbesian, of "Questions To Ask Progressives". They're questions that, we think, should be on every newscast in the country - if the news media wasn't filled with progressives.

Here's a few, starting with one connected to Dr. Helen's theme and continuing with others this blog has posed repeatedly:

• Why has no politician ever run on men’s issues or promised to improve the lives of males?

• If all beliefs are equally valid, how come my belief in the absurdity of this maxim gets rejected by its proponents?

• Ever noticed that for the past thirty years, we’ve been hearing we have less than ten years to save the planet?

• Once a politician labels the truth as hate speech, can anyone trust him to speak the truth afterward?

• If a politician gets elected by the poor on a promise to eliminate poverty, wouldn’t fulfilling his promise destroy his voting base? Wouldn’t he rather benefit from the growing numbers of poor people? Isn’t this an obvious conflict of interests?

• Why weren’t there demonstrations with anti-feudal slogans under feudal rule? And under Stalin, no anti-communist demonstrations? And under Hitler, no anti-fascist demonstrations? In a free capitalist society, anti-capitalist demonstrations are commonplace. Is capitalism really the worst system?

• If capitalism makes some people rich without making others poor, who will benefit when capitalism is destroyed?

• If the poor in America have things that people in other countries can only dream about, why is there a movement to make America more like those other countries?

• Why, on the rare occasions when Obama’s actions benefit America, does his base get angry? And every time his actions are hurting this nation, his  base is happy? Who exactly are these people?

• If cutting out the middleman lowers the price, why are we paying the government to stand between us and the markets?

• If racial profiling is an abomination, what do you make of the last presidential election?

• If diversity training benefits everyone, why do those classes mostly consist of white heterosexual males?

• How many Kyoto Protocols are rendered pointless by one medium-sized volcanic eruption?

• Why does Hollywood glamorize drug addicts, criminals, liberal Democrats, and mentally challenged people? What do they all have in common?

• How come Hollywood can always find a good side in thugs, but never in businesspeople? What was the last movie that pictured a self-reliant, industrious man as a role model?

• If it’s capitalist greed that forces Hollywood to exploit the lowest human instincts, why didn’t the same greed force Hollywood to exploit America’s patriotism and make war movies showing the U.S. presence in Iraq and Afghanistan as a force for good? Wouldn’t one such film bring more green cash than all the anti-American flops in the recent years? Where was Hollywood’s capitalist greed then?

• How come those calling Sarah Palin a “bimbo” often look like part of Paris Hilton’s entourage?

• If there are no absolutes and family is an antiquated tool of bourgeois oppression, why is having gay marriage an absolute must?

• Would you know from the media coverage that there are more sex offenders among public school teachers then among Catholic priests? How come the church gets the blame and the Department of Education doesn’t?

• Why is the media so outspoken about sex abusers being priests, but avoids calling them homosexual pedophiles? Who are they afraid to offend?

• Why do those who decry modern civilization never live far from shopping centers and why don’t grind their coffee with a stone ax?

• If we are called a “consumer society” because we consume, why aren’t we also called an “excreter society” because we excrete?...Who puts these labels on us and for what purpose?

• How come the unselfish Americans hate their country out of personal frustrations, while the selfish ones defend America with their lives?

• If describing terrorists as freedom fighters is justified by the journalistic principle of neutrality, what is the name of the principle that justifies describing U.S. troops as rapists and murderers?

• When the media portrays the killing of terrorists as “slaughter of civilians,” while slaughter of civilians is portrayed as “resistance to occupation,” is the media really being neutral? Whose side are they really on?

• If Hollywood types are so opposed to capitalism, why is there a warning against unauthorized distribution of their movies?

• Why is experimenting on animals cruel, but experimenting on human embryos compassionate?

• How come industrial logging is a crime against nature, but the destruction of forests by wildfires is a natural cycle of life?

• Why do those who object to tampering with the environment approve of tampering with the economy? Isn’t the economy also a fragile ecosystem where a sudden change can trigger a devastating chain reaction?

• Isn’t the latest economic crisis such a chain reaction?

• Aren’t most of today’s social ills the result of tampering with social ecosystems?

• Why is bioengineering bad, but social engineering good?

• If Al Gore is right and our consumption of the planet’s resources is a moral issue, doesn’t that make genocide an ethical solution? How about an artificial famine? What would Al Gore choose?

• If being a winner in nature’s struggle for survival is selfish, does being extinct make you an altruist?

• Since our planet’s resources are limited, wouldn’t the ultimate act of environmental activism be to stop eating and starve to death?

• How come those who hate humanity for its faults are called “humanists” but those who love humanity for its virtues are called “hate-mongers”?

• If economic ups and downs are natural cycles, why is the downturn always blamed on unbridled capitalism, but the upturn is the result of a wise leadership of a Democrat president?

• Why is there never a media story praising capitalism for the booming economy?

• Ever noticed that those who demand “power to the people” also believe that people can’t do anything right without government supervision?

• How exactly does dependency on the government increase “people power”?

• Why is there never a headline that says “Government program ends as its intended goal has been achieved”?

• How come so many anti-American radicals are wearing American brands, listen to American music, watch American movies, and play American video games on computers designed by American engineers?

• Can you name one person who paid the IRS more than he owed because he trusted the government to put his money to good use?

• Did it occur to any of the 9/11 Truthers that a government conspiracy to murder thousands of people would have also included a plan to rub out a few troublemakers?

• If U.S. oil companies own everyone in Washington, how come they allowed Congress to grill them for the alleged price gouging — and to broadcast it on C-Span?

• Why didn’t Congress also grill Hugo Chavez, Vladimir Putin, and a guy named Abdullah Ibn Abdul Aziz Bin Abdulrahman Bin Faisal Bin Turki Bin Abdullah Bin Muhammad al Saud?

• Why are windfall profits a problem when they enrich U.S. companies that pay billions in taxes — but when Hugo Chavez uses the same windfall profits to fund Marxist guerillas in Colombia, it’s not a big deal?

• If George W. Bush was an oil-thirsty dictator, why couldn’t he in eight years get permission from Congress to drill in ANWR? And why didn’t that failure in any way hurt his dictatorial reputation with the media?

• If it’s true that the media emphasized bad news and harassed President Bush only because they competed for ratings, what changed now? Aren’t they worried that today’s emphasis on good news from the White House will destroy their ratings and make journalism irrelevant?

• And finally, if all opinions are equal, how come a liberal who disagrees with a conservative is open-minded, but a conservative who disagrees with a liberal is a bigot

Check out his post for the rest. We only cut out a few and had a hard time doing that, they're all so good.

Gawker ran a piece called "Our Favorite Music of 2010" that made us wonder:

Don't they realize how heartbreakingly bad it is?

The best song on the list is one we paid attention to - Erykah Badu's "Get Munny" - but the rest (with Joanna Newsom's haunting vocal on "Good Intentions Paving Company" being a notable exception) are simply synthesized garbage that we're happy not to have noticed at all.

Think about that. Some of the so-called "best" songs of the year (picked by so-called "hip" or "cool" critics) and even music lovers haven't heard them anywhere.

True, in the case of these pieces, we're grateful, but it still tells us Gawker's list is bullshit and the music business is in serious decline. Shit, the Rap song we posted, way back when, is better than every song on their list (but Budu's) which leads us back to Oleg Atbashian's query about the progressives running Hollywood and the music business:

Doesn't capitalist greed mean, at the very least, they should be trying to provide us with what we want - and not what they want to give us?

We find there's a lot of that out there. Let a poor person ask for money and the rich will figure out any reason not to give it to them, like giving it to charity instead, not trusting individuals to know what's best for themselves, because the giver has a stick up their butt about drugs, or drink, or cigarettes, or whatever. (When they have no idea what any individual will actually do with the money they give - they just go with their imaginations, which are crippled. Like how is the Salvation Army going to kick-start our music career? It can't, but us getting back to work will employ more people than the giver could ever imagine. Do you see?) We'll repeat what we always say to the nanny state types in this situation:

It is YOU - with all of your "green" and "healthy" admonitions, backed by government influence, on how the rest of us must live - who make our lives feel like they're worth less than living.

That's something they only seem to understand in the case of gays, who make up such a small percentage of the population, we wonder if these people aren't deliberately being evil to everyone else.

Oh, of course they are - they're NewAgers to their hearts:

And it's only "my way or the highway" with them.

We'll let you know if "the American way" ever comes into it.