"...it's not the training to be mean but the training to be kind that is used to keep us leashed best." ~ Black Dog Red

"In case you haven't recognized the trend: it proceeds action, dissent, speech." ~ davidly, on how wars get done

"...What sort of meager, unerotic existence must a man live to find himself moved to such ecstatic heights by the mundane sniping of a congressional budget fight. The fate of human existence does not hang in the balance. The gods are not arrayed on either side. Poseiden, earth-shaker, has regrettably set his sights on the poor fishermen of northern Japan and not on Washington, D.C. where his ire might do some good--I can think of no better spot for a little wetland reclamation project, if you know what I mean. The fight is neither revolution nor apocalypse; it is hardly even a fight. A lot of apparatchiks are moving a lot of phony numbers with more zeros than a century of soccer scores around, weaving a brittle chrysalis around a gross worm that, some time hence, will emerge, untransformed, still a worm." ~ IOZ

Jun 17, 2013

How To Kill

If you can't dispute a man's actions on the merit of those actions, feminize him:

The Washington Post's Richard Cohen seemed likely to win the contest when he confusingly dubbed Snowden a "cross-dressing Little Red Riding Hood."

Because, you know, being just like a young girl at the mercy of a predatory beast is a condemnation of...









...well, obviously, not the predators.



(original quote from the H-Post)

40 comments:

ifthethunderdontgetya™³²®© said...

Richard Cohen will always be a wanker.

Funny that he, John Yoo, Dick Cheney, Karl Rove...and Charles P. Pierce are now all in the same camp.
~

High Arka said...

It's a compliment to compare someone to Little Red Riding Hood. Perhaps you should read the original story, instead of the American pioneer version.

Red Riding Hood is a story about the triumph of female intuition. The woodsman's role is heavily trumped up in the American version.

It may be time to stop relying on Disney adaptations as the factual backdrop to your historical critiques.

Jack Crow said...

When someone writes "cross dressing little Red Riding Hood," the first thing that comes to mind is "yeah, that's a compliment."

High Arka said...

Do you have a problem with cross dressers? If he'd used a pejorative term, or just said, "f***ing cross dressing Little Red..." that would've been one thing. This one happens to like cross dressers, so when this one reads "cross dressers," red-alert "insult!" alarm bells do not automatically go off. (Same for Red Riding Hood, who was a great literary character.)

Cohen may be being an asshole, granted--but not because of a reference to Red Riding Hood. Critique him on his support for condemning the release of NSA information, perhaps. For me, though, criticizing him over the passage you selected is like saying he's bad for writing:

"Snowden certainly is a dashing Peter Pan!"

(If you're in search of anti-female rhetoric and actions to comment on, you should write up a piece on government infatalization, rape, and economic repression of southeast Asian sex worker unions and their advocates/members.)

Jack Crow said...

Heh. It's like you're not even paying attention to your own argument.

Without an obvious swear word, "Cross Dressing Little Red Riding Hood" is a compliment?

Heh.

Coldtype said...

Troll bait from HA Jack, nothing more. I get your point.

Jack Crow said...

Cold,

Agreed. HA briar patched himself and I hopped right in.

d.mantis said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
d.mantis said...

I think its hilarious that Arka is incapable of understanding popular intepretation.

High Arka said...

I understand the point Jack originally made. It's a bad point, though. The LGBT community did well for itself when it took over the word "queer," which had previously had negative connotations. By continually finding negative connotations in references to women, you are reinforcing clumsy, decades-old stereotypes.

Red Riding Hood really is a good connotation. Shove it back in Cohen's face by celebrating the comparison. Force him to think about the metaphor he's using, and to realize how wrong he is. Reclaim fictional figures of the past in the spirit in which they were created.

What swirls about our disagreement here is that you genuinely and thoroughly find Red Riding Hood a negative reference. You have allowed Disney, and early American patriarchy, to define the world for you. Free yourself; free Red Riding Hood; free the real meaning of the story, and of the character.

Anonymous said...

Way to miss the point HighArka

High Arka said...

Would you be so kind as to explain the point to this one?

Jack Crow said...

Civil rights would have been so much better if blacks had freed themselves in celebrating and embracing mamie and sambo, right, Arka?

High Arka said...

(Your comparison would be apt if "Red Riding Hood" was intrinsically insulting. That's why I began by pointing out that it wasn't.)

Jack Crow said...

"Intrinsically insulting"? You're off the rails.

Historical context matters. Which brings us right back to...the original post.

High Arka said...

The historical context you're offering as to Red Riding Hood is an arrogant, ignorant American version, extremely limited in temporal scope, which ignores not only the original folk tale, but its first widespread written form, and the many years of history between that and the time that Americans sensationalized it into an early twentieth century soulless blurb about scary wolves.

You've disregarded the real Red Riding Hood--the real character; the girls and women she was based on; the fine qualities she was meant to exemplify; the non-American culture that wanted to express that admiration.

So many people think it's a joke only because they've so internalized Red Riding Hood as the worthless, corporate, consumerist, Americanized, Disneyfied version.

There is a bigger world out there than the Gender Studies department at your local university.

What you did is offensive, but I forgive you. I understand that you are so enmeshed in your own culture that you find it difficult to imagine that other people do not see the world the same way you do.

You are probably some degree of accurate about Mr. Cohen--he probably thinks much the way you do, and is unaware that he made either an inapt comparison, or a compliment!

Jack Crow said...

Heh. The original Red Riding Hood was a cautionary fairy tale, starring a little girl who needed to be saved from a predator by a man, after she ignored her mother's warning to stay on the beaten path.

The really early versions of the story have her strip down naked and get in bed with the wolf, ogre or were-wolf, after she is fed her grandmother's body by the predatory beast. The wolf then eats her. Story over.

Heh.

High Arka said...

Here--you might appreciate this, and it goes a little farther than your standard Googled results:

Wolves & Sexless Wonders.

Lisa Simeone said...

Eegads, I just had a nightmarish flashback: sitting in a grad school seminar, listening to people wank off to "liminal," "cultural," "appropriating," "gendered," and god knows what else.

Methinks High Arka missed the point.

Jack Crow said...

Oxtrot, you are not welcome to post here.

mistah charley, ph.d. said...

i thought it was bradley manning who had transgendering tendencies (not that there's anything wrong with that)- is this another example of where i;ve missed something?

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Lisa Simeone said...

August 21, 2013

Just got back from the sentencing at Ft. Meade. 35 years for Bradley Manning, minus 1,294 days already served. Plus demotion to lesser rank of private, plus dishonorable discharge, plus reduction of whatever measly pay they were giving him.

Press conference with Manning's lawyer David Coombs at 1 o'clock. I'm going back for that.

Rally and march at White House tonight. Those of you in the DC area, join us.

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I miss your voice, Jack. Reading the comments reminds me of a reason why one would choose mute as a viable option for which I find only understanding. Still, I miss your voice and hope all is relatively well with you & yours.

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