Lacking What? Now, What Else?
I wish to apologize in advance for some of the graphic language in this post. Unfortunately, this situation has left me few alternatives but to discuss the abrasive and disgusting tone of some in the media. I do it as a necessity because I believe Americans should know the character of the people in whom they have placed their trust. Like Andrew Breitbart’s explanation in the movie The Undefeated, I’ve concluded that there is a real problem in our culture, and among many Republican men particularly, there is now a surrender of the values we once shared, and it is expressed in a general cowardice to be seen when conservative women come under sexist, vulgar attacks. It’s not that conservative women in politics can’t defend themselves, but when allegedly conservative outlets begin to act like the worst leftist purveyors of filth, one begins to wonder about the character of people who claim merely to be reporting the news. Frankly, it makes me sick, and it makes me angry. What’s happening to we men that so many of us will say nothing about it? Now, I’m going to have my say, and I’m also going to show you the truth about some in the right-wing media.
I’m a middle-aged man. I was raised to have a baseline respect for people in general, but particularly for my elders on the presumption of their wisdom, and for women on the basis of the assumption that they had already put up with more garbage from men than they ought to have been asked to endure. It’s not to say that women aren’t equally capable of crass and vulgar behavior, as a quick tour of our culture will demonstrate, but I was raised with that nowadays primitive (and some say “sexist”) notion that my basic reflex as a man should not include treating women as another of the boys in a locker-room discussion.
Some feminists will insist that this is still a sexist view of women, and in one sense, I can see their point, but perhaps it is because the people I love most in this world are women, I tend to restrain my language in their presence lest I be considered a first-rate jerk. What seems to have become the norm on both sides of the sexual fence is an increasingly crass tone to every disagreement, but that is not why I write this evening. Instead, I want to talk to you men. I realize that the younger you are, the more inclined you may be to talking to women like one of the fellows, but I’ve become tired of men using linguistic bombast that includes references to female genitalia when speaking to women. You can call me a “fuddy-duddy,” or “old school,” or frankly anything else your courage permits, but in my world, you use that language in front of a woman at your own peril.
I realize some of you will complain that there exists no shortage of women who rush to verbally emasculate men with the immediate reference to their “penises.” I’ve heard it, much too often frankly, and some of them should also be ashamed. Having covered the excuse some men will use to justify their own vulgarity, let’s move on to what I observed Sunday evening that has caused me to boil over. I was on Twitter, and Dan Riehl re-tweeted something another had tweeted and I could hardly believe my eyes:
@Nick_Rizzuto: Can someone please give me the 411 on why there are so many sandy vaginas over this @DailyCaller Tyson/Palin story?
I knew the name from somewhere, but I couldn’t quite place it. I clicked into his profile, and was reminded: Rizzuto works for GBTV and TheBlaze. I was doubly incensed given the recent Brian Sack routine on GBTV, so I sent my own response, as did a number of others.
Let me explain something to you boys who think such language is cool, and yes I said “boys” because I fear some of you are barely beyond puberty, who think this is a really effective form of argumentation: You look like an ass when you do this, and for precisely the same reason the Carlson’s outfit looked like a bunch of asses the day before, and GBTV looked like a bunch of asses on Thursday: Using this kind of language merely demonstrates that you view the opposite sex as nothing more than their genitalia, with the motive of dehumanizing them and dismissing them. One might well expect a thug like Mike Tyson to use such language, because we already know what the ear-chomping, punch-drunk, has-been boxer thinks of women as demonstrated by his physical and verbal violence against them, but the reason you shouldn’t engage in this is because you aren’t (or should not be)that sort of sexist thug. I can’t believe I’m having to point this out to the erudite Tucker Carlson, the pious Glenn Beck, or his staff member Nick Rizzuto, whose most recent tweets indicate he and his wife/girlfriend(no un-PC assumptions here) have recently had a baby.
Boys, this is garbage. Carlson, in all honesty, after your publication ran with the post it did, and Beck, after GBTV’s ridiculous “joke” of Thursday, and yeah, you too Rizzuto, I don’t know what any of you could possibly believe you have to offer to a civil discussion about any subject after this. You’re all embarrassments to manhood. At least Rizzuto had the good sense (or at least a sense of CYA) to delete his post, and issue an apology via twitter. That’s the sort of thing that got Carlson off the hook, somewhat, when he did a very similar thing back in March of this year. Apologies are unlikely to help him now, however, as Greta Van Susteren is on his case after Dan Riehl pursued the story all day Saturday. Mr. Beck has a special problem, and it’s one he’s yet to address: Two of these three incidents involve people who work for him, and one took place on his new network.
I’m disgusted by this sort of conduct. Carlson, your staff should know better too. Beck, you ought to clear something up with your people. I’m beginning to wonder about the sort of culture that pervades these institutions of allegedly conservative thought: Is it that you’ve now become the caricatures the left has drawn? I simply don’t see any excuse for this. Nobody is running stories about the unsubstantiated sexual improprieties of any of the other candidates. Don’t pretend there are none. Sure, they’re awful and tawdry and probably false, but that same characterization fits what’s been said to date about Sarah Palin. What we have here is a cowardly attack on Governor Palin, and it’s bad enough when the left does this, but it ought never to come from our side.
Worse, Carlson’s staff lets rip with a story about Mike Tyson’s commentary and his utterly foul and violent descriptions, and nobody at Carlson’s organization seems to think anybody has done anything wrong, except Dan Riehl for reporting on it on Saturday. No, they were simply “doing their jobs” to report the news. Ditto Beck’s own site The Blaze, which did a similar garbage pass-along story on Joe McGinniss’s salacious novel. Then there was Sack on GBTV with his jokes over which even the studio audience groaned nervously. Now Nick Rizzuto, from The Blaze and GBTV says this?
No way. It’s not accidental, and it’s not merely “doing one’s job” to pass along stories as “News” the sole purpose of which is to further a smear, using people like Mike Tyson and Joe McGinniss as surrogates to deliver it.
Add to this Nick Rizzuto’s tweet, and what it looks like to me is a bunch of men who are using crude smears in order to dismiss another woman. Why do this? What could be their motives? You tell me.
Monday morning, a colleague of Rizzuto’s, S.E. Cupp, also from GBTV, tweets:
“@secupp: Pretty sure Tyson’s the pig here, not Tucker. RT@politico: Greta: Tucker’s a ‘pig’ for Palin story http://politi.co/pJAXSW“
@marklevinshow: Mike Tyson is a convicted rapist. Why were his vicious words about Sarah Palin considered newsworthy? I think… http://fb.me/11CP0a4pf
Tweets from 9/18/2011
Mark America 