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Men make money and women are physically attractive: Your sex and gender morning roundup

October 28, 2010 - 09:00 AM
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(The Daily Beast)

Good morning. The sex-and-gender media of the day is, as TBD Editor Erik Wemple would say, simply brimming with frio. Punishment will be assigned accordingly. Let's get to it!

OFFENSE: Roger Ebert dismisses Playboy's objectification of women like so: "I was trembling on the brim of puberty, and aroused not so much by the rather sedate color "centerfold" of an undressed woman, as by the black and white photos that accompanied them. These showed an ordinary woman (I believe it was Janet Pilgrim) entering an office building in Chicago, and being made up for her "pictorial." Made up! Two makeup artists were shown applying powders and creams to her flesh. This electrified me. It made Pilgrim a real person." Playboy: Making women real people.

SENTENCE: 24 hours in a crotchless bunny rabbit costume.

OFFENSE: The Washington Post's Kathleen Parker takes on the Clarence Thomas-Anita Hill sexual harassment thing, finally. "In 1991, the world divided itself into two camps: those who believed Anita Hill and those who didn't. I fell somewhere in the middle: She may have told the truth, but so what?" Parker writes, two days after Richard Cohen expressed an identical sentiment in the paper (and 20 years after the thing happened). Parker, at least, attempts to one-up Cohen's bizarre gender commentary with some nonsensical racial intonations, declaring Thomas a repeat victim of "high-tech lynching." SENTENCE: Barred from attempts at racial commentary ("I don't see him as only black. He is my cousin") for four columns.

OFFENSE: "We've called her 'Senator' for many years. It's time to call her 'Ma'am' again"—David Zucker produced this video in the hopes of unseating Sen. Barbara Boxer, who once asked Brig. Gen. Michael Walsh to call her "Senator" instead of "Ma'am" in a Senate hearing. Zucker chose to respond to this year-old salutation disagreement by mocking Sen. Boxer for being addressed as a Senator in a hearing in the Senate, and also resurrecting dated caricatures of Native Americans.


SENTENCE: Be addressed only as "Count Zucker" for the next year.

OFFENSE: The Daily Beast has produced a slideshow on "Baseball's Sexiest Teammates," ranking baseball platers' "wives and girlfriends" on their physical attractiveness and other conspicuously gendered categories ("Number of Scheduled Breast Implants: 1; Number of Breast Implants Carried Out: 0"). But the Beast knocks this one out of the park with the apparently unironic juxtoposition of the slideshow with this "Baseball's 10 Richest Players" feature. Men succeed by hording resources like currency and attractive women! Women succeed by being horded by successful men!

Chocolate strawberries

SENTENCE: Daily Beast must produce photo slideshow ranking male staffers on protrusion of abdominal muscles and previous hairplug consultations; female staffers will be assessed based on salary and attractiveness of significant others.

OFFENSE: Dan Choi calls Harry Reid a "pussy" who will be "bleeding once a month" for failing to take action on "Don't Ask Don't Tell." After being accused of misogyny,  Choi defended himself by airing his pro-choice views and declaring himself a feminist. He later tweeted an apology for the remark. SENTENCE: 40 years of monthly genital bleeding.

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  1. kza kza

    kay cee

    Oct 28, 2010 - 01:57:25 PM

    Roger can say anything he wants as far as I'm concerned. He should be president.

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