Tired and Emotional
The Huffington Post isn’t one of my regular haunts, but in light of the following perhaps it should be. Behold the bewildered psychodrama of Ms Erica Jong.
I am so tired of pink men bombing brown children and rationalising it as fighting terrorism… I am so tired of pink men spouting nonsense on TV. I am so tired of pink men arguing, blathering, bloviating, predicting the future – usually wrongly – and telling women to shut up. I am so sick of hearing that another pink man has dropped his children out a window, off a bridge or killed his pregnant wife or killed his unpregnant wife because he was infatuated with another pregnant woman. I am so sick of pink men making war and talking about peace… Don’t tell me about women who kill. I know there are some – but fewer. So let’s just remember our mothers – who bore us, protected us against our fathers and grandfathers and all the pink or brown men who wanted to rape us or kill us or starve us because we were girls.
This measured yet devastating critique is followed by,
I am not stupid.
And by,
I know all generalisations are false.
(Via Protein Wisdom.)
“History repeats itself, first as tragedy, second as farce.”
Sadly for Erica Jong, her first time was also farce. Which is tragic.
Ms Jong appears to be acting out her own ugly personal issues rather than making a meaningful political statement. Being a gentleman, I won’t describe the above as “the screed of an embittered crone”, though others might.
“The Huffington Post isn’t one of my regular haunts,…”
If you said otherwise, I would have serious doubts as to your sanity.
Oh, now – do let’s be considerate of the poor thing. Isn’t it bad enough that she has to live with such a misshapen view of reality? And it merely makes her “so tired”, with occasional forays into “so sick”. This is “I am woman, hear me roar”? More like whimper. Maybe its time to end this suffragette experiment. The poor dears obviously can’t handle the pressure.
“The Huffington Post isn’t one of my regular haunts,…”
Actually I think David needs to read a little more of the Huffington post. I’m sure watching the Democrats turning identity politics on each other will warm his cold capitalist heart. Try this one David.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/rj-eskow/strange-bedfellows-the-_b_81184.html?load=1&page=2#comments
The comments are a must read. One commenter impressed me with how he picked up on how Bill Clinton’s use of the phrase “rolling the dice” in connection with Obama is racist.
How can you argue with this?
“Roll of the dice not racist?
Google Tex Avery’s Bugs Bunny cartoons. Now watch the racist one never shown on TV. Here’s the conclusion: When Bugs is hunted by the huge-lipped dark-skinned kid hunting him, Bugs distracts him by showing him a pair of dice. In the ensuing craps game, Bugs wins all the kid’s clothes, leaving him naked and shivering at the end.
Now do you understand that “roll of the dice” is a well-known race bait??”
Why can’t you recruit a few commenters of this caliber to support Dr. Dawg? I’m sure he would appreciate the help.
Oh my. It’s quite dizzying, trying to keep up with the ever finer and more technical forms of racism and sexism being alleged. It starts at tenuous and contrived and ends at the hallucinatory. It’s a kind of fractal madness.
It’s faintly depressing to see just how many people plan to vote, not on the basis of the individuals’ policies and qualities, such as they are, but based on the candidates as symbols of some category of mankind. But following that kind of reasoning, Clinton’s success will most likely be construed by default as evidence of widespread racism, and Obama’s success will be taken as damning proof of how much “we” dislike women. Not dislike Hillary as a candidate, or her ideas, but the *gender* she happens to be. It’s a self-fulfilling paranoia.
I don’t believe I know any pink men. There was my great uncle John, who sometimes was sort of pink, but he was Irish and drank way too much.
Erica Jong’s repeated use of the phrase “pink men” is clearly homophobic. She should be made to go to Old Compton Street to apologise, then to Harley Street for counselling.
There is no excuse for this sort of thing.
I do love a good rant.
By utter coincidence, I’ve just finished Spivak’s “Can the Subaltern Speak?”, in the course of which she talks of “white men protecting brown women from brown men.” It’s not the context (which would take far too long to explain here), it’s the striking fact that colour appears to have such extraordinary rhetorical force.
I am told that in Eire, the Gaelic word for “black” (describing a person) is “blue,” because the word “black” carries with it profoundly negative connotations in that language.
Hmm. I feel a paper brewing. 🙂
“…it’s the striking fact that colour appears to have such extraordinary rhetorical force.”
I suppose that depends quite a lot on whether you wish it to. In the case of Ms Jong and her villainous “pink” men, my impression was not of rhetorical force, but of a confused and unhappy woman venting her unpleasant personal issues.
And you should put the Spivak down, Dr D. No good can come of it. 🙂
David:
Rhetoric works in mysterious ways. It did, after all, generate a post here, and a thread.
I shall take your second point under advisement. 🙂
Erica Jong was among the first to be feted in the new wing where celebrity, frenzied prurience and politics finally got a chance to hook up. It’s easy to forget that long before she became tired and emotional she was perky and emotional, and a real cause celebre, on account of her writing like this:
“My fingers (and toes) turn to ice, my stomach leaps upward into my rib cage, the temperature in the tip of my nose drops to the same level as the temperature in my fingers, my nipples stand up and salute the inside of my bra (or in this case, dress — since I’m not wearing a bra)…”
Yikes. When her nipples stand up these days, it’s to ask someone to call them a cab:
“I’m so tired of pink men…rationalizing…spouting nonsense,…blathering, bloviating…telling women to shut up…”
Mistaking one’s personal life for a political cause IS fatiguing, for everyone within earshot. Years ago I knew a Quebecois guy who was heavily into his cups. One night, out of the blue, he solemnly barked that my new girlfriend, whom he has just set eyes upon for the first time, was “the kind of woman who will leave you.”
I said “Really, Bob?” He said “Yeah, she’ll take your favourite record — the one you can’t get anymore, and you looked all over the place — and she’ll take your red van, and…”
I didn’t have a van. I asked him if he was perhaps talking about one of his ex-girlfriends. He said impatiently “No, no, I’m talking about your girlfriend, Melissa. She’ll take dat sweater wit the three brown caribou on in that your Mom knitted…”
Jong: “Our fathers and grandfathers and all the pink or brown men…wanted to rape us or kill us or starve us because we were girls.”
Well, Ms. Jong, so sorry about all those pink and brown men, but all that acting-out you did afterwards in the interests of becoming a famous advocate for acting-out didn’t exactly help, did it?
BTW, David, hasn’t Madeleine Bunting also been publishing a series of articles under the title “I am Tired of Pink Men?” Maybe I’m thinking of someone else.
EBD,
Well La Bunting does have a tendency to assume that her own emotional disposition is shared by her readership. Which, when you think about it, takes a whole heap of ego.
‘I am so tired of brown men blowing up innocent people and rationalising it as a jihad I am so tired of brown men spouting nonsense on TV, and the BBC interviewers giving them the time and day to spew their hate. I am so tired of brown men arguing, blathering, bloviating, predicting the future – usually wrongly – and telling women to shut up. I am so sick of hearing that another brown man has murdered his daughter in an ‘honour killing’, or has thrown acid in the face of a young girl who dared not to wear a veil or who burnt his wife to death. I am so sick of brown men making war and talking about ‘the religion of peace’…’