I spend a lot of time trying to understand what goes on in the minds of people I don’t agree with. I mostly understand the serious center/left-center — they’re about punching hippies while still mostly voting for Democrats. I understand libertarians, though I’m not sure I can put it into words.
I still can’t wrap my head around conservatives who are obsessed with culture, hating “Avatar” for promoting a librul agenda, hating Avril Lavigne and Pink for being “romantic lone wolves”, and so on. Here’s a good example:
If you only read one op-ed today, or this year for that matter, it should be this: usatoday.com/story/opinion/…
— Charles Lane (@ChuckLane1) May 6, 2013
This links to a fairly innocuous opinion piece criticizing “hook-up culture”, written by a 20 year-old woman who’s a sophomore in college. That’s the most important op-ed of the year? And the tweet was then favorited and/or retweeted by 13 middle-aged conservative men (along with one middle-aged conservative woman).
Atrios has written several times that many conservatives oppose access to contraception for young people because they find the whole topic icky. That’s true only in the sense of it being so icky they can’t stop thinking about it. It’s so awful what these kids are doing with each other, so awful…let’s talk more about it!
Sly
FOR THE LAST TIME, I DO NOT CARE ABOUT JASON COLLINS BEING GAY!
Wait… what was this about?
jibeaux
Armchair psychoanalysis, but I think some of these guys are idly or not so idly scoping for the next wife, of -20 years from themselves, and they don’t like to picture that wife enjoying sex with a man of their own age. But, who knows.
GxB
I think the old axiom, sex is like oxygen, no big deal unless you ain’t getting any, applies here.
Mark S.
Ha ha, I missed that “classic” from Bobo. “iPhone Lone Rangers.” That’s what makes Brooks the Emile Zola of our time.
Calming Influence
I find the idea of a healthy male being opposed to the hook-up culture icky.
BGinCHI
Jesus fucking christ.
The only reason Charles Lane and these other jamokes think “hook-up culture” is new is because they were busy reading National Review and wanking to Penthouse instead of getting out into the hook-up free market.
But maybe they just couldn’t get any market share.
jefft452
“hook-up culture”
In my day we called it “dating”
Brother Machine Gun of Desirable Mindfulness (fka AWS)
I think I see the problem here.
jamick6000
i think part of it is resenting people who have the sex
Violet
What’s the angle? Is the woman who wrote it somehow related to him? Is he trying to get her op-ed some clicks as a favor to someone?
jl
Better trolling, please, DougJ.
I mean, I’d bet a nerdy math grad student had better… ahh… never mind.
Valdivia
Oh dear mother of the lord. Is Lane a Douthat in disguise? I think I really should just give up writing my serious book and dedicate myself this summer to doing the work and getting published “Sex and The Neocon” I think I’d be super famous no?
the Conster
It’s amazing how cringingly un-self-aware middle aged white men are. They think their opinion should automatically govern everyone’s behavior. That’s what their gun fetishism is about – when you lose the argument, you have something you can force your desired outcome with – you know – the old “you made me do it by not agreeing with me” thing.
ranchandsyrup
Scared of the wimmens. A large % of conservative behavior reflects an admission that they treated X group poorly and expect X group to treat them poorly when X group is in power.
Ted & Hellen
I have longed believed hook-up culture, be it gay or straight, to be ultimately dehumanizing, soulless, and soul destroying.
All those lonely people pretending to be able to completely disengage their genitals from their hearts and minds. It’s bullshit.
That said, I also believe no one, particularly the government, should be in the business of telling adults what to do with their jiggly bits.
Wag
Did the 20 year old write this piece as an assignment for her David Brooks seminar at Yale?
scav
And Viagra will now be sold direct, online, by Pfizer (men endangered by printer ink!), with countermeasures carefully locked away from “those sluts” and their “hook-up culture”.
Mark S.
@jamick6000:
Ding, ding, ding.
jrg
I don’t think it’s a political thing. It just manifests itself that way. People like Charles Lane are unhappy, and need something to whine about. That’s just how some shitty people cope with the world around them.
Tom
Eh, I’m a male in my 20s and find the “hookup culture” icky. Yes, I guess I’m a prude in some respects. I may also be suffering from having a Disney-heavy childhood, from which I kinda ended up with the thought that the man and woman both should have limited “experiences” until they end up with the one they’re “supposed” to be with… Oh well, this isn’t time to psychoanalyze myself!
The part that’s insane is thinking an op-ed not liking it (which I’ll admit I didn’t read, but come on) is the most important op-ed of the year. Thinking that is certifiable.
Oh, it goes without saying, but I’m not going to have the government enforce my opinion of the hookup culture. That’s just dumb.
Chyron HR
@GxB:
I… I really don’t think those are the right lyrics.
Valdivia
Also, too. I’m about to lose my Internet connection because apparently Harper’s Ferry West Virginia is not wired to AT&T. Yay me. Keeping fingers crossed for wifi. Or I’ll kill the friend who rangled me to accompany her on this trip. :)
SatanicPanic
I’m with you Doug, some nerd writes an op-ed saying she’s awkward around the opposite sex- wow, this is insightful?
Brother Machine Gun of Desirable Mindfulness (fka AWS)
@the Conster: Hey now!
DougJ
@Valdivia:
Yes, you should. Make it as contrarian as possible: neocons have better sex lives BECAUSE they are more hung up or something like that.
Napoleon
@Chyron HR:
A Sweet fan?
SatanicPanic
@Chyron HR: you get too much you get too high, not enough and you’re gonna die?
schrodinger's cat
@Wag: She is from Harvard according to the byline.
Violet
What the hell is “hookup culture”? Sure makes hooking up sound rather grand. Gets it’s own culture.
jamick6000
yo yo yo my next 200 balloon juice comments go out to all you ladies who are a bit chunky and look like reese withers poon
jl
I will pen an earnest column about how the rot of the hook-up culture started with O. Henry.
“Say, Sally, wouldn’t it be swell if we was to go to Cony Island this Sunday?”
See if I can get one these guys to link to it. Brooks would go for that one. High toned, see?
“swell”? You know what swells don’t you? “Cony” Yeah, you know what rabbits do, don’t you?
These damn kids today! World’s going to hell in a handbasket. All topsy turvy, that’s what I say. Them careening around in their automobiles and sneaking plans for ramdyvooooz over that damn newfangled tellyphone when the folks is downstairs. Yessir.
scav
Ok, looking at my moderated comment, there’s no way I could have not tripped the filter, thus it’s really really topical and the comments in the linked piece dumb enough to be worth it. Please, for their sake, unmoderate?
I’m almost beginning to feel sorry for Harvard . . . almost
Violet
@Valdivia: @DougJ: Completely agree. Write a book about it, or at least an article. Be sure to interview a neocon on the record.
Valdivia
@DougJ:
I was thinking of making it a ‘ I dated all these jerks’ kind of expose since I have been on enough bad neocon dates to write a book. I think I’d just need a little more field work. Preferably one that totally gets me out of testing your hypothesis! though you’re totally right about being hung up. These guys run weirdo to creepy to kinky.
GxB
@Chyron HR: Not based on the song – heard it elsewhere. BTW there’s a Little Willie joke just dying to get out…
Valdivia
@Violet:
Oh I have them on the record ;)
But yes I know what you mean and I have the perfect one in mind.
I’d just need a nom de plum lest my poor father die of a heart attack.
ETA: how about getting Sulli to comment too? That would be glorious since he knows them all.
Cacti
Young people today enjoy having sex. As opposed to all of those other generations when young people enjoyed having sex.
Napoleon
@GxB:
funny!
Marc
Is there any evidence that youth culture is substantively different than it was 10, 20, 30, 40, 50 years ago? Do 2013 young adults actually have more partners than they did in 1978 (pre-HIV)? 1967 (Summer of Love?) Or is this just more griping about Kids Today?
Hunter Gathers
Conservatives are just pissed off that the youngins’ are having a lot more fun in school than they ever had. Instead of having fun and getting laid like everyone else with a pulse, they spent their Fridays nights debating Atlas Shrugged, the awesomeness of Barry Goldwater, and the inherent Burkean nature of slut shaming. All because that slutty whore in Freshman composition wouldn’t fuck them.
There would be no conservative movement if these fuckwits had actually gotten laid in high school/college.
NotMax
Paging Mr. Comstock. Mr. Anthony Comstock, please pick up the disinfected white courtesy phone.
Lockstep Puritans.
Not a pretty picture.
Suffern ACE
So Bill Kellher pens an op ed piece calling for War with Syria and Charles Lane is distracted a young woman concerned about sex.
This is actually a good sign, I guess, that we won’t be heading off to war any time soon. Not all of them feel that Syria is important right now. But we are treading in some dangerous waters.
To the young ladies out there–it’s o.k. if you’re not eager to engage, so calm the fuck down.
To to the old neo-cons out there–it’s not o.k. that you’re eager to engage, so clam the fuck up.
I hope our leaders don’t get confused about those talking points.
Redshift
It’s written by a member of the generation Lane wants to tell how to live their lives, expressing a point of view he agrees with. What could possibly be more important? Something about other people?
We write so often about complete lack of empathy being a defining characteristic of conservatives, we forget how important a characteristic narcissism is, too.
Arclite
Obviously conservative men oppose birth control so they have an excuse to fuck women in the ass to avoid getting them pregs. Didn’t you guys read the Washingtonienne blog?
Tom_B
It’s a Strangelov-ian “Purity of Essence”- thing; you would’nt understand.
scav
@Valdivia: “nom de plum”: Old English Greengage? Early Laxton? Blue Tit is really too good to be believed and real.. You’re onto a winner here.
DougJ
@Hunter Gathers:
Not convinced young people today are having more fun than they did a generation or two ago.
Tom_B
It’s a Strangelov-ian Purity of Essence- thing; you would’nt understand.
gbear
I’ll just go with Garrison Keillor’s Scandinavian pick-up line:
“Ya know, some times a guy can get a little lonesome…”
Violet
@Valdivia: Oh, that would be excellent! Get Sully’s insights into neocon gay culture. I can only imagine! Could you talk to a fetishist and get his/her observations?
gelfling545
Over the past 2 years I’ve had made a rather unusually high number of acquaintances with 20 somethings for a person of my years due to some work I am doing. I have observed that dating activities/patterns/etc. of this group seem remarkably similar to what was happening in “the day”, as it were. They seem a bit more frank about acknowledging their connections and a bit more prudent about contraception than we were in the 60’s – 70’s but not a lot different. I think this obsession with the “hook up culture” is just another manifestation of old people finding everything about the younger generation worse than they were when in reality it just looks worse to us because it’s not us doing it.
Redshift
@Marc:
That’s an essential part of it. I remember back when I was a teenager, local newspapers would print stories about the shocking things all the kids are doing these days, “researched” by talking to the teenagers who were hanging out in the parking lot during classes. Now local TV news shows do the same thing.
It’s all about making a buck by being a dealer for outrage addicts.
Tonal Crow
@Hunter Gathers:
I tend to agree, and think this is what’s behind much homophobia too: they just can’t stand that gay men might be having lots of hot sex.
Redshift
@DougJ:
It’s not that they’re having more fun than young people did in general back then, only that they’re having more fun than the wingnuts did when they were their age.
Tonal Crow
@Redshift: My Gawd! Have you heard that these kids play something called “Lead Zeplinger” backward, and it says “I love the Devil”??!?!?!?!?!?!!!!!!
Valdivia
@scav:
:D
@Violet: I think they’re all fetishists but hell yeah. I think it be a fun book to write.
gelfling545
@schrodinger’s cat: Oh, god, isn’t everybody? Doesn’t anybody not from Harvard ever have an opinion or do anything? Unless British, of course, then they’re “Oxford educated”.
Ash Can
Dear Charles Lane,
The Sexual Revolution happened 45 years ago. Your side lost.
Sincerely,
Modern Culture
scav
@Tonal Crow: No that you mention it, all this digital “ap” business is in direct defiance of partiarchical authority. Ap is Pa — Patriarch, castrated and inverted.
SatanicPanic
@DougJ: Even with all the rainbow parties?
Hunter Gathers
@DougJ:
I’m fairly certain that youngins’ of the GLBT persuasion are having a LOT more fun these days than they did even when I was in college 20 years ago, not to mention 30 or 40 years ago. And that pisses them off even more than having Chunky Reese Whitherspoon shove her boobs in their face.
gbear
@Valdivia: You have to be careful with a story like that. A singer I know wrote an article for a local magazine called ‘My Life In Rock & Roll’ in which she described everyone around her being incredible jerks. It wound up telling a whole lot more about her than about anyone else in the story.
Arclite
@DougJ:
I think you’re right, but I think that Conservatives (young and old) get less busy in general.
Ash Can
@Tonal Crow:
Minor adjustment.
belieber
“…so awful…let’s talk more about it!”
So pretty much every single one of your blog posts and Cole’s blog posts (when he isn’t talking about his sorority or his pets or other shit nobody gives a damn about).
Oh the hypocrisy.
ChrisB
I was going to post about Happy Feet until I saw that the thread was about sex.
It’s like junior high all over again (I developed late).
Suffern ACE
@Ash Can: Yeah. But this week, we’re going to be hearing about the “Sex Superbug”, so prepare to be scolded.
Valdivia
@gbear:
Very true. Though I won’t be the one making sexual jokes about Guantanamo. Which did happen to me on a date.
cmorenc
@Tom:
No, Tom this indeed isn’t the time to psychoanalyze yourself. Instead, what would do you a world of good is to go out and get laid. It’s emblematic of what’s wrong with “Disney-heavy” anything is that *no one* has ever gotten laid in a Disney movie.
Suffern ACE
@Suffern ACE: I mean, it’s may and that means Ratings Sweeps, which means young folk sex, Amanda Knox sex, hooker sex, and “Strippers Exposed!” stories on the nightly news for the next three weeks. Yay us!
NotMax
Luckily fun (and also, for that matter, pleasure) is a renewable resource, else previous generations would long, long ago have depleted it entirely.
Once affordable 3-D printers become common, those dang horny kids won’t even have to leave home, just download a template.
@DougJ
Add in that much of the tut-tutting is about ‘them’ suffering less guilt.
Mandalay
@Arclite:
Not only that…it also allows Christians to preserve their virginity for marriage.
Conservative butt sex is a twofer.
Bill E Pilgrim
You do get the strong impression that some of these guys are just still seething about growing up in “hangup culture”.
Hi, yes, uh, Betsy? Yes, this is David, from homeroom. I was just…. Hello?
Roger Moore
@ranchandsyrup:
I’m not sure that it’s even that much. It’s more that white men used to be in charge of everything, and they’re upset with the loss of privilege implied by equality for everyone else. They really seem to have a total zero sum attitude toward the world. Improving conditions for anyone else in any way means making conditions worse for them. At the same time, I think they honestly think that making things worse for other people will somehow make things better for them.
scav
They’ld likely have less of a hang up about hook ups if they weren’t so often hung up on.
might have strained something there.
Eta. or were better hung — and now I’m really damned.
eta 2 hi @Bill E Pilgrim
? Martin
In terms of understanding it, some people are simply more emotionally wired to sex than others. To those that aren’t, hooking up probably seems icky. Nothing wrong with that.
I suspect the gun folks are emotionally wired to the power of having a firearm. I’m not. Seems cowardly to me to have to walk around always being better armed than everyone else.
My guess is the anti-hookup guys just don’t get an emotional charge out of sex, so it seems shallow and demeaning to them. And since most of those guys seem to be my age or older, that got a bit magnified during the AIDS era when hookups were seen as outright dangerous and risky.
Gus
Is there a bigger asshole in mainstream media than Charles fucking Lane? Probably, but he’s gotta be top 10.
Baud
I don’t understand. If someone is uncomfortable with the hook-up culture, why don’t they just start blogging?
Omnes Omnibus
@Valdivia: So what is it about neocons that you find so attractive – at least a first glance?
@Redshift: Bingo. Back when I was an undergrad (82-86), there was a definite hook-up culture. People who weren’t in a relationship spent at least Friday and Saturday nights trying to arrange “short term relationships.” The only people who were really bothered by this were the people who were unsuccessful at it on that particular night.
I would say that Lane needs to tie an onion to his belt, but he didn’t even follow the style at the time.
DougJ
@cmorenc:
You’re forgetting about the unrated version of “The Shaggy DA”. Also not sure I agree with your advice.
EconWatcher
I gotta say, as the father of a young daughter, I do worry about our overly sexualized culture. I don’t think you have to be a fundie or a wingnut to worry about that; I’m an agnostic and liberal on most issues.
But I don’t want my daughter to feel pressured into doing anything before she’s ready because everybody’s doing it. And, at the risk of getting pelted, I do think the emotional dimensions and emotional risks are often different and more serious for girls. I see these risks and pressures as being different for my son, although he will face them as well. Obviously, there are exceptions for both boys and girls.
I don’t think there was any idyllic situation in the past, I support candid and open education, and I don’t support censorship. But we are trying, within our poor power to do so, to let our kids be kids, and not have them pushed into adult stuff prematurely. And I gotta say, pop culture and peer pressure don’t help with that. You’ve got to admit, some of it is grotesque, and doesn’t promote a healthy image of loving relationships.
And by the way, I think the situation in this area is better than when i went to high school (79 to 83): I’m just saying it’s still bad.
DougJ
@EconWatcher:
Sure, but is a fairly predictable opinion piece on this topic really the most important op-ed of the year?
NotMax
@DougJ
Not to mention that the breakout cartoon which made Disney Disney was “Steamboat Willie.”
/juvenile sniggering
Bill E Pilgrim
@scav: Hey you’re not taking me down with you.
@Ash Can: That’s what I was thinking. I think they actually get more outraged if someone gives it a new name. “We don’t make a party out of lovin'” was the worst scolding we got back in the day, and he was mostly kidding it turns out.
EconWatcher
@DougJ:
No, definitely not
Omnes Omnibus
@EconWatcher:
I think this should be true of just about anything with high school and college students. Drinking, drugs, sex: do them when and if you are ready and only as much as you yourself want.
Roger Moore
@Arclite:
I don’t know if they actually get less, but they’re supposed to feel ashamed of it when they get some unless it’s boring missionary sex within marriage. If they’re really upset about something, it’s that everybody else feels OK talking about what they’re doing.
gogol's wife
I basically live in the middle of hookup culture every workday. All I ask is that they don’t tell me anything about it.
These posts always confuse me, because in my mental universe, Charles Lane is this guy:
Charles Lane (born Charles Gerstle Levison January 26, 1905 – July 9, 2007) was an American character actor whose career spanned a remarkable 64 years. Lane turned in his last performance at the age of 90. Lane appeared in many Frank Capra films, including You Can’t Take It With You (1938), Mr. Smith Goes to Washington (1939), Arsenic and Old Lace (1944) and It’s a Wonderful Life (1946). He was a favored supporting actor of Lucille Ball, who often used him as a no-nonsense authority figure and comedic foe of her scatterbrained TV character on her TV series I Love Lucy, The Lucy-Desi Comedy Hour and The Lucy Show. His first film of more than 250 movies was as a hotel clerk in Smart Money (1931) starring Edward G. Robinson and James Cagney.
? Martin
@Hunter Gathers:
Well, 20-odd years ago I attended a college with a reputation for being LGBT friendly (and it was – and still is). It was quietly enough shared that I didn’t learn that reputation until I arrived, but they were definitely having a LOT of fun there at the time – and the LGBT population was quite large as a percentage of the overall. I’d say ballpark of half the student body. So I think it came down quite a lot to whether or not you found a safe place.
As campus cultures have changed, the need for a safe place has also changed, so you’re seeing a lot more LGBT activity at all schools, hence the perception.
Bill E Pilgrim
@EconWatcher: That’s an interesting comment. I wonder about whether people like Lane and David Brooks are complaining about it being “sexualized”, or whether they’re complaining about a lack of authoritarianism that they often seem so fond of. But they wouldn’t complain so much about the constant commercial sexualization of nearly everything, for example.
Narcissus
@Arclite: Man that takes me back
NotMax
@gogol’s wife
That Mr. Lane’s bon mot at a 100th birthday tribute remains a classic.
danimal
@belieber: I’ll bite. My turn to feed the troll.
Bitching about a blog writer’s choice of topics on his blog is really, really stupid. You don’t have to be here, and I’m pretty sure I’m not alone in thinking the site would be better without you. Judging by the site’s popularity, the mix of topics is a winner and earns the site a lot of traffic. If you don’t care about a topic, skip it.
This really isn’t too difficult.
Seanly
I’m a married male in my mid-40’s.
Where was this hook up culture when I was in college? I never could get any back in the day. We would spent Thursday through Saturday trying to hook up but rarely succeeding.
Knocking boots can be a lot of fun. All these stuck up pundits & this poor repressed op-ed writer should get out a little. Get your kink on, people!
Plus, isn’t this op-ed one that gets dusted off every 3 or 4 years? The original was probably written in 1702.
@? Martin:
Would that be Sarah Lawrence? It wasn’t a big secret…
EDIT: Oh for fugg’s sake, within the 1st paragraph was this line – “Is modern art really art?” Did they find the most uptight a-hole in the entire student body of Harvard to write this turd? Lighten up, Francis.
Bill E Pilgrim
@gogol’s wife: I remember making that connection once on IMDB. Dennis the Menace’s school principal, and so on.
This Charles Lane is in IMDB too it turns out, having been played by Peter Sarsgaard in the movie about Stephen Glass.
gogol's wife
@NotMax:
Yes, that is priceless. But their choice of clips leaves out his whole movie career, which is huge. He seems to be in every movie I watch.
scav
@Bill E Pilgrim: No worries, it was merely a cheery wave as I went under for the third time, dragged under by the sins you wisely omitted.
Redshift
@Tonal Crow: This week, it’s “synthetic mari*uana.” All the kids are doing it, and it turns them into zombies and stuff, if the local news is to be believed.
YoohooCthulhu
@Tom:
And that’s fine. But the point is, it really *isn’t* being forced on you. Casual sex is depicted in the media…because it’s always been depicted in the media. It’s not some new thing.
The crazy thing is so many people being obsessed about other peoples’ sex lives. I even went through that phase, and I still can’t explain it.
Bill E Pilgrim
@scav: I was only teasing. I thought yours were good. Great minds flail around alike.
sophronia
It seems that some people, no matter what their pretensions to being serious public intellectuals, just cannot get past the Victorian idea that the most important thing about a country is the purity of its women.
NotMax
@gogol’s wife
Agree that the clips could have been more expansive.
Somewhat in the producers’ defense though, it was a short feel-good segment on an awards show for TV work.
Citizen_X
@Tom:
Snow White and all seven dwarves would like to have a word with you.
gogol's wife
@NotMax:
Yes, it was very nice for the occasion.
ThresherK
@Tom: I don’t know how you (in particular) or young people (in general) find suitable companionship (I’m, um, fairly older), but I have the feeling one way isn’t her strategy: Broadcasting these feelings to all, getting Charles Lane to pimp you, and becoming the darling of middle-aged men who either never got any at that age, or don’t want young’uns to have what they did.
Her mindset makes me think she time-traveled and got handcuffed to a lamppost in Times Square c.1973. Doesn’t she have any agency of her own?
Citizen_X
@Redshift:
“Our next guest is a black conservative, with an important message about today’s black culture!”
schrodinger's cat
@gelfling545: Or they can be like Sully, with Oxford and Harvard on their resume. BS with an accent, just sounds better doesn’t it?
Cassidy
Hook up culture? Do they mean “young, single people going out to a bar or club and hoping to get laid”? Do they think this is new?
Omnes Omnibus
@gelfling545: Bobo has a BA from Chicago.
@Cassidy:
Yes.
Not really, but they pretend that “this generation” is different. Back in the [insert decade of pundit’s youth], people were just having a good time, but now it has become demeaning and dehumanizing. Or something like that.
Joel
any 20-year old who complains about other people getting laid is really just complaining about not getting laid themselves, amiright?
PIGL
@the Conster: hey…middle-aged white guy here, saying that you are an un-truther. The phrase you are probably groping for is “douchebag authoritarian motherfucker”. In polite company, you could substitute “frustrated 40-something virgin”. Or, if space is at a premium, as in twitter texts, may I suggest “frustrated loser” or “Republican” or even the classic “asshole”.
It’s got nothing to do with being white or middle-aged.
Hoodie
Jesus, kids were banging acquaintances all the time when I was in college in the 80’s, they didn’t call it a “hookup” and it sure as shit wasn’t a culture. Why this would be the one op-ed I should read escapes me, unless all op-eds are shitty and this one at least has sex in it. Lane is a perv.
rex everything
After reading the USA Today piece, I hafta say I’m less freaked out by the hookup culture than I am by a 20-year-old whose writing style could be fairly described as “Dave Barry minus the hip edginess.”
Villago Delenda Est
@Bill E Pilgrim:
That’s different. That’s about the pursuit of sacred profit, the gift of Mammon, their God. Totally and completely different. There is nothing, nothing that is immoral in the pursuit of profit.
Villago Delenda Est
@Joel:
You are correct, sir. (rimshot)
Gravenstone
@jamick6000:
… without having to pay first.
FTFY
Tonal Crow
@Redshift:
I wonder when the horrors of digital drugs will make a comeback?
Ban the internets NOWWWWWWWW!
BArry
(replying to the original post)
In the end, it’s fat, balding, greasy middle-aged men salivating over the real and imagined exploits of hot young college girls.
Joel
p.s. I know you’re referencing Master P here, but the song that jumps to mind is “The P-Jays” with Del Tha Funkee Homosapien.
Omnes Omnibus
@BArry: I am not balding, greasy, or particularly fat so I may not fit your criteria, but, if this is the case, why would they be upset about the real and imagined exploits of hot young college girls?
Mike in NC
It’s part of conservatives’ nature to worry that somebody somewhere just might be having a good time.
Cassidy
@Omnes Omnibus: I think the argument could be made about degrading or dehumanizing, they’re just not making it.
Valdivia
@Omnes Omnibus: oh late to this. I wasn’t attracted to them. These were blind dates. Or set up dates by friends of friends. Not people I sought out. Obviously others thought these men would like me. This probably says bad things about me. :(
mclaren
Why, Doug?
Stupidity or maliciousness explains 90% of it. And guess what? I don’t give a fuck whether the Republicans who proclaim “global warming is a hoax” or the sociopathic Democrats who assert that the president of the united states has the legal right to murder American citizens without a trial are stupid or vicious. It doesn’t matter.
These people need to be crushed, ground into hamburger, and swept out of the way. They need to be relegated to the margins of society and publicly ridiculed and shouted down whenever they open their mouths.
I don’t give a fuck why these people are advocating insane evil policies, just as I don’t give a damn why the people in the Kremlin during the 1930s advocated insane evil policies, or why Pol Pot’s minions advocated insane evil policies during the reign of the Khmer Rouge.
Just crush ’em. Sweep ’em away. Steamroller the bastards and let’s get back to fixing the giant continent-wide trainwreck the Republicans and fellow-traveler corporatist Democrats have made of this country over the last 35 years.
Omnes Omnibus
@Valdivia: Maybe the friends of your friends just need better taste.
wuzzat
I spend a lot of time trying to figure out how to deal with a specific subset of New England Republican,the upper-middle middle class, life-long Blue Stater who thinks it’s all state’s rights and keeping more of your hard-earned tax money out of the hands of greedy strawmen. Trying to explain that there’s a whole lot of crap they take for granted and that benefits them that does not exist in most red states is kind of like trying to explain the desert to fish.
bcw
Puritanism: the haunting fear that someone, somewhere is having a good time. – H.L. Mencken.
jon
Hookup Culture isn’t a culture, and it’s hardly a Thing. It’s just people having casual sex, a thing that has been going on for as long as there has been sex. It’s not even a rejection of relationships, as hooking up has led to about 90% of my long-term relationships, including my 13-year marriage and every single one of my relationships that lasted more than six months. Like all relationship strategies, it has a high failure rate. I’m at 1-26 or so, and that one is (if I want to make my girlfriend cry) conditional. Most relationships don’t work. That’s just how it works. I’m 0-8 for romantic relationships without sex. I’ll take my chances with the hookup cultural ideal, as it’s much more fun.
Xenos
The kids are alright.
They have been for a long time.
And hookup culture is not, new, and not a culture. It is young people looking for connection and fun in a way that works for them. What sort of asshole resents any person for being human?
Omnes Omnibus
@Xenos:
Charles Lane.
Lawrence
Hey Beavis, you see that arrow? That arrow symbolizes the wiener.
What wiener?
It stands for all wieners everywhere.
PEOPLE ARE STILL HAVING SEX…
What people? I want the names!
The Raven on the Hill
For many years I’ve been saying that there are few things in modern conservatism that cannot be partly explained as an expression of threatened masculinity. I think this is one of them.
There’s other things going on here, but it’s late; take this for what it’s worth.