Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

Disappointing to see gov. newsom with his finger to the wind.

It’s always darkest before the other shoe drops.

Within six months Twitter will be fully self-driving.

You are either for trump or for democracy. Pick one.

JFC, are there no editors left at that goddamn rag?

Black Jesus loves a paper trail.

Shallow, uninformed, and lacking identity

A snarling mass of vitriolic jackals

Text STOP to opt out of updates on war plans.

You know it’s bad when the Project 2025 people have to create training videos on “How To Be Normal”.

Just because you believe it, that does not make it true.

You can’t attract Republican voters. You can only out organize them.

The line between political reporting and fan fiction continues to blur.

The fight for our country is always worth it. ~Kamala Harris

They were going to turn on one another at some point. It was inevitable.

Republicans do not trust women.

“But what about the lurkers?”

So fucking stupid, and still doing a tremendous amount of damage.

Find someone who loves you the way trump and maga love traitors.

“Just close your eyes and kiss the girl and go where the tilt-a-whirl takes you.” ~OzarkHillbilly

If rights aren’t universal, they are privilege, not rights.

Yeah, with this crowd one never knows.

Humiliatingly small and eclipsed by the derision of millions.

So many bastards, so little time.

You are here: Home / Open Threads / Sunday Night Funnies Open Thread (Extremely On-Line Social Media Edition)

Sunday Night Funnies Open Thread (Extremely On-Line Social Media Edition)

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Yes, you *have* heard the name Bari Weiss before, at least if you’ve skimmed the posts sharing my unhealthy compulsion to mock Bari and all her cronies. On the other hand, their ‘ideas’ are so weightless and insubstantial that perhaps they slide off your minds, unregretted.

It’s the end of the weekend, after one chaotic week and facing into another, and mocking the deserving is as much energy as we can spare… (Bonus: Elon Musk’s most mock-worthy ex!) From Kerry Howley at NYMag, “Scenes From the End of the Sexual Revolution”:

The question “Has the Sexual Revolution Failed” contains within itself a number of other questions (failed at what? Failed whom? Why are we talking about this?), precisely none of which were answered Wednesday night at the Ace Hotel in downtown Los Angeles, where 1,600 plaid-skirted e-girls and be- khakied normies and the aspiring canceled paid as much as $165 a seat to hear a British ideologue, a deft Dimes Square shape-shifter, an ex-Muslim podcaster, and Techno Mechanicus’s mother debate the resolution. You can’t really fault the organizer, even if the organizer was Bari Weiss. It ought to have worked. An ill-defined proposition, half of Red Scare, a random British lady very upset about BDSM, and Grimes? No notes…

The alt-right’s inchoate longing for sexual repression in the absence of religion remains mysterious. Fifty-six percent of the audience, polled beforehand by text at an event featuring four ambitious women and moderated by a queer married media mogul, agreed that the sexual revolution had “failed.” The debate was drawn from Louise Perry’s book, serviceably titled The Case Against the Sexual Revolution, which takes as its presumed reader an extremely credulous liberal raised up in isolation from any information beyond the feminist blogosphere circa 2004 and who needs to be informed, at truly extraordinary length, that men are, on average, physically stronger than women. Women have been pressured to “fuck like men,” a situation that leaves alpha males very happy but all women depressed, abused, vulnerable, and commodified. If there is nothing here that went unsaid by Kay Hymowitz or Christina Hoff Sommers in the dark heyday of the hookup-culture think piece, at least everything sounds better in a British accent.

Perry struggles with specifics but seems to genuinely believe we would be happier with mid-century sociosexual norms (let’s assume it’s a kink), so it was simultaneously unfortunate for her and very funny that her more capable co-debater, Anna Khachiyan, refused to defend the proposition. Khachiyan could not “with a straight face” argue that the sexual revolution failed. She thinks sex is “cool and fun.” “The idea that we live in a society where men are in charge,” she said through a cloud of vape smoke, “is funnier than anything Tim Dillon has ever said.” She “low-key agreed” with the other side’s Sarah Haider, who made the sensible point that having to marry to achieve economic stability was also a form of sexual commodification. The problem with the sexual revolution, Khachiyan said, with destigmatizing all the stigmas, was being left to make do in a society in which “there’s no one to blame but yourself.”

Men in my vicinity were betting that Grimes would not show, but there she was, chaotic neutral, tasked with defending 63 years of presumptive progress. “I’m really bad at reading from a paper,” she said underneath her nymphcore bonnet, and later, speaking for all of us, “I don’t know what I’m supposed to be rebutting.” She suggested, promisingly, that we “rebuild civilization.” Her suggestion for a better civilization: free child care at work…

Another review, from the LATimes entertainment section — “Bari Weiss’ big L.A. debate was less ‘free expression’ than self-promotion”:

… If you’re looking for smart, incisive, even plain provocative dialogue about those questions, stop reading here. There was little to no daylight between the panelists’ views, and they were tethered by a common goal: calling attention to their own brands by sitting on the shoulders of the very movement that afforded them the freedom to sit on that stage and talk in circles.

As for the contentious viral moments that organizers might have hoped to leverage into financial support, followers or cultural cachet, those never happened. The audience of 1,600-plus, all primed to cheer the speakers’ adversarial views, found less and less to react to as the panel digressed. Rowdy millennials in Camille Paglia T-shirts, stoic middle-aged men in promotional “Free Press” baseball caps and well-groomed seniors in the pricey seats up front instead witnessed a group of like-minded women mostly agreeing with one another. There’s an art to skating on the edge of right-wing rage while pretending to be a nondenominational outsider, a skill Weiss has tried to harness over the years with varying degrees of success. Wednesday’s event was a prime example of what it looks like when the act falls flat…

And yet — Mission accomplished! Here we are, talking about Bari Weiss!

Reader Interactions

99Comments

  1. 1.

    OlFroth

    I continue to be ashamed that I graduated from the same exclusive prep school that Weiss graduated from.

  3. 3.

    TF79

    I have liked Grimes’ music for many many years , and I always find it off-putting when people refer to her in relation to the Lord of the Edgelords, as opposed to a critically-acclaimed and talented (and weird) musician in her own right

  4. 4.

    dmsilev

    Rowdy millennials in Camille Paglia T-shirts, stoic middle-aged men in promotional “Free Press” baseball caps

    I’m trying to decide which group is more disturbing and/or pathetic, and the only answer I can come up with is “yes”.

  5. 5.

    Jim, Foolish Literalist

    when her name started being paired with Matt Taibbi and Elmo Musty I thought, yeah, that fits

  6. 6.

    West of the Rockies

    Is it just me or is some of the writing showing off how cool the writer is?  Seemed like  fair bit of hipster jargon

    I probably need to reread it.

  7. 7.

    Anoniminous

    Re: Alpha Males

    If those moronic idiots had read an Anthropology paper published in this century the notion of “alpha males,” e.g., male wolves that assert dominance over their pack through aggression, comes from a thoroughly refuted and debunked model of wolf social groups. 

  8. 8.

    Sure Lurkalot

    FFS, don’t these ladies have careers where they (deservedly or not) make beaucoup bucks on their own? What part of what they tout as the appropriate place for women do they actually inhabit?

  10. 10.

    SpaceUnit

    If nothing else it seems the Sexual Revolution gave women the freedom to hold their own circle jerks.

  11. 11.

    UncleEbeneezer

    @Anoniminous: Hasn’t the scientist who did the initial research tried to make the public understand that the whole “alpha male” theory that so many in the public believe, is completely at odds with the actual findings?  I heard it mentioned on a sex podcast the other day, but they didn’t give the scientist’s name.

  13. 13.

    Suzanne

    Khachiyan could not “with a straight face” argue that the sexual revolution failed. She thinks sex is “cool and fun.”

    Well…. yeah.
    The sexual revolution hasn’t been awesome for men. That’s why they’re trying to convince women that it’s a failure.

  14. 14.

    Kay

    Former New York Times opinion writer and full-time agitator Bari Weiss moderated the most-certainly-not-right-wing-how-could-you-even-suggest-such-a-thing event, which kicked off with comedian Tim Dillon joking about transgender teens and how bored he was with the war in Ukraine.

    Just as side-splittingly funny as Bill Mahr, I see. He’s bored with the war! Hilarious!

    This is all of anti wokeism:

    and substance that borrowed from the contrarianism of Bill Maher, the antiliberalism of Newsmax and the prattle of a Young Republicans rally.

    It’s junk. The “panels” they hold don’t actually discuss anything because this shit is too weak and thin to talk about for more than 5 minutes.

  15. 15.

    Suzanne

    @Yarrow: You’re sooooooo right. She’s boring AF. She’s just trying to cosplay as an intellectual by WELL ACKSHULLYing all over the place and it’s tiresome.

  17. 17.

    Snarki, child of Loki

    So the review above has a link to the LA Times, but really, it deserves a review of the type that used to show up in the movie review pages of the LA Weekly, right next to the Akbar & Jeff “Life in Hell” cartoons, and that one could enjoy just for the gory evisceration of the subject of the review.

     

    “…leaving a toxic cloud of stupidity in it’s wake…”

    Yeah, and I miss the Weekly World News also, too.

  22. 22.

    MisterDancer

    @Suzanne: The sexual revolution hasn’t been awesome for men. That’s why they’re trying to convince women that it’s a failure.

    It’s ironic as hell that the prior thread is chock-full of Trek references, because you can kind of trace how our culture is dealing with the idea(l) of sexual pleasure thru what Trek is putting on screen…or not.

    Kirk may not have been a playboy in every sense, but he did sleep with a LOT of women — Spock, too — in ways that I understand closely aligned to what the then-extant Sexual Revolution promised. That Women (and eventually Non-Binary) people got a voice and started pointing out the HUGE flaws in that model…yeah, you’re right.

    I think that broke a lot of people. And not just Men. And they’ve been trying, desperately, to get men back fully and completely on top, since.

    What a waste.

  24. 24.

    Anoniminous

    @UncleEbeneezer:

    The original paper “Expressions Studies on Wolves”  was published in 1947 by Rudolph Schenkel, it didn’t do much outside of Ethology.  It was Dr.  David Mech who popularized the notion in his 1970* book “The Wolf: Ecology and Behavior of an Endangered Species.”  Despite his pleas that some of the work is outdated and plain & fancy wrong and he goes around telling everyone who will listen there’s some seriously wrong stuff in the book the publisher won’t stop selling the thing.

     

    * for some reason the mid-60s to mid-70s was chock-a-block with Bullshit Anthropology and Biology that have been driven deep into the popular mind.  “The Selfish Gene” is another example.

  26. 26.

    MisterDancer

    @Adam L Silverman: Somedays I truly wonder how far in the sand these people’s heads are. The ones not just lying about what they do in the bedroom,  that is.

    (Also, that was a lovely scene in DEADPOOL. )

  27. 27.

    Splitting Image

    I’ve thought for years now that Camille Paglia is basically the most influential public intellectual of the last 50 years. She perfected the art of identifying as a liberal writer who polishes her contrarian bona fides by supporting Republican talking points. So she identifies as pro-choice, but says pro-lifers have the better moral arguments. She identifies as lesbian, but says that heteronormative relationships are empirically the best. And on and on. She’s the Bo Diddley of pundits. Every stupid piece of shit with a megaphone, from Bari Weiss to David Sirota, is stealing her act.

    Excuse me, I have to go read an article by Molly Ivins.

    OK. Done.

    I’ve been reading some early Playboy magazines from the 1950s, and it’s remarkable how quickly the editorial policy moved from “everybody would be better off if we all talked more candidly about sex” to “men are in danger of being completely emasculated” the second women started speaking out about their own needs. A lot of men supported the “sexual revolution” when it had the potential to make women more available, then began to oppose it when it started to be about women being available but only on their own terms.

    I totally support the sexual revolution if it means that people who want to shag each other seven days a week are able to find each other and people who don’t want to shag at all can find each other. Win-win all round.

  28. 28.

    Mousebumples

    I was in college when I realized being in “a relationship” wasn’t worth putting up with shit from crappy boyfriends.

    I’m tall, I have a Doctorate, and I have a high paying job. So many guys would get squiggly over one or more of those.

    Amazing women deserve amazing partners. As many of us here have said before, the GOP wants to put women back in the 19th century. I’m not going, and I’m not letting my daughter deal with that shit when she grows up.

  29. 29.

    frosty

    @SpaceUnit: If nothing else it seems the Sexual Revolution gave women the freedom to hold their own circle jerks.

    You win the thread! I think I’ll go read the library book that’s due soon.

  31. 31.

    Adam L Silverman

    @MisterDancer: It’s a hysterical extended montage scene.

    As for your substantive reply, without a doubt. But the author of the sentence misses the real point she thinks she’s making. Which was not that “women have been pressured to fuck like men”, but, rather, that women were empowered to not just be open about their sexuality, what they do and don’t like or prefer, but also to be free to pursue what they do and don’t like. Frankly men should be happy that women are empowered to be subjects not objects. But I’m funny that way.

  33. 33.

    Suzanne

    @MisterDancer: I feel like, in general, American society is just more competitive in every sense than it used to be. That was a choice, made by previous generations, though I don’t think they realized that they were making it. This “regulatory environment” incentivizes extreme individualism and main-character-syndrome self-involvement and resource hoarding. And all of those same market forces are affecting our personal lives.

    The thing about competitions is that there are, by definition, losers of those competitions. There’s no way to create this hyper-competitive society but have relationships and sex stay unaffected.

  34. 34.

    Kay

    @Yarrow:

    A laugh riot:

    Tim Dillon@TimJDillonOct 29, 2021

    I’m on the 5th booster watching Tiger King 4. Ellen is President. The camps are for our own good. I’m excited about our day of sun next week. Everything is good.

    I hope he told the joke about “pronouns”. That one never gets old.

    I think they miss loudly and incessantly whining about having to wear masks, which was apparently the greatest suffering any of them have ever endured. They get a lot less attention these days. They need something new to happen so they can pretend their rights are being violated.

  35. 35.

    Suzanne

    I will note that the Harvard Business Review ran a piece informing women that one’s choice of partner is the biggest decision of one’s professional life. It’s 100% true. When those are the stakes, men who are not fully on board, self-sufficient, and equitable are not going to be successful with women.

  36. 36.

    Jackie

    Off topic, but worth the laugh:

    “Half a dozen House Republicans announced a deal on Sunday to temporarily fund the government with the goal of averting a shutdown at the end of the month. But it’s far from certain that the proposal would unite their fractious conference to send a bill to the Senate, where it is expected to get rejected,” the Washington Post reports.

    “The short-term funding bill would keep the government running until Oct 31 and trigger a one percent cut to current fiscal levels.”

    That the House GQP even thought this was newsworthy breaking news…

  37. 37.

    Ken

    @Steeplejack: Give the Algorithm a few hours to digest that search, then let us know what ads it starts serving you. That may give us a clue.

    (To me, “nymphcore bonnet” sounds like something from an entomological paper. “Between the second and third instars the larva develops the nymphcore bonnet, which in the adult form will blah blah blah….”)

  39. 39.

    Anoniminous

    @SpaceUnit: ​

    If nothing else it seems the Sexual Revolution gave women the freedom to hold their own circle jerks.

    As we’ve been notified about Congresswoman Boebert and date.

  41. 41.

    dmsilev

    @Jackie: Half a dozen Republicans, even if they ostensibly represent several of the various sub-factions of lunatics, can’t guarantee that anything will pass the House, never mind make it past the first laugh test from the Senate.

  45. 45.

    Scout211

    I had a long rant typed up and then decided I was taking these women far too seriously.  I took a walk and calmed down.  But it still irks me that they are using all the privileges that they have as young women today to criticize the feminists and activists in the 60s who fought for those very privileges that they can so cutely criticize for their own five minutes of attention.

    I was a teen in the 60s and I’m here to tell those pseudo-intellectual women that they are full of shit.  But they likely already know that and really don’t care.

  47. 47.

    NotMax

    Open Thread?

    Something especially germane for Missourians. First impression from this out of stater is this is a guy with his head screwed on straight, projecting a relaxed yet knowledgeable air.

  48. 48.

    piratedan

    @Suzanne: I would argue that for a certain demographic of men that it has been absolutely awesome.

    That demographic being guys who aren’t assholes, respect women and seemingly grasp that nowadays sex doesn’t necessarily equal love and that if the former leads to the latter, great but that relationships take work.

    sadly, it appears that it’s not a large demographic

  50. 50.

    brendancalling

    “Mission accomplished! Here we are, talking about Bari Weiss!”

    Speak for yourselves. I don’t even know what that person looks like. Is Barry Weiss like some old dude like Dennis Prager or something?

    Anyway, my ladyfriend and I were JUST discussing the sexual revolution, and she noted that 100 years ago if she wanted to be single she’d probably have to be a nun or something. She’s glad that she’s been empowered to never have kids if she doesn’t want them (and she doesn’t, so she doesn’t), she’s glad she can choose to not be married, she glad she has access to birth control so she can have sex for fun whenever she wants. In short, she gets to be the independent woman she is, and I’m the lucky bastard she chooses to hang out with.

    Yesterday, we ran ten miles together. Remember when women weren’t allowed to run marathons? Bad times. Now we’re both in training. Viva la revolución sexual!

  56. 56.

    Sister Machine Gun of Quiet Harmony

    @Anoniminous: I agree completely. Before the change, I identified a lot with werewolves. After all, every month I had to work to contain my tendency to turn into a rage filled monster. I don’t understand how it became such a male dominated thing. The metaphor belongs to us.

  61. 61.

    Jackie

    @dmsilev: No kidding! The Senate is also saying “are you kidding?!” I guess that a totality of SIX GQP House members in agreement is THE news!

  62. 62.

    Geminid

    @Jackie: Those were three Republicans from the Main Street Caucus and three from the Freedom Caucus who came up with this agreement on funding. But it sounds like they were negotiating on their own hook, and that their fellow caucus members are not bound by this agreement. It’s just a start.

    The agreement does not speak to the issue  of Ukraine aid, which the Biden administration and the Senate want to pass in a separate bill, along with border funding and disaster relief in a separate bill. That will be a big fight just by itself.

  63. 63.

    Steeplejack

    @Jackie:

    That article has already gotten more than 800 comments in the three hours it has been up! Mostly, from the ones I looked at, pillorying it as the nothingburger it is.

  67. 67.

    Another Scott

    Meanwhile, report that TIFG’s monsters said that they would fund primary opponents for Texas senators who voted to convict Paxton:

    LoopEmma

    Would explain some things – they’re always afraid of primaries…

    Cheers,
    Scott.

  68. 68.

    Enhanced Voting Techniques

    Women have been pressured to “fuck like men,” a situation that leaves alpha males very happy

    What? Take only five minutes and be asleep by the end it? What does that mean?

  70. 70.

    Aj

    Pathetic

    Kacsmaryk used the term a zillion times in his decision so now every one has to look it up see what it was and rewrite ancient history.

    I wondered why he was sooo hung up on it. Now they are all jumping into the wagon

  71. 71.

    Anoniminous

    @Lyrebird: ​
     
    That’s very interesting and it is interesting how the field has advanced. When I was studying Animal Behavior Females were Acted-Upon rather having Agency. The notion of Female Choice never entered the lecture hall.

  73. 73.

    glc

    Yes I do know who Bari Weis is, I believe,  and for that, I have no one to blame but myself. And, possibly, Tim Berners-Lee, but that’s a stretch. No good deed goes unpunished.

    On the other hand, I tend to get her mixed up with Ruth Shalit Barrett for no obvious reason, and I take some pride in retaining this level of ignorance in the face of all the available information. Maybe someone more knowledgeable can figure out what the source of that confusion is: I have no idea.

    But I do know the difference between Naomi Klein and Naomi Wolf.

    The other day I realized I’d forgotten Kenneth Starr’s name momentarily, and my wife said “something like Barr.” Hmm.

  74. 74.

    Lyrebird

    @Anoniminous:

    Donna Haraway (Primate VIsions, 1990) was one of the few post-neo-whatever culture theorists whose work I was glad to have at least partly slogged through in grad school.  I don’t know who else contributed to the corrective, but as you point out, the corrective was needed!  If you are bored, BTW, I recommend borrowing a copy of The Trouble With Nature.  (That author is not an anthropologist sfaik but talks about misconceptions about gender roles in social science.  Nice takedown of some of Steven Pinker’s claims.)

    @Enhanced Voting Techniques: Thank you for that antidote to the Bari induced headache!

  75. 75.

    wjca

    @Suzanne: The sexual revolution hasn’t been awesome for men.

    I’m not sure that’s generally true.  Certainly it has been a big negative for that subset who incline to exploit women.  (Actually, they mostly incline to exploit everyone.)

    But for a lot of us, it’s been a net plus.

  78. 78.

    Trivia Man

    @Mousebumples: tall, smart, rich? Swoon.

    I had a coworker who out-earned her husband substantially and many (men) asked her if he was REALLY OK WITH THAT! Yes, he was very much OK with that and thought the very question was hysterical.

    I only ever dated one woman taller than me, briefly, it never occurred to me that somehow I should be … threatened? Offended? Demeaned? My social skills and her overall coolness doomed the relationship before I ever found a downside.

  79. 79.

    Jim, Foolish Literalist

    @Trivia Man: Tucker Carlson went on a rant about how it’s emasculating for a man to be out-earned by his wife, and I thought, that’s an interesting little window into Tucker’s feelings, maybe subconscious ones, about his father and his step-mummy

  80. 80.

    BellyCat

    The Sexual Revolution ™ revisited fifty years later:

    Women so frequently on top discovering  that being on bottom is kinky.

  82. 82.

    Trivia Man

    @Jim, Foolish Literalist: I knew someone who married a guy like that. When he was working, he would DEMAND that she quit her job and stay home full time. Because it was insulting to imply he couldn’t support a family. When he was unemployed (a welder, so fairly often back on the 80’s), she immediately went back to work until the next time. I felt bad for her, but her choice and she was apparently fine with it.

  83. 83.

    moonbat

    I hereby belatedly join in the rant about biological anthropology’s late understanding of/belief in the female orgasm. All those primatologists for so many years couldn’t figure out why on earth the female monkeys were yelling and clutching their partners!

    Why indeed?!

    Can we just skip to the end and posit that men who want to go back to the days before women’s lib are just really crummy lovers?

  84. 84.

    Anoniminous

    @Lyrebird: ​ A trans friend has been pushing me to read de Waal’s 2022 book Different: Gender Through the Eyes of a Primatologist. I want to read it since she has recently transitioned and so could provide some very interesting perspectives. Another friend just went the other way and recently completed his transition. If I can get some time I’d like to start a discussion between the three of us with the intent of publishing a book.​
     

    ETA: Thinking about it, I just realized I personally have known or known about eleven people in my extended social circle who have transitioned.

    Weird

  88. 88.

    Fair Economist

    The people who think the sexual revolution “failed” are incel types who can’t get laid now that women don’t have to be married to get a credit card and can choose whether to have sex and who to have it with.

  89. 89.

    HumboldtBlue

    I freely admit I was ridiculously lucky to have fully enjoyed the sexual liberation movement because it was the daughters of the women who paved the way I grew up with, and more of it, please.I got away with no kids and a lot of friends.​
    And this joint needs more dancing.​

  93. 93.

    Odie Hugh Manatee

    @HumboldtBlue:

    Same here, lucky dog! ;) The 70’s and 80’s were a good time to be single, young, reasonable looking, play guitar in a local band, ride a motorcycle and drive a hot car. All the bait you needed to reel them in during the heyday of the sexual revolution. Funny thing is that I married the last one I caught and the 27th will be 37 years since we signed the papers.

    I too am glad I survived without having kids strewn all over the place. Thank you very much contraceptives!

  96. 96.

    Lacuna Synecdoche

    Anne Laurie @ Top:

    And yet — Mission accomplished! Here we are, talking about Bari Weiss!

    Bari who?

    I only read it to find out how Grimes – whose albums I’ve generally liked despite her recent boytoy – got herself roped into this mess.

  97. 97.

    JCNZ

    @West of the Rockies: She is cool, no question. This: “There was little to no daylight between the panelists’ views, and they were tethered by a common goal: calling attention to their own brands by sitting on the shoulders of the very movement that afforded them the freedom to sit on that stage and talk in circles.”

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