Category Archives: culture

The Disposable Woman

Anna Holmes has an excellent op-ed in today’s New York Times about the Charlie Sheen debacle as it relates to his numerous episodes of domestic violence.

The piece begins with a short summary of Sheen’s publicly known assaults on various wives, girlfriends, and associates and then frames those incidents with the frat-house nature of many of the “interviews” he’s done over the last few weeks.

In “The Disposable Woman,” Holmes writes:

The privilege afforded wealthy white men like Charlie Sheen may not be a particularly new point, but it’s an important one nonetheless. Lindsay Lohan and Britney Spears are endlessly derided for their extracurricular meltdowns and lack of professionalism on set; the R&B star Chris Brown was made a veritable pariah after beating up his equally, if not more, famous girlfriend, the singer Rihanna. Their careers have all suffered, and understandably so.

This hasn’t been the case with Mr. Sheen, whose behavior has been repeatedly and affectionately dismissed as the antics of a “bad boy” (see: any news article in the past 20 years), a “rock star” (see: Piers Morgan, again) and a “rebel” (see: Andrea Canning’s “20/20” interview on Tuesday). He has in essence, achieved a sort of folk-hero status; on Wednesday, his just-created Twitter account hit a million followers, setting a Guinness World Record.

But there’s something else at work here: the seeming imperfection of Mr. Sheen’s numerous accusers. The women are of a type, which is to say, highly unsympathetic. Some are sex workers — pornographic film stars and escorts — whose compliance with churlish conduct is assumed to be part of the deal. (For the record: It is not.)

You really should read the whole piece, and not just to atone for the traffic you gave TMZ earlier this week when you gave in to those links on facebook and watched Sheen in action.

Larry King and Lady Gaga are the Same

We’re on a postal route that doesn’t have an assigned mail carrier. Some of the carriers are great. Some are insane. Consequently, sometimes our mail arrives at exactly 9 a.m.. Other times it arrives whenever the neighbor who happened to receive it drops it off or puts it back into the mail as mis-delivered mail.

Last week, I received the August issue of the Oxford American. I read it on the Metro today.

Technically, I only read part of it on the Metro. I started laughing so hard I was crying and, since I was by myself, I decided to put the magazine away. I suspected I was giving the guy sitting in front of me something to tweet about, so that’s nice I guess. Still, I worry that behaving weirdly on the Metro by laughing to oneself, even when obviously reading and not potentially communing with the Overlords from the Planet Twilar or whatever it is that some of my Special Metro Friends do, might serve to up the amplitude on my Freak Magnetism. I can’t take that chance. I have no vacancies on the Special Metro Friends roster, not since I started seeing Bag of Snakes Dude on the train on a regular basis.

Anyway, I was disappointed to find that the piece that made me laugh out loud to myself isn’t available on the Oxford American website.

Fortunately, I decided to google the article title and found I could still link to it via the Utne Reader.

Unfortunately, the Utne Reader reprint of “Larry King Is the Future-And other signs of the coming apocalypse” by Jack Pendarvis turned out to be an excerpt.

The part I found the funniest isn’t online. The excerpt is still worth a read, but the absence of the part I wanted to draw your attention to makes my (blogging) life a little harder. Perhaps the Utne Reader doesn’t condone the YouTube, because this seems to be the only paragraph that’s missing from their reprint. Hmmm. Well, regardless, here it is:

I am not the particular kind of crank who thinks everything is worse now than it ever was. I think everything was always horrible. Next time some old, muttering fart tries to get nostalgic on you, escort him to YouTube and force him to watch some 70s variety shows until he shoots himself, four minutes later. I suggest the comedy skit that leads up to the Tony Orlando and Dawn cover of “Kung Fu Fighting.” Whatever your generation, your computer’s main purpose is to reinforce political superstitions you already have and run an endless loop of the cherished pudding commercials of your youth. In the future, you will never have to leave the past!”

Here’s that clip, in case you need it:


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