Quick thought on women in elevators

Now, if you don't occasionally wander through the godless corners of the internet, you might have no idea, but a vlogger named Skepchick posted a video where (right about the 4:30 mark, if you're in a hurry), she mentions an encounter she had.

Basically, she'd given a talk explaining that when men sexualize her, it creeps her out. So, when a guy (later established to have been present at that talk) followed her onto an elevator and asked her up to his room, she was uncomfortable.

And that blew up, with a lot of people trying to claim that she was calling all men rapists, and women should just chill out, and on and on. Because... well, because men are dicks, mostly. I should know - I happen to be one myself. Some of us repress that side of our personalities, but far too many don't.

(In the midst of all this exaggeration, a world-famous atheist tried to poo-poo the whole thing, essentially saying that women in Muslim countries have it far worse, so women in America should stop complaining. You know, something like claiming that people are blown up in Jerusalem a lot, so if you get knifed in Boston, just walk it off and quit whining.)

Now, I just have one thing to say about this (of course, I'm going to take way too long saying it, but that's just me). And, actually, it breaks into two parts.

First, that's not what she said!! Christ, the video is right up above here, and I told you where to look! Go watch the fucking thing!

* ahem *

But (he continues in a calmer voice), since you brought it up, yes, women do, in fact, get raped in elevators. In fact, one guy in New York enjoyed it so much that he went out and tried it again. Which inspired copycats.

(Pro-tip: when googling for examples of "elevator rape," be sure that SafeSearch is on. That also happens to be a twisted fantasy for some guys. Which should actually tell you something.)

Also, two fairly common justifications for this dickish attitude on the part of guys:

1. Well, elevator rape isn't very common!
Yeah, asshole. Neither is homosexual rape. Do you want to be the lucky one?

2. It's stupid to worry, because elevators have security cameras!
OK, rich boy. First, no, many of them don't - cameras are expensive. Second, many of the places that have cameras don't have them monitored in real time - that's also expensive. And third, even where the camera has been installed (and here's a dirty little secret of the security business for you), they often don't work. It's just that the people in charge don't want you to know that: they're hoping for a placebo effect on crime.

So, fuck you very much, you fat, privileged, self-important pricks. Women get raped every day. And sometimes it happens in elevators.

I hope that nobody you care about becomes a statistic.

Bachmann to the Future

What can you say about Michelle Bachmann that hasn't already been said about Charles Manson, Emperor Norton, or that guy in the laundromat fondling himself and muttering as he watches a dryer full of Power Ranger sheets tumble around and around and around?

Understand that I have no verifiable evidence for this, but I have to assume that at some point in her childhood, Michelle Bachmann was told “you’re so pretty” by an older man as he touched her inappropriately. And that‘s why she adopted this “wide-eyed lunatic” persona, as a defense mechanism. Because a high-functioning paranoid schizophrenic would have a hard time getting reelected even in the rural parts of Minnesota, where the population is so thin on the ground that sometimes a close relative is the only sexual partner available when the snows close in.

That does not, however, mean that I think she's sane and hiding it, like some of the commenters here seem to be positing. Hers is a special kind of bugfuckery only found where the gene pool is frighteningly shallow.

Yes, she did graduate from Winona State University, but she then went on to Oral Roberts University for her graduate studies in law. (Yes, Oral Roberts University, founded by televangelist and comic book publisher Oral Roberts, widely known for casting God as a loan shark and thug.)

This is not a storied academic career.

Bachmann is more than happy to drive blindly into the Alleys of Madness, seeing conspiracy theories at every turn. She claims that Obama is promoting "gangster government" and the healthcare bill is hiding $105 billion that Congress had no way of knowing about. (That would be the funds built into the bill to allow it to operate, something Bachmann's own party has been pretending to care about.)

No way of knowing about, unless they'd actually read the bill. (Of course, this isn't the first time that Bachmann has proven that she'll willingly make shit up about healthcare, so it's difficult to see why she gets airtime to wave around her colostomy bag of lies. But there she is.)

When Michelle Obama took a completely non-controversial stand in favor of breastfeeding, Bachmann (whose shriveled mammaries could only produce battery acid and liquid fear at this stage) started emitting harpy-like shrieks accusing the Obamas of creating a "nanny state." (If nothing else, the word she was looking for was "wetnurse" - a nanny is a completely different job.)

And now she went in front of an audience in New Hampshire, to inform them that "you're the state where the shot was heard around the world in Lexington and Concord."

She, of course, later went on to claim that she simply "made a mistake," and "should've said Massachusetts rather than New Hampshire."

Which is complete horsecrap. Yes, she should have said Massachusetts instead of New Hampshire. And she should have said it when she wasn't talking to a crowd from New Hampshire. And she shouldn't have repeated it the next fucking day.

That hollow space behind her eyes allows concepts entirely unrelated to reality take root. When even Chris Matthews (a man who practically wet himself over Bush's flightsuit codpiece) can take her apart without even trying hard, that shows the breadth of this woman's rambling inanity.


The money shot here? "People on the right who've gotten into this anti-intellectual cant, as if not knowing anything is somehow knowing everything." A topic for a future time.

The Dumbing Down of the Right

Rush Limbaugh, never one to shrink from looking like a complete douche and already angry because he had to cancel his annual trip to the Dominican Republic to avoid their cholera epidemic, vomited up another spittle-flecked rant against all that is good and decent. Or, to be more accurate, showed his hatred of anyone with an IQ higher than 40.

Shortly after Obama’s speech at the memorial for the victims of the Tucson shooting, the Fox “News” show Special Report had a panel of bloviators (Brit Hume, Charles Krauthammer and Chris Wallace) who had the unmitigated gall to suggest that Obama had given a good speech. Limbaugh, practically choking on the bile rising up in his corpulent throat, spewed the following fascinating statement.

”They were slobbering over it for the predictable reasons. It was smart, it was articulate, it was oratorical. It was, it was all the things the educated, ruling class wants their members to be and sound like.”

Now, Krauthammer, who looks a bit like a cartoon child molester, didn't really appreciate that statement. But he actually managed to make sense in his response for once.

"As one of the three slobberers...I find it interesting that only the ruling class wants a president who is smart articulate and oratorical in delivering a funeral oration. It's an odd and rather condescending view of what the rest of America is looking for in their president.”

Unfortunately, there’s a portion of the American people who feel exactly that way. It’s a strain of anti-intellectualism that’s all too common in the right wing.

Joe (the "Plumber") Wurzelbacher, known liar and serial wife beater, got his fifteen minutes of fame based on a complete lack of understanding of government, taxes, or pretty much anything else. Sarah Palin, an articulate but sadly undereducated woman, seems to appeal to the great unwashed because she's "one of them" (despite having all her teeth and a seven figure income).



Ignorant of history, opposed to science, they hate anyone who seems to be "better than us." Which, for the most part, is anybody who can read at better than an eighth-grade level.

You know, I wasn’t particularly impressed by ABC’s recent revamping of “V”, but I used to watch the original show avidly when I was a teen. Still, there was one plot device that I never liked (I thought it was a little weak): one of the tactics employed by the aliens in their quest to enslave humanity was to demonize scientists and educated people as "enemies of the people."

But looking at America today, I’m suddenly seeing it in a whole new light.

The narcissism of Small Differences

Another day, another triumph for malignant stupidity. I have a filter on my e-mail program that deletes most anything that mentions the President. Odds are it's more crap about finding proof that Obama is a Muslim, whether it's in goat entrails, the arrangement of the stars, some spliced together video or some total fabrication by one of Fox's Friends.

I may add filters for the words Mosque, Muslim and Islam as well because like the voices in the madman's head, mad America sees Muslims everywhere and hates them: in any curved line -- even in NASA mission patches and most of all in buildings with Domes. You know those round arches found at St. Peters, on many Orthodox basilicas and even that cathedral of Democracy, the US Capitol building. If it curves like the new moon, like the orbit of an electron, the path of a rocket: if it has a dome, it's Muslim and it's evil.

Take The Light of the World multidenominational church outside Phoenix, Arizona. All truth, decency and sanity notwithstanding the mad morons of America want you to think it's a mosque and for no other reason that it's domed. Looks to the Demented Idiots of Arizona like a Mosque - must be a center of America-hating Islamic Jihad.

In response, there's a banner now waving at the construction site:

"If you think we are different you are wrong, we are building a Christian house of prayer."

Isn't that part of the problem? Are Muslims "Different?" What about Jews, Mormons, Secular Humanists, Buddhists, Hindus, Unitarians, Freemasons? DIFFERENT! BE AFRAID!