Don’t Like: The New York Post’s Decision To Post Erin Andrews Spy Video Pictures and Including A Distasteful Cartoon As Well

(note: this is not page with the picture… I’m not going to do that)

Ragging on a rag like The New York Post (eh, get it?) seems like a waste of time. It’s a nonsense paper, with a nonsense agenda, designed to make money, and it does. Fine.

I’m also not here to get political. That would be pointless. Dismissing a sensationalist paper for it’s politics completely misses the point as they are inherently designed to piss people off or go the extra step out of bounds on a given angle (politically speaking of course). Does it potentially have a negative effect? Sure. Do I like that so many people read it? No. It’s just doesn’t make sense to rail against this because it’s an inherent reality of the mud slinging business. And most of their gossip rag stuff is completely trashy, but appropriately trashy in the larger sense. In other words it’s exactly the kind of nonsense you’d expect to find in any magazine like that.

So then The Post went along the other day and ran a story on page 1 referencing the now unfolding and infamous Erin Andrews story. If you have not heard, the ESPN sideline reporter was recently filmed with a peephole camera as she was changing in her hotel room. It is a significant offense. Highly illegal. And rotten to the core. Honestly, I did not find that it happened that surprising. Erin Andrews has a vehement, vocal, and often juvenile fan base, stemming from the fact that she is an attractive, capable woman and is a member of the sports world, particularly college sports. That lends itself to a certain kind of attention. She is also a decent sideline reporter (my qualms are more with actually sideline reporting and not her performance itself). The problem with having this kind of celebrity-like admiration is that she also a sideline reporter and NOT a giant celebrity with security and protection and all the like. Honestly, I’ve worried for her safety in a variety of situations.  Sure, she seems tough and no nonsense and all that good stuff; she’s probably perfectly capable of taking care of her self… but still. I worried about, I dunno, something like this.

Most of the major papers have and simply abstained from referencing the story all together… but The Post? They ran an article about her outrage… including a screenshot from the video (a barely censored one).

This is absolutely deplorable.

More than than that it is actually illegal. They are posting a pic which was from an illegally shot video. Admittedly, I do not know the finer points of the law concerning this issue, but I know that that kind of act is illegal and grounds for legal action. The Post have since taken it down on the website version of their paper. But probably more because people are pissed (even within their regular readers). This sentiment is also not to imply that I, or some of the people who complained, are some kind of prude or believe that sexuality has no place in modern media. Who can’t understand why a lot of people would want to see a naked video of someone famous? Particularly an attractive famous person.  It’s just that I recognize the inherent difference of a video obtained through such incredibly dishonest and violating means. Not helping matters is that some people are confusing the release of this video with the “release” of some other famous celebrity videos; they don’t understand what the big deal or difference is and why this video can’t legally be posted.

There isn’t even a comparison. Those videos were released with pre-made deals and financial compensation. It was planned. This video was not.

Which leads to something else The Post happened to do in that edition of the paper. They printed this cartoon.

There are three possible meanings you can take from this cartoon. The first is that modern corporate/celebrity culture uses sex and personal stuff to sell sell sell. Which would be valid. But that would be giving a lot of credit. See the problem is those 5 blatant ESPN signs, which means the second possible meaning and perhaps most obvious is that ESPN planned or wanted this video to come out. Or is somehow glad. Which is malicious and implies they are a morally bankrupt organization… which I find to be anything but the case for the company. It also completely discounts the fact they’ve been running around like crazy suing websites and LEGITIMATELY trying to shut it down. If anything ESPN has been the one major sports coverage unit that has really, and truly tried to abstain from sexualizing sports. They consider themselves a family network. They really do and seperates themselves from Fox Sports, which has no qualms about doing so (the great irony of this being that Fox sports is 1000 times more likely to have the kind of behavior/viewpoint shown in this cartoon). The third meaning, and most offensive, is that Erin Andrews was in on it. Which if that is the intent, is probably the most heinous, sexist, cynical, violating tone I can think of for a situation like this.

Once again… this is absolutely deplorable.

Yes the cartoon probably falls under free speech and probably has the legal standards to run… but then I have the right under free speech to say this probably should never have seen publication and if I ran a paper it wouldn’t… ever.

This sounds like I’m getting all high and mighty and holier than thou… I know… I’m sorry. True, should I expect anything less from society? Is this really THAT big a deal? I’m not sure. But sometimes I get tired of being cynical. I get tired of just ignoring shitty behavior just because humans are inclined to be shitty sometimes. But every once and awhile it’s okay to call a duck a duck. Their actions are egregious. It deserves to be called out.

In response to the whole affair, ESPN has blacklisted any Post reporters from their coverage and removed their access to any ESPN broadcast. This will have an immediate effect on their coverage and will hopefully hurt them financially.

But for Erin Andrews, in a perfect world, she would sue for posting the picture and defamation of character for the cartoon. She has a legit claim with the picture, but the cartoon claim would be thrown out under free speech. And since the post is part of the News Corp empire the history of two mega corporations suing each other tells us that it would be so bogged down in various stalls and litigation as to be a complete waste of time.

So in the end, ESPN made the right call.

For me, the whole thing has no effect, really.

I will continue to never read The Post.

Don’t Like: #2, Brett Ratner (on the list people, all of whom I would Punch if I saw them)

For a blog where I spend half the time bitching about stuff I don’t like, I do try to avoid careless internet asshatery and needless contrarian bullshit, and instead focus on some kind of minuate, or larger theoretical argument. Let’s be honest, often the internet descends into “I HATE YOU’RE YOUR FAVORITE THING!!!!!!!! RARRRRRRRRR! U R GAY!!!!”. I try to avoid that. But… Occasionally I indulge in my more base tendancies. So for this week:

Here’s a list of 5 people I would punch if I saw them.

#2, Brett Ratner

Reasons: Make no mistake. I want Brett Ratner’s job. He is a filmmaker. A successful filmmaker at that, complete with confidence and assured technical skill. He is adaptive and can make different kinds of movies with different kinds of tones. It is all highly enviable. What his films lack, however, is the great intangible that pretty much anyone can notice: passion.

Does a filmmaker have to be passionate? Technically no. This is a business after all, but we’re talking about position that THRIVES on passion. Passion of a filmmaker is primarily what imbues the movie with life. Sure it’s an intangible, but it’s easy to look at any film and tell if the filmmaker cared (even/especially in failures).

While it may be intangible on the screen, Ratner’s utter lack of passion is PAINFULLY tangible in interviews. I will not get into his womanizing, his shrewdness, his boasting, his callousness, his misogyny, his partying, his celebrity hookups, or his infidelities. I mean fuck, with passion, these banal qualities could even be the things that make him endearing. Isn’t that what made Bob Fosse endearing?

The simple truth is I have never seen a filmmaker speak with such utter disregard for the subjects he’s presenting in his films. He barely makes allusions to transparency. The subjects are all unimportant to the positioning of his own self-image. He wants to be a big filmmaker. He wants to set records. He wants the glory and accolade, but he CLEARLY doesn’t relate to any of actual things. If he does? It’s not coming through in the slightest. It almost seems as if filmmaking is merely a means to end for him. For those with passion, it can often be end of means.

The Rush hour movies don’t bother me. They’re a nice, though neutered return to buddy cop movies, which honestly doesn’t hold a special place in anyone’s heart. Plus I like Jackie Chan. What is more bothersome, however, is his persistent forays into beloved properties. The lesser offender was his entry into The Hannibal series (already slightly undermined by “Hannibal”) with a remake of an already great film Manhunter (his was “Red Dragon”). It came off as a simple mime and copy of Silence of the Lambs, completely missing the atmospheric intensity and deliberate focus of that film. It was hollow emulation complete with perennial scenes seemingly recopied. It wasn’t directly contrary or offensive in initialization, but its complete lack of effectiveness, however, was offensive. Audiences, often subconsciously, took notice. After Red Dragon, one of the greatest screen villains of all time was merely a caricature of himself.

The greater offender was X-Men 3. Ignoring my love of the franchise and Bryan Singer reaching the pinnacle of an effective blockbuster with X2, X-Men 3 was completely vacant entry. What makes it worse is that instead of it being an “ignorable” tumble in the hay adventure, it was intended to be a crescendo. Characters are killed, but done so haphazardly. Other major characters are killed with the inclination toward emotional resonance, but the lack of logical reasons to do render the effect meaningless. What’s worse is the central conceit of the film (“curing” mutants of their powers) is completely and utterly turned on it’s head with the last frame of the film. In some ways I love it, because it allows for a “do-over” in some regard. It also renders the process of sitting there for 2 hours completely useless.

Ratner was talking once of actually making a Hugh Heffner biopic. I wanted him to do it oh so desperately because it seemed like the one instance where you could evoke a kind of passion from him; THAT is a subject matter akin to his own nature. But nothing came of it… because supposedly he got another chance to ingrain his lack of passion into another beloved franchise. Specifically by me. Seriously, god help him if he tackles Conan next. He’s reportedly signed on… but… I love those movies. They’re awful… but there’s a kind of weird, glorious passion there.

The worst part is I’d go see it with a sense of hope.

Judgement: In the end, simply a waste of talent.

Result: Okay… this is where I get honest and have to acknowledge part of the reason he’s on this list. I once saw Brett Ratner in real life… and I didn’t punch him. I regret it of course, but there were inherent difficulties. One, he was talking to all my bosses and that would have just been uncouth. Two, it is not-surprisingly difficult to work up the courage to just go up and punch a dude in the face, completely unprovoked. I wish I was walking by and he just said something to justify it like “Hey fuckstick!” But no… he just makes deeply impersonal movies about otherwise deeply personal/beloved subjects. That’s not the greatest reason to punch someone in reality.

But he sure of fuck deserves it.

Look at this asshole:

Don’t Like: “Freaxxx” By Brokencyde

Just wow.

This monstrosity has been floating around the blogosphere lately and perhaps for good reason. I wasn’t going to say anything at first. Most of the commentary has been along the lines of “sign of the apocolypse” and “fall of western civilization… but over the last 24 hours I’ve become a little bit obsessed.

See this isn’t just your usually stupidity. This is special.

Strangely, the questions begin with the haircuts. How does someone get that haircut who isn’t a Japanese teen five years ago? They aren’t even fallout-boy-at-least-definable-by-physics-bad. What possesses someone to be that incredibly outrageous with their hair? It’s amazing. Who likes that?

Then there is, you know, the actual music. I mean, what? Apparently they have combined screamo and crunk. And appear to have done so by yelling intermittently at periods of their crunk song. For no apparent reason. Also the stunning acne. I imagine this is preventative to stardom, but what the hell do I know. I just know it illicits a gutteral response of “yick”. Then there’s the name “brokencyde” a weird mashup of a bunch of other band names that somehow make more active or relative sense than this one. It’s a kinda desperate name at that. I imagine some bad late 70’s high school band naming themselves “Led Sabbath” and that seems akin to this. But this is all the surface-y stuff. It’s like not liking frida because she has a unibrow. Actually it’s not like that all. You might not be able to judge a book by its cover, but in this case it would have been really, really helpful.

Obviously, the music sucks. Not even enjoyable on some ironic level. It’s harsh and loopy and not in a pleasing way. The lyrics spare no subtext like mongol hordes spared no village. It’s audacious in some ways really. “Let’s fuck on the dance floor! Right now!” is the effective gist. Sure, it’s juvenile to a fault, but the members of this seem so inandated with their own awesomeness and not in a “our subculture actually values this” kind of way that allows me to put a lot of rap video’s excesses off the hook. There’s nothing “awesome” really happening. The range rover, the benz, the pathetic red plastic cups, the tiny party of 7 girls obviously conned into this somehow. It’s all  longing to be something it terribly isn’t.

But the truly amazing part comes at around 1:50 where there is a sudden, dramatic 180 switch and the boys proceed to yell “LIAR!” at the girls and pantomime choking a Jamie-Lynn Spears lookalike. The juvenile behavior at this point reaches absurdity. Little are they aware, but the action profiles the insane, deeply rooted problem of young boys trying to “get chicks”. They espouse their sexual prowess (in reality, obviously lacking) and regard women as nothing more than vacant fuck puppets (that’s the nicest way I could put it), but their fragility is SOOOOOOOO transparent that they scream LIAR! WHORE! at a moments notice. You hurt their feelings you see!

It’s all so wonderfully poetic. They completely emasculate their own amazing bullshit.

And look. I’m not someone who gets up on a soap box and bitches about every little indignation (well. actually that’s exactly do in this blog. but not in real life… or… um LOOK OVER THERE! [runs away]). Most of the time you watch a bad late 90s rap video and kinda laugh it off. There’s kind of an aloof charm, or slickness to that stuff and a lot of other music videos in general that make it all at least OK.

“Freaxxx” is fallout and effect of all that I guess; a couple of lame ass tards’s interpretation of the baser ends of pop-culture, complete with the more transparent evidence of about 14 different aspects of arrested maturation and development.  They are WELL within date-rapist territory. In short, these fuckers have problems… and I’m guessing they’re not alone.

My friend Ken had some nice input too after I sent it to him: “Way to loop and lip-synch to your own emo scream while filming against a backdrop of a McMansion development.  I like how the lead “vocalist” is the only one who appears to be having a good time.  The actively-disinterested blonde dancer is perhaps my favorite element of the video.  The strained novelty of the dancing pig-suit gentleman is another excellent touch. It is really and truly a tragedy that the Midwest has been dragged kicking and screaming into popular culture by the internet.”

Don’t Like: 4th Wave Feminism (But It’s VERY Complicated)

Warning: This is a discussion of semantics.

I am a Feminist… I am a dude.

Understand I’m not trying undermine the notion of being a feminist. I know some women take issue with how liberally men are willing to label themselves as such and deeply respect that. I know this guy who considered himself a feminist and he was also a remarkable verbal abuser and one-time physical abuser.  But in his deranged head, he was “oh so feminist”. So one can understand the apprehension.

But… well, I’m going ahead and saying it anyway.

I’m doing it because feminism has a lot of different definitions, and most of them are pretty reasonable definitions. That’s what happens in a good discourse.

To be fair, 4th Wave Feminism isn’t even a thing. It’s a term some people kind of assigned to describe what’s happening right now in feminism. There were of course other real waves: 1st wave) suffrage. 2nd wave) women’s lib movement of 60’s-80’s. 3rd wave) early 90’s corrections to the “failures” ie women have the right to act like a man, earn the same wages/positions/etc. There’s more to third wave, but since there’s no singular defining trait/event, that’s an okay description.

So… 4th wave.

First off, let me state that I think that sexism is still such a huge problem in this country. HUGE.

Societal Problem #1- the mixed messages we’re sending young girls. We live in a culture with an increasing religious population which abhors both women’s sexuality, femininity, and homosexuality. At the same time, we have a secular society where sexuality is increasingly out in the open (some in a good way too, but mostly a bad way). Think about MTV/Reality shows. Hell, most everything on television is nuts. It’s not the “showing of the skin” it’s the unintelligent and crass way this sexuality is presented (HBO may be the most gritty but they deal with their subjects so intelligently it’s often to make a point… except Entourage but that show sucks).  With the two conflicting messages, every young girl is trying to fight between being a madonna and a whore. This conflict has always been an element to humanity no doubt, but within today’s culture there are a lot of new kinds of obstacles. (There was a great recent movie about this subject: “Towelhead” by Alan Ball.)

Societal Problem #2 – Frat culture – I’m not speaking ill of fraternities necessarily. I’m speaking ill of the associating stereotype of how “frat guys” behave. And we all know what I mean by that. Now going off that mentality, I have this dumb pseudo-pop-psychology theory and it goes something like following: Elementary school boys grow up and are afraid of girls. They want the approval of their guy friends and for those guys to think they’re totally awesome. They start to grow up and have problems relating to teenage girls and react by starting to get angry/misogynistic. It gets worse and worse and soon they’re just trying to score chicks so they can get high fives from their buddies. So they hate/resent women and only use them patriarchal status symbols…. And I think this is fucking 50% of the male population. I really do. I see it everywhere and it pretty much disgusts me. Don’t get me started on the college boys who put drugs in girls drinks at parties. To me there’s nothing more abhorrent than that kind of behavior. It’s a hate crime to me.

Societal Problem #3 – It was kind of always this way. These are not new problems for our society. It’s mostly just that sexual abuse is FINALLY starting to be reported with more frequency. And these aren’t the final numbers by a long shot. The amount of rural sexual abuse that goes unreported is simply stunning. Absolutely stunning… And historically it was even worse.

Societal Problem #4 – there’s no central concrete obstacle for feminism at the moment – the problems with the third wave feminism are only multiplied today because the perceived problems are all conceptual. With the advent of title 9, increased support for equal pay, etc. there are fewer and fewer concrete obstacles.  So why are things still so shitty? It’s because the attack is now on a thought system and that makes things, uh, rather difficult.

As a result, I think 4th wave feminism is pretty fractured. It’s somewhat like today’s music, it’s like there’s competing genres. Do you like emo or hip hop? Are you super indie Mr. Hipster or top 40? Feminism has similarities. There’s some more militant forms of feminism now, but since I tend not to like militant forms of pretty much anything, I won’t even get into that.  One the other side of the political spectrum, there’s the amazingly strange “feminists for life” group . The name does not imply they are feminists for the remainder of their living years, but instead being women who are intensely pro-life… that one’s… interesting. But most kinds of feminism today are now in the form of micro-analysis; the daily interaction of men and women, the subtexts of film and literature, and international comparison. It leads to a lot of fascinating stuff that I enjoy reading with vigor.

… It also leads to a lot of unfair stuff.

What’s specifically is unfair? Lots of stuff really, but one example of the negative aspects would be modern feminism as a game “of gotcha”. Now the dynamics of “gotcha” are now surprisingly popular in the era of Palin and her complaints of “gotcha” media tactics. The main difference is these journalists are trying to expose the woeful political ignorance of a candidate. Asking about the Bush Doctrine is not a gotcha question. Heck, if I know what the bush doctrine is it is NOT A GOTCHA question. Anycrap, I digress. Gotcha feminism is taking valid arguments and points and applying them to situations where they don’t necessarily apply.  It’s like (a) set up a valid point (b) apply point to a given situation that may not apply and (c) tear into it. Examples:

Example #1: The bechdel test

let’s go to wiki: The Bechdel test: The strip popularized what is now known as the Bechdel test, also known as the Bechdel/Wallace test, the Bechdel rule, Bechdel’s law, and the Mo Movie Measure. Bechdel credits her friend Liz Wallace for the test, which appears in a 1985 strip entitled “The Rule“, in which a character says that she only watches a movie if it satisfies the following requirements:

1. It has to have at least two women in it,
2. Who talk to each other,
3. About something besides a man.^[4]

(ignore the boldness here, I’m have formatting problems, sorry) First off. I really love Bechdel rule. As a writer it helps me immensely. I also think it’s pretty obvious the point of the test is to really just point out how few movies actually do this… which is great. But following this test? My god. There’s so many great movies that say a heckuva lot of interesting things that do not pass this test in any way. AND there are a lot of shitty, pandering movies that say awful things about females and DO pass the test (I’m looking at you 27 Dresses). And yet I’m constantly surprised by how many people use the test as some kind of justification for a movie’s validity. (It all goes back to how most screenwriters are males who have no idea how to write female characters, that’s how simple it is).

Example #2 – Firefly is sexist!

Here is an excerpt from a feminist blog that got passed about the internet for awhile for it’s almost stunning over-reaction. It was in regards to Joss Whedon (a popular figure in the “girl power” arena) and his show Firefly. The author decided to tear into the show and expose it for the sexist piece of shit she thought it was:

“Aside from women being fuck toys, property and punching bags for the men, the women have very little importance in the series. I counted the amount of times women talk in the episode Serenity compared to the amount of times men talk. The result was unsurprising. Men: 458 Women: 175. So throughout the first episode men talk more than two and a half times as much as women do. And women talk mainly in questions whereas men talk in statements. Basically, this means that men direct the action and are active participants whereas women are merely observers and facilitators.“

That’s what we call gotcha tactic. The points she brings up have no real baring on whether a show is sexist or not. It simply can’t. It’s classic scientific conundrum of correllation and cause.  Add in the fact that most of the characters are male (especially all the evil baddies) and one of the female’s main character is crazy and only talks rarely, then well… it just seems even more irrelevant.

I really suggest giving this blog post a look http://users.livejournal.com/_allecto_/34718.html … the funny thing is the more I read the post the more I find bits of validity to her points… but it is such a strong reaction to something that doesn’t have nearly the kind of malice she is describing. Of course the show doesn’t stand up as the perfect model of feminism. That’s not what he’s trying to do in the slightest. The kinds of feminist issues in Buffy aren’t even on this show’s radar. And more importantly, they don’t have to be. Firefly is really about a universe that’s crumbling. It’s crumbling on a epic scale and they live in a stunningly depraved world. So a lot of bad, bad shit happens. On top of that, much of whedon’s “sexism” is coming from a critical view. Every one of them is a deeply flawed character, that I don’t think he even had a chance to scratch the surface with (look at the first season of buffy… and where it ended up going. That first season was crap in comparison). I’m inclined to think that he’s cognizant of the females and I think he’s hyper-aware of their feminist drawbacks. But oh yeah… the show happens to be pretty darn good.

I showed the blog post to my friend and he simply wrote back “here’s a list of things that do not fit in with my narrow world view”

Sure that’s a little curt (he did so for humor’s sake) but it gets at the very point I’m trying to make. It may seem like I’m just picking on these two examples but there are countless other instances that overwhelm my impression of the direction of feminism (at least on the collegiate level). Most forms of modern 4th wave feminism are just so darn limiting in their scope. Does “not feminist” = bad? It’s just an inherent question one has to ask themselves when participaing in “feminism”. By adopting any ideology do we limit the exceptions?

At one point in the blog the author digs into the interracial relationship in firefly and makes this comment:

“Let me just say now that I have never personally known of a healthy relationship between a white man and a woman of colour. I have known a black woman whose white husband would strangle and bash her while her young children watched. My white grandfather liked black women because they were ‘exotic’, and he did not, could not treat women, especially women of colour, like human beings. I grew up watching my great aunts, my aunty and my mother all treated like shit by their white husbands, the men they loved. So you will forgive me for believing that the character, Wash, is a rapist and an abuser, particularly considering that he treats Zoe like an object and possession. Joss Whedon does not share my view, of course, and he paints the relationship between Zoe and Wash as a perfectly happy, healthy union.“

First off, I’ve personally known healthy white male/black female relationships. That statement is wholly fucking ridiculous and maybe even racist. There can’t be? Really? That’s simply naive. The author may claim I’m naive because I’m being ignorant, but that’s horseshit and i’ll stand by it. And yes, OF COURSE the aforementioned racist exoctism is an issue in our society. But that doesn’t mean we have to rush out and make every interracial relationship ABOUT the problems of the interracial relationship. That’s ridiculous. She even goes onto bring up excellent films which deal with the subject of racial sexuality and says we should watch those instead. The movies she mentions are all excellent (like Rabbit Proof Fence). But, folks, wtf does that have to do with Firefly. That’s not the subject

As a result of this kind of feminist gotcha-ism, many males go on to make ridiculous conclusions about feminism on the whole… like this:

Needless to say, but that’s a dumb conclusion. Is it complete without merit? YES. That is a sentiment without any merit. It’s a sexist statement down to its very core. But what it does highlight is an unintended consequence to some of the 4th wave’s more unfair analysis. Now I’m not JUSTIFYING a reaction like this in the slightest. A sexist reaction is a sexist reaction. But in the wake of discourse, it awakens the notion of pragmatism in micro-analysis.

There it is… pragmatism. It seems like the biggest obstacle of the 4th wave is the limits of its structure. Does micro-analysis eliminate the scope of macro-analysis? Does feminism need to incorporate the human condition? Can feminism adapt to incorporate a wide range of definitions?

Most of the male/female relationships I know are pretty even handed, both economically, socially, and fundamentally.  But some of them definitely would run against the grain of someone’s differing notion of feminism. And once again, YES this even-handedness is CERTAINLY not the consensus on the whole of this country. How can it be? The 50% frat culture I mentioned before and religious sentiments make me nuts. Most pornography makes me absolutely sick to my stomach. But that’s not what I’m talking about. Those are the obvious battles and I’m talking about the more subtle ones that stem from battles over the things that shape our modern cultural landscape like Firefly and the Bechdel test.

With that, how does 4th wave feminism, in it’s current position, move forward?

There are still some public obstacles. The glass ceiling in the economic front. I think there needs to be some rebellion against the confines of the growing religious attitude, the confines of frat culture, and a global movement toward feminist aid in 3rd world countries where human life is worth less than an IPhone.

And heck I’ll say it… In some ways I think the American feminist experience is becoming much more about redefining the male role than ever before. How do men indeed become feminists while still owning, well, let’s just call it “the male mystique?” (to borrow a phrase). Yes, I’m sick of the “frat” culture. I’m sick of the blatent sexism… but how does feminsm combat that? I simply don’t see the trend of micro-analysis helping. I don’t know… Sometimes it does very well and I’ll read an article that pinpoints these exact problems in our daily life… but a lot of times I encounter the other stuff.

Maybe we’re just approaching a difficult time where the line between feminism and humanism is becoming blurred.

* Final note: I fully realize this whole post is dangerous. Please keep in mind It’s not a paper. It’s not well thought out. I only looked over it once.  It’s kind of a stream of consciousness tangent designed to bring up points. That’s all it is intended as. And I hope all it’s taken as. Thank you.

Like: Candace Parker: Brawler

The WNBA is a tax write off for the NBA. That’s why it still exists.

As it’s own independent thing it is a commercial failure, let’s make no quams about this, but that’s okay. The WNBA hasn’t attracted male viewership because the quality is not as good as the NBA. It’s that simple. It’s the reason foreign soccer viewership is up, but not MLS. People want to see the best soccer just like they want to see the best basketball. There’s only so  much sports to watch and people watch women’s tennis because it is actually an excellent product. Everyone says that Candace Parker’s consecutive dunks are transforming the game. They’re not. A step in the right direction? You bet.

The sport simply needs more physicality so it can look like modern basketball. It’ll happen with due time. Women are getting taller and stronger. It’s just a matter of time before they can throw it down over someone consistently. This isn’t sexist. Not in the slightest. It’s just a matter of sports nuance. Are WNBA players great shooters? You bet. They have incredible fundamentals and I’d be happy to show kids tape on how to create ball movement for set shots. But sit down and watch a game? It just doesn’t measure up to the physicality.

Which is exactly why the sports biggest new star getting into a throwdown last night is so important. Because it is awesome. Brawls are exciting. I don’t care what anyone says, brawls exhibit passion, pride, and physicality. The very thing that viewers like to see. The story has ALREADY gotten way more hits and interest than any other story in the WBNA and it happened last night. And it’s not all retarded catfight jokes. It’s much more legitimate than that.

Said throwdown: