Misogyny, Hypocrisy
Yesterday on the radio, one of the local morning DJs was saying that one American Idol contestant’s domestic violence arrest was just as bad, morally, as another’s use of cocaine. When her partner DJ called her out on it, she became annoyed with him and explained her position. “We don’t even know what kind of phone Scott Savel threw at his wife,” she argued. “It could have just been a cell phone!”
Now, I’m not arguing with Mix 96.5 Roula’s right to marry a man who throws cell phones at her. I have no interest in the private conjugal acts of consenting adults. It did strike me as a little weird, however, that Roula spent a good part of this morning’s show bitching about people who stand around read magazines at Barnes & Noble. That’s stealing, she said.
God bless capitalism and domestic violence.
Today a coworker forwarded me a lame email joke. That happens about fifteen times a day, actually. Many of them are unfunny, stupid, and even offensive. I usually delete those and go about my business. This last one, however, featured an video clip of a man punching a woman in the face. Over and over again, a guy punched a woman, in a boardroom, for no reason I could see, about the notice that “Slap Your Co-Worker Day is Coming!!”
On a wild, devil-may-care type impulse, I hit Reply All and typed, “There’s nothing like seeing a man punch a woman in the face, is there? What was the funniest part of this? The fact that she didn’t expect to get hit, or just the pain and humiliation getting hit like that must have caused? Please explain. I have to admit that I didn’t get the joke.”
Someone on the list immediately replied with, sic, “It was only a joke I did not send this to you.”
If she had written, “Hey, jerk, lay off the Reply All. I didn’t send this shit to you,” then I would have empathized completely. But the fact that she was compelled to defend the video even while denying responsibility for it? Priceless.
These are the same people, by the way, who regularly send out emails containing rhyming prayers for each others’ souls.
Announcement
Today was National People Who Think Violence Is Funny Are Going to Die Day.
Wait – why is ninety percent of the population sudenly dead?
Oh, well. Forward this message to ten other people, and all your wishes will come true.
