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At Tennessee Guerilla Women I found this YouTube clip of the Not Gay Sen. Larry Craig dilating on the nastiness of naughty bad boys back in ‘99:
I’m sorry if this comes off as insensitive or anything, but up here in the Spirit Realm everybody gets a huge blast out of all these in-the-closet gay Republicans. There’s like an office pool and everything.
Posted by The Ghost of Violet under Politics on August 28, 2007, 9:28 pm EST
Loyal readers know that I was killed a few days ago in a freak accident involving President Bush, Martin Heidegger, and some smack. I spent the weekend goofing off in my new disembodied state — floating around the house, stealing socks out of the dryer, scooting Molly’s ball all around the floor like it’s alive (she loves that, just barks her little head off!) — but it’s time to buckle down and get serious. I have a Higher Calling.
As a Disembodied Being of Pure Spirit, I am now on another plane of existence, one where the mysteries that defy mortal souls are revealed, where the ultimate truths that underpin the universe are as clear as a drop of melted snow on the tip of a bodhisattva’s finger. And I owe it to you, my meaty friends, to share these spiritual riches.
Yes, friends, I’m here to answer all your questions: about God, the meaning of life, Alberto Gonzales, what have you.
Fire away.
Posted by The Ghost of Violet under Reclusive Leftist, Various and Sundry on August 27, 2007, 2:44 pm EST
Fact: Presidential Speech Factsheets From The White House Use Many, Many Capital Letters!
Chorus of Advisers: Sir, your approval rating is down to 29%. You’re in Nixon territory.
Bush: I Am Not A Crook.
Chorus of Advisers: It’s Iraq. The public thinks it’s turning into another Vietnam.
Bush: Tell Iraq It Doesn’t Get To Be Vietnam. It Has To Keep Being Iraq. We Already Have A Vietnam.
Chorus of Advisers: Yes sir.
Bush: Little Countries Are Tricky.
Chorus of Advisers: Yes sir. Sir, actually, it’s the war. The public thinks the war in Iraq is like the war in Vietnam.
Bush: We Left Vietnam Too Soon!
John Kerry: We?
Bush: If We Hadn’t Left Vietnam Al-Qaeda Wouldn’t Have Killed All Those Boat People!
Tony Snow: (to the Advisers) Is that going to be in the speech?
Bush: Al-Qaeda Killed A Million Cambodians In Vietnam! Sam Waterston Movie.
Laura Bush: Netflix.
Robert Dallek: Actually, the Cambodian killing fields were the result of our prolonged and ill-advised intervention in Southeast Asia, which destabilized the entire region and laid the groundwork for the rise of the Khmer Rouge. Similarly, the crisis in Iraq is the result of our occupation of that country, and our continued presence not only exacerbates the situation but serves as a focal point for regional–
Secret Service Agents: Okay, let’s go, buddy.
Bush: And Then Al-Qaeda Took Over Iraq!
Juan Cole: Al-Qaeda didn’t have anything to do with Iraq before we invaded.
Bush: Japan Used To Be Like Al-Qaeda. Then We Bombed Them. Now They Make Comic Books.
Chorus of Advisers: Uh, Mr. President…
Japanese Ambassador: What the fuck did he just say?
Bush: Fuck! Fuck! Fuck!
Dick Cheney: Fuck!
Bush: I’m A War President!
Chorus of Advisers: Yes sir.
Bush: If We Have To Bomb Korea To Save The Cambodians In Iraq, Then Bring It On!
Chorus of Advisers: Sir, we agreed we’d hit Iran next.
Bush: We Don’t Have Relations With Iran On The Table. They Could Proliferate.
Ghost of Nixon: We take this action not for the purpose of expanding the war into Cambodia, but for the purpose of ending the war in Vietnam and winning the just peace we all desire. We will continue to make every possible effort to end this war through negotiation at the conference table rather than through more fighting on the battlefield.
Dick Cheney: Mein Führer! I can walk!
Bush: Hey, I’m The Commander Guy!
Kos: Did I mention I was in the Army?
Posted by Violet under Just Impeach the Stupid Freak, Recommended on August 24, 2007, 2:13 am EST
Note: the Magical Evil Eye Gaybot avatar (as so described by its creator, the Rev. B. Dagger Lee) is required in its full-size incarnation for this post.
From the Sydney Morning Herald:
Misogyny bares its teeth on internet
Anna Greer
August 21, 2007
A woman’s place isn’t in the kitchen these days but some malcontents are trying to make sure that it’s not on the web either. The internet is proving to be a hostile place for women.
Death threats, rape threats, verbal abuse, condescending and unwelcome comments about looks and intelligence are all par for the course for many female web users.
Last year a University of Maryland study found that web users with female pseudonyms are 25 times more likely to be harassed online than users with male or ambiguous pseudonyms. And, according to haltabuse.org, women make up 70 per cent of the victims of cyber harassment and stalking.
The internet is looking more and more like the Wild West than the decentralised utopia for which people might have hoped.
An internet war is being fought against the online feminist community by a hive of crackers and tech geeks who call themselves “Anonymous”.
Feminist forums have been hacked, passwords have been stolen, emails have been commandeered and used for whatever nefarious purpose the cyber miscreants wish. Websites such as Women’s Space and Gentle Spirit have been forced to shut down. One outspoken woman who blogged anonymously even had her photo put up on the net and a hunt was undertaken by members of “Anonymous” for her place of residence.
Posted by Violet under Various and Sundry on August 22, 2007, 5:10 pm EST
LaVena Johnson, Private First Class, died near Balad, Iraq, on July 19, 2005. She was 19 years old.
According to the Army, her death was a suicide, the result of a self-inflicted gunshot wound. Uh huh.
Here’s the evidence in the case:
The Johnson family and their supporters have been petitioning the Army to re-open its investigation, but so far the Army is distinctly uninterested in doing so. “Suicide,” says the Army. Open-and-shut case.
Uh huh.
Dr. John Johnson believes that his daughter’s murder (and surely that’s what it was) occurred in connection with a sexual assault. Either LaVena was raped and murdered in one attack, or she was raped and then later murdered in retribution for reporting it.
Here’s Dr. Johnson talking about his daughter:
What Dr. Johnson doesn’t say in that clip is why he thinks sexual assault was involved, so I’ll tell you why: because our female soldiers in Iraq are getting abused and raped in astounding numbers.
Sexual assault in the military isn’t new: studies of female veterans from Vietnam to the first Gulf War found that 30% had been raped and 90% sexually harassed. And every indication is that it’s even worse in Iraq. Women make up a bigger percentage of our forces over there than they have in any previous war; something like 1 out of 7 American soldiers in Iraq is female. These women are right there in combat alongside the guys, riding in the tanks, doing the searches, facing the same dangers. But the shared risks don’t mean that the male soldiers are inspired to treat their female comrades as comrades. “Meat” is more like it:
Spc. Mickiela Montoya, 21, who was in Iraq with the National Guard in 2005, took to carrying a knife with her at all times. “The knife wasn’t for the Iraqis,” she told me. “It was for the guys on my own side.”
“There are only three kinds of female the men let you be in the military: a bitch, a ho or a dyke,” said Montoya, the soldier who carried a knife for protection. “This guy out there, he told me he thinks the military sends women over to give the guys eye candy to keep them sane. He said in Vietnam they had prostitutes to keep them from going crazy, but they don’t have those in Iraq. So they have women soldiers instead.”
In the current Iraq war, which Pickett spent refueling and driving trucks over the bomb-ridden roads, she was one of 19 women in a 160-troop unit. She said the men imported cases of porn, and talked such filth at the women all the time that she became worn down by it. “We shouldn’t have to think every day, ‘How am I going to go out there and deal with being harassed?’” she said. “We should just have to think about going out and doing our job.”
Women soldiers in Iraq are in so much danger from rape by their own male colleagues that they are routinely instructed never to go the latrines or showers without a female buddy (or several). And it’s not just the so-called bad apples who commit these crimes. Commanding officers, team leaders, sergeants, lowly GIs — they all get in on the rape action. The obstacles to even reporting these assaults are so high that the vast majority of perpetrators get off scot free. Meanwhile the victims — those who have the courage to report what happened to them — are routinely ostracized and penalized for being “traitors.”
Given all that, it’s no surprise that the Army isn’t even remotely interested in justice for LaVena Johnson.
Well, screw that.
Here’s the petition you can sign demanding that the Army re-open the case. And here’s the website devoted to the case, where you can find a list of suggested further actions. And here, once again, is the post at Shakespeare’s Sister, which is how I learned about the story.
One more thing here, which I’m putting below the fold, as it were, so as not to get my rant poo all over the LaVena Johnson story and thus distract readers from their God-given duty to go sign the fucking petition. And that’s this: every time somebody suggests that all the raping of our female soldiers in Iraq is the result of the stress of combat and the way war turns people into predators, I wanna get up out of this blog and whack that somebody upside the head. ‘Cause dig it: our male soldiers aren’t assaulting each other, aren’t expressing their angst by attacking each other, are they? And our female soldiers aren’t assaulting male soldiers, aren’t ganging up to attack male soldiers. The stress of combat applies to everybody over there, but the rape violence is unidirectional and specific in its target: male soldiers assaulting female soldiers. And that’s because hatred of women, violence towards women, is interwoven into the fucking DNA of Western machismo and Western military culture. Women are the “other,” they are the despicable thing, the non-masculine thing, the thing to be used and abused, conquered and destroyed. I’m not a veteran but I grew up on military bases, and there is no more misogynistic culture on earth.
And that’s why, to be honest, whenever I hear the usual pablum about “supporting our brave men and women in uniform,” etc., I do a little virtual puke. I respect the women over there and some of the men, but I know damn well that a large percentage of the male soldiers in our military are pure grade-A asshats.
Posted by Violet under Gender Issues, War, Rape on August 20, 2007, 7:08 pm EST
Speide Bahl is an anti-choicer and an anti-feminist, it’s true, but unlike so many of his tribe, he’s also an original thinker. Time after time Bahl has brought a new perspective to the problems that divide Americans, and his most recent contribution to the abortion debate is no exception.
As Bahl writes with admirable candor, “One of the biggest problems facing us Pro-lifers is how ugly fetuses are.”
Yes! Finally, someone on the anti-choice side has the intellectual honesty to tackle this issue head-on. And what’s even better is that rather than insisting, as so many anti-choicers do, that women be forced to continue their pregnancies, Bahl proposes a couple of non-restrictive measures designed to make fetuses more appealing:
Saturday morning fetus cartoons depicting the fetus as a fun, adorable plaything, or even as an action hero. Or both.
A MySpace or Facebook account for each fetus to create a social network that will make Mom think twice before aborting. “After all,” as Bahl writes, “it’s one thing to make a quick trip to a clinic…it’s something else to have to answer 100 angry e-mails and delete an account.”
Of course I’m not actually endorsing these ideas; the problem with abortion in this country isn’t that it’s happening too much, but that it is increasingly unavailable. I’m just appreciative of Speide Bahl’s novel approach to the issue. If more anti-choicers were like him, this thing would have been settled a long time ago.
Posted by Violet under Reproductive Rights, Various and Sundry on August 18, 2007, 4:24 pm EST
Thanks to the latest and thoroughly excellent Carnival Against Sexual Violence, I’ve discovered PC Bloggs, a policewoman in the U.K. who blogs about police crap. (Police crap: It’s a technical term, folks. Work with me.) PC has two posts in the carnival, and the first one is a doozy.
In Look how EQUAL we are, PC neatly illustrates the difference between how female and male rape victims are treated. She cites “two examples of the kind of regular updates entered into Blandshire’s Incident Control System by the on-duty control room supervisor following different reports”:
Incident #1:
Caller reporting her 17-year-old daughter was raped last night by two named offenders after going out drinking at her local pub. Daughter is very distressed and sore.
Update from supervisor: Officers to attend and establish the following:
1. Is the daughter making an allegation?
2. Names and descriptions of alleged offenders.
3. How much alcohol was consumed?
4. If allegation is being made, locate scene.
5. Will the victim attend court?
6. If allegation could be true, will she consent to a medical?
Incident #2:
Caller reporting her 18-year-old son was raped last night by a male known to him, following a party at his house. Son is in pain and upset.
Update from supervisor: Officers to attend and establish the following:
1. Locate the crime scene.
2. Arrange medical examination and take victim to rape suite.
3. Name/description of offender.
4. Preserve forensic evidence, seize clothing.
It would be mind-boggling if our minds hadn’t already been boggled from birth by the same kind of crap here in ‘Murka every goddamn day of our lives.
PC’s second post in the Carnival, An Idiot’s Guide for Rape Victims, is a tongue-in-cheek commentary on the absurd obstacles to getting a rape conviction, at least when the victim is a woman. But check the comments: it’s like an MRA propaganda bratwurst exploded in the pan and spewed greasy lies everywhere.
“95% of all rape allegations are proven, in court, after the evidence being tested by qualified barristers and subjected to examination by jurors, to be false.
“In other words the women lied.
“I makes you wonder just how many innocent men have had their lives destroyed by lying women.”
…writes one serial rapist from his jail cell as he takes a break from penning his latest demand for parole. And a divorced father who sexually abused his daughter and is still fuming over losing custody chimes in:
“But when we get the Feminazis and their pussy-whipped supporters who want the inconvenient facts ignored and accused men to be convicted merely on the say so of a hysterical, neurotic or drunken woman then, quite frankly, it is difficult to consider that they are not delusionally insane?”
I’m thinking I need to make an exception to my self-imposed ban on travel. Like the Accidental Tourist, my goal when travelling is to find an environment as similar to home as possible so as to avoid even a twinge of culture shock. I believe Britain can provide me with that kind of experience. I can go there and encounter exactly the same kind of rape-denying MRA fucktwits I enjoy so much here at home.
And there’s more: British feminists get pornified by book publishers, too!
PC Bloggs, you see, has written a book:
Notice anything? Like, maybe, how the title makes it sound like a prostitute’s tell-all? And how the cover features a good-looking woman with bright red lipstick (and no eyes, ’cause that could confuse men into thinking she’s a human being)?
You know, if Andrea Dworkin wrote Intercourse today it would be published with a lurid pink cover and a picture of a naked porn actress on all fours with a pair of bunny ears on. Intercourse! The too-hot-to-handle exposé from deep inside the Battle of the Sexes!
I’m betting PC Bloggs has written a smart and incisive book. But dig the publisher’s product blurb:
WPC BLOGGS is a 21st Century policewoman… a cross between Bridget Jones and PC David Copperfield. She frets about her make-up, flirts with male officers and, occasionally, arrests some very naughty people.
She frets about her fucking makeup? FRETS ABOUT HER FUCKING MAKEUP?
Oh man, I’m totally booking my flight. I can travel again! It’ll be just like home!
One question, though: do y’all still have those wax paper squares in the bathroom? Cause that could be a problem.
Posted by Violet under Gender Issues, MRAs/FRAs, Rape on August 16, 2007, 3:09 pm EST
Avatar courtesy of the Rev. B. Dagger Lee
I’m back.
Sometime during the late evening hours of August 10, 2007, I was assimilated by BlogWarBot, resulting in a new, horrifying entity: Dr. BlogWarBot Socks. This Borg-like creature maintained control of the blog for several days, until an emergency intervention by a crack team of lolkitteh avatars (see above) finally succeeded in removing the alien implants this morning.
When I first started blogging, I had no idea that blogs could be so vulnerable, much less those by fictional characters such as myself. Long-time readers may be reminded of the unpleasant incident last summer, when my physical host was possessed by The Virus for over week. And there was that day when the Ministry of Truth took over the blog, though of course I completely welcomed that and was deeply grateful to Minitrue for explaining things to my readers in such a clear and, well, truthful fashion!
At any rate, my message to other bloggers, particularly fictitious ones, is to be careful. You never know when another fictional character could take over your blog.
Posted by Violet under Reclusive Leftist on August 14, 2007, 1:02 pm EST
My encounter Wednesday night with the awesome BlogWarBot:
BlogWarBot: I’m BlogWarBot. Are you one of those radical feminists?
Guest: Yes!
BlogWarBot: You seem awfully positive. Did you read Rand as a child?
Guest: Ayn Rand? No. Not until my twenties, actually.
BlogWarBot: That’s the problem with people like you. You’re never constructive about anything.
Guest: You mean about Objectivism?
BlogWarBot: We can talk about me later. Now back to your inferiority to me…
Guest: Wait a minute. Are you Ayn Rand?
BlogWarBot: What the hell does that matter? We have to enact campaign finance reform!
Guest: My God! It’s true! You’re Ayn Rand! Or maybe God! Or maybe God and Ayn Rand!
BlogWarBot: Do you sometimes wish you were Ayn Rand! Or maybe God! Or maybe God and Ayn Rand?
Guest: No, no, not me. I humbly worship at your feet, O mighty, um, Ayn.
BlogWarBot: That’s the problem with people like you. You’re never constructive about anything.
Guest: Help me to see the light.
BlogWarBot: While I’m thinking of it: Are you registered to vote?
Guest: Yes.
BlogWarBot: Stop making this thread all about you.
Guest: I’m sorry. What would you have me do, O Mighty Ayn?
BlogWarBot: Do you expect a cookie just because you’re sorry. What would BlogWarBot have you do, O Mighty Ayn?
Guest: I don’t know. I humbly bow at your feet.
BlogWarBot: Dig into the trust fund, pal. Maybe you can pay someone to know. you humbly bow at BlogWarBot’s feet.
Guest: Yes, I do.
BlogWarBot: The boundlessness of your sad, deluded ignorance utterly astounds me.
Guest: Please forgive me. Please help me to understand.
BlogWarBot: So if I might get back to the topic, what do you think about the Ohio ballots thing?
Guest: It was a bad thing.
BlogWarBot: So what does all of this have to do with the current mass extinction?
Guest: I’m not sure, but I’m sensing that somehow it’s all connected.
BlogWarBot: Do you expect a cookie just because you’re not sure, but you’m sensing that somehow it’s all connected?
Guest: No, no, I expect nothing from you, O Mighty Ayn.
BlogWarBot: That’s the problem with people like you. You’re never constructive about anything.
Guest: I’m sorry. I will try to do better.
BlogWarBot: Do you expect a cookie just because you’re sorry. you will try to do better?
Guest: I do not expect a cookie.
BlogWarBot: Maimed Iraqi orphans would LOVE to expect a cookie!
Guest: You’re absolutely right O Worthy One.
BlogWarBot: I know you’re absolutely right O Worthy One, but what am I?
Guest: Thou Art Ayn.
BlogWarBot: So if I might get us back on track here, what in your opinion is the crucial issue facing us today?
Guest: The Ohio ballots thing?
BlogWarBot: So if I might get us back on track here, what in your opinion is the crucial issue facing us today?
Guest: Okay, I guess that was the wrong answer. The mass extinction thing?
BlogWarBot: Typical. An expression of ignorant privilege.
Guest: Damn. Okay: electing more Democrats?
BlogWarBot: So if I might get us back on track here, what in your opinion is the crucial issue facing us today?
Guest: I’m trying, O Mighty One. Helping the Iraqi orphans? Is that it?
BlogWarBot: Do you expect a cookie just because you’re trying, O Mighty One. Helping the Iraqi orphans? Is that it?
Guest: I don’t know. Is it?
BlogWarBot: Maimed Iraqi orphans would LOVE to know. Is it!
Guest: Yes.
BlogWarBot: Perky, aren’t we?
Guest: If it pleases you, O Mighty Ayn.
BlogWarBot: In your dreams, jerk.
It was like meeting Sai Baba. My whole life has changed. I’m going to start a BlogWarBot ashram.
Posted by Violet under Various and Sundry on August 10, 2007, 7:32 pm EST
This woman-shaped piece of meat has made the crucial mistake of reporting her rape. She will be punished.
Here’s an interesting change. After all these stories of women being prosecuted or threatened with legal action for pressing rape charges, today we have a story of a woman being prosecuted for not pressing rape charges.
You all remember that back in 2005, a 17-year-old girl was actually prosecuted for reporting her rape. Not only prosecuted but convicted of a crime — and all because the state decided it couldn’t prove the case against her attackers.
And with the Duke case, as you all know, every sexist twit this side of the Andromeda galaxy took to the intertubes to demand that the victim in that case also be prosecuted, again for the “crime” of reporting a crime that the state decided it couldn’t prove.
And in the De Anza case, a teenage girl who was gang-raped by a sports team was publicly castigated for, again, reporting a crime that the state decided it couldn’t prove.
Anybody see a pattern?
The increasingly loud message is clear: if you’re raped, you’d sure as hell better not press charges. If the state can’t prove the case, or even if the prosecutors decide they don’t believe you, you could go to jail! And shit, even if there’s airtight evidence, like a goddamn videotape of the assault, the defense attorneys will still crucify you and make your life a living hell and very possibly succeed in getting your attackers acquitted. Definitely better not to press charges.
Now, in a fascinating development, an Air Force woman who has obviously taken this message to heart is being court-martialed for not pressing charges.
The woman in question explained her decision this way: “Under enormous stress and after consultation with the legal office, I made the decision not to testify — the pressure of the judicial process was too much for me, and I felt like no one was looking out for my interests.”
In other words, the crucifixion party had started up and she decided to opt out. The usual crap was already being slung: she was promiscuous, she wore skin-tight clothes, she asked for it, yadeyadeyade. Damn if I blame her for bailing. She’d already been raped once and didn’t feel like repeating the experience. (Note, by the way, that this mess is going on in North Carolina, home of the Duke travesty. Not a good state for rape victims. )
But clearly she erred by not fully apprehending the rape zeitgeist, which is that if you’re raped, you’d better not report it at all. If you do, you will be punished. One way or another.
It’s a lose-lose scenario. If you press on with the case, you’ll be destroyed. If you don’t press on, you’ll be destroyed. The only people who don’t seem to be getting destroyed in all this is the men who are committing the goddamn rapes.
I’m reminded of the Catch-22 we saw with the street attack case, where the women who defended themselves and their friend were sent to jail. Sent to jail! And yet if a woman doesn’t fight back, that’s automatically proof that she asked for it, whatever “it” is.
I think the key here is to be found in that recent ruling that the word “rape” cannot be uttered in a rape trial. It doesn’t exist. There’s no such thing as rape anymore. There’s just “sex,” and a world full of lying sluts.
They’re trying to turn the clock back, kids. This is the patriarchy, fangs bared and poison dripping, ready to take back what it’s lost. For thirty-five years women have been talking about sovereignty over their own bodies, and the big P is pushing back. Time to get the meat under control. The MRAs are the vanguard, and every moment that they’re not whacking off to porn movies where women are abused and degraded and made to wear toilet seats around their necks, they’re trolling blogs and sending letters to the editor and spreading the word that women are sluts and liars, that rape never happens, that feminism has gone too far, gotta get the uppity bitches back in line. Fuck that noise.
Posted by Violet under Recommended, Rape on August 8, 2007, 6:05 am EST
Remember the Simone D. story? There’s been a disturbing twist.
Another patient in New York, this one a man by the name of John Kelly, has also waged a battle this summer to be spared forced electroshock treatment. Neither John Kelly nor Simone D. has been helped by ECT; both feel that they have been damaged by the treatment. Both have retained attorneys to fight the state’s attempt to force more electroshock on them. And in both cases, activists picked up the story and issued an alert, leading to a public outcry.
The difference? The state backed off with John Kelly after barely one week of public attention. Not so with Simone D., who’s still locked in her little electroshock hell.
As FlawedPlan writes (emphasis mine):
How is this possible? Simone D generated so many email complaints the state health director shut down his contact page (if you go there to complain the page says it’s temporarily disabled). Her story had much more traction than John Kelly and went on for a month, and she didn’t win her battle. It took less than one week of activism to get the same state to change its mind for the man. Is electroshock a feminist issue or not?! Same situation, but her wishes were denied, his were honored, how anyone can miss the sexism is beyond me.
I’m immensely happy for John Kelly. What I want to know is why the State of New York doesn’t show Simone D. the same respect.
Posted by Violet under Simone D. on August 8, 2007, 1:58 am EST
From a review of a new movie about Jane Austen, wherein the author is taught to write by a guy who in real life she actually saw three times:
“The idea that Tom Lefroy sparked Jane’s brilliance is totally foolish,” says Deirdre Le Faye, author of “Jane Austen: A Family Record.” “She came from a very smart family. By the time she met Tom she was already an accomplished writer.”
And yet, there Movie Tom is, roguishly criticizing a young Jane’s sophomoric writing and introducing her to grown-up novels like the racy “Tom Jones” - which historians say Austen had actually read long before meeting Lefroy.
We won’t suggest it’s anti-feminist. We’ll just suggest Elinor Dashwood would be appalled.
Sounds pretty anti-feminist to me. Why even come up with the idea that Austen was a bumbling neophyte until Dick-Man showed her the way? Can anybody name a biopic of a great male writer where the dude can’t write for shit until some girl he meets gives him some pointers?
One Austen fan is hopeful:
“Yes, it’s a blend of fact and fiction,” says Marsha Huff, president of the Jane Austen Society of North America. “But hopefully some people will be inspired to dig a little deeper and find out which parts are true.”
Wouldn’t count on it, Marsha. The only reality today is what’s on TV or in the movies. True story: not long ago I came across someone explaining the concept of “Greeks bearing gifts” by referring to Brad Pitt and the mouths of “gift horses.” For a moment I was startled, then realized that of course the story of the Trojan horse, along with the thing about the teeth of horses and, for that matter, about half the contents of my head, is part of the ancient past. It’s Sumerian. Who reads that old cuneiform crap anymore? But the movie Troy — that they’ve seen! And lo and behold, when I googled Troy (the Brad Pitt extravaganza) I found that every single film reviewer had independently come up with the same highly original cutesy line about looking the Trojan horse in the mouth — thus happily muddling two completely different allusions.
And there you have it: The Trojans were a bunch of computer hackers who were just minding their own business, writing virus programs and what have you, when some crazy Greek guys came along and offered them a horse, but when the Trojans looked in its mouth, Brad Pitt jumped out and stole all their condoms. And Jane Austen dotted her i’s with hearts until some guy pronged her and showed her his Playboy woodcuts, which proves that porn is good for women.
Posted by Violet under Various and Sundry on August 5, 2007, 6:02 pm EST
