about whether to consider myself a feminist. Then I read something like this, and I think to myself, no way, Jose. Someone else is gonna have to rehabilitate that word. I’m not getting within 100 yards of anyone so insanely prickly. How do they even function when they’re bristling with rage all the time? How do they even manage to get enough oxygen circulating through their wizened little hearts, when every breath they take is saturated with toxic levels of imaginary sexism? What a cold, hard world it is for people who . . . really get off on thinking it’s a cold hard world. My stars.
Up next: a special truss for guiding your tootsies in the general direction of your flip flops! How about some lotion to rescue your fingertips from the ravages of pressing the OnStar button in your SUV if you get lost on the way to Starbucks? Or maybe an itty bitty squeegee for clearing the fog off your upper lip when you courageously tackle an ice cream cone? Take heart, Americans! We will survive the summer.
Here’s the only completely sensible thing I’ve heard: this is a big deal about nothing. As one commenter pointed out, maybe the guy had diarrhea and didn’t feel like telling anyone. Maybe an old friend is on his death bed. Who the heck knows? We don’t. I’m fairly sure it wasn’t just a passive aggressive fabrication when “an archbishop told the crowd of cardinals and Italian dignitaries that an ‘urgent commitment that cannot be postponed’ would prevent Francis from attending.”
Here’s the thing: you outraged ones, do you seriously not realize that you’re getting played by the media? Some pissy cardinal got mad and told the media that it was a story. It’s not. Think I’m wrong? Do you really think that Benedict went to every last thing on his schedule for eight years? Really? He never skipped anything, ever? Or if he did skip something, were you there to see how he let people know he wouldn’t be there, and were you also there to see how Francis let people know he wouldn’t be there? And Benedict did it right, and Francis did it wrong, every time, because if Benedict did it wrong, then the media would have written a story about it? And Francis deliberately arranged for there to be an empty chair, but Benedict definitely and personally made sure that nobody was disappointed ever? You know this? Because of all the stories you’ve read, written by the totally impartial media, whom you have always trusted in the past to get all the details right about all things Catholic?
Please. You. Are. Getting. Played. If you don’t like him, fine. (I think you’re nuts, but what do I know.) But if you’re seriously calling him “tyrannical” for not showing up at a concert, or refusing to pray for him because, according to a transcript of some unscripted discussion, you think he’s not properly grateful for prayers, then you have a serious problem.
The same goes if you like the pope, and you have read a few stories and have concluded that he is Sending a Signal to the Musico-Ecclesial Complex about how, from now on, we will be scraping all the gold leaf off St. Peter’s and melting it down to buy clean needles for addicts and christening gowns for the children of prostitutes. People. Get a grip. He’s a very interesting pope. But this just plain isn’t a story.
Yeah, I feel kinda bad for the people who practiced their music and then didn’t get to play for the pope. That stuff happens sometimes. But I have no sympathy for people who are just horrified, just bowled over with revulsion and dismay, at his rejection of everything that has been sacred to us lo these many years. Because the people who are the most horrified are the same people who pooh-pooh their fellow Catholics who leave the Church over truly painful issues — things like divorce and remarriage, or the abuse scandal. You expect the entire world to just . . . . get over stuff, and yet you are climbing up your own assholes over an empty chair at a concert.
This is what I’ve been trying to tell you. You are not getting nearly enough chicken fat, beets, or fish jelly in your diet. Or tzimmes (which sounds delicious, but is basically a bunch of strangled root vegetables with hot prunes). Yes, gentiles, if you ate more food that looked like this:
you wouldn’t need this:
Found in my local grocery store circular. Oh, New Hampshire.
When I ask my kids an impossible question in a high-pressure situation — say, something like, “You thought it was okay to use a toilet plunger, a real, used toilet plunger, that is used for REAL POOP, for your Dalek costume? What were you thinking? Huh? What made you think that was okay?” — they don’t know what to say. They’re the ones who put themselves in that situation, and yet they know and I know that there is no acceptable answer to the question. But I’m all caught up in the passion of the moment, and I actually stand there, glaring at them, waiting for an answer. More than once, the answer I’ve gotten is ” . . . bep . . . ”
I don’t know what “bep” means. It’s some kind of croaking that comes straight from the soul of a person who’s face to face with the impossible, I guess.
“Bep” is more or less what Miss Utah said in a widely circulated, widely mocked video from the Miss USA Pageant. Someone named Nene Leakes asked her, “A recent report shows that in 40 percent of American families with children, women are the primary earners, yet they continue to earn less than men. What does this say about society?” Here’s Miss Utah’s response:
Dopey, right? Of course it is. But my response was pretty much the same as what NPR blogger Linda Holmes says here: that there’s no possible way anyone could give an intelligent or meaningful answer to that question, especially in that setting.
Not to put too fine a point on it, what kind of a simultaneously (1) dumb and (2) impossible to answer question is that? First of all, it’s three questions rolled into one — what does it say that in 40 percent of homes, women are the primary earners, or what does it say that women earn less than men, or what does it say that we allow these two facts to coexist?
Second of all, “What does this say about society?” Really? Not “What kinds of help do families need to make ends meet?” or something with at least some policy meat on the bones, but “What does this say about society?” Asked by NeNe Leakes? While you’re standing next to Giuliana Rancic, whose other job involves making people walk their fingernails down a tiny, hand-sized red carpet? What would have been a good answer to this question that could have been delivered in the time frame she had?
I think about this kind of stuff a lot. I’ve studied it. I’ve had about 20 years longer than Miss Utah USA to think about it. I have no idea what I would have said if someone had asked me such a moronic question on live television.
This isn’t the kind of question that actually tests what you know; it’s basically a test of your ability to generate cow patties on command.
What do they want from this poor woman? They starve her and paint her and wrap her up like a rhinestone mummy, dangle a cash prize in front of her, and then ask her about women’s place in society.
I don’t suppose she stumbled because she was suddenly struck by a paralyzing bolt of irony. I suppose she just got mixed up, and didn’t know what to say. But still.
I don’t have any particular opinion about beauty pageants. They used to seem exploitative and demeaning, but boy, you have to work pretty hard to stand out in that field these days. It almost feels wholesome and reassuring that all these women have to do is trot around in bathing suits and have very white teeth, and nobody expects them to live tweet an orgasm or something.
What does that say about society? Ohhhh, I don’t know. Bep.
