Re: [bitch] Are Men Necessary?

In the text, if OK.
g

On Mar 4, 2006, at 9:47 PM, bitch@... wrote:

> Here's an example of the craptastic-ness that drove me batty. I didn't
> realize why until I had to articulate it:
>
> Arabs put their women in veils. We put ours in the stocks.
>
> (Now, of course, we leave that sentence there to stand alone  
> because it's
> such a fantabulously witty one-liner, it has to be left there for  
> us to
> admire. IOW, if you don't know if enough to admire it, bitches,  
> I'll give
> you the visual cues, see. Kneel. ON your knees. Before my fabulous  
> witty
> one-liner. For those of you so inclined, feel free to chant, "I'm not
> worthy. I'm not worthy.")
Uh, when I read this, were I not alone in the room I would want to  
look around
to see if there was someone behind me you were talking to.  This is  
the lead in to
the follow up expansion on what, by just a tad of straying, St.  
Sigmund refers to as
castration anxienty.  Now, here's the problem--y'all be hip on all  
kinds of post-Marxist
lingo that I have to search, but that's what I do. I have no right,  
from the perspective I
understand in the text below, to assume that Bitch readers are  
immediately conversant
with essential Freudian concepts.  But I suspect my attitude, like  
most of us liberal
elites, is if you can't take the speed, don't try to hang on. Or, as  
I say in my text books, I do not
write down. The podium slants toward me. Look it up.
>
> "Every culture has its own way of tamping down female power, be it  
> sexual,
> political or financial. Americans like women who wear the pants  
> beaten up
> and humiliated. Afterward, in a gratifying redemption ritual,  
> people like
> to see the battered women be rewarded.
>
> That's how Hilary Swank won two Oscars. That's how Hillary Clinton  
> won a
> Senate seat and a presidential frontrunner spot. And that's how Martha
> Stewart won her own reality TV show and became a half billion dollars
> richer while she was in prison."
>
> (The Hilary Swank line... my lord, it's totally dependent on one  
> having
> seen both films. But, one couldn't possibly be bothered to explain it
> because that would ruin it. Now, were I writing something like that, I
> would immediately stop and realize that I had to explain a reference
> because I'm writing for an audience I can assume may not know both  
> films.
Uh, I am not trying to excuse ms Dowd, but it strikes me she could  
ask if your name were
recognizable by the majority of reading people who take themselves in  
the least seriously.
And it strikes me that she might reply, as I have to my editors, I  
need the flow, the info, is non-
essential, if anyone does not take my word for it on the basis of the  
"authority," or ethos earned
by my life''s work, and the rest of the text, they are not among my  
audience.
>
> You get the impression, reading this book, that Maureen Dowd just  
> doesn't
> care who the audience is and what their level of cultural and  
> political
> knowledge is. It's one big insider's discussion but not necessarily  
> because
> she lives in a bubble -- after all, there are people called editors to
> correct this kind of self-absorbed writing. No, I get the sense that
> doesn't know how to deliver a one-liner and feel confident that her  
> reader
> will get it if it's delivered in anything but a very present, here- 
> and-now,
> stand-up comedy style.)

Yeah, I think that is all right, correct.  That's one of the problems  
with writing. You don't hear
the audience reaction. But I suspect she knows that.  I suspect also  
that she has learned that,
for instance the piece you pulled out above is the equivalent of the  
sound bite, and it is the
bite that is bruited about, is quoted by reviewers, is remembered,  
etc.  The one liner is eschewed
by academic writer, but the salsa of trade writing,
>
> [...]
>
> But Hillary and Martha -- the domestic diva with the new ankle  
> bracelet
> echoed Judy Garland on her Web site when she got out of jail that  
> "there is
> no place like home" -- are not self destructive.
>
> (Now, that sentence is just terribly fucked up. She's so caught up in
> delivering the line between the em dashes that she can't be  
> bothered to
> restructure the sentence or get rid of the line. I don't think Dowd  
> would
> ever do the latter and I feel sorry for her editor! I'm pretty sure  
> it must
> have been one rocking time trying to edit that woman's work!)
>
Wow. The em dashes separate material obtaining only for Stewart, to  
which I can see an
objection re clarity, but which is grammatically acceptable, if less  
than felicitous, it is "correct."

But this is all style, and while I live on the priciple that style  
and substance are inextricable,
I await a substantial criticism.

Cheers,
g

>
> k
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> Squeeze mailing list
> Squeeze@...
> http://mail.pulpculture.org/mailman/listinfo/squeeze_pulpculture.org

_______________________________________________
Squeeze mailing list
Squeeze@...
http://mail.pulpculture.org/mailman/listinfo/squeeze_pulpculture.org