So good old Dinesh D’Souza — the right-wing culture warrior who hit it big this year with the film 2016: Obama’s America — evidently has a new fiancee. This has caused a big kerfuffle amongst some of D’Souza’s pals on the Christian right, because it turns out that he’s not quite unmarried at the moment, having only just filed for divorce from his current wife of twenty years. Oh, and his new gal pal – 29-year-old Denise Odie Joseph II — is apparently also married.
Yesterday, D’Souza resigned his lucrative job as president of The King’s College, a small evangelical school in Manhattan (where he was reportedly paid a cool million bucks a year). His explanation for the whole adultery thing?
I had no idea that it is considered wrong in Christian circles to be engaged prior to being divorced, even though in a state of separation and in divorce proceedings.
Yeah, how could a family-values-loving, highly paid president of an evangelical Christian college possibly be expected to know that getting engaged to someone while you’re still married might not go over so well in evangelical circles?
As a result of all the controversy, D’Souza says he and his beloved are “suspending” their engagement.
But enough about Dinesh. Let’s talk about his (possible) future wife. Despite the whole adultery thing, Joseph seems to think of herself as a bit of a crusader for “family values” against the evil forces of liberalism and feminism.
Indeed, in one blog post earlier this year on Smart Girl Politics, she argued, amongst other things, that women’s suffrage was a terrible mistake. Well, “argued” might be stretching it: the post is a long, barely coherent, free-associational rant laced not only with internalized misogyny but with racism and homophobia to boot. Let’s take a look, shall we?
Beginning with a highly ironic paean to Rick Santorum as the only Republican in the primaries “to acknowledge … that the family unit is the cornerstone of American society,” Joseph then launched into a confusing and confused attack on what she called RINO – that is, Republican In Name Only – men who in her view haven’t been doing enough to keep their wives and daughters in check:
RINO Republicans are analogous to fathers who proudly proclaim their conservativeness at dinner parties or perhaps during early afternoon phone calls to El Rusbo’s show, but let their “independently-minded” wives … pump their teenagers full of birth control and encourage their daughters to live the lives for which their bra-burning foremothers fought so valiantly. …
RINO Dads are those guys who will sheepishly to proudly, fill out Republican ballots on Election Day while their wives openly mark their support for things like, “freedom of choice” and “freedom from poverty.” What most people don’t realize, and indeed what I didn’t realize until I blocked out the “madding crowd,” is that these women and their RINO men are like a vast national living history museum, pictographically illustrating exactly why the 19th Amendment was never the best idea ever and in fact, more closely resembles the greatest show on Earth. Think Ringling Bros. …
When our men cannot even remember the principled widespread women’s opposition to women’s suffrage because they never even learned about it in the first place, but can instantly recall which American president freed the slaves without also recalling the importance of his most seminal quote—“A house divided cannot stand,” our society is in trouble.
She quotes anti-suffragette Madeline Dahlgren (1871):
We believe that God has wisely and well adapted each sex to the proper performance of the duties of each. We believe our trusts to be as important and sacred as any that exist.
It is our fathers, brothers, husbands and sons who represent us at the ballot-box. Our fathers and husbands love us. Our sons are what we make them. We are content that they represent us in the corn-field, the battle-field and the ballot-box, and we them in the school-room, at the fireside, and at the cradle; believing our representation, even at the ballot-box, to be thus more full and impartial that it could possibly be were all women allowed to vote.
Evidently, while God doesn’t think women should vote, he has no problem with women writing barely coherent tirades about politics on a blog called Smart Girl Politics.
After a weird digression in which Joseph explains she will no longer shop at J Crew because one of the designers there paints her son’s fingernails pink, Joseph returns to her attack on the RINO dudes. She spices up her argument with some good old fashioned racism:
While RINO dads and men are often heard snickering about feminists around the water cooler, they do not realize that by virtue of being RINOs, they are complying with the same feminist/liberal system of social engineering they sneer at when manifested in more obvious forms like the black single-mother society. Believing themselves to be infinitely superior by virtue of being married and financially supporting their children, they do not realize that they are setting their own sons up to be the “playas” and their daughters up to be the “played.”
If they took a moment to actually listen to the music their children listened to, or a moment to look at the way their children dress, they would realize that they are going the way of black ghetto society. They would realize that by failing to do the job their foremothers cherished, their wives, who don’t even know enough to scoff at Madeline Dahlgren and who should be the proud, moral guardians of their homes, are leading their RINO (and real Republican civilization) to their inevitable demises.
This, for some reason, leads into an extended attack on the singer KeSha and the video for her song “Tik Tok,” after which she returns to the subject of RINO dads.
Apparently though her video father seems capable of amassing enough money to afford his family a comfortable lifestyle and manicured lawn, he is completely powerless against the will of his monstrous teenaged whore child. This video might as well be a Discovery Channel documentary on the behavior of that intriguing species known as the RINO Dad. Thank the Lord no man will ever expect Ke$ha to be the moral guardian of his home, seeing that her father’s generation seems to be the last marrying generation. And who can blame them? With Ke$has or watered-down versions to choose from, what man would want to voluntarily impregnate a woman? …
Perhaps Ke$ha’s father learned along the way that if he beat the hell out of Ke$ha like she deserves and then sent her to a convent, he would become a social pariah and end up in jail.
I guess “beating the hell” out of children is a family value?
After a bit more KeSha-inspired free association, Joseph returns to chronicling the coming apocalypse, and manages to produce this unholy muddle of a sentence:
From extreme vanity sizing to demands that magazine models (anorexic and unattractively thin models notwithstanding) look like the “real” (cuz I guess the rest of us don’t count) size 8 woman, who historically would measure in at a size 16 to 20, modern women of the West are on the apocalyptic “Wild Hunt” for the ideal and are leaving terrific characteristic destruction in its wake.
Then she follows up with this shorter but equally baffling sentence:
As women spearhead the demise of the ideal, the alternative to hypocrisy, they spearhead the demise of social order as we know it and love it.
Then — perhaps unwisely, in light of her current situation with the still-married Mr. D’Souza — she returns to the importance of traditional family values, once again with a side order of racism:
Henceforth, all of us will be staring down the barrel of life in a hip hop video or government-funded project where no one makes pretenses about “what they be.” Where no one has to succumb to sin because sinning is the status quo and where no one need ridiculously pretend to be faithful because well, we would have wisely outgrown such primitive notions about nuclear families as individual economies. We would have outgrown capitalism itself because government entitlement spending would have to grow ten-fold to accommodate and assist the burgeoning hoards of single-mom children born of the scarred sons of divorce who accidentally inseminated their female sex partners, or couples who themselves participated in that modern American rite of passage we call divorce.
Huh. You mean that “rite of passage” that you and Mr. D’Souza will soon both be intimately familiar with?
After an extended defense (I guess) of Sarah Palin, she winds up her attack on hypocritical “in name only” Republican dudes:
RINO Dads, the next time you see your daughter bounding (or sauntering) down the stairs in a pair of booty shorts with messages like “juicy” emblazoned on her backside, please stop her, turn her around, and force her to go upstairs and change. As you march her room-ward, tell her why she can’t dress like this, school her on the consequences of her behavior. Do it even if you were on your way to your man cave to watch x-rated content featuring teenaged-looking girls dancing around in booty shorts with messages like “juicy” emblazoned on their backsides. Do it for your daughter, yourself, society, the ideal, but most of all, do it because you now remember that hypocrisy has always been our last, best hope.
Apparently so.
Hat tip to Ed Brayton of Dispatches From the Culture Wars for unearthing this post from Ms. Joseph.
Oops, I left out a phrase:
but only a [non-feminist] [straight] [cis] [het] man CAN PERFORM THIS SEXUALITY PURELY.
And, clearly, parentheses hate me tonight.
Only excuse: two straight days grading grading grading grading….
@Cloudiah: *blush* Thank you!
I haz missed guyz, but work is……omg work is multiplying.
We’re having our regional accreditation soon, and the place is abuzz to try to do all the stuff we should have spent the last eight years doing.
And administrative heads are actually falling….or being demoted, heh.
ithiliana: With all that grading the road must be in great shape.
@Pecunium: *spits fizzy lime water all over monitor and keyboard*
Pecunium, I’m giving that post a standing ovation.
Actually I’d say he’s at the more sedate end of the onstage fanservice curve (dry humping rather than making out/groping/simulated oral), but the thing he does with the giant dancing cats? That’s hilarious.
I’m curious – what does this have to do with his sexuality and why you’re not obliged to consider it authentic?
@Everyone
Clearly, as it were, you have, in a sense; captured the very soul of Steele’s rhetorical style. Vile and disgusting, the lot of you.
You know, in point of fact, I quoted this, and I was going to read and respond here. But then I thought, life’s too short to spend arguing with a smug, arrogant blowhard on the internet. TL;DR.
In point of fact, excuse me, I’m sorry, to be sure, vile, disgusting, typical feminists; too many commas, incorrectly used semicolons. Disgusting. Parsing hairs. Shaming language. Jester’s fool. Blah blah blah. Hi Steele.
Says! Finally, a worthy opponent.
I’m curious – what does this have to do with his sexuality and why you’re not obliged to consider it authentic?
This was not in reference to that; I think we’ve all reached an impasse. It was a general response to Pecunium’s general animus, which I have quid pro quo let slide until now.
But to open the can of worms once again – it’s not about “authenticity” per se. It’s about using a potent force, and a natural force (that is, male sexuality) for nefarious purposes. I’ll rephrase – I do respect all male sexuality. However, I am under no obligation to respect all of its possible applications. I do not respect the use of a gun to murder, though I bear no ill will toward the metal instrument itself. Kapiche?
Were you, perchance, looking in the mirror when you wrote that? You should have been.
And Unpaid Help busts out another one from the Catalogue: Projection. In fact, that may be the second oldest one in the book, aside from, of course, the slur “misogynist”.
Sorry, Steele, but your argument still doesn’t work. The reason it doesn’t work is that you have no way of knowing whether or not the sexual expression (what you’re referring to as application) of some random guy on the internet reflects his deepest inner longings, his social conditioning, or any other outside force. There’s just no way to tell what’s intrinsic to the person and what’s the product of outside forces when you don’t know them on a personal level at all. Given that, most people err on the side of assuming that what people say about themselves (in this case what they’re saying their sexual preferences are) is true, and truly what they prefer. Assuming that they’re either lying or deluded is disrespecting both them and their sexuality.
Male sexuality doesn’t actually qualify as a force, d00d. You might want to get that checked.
Steele, that isnt’ what you said at all. You said (in condensed version) that you don’t respect the sexuality of men who are feminists. Squirm all you like, that’s what you said.
Oh, and calling feminism a ‘nefarious purpose’ says enough about you: that you do not want human rights, that you reject the equality of half the human species. And that, sonny Jim, makes you a (careful, SHAMING LANGUAGE WARNING) misogynist.
Unpaid Help, you know, you’ve exhausted the two most powerful tactics in the Catalogue, and it’s only been two days. Bringing out the “big guns”, I see. (Of course, since calling me a m***gynist merely makes me chortle, it’s a futile effort, but still – points for effort).
LOL projection! Steele old son, you could reincarnate as a film projector, you’re that good at it. It’s one of the few things (along with mutilating the English language) that you are good at.
And he busts out a quid pro quo, which should put you feminazis in your places.
Sorry, Steele, but your argument still doesn’t work. The reason it doesn’t work is that you have no way of knowing whether or not the sexual expression (what you’re referring to as application) of some random guy on the internet reflects his deepest inner longings, his social conditioning, or any other outside force. There’s just no way to tell what’s intrinsic to the person and what’s the product of outside forces when you don’t know them on a personal level at all. Given that, most people err on the side of assuming that what people say about themselves (in this case what they’re saying their sexual preferences are) is true, and truly what they prefer. Assuming that they’re either lying or deluded is disrespecting both them and their sexuality.
But this makes no sense! Sexuality used for purposes of advancing feminism is a logical fallacy; you can’t be “sexually attracted” to political purposes! Do you not understand??
Funny, you squealed about wanting David to blot out that SLANDER and LIBEL the other day. You might want to make up your mind about whether it’s amusing or terribly upsetting. Not that your reaction matters. Whether you understand the meaning of the word or not, the simple fact is you are a misogynist. Nobody who identifies with the MRM is anything but.
But you have no way of knowing that they’re using their sexuality to advance feminism. That’s the point. Your initial assumption is flawed, so every other argument that you try to build on top of it is also flawed.
First he burbles about sexuality harnessed to Nefarious Feminism, then he says it can’t be.
Rustbucket – Make. Up. Your. Stupid. Mind.
Excuse me. I’d like to stay and deconstruct the Boobzers’ positions, however I have a life to get back to; a girlfriend who just texted me and things to do, people to see. I don’t have all night, unlike you lickspittles.
He always runs away when he realizes that he’s gotten himself into an argument that he can’t win.
Sexuality used for purposes of advancing feminism is a logical fallacy; you can’t be “sexually attracted” to political purposes! Do you not understand??
… Is he trying to be sarcastic, or did he just say the argument he was trying to make is a logical fallacy?
As usual it’s hard to tell whether he just admitted to being a Poe or whether he’s the dumbest person on the internet.