You probably haven’t been wondering what good old A Voice for Men — yes, it’s still alive, if barely — has to say about Will Smith’s famous slap. But I’m going to tell you about it anyway, because I found it quite … educational?
The gist of Mark Dent’s overlong post on L’Affaire Smith is that the “Anchorman 2: The Legend Continues” actor wouldn’t have gotten away with the slap had he not been slapping another man in defense of his wife. And that’s undoubtedly true. We live in an age where such “chivalry” is still celebrated, at least by a chunk of the population. On our side of the political spectrum, we call outbursts like this examples of “toxic masculinity.”
Ah, but Dent’s essay offers more for anyone who wants to wade through all 2000 words of his pretentious prose. Since I can’t really expect anyone to do that voluntarily, let me provide you with a capsule version of Dent’s assessment of the true victims of the slap.
REAL VICTIM NUMBER ONE: Bald dudes.
When Chris Rock made a reference to Jada Pinkett Smith’s “G.I. Jane” haircut, he did so knowing that she suffered from hair loss due to alopecia, an issue pf particular sensitivity to black women, who are more likely to develop the disorder than their white counterparts.
But who is thinking of the suffering endured by dudes who go bald?
You see the thinking is women are not used to the idea of losing their hair and it is not a common occurrence for females particularly at a young age, whereas young men have endured this affliction since Adam was a boy.
Yet nobody explains why this makes it any easier for a teenage boy or man in his early twenties to watch his hair slowly recede or indeed quickly reveal his bald skull and always to the great amusement of his friends, work colleagues, sport teammates and the media
REAL VICTIM NUMBER TWO: TIny guys.
I’ve often argued that the argument about not hitting a woman being based upon size and strength differentials is a lie.
Tiny men can be beaten by huge men and nobody expresses the slightest concern about size and strength disparity. Such a disparity existed at the Oscars the other night.
REAL VICTIM NUMBER THREE: All men, at the hands of the “gutless” Chris Rock.
Rock let men down by deciding not to bring charges. This is not admirable. It is a gutless, weak response from a man who is scared he will be attacked a second time for calling out his abuse at the hands of a psychotic cuckold.
REAL VICTIM NUMBER FOUR: Donald Trump and his family, who have also been the butt of jokes from Hollywood types like Alec Baldwin and Bette Midler.
Think of the endless lectures from the scum that gather for these awards. Lectures about the poisonous, vile nature of a certain politician. Think of the hideous comments made about him, his wife and children. Nobody said they were offensive and disgusting. Not one person called them out as highly inappropriate. They laughed and cheered every vile word and threat of violence, be it spoken by demented De Niro, the killer Baldwin, Cher or Bette Midler.
TRUE VICTIM NUMBER FIVE: The soul of America.
Hollywood must die. It is an idea passed its used by date. Its narcissism, stark hypocrisy, sexual corruption and vile violent politics are a shit stain on the soul of America.
Well, that about covers it, I guess, though I would like to offer a little addendum on the behalf of the REAL REAL VICTIMS: All of those who’ve seen the following sentence from Dent’s post.
All of the strong, independent women were standing and applauding- dewy eyed and perhaps a little moist in another region as the batterer stood and accepted his Oscar … .
We really need to just ban the word “moist” altogether. That’s the real lesson I take from all this.
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Alec Baldwin accidentally — and perhaps negligently — killed Halyna Hutchins, a woman. Concern about a woman’s death is far, far away from your wheelhouse.
@ Kat, ambassador, feminist revolution (in exile): Yeah, but he didn’t do it, like, on purpose, and also he makes fun of Trump. Not one of their people. All’s fair in hate and smears, even if you have to sacrifice a little ideological consistency to do so. 🙄
@Snowberry
Oh, the problem with Baldwin is that he killed a woman accidentally, not deliberately? Okay, I see that I misread this MRA’s message.
But then what will we call that 90’s Canadian alt-rock band? I rather like them…
You can almost hear the whooshing sound as the point sails swiftly over their heads.
Another bunch of pointless, clueless blathering that seems to make the people least affected come off as the biggest victims of all time. Cry harder.
And he even managed to bring up the orange asshole and his toxic family into this giant nothingburger? Pathetic. (When is that treasonous [redacted] finally going to be charged with something substantial so we don’t have to fear for 2024?)
Oh dear. I’m a little dizzy from the tumultuous whirls of words. Also, none of them made sense.
Perhaps not much longer:
https://www.alternet.org/2022/03/judge-destroys-doubt-january-6th/
Take him away, boys!
Real victim huh?
Maybe I’m reading the wrong news sites, but I’m seeing a lot of ink spilled about people like Denzel Washington and Tyler Perry “comforting” Will Smith afterward, talk of people being there for Chris Rock, but outside of a couple articles of women empathizing about alopecia, precious little about anyone “comforting” Jada.
But yes, we should all feel for Donald Trump because those evil Democrats made fun of his small hands… errrr, wait, who made his hands a thing during his presidential campaign?
@Surplus to Requirements
Obummer committed war crimes, but he’s not in jail, and will probably never be. I’ll be waiting for your “take him away, boys!” which will come on a day not ending with a ‘y’
OK, cool. If you don’t want it to be seen as more of a tragedy for women, maybe you and your buddies can stop loudly equating women’s worth and fertility with having long hair, while insisting looks don’t matter for men. You don’t get to make up the rules and then cry foul when everyone else follows them.
Gosh, if only Hollywood could be more polite and not stoop to name calling.
By that metric, so did Cheeto Hitler, both Bushes, Clinton, and Reagan, along with Nixon, Johnson, and Kennedy, so what the fuck is your actual point?
Did any of them besides Agent Orange try to stage a coup against the US government? Did any of them besides Treason-Weasel try to shake down an ally for political gain? Did any of them besides Dumbshit the Wonder Putz give classified information to our country’s enemies while hosting them in the Oval Office?
Yeah. I didn’t think so.
I’d be waiting for your chant of “take him away, boys!” but unlike you, I’m not a gullible moron.
[Edited because I forgot to add Biden to the list above.]
“…he did so knowing that she suffered from hair loss due to alopecia, an issue of particular sensitivity to black women, who are more likely to develop the disorder than their white counterparts.”
What is your basis for saying Rock knew about her alopecia? I have found nothing to confirm this.
@jsrtheta
She did go public about her alopecia back in 2018.
@Gaebolga
It’s just very cute when libs think their fantasies about Trump being taken away in a suit that matches his skin tone will come true, when their are people that have committed crimes worse than your little Russia narrative. If they didn’t go to jail, Trump won’t, and if he did, I bet he’d get a pardon, if not from Brandon, than from whoever is next in line. Take off your SNL-colored glasses and smell the covfefe.
@Squack
Words are cheap, yours moreso than most:
List ‘em, fuckstain.
@Squack
You aren’t very smart huh
@Squack
This coming from the QAnon Trump Cultist who is so divorced from reality and devoid of morals and ethics that I don’t you can find your way to the refrigerator of your own house.
Also; isn’t Trump the one who praises literal dictators and fascists? Like that of Putin who is having Russia invade Ukraine unprovoked. I suspect however, your totes okay with that. Because right wingers love fascism and authoritarians and repeatedly trying to assert such things as “okay and moral actually” whole engaging in balance fallacies, false equivalence and DARVO.
In other news. I’m getting a new tattoo tomorrow
@Quack:
So did every President not named “Jimmy Carter”. None before Trump attempted an autogolpe to become a dictator, though. Two did attempt secessions: George Washington succeeded; Jefferson Davis failed.
Than the “little Russia narrative”: sure, chief among them one Donald J. Trump. Let’s see. First, the “little Russia narrative” was treason, one of the top crimes on the books. But here is a probably non-exhaustive list of Trump crimes:
Obstruction of justice
Contempt of court
Contempt of Congress
Defamation of numerous victims, including Dominion voting systems and miscellaneous former POWs and political foes
Hate speech, incitement, etc (ongoing!), from the 2016 campaign (“rough up my hecklers and I’ll pay your legal bills” ring a bell?) through to the Ellipse on January 6, 2021 and continuing to the present with his (failed — it was a Trump business venture, after all) attempt to spin up a white supremacist social media site.
Fraud, insider trading, Hatch act violations, campaign finance fuckery, securities fraud, scams, cons, fraud …
Taking kickbacks (mainly via expensive-stays-at-Trump-properties-for-influence schemes)
Breach of contract (most commonly, stiffing contractors after they built one of his various gold-plated monstrosities; also, adultery, at least 4 times against 3 wives)
Domestic abuse
Rape (26 counts, just counting the women who have come forward; likely far more, in the upper double digits even; including author E. Jean Carroll and his own wife-at-the-time Ivana Trump; the latter cements the case that he’s a domestic abuser, as well)
Treason (2016 Russian-sanctions-lifting-for-oppo-research-on-Hillary-Clinton)
Treason (leaking assorted secrets; cavalier with national security matters on multiple occasions)
Treason (2019 blackmailing Ukraine with no-promised-military-aid-unless-you-do-oppo-research-on-Biden; impeached for this one)
Treason (2020-2021 coup attempt; impeached again)
Sedition (2020-2021 coup attempt)
Severe human rights violations, up to and including acts that technically qualify as genocidal (e.g. the family separation thing)
Violations of the Presidential Records Act
And, of course, war crimes (notably the Qassem Soleimani assassination)
That easily exceeds every past president, including Nixon and including the Confederate one, combined. It exceeds any individual past human except for the most notorious serial killers and mass-murdering dictators like Hitler and Stalin. And it only exceeds even those last because he’s an incompetent buffoon whose coup attempt failed. We’d be in the midst of Holocaust II by now otherwise, I’ll warrant.
His whole family seems to be corrupt; Ivanka and Eric were involved in various scams and Hatch act violations, and Don Jr. was up to his neck in the treasonous 2016 sanctions-for-Clinton-emails deal that, in all likelihood, was instrumental in putting his daddy in the White House.
Relevant, though I doubt the new guy will read it as it’s very long and might interfere with fapping time: https://www.mcsweeneys.net/articles/the-complete-listing-atrocities-1-1-056
@ surplus and nequam
Ironically Trump’s never ending litany of scandal seems to be what staved off any action up to date. It’s just so overwhelming. There’s no time to focus on an offence before the next one bumps it off the news cycle.
But eventually the music stops. Unless of course Trump can get back in charge of the music in 24. Let’s hope not.
But anyway, for me, the Trump playbook always brings this to mind.
The Russia allegations were total nothingburgers, just the liberal news and your celebrity politicians huffing each others farts. You all got hot and horny for Mueller, naively thinking that anything he was going to do would get you that fairy-tale ending where the natural order is restored. You didn’t prove anything.
Secondly, Trump won. This is an uncontestable fact, he won and was unjustly prevented from assuming office due to USPS fuckery, who have a conflict of interest due to liberals obsession with such socialistic enterprises. Moreover, this was not a coup, this was an attempt by his enemies to smear him. Literally all that happened was some leftists occupied a building in order to further dehumanize conservatives in the eyes of the media.
@Squack
…so you can’t list anyone who committed crimes worse than the ones I listed.
What a shocking development that no one could have seen coming.
Well, I’m not feeling in the mood to engage with a troll, so… OK, Elaine, I’ll bite: What kind of tattoo? Got a story behind it?