"With no notice, the man stepped forward, grabbed the headband off of Dexter's head and threw it to the bottom of our shopping cart."

"He then cuffed Dexter around the side of his head (not hard, but that is not the point) and said with a big laugh, 'You'll thank me later, little man!'"

At the same time as I stepped forward, Dexter grabbed his head where the man had smacked him and threw his other hand forward, stomping his foot and shouting, "NO!" I got between my son and this man and said very firmly, "If you touch my son again, I will cut your damn hands off."

The guy snarled at me, looked at Dexter with disgust and said, "Your son is a f*cking fa***t." He then started sauntering out, but not before he threw over his shoulder, "He'll get shot for it one day."

That spiraled out of control quickly!

The things that happen to HuffPo mombloggers when they happen to go to WalMart with their 2-year-old sons wearing mommy's pink lace flower headband.

Here's the blogger Katie Vyktoriah's description of the horrible homophobe who was, I take it, monitoring WalMart shoppers for insufficiently instilling gender norms in toddlers:

The man was overly large with a bushy beard and a camouflage shirt with the arms cut off. He had tattered shorts and lace-up work boots with no laces. I could smell the fug of cigarette smoke surrounding him, and there was a definite pong of beer on him.

Smoking and shorts. And overly large. When are men overly large? Don't they know when they are taking up too much space? A camouflage shirt with the arms cut off... talk about the right to "bare" arms. And the "pong of beer"... Pong?



Pong, meaning "A strong smell, usually unpleasant; a stink" is a Britishism. OED examples:

1925 E. Fraser & J. Gibbons Soldier & Sailor Words 226 Pong, a stink.
1936 F. Clune Roaming round Darling xxiv. 257 Avoid the smell of camel. They were complete with permanent, pyramid, and perfume, commonly called pong....
1991 D. Coupland Generation X i. i. 4 Smelling the cinnamon nighttime pong of snapdragons and efficient whiffs of swimming pool chlorine.

There's a blast from the past. Not the old Atari game (whoever forgot that?) but "Generation X." Remember when everyone was reading "Generation X: Tales for an Accelerated Culture"? I'd buy that right now and blog it for its poignant, pungent, pong-ent, obsolescences, but it's not available in Kindle? Not in Kindle! Oh! How the times pass! How the cutting edge dulls!

But, what say you? There's a lumbering, overly large man in shorts, a jack-booted thug with no shoelaces, and he's come to snatch the pink headband off your little boy. Threaten him with hand amputation, that might bridge the culture gap. Or, since he's a stinking smoker, a beer drinker, it might incite him to splutter out some warning about future bullying that will be so badly worded that in print it's good enough to make the HuffPo crowd gasp: Oh, noooooo! Homophobia rages... at WalMart. That's why I NEVER go there. That guy is always there, in his over-largeness, blocking the aisles, shuffling around, graceless... and laceless.

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Dickmanship, Part 2: Women in politics.

This blog has been heavy on the Weiner coverage. 3 of yesterday's 14 posts had substantial Weiner content. But I passed on the Olivia Nuzzi story in yesterday's Daily News: "Anthony Weiner intern reveals why she, fellows joined New York mayoral campaign." It just looked like another woman trying to horn in on the Weiner action. Who is she? Who does she think she is? Yeah, campaigns have interns. She asserts that Weiner interns are hot to get to Huma and through Huma to Hillary, but that's not surprising or disturbing. Ambitious people seek to network and climb. Why is this even in the newspaper?

To my eye, it looked like Nuzzi's selling point was her ability to look somewhat pretty posing with tilted head; long, flowy, bleached-blonde hair; lips pursed just short of duck face; and a tight, sleeveless navy blue dress. Navy blue, for comparison purposes to a  picture of Huma looking less pretty in a more frumpy navy blue dress. Navy blue, because Monica Lewinsky, the ultimate intern, historically wore, stained, and retained a navy blue dress. In case the subliminal hint isn't enough, the article has the name "Monica" inserted in an anecdote in which Weiner attempts to demonstrate his ability to remember the names of his 20 interns and incorrectly calls one Monica, then tries Monica a second time with the author. Not told whether any of the interns were really named Monica, we are left free to imagine that the lecherous Weiner intended to convey the message that he was looking for Lewinskyesque services from his interns.

I'd kicked the sext-crazed man around enough, and Nuzzi was such an unsubtle attention whore, so the best thing to blog is nothing. But that was yesterday. Why am I writing about Nuzzi today? Because there's another woman stepping out onto the stage of The Anthony Weiner Clown Show, and her I find amusing, and she's not an attention whore. She didn't realize she was on stage. She thought/claims she was giving an off-the-record interview. It's Weiner’s communications director Barbara Morgan:

“I’m dealing with like stupid fucking interns who make it on to the cover of the Daily News even though they signed NDAs and/or they proceeded to trash me... And by the way, I tried to fire her, but she begged to come back and I gave her a second chance.... Fucking slutbag. Nice fucking glamour shot on the cover of the Daily News. Man, see if you ever get a job in this town again,” said Morgan.

“It’s all bullshit,” she said. “I mean, it’s such bullshit. She could fucking — fucking twat.”...

“She sucked. She like wasn’t good at setting up events. She was clearly there because she wanted to be seen. Like it was, like, terrible and I had to like - she would like, she would just not show up for work... And then like she had the fucking balls to like trash me in the paper. And be like, ‘His communications director was last the press secretary of the Department of Education in New Jersey.'... You know what? Fuck you, you little cunt. I’m not joking, I am going to sue her.”

Key word: balls. Paging Tina Brown, who — in "End the Damn Dickmanship!" — longed for a testosterone test to screen excessively masculine individuals out of the political arena. Brown acted like she thought her dreamed-of test would only exclude dickish men like Weiner, but I suspected — in my first Weiner post of yesterday — that Brown herself would score high on the test. And now we've got more ladies waving their hands around. Give me the test!

There have long been soppy dreams that women in politics would mean kindness and cooperation. "My idea has always been that if we could bring the mothers of the various nations together, then there would be no more war." I wish I could find video of Vanessa Redgrave delivering that line in "Howards End." Her silliness is vividly apparent, in a story set at the beginning of the 20th century. It's absurd to hear the same idea recirculated, as ambitious women tear into men — like Nuzzi into Weiner — and into other women — like Morgan into Nuzzi. To quote Morgan: It’s all bullshit. I mean, it’s such bullshit.

I guess I'm supposed to denounce Morgan for calling Nuzzi a "slutbag," a "twat," and a "cunt." Those female-specific insults. But didn't Tina Brown call Weiner a "dick"? And, if so, shouldn't we give equality to women and get our share of gender-based insults? But Tina Brown didn't call Anthony Weiner a "dick." She referred to his "dickmanship." He's not a dick but a Person of Dickmanship. The equivalent would be to refer to a woman's twattishness. But that kind of distancing in the insults is for the official print version. How does Tina Brown speak off the record? Seriously, why do you think Barbara Morgan thought she could talk like that? Such a string of epithets can't come out of nowhere. There must be a culture.

And yet, if that were the culture, wouldn't there be thousands of ambitious interns like Nuzzi, whose climbing hit a ceiling, dishing out a million "Fuck you, you little cunt" quotes?

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"I've found the perfect woman. Gorgeous, sexy and like a bit of crazy."

Texted Anthony Weiner to Sydney Leathers. I imagine that about what Bill Clinton might have thought about Monica Lewinsky. Oh, these men who marry excellent wives and then find there's not enough sex and — more perversely — none of the old crazy.

That made me think about the old political phrase "a little bit nutty and a little bit slutty." It was an attack, not a description of the perfect woman. Here's David Brock explaining the phrase:

If [Clarence] Thomas was completely innocent, Anita Hill would have had to be insane to go on national television and tell a lie under oath. Grasping for an explanation of the inexplicable, doing everything I could to ruin Hill's credibility, I took a scattershot approach, dumping virtually every derogatory—and often contradictory—allegation I had collected on Hill from the Thomas camp into the mix.... She was, in my words, "a little bit nutty and a little bit slutty."...

Some conservative friends... did warn me quietly that the "little bit nutty and a little bit slutty" line, a reference to the classic nuts-and-sluts defense in sexual harassment cases, was in poor taste, or at least politically foolish, in that it handed my critics a club with which to beat me. The phrase certainly stuck, and it would be unearthed and brandished in my face in all future controversies over my work... I had fallen in with radicals of the Gingrich-Limbaugh stripe. After all, how far was the "nutty/slutty" line from Newt's rants about the "grotesque" and "sick" Democrats, or Limbaugh's slurs on blacks and women?

What works as an attack on a woman's fitness for public life is also a description of the perfect woman.

My Imaginary Reader gasps and splutters out: Different times, different parties, different purposes.

Have I made you uncomfortable enough to call me crazy?

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"Is this really the message we want to send to the rest of the world? That this is Wisconsin? A place where people can’t come and express themselves in their state capitol? That’s bologna."

So said state senator Bob Jauch, about the arrest of 22 of the "Solidarity Singers," for singing in the Wisconsin Capitol building without a permit. This singing has been a regular event since the big protests in 2011. The arrests followed a singalong that defied the police chief's message — posted on a sign — "I have determined that your group does not have the required permits. I am declaring this an unlawful event. Please either move outside or disperse immediately. If you do not, each participant is subject to arrest."

By the way, I think it's funny to write "That’s bologna." Normally, one sees the spelling "baloney," when the reference is to humbug/nonsense. My authority is the (unlinkable) Oxford English Dictionary, which gives the alternative "boloney."

1928   Sat. Evening Post 28 Nov. 21   Gee, that's a long shot. Boloney! That's not the ball—it's the divot.
1935   Discovery Dec. 378/2   He even suggests that much of modern psychiatry is ‘hooey’ and ‘baloney’.
1935   E. Weekley Something about Words 64   Boloney must surely be for Bologna sausage (whence also the English polony, dating from the 18th century), influenced perhaps by the contemptuous sense associated with the German wurst.

"Bologna" is the spelling for the sausage, which is notable for its large size. Here are the OED's historical examples:

1596   T. Nashe Haue with you to Saffron-Walden sig. R2,   As big as a Bolognian sawcedge.
1833   ‘M. Dods’ Cook & Housewife's Man. (ed. 5) iii. i. 267 (note) ,   Real Bologna sausages labour under the imputation of being made of asses' flesh.
1850   Knickerbocker XXXV. 23   Relishing ‘Bolognas’, will he plead that a jelly-eyed roaster is disgusting?
1916   C. Sandburg Chicago Poems 24   The dago shovelman finishes the dry bread and bologna.

First, I love the spelling "sawcedge." Second, dago shovelman?

The dago shovelman sits by the railroad track
Eating a noon meal of bread and bologna.
     A train whirls by, and men and women at tables
     Alive with red roses and yellow jonquils,
     Eat steaks running with brown gravy,
     Strawberries and cream, eclaires and coffee.
The dago shovelman finishes the dry bread and bologna,
Washes it down with a dipper from the water-boy,
And goes back to the second half of a ten-hour day's work
Keeping the road-bed so the roses and jonquils
Shake hardly at all in the cut glass vases
Standing slender on the tables in the dining cars.

I love the way Sandberg empathizes with the worker, all the while calling him a "dago."

"Dago" is in the OED, in case you're wondering. It's defined as "A name originally given in the south-western section of the United States to a man of Spanish parentage; now extended to include Spanish, Portuguese, and Italian people in general, or as a disparaging term for any foreigner." The word is a corruption of the proper name Diego. Some historical examples:

[1723   Bumstead in New-Eng. Historical & Geneal. Reg. (1861) XV. 199   The negro Dago hanged for fiering Mr Powell's house.]
1832   E. C. Wines Two Years in Navy (1833) I. vi. 145   These Dagos [of Minorca], as they are pleasantly called by our people, were always a great pest...
1904   T. Roosevelt Let. 2 Sept. in H. F. Pringle T. Roosevelt (1931) 294   It will show these Dagos that they will have to behave decently....
1909 H. G. Wells Tono-Bungay iii. iv. 406 'E's a foreigner... That's what E is—a Dago!

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“Spitzer, you cheated on your wife!”

“You betrayed your constituents. You abandoned your wife. You betrayed everybody!”

“This is about power. You just want power, man. If you want public service go volunteer somewhere!”

“Did you leave your black socks on?”

“This is what I look forward to — dealing with the public,” said Spitzer. “This is New York. You know when we go to a ballpark we heckle the pitcher who throws one bad pitch. We have a little bit of the heckler in each one of us. At a certain point it passes the line of decorum, but this is New York. This is politics. I’m game for it. I have skin as thick as a rhinoceros.”

A rhinoceros in black socks?

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9 things Freeman Hunt said...

... in the comments at "If men did this to women..." (##1-5) and at "A somewhat dismissive response" (##6-9):

1. "When I was growing up, the prevailing sex ed was that you, male or female, were wholly responsible for your own birth control and that you should never assume or believe that the other person was taking care of it. That's not the prevailing wisdom anymore?"

2. "Maybe all those traditionally religious people don't hate sex--maybe they have all those prohibitions on sex outside marriage for some other reason... It's like there was a plan for all of this or something."

3. "Odd. This thread is odd. Are some people furious because (1) Althouse suggests men don't go depositing sperm around women they don't love and would despise having children with or because (2) Althouse/the law being in favor of/upholding abortion rights?"

4. In sarcastic imitation of other commenters: "I don't wanna have babies with the skanks I like to hose down with my sperm. Those disposable tramps I bed should be drawn and quartered if they try to pull a fast one on a fine, upstanding guy like me. Just where do these no-good, dishonest women I make love to get off?"

5. About my supposedly "nasty" taunting of males who claim victimhood over their loss of control over the sperm they've released into the wild: "Heh. Oddly enough, I think that was intended to be encouraging. It's encouraging this idea that a person can be more than an animal who ruts around with whoever, even those he doesn't like or know, more than a careless, appetite feeding beast. I think it was an invitation to the recognition of the divine spark in man."

6. "I'd imagine that Althouse, Instapundit, and Dr. Helen are perfectly capable of arguing intensely about an issue and not taking it personally. Surely anyone who comments here, of all places, does the same on a regular basis!"

7. "How many of us have had it out, ripped each other apart rhetorically and gotten on perfectly well afterward? That's one of the best things about this place."

8. "As for my opinion on this small controversy: This is good. This victim man stuff was hitting a tipping point of absurdity, so the push back is well timed.  I write that as someone who adores men and was raised mostly by her father. And I'm proud to say that my dearly departed father would never have advocated such a base vision for manhood, this vision that sees man as a pathetic beast who throws his sperm about with abandon and needs protecting from the women he beds."

9. "@Freeman: It's actually a venerable academic tradition. I learned about it firsthand from an oldtimer and wrote about it here. I thought about bringing up the fact that it's a hallmark of healthy academia. Whenever you see it slide in academia, the result is less rigorous work and meagerness of mind."

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