When I was a boy, the adult women were much more sensible than the corresponding women of today. Back then, the moms and aunts were in their late-20’s to mid-30’s and they struck me as the most practical adults in my world. They did all the work for family events so that’s probably why it seemed that way to me.
One of things I recall hearing as a kid was how a family weirdo “always had to get involved in stuff. “ As a kid this made no sense to me, but looking back on that time from the perspective of this time I get it. The weirdo in question was into causes. It was always something to do with poor people somewhere very far away. I think she was into some weird church too, but it was a long time ago.
I thought about that when this turned up in front of me the other day. I use one of my many fake Yahoo e-mail accounts for travel sites so I saw it when printing off travel documents. I clicked on the story because I foolishly thought that maybe someone was going to finally call bullshit on the college rape nonsense. I was wrong, of course.
The article is complete nonsense. The vibe that comes through suggests the author is struggling with mental illness. I looked her up and my suspicions were confirmed. As soon as the word “jezebel” comes up you know you’re either dealing with Bible study, Hebrew school or crazy people. Her twitter feed makes clear she is not one of the first two choices.
It used to be that women like Jennifer Gerson Uffalussy, the authoress of the Yahoo article, had to work hard to be “involved in stuff.” If she wanted to be a pest, she had to do it retail. That meant going to a public place and handing out mimeographed rants or making a nuisance of herself in some way. Airports were popular places for Moonies and Hare Krishna’s. I recall our family weirdo making a scene at the local grocery store once over something unknown to me.
It used to be that the mall in Washington was the weirdo bug light. Every weirdo with a cause showed up in DC and went to the mall to “make their voice heard.” Well, it seemed like every weirdo with a cause. If you walked from one end to the other, you would see just about every brand of nutter this country could muster. I used to know a guy, who had a scale for the degree of crazy on the Mall that day.
That’s no longer the case. Today, Jennifer Gerson Uffalussy can be a pest from her bedroom. She can sit around all day texting other lunatics about lunacies they share in common. They can coordinate their efforts and “make a difference.” Because they don’t have to worry about getting punched in the nose, they can be as vicious as they like. The technological revolution created the social justice warrior by breaking down the fences society had used to keep the nuts penned up.
I don’t have answer for this. My sense is technology has turned 50,000 years of evolution against itself. For as long as man has been man, we had ways to deal with our defects. The best way was to arrange things so that it was hard for any one person to make too much trouble. Technology has obliterated those old limitations. I know people with the IQ of a goldfish with a smartphone and social media accounts.
The upshot, if there is any, is that I will be dead before lunatics like Jennifer Gerson Uffalussy have reduced the whole thing to rubble.
Dindu – you said “thats a self cleaning oven.” Excellent.
Some folks just do that sort of thing. Preaching on street corners type of stuff. We are all liable to that exposure more than we used to be. Used to, you could just take a jog over to the next parallel street to avoid them. Now, one click and you done been mooned.
Oh, incidentally, there never has been a “greatest generation” and there never will be. That whole thing about “greatest generation” was invented by Tom Brokaw.
My Dad had four sisters, two of them twins not much older than myself. They delighted in serving as big sisters for me and reminded me of that right up until they passed away. Their unconditional love and loyalty was a road map for me in dealing with and understanding women. My successful marriage turns forty this year and I owe them a large measure for that. Women are the soul and conscience of society. When they lose their way we become adrift with no wind in our sails and a broken rudder. Such is the perilous state of our… Read more »
The really astonishing thing about the overeducated Ms JGU is the privileged background – and the privileged existence. Graduate of Tufts. Internships. Graduate schools. Close friends with a global reach (scan the bios of the wedding party….Shabbat included as part of the services, unsurprisingly) These are not your father’s nutjob professional protester who goes back to his one room SRO with a hotplate. These are the type of people who will run my life in my dotage (I’m about 2/3 thru my run given typical actuarial tables, FYI) and it scares the pants off me. Where did these people come… Read more »
This “rape culture” fantasy is a navel-gazing group hysteria. But apparently she is getting paid to write about it by several sites. Amazing! It feels like we’re standing way back in the crowd at the new Salem witch trials, and and this woman is one of the neurotic biddies standing up front, screeching in Cotton Mather’s ear to burn all the warlocks NOW ! Are we being engineered into this frenzy? Is she just somebody’s tool? She gets paid for pageviews, so if vicious ‘the-sky-is-falling’ swill sells, that’s what Yahoo wants her to write? You really have to be unmoored… Read more »
There have always been weirdos but their damage in the past was rather limited to where they could walk or take the bus. Today the weirdos can use technology to connect to their kind wherever. Methinks the population of weirdos has increased with tech advances, feeling bold behind their screens. Oy.
“Lack of bystander action”, a contributing cause of “rape culture”? Can it get any more foolish? I guess it truly is the end of days. Come the grid-down these nut-cakes will be the first to perish as they apparently have no useful skills or reason for being.
Well I’m old too. All my aunts, uncles, parents and grandparents went through a 11 year depression followed by a four year war. They were more serious people after experiencing real world problems that most of us today are protected from. I gotta feeling though that we are going to once again as a nation be tested and if we survive it we will have another “great generation” to steer us for 30 + years.