Thursday, March 18, 2010
DUH: I generally steer clear of these tabloid things, but I do have a hypothetical question: What do you expect when you marry someone who was just married to a porn star? Or, if you're on the fence about that one: What do you expect when you marry someone who was just married to a person who had a three-way sex tape with Vince Neil?
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Maybe she expected that he wanted to be married to a different kind of woman.
ReplyDeleteI'm quite an infrequent poster here, though an almost daily reader, and just really felt compelled to comment. This post had a feel (perhaps only mine) that you would not be troubled by replacing the word "expect" with "deserve" throughout.
ReplyDeleteIf only she had married that great golfer with a perfect record, destined for glory and unblemished by scandal ---surely then, nothing bad would have come of it. Right?
Interesting idea in the abstract, but I'd love to be a fly on the wall for the part of the first-date conversation:
ReplyDelete-I should tell you, I was married.
-I can handle that. I was engaged.
-Actually, I'm kind of still married. In the process of divorcing.
-Okay, as long as it's over.
-My wife had a weird job.
-Live and let live, I always say.
-She's a porn star.
-Uhhhhh
-She has a sex tape
-Isn't that the definition of porn star?
-Kind of a busman's-holiday sex tape.
-Doing it for love still must be better than doing it for money, right?
-I'm not sure she loved either of them
-Either?
-There were two others on the tape
-Okay
-One of them was Vince Neil
-Ewww
-Wanna get married?
-How's 12 months from now?
Isaac, to be honest, I've found your last two posts a little puzzlingly misogynistic. Maybe I'm just missing something or misreading you, but it's left a bad taste in my mouth that has lingered for quite a while.
ReplyDeleteI know it's incredibly unlikely, but I'm hoping it's not true. I like Sandra Bullock and I feel bad for her. There she was, collecting her awards and thanking him and he's sitting there all teary acting like the proud husband. That's pretty rotten.
ReplyDeleteIf it is true - and with the statement he released earlier today it seems likely at least some of it is - I just think eew. What is the deal with these guys who are married to beautiful women but then cheat on them with skanks?! And since I'm already being all judgey, I may as well keep going and just say I don't have a very high opinion of these women who go after another woman's husband. Obviously he's the married one and thus most of the responsibility for whatever happened rests with him, but still... not cool.
well, when you put it that way, of course she deserved it <not>. </not>
ReplyDeleteAnd, in the interest of putting the blame where it belongs (ie not on Sandra Bullock), what do you expect when you as a famous person send text messages or emails to your paramours? Never in writing, people. Never in writing.
ReplyDeleteI am super hoping that by sorta true, it is something not soooo bad (and yes I realize that seems silly and naive, but I like her so I want her not to be jerked around).
ReplyDeleteAnd I also feel so bad that all of this has to be so HUGE and so public and so the Today show reporting that she has moved out of their house like it was something they should pretend was news and any of anyone's business.
And it makes me incredibly relieved that I am not famous or publicly interesting so none of my relationships have to stand up to this sort of scrutiny becuase they sure wouldn't. Even the one with my fiancee who I love very dearly but you know I don't float along dreamily with through infinity because I happen to be flawed and human and so is he.
I don't have to agree (with Bullock, my point is only that people should try to temper their emotions with some rational analysis when predicting the logical consequences of their choices) but I can see thinking it with this post.
ReplyDeleteWith the last post, you are 100% missing the point, and the accusation of misogyny -- it's wrong. It's more obscure than most things I do on this blog, and I certainly can be blamed for writing something that's too obscure, too impenetrable, too schticky, too stupid, too weird, or too unfunny. "Misogynistic" is an unfair criticism, so I'll ruin the joke by explaining it: it is, as the title says, an account of a fight between the narrator and his girlfriend. What is the fight about? The girlfriend thinks the narrator is unreliable ("I can't count on you"); the narrator thinks he's omnicient ("Christ, I know"). Get it? An unreliable omnicient narrator -- meta joke. The narrator also is an asshole, which should be obvious. So you have an unreliable omniscient third-person narrator whose girlfriend has just broken up with him, and the punch line is that he lashes out -- unreliably, get it? -- in the last line. See, the exact point of that dumb joke was that by understanding the narrator's bias, you can see through the BS and reverse the sympathies. Whether or not I got the point across, the intent was to make the narrator (not the girlfriend) the sad, pathetic one.
Eh, I don't know why I'm getting worked up about this.
I had to have the unreliable narrator thing explained in excruciating detail (first reaction: "Wait, are you breaking up with me?") before I got it (still kind of don't get it), so I'm in the "too obscure and impenetrable" camp on that one.
ReplyDeleteRe Sandra Bullock, what?? Is the counter-argument that it's completely shocking news? And even if that's your argument, how is isaac's point misogynistic? That's a pretty loaded word, and for the record, isaac is about the least misogynistic person you could ever meet. As a woman who took an awful lot of feminist theory classes in the mid-90s, ie the golden age of "That's misogynistic!" I call shenanigans on that.
Totally agree -- I love her and hate the exploitation of personal heartbreak. And she's not someone who's out there courting paparazzi attention.
ReplyDeleteSince we're <>ing to make ourselves absolutely clear, . My vocabulary includes both of those words and distinguishes between them.
ReplyDeleteNow I get it. The whole narrator thing was clearly way over my head. But now...it's funny.
ReplyDeleteFor the record, I'm not Usually Somebody Else.
Since we're <>ing to make ourselves absolutely clear, . My vocabulary includes both "deserve" and "expect" and makes a clear distinction between the two.
ReplyDeleteDon't know why blogger keeps eating my comment. What I said was that I didn't say "deserved" -- you said I said it. My vocabulary includes both "deserve" and "expect" and makes a very clear distinction between the two.
ReplyDeleteThis thread was kind of flamewarry. I just made that word up right now and I'm proud of it. I hope I'm not misogynistic, but after reading everything above I'm not so sure. I liked the narrator thingy even if I now realize that I didn't get it (at all, which makes me bitter and resentful towards Isaac for making me feel stupid, but doesn't make me think he hates women especially since I think he's married to one and all, but maybe he hates us stupid people and wants us to feel bad when we don't get his high falutin jokes, who does he think he is Dennis Miller?)
ReplyDeleteIs the narrator that cool black guy with the sounds like God from Shawshank redemption and penguins are dying in the cold and Million Dollar (not Irish but pretending to be Irish) Boxer girl? If so, is the post racist too I wonder?
There used to be a comedian who would begin his routine, So Goethe says to Nietzsche.... and then upon seeing the blank looks... So there are two gay midgets in the shower ... [pause] I just wanted to adjust for my audience.
I'm puzzled and dismayed by this thread, but I sure love this blog. Keep up the good work everybody, Isaac, Meghan and Usually Somebody Else. I too am not usually somebody else, unless you count when I dress in drag for my nightclub act and do torch songs.
And, for the record, I don't want you to stop coming here or stop commenting. I love commenters. I probably wouldn't write if people didn't comment, and probably one reason I post less nowadays (besides being busy) is that people don't comment as much. I love it when people disagree with me, because I like to argue, and in general I don't mind if people here think I'm an asshole (I say "in general," because I do mind if people think I'm a particular kind of asshole). I just ask that when you comment, you don't use as the jumping-off point something that I didn't say but that you feel that I would be untroubled by saying.
ReplyDeleteJoining everyone in the Did Not Get The Narrator Thingee, and this is from someone whose favorite narrative device is the unreliable narrator. There are a plethora of things on TT that are about pop culture things that I am not versed in, and so in not understanding things I generally jump to the conclusion that I haven't seen that movie / watched that show / read that book / played that videogame / subscribed to that magazine / seen that twitterfeed / whatever. I read it, I couldn't place it, I saw no jumping off point to get more information to figure it out, I walked on by until USE's comment.
ReplyDeleteOh, and not to go with "but think of the CHILDREN!" but the worst part for me is that Sandra Bullock was (or professed in the media to be) very involved with Jesse's 3 kids, and she's moved out of the house leaving them there with him. She's a grown woman with a lot of options, he's a cretin, and they're just screwed.
ReplyDeleteBut more importantly, did you like my post? Do you like me? Do I look fat in these pants? How can you validate me?
ReplyDeleteNow that is more like it.
ReplyDeleteWhy is everyone pissed off at Jesse James? Hasn't he been dead since the 1870s?
ReplyDeleteIn admitted disreguard for the general dislike of threadjacking here, I passed my oral exams today and am pretty damn excited about it. Now, in an attempt to relate back to this post, if you take "oral exams" in a completely inappropriate way, then I'm sorta on topic, but you'll also have an incorrect impression of what I do for a living.
ReplyDeleteI'll set aside my usual loathing of women to congratulate you on success at whatever mysterious challenge you've undertaken.
ReplyDeleteThanks Isaac.
ReplyDeleteCongratulations Emily. No Joke to follow.
ReplyDeleteThe point I was trying to make there was that your post didn't seem like it was really asking what she "expected".
ReplyDeleteAs Meghan noted above, I think she was expecting something else. My takeaway of your post and initial response was that you were putting the negative judgment on the woman for getting involved rather than on the man for subsequently cheating. Some folks on paper look to be lousy spouses but end up being gems, thus I don't see marrying someone who may look bad on paper to necessarily lead to the prediction of that person having an affair or somehow otherwise being a louse.
That's what I was responding to in what I'll agree was a rather inartful way. And now, I've have spent entirely too much time on the relationship expectations of this hypothetical couple.
Congrats!!!
ReplyDeleteCongrats, Emily.
ReplyDeleteBased on my knowledge of Isaac, not a misogynist. I tend to disagree with the premise of the post---while I tend to think, if you cheat with someone who is already involved, you should not be surprised if that someone turns around and cheats on you, I don't necessarily think that the fact that a person was involved with a porn star necessarily makes that person prone to cheating. But that's just a disagreement.
Fanwarry? Fanwarlike? Fanwarrish? There really does need to be a word, right?
I think James is a shit. Maybe he'd professed to some bad mistakes, and she wanted to believe him. Or maybe Bullock likes guys with a bad boy image or fixer-uppers. Who knows?
ReplyDeleteI've been cheated on by someone I loved. We had been together for a few years when it happened, and I can say that the pain took my breath away and left a miserable, dull ache. But worse than that was feeling like an absolute fool for not seeing it, for trusting him. I was livid that he didn't have the cajones or respect for me to just say he wanted out. At least until I figured out that he didn't want out. He just selfishly thought he could have it both ways.
I can only imagine how that must be magnified by a thousand for Bullock after she professed her love and lust for James in front of millions of people.
That's fabulous!
ReplyDelete<p>I didn't mean to set off a firestorm. I am a regular reader and occasional commenter, and I only spoke up because the posts significantly troubled me. My intent was not to make trouble. I let the first post pass, but with the second one coming so quickly after it, I felt I had to say something because I felt that the posts seemed strangely hostile to women.<span> </span>I realize that the cumulative impression may have been magnified by the two posts coming so closely together.<span> </span>I apologize if I hurt Isaac's feelings, as that was not my intent, but I stand by my impression of posts as read without context. I don't know Isaac personally and so can only comment on what is posted here. I would like to point out, though, that I said the last two posts struck me as misogynistic, not that Isaac was a misogynist. If I believed that Isaac was always like that, I would not have said the posts were puzzling to me. A small point, perhaps, but one that I would like remembered. It was my intent to give some feedback about how the posts could be taken / show I was open to futher clarification, not to make a personal attack. Having had the joke explained, I can appreciate what Isaac was going for, but I don't think you should underestimate how offensively it could come off to someone who has no other information beyond what is posted on the site.
ReplyDelete</p>
<span>I didn't mean to set off a firestorm. I am a regular reader and occasional commenter, and I only spoke up because the posts significantly troubled me. My intent was not to make trouble. I let the first post pass, but with the second one coming so quickly after it, I felt I had to say something because I felt that the posts seemed strangely hostile to women.<span> </span>I realize that the cumulative impression may have been magnified by the two posts coming so closely together.<span> </span>I apologize if I hurt Isaac's feelings, as that was not my intent, but I stand by my impression of posts as read without context. I don't know Isaac personally and so can only comment on what is posted here. I would like to point out, though, that I said the last two posts struck me as misogynistic, not that Isaac was a misogynist. If I believed that Isaac was always like that, I would not have said the posts were puzzling to me. A small point, perhaps, but one that I would like remembered. It was my intent to give some feedback about how the posts could be taken / show I was open to further clarification, not to make a personal attack. Having had the joke explained, I can appreciate what Isaac was going for, but I don't think you should underestimate how offensively it could come off to someone who has no other information beyond what is posted on the site.
ReplyDelete</span>
I guess I can't stop you from thinking that I meant something other than what I said. I made an observation, not a judgment, no matter how many times you tell me what it seems to you I was really saying.
ReplyDeleteJust curious, by the way, what you'd say if your friend, sister, or daughter came to you and said "I'm thinking of getting married tomorrow to the most wonderful man in the world, Jesse James/Tiger Woods/Charlie Sheen." Wouldn't you say, "have you given some thought to how this might play out?" That wouldn't mean that you think that your friend/sister/daughter deserves whatever happens to her if she decides to go through with it. I assume the opposite -- you would be certain that she didn't deserve someone horrible like James/Woods/Sheen. In fact, it is precisely because you want your friend/sister/daughter to get the good things she deserves that you probably would wrack your brain trying to figure out how to get her to make the most reasonable evaluation of what she should expect.
My point -- and I was trying to be funny about it, mostly because Vince Neil is disgusting (and I owned the first two Motley Crue albums) -- was that in 2005, when Bullock married James, it didn't look like such a great idea. If I pointed that out in 2005, nobody would have accused me of judging her or being misogynistic. Why is it misogynistic or judgmental that I pointed it out in 2010?
It might have helped, at least from my point of you, if you'd explained *why* you'd found them misogynist. Telling us how you feel isn't feedback.
ReplyDeleteNow you are putting words in my mouth--misogyny was never uttered in my posts nor did I even think that.
ReplyDeleteIn each of my comments, I was talking about my perception of what you had said. Probably says more about me, than you. I guess when I've had people say to me "duh, what did you expect", there's always been a judgmental aspect to the question.
Maybe it's the "duh" which led to my visceral response, I always read that in posts/comments (not necessarily here) and it is generally used to be dismissive of something said previously as being absolutely idiotic.
Anyway, I'm glad you weren't being judgmental....really glad you are not a misogynist:)!
You know, I have kind of been wondering about that - why don't people comment as much? Is it the new commenting format? Is it that everyone is too busy now reading facebook and twitter? Is it something else? I know I don't comment as much as I used to ... I think because I used to think I had something to contribute, but now I feel like I have already made the same points repeatedly. But I miss the frequent comments of the frequent commenters and the more frequent posts of the posters who posted for the more frequent commenting. Maybe spring is a good time to do one of those check in posts you guys do ... where is everybody these days?
ReplyDeleteI'm with Bill, I'm not sure how any of this is misogyny. The post is questioning someone's judgment, and just because that person is a woman does not mean the person doing the questioning hates women.
ReplyDeleteI don't want to start anything up that seems to have calmed down, but I do want to respond to the linguistics of the original post and why they hit me as sounding misogynistic.
ReplyDeleteJesse James used to be married to a porn star. He wasn't the porn star. He wasn't in a three way with Vince Neil (ick). If he had been those things, she probably would not trust his sexual faithfulness to the same extent.
The way this post reads to me is equivalent to, "well, you were married to a lawyer, so I expect you will lie to me. It's a given that lawyers lie and all those involved with them are not honest either." Throw in the madonna-whore overtones of the whole situation and the echoes of the cow buying/milk drinking sexism of the fifties ringing in our ears, and it should seem pretty obvious that this post would strike a bunch of women as being negative towards women. Keeping in mind that we can't hear your tone of voice and don't have other experiences to temper our perception.
Well said Vanessa. I completely disagree with your point of view and everyone here who has espoused it, but at least now I understand it.
ReplyDeleteI would not marry a woman who used to be married to a male porn star. I would expect that there was a fatal and fundamental psychological flaw with a woman who used to be married to a male porn star separate and apart from any fear I might have of not measuring up to Johnny Wad or Dirk Diggler. If I married a woman who used to be married to a male porn star I would expect the world to judge me. If after marrying her the woman left me for sexual adventures with another and you judged me, I would not think you were judging me because I was a man, but rather because I did not understand human nature and that I had allowed my love or lust for the woman to override what everyone else would have known, that being that it was likely that there was something wrong with her that caused her to previously have been married to a male porn star. That is why I don't see Isaac's post as misogynistic, and would not have seen it as misogynistic even if he had chosen to use the word "deserved" that was fought about above. I love Sandra Bullock. I wish the best for her. Sandra Bullock has entertained me and I feel in that weird way we do about celebrities that I know her. I am truly sorry this happened to her. I don't want her to be sad. I do think, however that she made an obviously bad choice that has nothing to do with her gender.
Now, in an issue where I think Misogyny has played a role, a female captain, Holly Ann Graf has been relieved of her major command for abusing her officers and crew. I knew her, she was an instructor at Villanova when I was a midshipman. Having served myself under at least one captain who was as difficult as Captain Graf was described to be, I cannot help thinking that if she had a penis (she'd be my uncle) she probably would still be in command of her ship. I'd love to know the real story there. I wonder if the men (and women) in her command would have viewed her as so tyrannical if she had been a he.