Winners and Losers

Now more than ever, I wish I would have written a post last year congratulating Major League Baseball's Philadelphia  Phillies for winning the World Series. I kind of wish I would have written one congratulating them when they won the National League Pennant this year, though at least this way I can't be accused of jinxing them. Anyway, while it was disappointing to see them lose this year's  Series, it was a joy to see them go two years in a row. They are still winners in my book and should hold their heads high. I will certainly miss being near them when I move to New Hampshire.


As for the "Losers" referred to in the title of this post, no, I don't mean the New York Yankees fans, as obnoxious as many of them are. This is their moment and I don't begrudge them their celebrations. Well, not too much, anyway. No, the losers I'm talking about are more along the lines of the usual suspects.

First, there are the piece of shit Bensalem cops who arrested Susan Finkelstein for allegedly trying to trade sex for World Series tickets. How did these brave modern day Sherlock Holmeses discover this dangerous criminal? From an ad she posted on Craigslist. Aside from the ridiculousness of anti-prostitution laws in general, there are dozens of ads on Craigslist that are more explicitly offering prostitution than this:

DESPERATE BLONDE NEEDS WS TIX (Philadelphia) Diehard Phillies fan--gorgeous tall buxom blonde-- in desperate need of two World Series Tickets. Price negotiable--- I'm the creative type! Maybe we can help each other!

The Barney Fife KGB wannabes who responded to this ad were obviously more concerned with getting publicity for their little department than doing anything that would actually protect the public. I guess they wanted to make it appear that they are good for something other than writing parking tickets or harassing honest, law-abiding gun owners. Maybe also they were motivated by the idea that sports are supposed to be pure and wholesome and not to be tainted by anything the sanctimonious mavens of morality arbitrarily decide is wrong. Same mentality that allows officials of all of the professional sports leagues and the NCAA to swoon from scandalized outrage at the thought of expanding legalized gambling on their sacred rituals, while never missing a crass opportunity to gouge their fans for extra bucks. Also the same mentality that causes league officials suspend and sternly scold the players catch with marijuana, while these same pompous preachers don't think twice about accepting ads for beer and boner pills  (Not that I have anything against beer or hard-on pills, I enjoy beer quite a bit and am glad that there are pills to help me get an erection should I ever need them - it's just that it is the height of hypocrisy to accept money to promote drugs which do have considerable, if worthwhile, risks while condemning users of what overwhelming evidence shows to be the safest drug humanity has ever known).


And that brings me to the other losers I have in mind, two pieces of garbage from across the pond named Alan Johnson and Neil McKeganey. I usually don't get involved in the internal affaires of other nations (though I have severely criticized Harriet Harman on Antimisandy.com this was because she tried to make a United States governor submit to her will in her desperate crusade to subjugate her fellow British citizens). Anyway, Johnson and McKeganey are two nanny state extremists who are demanding that Professor David Nutt resign his position as chairman of Britain's Advisory Council on the Misuse of Drugs (ACMD) because he was brazen enough to commit the ultimate crime - telling the truth. Specifically, for saying that "alcohol and cigarettes are more harmful than cannabis," a position that no serious researcher would object to, except on ideological grounds. McKeganey, himself, even admitted “In terms of health harm there is no doubt that cigarettes and alcohol are both more harmful than many currently illegal drugs,” he added. “They are associated with many more deaths and with much wider rates of illness," but despite such an acknowledgment of common sense, he was perfectly able to adapt his authority worshiping doublethink to pretend to believe such obvious bullshit as this:

If you are the key person offering advice to the government you cannot then simultaneously, in public, criticize the government for the decisions it takes. David was going so far beyond his remit to raise fundamental questions about the direction of UK drugs policy in relation to cannabis and in relation to seeking to combine alcohol and tobacco with illegal drugs — in the process muddying the distinction between illegal drugs and legal drugs.

No, God forbid someone advising the government should disagree with them. Everyone should know that "advising" the government means confirming the fact that the almighty politicians and bureaucrats are always right. And yes, how dare Nutt  [muddy] the distinction between illegal drugs and legal drugs. He has no right to do that just because this distinction is based on anti-scientific, superstitious arbitrary moralism. Obviously, if drug laws were based on public health instead of manufactured prejudices alcohol would be of greater concern to authorities than cannabis, and tobacco would be of much greater concern than cocaine, heroin, or any other so-called "hard drug."

Don't get me wrong - I don't think any of them should be illegal. Even tobacco which is much deadlier than alcohol, cocaine, and heroin, to say nothing of the safer-than-aspirin drug cannabis, has been responsible for far fewer deaths than meddling authoritarian governments. But putting things into perspective, "muddying the distinction between illegal drugs and legal drugs" is a logical response to the arbitrary bullshit of morally bankrupt government drug policies. Well when my friend e-mailed me this story under the subject line: "Refuse to support Nutt's sacking!‏" and beginning with the line "It looks like Johnson is supporting Nutt's sacking", I said "What a couple of Johnsons Johnson and McKeganey are. They are not fit to lick Nutt's sack." I think that pretty well sums it up.

Even the most reasonable radfem....

I learned of a challenge to find feminist porn from Nine Deuce at "Rage Against the Manchine." Though the challenge was initiated by another radical (read anti-sex) feminist, Nine Deuce was offering to bet anyone $100 to anyone who could win the challenge. I did not take the bet, for reasons that should be obvious to anyone with a passing familiarity with radical feminism (and if it's not obvious read on and it will become so).

Nine Deuce is one of the few radfems who will occasionally let people who don't kiss her ass comment on her blog, and even more occasionally she will post opinions of people who disagree with her, if only so she can personally attack them. So, I thought I might have a chance of getting my comment posted. WRONG! Why I do not know, but I suspect it is because of its mildly sarcastic tone. I should have known that 92 reserves sarcasm for herself and her groupies (of course their sarcasm is anything but mild and usually quite personal). Just goes to show that even the most reasonable radfem can be very arbitrary and unreasonable, and will impose double-standards at the drop of a hat when her fragile little feelings are hurt by someone attacking her worldview.

Anyway, here is the oh-so-offensive posting:

This seems like a rigged contest to me. When has an anti-porn feminist ever considered anything even slightly erotic to be feminist?

Photos of nude or scantily clad men for women's consumption? Male exotic dancers? They're not fulfilling women's real sexual fantasies, just the women's desire to be like men so they're ...MISOGYNISTIC! Women playing a dominant role in BDSM? Everyone knows that no woman really wants to participate in BDSM in any role; they only do it to please their male partners therefore it is ...MISOGYNISTIC! Lesbian porn? Always someone playing a male role and someone playing female role and playing the female role is always degrading. (Incidentally the exact same thing can be said about gay male porn). Now, I, personally, don't know what evidence there is to support the idea of all lesbian and gay porn having people playing opposite sex roles, or the reason that the female role is inherently degrading. But the high priestesses of radical feminism all agree among these points so they must be true. Therefore, of course all same sex porn is ...MISOGYNISTIC!

In fact all sex is misogynistic. All male masturbation is, too, because masturbating males are fantasizing about having sex with (and therefore violating) a woman, or fantasizing about having sex with someone they plan to treat like a woman. I don't know if female masturbation is misogynistic but I'm sure researchers in Women's Studies labs are working hard to determine that.

PS Congratulations to the Villanova men's basketball team on making it to the Final Four for the first time in 24 years! Thanks to you not all of the money I left in Vegas 2 weeks will stay in Vegas (and even less if you win the overall tournament). But whatever happens from now on, thanks for a great season.

On the bandwagon

No not Obama's; my feelings about him haven't changed since the election. I'm talking about the Philadelphia Eagles. I use that title because I am not usually that much of a sports fan, my main interest in spectator sports comes from betting on them. My top 5 favorite athletes of all time are horses: Seabiscuit, Secretariat , Smarty Jones, Curlin, and Cigar (and I'll be damned if I can name their jockeys without looking them up, though I do remember that Seabiscuit's jockey was played by Tobey Maguire in the movie!)

Still as a lifelong resident of Montgomery County Pennsylvania it is hard not to get caught up in the excitement. It was similar when the Phillies won the World Series three months ago; an event that I wanted to mention here but never got around to at the time. True, the Eagles still have two playoff rounds to go before getting to the Superbowl never mind winning it, but I have followed the Eagles at least slightly both this season and in the past whereas I hardly knew the Phillies existed in recent years. The point is in both cases there is/was celebration in the air, a good cure for both post-holiday blues and the grimness of other events dominating the news of the day.

I do wonder if I'll still root for Philadelphia area teams when I move to New Hampshire, something I plan to do as soon as financial and job market conditions permit. Of course, in college sports I will still support my undergrad alma matter Villanova - I usually follow basketball there, especially close to and during NCAA tournament time, football not so much, though it is interesting to note that a school with a division I basketball team and a division I AA football team, should see its most successful graduate athlete be a professional football player (I mean no disrespect to Kerry Kittles by suggesting that Brian Westbrook has been a more successful pro-athlete than him, and I would certainly be willing to listen to someone who wanted to argue otherwise). As for my MBA college Drexel, its basketball team has occasionally been a contender and I would probably take pride if any of its teams did gain the national spotlight, though, I have not generally been inspired to root for those teams. I have had other fleeting loyalties to college teams but I'll save that for another post.

Getting back to New Hampshire, I do believe there are some college teams the locals root for but I don't know the details. There are the "New England" Patriots but honestly they are mostly a Boston team, a team that despite their name represents a place that is the antithesis of everything I love about New Hampshire. Anyway, while I do feel more of a sense of identification with the members of the Free State Project than the people who I share a location with by accident of birth in Southeastern Pennsylvania, my fellow FSPers to the extent that they are sports fans are just as likely to be fans of teams from the areas from which they originated as fans of NH area teams. Still, I have a dream of bringing pro-sports teams to New Hampshire in stadiums that are entirely funded by private money. Of course, this would require welfare queen team owners to agree to terms that might allow them to profit immensely but without ripping off the taxpayers which they believe is their birthright. One possibility would be to allow gambling within the stadiums and allowing private stadium owners and team owners to share that revenue. Of course, the sanctimonious pro-sports leagues would no doubt oppose that on empty moralistic grounds (officials in the MLB, NFL, NBA, and NHL are, after all, in the pockets of organized crime, much like the politicians who make the laws regarding gambling, prostitution, drugs, etc., making sure those activities are kept underground where gangsters can take their cut; as for NCAA well, again, it will take another post to deal with the scum who run that vile organization).

Anyway "Go Eagles!", if for no other reason than I would like to see if Andy Reid can manage to grow a decent beard by Superbowl Sunday! (I do sympathize, I've grown beards twice before in my life, and when its in that scruffy state the itching it causes would most definitely constitute torture if it was not self-imposed).

PS This post like my last one was at least partially inspired by Renegade Evolution. As such, I have decided to add what appears to be her pet organization - Sex Workers' Outreach Project to my (so far very small) list of links on this blog. I will also be sending them a donation. I know it's not a whole lot but I figure it's a start, and I am giving SWOP priority over other causes I support besides the Free State Project, for now.

By the way, now that football has (or at least had) become a topic of blogging again, I wonder if this will bring any new blog entries from Jill Brenneman. I see she did comment on Ren's post on the subject. It is always good to hear from her. I once exchanged comments with her when she was known as Jill Leighton and was running a radical feminist site known as stopprostitution.org. Even then she seemed very nice and was able to disagree quite agreeably. Of course, a much more hardline antisex radfem chimed in and behaved the way that you would expect a hardline antisex radfem to behave. But Jill while not outright condemning or distancing herself from her vicious colleague made it clear that she did not speak for her. I was pleased, but not surprised when I learned that Jill had left the dogmatic world of antisex feminism behind her.