Posts Tagged ‘Social Issues’
THOR’S DAY RANT: Dress like a Ho, and You’ll Be Treated Like One!
Written by Troglodad
Thursday, 30 July 2009 10:43
5 Comments

I'm talking about "Booth Babes," of course.

Don't know what a Booth Babe is? Well, companies around the country like to have expositions and conventions to convince retailers and consumers to purchase their products. These events are like flea markets–vast rooms with row after row of product booths. And like a flea market, companies need a way to lure people over to their booths.

Booth babes seem to work really well.

A booth babe is an attractive girl, who stands in, or outside the booth, luring men in with their feminine wiles. In the video game and comic book industries, booth babes tend to be scantily dressed- showing more cleavage than Elvira, and wearing skirts too short to leave anything to the imagination. Sex sells.

This is a formula that works. Look up "booth babe" on the internet, and you'll see countless photos of hot chicks about to explode out of their tops, while red-faced young men clamor around. Guys like pretty girls. Guys really like near-naked, pretty girls. Everyone knows that.

Recently however, I happened across two really stupid instances of indignation at men ogling the booth babes.

The first was on the G4 (Gamer's) Channel. They had a special on their Booth Babes and their adventures at the San Diego Comic Convention (Comic books, not comedians). And I was surprised to hear the miniskirt-wearing models (some of whom were playmates) griping about guys standing around staring at them all day long, trying to take pictures up their skirts as they rode down escalators, and otherwise objectifying them.

The other, even more ignorant instance I happened across was a report of a Booth Babe protesting a video game's campaign, "Sin to Win." For this campaign, the game maker was soliciting convention-goers to get pictures of themselves with booth babes. The more wild, the better, and the winner would get a huge prize. One professed Booth Babe was aghast at this, and the article goes on to lament the objectifying of women.

What?!

Now, I don't want to sound like a rapist, who offers the "she was asking for it" defense, but when women show cleavage, is it for ventilation purposes? Or is it to show off their wares? I can see my wife getting mad at me for staring at some chick in butt-cheek-exposing short-shorts, and a top eight sizes to small, but should the girl wearing these enticing clothes have the right to complain I'm looking?

I'm not saying women should all walk around in burkas, but let's have a little common sense here, people! You put your boobs out there for the world to see, don't open your yap when they start looking.

In the case of booth babes, maybe someone ought to explain to these "Forrest Bumps" when they take the job, the whole point is to lure men in by showing some skin. The companies WANT prospective male clients to look.

Bottom line, if you don't want men looking down your shirt, button it up. If you don't want men staring at your rump, wear a longer skirt, or one that is loose and baggy, not spray-painted on.

 
When dissent becomes hate
Written by Chad Phillips
Monday, 06 April 2009 21:17
38 Comments

I’ve got a couple of questions: First, Is there a difference between who a person is, and what a person does? I ask this question because I see a growing trend in American culture. If I object to a behavior or disagree with someone, I am told that I am insecure in my beliefs; that I am intolerant; that my dissent is a cloak for bigotry. In its extreme form, this view says that my objections belie an intense hatred for those with whom I disagree.

The logic seems to be: you object to my behavior, therefore, you hate me. Does that line of reasoning seem rational to you? Let’s give it a test drive. I object to the behavior my children sometimes exhibit and I am quick to correct it, but ask anyone who has seen me with my children and they will tell you the love we have for one another is obvious. In fact, the correction of my children is evidence of my love for them. So the “hatred” scenario doesn’t really hold water when speaking of objecting to a particular behavior, at least in my case.

Why am I getting into this? Because there are a number of people in this country (some of them professing “Christians”) whose inflammatory rhetoric belies a hatred for homosexuals. That extreme view has become the rule and standard by which some in the gay movement judge anyone who believes the gay lifestyle is wrong.

Social liberals have picked up on this and used this tactic to minimize anyone who attempts to enter the debate. In the process, Christians who openly dissent are vilified as hateful, bigoted, unloving, etc. The campaign has been amazingly effective in intimidating Christians, (or anyone else who disagrees) and bolstering a negative stereotype for those who dissent. The message is loud and clear: "Christians hate gays!" For that matter, anyone who objects to the gay lifestyle (or by extension gay marriage) hates gays.

What about you? Perhaps you object to my moralizing about homosexual behavior. Maybe you think I’m wrong to hold these views. Should I be as the extremists are and decide that because you object to my views, your objection means that you hate me? How does objecting to a behavior, or disagreeing about what is right and wrong become hate? To accuse you of hating me because you think my view of homosexuality is wrong would be an extreme form of hyperbole on my part. Yet that is precisely the auspices under which the radical gay movement and the cultural “elite” are operating.

 
Abortion To Go?
Written by Ted West
Thursday, 11 September 2008 20:11
27 Comments

Camille Paglia is an enlightened liberal. She may or may not be the first rational member of her species, but if she's not, she may be as close as a liberal can get. In her latest column which begins with a vicious dismissal of John McCain's heroism, she then morphs into a tough assessment of Barack Obama as prelude to an extraordinarily effusive bit of praise for Sarah Palin. Paglia's take on America's Sister is pitch perfect. She loves her. Who wouldn't?

But it's where Paglia ends up that really grabbed my attention. She says that she regards abortion as murder, but demands a woman's unlimited right to make that choice. That's bold. What's even more amazing is that she makes sense. This is of particular interest to me because it was only yesterday that I was wondering how the abortion gap between liberals and conservatives could ever be bridged, and I was thinking that the only possibility is for liberals to admit that life begins at conception. Paglia does that.

And so we are immediately closer to compromise than I'd ever thought possible. But let's be clear, I'm talking about compromise between Camille and me, not liberals and conservatives, both of which are so entrenched in the extreme that unless both groups adapt the Camille Paglia-Ted West approach, this battle will go on ad infinitum. And both groups are wrong, though conservatives have principle on their side: being that if something is alive, it's wrong to kill it arbitrarily.

However, I don't consider abortion to be murder, at least not all abortions. Paglia does, by the way. That shocked me.

Here's how I see it. A fetus is as alive as you or I, but with notable differences: it's lacking awareness, and at least to some point, it likely feels no pain. Consequently, killing a fetus in the early stages of development is not the same as killing your ten-year-old (who probably deserves it more). And it's not the same as killing a fetus in the third trimester.

So where Paglia says it's murder and still demands that women should be allowed unlimited choice, I only say that it's killing, but that women should not be allowed unlimited choice.

Mistakes happen, and while it would certainly be better, or at least far more moral and ethical to bring that mistake to term, I'm not going demand that a woman do that… the first time. She's wrong to kill the fetus, but she's not a murderer in my eyes. One would hope that her conscience would allow her to experience all the ethical considerations leading to her decision, but if she can live with herself, I would accept her choice.

But again, I'm talking about the first time. The second time, I would regard as serious misdemeanor, punishable by fine and/or jail time. not that it's more serious for her to disrupt a second life, but because at some point, if discipline and conscience fail her, the State has to step in and impose its values on the woman, which is the main reason for the State to exist in the first place.

Needless to say, a third time would then be a display of cold callousness that no society should accept, and thus the punishment should be stiff.

So If Ms. Paglia would accept this limit on choice, we can put this matter to rest. It should displease left and right equally, but I think it's realistic and fair. Not to a particular fetus necessarily, but to a whole lot more fetuses than receive fair and ethical treatment under the current situation.

The broad scale solution has to involve the admission by liberals that abortion is killing. The idea that we don't know when life begins is preposterous, but it's fair to argue when life as we know it begins, and that line of demarcation should be when the fetus is capable of existing outside the womb on its own. As I indicated, there are ugly choices all around, but neither side should expect to get exactly what it wants. That's not only unrealistic, it's not defensible.

I applaud Camille Paglia. I admire her bravery. But then I admire mine too.

Editor's Note: The image of Barack Obama in Freddy Kruger makeup is courtesy of MTW contributor, T.R. Oglodad.