beatlegs posted:

Here's a non-rightwing source:

http://www.charlotteobserver.com/2012/12/11/3720826/lawmakers-assail-mexico-obama.html

quote:

If there were fewer women and more “male aggression” in Sandy Hook Elementary School, the massacre there never would have taken place, according to a contribution to a leading conservative magazine.

National Review, whose in-house editorial suggested Newtown was the price of the Second Amendment, published a piece on Wednesday from anti-feminist Charlotte Allen suggesting the reason the shooter was able to kill so many students was because Newtown was a “feminized setting:”

There was not a single adult male on the school premises when the shooting occurred. In this school of 450 students, a sizeable number of whom were undoubtedly 11- and 12-year-old boys (it was a K–6 school), all the personnel — the teachers, the principal, the assistant principal, the school psychologist, the “reading specialist” — were female. There didn’t even seem to be a male janitor to heave his bucket at Adam Lanza’s knees. Women and small children are sitting ducks for mass-murderers. The principal, Dawn Hochsprung, seemed to have performed bravely. According to reports, she activated the school’s public-address system and also lunged at Lanza, before he shot her to death. Some of the teachers managed to save all or some of their charges by rushing them into closets or bathrooms. But in general, a feminized setting is a setting in which helpless passivity is the norm. Male aggression can be a good thing, as in protecting the weak — but it has been forced out of the culture of elementary schools and the education schools that train their personnel. Think of what Sandy Hook might have been like if a couple of male teachers who had played high-school football, or even some of the huskier 12-year-old boys, had converged on Lanza.

Via Jessica Valenti, who notes that this is extraordinarily “disrespectful to the female teachers and staff at Sandy Hook. Allen mentions their heroism as an anomalous aside rather than exceptional bravery that saved lives. The bravery of the women in Newtown – principal Dawn Hochsprung and psychologist Mary Sherlach who rushed the shooter before being killed, teacher Victoria Soto who died protecting her students, Kaitlin Roig and Abbey Clements who hid their students and calmed them – is remarkable.”

Allen went on to blame Lanza’s mother, saying “You simply can’t give a non-working, non-school-enrolled 20-year-old man free range of your home, much less your cache of weapons…Unfortunately, the idea of being an ‘adult’ and a ‘man’ once one has reached physical maturity seems to have faded out of our coddling culture.”

Spacedad posted:

If that statement were even remotely true (it's not) it would mean we have the worst police firearms training in the world.

quote:

Those who think high voter turnout indicates civic health should note that in three German elections, 1932-33, turnout averaged more than 86 percent, reflecting the terrible stakes: The elections decided which mobs would rule the streets and who would inhabit concentration camps.

quote:

I'd also like us to encourage people to gang rush shooters, rather than following their instincts to hide; if we drilled it into young people that the correct thing to do is for everyone to instantly run at the guy with the gun, these sorts of mass shootings would be less deadly, because even a guy with a very powerful weapon can be brought down by 8-12 unarmed bodies piling on him at once.

quote:

There was not a single adult male on the school premises when the shooting occurred. In this school of 450 students, a sizeable number of whom were undoubtedly 11- and 12-year-old boys (it was a K–6 school), all the personnel — the teachers, the principal, the assistant principal, the school psychologist, the “reading specialist” — were female. There didn’t even seem to be a male janitor to heave his bucket at Adam Lanza’s knees... Think of what Sandy Hook might have been like if a couple of male teachers who had played high-school football, or even some of the huskier 12-year-old boys, had converged on Lanza.

quote:

Star New York Times columnist and Jay-Z enthusiast David Brooks is taking his talents to New Haven. The Yale Herald's Bullblog noticed that every liberals' "favorite conservative" will be teaching a class in the spring titled just plain "Humility." According to its description, the course promises to explore "The premise that human beings are blessed with many talents but are also burdened by sinfulness, ignorance, and weakness," as demonstrated by men such as Moses, Homer, and "others," like maybe Paul Krugman. "I taught at Yale about six or seven years ago and at Duke since and really enjoyed it," Brooks told Intelligencer, "so I was pleased to be able to do it again. I'm going to commute up Mondays and Tuesdays each week."

Joementum posted:

Kiwi Bigtree posted:

I don't get what is so bad about this one, especially in comparison to the other three.

Joementum posted:

Have you ever read a David Brooks column?

Kiwi Bigtree posted:

I don't get what is so bad about this one, especially in comparison to the other three.

Kiwi Bigtree posted:

I figured it was something like that. I was just wondering why a columnist doing something massively ironic was worse than nazi-baiting, training children to be human shields, and misogyny, respectively.

Joementum posted:

It's the culmination of a decades long career. The cherry on top of the fifty scoop moralizing blowhard sundae.

Joementum posted:

It's the culmination of a decades long career. The cherry on top of the fifty scoop moralizing blowhard sundae.

Joementum posted:

*Megan McArdle*

Amused to Death posted:

Man I thought the right-wing was going insane over any possible kind of gun regulation in response to Sandy Hook, boy was I wrong. They're attacking from all angles. The National review published an article blaming Sandy Hook on, well, women.

http://thinkprogress.org/justice/2012/12/19/1361521/top-conservative-publication-newtown-happened-because-women-ran-the-school/

Lord Lambeth posted:

The notion that people died because there wasn't a man to stop the crazy man with the boomstick is hosed up on so many levels.

quote:

Kevin Anzellotti, the head custodian at Sandy Hook, is a man. Theodore Varga, a fourth grade teacher, also possesses XY chromosomes. I just did the research Allen didn't do, and it took all of fourteen seconds. Beyond that, though -- why does no one who writes this way look into the circumstances of other massacres? The second person shot by Jared Loughner was Gabe Zimmerman, an aide to Gabby Giffords who, hearing the gunshot that would cripple her, turned and stepped toward Loughner. The gunman shot Zimmerman in the head. The fourth person shot by Loughner was Giffords's aide Ron Barber, who survived shots to the cheek and groin. He was saved by John Roll, who lunged at the aide and was shot fatally in the back. Loughner did all of this in less than six seconds. Grown men in good health were cut down, because bullets move faster than people do.

Joementum posted:

The best/worst part of that article is that it's not even loving true that there weren't any manly, husky, burly men around.

Myrdhale posted:

Remember kids, while women, being frail and girly, die right away from being shot, manly men can charge a gunman and not get killed just as quickly because AGGRESSION!

Kiwi Bigtree posted:

I genuinely wonder if there is an end point to the counter-narratives that come out of these situations.

Like, if a gunman using legally purchased and modified weaponry opened fire in a traditionally conservative area with men between 25-35 who have a history of high school sports and are all currently carrying concealed firearms, what would they blame it on then?

Zeroisanumber posted:

They lacked the gumption and courage of the WWI generation, who were unafraid to stack up an entire town's worth of young men so that the next wave had cover to take out a single machine gun nest.

Kiwi Bigtree posted:

I genuinely wonder if there is an end point to the counter-narratives that come out of these situations.

Like, if a gunman using legally purchased and modified weaponry opened fire in a traditionally conservative area with men between 25-35 who have a history of high school sports and are all currently carrying concealed firearms, what would they blame it on then?

Oceanlife posted:

As a male between the ages of 25 and 35 with college sports experience I know I am the first line of defense when danger comes to my town. I sit at the ready, lacrosse stick in hand, ready to strike down any armed gunmen with a barrage of well thrown lacrosse balls.

quote:

There is a picture going around the Internet that I have seen about a dozen times today that claims that Israeli teachers are packing heat. Well, are they? The answer is “NO.” There may be some exceptions in dangerous areas like the West Bank (where five percent of Israelis live), but in general, Israeli teachers are not walking around like it’s the Wild Wild West, strapped with a six shooter. No, our teachers are not focused on shooting, but educating. That doesn’t mean, however, that we don’t protect young students.

In the picture, the students are on an outing. While it appears that the teacher is holding a rifle, I have never seen such a thing in ten years of living here. Rest assured however, they are under armed protection. In most cases it is an armed guard or a soldier that will accompany a class, not the teacher. And my guess is that the woman with the gun is a security guard, not a teacher.

Oceanlife posted:

As a male between the ages of 25 and 35 with college sports experience I know I am the first line of defense when danger comes to my town. I sit at the ready, lacrosse stick in hand, ready to strike down any armed gunmen with a barrage of well thrown lacrosse balls.

A Winner is Jew posted:

Please tell me you had 13 years of lacrosse at boarding school.

Pope Guilty posted:

Did you not?

Mercury_Storm posted:

Maybe that will be the new right wing "if only!!!" gun meme: If only Tidus was there to save the day (and my heart) with his magical blitz balls!

GWBBQ posted:

You know it's bad when it's as bad as Bill O'Reilly says it is.

800peepee51doodoo posted:

It's not though? That idiot brought a gun into Mexico and is surprised he got arrested? There are huge signs as you approach the border that say ALL GUNS ARE ILLEGAL DONT BRING GUNS HERE YOU WILL GO TO JAIL FOREVER. It's impossible to not know that you can't bring any guns at all into Mexico. They make it really really clear.

Kiwi Bigtree posted:

I don't get what is so bad about this one, especially in comparison to the other three.

ufarn posted:

The guy is an unironic Guilded Age apologist. You just have to read some things to believe them.

At this point, being a regular NYT columnist is a mark of Cain.

quote:

Star New York Times columnist and Jay-Z enthusiast David Brooks is taking his talents to New Haven. The Yale Herald's Bullblog noticed that every liberals' "favorite conservative" will be teaching a class in the spring titled just plain "Humility."

SedanChair posted:

Holy poo poo. What is the opposite of schadenfreude? Because I am experiencing it.

Oceanlife posted:

It's almost as if she can't admit failure of the system in her life so she doubles down on a system that destroyed her family.

Oceanlife posted:

When she was 19 her father, a union worker, died of cancer leaving her mother to fend for herself. To make ends meet her mother cut all unnecessary expenses, including health insurance and paying for her college. So she was forced to drop out of college and get a job to support her mother. Not even six months later her mom was hit by a car and remained in intensive care for several months, leaving the family completely broke from medical bills. Today, she is a stay at home mother with no degree and relies entirely on her husband to pay for her four kids.

Was this an eye opening event that would lead her to champion social reform? Actually quite the opposite, While her husband at work she makes posts about how universal health care and free college would be disastrous. Want to hear about self sufficiency, she'll be glad to post walls of text about it. It's almost as if she can't admit failure of the system in her life so she doubles down on a system that destroyed her family.