JABbering Stooge

I’ll admit it. I never was much of a Charlie Chaplin fan. Even though Chaplin was first to the form, I just always preferred the Three Stooges for my Roaring Twenties/Depression-era slapstick comedy. Until yesterday afternoon, that is. I went to see The Great Dictator, which was being shown at the Paramount Theatre downtown as part of their 2007 Summer Film Series.

Wow, was that movie good! Granted, the Three Stooges also made a series of short films lampooning the Nazi dictator, but this was something extra special. For beneath the mocking buffoonery, there was also a serious truth-to-power-speaking underlying the whole flim. Even better, the flim has aged well with time, because much of it still resonates to this very date - especially in light of the delusional nutjob running our country. Many of the characteristics in one of Chaplin’s characters - Tomanian dictator Adenoid Hynkel - from his congenital inability to speak coherently to his colossal inferiority complex (watch Hynkel’s relationship with Bacterian dictator Benzino Napolini for evidence of this) - are present in The Most Holy George W. Christ.

But perhaps the best moment in the film is at the end, when Chaplin’s other character, the Jewish barber, in the disguise of Hynkel, gives a speech on the occasion of the Tomanian conquest of Osterlich:

I’m sorry, but I don’t want to be an emperor. That’s not my business. I don’t want to rule or conquer anyone.

I should like to help everyone if possible; Jew, Gentile, black man, white. We all want to help one another. Human beings are like that. We want to live by each other’s happiness, not by each other’s misery. We don’t want to hate and despise one another.

In this world there is room for everyone, and the good earth is rich and can provide for everyone. The way of life can be free and beautiful, but we have lost the way.

Greed has poisoned men’s souls, has barricaded the world with hate, has goose-stepped us into misery and bloodshed. We have developed speed, but we have shut ourselves in. Machinery that gives abundance has left us in want. Our knowledge as made us cynical; our cleverness, hard and unkind. We think too much and feel too little.

More than machinery, we need humanity. More than cleverness, we need kindness and gentleness. Without these qualities, life will be violent and all will be lost. The airplane and the radio have brought us closer together. The very nature of these inventions cries out for the goodness in men; cries out for universal brotherhood; for the unity of us all.

Even now my voice is reaching millions throughout the world, millions of despairing men, women, and little children, victims of a system that makes men torture and imprison innocent people. To those who can hear me, I say, do not despair. The misery that is now upon us is but the passing of greed, the bitterness of men who fear the way of human progress.

The hate of men will pass, and dictators die, and the power they took from the people will return to the people. And so long as men die, liberty will never perish.

Soldiers! Don’t give yourselves to brutes, men who despise you, enslave you; who regiment your lives, tell you what to do, what to think and what to feel! Who drill you, diet you, treat you like cattle, use you as cannon fodder. Don’t give yourselves to these unnatural men - machine men with machine minds and machine hearts! You are not machines, you are not cattle, you are men! You have the love of humanity in your hearts! You don’t hate! Only the unloved hate; the unloved and the unnatural.

Soldiers! Don’t fight for slavery! Fight for liberty! In the seventeenth chapter of St. Luke, it is written that the kingdom of God is within man, not one man nor a group of men, but in all men! In you!

You, the people, have the power, the power to create machines, the power to create happiness! You, the people, have the power to make this life free and beautiful, to make this life a wonderful adventure. Then in the name of democracy, let us use that power.

Let us all unite. Let us fight for a new world, a decent world that will give men a chance to work, that will give youth a future and old age a security. By the promise of these things, brutes have risen to power. But they lie! They do not fulfill that promise. They never will! Dictators free themselves but they enslave the people.

Now let us fight to fulfill that promise. Let us fight to free the world! To do away with national barriers! To do away with greed, with hate and intolerance! Let us fight for a world of reason, a world where science and progress will lead to all men’s happiness. Soldiers, in the name of democracy, let us all unite!

Hannah, can you hear me? Wherever you are, look up Hannah! The clouds are lifting! The sun is breaking through! We are coming out of the darkness into the light! We are coming into a new world; a kindlier world, where men will rise above their hate, their greed, and brutality.

Look up, Hannah! The soul of man has been given wings and at last he is beginning to fly. He is flying into the rainbow! Into the light of hope, into the future! The glorious future, that belongs to you, to me and to all of us. Look up, Hannah. Look up!

Amen.

Southwest Airlines’ new dress code for female passengers:

Jim Peterson would be so proud.

It would appear that I’ve struck a nerve with the author of that atrocious bit of misogyny over at Men’s News Daily. In comments, he writes:

That is funny. I am the original author of the article and I never thought of that when I said “you could be hit by a truck”. I was just saying that American men need to change their wills early and not procrastinate.

I don’t think the mafia would be getting involved with fighting rabid feminism.

Hey, I’m not the one who carelessly strung together a phrase intended to encourage men to write their wives out of their wills that ended up reading like a mafia-style threat.

By the way, the only reason why I got into men’s rights is not because of anything the MRA blogs had been previously talking about (father’s right to save money by raising a child himself instead of paying child support to the child + his mom).

Yeah, sure. Keep telling yourself that, Sparky.

I got into men’s rights because the other side went way too far.

Woah, hold up! Talking point police! Pull over! Seriously, this is the classic dodge that these "men’s rights" (to treat women like shit) jerkoffs always use to deny that what they are really all about is preserving the status quo where men have far more power and priviledge than women. If "men’s rights" were really about providing a check to make sure feminism doesn’t try to do to men what men have been doing to women since the beginning of time (because in the eyes of "mens rights" advocates, all feminists are trying to turn human society into the praying mantis reproductive process), "men’s rights" advocates wouldn’t be deriding pro-feminist men as "manginas" and other sexist, derogatory terms for "feminized" men. And they sure as hell wouldn’t be advocating for blatantly sexist policies like we’re about to see in Mr. Peterson’s comment. The third strike against Mr. Peterson’s cop-out claim that "men’s rights" advocates are only active as a backlash against "overreaching" by "feminazis" is this: At no point in the original screed does he make even the slightest effort to distinguish between "good" feminists and "bad" feminists. It’s only when he’s called on his misogynist bullshit that he tries to fling rhetorical dirt in the ref’s eyes. But please, let’s see if you can dig yourself out of the hole you got yourself into.

There is now a law called IMBRA that forces American men to have background checks in order to say hello to a foreign woman online. This is totally against the Right to Assembly

Okay, now you’re being deliberately misleading in an effort to set up a slippery slope fallacy. IMBRA is about regulating, if not reining in, the mail-order bride industry - an industry that is at best inherently creepy on its face (only pervy losers would have to resort to it to find a woman willing to marry them), and at worst, a wretched hive of human trafficking scum and villainy. And that’s on top of all the shit mail-order brides go through even if they aren’t being used in a human trafficking ring (more on that in a bit).

and many feminists agree on this point.

Thank you for that report from the Some Say Network News™. Seriously, what feminist is in agreement with you on your BS claim?

It is not “feminism” that has suddenly declared itself my enemy, but a few arrogant radicals,

See my point about anti-feminist cop-outs, above.

primarily at a place called the Tahirih Justice Center and NOW, who think they can speak for foreign women and take away their right to meet men without time-consuming paperwork.

Oh, sure. Never mind that 85% of the victims in intimate partner violence are women, or that three-fourths of the rapes in this country were committed by someone the woman knows and “trusts.” Every single rape accusation is faked to pick men’s wallets.

And as for your weird obsession with the Tahirih Justice Center, one of their biggest causes is fighting against such things as female genital mutiliation, human trafficking, torture and rape, especially in Third-World countries. You know, the sort of issues that conservatives constantly use to incite violence against Muslims, then conveniently ignore or even flip-flop on when doing so suits their purposes (i.e., when it means that American women might possibly come within a mile of getting on equal footing with American men).

Signing written approval to have contact with an American involves an extensive, if not permanent, time delay for foreign women who do not check their email every day or who do not have email. They previously gave out their post office boxes and they still expect letters to arrive at these post office boxes, but IMBRA is making it so they never come.

Except via the 70% of dating sites that completely ignore the IMBRA law, which will be defeated in federal court with the help of women soon.

So some Nice Guy™ has to jump through a few more hurdles to prove that he’s a Nice Guy™ before pulling a reverse Michael Henchard. Boo-frickin’-hoo. Oh, and by the way, don’t look for the courts to rule that men can treat foreign women like shit anytime soon. The last few lawsuits over IMBRA haven’t fared too well…

You know, I’d seriously consider sending Mr. Peterson a copy of Jessica Valenti’s book, particularly with the entire text of Chapter 4 - “The Blame (and Shame) Game” - highlighted, but somehow I get the feeling that he’d use it for toilet paper, instead.