Such Symmetry in Nature

I am a hobby sociologist. People crack me up. I was listening to a chatter show the other day, talking about social media. The conversation turned to how it's decided to change a facebook status from "single" to "dating." After the first date? After the first couple weeks? After a series of tense negotiations, mediated on both sides by retired Federal judges? A young lady of college age called in. Perfect. Someone of the appropriate age to care about this crap. She said women used to care if their men friends changed their status to "dating," but not so much anymore. It's a sign of being needy and manipulative to insist the fellow acknowledge the relationship. Besides, most guys didn't even know how to change that bit on their pages.

No, really, she said that out loud like it made sense or something. I cried laughing. Also, I cheered a little. A guy can figure out how to get on line, set up a page, download pictures, embed video and music, but can't noodle through how to do that personal status thingy.

Years of building the self-esteem of little girls has lead to this point. All that empowerment garbage has filtered through the feminine psyche and expressed itself as: Men are stupid. They are barely able to stand upright. They are no damn good at everything. We can't expect them to function like people, certainly not without supervision. This is the exact reverse of the attitude of about fifty years ago or so. The women back then whined and protested and set fire to their underwear (what was that about?) and generally made a nuisance of themselves until we've gotten to the point where we are now, where men expect us to change our own oil, put out forest fires and sweep for mines. When confronted with the same exact attitude, the men say, Yeah, whatever. We're idiots. Don't bother us with anything difficult.

This is why men are smarter.

Classy, Classy CBS

Imagine spending heaps and piles of your parents' money to get a degree in communications from some ivy-swathed institution Back East. Through family connections or dumb luck, or even through working at it really hard you land what you're told is a coveted intern position at CBS. The future looks bright. Then Dave happens.

If you are a female person, your phone, computer, facebook, etc. are clogged with strangers asking you if you're doing Dave. I'm sure it doesn't even matter whether or not you intern for his show; it's enough to work in the same building as his staff. If you're a male person speculation trends more toward the sinister. If the Tiffany Network is cool both with David Letterman and a news producer diddling the help, every male employee of the network must be considered a potential episode of "Mad Men."

I don't think the ladies involved will sue for sexual harassment. Dave's main main squeeze got her law school paid for. Picture phones are handy. What I want to know is, what's the redress for everyone whose resume is now a dirty joke because they work for CBS?

Nobody Asked Me...

OK, so I'm a little late to the Palin party. I wanted to see how things were shaking out. So far I've got: She's unqualified, inexperienced, too religious, frumpy, and a bad mother. Also, she's evil. She purposefully afflicted an innocent baby -- her own baby --with a genetic disease. Your baby could be next.

Of course none of this is true. Alaska's pretty big and it borders on two foreign countries, one of whom hates us while the other merely tolerates us. You pick which one's which. People in the lower 48 ( No, really, Mr. Obama. 48. ) tend to forget about Alaska, all tucked away up there like that. It's got military installations, some that are en clair and some that aren't. I suspect she already has a working relationship with the top brass. They produce and export energy, although I don't think they have refining facilities up there, so they pay the most for the petroleum and propane they consume. More than Hawaii, even. Sucks. Because Alaska's so big it's a logistical challenge to get anything civic done statewide, like law enforcement. Mrs. Palin has to coordinate the activities of state and local authorities with the Feds, who are run from DC, the opposite of Alaska. She's had as much experience running a government as Harry Truman did when he became President. He managed.

So she's got to be on the ball to do all this and coordinate the activities of all those kids. And don't start on the pregnant daughter. The same thing happened to my son, his cousin on dad's side, my oldest uncle on mom's side, Mr. Obama, and several members of your own family whether you know about it or not. The dinosaurs of feminism, Quinn and Steinem, for whom Sarah Palin represents everything they claim to admire, say she has too many children and she can't look after them properly and work outside the home. Nobody said that to Al Gore, who has four kids, or Grammaw Pelosi, who rounded up every child in a five-mile radius and a couple of short adults for her swearing-in photo, or JFK, who had his kids in his office with him while he was President. Maybe men are better at thinking about more than one thing at a time.

I think I know what the problem actually is. I ran into this attitude a lot when I was working construction. The idea of me appealed to the "hear me roar" crowd. You know, single mommy gets herself off welfare, works in a nontraditional field, competing with the menfolk on their level, yada yada yada. The most patronizing and obnoxious people, the ones who took the most care to remind me that I was there because of affirmative action and not because I worked damn hard, the ones who expected me to be grateful to them specifically, were my union reps, every man Jack a good liberal. When I made it clear that I not only did not feel beholden, but that I thought they should thank me for making it so they could work indoors swinging a pencil was when they started in with the "stupid girl" crap. Like in that movie -- "Full Metal Jacket," I think it was-- where the soldier slaps the Vietnamese guy upside the head and says "We're doing you gooks a favor, here!"

Sarah Palin's problem is that she's uppity and she doesn't know her place.

I'm Just Saying, Is All

Nancy Reagan, who was never the president and never ran for the office, caught all kinds of crap for consulting with an astrologer. Candidate Hillary Clinton, who claims to have been "co-president" (although she may have meant to say "-dependent") copped to channeling Eleanor Roosevelt. No word on if she was hoping for fashion tips or dating advice. Her critics had a field day with that. And now we have the boy genius Obama, who's campaigned in 57 of our 58 states and yesterday demonstrated that either he doesn't know what Memorial Day is or that he possesses a sixth sense. And unless you listen to AM radio you've heard nothing about any of it. Weird.

Pay No Attention to the Man Behind the Curtain

Vladimir Putin, Former President of Russia (You, there. Quit smirking) may or may not be dumping his wife for a girl half his age. He says no, but yeah, right. Anyhow, the lady in question is a former rhythmic gymnast (you're smirking again), lovely to look at and possibly double-jointed. She is also a member of the Duma, the lower house of Russia's Parliament. And now you have my attention.

Here's why Putin's a freaking genius. While he was officially in charge he arranged for a bevy of fabulous babes to be elected to the Duma. They were even called "Putin's Babes," greeted enthusiastically by the media and, one presumes, their fellow legislators. Attention is paid to their every move, especially if the move involves exiting a car or dropping a pencil, and nobody notices what's actually going on. A classic piece of misdirection done on a grand scale. Very Russian. But back to him and the girl.

Women everywhere are all balled up over the whole trade-in-your-wife thing. Again, look at what's actually happening without getting caught up in an emotional reaction. Putin set up his buddy Medvedev as president. Friendship engenders a certain amount of loyalty, but Putin shouldn't rely that his friend will always follow his advice. A very young lady with little world experience and a taste for the glamorous life is... malleable. She is easily manipulated into being an instrument of Putin's will. And nobody will think to question her because she's so pretty, and pretty people can never be evil.

Putin's not quitting and he's not going anywhere. He is installing a shadow regime made up of people he can blackmail or threaten or dominate. And he's being very up-front about it. It's like he thinks no one will challenge him.

Sauce for the Gander

The following is from a work of popular fiction. I've played with the wording a tiny bit to illustrate my point. It's a popular enough work that you might recognize it in spite of that.

This little vignette plays itself out in offices everywhere, I expect:

She: I'm hoping we can work together on this project in the spirit of cooperation. I'll have some ideas, and you'll have some ideas, and together we can pick the best ones.

He: Sure, that's one approach. But I prefer to exhale deeply and roll my eyes while you prattle. Then I will verbally demolish your ludicrous ideas, and dismantle your mistaken self-image as a competent woman.The carnage will create a striking contrast for the warm, clear glow of my brilliant ideas. Later, I will round out the package by spreading amusing stories about how ignorant you are.

She: Is there any chance of doing it my way?

He: Now watch my eyes.

I've been talked to like that, and I'm sure I could round up a few other women across a -- pardon me -- broad spectrum of ages who could say the same thing. It's infuriating. It makes you want to cry. If this were to happen in a real life company what would happen to 'he'? Summary dismissal? Nasty lawsuit? A trip to Glorious People's Sensitivity Camp? I bet it does happen in real life. I bet it'll happen today and nobody will even notice. Because it'll be a woman saying that to a man. The above is from a Dilbert cartoon and I switched the speakers' genders. So it's funny now.

I'm sure some hairy, wizened old "feminist" will set me straight but I never saw the point in being equal to men. Not equally awful, anyhow. I appreciate men. I admire their dynamism, their ambition, even their occasional lapses in judgment. Most major advancements in civilization just had to be the result of a bet or a dare. Space travel, for instance. Women would never think to say, "Go big or go home"; we're more like, "What's everybody there going to be wearing? And did you look at a map?" Worthy questions, but hardly inspiring. I like how helpful men are, how the nicest ones make it possible for me to dress pretty and smell good, secure in the knowledge that gas will be pumped and jars will be opened; I have but to ask. Hard to square with being a welder? I only did it to make a good life for my kid. My male kid. My feminist relatives hate when I say that. I've always been their little mascot.

So how do you deal with the dismissive attitude? You remember that it's not unique to either gender and you quietly thank them for being such a dunce they'll never expect it when you outflank them. Take the lead in broadcasting that they were the brains behind the operation. If it was a good idea you seem supportive. If it was a crappy idea, well... Also remember they carry a grudge and they have lots of time to obsess over things because they're usually single. Plausible deniability. That's all I'm gonna say.

There. Now that I've alienated most of the women and they've stomped off in disgust we can swap dirty jokes. I used to work construction; I know some funny ones.

Reasons to Wake

OK, I do know it's not St. Patrick's Day yet, so I'll save my lame St. Paddy's joke for then. This is good, though. Every so often, maybe no more than once or twice in a person's entire life, perfect serendipity occurs, a moment of such flawless absurdity it remains recorded in the memory forever like Youtube. I had such a moment on St. Patrick's Day of 2000.

Once upon a time I belonged to the Piledrivers Union. Local 34, Oakland, Ca. I was a welder. No, not like the girl in Flashdance; she was an actress. It was hard damn work, and to paraphrase Steve Buscemi from "Armageddon," it paid well, the scenery changed and sometimes you got to blow stuff up. And I met some awesome men, as well as one or two of the biggest crapweasels ever to walk on their back legs.

The morning of 3/17/2000 I was working on a building foundation job in San Francisco's Financial District. My little corner of the world was right next to the fence separating the jobsite from Howard Street. So I'm all duded up in my protective gear, looking like the lesbian dream date, welding away. I finish the piece I'm working on, put up my mask, and there is a beautiful young man in a kilt, riding his bicycle up the street towards me. A healthy specimen, he was. We made eye contact and he registered surprise. I'm unmistakably female; I look like R. Crumb drew me. I don't often express these sentiments out loud to strangers, but I was moved to call out. I mean, the guy is riding a bicycle in a kilt. In America. That's one confident dude. And yes, his skirt was blowing up. Without thinking I said the first thing that popped into my head. "Baby." The rest of the sentence, "Let's get married for the weekend," was implied. And then he was gone from my life like the fading light of dusk, like the last sip of wine, like a loosely-held sucker from a baby's hand. Or something.

A male pedestrian gets hey-babied by a female construction worker. Welcome to California. Enjoy your stay in Bizarro World. And if you're that guy, I'm sure you remember me. The offer still stands.