I was going to try and be all substantive and shit, talking about what I think Barack's strategy should be for the first 100 days or so (hint: do not listen to anyone who writes for the Washington Post who is not Harold Meyerson or Eugene Robinson), but was sidetracked by one of the more amusing things I've read in a long time. Let me preface this by saying that I am a liberal -- hell, a social democrat -- because I believe strongly in socializing risk, in protecting the most vulnerable, in insulating people as much as possible from the vagaries of capitalism. So I seldom laugh at tales of unemployment, crushing debt, and health problems -- but damned if there isn't an exception to every rule.
And so I give you Kim du Toit -- and yes, that's pronounced "da twat" and I will fight to the death anyone who suggests otherwise. Roy Edroso has the tale of woe. For the uninitiated, Kim is the author of the brilliant internet magnum opus "The Pussification of the American Male." in which he, among other things, denounces Euro girly men who criticized Commander Cod Piece's landing on the deck of the Abraham Lincoln twenty or thirty years ago, but above all denounces our nation of emasculating women.
So it was with some surprise that I read that Mr. Da Twat has not been gainfully employed for the last seven years, that he is a gout riddled dead beat in debt up to his eyeballs, that his Cheeto habit is so overwhelming he needed lap-band surgery, and that he is resorting to having his wife beg for money on the internet to bail his sorry ass out. This then is the classic exemplar of conservative masculinity -- a world of big talk, large debts and small, um, equity, for which only a large gun collection can compensate.
Now I guess I'm a bit of a pussy by Kimmy's standards -- I did three loads of laundry today, went to two different supermarkets, and cleaned the bathroom. Hell, I not only don't own a gun, I've never even shot one. Oddly enough though, I've managed to work and support my family (well my wife does too -- I'm even a bigger pussy), taking 5 or 6 sick days over twenty three years. And I'd like to think that even with gout, I would somehow manage to haul my fat ass out of the house and earn my keep -- at a minimum I don't think I'd take a jaunt around the world while trying to figure out how to stiff my creditors.
It's stuff like this that confirms my sense that being a right winger is more of a pathology than anything else -- the stunning lack of self-awareness, the bloated sense of entitlement, the completely unironic accompanying denunciations of free-loaders, the threats to go "John Gault" when you don't have a fucking pot to piss in, the hyper masculine rhetoric when you haven't been able to see your own tiny tool for years. And what is Kim's bold plan of action? He's going to retire from his seven exhausting years of blogging and write that novel we all know he has in him. I can't wait.
