Gentle readers, I do so enjoy bringing you grotesque of “journalism” from time to time. Like a svelte feminist pussycat with a dead, fleabitten rat, I am delighted to drop them upon your doorstep and wait for the ruckus to begin. Y’all never disappoint.
And yet, when PhDork sent me this piece of op-ed fuckery from the Irish Times, I was less interested in presenting it to you than ripping it to shreds with my claws and burying the pulpy bits out back behind the garbage cans. Because that’s the response this dead, fleabitten rat of an op-ed piece deserves and, frankly, it just might be the response the author himself deserves.
The piece, courtesy of one Newton Emerson, is entitled “Working Women Almost Certainly Caused the Credit Crunch“, and frankly, that’s the most neutral and logical sentence in the entire essay. Click at your own risk. If you have high blood pressure or rage epilepsy, you might want to go here instead.
Still with me? Okay. Here you go:
The answer to all our problems is staring us in the face. It may even be quite literally staring at you, right now, across the breakfast table.
So put the paper down, stare back and ask yourself a selfless question.
Does the woman in your life really need a job?
Oh yeah. He went there. And it’s allllll downhill from here.
Of course there will always be a place in the world of business for exceptional women. Women also have an important role to play in jobs that are too demeaning for men, like teaching.
That high pitched shriek of pure homicidal rage you hear is MamaSharper, Ph.D, lifelong educator, former elementary school principal and currently superintendent of a large public school system. Mr. Emerson, I recommend you drop into a protective crouch and cover your groin immediately.
Consider the issue of unemployment. There were 221,301 men on the live register last month and just under one million women in work.
Surely at least half these women have a partner who is earning? Surely at least half would be happier at home? One half of one half is a quarter and one quarter of a million is roughly 221,301. I think we can all see where this argument is going.
Oh, I think we can.
It would be ludicrous to suggest that women should be sacked purely to give men their jobs. In many cases, their jobs should be abolished as well.
In short, women were the driving force behind the greed, consumerism and materialism of the Celtic Tiger years and it was female employment that funded their oestrogen-crazed acquisitiveness.
ZOMG, that’s right! It was the oestrogen! Or estrogen! Whatever! It was solely the women who were selling bad mortgages, racking up credit card debt, destabilizing currency, and running the banks into the ground. Those poor, blameless men spent the last 10 years enjoying a pint at the local pub and discussing the works of James Joyce. They’re innocent victims of hysterical women armed with paychecks!
The time has come to build a more sustainable, equitable and progressive society.
We agree! Hooray! Now how are we going to do that?
Why not make a start by telling your other half to quit her job? She can ask you for the housekeeping on Friday.
Ahhh…there’s something refreshing about having your misogyny straight up, isn’t there? You can’t avoid it; good old-fashioned woman hating, right there in a major national newspaper. Unfortunattely the on-line edition does not enable comments; a damn shame because Irish women are no joke and I’m sure this piece kicked up a hell of a shitstorm (in fact, I suspect a few long-dead warrior queens are clawing their way out of their tombs this very minute).
The only real controversy here is why the editors of the Irish Times would run something so ludicrous, so obviously, howlingly sexist. Would they run a similar article suggesting every non-white person in Ireland be fired? Probably not; blatant racism is still less socially acceptable than sexism (they might occur at the same rate, but newspaper editors generally shy away from being openly racist in print). Maybe it’s a bit of satire? Performance art? A rip-off of Swift’s “A Modest Proposal?” I really wish it was a hoax. And yet….
Oh.
Oh wow.
Thanks for the warning about not reading the whole thing because I think my head would’ve exploded. As it is, ceiling cat help any man who ever suggests that I shouldn’t work. Given that I’ve had two men separately suggest that we marry and they stay home with the kids, I’m probably safe from that suggestion, but ohhhh goodness.
I hope that there is a record number of irate letters to the editor tomorrow (including letters from every teacher everywhere–I’m surprised he even thinks women are good enough to teach boys, frankly). If he loses his job, then there would be a spot for one of those 220k people.
“Yet they are barely represented in the useful public services of firefighting and arresting people.”
“According to its research, twice as many woman as men travel to work by bus and train, potentially halving the impact of cutbacks in public transport. However, it is probable that three-quarters of the Central Gender Mainstreaming Unit’s staff are women, so these figures should be taken with a pinch of salt.”
I’m getting a bit of a tongue-in-cheek vibe from these lines, suggesting that the author was going for some sort of Onion-esque satire… It falls flat, however, because it’s simply not funny!
Oh, my people, why do you forsake me? And right before St. Patrick’s Day, too! My Irish grandmothers and aunts and cousins and second cousins and mother and I hang our heads in shame.
I have an easy follow up question. “Does the Newton Emerson in your life really need a head?”
I’m going to hope this is followed by a “Gotcha! I was totally kidding!” Or maybe he was drunk? Or has some sort of brain damage? I don’t know why I’m making excuses except for I’d rather live in my self-made bubble where no one would ever say this kind of shit.
I can only hope the first woman to lose her job in the revolution is the editor of the Irish Times.
some irish blogs are saying the writer is a satirist. a very poor one, it appears. maybe someone should fire him!
@JDRegent: If so, I don’t think “satire” means what he thinks it means.
“Satire” has come up so often as a defense that I think we really need a refresher course on what satire is. So many jackasses out there seem to define it as “an alibi for when I say something really offensive/stupid/ridiculous that’s calculated to offend people”.
I would be very open to a BeckySharper seminar on the correct uses of satire.
If this is satire, it’s shitty satire. If it’s not, then my message to the Irish Times is Erin Go Blow Yourself.
I definitely think he was aiming for satire. But seriously, I am a stay at home mom and this made me want to kick him in the balls.
Sarah.o.a.l.g *snort* *Raises juice box*
I wish people would learn to apologize for stupid jokes that went awry rather than getting all defensive and “it was satire that clearly was too sophisticated for your outraged head.” Also, I wish people would apologize for being assholes.
From Merriam-Webster:
sat·ire
\ˈsa-ˌtī(-ə)r\
1 : a literary work holding up human vices and follies to ridicule or scorn
2 : trenchant wit, irony, or sarcasm used to expose and discredit vice or folly
So….no. Satire FAIL, Mr. Emerson.
That sound you just heard was my FATHER, a lifelong teacher and public school administrator, getting on the Concorde to punch this asshat in the fecking face.
YES, you goddamn moron. I should lose my job (oh wait! I did!) so…what? An investment banker can become a freelance factchecker? And I can keep house for…my roommate? Who is also a lady? LOGIC FAIL.
It could completely be satire, if Emerson doesn’t realize how entrenched misogyny actually is in society and just didn’t go BIG enough. Perhaps cash-strapped families could auction off their extra daughters, etc.
Alternatively, it’s much more likely he’s an ass.
My second thought was: How will lesbians eat?
“How will lesbians eat?”
Enthusiastically and with more skill than men, as usual.
Oh wait, you meant eat, like, food? Oops.
ah, nice to see my fine country turn up on harpyness.. emerson was responsible for ‘the portadown news’, which was occasionally funny. this REALLY wasn’t. you’ll be happy to note that there were a lot of letters to the editor about this..
@Kivrin, that was so funny – I almost spit my coffee on the screen!
I figured out that it was probably meant to be satire (Central Gender Mainstreaming Unit? oestrogen-crazed acquisitiveness?) but I agree that it was not very well written.
Oh, come on, it’s obviously a piece of failed satire. It doesn’t deserve attention, let alone anger.
@Marie: I disagree. Mind-blowingly offensive statements don’t become LESS offensive when they’re failed satire. If anything they become more so, because when the author fails to make any satirical point at all he’s just being a misogynist asshole.
I also hate it when people say “oh come on…don’t be angry….it was just a joke.” about something hateful and misogynist. If it’s hateful, I have the right to be angry. Dismissing a woman’s anger over being insulted is straight from the sexist playbook.
It’s a bit of Poe’s Law, I think. The problem is that someone will take it seriously and use it to make life decisions.
Also, I’ve been pretty routinely disappointed with the overall quality of satire in recent days, particularly the New Yorker cover back during election season. They seem to think that satire can’t also be funny.
The guy should be forced to watch Dr. Strangelove til he gets what good satire can be.
At first I was pissed. And then I thought it was kind of funny. I’m 99.99% sure this is satire, albeit weak satire. It doesn’t get funny until the last two paragraphs, with the ‘oestrogen-crazed acquisitiveness’ and the ‘ask the menz for the household money’. Until then, it’s sort of believable, which is why it isn’t good satire. Good satire starts out with a reasonable premise and leads you gently but inexorably to a ridiculous conclusion (see the granddaddy of all satiric writings, Swift’s ‘A Modest Proposal’). The problem with Emerson’s piece is that it sounds too plausible up until the end. So, not that funny. But also, I think, not malicious.
Also, I believe Newton Emerson to be a pseudonym. Really? Newton Emerson? His parents named their kid after not one, but TWO philosophers?
Everybody calm down it is satire, I visited the Irish Times website and read a few of his other articles. His humour takes a bit of getting used to and a lot of it is regarding particular current event going on in Ireland so its not really accessible
ONe of them
http://www.irishtimes.com/newspaper/opinion/2009/0304/1224242229228.html
was actually quite clever it compared a recent multi million pound bank robbery with real estate developers trying to reroute a proposed metro system.
So everybody can relax. Incidently the Irish times is one of the most leftwing pro feminist newspapers out there, I’m pretty sure he wrote the article in order to provoke his likely readership.
[...] Mai Mind, It Eez Blown (Courtesy of the Irish Times) – "Of course there will always be a place in the world of business for exceptional women. Women also have an important role to play in jobs that are too demeaning for men, like teaching." [...]