Saturday, September 20, 2008

"I wanna eat her Alaskan pussy from behind."

So says Margaret Cho, sharing some of her more... um, personal thoughts on Republican Vice-Presidential candidate Sarah Palin. Cho is not voting for McCain/Palin; but that doesn't stop her from being hot for Gov. Nanuck of the North.

[Note: This post is appropriately obscene, so be warned. Also, my mood has turned into a full-blown clinical depression, so I'm not my usual life-of-the-party self.]

I've avoided discussing Governor Mooseburger, who seems to be "kind of a big deal" around the mildewy blogosphere, for what I think is a logical reason: I don't really care about her. I understand why Republicans like her: she's smart, young, religious, down-to-earth, and somewhat libertarian- at least in terms of guns. I also understand why Democrats don't like her: she's a bit of a religious zealot who seems to have no problem with breaking the commandment against lying, and when she talks about "not blinking" she sounds like Bush.

But, I'm more than agnostic here- I've lost all interest in this endless stupid race, which seems to require me to follow things like "lipstick on a pig" and if Rush Limbaugh likes Spanish-speakers or not just to keep up. I can't keep up. Wake me up when it's over, or when any of these people are capable of just talking to Americans for five minutes at an adult level. I just don't have the respect necessary for any of the candidates or any of the voters to pay attention anymore- I had the same problem with pro wrestling.

Also, right now, I barely have the wherewithall to turn my head from right to left, much less worry about this American Idol-level election race.


Anyway, people weren't happy with Margaret Cho. Many were unhappy with a crappy joke she makes in the piece about John McCain getting shot down in Vietnam. I'm not going to defend that because it was insensate and stupid.

But, I've read a few things here and there where other people have called out Cho on the "sexism" of not treating Palin "with dignity" in her blog post, and I just don't get that. These are people who don't particularly agree with Mooseburger's politics, so give them some credit for taking up for her. They also say Cho is being "bloody unhelpful", "disappointing" and "unfunny".

Okay, well I agree it's not Wilde-level comedic prose. Margaret Cho's material has always been hit-or-miss for me. But I have no idea when wanting to fuck someone became "sexist".

Let's unpack this one, okay. Why would it be sexist to want to fuck someone?

1. You're not seeing them as a full human being? Why should this be so? Aren't we all sexual beings? And if so, why is sex an activity that somehow negates all other activities, so that seeing someone as a good sex partner means somehow not seeing them in any other way?

2. You're mixing sex and hate by disagreeing with their politics and still wanting to fuck them? I didn't get the "hate-sex" comment at all because Cho was specifically keeping the erotic and the political separate in the text- she doesn't want to talk politics with Palin, but wouldn't mind having sex with her. Do you have to love and adore someone to want to have sex with them?

3. You're not taking her seriously as a woman or a politician? Again, why does wanting to fuck someone mean not taking them seriously in other realms of life? Is there something so ludicrous about fucking that it demeans anyone who does it? I have more respect for Claire than any other woman in the world; I'm also fine with eating her Canadian pussy from behind, in front, or wherever.

4. You're treating her as a sex object? Well, or as a sexual being. What is so "dehumanizing" about sex? How does it turn the participant into a non-human? Seriously- I'm trying to understand the Puritan mindset here. Is it like looking at Medusa: do you turn to stone if someone thinks about fucking you? Do you go into a coma if someone fondles you?

Another example: I only think about my dentist in terms of working on my teeth: that's all I want out of him. Is this dehumanizing him? Reducing him to a dental object?

5. You're not treating her with dignity? Again, I think you have to have your own problems with sex to understand why it negates someone's dignity to think about having sex with them.

6. It's reducing her to a "patriarchal fantasy"? Should lesbians just stop having sex altogther? Why do people use this term "reducing" in terms of fantasy? Why not elevating her to the status of a fantasy?

I just don't understand why our fantasy lives are so often seen as dangerous or corrupting. Wilhelm Reich had the great line: When you control their genitals, you can control the world. Convincing people that their sexual fantasies are hateful, demeaning, degrading, sick, sinful, immoral, pathetic, or grotesque is like punching them in the psyche.

Anyway, what say you? Is it demeaning and sexist to want to have dirty, filthy sex with someone you don't know? Should Margaret Cho appologize to Alaskans or women everywhere?

14 comments:

Brian Dunbar said...

I think the biggest problem was ... it wasn't funny.

But I'm not a big fan of smut and raunch where there is supposed to be humor. Anyone can string together expletives - using that as the basis for your material is easy.

But actually making something funny without recourse to the swears takes talent.

Rufus said...

Yeah, it's been a while since I've found Margaret Cho's material to be funny. It seems like her yearly DVDs are chronicling a routine with diminishing returns.

I think it's possible to be both obscene and funny- Richard Pryor's standup was great, in my opinion. Bill Hicks was quite often obscene and funny. Then you have people like Woody Allen, whose standup was hilarious without a single swear word.

I think the problem with her material is that it's often not even actual jokes- just saying something obscene and then repeating it slowly in increasingly exaggerated voices. It's pretty hacky. I've noticed a lot of comedians are resistant to writing actual jokes these days.

But, still, her material doesn't strike me as particularly demeaning to anyone, aside from people who buy tickets to the show.

Holly said...

Don't forget Lewis Black, Chris Rock, and Dave Chappelle, all of whom can basically sum up the AP news feed with a particular emphasis, and it's funny as shit, and it's alarmingly factual.

I guess the issue about getting hot for candidates revolves around whether they're Regular People or an elevated, protected class. Because if it's OK to think and say these things about anyone else in the media, it's hard to point where it's NOT ok to do that to a candidate. No matter what else a candidate is, a candidate is a figure in the media. She's more famous than Fergie (this week).

Not that I ever hope to hear what Margaret Cho thinks of Fergie.

Rufus said...

I miss Dave Chappelle. He seems to have disappeared.

I can't see why we should defer to Politicians, or anyone else really, in terms of having sexual fantasies about them. Sharing those fantasies is inappropriate in terms of, say, telling your librarian that you dream of shagging her. But, I can't see where it actually demeans a public figure.

As some people have already pointed out, Margaret Cho wasn't really writing about Sarah Palin; she was writing about herself.

SecondComingOfBast said...

I think it reminds people in an uncomfortable way that these are just people, they're not some person that is so far above and beyond the rest of us that you should never entertain any kinds of sexual fantasies about them.

You see it all the time. Everybody has done something in their lives that really don't amount to squat in the grand scheme of things, but our politicians, especially those that aspire to higher office, should be above all that. So if we find out they've had extramarital sex, or they've smoked a joint, etc., we "tsk, tsk" and shake our heads or we get overly defensive, depending on whether we are supporters or are against them.

I've never heard Cho's routines, nor do I particularly want to, but from the way you describe her reminds me somewhat of a comedian from a few years back named Andrew Dice Clay, whose comedy seemed to revolve chiefly around obscenities.

Unknown said...

I actually didn't think it was sexist until the end, when she wrote:

"Although you know that thing is frozen and my tongue would probably stick."

I know it was a play on the whole Alaska thing, and I realize it was a joke, but it also seemed like a low and somewhat sexist blow to accuse a woman candidate of being frigid just because you don't agree with her.

Rufus said...

Fair enough. I didn't make the frigid connection.

Pagan- She's a bit funnier than Andrew Dice Clay because she does a funny impression of her mother and is pretty good at characters in general. But, still not a lot of actual jokes.

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