On the radio yesterday, Rush Limbaugh fielded a question from a caller:
CALLER: (laughing) My question to you is because I realize you’re the only one with the testicular fortitude to answer it properly, is I’m curious about Hollywood and their portrayal of men and trying to neuter men and the lack of masculinity in men. But yet they’re glamorizing the Fifty Shades of Grey and the guy in that, which is a total scumbag, I think. And now they’ve made another movie, Book Club, with three of the top liberal women in the country talking about how great it is. Explain that to me please, sir.
Wow, that's a packed question. On the one hand, liberals hate masculine men and want all men to be soy-boy betas. On the other hand, that guy in Fifty Shades seems awfully assertive. What's up with that? Why didn't Hollywood make him drive a Prius and eat avocado toast?
Well, it's complicated. Allow Rush to explain.
RUSH: It’s an offshoot of the feminist movement, and it is all about power. It’s all about taking power away from men. The imagined power that leftists think men have genetically, stronger, taller. Traditions, they’re the breadwinners and of course the females are the nurturers, all of human nature the left finds itself at war with. And when they disapprove or disagree, they set about changing it and eliminating it.
And it’s all about power and raising up women, but it’s also — you know, masculine men are free thinkers, they are independent, they are self-reliant, and all of that is anathema to liberalism, too, which is all about communal everything, and everybody thinking the same, being the same, doing the same, never deviating. So in that circumstance how in the world can those same people praise and promote a book like Fifty Shades of Grey?
Yeah, that was the question. So what's the answer?
Well, for one thing, the woman in the book is totally willing, after a fashion. Maybe not at first.
Oh, she's willing. Cough slut cough!
But the second thing is — and I may get into a little bit of trouble here. But a lot of people would look at Fifty Shades and they would say, “That’s soft porn, the book, the movie, that’s almost soft porn.” Now, where on the political spectrum do you find people of that bent, David?
CALLER: On the left.
... RUSH: And when they engage in that kind of stuff, it becomes art, not depravity, and not perversion. It becomes art. They don’t see the contradiction. They can promote filth and perversion and depravity as long as it’s art, and they love irritating people who do not think that it is. And so much of what they do — and do not discount this — much of what they do is irritating people like you and me. They get off on it. They are thrilled by it. They love agitating you. They love throwing things in your face. They love it when you lose. They love it when what you believe in is shown to be silly, old-fashioned, or what have you.
CALLER: Regardless, if it’s totally opposite of what they’re trying to say on one side of their face, then turn right around, “Well, this is profitable, let’s make another movie called Book Club.”
RUSH: Right. Hypocrisy totally escapes them. They’re not capable of being hypocrites. Everything they do has a specific reason for it, and it’s justified.
Okay, so we hate machismo, but we make an exception when we're creating sexually explicit material, which we force down people's throats as part of our mad-scientist plan for global domination (in a soy-boy beta kind of way). And we use the word "art" as cover for our cultural pornification (though if there's one word I've never heard anyone use in connection with Fifty Shades, it's "art").
Right. Got it.
The reality, of course, is that Fifty Shades wasn't cooked up by the Podesta brothers and Hillary Clinton in a lab funded by George Soros. Years before the Hollywood movies were made, Fifty Shades began asTwilight fan fiction written by a British author who originally used the pseudonym Snowqueen's Icedragon. (She later opted for the simpler pen name EL James). The trilogy of books was then published in print and electronically by a small e-book company founded by two Texans and two Australians. The books became a phenomenon and were eventually scooped up by major publishers worldwide. The trilogy has now been published in 52 languages.
That's some awfully complicated spirit cooking, even for the all-powerful Vast Liberal Conspiracy.
Why are the best-selling books of the 21st century about a macho BDSM fan? That's what the marketplace wanted. (Oh, and he's a sensitive soul deep down, with a history of being abused. So maybe he's a soy boy after all.)
Cross-posted at No More Mr. Nice Blog