Anthony Lane writes like a dream and reviews intelligently. I point out this last paragraph of his latest review merely to observe the heterosexism of many alleged opponents of pedophilia. Lane is reviewing the hot new movie, “Tadpole,” in which a fifteen-year old boy is molested by older women. The law describes this as criminal conduct on the part of the women involved – one of them even, in Lane’s words, “pimps” the youth to her friends. But the New Yorker regards this not only as unremarkable, but a hugely lucky break for the kid. The end of the movie suggests that the teenager eventually settles for sex partners roughly his own age, after going trhough a pedophile phase. Lane complains:
The implication is that when [Bebe] Neuwirth, wearing a leather skirt and a fur coat, guides you back to her apartment, gives you a massage, and spirits you into her bed, the whole thing is just a phase, something you have to go through and grow out of, when it is, of course, as good as Oscar’s life will ever get. Honestly, kids today: no respect.
Now I think a commonsensical view of pedophilia will make a distinction between a horny fifteen year old boy and a mature women and other abusive relationships. But then I’m not Mary Eberstadt or Rod Dreher. Here is pedophilia chic in an almost classic formulation in a movie with big stars in it, reviewed in the New Yorker. And the social conservatives are utterly mute. Do you think they would be quiet if this were a same-sex relationship? Tells you something about their real agenda, doesn’t it?
“A LEGACY OF MISERY”: That’s how the New York Times describes the results of the war to liberate Afghanistan. I keep thinking it can’t get any worse, and then it does.
MURDERING FREE WOMEN: I finally read Sarah Lyall’s moving account in the Times of the disgusting murder of a young Kurdish immigrant to Sweden by her own father. Talk about a clash of civilizations. The young woman simply wanted to choose whom she married. Her father and brother regarded her as “a whore” for doing so, and repeatedly beat her, stalked her and eventually murdered her. In a classic act of appeasement, a Kurdish member of parliament had tried to broker a deal between this young woman and her father, in which the woman would stay out of the national media in return for her father’s leaving her alone. Like most attempts to appease thugs, this one failed. I notice that religion is unmentioned in Lyall’s account, and the story sadly bends over backwards to be p.c. Is not the fact that this woman was killed by a strict Muslim relevant? Or is that basic fact deemed to inflammatory for the Times’ readers? I love this summary of the issues involved:
[I]t was this very desire for independence that provoked her father into a rage so great that he killed her in January, turning her into the tragic emblem of a European society’s failure to bridge the gap in attitudes between its own culture and those of its newer arrivals.
This strikes me as a euphemism. The fundamentalist Islamic attitude toward women is barbaric. Pim Fortuyn was right that immigrants who treat women like dirt should indeed have no place in a Western country. If they cannot treat women, gays and other religious groups with tolerance, they should stay in the cultural backwaters where they belong.
IT’S WORSE IN NORWAY: Check out Bruce Bawer’s sobering account of unassimilable Islamic fundamentalism in Europe. Here’s a paragraph that stopped me in my tracks:
In September 2001 (only five days, in fact, before the destruction of the World Trade Center), the Norwegian newspaper Dagbladet reported that 65 percent of rapes of Norwegian women were performed by “non-Western” immigrants-a category that, in Norway, consists mostly of Muslims. The article quoted a professor of social anthropology at the University of Oslo (who was described as having “lived for many years in Muslim countries”) as saying that “Norwegian women must take their share of responsibility for these rapes” because Muslim men found their manner of dress provocative. One reason for the high number of rapes by Muslims, explained the professor, was that in their native countries “rape is scarcely punished,” since Muslims “believe that it is women who are responsible for rape.” The professor’s conclusion was not that Muslim men living in the West needed to adjust to Western norms, but the exact opposite: “Norwegian women must realize that we live in a multicultural society and adapt themselves to it.”
And the only people, according to our media, who dissent from this are extreme right-wingers. Why not call them what they really are: liberals?
POSTMODERNISM MAKES YOU HUNGRY: A new angle from the Onion.
THE DEMS AND THE HANGOVER: As usual, Mike Crowley delivers the goods on Congressional maneuverings on the market.
THE GREENSPAN BUBBLE?: This short piece detailing how the Fed badly handled interest rates in 1998 and 1999 helped me get a better handle on our current hang-over. Worth a look.
BACKLASH CENTRAL: I thought awarding Bill McGowan a National Press Award for tackling the tough issue of “diversity” in the newsroom would prompt a protest from the usual suspects. Lo and behold, it has.
THE HOOTERS DEFENSE: And I thought this tactic would only work in a gay bar.
JUDIS’ PRESCIENCE: “When people say Bill Clinton will go down as a great president because of his record on the economy, they mean two different things. First, they mean that Clinton’s economic policies have contributed to an unusually prosperous eight years. By and large, that’s true. Second, they mean that his economic team – including Robert Rubin, Lawrence Summers, and Alan Greenspan – developed an enduring formula for successful economic management. By and large, that’s nonsense. In fiscal policy, international economic policy, and monetary policy, the principles with which the Clinton administration has become identified can’t solve the challenges faced by the next administration. In fact, they didn’t even solve the challenges faced by this one.” – John B. Judis, The New Republic, January 2001.
The Dish 