Rush Limbaugh needs a lesson in preserving criticism capital because he’s just wasting it all on nothing. As with Sandra Fluke, Limbaugh has propped up the sails of a female writer named Tracie McMillan, who is making the rounds peddling her book across normal elite-progressive channels. The same concept applies to the Southern Poverty Law Center’s attack on Manosphere sites. The attack will merely increase Manosphere traffic.
So the positive impact of the negative review, or the inefficient use of negative capital. When a polarized figure or a polarized group rails against an opponent on the other side of the political spectrum, that opponent will actually gain esteem in the eyes of the camp-members with whom he or she is associated. Sandra Fluke’s testimony was DOA…until Rush spoke up. Tracie McMillan’s book was nothing…until Rush spoke up. He made martyrs of both.
But let me jump to McMillan’s book, The American Way of Eating. It sounds like a stupid piece of prole porn where the author works in a few dirty jobs for a couple of weeks and then tells us all how shitty it all was. McMillan worked at a New York City Applebee’s and was roofied by a co-worker and sexually assaulted by one of her co-worker’s friends.
She also has a piece at The Atlantic which covers her stint as a fruit picker in California. The takeaway from that little story is either that fruit picking is difficult work or that she’s a crybaby who sucks at performing manual labor. McMillan starts the piece by detailing her nausea and then details her continuous whining about everything – the working conditions, the heat. But through the course of the piece, McMillan makes clear what we should be taking away from all of this:
There are other ways it could be worse, of course. I could have to keep doing this job indefinitely. I could lack the resources to pick up and move to a more temperate climate. I could be without a car. I could have a less friendly supervisor and could thus lose my job for spending an hour sitting in the shade and listlessly picking at fruit. I could be less educated about heat sickness and have somehow pressed on, working until I actually did collapse from the heat, or the dust, or the food poisoning, or whatever it is that has wrought havoc on me today. And I could be doing all of this without any legal status in the country, terrified that at any moment I’ll be forcibly returned to the border.
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I’m sure picking fruit in the hot sun all day is very hard work. My brother is fair skinned and he had trouble working in the hot sun all day. He would sweat off his sunscreen and then get a sunburn. I believe the only solution to these lousy working conditions is to send all the migrant workers home. The prices of fruits and vegetables will sky rocket, but that isn’t a big deal. People will plant their own vegetable gardens, which is what they used to do. It is great exercise. I hate going to Produce Junction anyway.
That is the great thing about fruit and vegetables, you can grow them yourself, and just eat what’s in season. That’s how it was done in the past. An orange was considered a rare treat in the winter.
In the restaurant piece, it sounds like she volunteered to be a white woman alone with a group of underclass blacks and hispanics, with the usual result. Restaurant culture, sure that’s the problem.
[Chuck: Summed it up perfectly. She's writing as if it was the restaurant's boys' club that led to her eventual assault. Has nothing to do with the hispanics and blacks that work there.]
Why would the thought of being sent home be terrifying? It’s not like you would be in any physical danger.
last time i visited israel it was on a teen tour and they took us to a kibbutz and woke us up at 5 am to pick pears. thats who picks the fruit in israel, israeli teens on kibbutzes. it fucking sucked and i got myself kicked off the 7 week tour after 10 days to avoid it.
Cesar Chavez wanted the government to restrict immigration to protect the labor market. Not the sort of thing you think of you imagine coming out of a civil rights icon.
C’mon, does any really believe that she was raped?
“Everything was, and remains, fuzzy; it was weeks before I heard the full story. ”
Translation: “I needed time to make up a story.”
Feminist women abandoned cooking and now it has turned into a “boy’s club.” Feminists should blame themselves, but instead they sit and complain. We already know feminists feel threatened by anything that men enjoy.
“When a polarized figure or a polarized group rails against an opponent on the other side of the political spectrum, that opponent will actually gain esteem in the eyes of the camp-members with whom he or she is associated.”
It’s a symbiotic relationship, also embodied in the blog world. Without the Ta-Weezies, the Hugo Futrelles, and the Jizzabel bunch, manosphere sites would have less to talk about; and similarly for the other side.
Looking at her pic, I gotta call BS on her roofie story.
Don’t know if she was raped, and I’m not saying she wasn’t. But even if she was, I don’t see how that makes her an infallible authority on this subject, or any subject for that matter.
The concept of civil rights was not as “advanced” in those days. Back then it was kind of assumed that immigration policy should benefit the citizenry.
I’ve seen what this woman looks like. If I had access to roofies I personally wouldn’t waste them on her
@several above,
Critic of a person’s appearance is not an argument.
Nor was it meant to be jz