Most Scandal-Ridden Politician Ever Quits Illinois Race [Chicago Machine]
Posted by CMAdmin
Pawnbroker Scott Lee Cohen wanted to be Lieutenant Governor of Illinois, and was going pretty well. Until it emerged that he’d once held a knife to the throat of a then-hooker girlfriend and had injected anabolic steroids.
He also and failed to pay child support and taxes, according to theChicago Tribune. The Democratic Party, who suspected this might come up in the campaign, asked him to step down after he unexpectedly won the party’s primary to run with Governor Pat Quinn. This despite a media appearance with his former-hooker ex ex-wife, pictured above, to ‘clear the air’ about his troubled past. Quinn is himself in office because of the allegations against Rod Blagojevich. Ah, Chicago.
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Scoring Sunday’s Nuptials: The New Economics of Marriage [Altarcations]
Posted by CMAdmin
Gawker Weddings Expert Phyllis Nefler has #GoneSkiing again, leaving me at the Altar(cations) with the NYT’s Weddings & Celebrations in my hand. Thankfully, our J-School Embed and onetime weekend editor Hunter Walker did me a solid. Hunter, be fearless.
I think I might be one of the first guys to try their hand at writing this column. [Ed. Technically true. But back in the day when Leon Neyfakh and Jon Liu did weekends, they posted Ad-Hoc Altarcations, which pitted them against the New York Post’s weddings. It was….glorious. So don’t fuck this up.] Weddings are a much bigger deal for women. [Ed. You’re fired.] Thanks to the toy, movie, and magazine companies, girls spend their whole lives being force-fed bridal fantasies. Without that background, I’m not nearly as well-versed in matrimonial customs as Phyllis and the other women who’ve written in this space over the years, but I’m glad to add the male perspective here. As a guy, I think I find the people in these pages even more contemptible than our regular Weddings experts do.
[Ed. Hunter, I’m totally absolving myself of any responsibility from anything that comes after this sentence.]
Unmarried men are on the bottom of the social totem pole. A recent report from the Pew Research Center breaks down these “New Economics of Marriage.” The data shows that, while the wage gap hasn’t completely closed, women are making major gains and dudes are on the decline. Wages for married women are growing faster than their husbands’ salaries. Salaries for single women of all education levels are rising faster than the incomes of bachelors. Unmarried men with no post-secondary education have actually seen their wages drop. For the first time, more women are graduating from college than men. This may be good for campus bros, but the rest of us single guys are screwed.
At this rate, we’ll be making less than the ladies in a few years time. This especially sucks for us since the current job market is brutal and centuries of sexist dating practices mean it’s still hard for guys to attract a mate without stable financial prospects.
Single men like me aren’t doing well in the workforce and we’re definitely on the outs in the dating game. Society has progressed to a point where the balance between feminism and sexism allows women to choose between climbing the corporate ladder or taking advantage of the old system and seeking out a sugar daddy.
For example, among the brides this week’s edition of vows there are flacks, financial analysts, and executives, but there’s also a 27 year-old community theater actress who married the chief executive of “Mapleton Communications, a company… that owns and operates 40 radios stations” on the West Coast and a 25 year-old “freelance photographer” who married the 44 year-old senior partner of a Dallas law firm.* Men don’t have this dual set of options.
All of this means that for guys like me, twenty somethings with questionable job prospects and more debt than savings, marriage often seems like an unattainable goal. Stereotypical guys supposedly fear commitment, but most of the dudes I know are much happier when they’re in relationships. Settling down means getting laid regularly and having someone who helps us avoid the male tendencies toward binge drinking and living in our own filth.
That’s why, as a financially unstable bachelor, I have an especially cold place in my heart for the wealthy newlyweds who feel the need to show off their relative financial security and allegedly happy relationships in the pages of a national newspaper.
In this week’s Vows Wai Gen Yee and Lorene Yue provided an extra meta example of the blend of self-promotion and self-love that’s showcased in the Times’ wedding coverage. Their story included a picture of the couple at their wedding holding pictures of themselves. It was a picture inside a picture of an egotistical celebration used to illustrate a column that is essentially, little more than an egotistical celebration. Contemplating this media whore mobius strip is enough to make your head explode:
Their story also included a tale that may be the all-time most completely unromantic recounting of a proposal ever:
“As the years passed, the couple rarely talked about marriage or commitment. Last July, as Ms. Yue’s 39th birthday was approaching, Mr. Yee, who wanted to be a father, did a rational analysis.
‘I was thinking, ‘She’s getting kind of old,’ ‘ he said. “I would either have to have children with Lorene immediately or find a new girlfriend and start the whole process all over.”
For her part, Ms. Yue said, ‘I figured it would be something we’d do in a couple of years…’
Instead, he pulled out a jewelry box one night over dinner and caught Ms. Yue by surprise…’
‘I think my first words were ‘You must be joking,’ ‘ Ms. Yue said. He sat back down in his chair. She eventually said yes.”
Good times!
So, who among this week’s crop of Times couples is the most obnoxiously ostentatious? Let’s score this sucker and find out!
Betsy Burton & Davidson Goldin
Both work in media +2
Her mother teaches at a Montessori School in New York +1
Their wedding took place in Tribeca +2
The bride is the “descendant of George Mason, an author of the Bill of Rights” +4
He graduated from Cornell +2
The groom is the “founder of Dolce-Goldin, a public relations firm” +2
Total: 13
Both work in media +2
The bride’s mother’s is named “Muffit C. Allen” +4
Her father’s first name is the initials “E.P.” +1
His father is the President of a home-building company +2
Their wedding took place in South Bend, Indiana -2
Total: 7
This was an epic battle between two pairs of flacks. In the end, Betsy Burton & Davidson Goldin won by being just a bit more high-powered, a lot more blue-blooded, and by not having their wedding in the Midwest.
Hunter Walker is Gawker’s J-School Embed. Phyllis Nefler will be back next weekend.
*The bride’s parent’s were the law partner and the photographer.
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Bullet Points: Socialite and Pharmaceutical Exec Gigi Jordan Charged with Murdering Her Autistic Son [Crime]
Posted by CMAdmin
Gigi Jordan, a multi-million pharmaceutical executive, was found in her $2,300/night suite “babbling incoherently” after trying to commit suicide, while her eight year-old son lay dead next to her. She’s being charged with feeding him an overdose of pills.
This story is, quite simply, one of the more insane, convoluted ones to come around in a while, especially with the conflicting nature of reports on Jordan. In just trying to suss out all the reports, it goes something like this:
- Gigi Jordan, a native Belgian, was the president of several New York-based pharmaceutical companies that manufactured drugs to treat cancer. None of the reports can seem to name the companies, though. After making her money in pharmaceuticals, Jordan got into the real estate game, making her fortune there. A New York Post source estimates Jordan’s value to be “about $100M.”
- In 2001, Jordan married Emil Valention Tzekov six days after divorcing the man she used to be married to, the pharmaceutical exec she made her fortune with, Raymond Mirra. Jordan gave birth to her son, Jude Michael, on July 13, 2001. It’d appear that the father of the son was Tzekov, who told the Daily News “That’s my son…I don’t know if I can talk about this.”
- Tzekov’s neighbors describe Jude Michael as “autistic” to the Daily News.
- Tzekov and Jordan got divorced in 2006.
- Tzekov told the Daily News he hadn’t seen Jordan or his son in a year.
- On Wednesday, Jordan checked into Room 1603 at The Peninsula Hotel.
- According to hotel staffers, she hangs a “Do Not Disturb” sign on the door, paid the bill in cash, ordered lots of room service, and “didn’t leave the room for two days.”
- According to the New York Post, Jordan’s aunt received an email from her threatening suicide and the murder of Jude. The aunt then contacted the 20th Precinct, faxing them the emails. The 20th moved into action, and figured Jordan was at The Peninsula.
- On showing up, police found the Do Not Disturb sign, and that Jordan had barricaded the door with either a couch or several chairs. On bursting down the door, they found Jordan lying on floor, foaming at the mouth and “babbling incoherently.” Her son, who’d been dead for what’s being estimated to be a day by police, was on the bed. Authorities believe Gigi Jordan fed Jude a lethal combination of Xanax and Ambien. Ambien’s been known to have a harsh side-effect of suicidal thoughts in some patients.
- Sources noted to the Post that the room was littered with pill bottles and “thousands” of pills, along with “scattered documents — including a suicide note penned by Jordan.”
- In the suicide note, she wrote that her son Jude was in “constant pain” and that she’d hoped “Jude [was in] a better place.” She also “mentioned speaking with a Wyoming child porn investigator about the sexual abuse of kids,” and cited the assistance of an ex-FBI agent. In an already bizarre and tragic case, this part sticks out:
Ex-FBI agent Flint Waters “told me many rich people are involved,” Jordan wrote. “Many wealthy guys trade child porn like a hobby.” Waters did not return a call Friday night.
- The Daily Newsalso reports that Jordan wrote that she donated $20M to Haiti relief efforts before attempting suicide, putting $12M to Doctors Without Borders and $8M to the Red Cross, noting that the other $7M in her estate would “be used for some better purpose in society.” Besides either organization now showing any record (though the News notes that this could be because she mailed the checks on Wednesday), this also conflicts with the New York Post’s sourced $100M valuation of her estate.
- On the website of a “Fertility guru”:
Jordan had said having her child has “helped awaken a spiritual connection to God.” “In learning how to release my fear of losing something I really wanted and to allow myself to believe I would have it,” she wrote, “I gave birth to a beautiful boy, and experienced a greater depth of love and connectedness with my child.”
- Jordan’s currently in the hospital right now, and she’s going to be charged with the murder of her son. She’s been cooperating with authorities, and gave them the password to her computer.
Now, just questions:
How did Gigi Jordan amass her fortune, and were these problems present before?
Why’d she check into The Peninsula?
How did nobody in Jordan’s life see this coming?
And most importantly, what part of Jordan’s past as a pharmaceutical executive will be tied to her current state as an incoherent, filicidal new-ager? Because something will be.
If you know anything, we’re listening.
Mom Gigi Jordan charged with murdering son after botched murder-suicide try at Peninsula hotel [NYDN]
Gigi Jordan feeds son, 8, fatal dose of pills, leaves strange 2-page note in botched murder-suicide [NYDN]
Rich ma ‘kills’ kid in slay-suicide bid [NYP]
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David Letterman, Jay Leno, Google Win Super Bowl XLIV [Highlights]
Posted by CMAdmin
Welcome to our post-Super Bowl XLIV world. Did you see that David Letterman/Jay Leno ad? Aren’t The Who so old and busted? OMG: PUPPY BOWL. Gay horses or something? A lot of amazing things happened. Then there was the football.
Let’s get this out of the way: The Saints of New Orleans scored 14 more points than the Colts of Indianapolis to win the Super Bowl. OK, on to the good stuff!
The Super Bowl is known for having commercials, and this year was no exception. The commercial that made the most people spit Pepsi One at their plasma screen televisions was this one for The Late Show with David Letterman. Jay Leno, Oprah and Dave all watched the Super Bowl together:
The Times has the story of how the ad came together last week. The Wrap says Letterman even wanted Conan O’Brien on board. This proves that the entire Late Night War was nothing more than an elaborate set up for this 15 second Late Show spot. Leno and Letterman were conspiring the whole time! Tomorrow, we’re going to see Conan, Leno and Letterman in an ad for Toyota where they drive a defective Prius off a cliff into a giant pool of money together.
Google was the night’s other big non-football winner. Their ‘Parisian Love’ spot has been around the Internet for a while, but it’s still most effective tech ad to hit the Super Bowl since Apple’s famous “1984.”
And we will give props to Snickers for hewing close to the classic Superbowl formula—sports + dudes + violence—but throwing in the twist of Golden Girls star Betty White and Abe Vigoda.
Just as the Late Night Wars made an appearance, so did the culture wars. This Super Bowl, millions of sports-illiterate nerds, women, Canadians and Gawker bloggers were introduced to Tim Tebow, the University of Florida quarterback who was not aborted by his mom, thank God. He starred in a couple of Focus on the Family ads to convince pregnant women that embryos aren’t just a cluster of cells—they’re precious potential Heisman Trophy-winners. This caused a level of pre-Super Bowl controversy that could not have been more out of proportion to the actual content of the ads:
So boring.
Other ads touched on hot social issues as well. Mainly: Gays made social progress by being deemed respectable enough to sell things to straights. A Budweiser ad featured a bull and a Clydesdale who became ‘good friends’ (gay lovers) despite the ‘fences’ (conservative social mores) that were put up to keep them apart. And here is an ad for Motorola, where the hotness of Megan Fox turns a gay couple straight:
(You will notice that the gays in this ad committed violence upon each other, just like the gays in that controversial 2007 Snickers ad. What does it mean!?)
Meanwhile, straight men took a step back in a bunch of ads that stereotyped us as misogynist dudebros. Particularly offensive was an ad for Internet TV device FloTV, which told men to “take off their dresses” and stand up to the joyless, ever-shopping harpies who are our significant others. And this admittedly well-made spot for the Dodge Charger made us feel the same way as did that guy in the high school locker room, the one who whipped everyone’s crotch with a wet towel.
When will society be ready to accept that all straight guys aren’t schlubs who trudge around in a testosterone haze, resenting their overbearing girlfriends? Some of us enjoy being emasculated; it’s actually sort of relaxing after centuries of oppressing everyone all the time.
A thoroughly unfunny Coke ad featuring The Simpsons plunged us deeper into despair:
Gays, gender, Conan O’Brien, The Simpsons jumping the shark. The concerns of the real world pressed hard on the slick, bright bubble of Super Bowl XLIV. Two players—the Colts’ Pierre Garcon and the Saints’ Jonathan Vilma—even had connections to Haiti:
We confronted our own mortality as embodied by the decrepit members of The Who creaking their way through the half-time show. Clearly, the children of Florida have nothing to fear from registered sex offender Pete Townshend, as long as they are able to move at a reasonable pace away from him:
And we realized that the Saints winning the Super Bowl doesn’t just make them the world champions of football; it is also God’s way of saying “sorry” for the whole Hurricane Katrina thing. As the Saints celebrated on the field and New Orleanians celebrated in the streets, announcer Jim Nantz reminded us of this, then listed a bunch of random parts of New Orleans to show off how connected he is to the place:
This Super Bowl we were ready to lose ourselves in some football while eating a quantity of chicken wings that could only be expressed in Roman numerals. Instead, reminders of the fundamental harshness and injustice of the real world kept dragging us down between every third play, making our chicken wings taste a little sour.
And that’s when we switched on the Puppy Bowl:
AWWWWWWWWWWWWW.
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Brangelina Challenges Queen Kardashian in Super Bowl of Photo Ops [Gossip Roundup]
Posted by CMAdmin
Did Brangelina’s presence make the Saints win, or was it Kim Kardashian’s tight end? Beyonce falls during a concert, Dr. Murray makes a creepy visit to Jacko’s tomb, Carrie Prejean gets engaged. Monday gossip is done preserving its purity.
- It is a truth universally acknowledged that a nationally televised event watched by millions is in want of celebrities contriving photo ops. Kim Kardashian won the Super Attention-Seeking Bowl, since her giant butt (itself a national pastime) all but secured the win for boyfriend Reggie Bush’s team. She wore a bizarrely shoulder-padded tweed blazer (I was going to say “Who wears a blazer to a football game?” but it looks like Brad Pitt did, too) and grabbed Reggie for an awkward post-game kiss. [fig.1] Brangelina also made an appearance, their first joint outing since the break-up rumor. They cheered for the Saints (since they are New Orleaners) and Maddox wore a charming hat. Unfortunately, since he was forced to sit next to his dad’s Rasta beret and scraggly beard, they looked like a tired jazz ensemble playing for nickels on the subway. [DailyMail] [DailyMail]
- Other Celebrity Bowl contenders: Tom Cruise playing “family man” with Suri, Katie, and son Connor. Hillary Swank looking coltish while cheering for the Saints. Ashton and Demi looking saintly while cheering for the Colts. J.Lo and Marc Anthony smiling graciously even though the Miami Dolphins, which they partially own, had a non-Super year. [Popeater] [DailyMail]
- Late to the game: Carrie Prejean announced her engagement to St. Louis Rams star and Ken doll clone Kyle Boller, but since his team wasn’t in the Super Bowl, and since she wasn’t naked, it went mostly unnoticed. [E!]
- Jersey Shore’s cast has been ordered to stop digging the paydirt: Finally wising up to the guido/ettes’ rapid acceleration towards overexposure, MTV is limiting their lucrative nightclub appearances to no more than two a week, all of which must be preapproved by producers. Should the orange ogres of the Garden State continue their reckless “pimping,” they will be fined. Of course, if the fines are less than the appearance fees, then the cyclone of Snooki will not slow, which MTV must know, since it hired these people precisely for their shamelessness. [P6]
- Page Six reports Conan O’Brien’s Central Park West penthouse is “quietly being shopped around with a $35 million price tag.” Add that to his $45 million severance package from NBC, and he’s on a roll with the lucrative exits. [P6]
- Dr. Conrad Murray visited Michael Jackson’s tomb, which he probably thought would seem sympathetic heading into his involuntary manslaughter charge, when in fact it was just creepy. [TMZ]
- “I’m very fragile,” says Heidi Montag. “I’m not in a great place right now.” We know. [People]
- Performing in Brazil, Beyonce fell. It almost looks like part of the choreography, but this cellphone video makes me motion sick, so you’ll have to assess it on your own.
- “And then it dawned on me that Italians have gone from Leonardo DaVinci to Sophia Loren to Snooki. What the [bleep] is that about?” Curb Your Enthusiasm’s Susie Essman left out Donatella Versace and Victoria Gotti. Then again: Monica Bellucci. It’s a wash. [P6]
- Charlie Sheen will be charged with felony menacing today for his Christmas switchblade attack on wife Brooke Mueller, but he might take a plea deal if the D.A. lets him drop it to a misdemeanor. Is there anything left to say on this case, other than a shudder and prolonged sigh? [TMZ]
- Michelle Trachtenberg tells a revenge story: Her teen nemesis brutalized her—”this one girl threw me down a flight of stairs, fractured my ribs, punched and fracture my nose”—but then, years later, they act like old friends and go to restaurants together despite Michelle’s still-seething hatred? “We were coming out of a restaurant and there was a wall of like 20 paparazzi… I turned to her and was like, ‘Oh, I’m sorry. I’m really famous. They need to take my picture. Sucks for you.’” Hollywood makes no sense. [P6]
- Diddy didn’t sleep for 78 hours. Shouldn’t he be dead by now? [Twitter]
Figure 1.
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Gov. David Paterson Spokeswoman Denies NYT Has a Resignation-Worthy Bombshell [Scandal]
Posted by CMAdmin
The Business Insider posted an unconfirmed report that the New York Times‘ David Paterson story is so big that the New York governor will resign tomorrow. But Paterson’s office is pushing back, telling Gawker “the governor is not resigning.”
We asked Paterson’s deputy communications director Marissa Shoenstein for a response and she emailed the following: “There is absolutely zero truth to these rumors. The governor is not resigning.”
Reached by phone, Shorenstein also claimed that the story isn’t coming out tomorrow or “any time soon” and called it a “profile” that’s going to be running in the Metro section of the New York Times. She says more than one Times writer will be bylined on the piece and that her office has been in contact with them and the governor is cooperating. Finally, when asked whether or not anything that’s going to be written in the forthcoming Times piece on Gov. Paterson could be described as scandalous, a “bombshell,” or anything that might find itself in the public’s general interest, Shorenstein gave a flat-out denial: “No.”
This, of course, is all spin from the governor. The Times will publish when it’s good and ready. And they’ll have the final word. In the mean time, We left messages for NYT spokeswoman Abbe Serphos and for NYT metro editor Joe Sexton on both his home and cell phones. We’ll update with their comment as soon as we hear back.
Until then, we’re still left wondering: What the hell is in this thing?
Earlier, some commenters gave us some ideas.
- Runner Up: “He’s not really blind.”
- “Perhaps they’ve discovered that he has no idea how to govern.”
- “I call banking kickbacks. That, or he wrote a cheque for a hooker like Jerry Springer.”
- “He first became Lieutenant Governor when Eliot Spitzer hired him for sex?“
- “I’m guessing that he’s a masturbator.”
- “It’s a hot li’l female, the Cuomo team is workin’ overtime, and he will not resign.”
- “He’s a hardcore Warcraft player who got a little too into erotic role playing as a female blood elf mage. Expect some pretty disgusting screenshots from Goldshire.”
- “He’s a third-party in the John Edwards/Rielle Hunter sex tape.”
- “Basically it’s that he is actually a Belgian-born white dude named Tim Kimberly and he was once a paid assassin for Opus Dei.”
- “Unless the “bombshell” Paterson news involves either of the two philias — pedophilia, necrophilia — or active drug-dealing to under-age children, serial murder, cannibalism, or dog fighting, I’m not going to give a shit.”
And finally, our winner:
Wow. Just…wow. More as we get it, but in the mean time, the Paterson camp is firm in their stance of noting that there’s nothing any of us should care about in this thing.
Update 1, 8:15 PM: Business Insider has now posted an update, noting a denial from Paterson’s camp that matches up with what we got from Shorenstein. They’ve amended their headline with an asterisk, and other than coming from Paterson’s “communications team” the denial’s source goes otherwise unnamed.
Update 2, 10:00 PM: The Associated Press is running a story sourced via an anonymous Democrat “close to the situation” that Paterson met with Democratic leadership over the weekend, regarding his re-election plans. The source, however, notes that it was over the question of whether or not he’s going to resign his office or announce that he won’t be running again. This meeting has—as spun by Paterson’s spokesman Richard Fife—nothing to do with rumors and/or accusations surrounding his personal life, but is instead simply part of “routine re-election campaign calls.”
Hunter Walker contributed to this report.
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Hungry Coyotes Descend on Columbia Campus in Advance of Gossip Girl Shoot [Wildlife]
Posted by CMAdmin
This week, Gossip Girl will film at Columbia’s Morningside Heights campus. This morning, three coyotes ranged the university’s stately grounds. Coincidence, or dark omen?
A tipster forwarded this email from Barnard’s Director of Public Safety:
Dear All,
Columbia Public Safety reports the possible presence of coyote’s on the Morningside Campus.
Three animals identified as coyotes were observed in front of Lewisohn Hall this morning, 911 was contacted and NYPD responded. NYPD spotted one of the
animals and confirmed it was a coyote. The one coyote that was seen by NYPD and CUPS went behind the CEPSR build and it is believed exited the campus.
An additional sighting by CU facilities was called in approximately 10:00 AM this morning but was not confirmed. All members of the community are advised not to approach these animals.If there are any sightings, please call Columbia Public Safety immediately at 212-xxx-xxxx or Barnard Public Safety at 212-xxx-xxxx
Thank You,
Dianna M. Pennetti
Director of Public Safety
It’s the latest in a string of coyote incidents: Last month, a coyote was captured at 155th street and Broadway; a couple days ago, a New York Times reader snapped a couple pictures of a coyote bounding over a frozen pond in Central Park. Before the past few weeks, there had been only 3 coyotes spotted in Manhattan over 10 years. Why have a cluster of coyotes descend on the upper regions of the island now? A troubling theory: According to Wikipedia, coyotes subsist on “small mammals.” This Thursday, a number of bite-sized mammals will be released in Morningside Heights:
WATCH OUT, TAYLOR MOMSEN!
[photo via NewYorkology]
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Rich People Yachting Feud Disconnected from World [Sail Of The Century]
Posted by CMAdmin
A feud between Oracle CEO Larry Ellison and fellow billionaire Ernesto Bertarelli over the rules for their America’s Cup yacht race has apparently cost the contest hundreds of millions in sponsorship. Weep for the wealthy; they have problems too. [BusinessWeek]
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Scenes from The Tonight Show’s Final Wreckage [War Photography]
Posted by CMAdmin
Most of Conan O’Brien’s staff turned in their badges and Blackberries this weekend, and employee Aaron Bleyart documented the scorched earth affair. No, seriously, the place has been razed. NBC’s preferred renovation appears to be explosives. [BAM]
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The Dance-Card Problem: College Girls Outnumber College Guys, Misandrist Chaos Ensues [Dating]
Posted by CMAdmin
A trend showing women outnumbering men on some college campuses gave the Sunday Styles an excuse to find the worst people at these schools, and quote them. Women get painted as floozies, but men? We’re painted as seed-spreading, penis-powered primates.
The problem is that some of it’s so, so true. Painfully so.
An entire thesis can be written about Alex Williams’ piece, headlined “The New Math on Campus,” which starts like this:
ANOTHER ladies’ night, not by choice. After midnight on a rainy night last week in Chapel Hill, N.C., a large group of sorority women at the University of North Carolina squeezed into the corner booth of a gritty basement bar. Bathed in a neon glow, they splashed beer from pitchers, traded jokes and belted out lyrics to a Taylor Swift heartache anthem thundering overhead. As a night out, it had everything - except guys. “This is so typical, like all nights, 10 out of 10,” said Kate Andrew, a senior from Albemarle, N.C. The experience has grown tiresome: they slip on tight-fitting tops, hair sculpted, makeup just so, all for the benefit of one another, Ms. Andrew said, “because there are no guys.”
Forgetting that “there are no men in this town” is the “waiter, there’s a fly in my soup” of straight women’s blanket pejoratives—especially in New York, where the women-to-man ratio is also skewed in “favor” of men—when literalized, it apparently creates issues. These issues include:
- Questions from your parents about why you don’t have friends who are men, or a boyfriend.
- Fierce competition from other women for the “few men” on campus.
- Being good enough to get a man to stop “playing the field” and settle down.
- Which sometime gives way to promiscuous behavior and (this is a quote) “..Girls feel[ing] pressured to do more than they’re comfortable with, to lock it down.”
- Those things some women feel pressured to do more than they’re comfortable with include “a man’s cheating” as “‘that’s a thing that girls let slide, because you have to,’ said Emily Kennard, a junior at North Carolina. ‘If you don’t let it slide, you don’t have a boyfriend.’”
- This happens because men are creating a “man’s ideal” of relationships, according to a UGA professor, who claims this ideal to be, quite simply “more partners, more sex.”
- And then there’s this: “Commitment? A good first step would be his returning a woman’s Facebook message.”
- Finally, men can essentially show up drooling on themselves after huffing an entire case of Home Depot’s finest primer, and still get laid.
“A lot of guys know that they can go out and put minimal effort into their appearance and not treat girls to drinks or flatter them, and girls will still flirt with them,” said Felicite Fallon, a senior at Florida State University, which is 56 percent female.
Is the New York Times is trying to start some kind of gender-population war? Or are people really as awful as this article would lead us to believe? Probably a little bit of both. Because—real talk—the truth is:
- Your parents are old, tell them to STFU. They’re Baby Boomers and tried to fuck everything that moved because the “times were different.” Why are you listening to them now?
- If College Girls want the kind of man who enjoys this kind of “fierce competition” over him, then they’re inherently welcoming that competition.
- Why would College Girls want a man who doesn’t want to settle down in favor of putting his penis in as many women as he could? If they want that kind of man, they’re kinda welcoming that kind of behavior.
- If college girls are dealing with the kind of man who reserves his judgment of you based on what happens on “the first night,” they also welcome him into their lives to come and go as he pleases. Literally.
- Do women really want to be with a guy who forces them to condone that behavior? Also, does a guy want to be with a woman desperate enough to condone that kind of behavior? Because, really, I don’t.
- Noting a “man’s ideal” of relationships is “fucking everything that moves” is antiquated, misandrist bullshit. Each man has their own ideal of what a good relationship is. Mine is dating someone with the good sense not to put up with me being an asshole. Lots of men are actually like this!
- People who read too much into minimal communications—like Facebook messages, or texting—are going to eventually go insane. On the same token, since College Girl took College Guy home and slept with him after meeting him at a bar—presumably drunk—under what social contract does him not returning a Facebook message or a text make him a bad guy? If he used an emotional appeal to get there, it’s one thing. But if he used the appeal of raging, two hour drunksex, it’s just more misandry.
- Finally, if women lower your standards for men, they’ll probably respond in kind, by either (A) dropping to these new lows or (B) lowering their standards for women.
Recently, there was a dust-up online when former Gawker contributor Natasha Vargas-Cooper noted on her blog “The Evolutionary Difference Between Man and Bro,” citing an example from author Julie Klausner’s forthcoming book on dating, noting how disenchanting dating some guys can be, and the length to which those experiences are tolerated. Another blogger—New York Press writer Jamie Peck—stepped in with this:
It seems disingenuous to me, though, to habitually put up with this kind of treatment and then complain about it, unless of course, you like having something to complain about, in which case you should take up a healthier hobby, like shark hunting or heroin. I’m not saying it’s not shitty when guys behave this way, but you do have the ultimate power to walk. I’d rather not date anyone at all than have a man who makes me wanna kill (note: this does not mean you can’t fuck anyone; it’s that nebulous in-between thing that trips most ladies up).
Correct! And there are many men who’d rather date women who don’t put up with this kind of shit. It’s just that none of them exist to—or were quoted by—the Times.
Again, though: are we really to believe in 2010 that so many young women—Or at least the ones without blogs, and maybe even some of the ones with them?—are really so genuinely, commonly tolerant of men’s despicable behavior all in the name of love,?
Evidence would suggest “no,” for the sheer inanity that the Times used to set their theory up, here.
Figure 1:
Jayne Dallas, a senior studying advertising who was seated across the table, grumbled that the population of male undergraduates was even smaller when you looked at it as a dating pool. “Out of that 40 percent, there are maybe 20 percent that we would consider, and out of those 20, 10 have girlfriends, so all the girls are fighting over that other 10 percent,” she said.
Congratulations “unconsidered” 20%. You’re apparently less likely to end up getting brain disease through your dick, as that’s easily one of the more despicable quotes delivered to the Styles Section, ever.
Figure 2:
Thanks to simple laws of supply and demand, it is often the women who must assert themselves romantically or be left alone on Valentine’s Day, staring down a George Clooney movie over a half-empty pizza box.
*Throws hands up, tosses laptop on floor*
Right, well. We’re done here. New York Times, please go fuck anybody but us, today. Particularly, yourself.
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