Crappy articles of the day

Checking the news today I decided to take a break from the usual suspects and catch up with the world’s happenings via The Telegraph. Granted, its editorial stance is usually not in line with my personal politics, but it’s good to get a range of views.

That is, if you can concentrate on them, amongst the REALLY IRRITATING ARTICLES they publish.

The first was a comment piece by James Delingpole on the Nicola Brewer comments about maternity leave harming women’s careers. Since he’d obviously written it to be an annoying little bastard* and bait people like me, I don’t want to spend too much time on it, but suffice it to say the gist was: ‘men are not genetically predisposed to childrearing, paternity leave is stupid’. This comment in particular struck me:

And now Nicola Brewer, the head of the Equalities And Human Rights Commission, is proposing I should be penalised for being male. She wants a “significant rethink of family policy”, whereby men are given the same parental rights and responsibilities women have.

Penalised for being male, James? By having equal rights and responsibilities in the workplace? You know that penalisation and equality rarely mean the same thing, right? Now the current situation where women are overwhelmingly primary carers as well as (often) full time workers to the detriment of their careers – that’s penalisation on grounds of gender. You don’t know you’re born, mate.

And I’m done rising to that one.

Then there’s Rowan Pelling (who I usually like) opining that parents should be “proud” if their daughters become a Playboy Bunny. I’m sure most parents are overwhelmingly proud of their kids anyway, regardless of their career, but opining that there’s nothing wrong with being a Bunny simply because the application process includes a maths test is oversimplistic to say the least.

However much Playboy try to sanitise their brand image by marketing pencil cases to under-age girls, it’s still a porn brand, and a pretty misogynistic one at that. They own a suite of porn channels which run programmes such as “”Bound, Gagged & Shagged”, “Piss Loving Lesbian Sluts” and “Extreme Insertions”*.

The human, female incarnations of the Playboy Bunny not only enhance the brand for these other activities, they *are* the brand. It’s beside the point that the women working as Bunnies are “strictly vetted, rigorously trained and fiercely chaperoned” – they’re the figurehead for the whole of the rest of the caboodle and, in a way, representative of the entire porn industry. To paraphrase Adhesively Unhallenged: if being a Bunny is so liberating, why don’t men do it?

Finally, still on the sex industry (well of course – it’s everywhere), we have reports that the heavily opposed lap dancing bar ‘Club Redd’ has burned down, just weeks after opening. The fire service have made no comment on the cause, but the club owner places the blame firmly at the feet of anti-lapdancing protestors.

Can I say first and foremost that arson is not cool?

Having got that out of the way – and assuming it was arson – proprietor Lee Valls demonstrates the contempt for women I can only assume is endemic in his profession by comparing the anti-lapdancing contingent to (you’ve guessed it) Nazis:

“With some people it runs to a high passion,” he said. “I compare it to the book burning in Berlin in 1939.”

Except it’s not really, is it, Lee? Because – and I wish this point didn’t need making – poor books weren’t being exploited by rich drunks for jollies on a bibliophile’s night out. Random passing books weren’t subject to being read without their consent. All books everywhere weren’t being degraded by the mere existence of libraries. Do you get my point, Lee? It’s a shitty metaphor, but it’s yours. A heads up: women aren’t books.

(Also – comparing everything to the Nazis is so fucking lazy, isn’t it? Not to mention disrespectful).

Any more for any more on irritating articles of the day? Consider this an open thread for crappy journalism.

*I totally did that to googlebomb him – click on it, won’t you?

**hat tip to Bea on the LFN network for those titles!