02/24/2006
Blink and Tipping Point author Malcolm Gladwell is blogging.
Video: Tea-bagging ruins a life.
Ohio Democratic Senator Robert Hagan rips Rep. Ron Hood's House bill banning gay adoption with a "tongue-in-cheek" alternative proposal — ban Republicans from adopting. His "faux memo" reads: "Credible research exists that strongly suggests that adopted children raised in Republican households, though significantly wealthier than their Democrat-raised counterparts, are more at risk for developing emotional problems, social stigmas, inflated egos (and) an alarming lack of tolerance for others they deem different than themselves...I have spoken to many adopted children raised in Republican households who have admitted that, well, it’s just plain boring most of the time."
Posted 11:21 AM EST by Andy Towle in Elsewhere | Permalink
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I LOVE IT!!!! Finally, someone firing back at the supidity!
Posted by: Rad | Feb 24, 2006 11:23:30 AM
Fantastic! This guy has a magnificent sense of humor and the biting wit is aimed in the correct direction.
Posted by: wayne | Feb 24, 2006 11:29:29 AM
Regarding the tea-bagging incident...I feel sorry for the family, but found myself thinking it played more like a Samantha Bee interview on The Daily Show. I kept waiting for the punchline, or one of Samantha's famous "you're staring at my breasts"...sorry to laugh, but I did.
Posted by: wayne | Feb 24, 2006 11:44:13 AM
Rep. Hagan's lampooning of the proposed legislation is beautiful! I hope that everyone knows that the Ohio Revised Code specifically prohibits the extension of civil rights protection to pedophiles and homosexuals. Yes, folks, it's true, in Ohio GLBTs are equal with criminals.
Posted by: JT Stout | Feb 24, 2006 12:32:34 PM
I must be missing something... "Tea-bagging ruins a life." makes it sound like you're mocking the kid and his family.
In fact, tea-bagging was the least of it. If you watch the video, what actually happened is a group of kids jumped him, held him down, and attempted to sodomize him with a foreign object. That's called attempted rape. You think that's FUNNY? WTF?
Posted by: Rich | Feb 24, 2006 1:07:16 PM
It was simply the title given to the video, Rich, if you look at the You Tube site. My interpretation of it as funny is all in your head.
Posted by: andy | Feb 24, 2006 1:15:59 PM
Red Sox rookies running the field in their underwear? I guess that is as close to "vibrating phone sex" as we get here in the States.
Rad
Posted by: Rad | Feb 24, 2006 1:30:06 PM
Love his wit! Mr. Hagan should run for statewide office in Ohio. God knows we need a change here after 16 years of Republican control.
Posted by: Dave | Feb 24, 2006 1:31:29 PM
Rich, I'm the one that said I found humor in the tea-bagging video. I empathize with the family, as I said previously, but the quality and content of the video struck me as something directly from Comedy Central.
Posted by: wayne | Feb 24, 2006 2:01:36 PM
Wayne, I agree it looks like a Samantha Bee interview. That's because it's an unfortunate example of exactly the kind of over-the-top, playing-your-heartstrings-with-the-deftness-of-a-rhino "journalism" that plagues prime-time "news-magazines", the local "evening news", and Barbara Walters interviews. ...which is exactly the kind of thing Samantha Bee is so good at mocking.
But video production quality aside, this is apparently the real story of a young guy who was jumped by a group of guys who attempted to sodomize him against his will. That's pretty serious and I would guess genuinely traumatic.
For whoever titled that video to focus on the teabagging as what "ruined his life" is not only inaccurate but minimizes and mocks the actual crime.
Which is why I'm perplexed that Andy linked to it and simply repeated the title with no explanation. What's the point?
Posted by: Rich | Feb 24, 2006 3:16:15 PM
Andy, thanks for replying.
I think the title was in poor taste, and worse, could easily be interpreted as mocking this serious incident.
I do trust that you don't share the apparent views of whoever titled the video, but by repeating it and providing no other context, there is an implied endorsement that I found surprising and confusing coming from you.
Really it's not a big deal and I'm not offended. I'm just trying to understand the point you were trying to make.
Posted by: Rich | Feb 24, 2006 4:15:55 PM
Rich: I can't see the video at work because of filters, but I do know that Mr. Towle tends to post things that will generate an intellectual or emotional response that will result in dialogue and debate. I think, given what I've read, that has been the result.
Posted by: JT Stout | Feb 24, 2006 4:55:49 PM
What exactly is the context of the video? Is it a dramatization...or a parody?
Somehow she just doesn't come-off as the outraged parent of a boy was was sexually assaulted and nearly gang-raped. In that context, her use of the phrase "tea-bagging" just rings-false.
Posted by: Ted B. (Charging Rhino) | Feb 24, 2006 6:22:51 PM
I also took the link title to be making fun of the situation re: the teabagging. The poor kid dealt with a lot more than that. You may not have meant it as disrespectful, but it sure comes off that way.
Posted by: Xavius | Feb 24, 2006 8:06:24 PM
OMG are people really this utterly humorless? There is one thing more humiliating than being teabagged and nearly banana raped and that is HAVING YOUR MOM TALK ABOUT IT ON TELEVISION. and that my friends, is what makes it hilarious. heartless? cruel? insensitive? yes. yes. yes. made me LOL? YES! jeez not everything needs to be treated with the obligatory "ohh I'm sensing we have real issues to work on here" people. sometimes just shrugging shit off, toughening up instead of being a total puss and accepting that your supposed friends might be complete dicks and just MOVING ON is better.
Posted by: tetley natural brewed | Feb 24, 2006 8:21:56 PM
You're right. Rape is hilarious.
Posted by: Xavius | Feb 25, 2006 12:38:13 PM
For some strange reason, it astonishes me that people would use non-existant e-mail accounts (Tom) or non-existant mail servers (Tetley). There must be something so utterly horrible in these people's lives that they have to hide who they are.
Again, no matter what a person thought of him, Mr. Schooler used his real name and e-mail.
Posted by: JT Stout | Feb 25, 2006 6:46:42 PM
Quite a stretch to suggest that a persons desire to maintain anonymity online must mean there’s something wrong with them. Maybe they just don’t want to be harassed by people who manifest disdain for their opinion to the point that they try and contact the person directly outside of the context of the comments being made. Knowing that there are people out there who don’t respect those boundaries is enough of a justification for creating online nicks that don’t reveal their identity. Not that there’s anything horribly wrong with a person who would cyberstalk someone with whom they disagreed.
Anyway, the kid doesn't look too torn up about the incident and lord knows I'd love to be a fly on the wall when they had the family meeting in which they all decided it would be a good idea to go on the local news with this. The attempted rape is not funny, but the set-up of the teabagging is. She identifies teabagging as "holding him down and rubbing their exposed genitals on him". That's not true. That might be what happened in this case but that's not an accurate definition of teabagging. TB doesn't involve the penis, just the testicles and doesn't usually involve force. In fact, the person who gets teabagged is usually asleep or passed out drunk and it's his buddies who do it to him after they paint all over his face with magic marker. This woman has been misinformed but I bet the kid knew that teabagging had merely a mischievous connotation before the attack. It’s difficult to hear teabagging in any context other than a humorous one. If they hadn’t included that bit, this report would have been taken more seriously.
Posted by: Chad Hanging | Feb 26, 2006 1:34:03 AM
JT,
I use a personal nickname.
I had a crank caller for FOUR years the cops "claimed" they cdn't help me with.
Last week, I finally email blocked and phone blocked a married guy.
Posted by: Gilli | Feb 26, 2006 1:49:37 PM
Gilli: Given how easy it was for me to find all sorts of information about people posting on blogs I don't necessarily advocate using real names. I do, however, think that when, as is the case with Mr. Towle's blog, either an e-mail address or URL is required, they should be legitimate. That is one of the lovely differences between Towleroad and smut sites (not that I have anything against them, in fact I LOVE them): Mr. Towle challenges people to engage in discourse both on and off the blog, the later challenges people to get off on the blog.
Posted by: JT STout | Feb 26, 2006 2:48:00 PM
lol.
Posted by: lol | Apr 13, 2006 12:58:17 AM