{"id":9002,"date":"2012-02-03T10:14:38","date_gmt":"2012-02-03T17:14:38","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/pwoodford.net\/blog\/?p=9002"},"modified":"2012-02-03T13:48:30","modified_gmt":"2012-02-03T20:48:30","slug":"two-kinds-of-people","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/pwoodford.net\/blog\/?p=9002","title":{"rendered":"Two Kinds of People"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"A friend posted a nasty little joke photo to Facebook.\u00a0 No, not the one on the left, which is just one of many anti-Michelle Obama images I found on the net.\u00a0 His showed Lucy and Ricky facing each other with caption balloons above their heads.\u00a0 Lucy: “The doctor says I can’t have sex for six weeks.”\u00a0 Ricky: “What does your dentist say?”<\/p>\n

There was a time I’d have chuckled at that, but today it repels me.\u00a0 I thought we had agreed, at least in non-Republican circles, to quit depicting women as nothing more than sperm receptacles, even in jest.<\/p>\n

I left a comment, telling my friend I didn’t see much daylight between his joke and rape-based humor of the “lie back and enjoy it” variety.\u00a0 I know he has a higher opinion of women than that.\u00a0 His defense?\u00a0 A woman sent it to him first and he was merely passing it on.\u00a0 Later, sure as hell, a woman chimed in, saying she didn’t find it offensive at all.<\/p>\n

Maybe I’m being an oversensitive PC bluenose and should lighten up.\u00a0 But then I hear the chairman of the Republican National Committee compare Obama to Captain Schettino<\/a> (because campaigning for a second term is just like<\/em> knocking women and children aside to get to the lifeboat), or learn about the latest Photoshopped image<\/a> of Barack as Rastus and Michelle as Mandy, sent by some Republican state senator to his entire constituent email address list, and I can’t help thinking that Republicans are, in general, the first of the two kinds of people in the world.<\/p>\n

Oh, you haven’t heard my Two Kinds of People theory? The first are those who burst out laughing when someone slips on the ice.\u00a0 The second are those who gasp.<\/p>\n

Plenty of educated, liberal, progressive people laugh at hurtful, belittling humor.\u00a0 If the joke’s outrageous enough and hits you right, you can’t help it.\u00a0 I’m certainly guilty.\u00a0 But generally it’s conservatives who are attracted to stereotype-based sexual and racial humor, and can never seem to get enough of it.<\/p>\n

John Stuart Mill had it right, way back in 1866:<\/p>\n

I never meant to say that the Conservatives are generally stupid. I meant to say that stupid people are generally Conservative. I believe that is so obviously and universally admitted a principle that I hardly think any gentleman will deny it.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A friend posted a nasty little joke photo to Facebook.\u00a0 No, not the one on the left, which is just one of many anti-Michelle Obama images I found on the net.\u00a0 His showed Lucy and Ricky facing each other with caption balloons above their heads.\u00a0 Lucy: “The doctor says I can’t have sex for six […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[19,250,8],"tags":[569,570,88,566,568,567],"class_list":["post-9002","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-class","category-culture-wars","category-politics","tag-conservatives","tag-john-stuart-mill","tag-obama","tag-racist-humor","tag-republicans","tag-sexist-humor"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/pwoodford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9002","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/pwoodford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/pwoodford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pwoodford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pwoodford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=9002"}],"version-history":[{"count":24,"href":"https:\/\/pwoodford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9002\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":9022,"href":"https:\/\/pwoodford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9002\/revisions\/9022"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/pwoodford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=9002"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pwoodford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=9002"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pwoodford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=9002"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}