I was raised by a single mother, my two sisters and I, trying to get by in the poverty-hating Reagan era while mom was in school and working like nine jobs at once.
Then after grad school, I stayed home with the kids while we lived on the sole earning power of my then-wife. Yes, I should mention that she, like Ma, was also female. Luckily that's where the similarities ended, but those types of comparisons aren't really the thrust of the story.
What I'm trying to say is that you'd have a hard time finding a dude who was more pro-gender-equality than I am. Equal pay for equal work sounds like a fairly simple cocktail of mathematics and rudimentary social justice, but still there are men in this country so averse to such a mixture, you'd think it was garnished with just a splash of menses.
Even though real money and a hand-grenade couldn't get me to vote for Sarah Palin or Christine O'Donnell, there's still probably something to the idea that the reaction to them has to do with their gender, at least to some small degree. I'd rather hear Sarah Barracuda called a fascist than a stewardess, to be honest. Mostly this is because I think, personality and skill-set wise, she'd make a shit-awful stewardess.
While the Mama Grizzly-types let me down, there are examples of creeping gender social equality. Hillary Clinton just missed her party nomination and probably certain election as president. That one lady who was not James Cameron won the Best Director Oscar last year.
I think the great exemplar of female social progress certainly has to be Mackenzie Rae Putnal.
Who is that, you ask? Clearly, you're not listening to nearly enough sports talk radio on your drive home from work.
She's the 19 year old cheerleader dating a big, bad NFL football player named Kassim Osgood. She's the one who was at her parents' house, chillaxin', as the kids say, with Mr. Osgood when a dude wanders in with a plastic bag over his face and brandishing a gun. Turns out he's some kind of ex-boyfriend or whatever. Tough guy drags her around by the hair, pistol-whips them both up a little bit. Bad scene.
How does it end? This is the interesting part: Mr. Football barricades himself in a room alone and jumps out a window, leaving the girl behind. Ostensibly he's running off to "get help."
Left alone with an armed and deranged man, what does our Damsel in Distress do? She breaks free, runs down stairs, finds a gun and exchanges gunshots with the intruder. The article doesn't say if she did so in slow motion while jumping sideways through the air or if, when she landed, she popped up and let go with a stinging, punny one-liner like "Plastic bags are what I use to store my dead meat" or "I always choose paper" or whatever.
I think the Lois Lane archetype is dead.
First of all, an ex-boyfriend shows up, all clingy and whiny, and throws a temper tantrum about the lost partner he pines for.
Football Man throws himself recklessly out a window and runs off into the night.
Mackenzie Rae goes downstairs empty handed and comes up blasting.
Who's the bitch in this scenario?
Nobody was hit or injured outside of some bruises. And we know violence never solves anything. But we know somebody came out of this episode a winner: America, that's who.
Thursday, September 30, 2010
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4 comments:
a plastic BAG over his FACE? er.
i sense some logistical problems with that choice of facial concealment, like for example the ability to breathe.
Mackenzie Rae sure does pick winners.
When I heard about this on the radio the plastic bag over the face struck me as something I must have misheard, but now here it is, in digital black and white, so it must be so. Seems as though time would have resolved this issue in Mackenzie's favor.
The other thing that struck me when I heard it on the radio, though, was although it was laid out just as you laid it out here, the radio dude (Jim Rome?) tried to characterize it as somekind of heroic event for Osgood and I kept wondering what detail he left out, like how Osgood dropped down through the roof with serpents and knives after he ran away. I think I was afflicted with an unreliable narrator.
But not now. Well told, sir.
mrgumby, i think this is the funniest blog-post-comment i have read in weeks.
afflicted with an unreliable narrator indeed. i am totally going to steal that and use it in my lit classes.
KnK: One suspects that rational thought processes were not ruling the day.
Gumbo: I heard it first on Jim Rome's show too. This is in part a redress of the bits he mis-emphasized. Plus I at no point described any of the events as "epic."
KnK x2: I waive any and all copyright claims existing or implied.
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