Asymmetrical Information

If people are wondering how Alterman made it into the phallus post - well, I heard his part of Fresh Air last night, and I can understand how Mindles made the association.

They actually had a full blown debate over a snow penis???? The snow penis is one of the oldest college pranks known. Methinks some Harvard professors are greatly underworked and in serious need of a life.

Heh. I graduated from the University of Colorado as a Bachelor of Fine Arts in '99...in a ceramics class, a girl and I collaborated on a 4 foot clay phallus that had a woman, in bas-relief, wrapped around it, and which was further adorned with hieroglyphic-style depictions of various sex acts.

Unfortunately, no one smashed it in protest...I probably could have built a career on the whole thing if they had. :)

In reply to Steve,

I too attended the U. of Colo. and it seems to me that the lack of uproar his statute aroused must be due to the different kind of feminisms active in Cambridge and Boulder. Apparently, Harvard has been infected by the Catherine MacKinnon branch of radical feminism whereas CU suffers from the Naomi Wolf branch.

As further proof, I offer the anecdote of the Boulder Public Library's refusal to hang the Stars and Stripes in the entryway in October 2001 for fear of "offending people" in favour of hanging an "art" exhibit--a collection of ceramic phalli strung together on a clothesline (entitled "Hung Out to Dry"). While conceding on a placard that the latter would be "offensive to some," Boulder, I suppose, thought the anti-male message of the display was sufficently important to risk the slight. Apparently, Boulderites disagree with their Cambridge counterparts and see penis sculpture as symbolic of the very opposite of female oppression.

Go far enough to the Left and you wind up on the Right. . . and vice versa.

Radical campus feminists and John Ashcroft shake hands.

Reminds me of the strange Meese/Dworkin alliance of the mid-'80s.

I'm with Dude
where were your comments when
Ashcroft was putting up curtains

I'm with Dude
where were your comments when
Ashcroft was putting up curtains

I'm with Dude
where were your comments when
Ashcroft was putting up curtains

I didn't know there was WSJ coverage of the incident...I just made a post today about the original article because a friend sent it to me. What timing!

I didn't know there was WSJ coverage of the incident...I just made a post today about the original article because a friend sent it to me. What timing!

If we shoot a few of these madwomen, maybe the rest will stop talking like that.

Yeek, those ladies are taking it as seriously -- only the other way -- as some of the posters in the earlier thread. People, it's SNOW. Kick it a few times if it doesn't work for you.

As for the Washington Monument comment...now THERE is a woman with a serious problem. Is there an exorcist in the house?

The funny thing is, for all the outrage against male, "phallocentric" views/actions/whatever, I've never seen anyone quite so obsessed with the phallus as feminists.

I couldn't help observing the irony of a debate about a phallus "limping" along.

Some years ago, Andrea Dworkin wrote about how she gave a speech on how pornography degrades women to a socially conservative religious group, and got a standing ovation. She said it was a "watershed moment for the right."

What a clueless fool.

Not that I have a problem with social conservatives per se. I don't. Indeed, I see most of the attacks on John Ashcroft as being based primarily on vile and unacceptable religious bigotry that's no better than anti-semitism or racism. But still, there are people on that side of the divide I'll never get on with, because I'm not particularly socially conservative. At least, not politically.

What a clueless fool.

To which are you responding, the statement itself, or the politics she wished to attach? The statement itself is not entirely without a research-based defense.

Attacking and destroying a symbol of sexuality is clearly an example of "gender-motivated violence", which is only committed by radical feminists as far as I can tell. I'd like to see the perps do time for this criminal act, but they'd probably enjoy it.

Sometimes a Snow Phallus is just a Snow Phallus.

Further proof on what Harvard excels at:
Training people to work in left wing political orgs that specialize in exploiting unimportant trivial events for profit and fame.

Uhhhh...Ashcroft didn't put up any curtains.

No, it’s not true — Ashcroft’s advance team, unbeknownst to him, ordered a typical pipe-and-drape backdrop, to produce “better visuals” for television when the AG gave speeches or held press conferences in the Great Hall. The idea started when the president came over to do the same — to dedicate the building to RFK. The White House insisted on this standard blue backdrop, the kind found all over America.

Maybe so, maybe not so. The thing is, no one in the media picked up on the above story at all. Because, you know, it could inconveniently put an end to an otherwise juicy story. A story that happened to have no attributable basis in fact.

BTW I don't care for Ashcroft all that much. I care less, though, for fabrications. Regardless of who they're aimed at. I absolutely loathe the DEA's actions regarding petty shit like bongs. Want to do effective drug enforcement? Go after the bulk heroin and cocaine. Go after the meth labs. Forget the pot and hash. This stuff, as far as I'm concerned, should be legal. I'm not all that sure the harder stuff should be illegal, but it's a fact that it's destructive.

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