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Introducing the first
Not Ready for the 21st Century!!!! Awards
officially sponsored by Here's The Deal - a column found at the
Dads & Daughters website.
by Hank Shaw ©2002
Hey everybody! Know
what time is it?
That’s right. IT’S
THE 21st CENTURY! Which means it’s time to give women and
girls a break after a couple dozen millenniums of violence and
discrimination.
Unfortunately, some
people aren’t getting the message. So we thought we’d recognize a few
of these Neanderthals with the inaugural edition of the Not Ready
For the 21st Century Awards. It’s just in time for the
Oscar-Grammy season.
NOTE TO CONTESTANTS.
Not everyone who deserves this award will get it. But don’t worry.
There’s always next year!
The
Outstanding Disservice To Humanity Award goes to the booming child
porn industry. Believe it or not, this is a $2-to-$3 billion business
in the U.S. alone. Which means there are a LOT of childporn-chugging
creeps out there. This felonious crew allegedly includes David
Westerfield, the next-door-neighbor charged with the San Diego area
murder of seven-year-old Danielle van Dam. Here’s something else to
keep in mind. A Department of Justice 12-state study published in
July, 2000 found that 14% of sexual assaults reported to law
enforcement agencies were committed against children under age 6.
Which means there could be as many as 40,000 sexual assaults against
little kids every year. Takes your breath away, doesn’t it?
These guys may not be
on the level of childporn chuggers. But it’s clear that some of the
boys at Dartmouth’s Zeta Psi fraternity have their hearts in the wrong
place. That’s why they’re getting the Aspiring Rapists Of America
Undergraduate Achievement Award. What happened? These boys
published high-grade women-hating crap in the spring of 2001. One
newsletter even promised an upcoming dissertation on one member’s
“patented date rape technique.” A six-month seminar in Cellblock
Seven might give these boys another valuable perspective on the
subject of rape. Might not be as much fun as they think.
Speaking of date
rape, let’s give the prestigious Pathetic Loser Award to all
the bottom dwellers who think it’s cool to slip knockout drops in a
woman’s drink. It’s a growing problem, thanks to drugs like GHB.
They work fast. They often wipe out the victim’s memory. Twelve
hours later, there’s hardly any trace of the drug in the body. It’s
even a cottage industry, with GHB recipes and kits available via the
Net. The growing list of rapists who use this technology allegedly
includes Andrew Stuart Luster, the great-grandson of cosmetic king Max
Factor.
According to prosecutors in Ventura, Calif, Luster sexually
assaulted three comatose women and videotaped the ordeal. Arrested in
July, 2000, he was awaiting trial as of March 5, 2002. Andrew’s take
on the whole thing? “It was consensual.” If he’s telling the truth,
his pick-up line musta been something like this: “Want to come to my
place and get unconscious? Then I’ll have sex with your body and
videotape it. Best of all, you won’t remember a thing! Whaddya
say?”
Our first
Hero-to-Zero Award goes to John Stebbins, who came up big in the
real-life battle the hit movie Black Hawk Down was based on.
That’s the hero part. Now for the zero part: Stebbins is currently
serving 30 years at Fort Leavenworth for raping and molesting his
young daughter. Gee…wonder if the guy had a well-stocked childporn
collection? (See above.)
The Totally
Clueless Civic Award goes to The City of Chicago for renaming a
stretch of road Hugh Hefner Way. This amazing milestone in American
history took place only a few months after the clock struck 2000. As
everybody in the universe knows, 70-something Hugh became so
successful selling nude photos loosely based on real women that he can
hobnob with celebrities, date twenty-something twin sisters, hang out
in his PJs, and buy a little RESPECT from politicians who truly
respect guys with a lot of money. Coming soon to a city near you:
The Larry Flynt Memorial Courtroom.
Speaking of which,
the renowned pornmeister—who once featured a cover photo of a
woman in a meat grinder--helped our next winner walk away with
the Clueless Candidate Award. Here’s the deal. Andrew
Cuomo—Mario’s kid—was going to take a 5-figure contribution from the
Porn King to fuel his campaign to be the next New York Gov. Drew
backed down when the Flynt thing hit the papers, but he still gets the
Clueless Candidate honor. I’m also naming him Done Lost MY
Vote Politician of the Year. I look forward to bestowing
that honor personally in the 2002 primaries.
Honorable mention
goes to another New York pol, Mayor Michael Bloomberg. In a 1998
deposition, Bloomberg said that he would believe a rape charge made by
one of his employees against a company executive if it was supported
by “an unimpeachable third party witness.” Apparently, Bloomberg
thinks that women usually have their lawyers present when they’re
sexually assaulted. Either that…or he’s JUST NOT READY FOR THE 21st
CENTURY.
All this talk about
cluelessness undoubtedly has you on the edge of your seat as we open
the envelope for the Clueless Corporation Award. And the
winner in this highly competitive field is…Simon and Schuster
Interactive. This digital-age division of the famous publishing
firm…a company that makes a small fortune from children’s books…gets
the honor because it SHOULDA KNOWN BETTER!
Here’s the
situation. S&S Interactive sells a video game called Panty Raiders
with a story line so clueless you think it has to be a hoax. Hormone-crazed aliens are gonna pull the plug on earth unless you
send them pictures of supermodels in their undies. But before you can
take the pix, you have to lure these balloon-breasted women out of the
woods with sleazy come-on lines, credit cards and mints. I’m not
making this up either.
When the game
launched in 2000, a number of people protested, including
DADs’ Joe
Kelly. S&S spokesman Peter Binazeski dismissed the criticism,
claiming the game was just harmless adolescent nonsense. “It’s so
over the top,” he said. “These are obscenely large breasted women
with zero waist.”
Obscenely
large-breasted women who are missing their midsection apparently have
a bright future at S & S Interactive, because the company still
features Panty Raiders on its website…EVEN THO THIS IS THE 21st
CENTURY!!! So far we have been unable to confirm reports that S&S
Interactive is ready to launch a game called Plantation Follies
with happy-go-lucky slaves who eat watermelon and bring in the
cotton. Not to worry. Even if they do, it’s only harmless racist
nonsense.
Honorable mention
goes to Microsoft which promoted the launch of its Xbox game system by
advertising a game called Dead or Alive 3. The TV ad featured a
couple of game geeks staring in awe at the crotch of a high-kicking
animated female figure. Let me rephrase that: “…staring in awe at
the crotch of a CARTOON.” First we had fictionalized photos of
real-life female sex objects. Now they’re pure fiction.
What’s next? The Cartoon Porn Network? Is it any wonder
why the Children Now advocacy group says many of the
top-selling video games are bad news for girls AND boys????
The Clueless
Educational Administrator Award goes to all the college
leaders who haven’t launched sexual assault prevention programs on
their campuses despite a Department of Justice study (December 2000)
that says there may be as many as 35 rapes for every 1,000 women in a
9-month academic year. Do the math. On a college with 10,000 women
students, you could have 350 rapes or more a year. Holy moly.
The situation’s bad enough that the Department of Education posted
this letter to college administrators on its website: “Women on
college campuses and young women generally are often at risk of being
sexually assaulted or victims of violence. While many schools have
created programs to raise awareness….some have not yet taken this
step.” Memo to Dads: Check this out before taking your
daughter to college for orientation.
The Bullish-On-Bullcrap
Award goes to the brokerage firm Morgan Stanley, the target of a
federal lawsuit alleging basic unfairness towards women employees.
According to the U.S. Equal Opportunity Commission, one woman had the
chutzpah to complain. So Morgan Stanley canned her. (The company
denies that was the reason for the termination and is fighting the
suit.)
In any case, Morgan
Stanley isn’t the only Wall Street firm to be charged with bad
behavior towards women. In recent years, Merrill Lynch, Goldman
Sachs, ING Barings and Citigroup’s Salomon Smith Barney have also been
accused by women employees of being throwbacks. What’s more, American
Express recently paid $31 million to settle a suit. You’d think the
high rollers would be getting the message. But according to a July
2001 study, two-thirds of the women on Wall Street STILL think they
have to work harder than men to get the same rewards. And a third say
they’ve experienced sexual harassment. Hey guys. Just do your job,
will ya?
The Equality Ain’t
Fair! Award goes to Anne Coulter, the talking head attorney who
lambasted the idea of leveling the playing fields for men and women in
USA Today (7/25/01). “Men’s teams are being decimated in
pursuit of an insane feminist dream that has morphed into federal
policy to make women’s sports equal to men’s,” she wrote. “Title IX
represents the ultimate totalitarian folly.” It’s “crazed feminist
social engineering.” Anne has a problem with Title IX, because some
guy sports teams have gotten the axe. She also thinks sports are
basically a substitute for fighting, which is a Guy Thing. So women,
who don’t have a biological drive to fight, are better off in the
theater department where they can satisfy their biological need to
talk loud in front of strangers.
There’s just one
little problem. Girls and women aren’t living Anne’s logic.
Instead, they’re the crowding into all the sports programs that have
opened since Title IX popped the locks. One example: About 80
colleges offered women’s soccer in 1981. Now more than 850 schools
field soccer teams for women. That’s a growth rate of more than
1000%!
Still, Anne’s not
going to let a little trend like that get in the way of a good old
phlegm-clearing, anti-feminist spew. “There is no vast market for
women’s sports outside of Sable of the World Wrestling Foundation,”
she concluded, apparently endorsing the notion that the 90,000
screaming fans who showed up to watch the 1999 Women’s World Cup
soccer game were figments of the feminist imagination. We won’t even
bring up the $160 million deal ESPN made with the NCAA to televise
women’s sports. Or the March 2002 survey which found that a majority
of women executives said they developed important skills like teamwork
and leadership by playing organized sports.
And now we
interrupt this presentation for a message from our sponsor.
When I was growing up throwing slow balls in baseball-crazed Southern
Illinois, I didn’t know a single girl in my class who was active in
sports. Fast forward to the present: Six of my seven nieces love
playing sports. That’s all the proof I need to cheer on Title IX.
Housework-Isn’t-MY-Work Award goes to husbands in
Italy who are setting a high standard for domestic gold-bricking. A
2001 study by an organization based in Rome found that Italian women
average 90 minutes of housework a day…AFTER EIGHT HOURS OF
WORK…compared to 15 minutes for men. That probably holds true for the
rest of the western world, too. Even guys who aren’t gender rednecks
come up weak when it comes to housework. Here’s how the game plays
out. Guys have a mental list of eight chores. They do four:
That’s their fair share. Even-steven. The only problem is, the wife
knows there are really a hundred chores which keep the house and
family afloat. So she gets stuck with the other 96 because she was
born with an extra X chromosome. It’s probably in the small print on
the birth certificate.
One more
revelation. Guys cherry-pick chores, too. One guy I know comes
home and heads to the basement for a little power-tool action,
cleverly disguising his hobby as housework. Meanwhile, his wife—who
runs a small business--takes care of the cooking, cleaning,
clothes-washing, kid-tending, and every other damn thing that HAS TO
GET DONE. P.S. I know how this game goes down. I’m a past
master.
The Sleazeballs of
the Year Award goes to the workfare supervisors in New York City
who harassed at least four women, according to a July, 2001
investigation by the federal government. According to the charges,
three women were sexually harassed. Another woman, who’s black, had
to work in a building where there was a noose hanging in the window.
As if those women don’t have it tough enough already…
We’re pleased to announce that hundreds of past
and present NFL players…maybe thousands…will be our first inductees
into The Hall of Eternal Adolescence for an amazing display of
mindless immaturity. Seems that visiting pro players have been spying
on the dressing room of the Philadelphia Eagles cheerleaders since the
glory days of Spiro T. Agnew. These guys scraped paint off windows
and slipped mirrors under doors to peep at women showering and
undressing.
News reports fail to say whether these massive men made
“tee-hee” sounds in the process. In any case, more than 100
cheerleaders are now trying to sue the butts off 500 as-yet-unnamed
players and 29 NFL teams that may have been involved: You go, girls!
According to the lawsuit, the “ability to peer into the cheerleaders’
locker room and to view them in states of undress was considered one
of the special perks of being a visiting team of the Eagles.” Don’t
worry guys. You could still end up with a huge endorsement deal with
Clearasil!
The Not Ready for
the 21st Century Man of the Year Award goes to Dallas
entrepreneur James Doolin, who sells “Wife Beater” t-shirts on his
website. Doolin says it’s just a harmless joke based on the name for
the sleeveless shirts that comes from the TV show Cops.
“Everybody calls them ‘wife beaters’ so I figured I better jump on
this before somebody else does and make some money doing it,” he told
USA Today. And jump he did. Bigtime. You can now order wife beaters
in several styles. You can add blood for an extra buck. You can even
order “Lil’ Wife Beater” shirts for the kids (sizes start at 3
months).
Site visitors can
also find pictures of people like Ike Turner, Tommy Lee and O.J. in
the Wife Beaters Hall of Fame. All of which says that domestic
violence—which just happens to be the biggest form of violence against
women around the world—is pretty darn funny. If Jimboy makes millions
off this scam, maybe Dallas will eventually put up a sign for Doolin
Drive.
Honorable mention
to Eminem, the 2001 Grammy winner, who’s given us light-hearted lyrics
like “Sit down bitch. If you move again, I’ll beat the shit out of
you.” For some reason, the “minstrel of misogyny” didn’t walk off
with a Grammy in 2002. Better luck next year.
AND NOW FOR THE AWARD
YOU’VE ALL BEEN WAITING FOR…
The World’s
Greatest Misogynist Organization Award goes to…(may we have the
envelope please?)...The Taliban! These cutting-edge gender
rednecks threw women out of jobs, forcing them to beg on the streets.
They kicked girls out of school, and shot women who tried to
sneak-teach them. They beat up women who had the temerity to leave
home without being leashed to a male relative. They made it illegal
for male docs to treat women patients. So women died in the hospital,
looking right in the eyes of guys who could’ve saved them. And that’s
just for starters. The good news is, they were bombed into
submission. The bad news is, there are still plenty of guys on the
planet—including some on our side in the battle against the
Taliban--who give thumbs up to the medieval treatment of women and
girls.
ALL OF WHICH PROVES
ONE THING. WE NEED MORE PEOPLE TO GET INVOLVED. So the worldwide
movement for gender equality WILL become one of the great
achievements of the 21st century.
Thanks for listening.
Read Hank's other column:
Critics See What's Wrong With
The World's Biggest Civil Rights Movement.
But Aren't They Missing Something?
Hank Shaw
Time4guys@aol.com
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