It’s wasn’t a rhetorical question to me, it was a rhetorical question to you. I didn’t want you to answer it, I wanted you to know your example had failed.
From Wiki (because it’s handy):
A rhetorical question is a figure of speech in the form of a question that is asked in order to make a point. The question, a rhetorical device, is posed not to elicit a specific answer, but rather to encourage the listener to consider a message or viewpoint
What’s gruesome? The fact that Fluke is a lesbian or enjoys sex? The only thing that seems gruesome to me is someone condemning her for this, which reflects badly on others, not her.
from a post earlier in this thread:
Fluke is the law student that Rush Limbaugh railed against on the radio calling her a “slut” and a “prostitute” when she said that insurance should pay for female oral contraceptives. He also said that she was having “too much sex” to pay for the contraceptives herself, thus displaying a complete misunderstanding of how they work, and also any consideration for, oh, all females.
P.S. She’s a lesbian, and was talking about medical uses of the drugs.
Basically, we - you and I - agree: none of that is relevant. The same point could have been made by saying something along the lines of “Limbaugh regularly tries to slut-shame people he disagrees with. Sometimes it backfires, but too-often it works.”
I’ll grant that Fluke didn’t have to be named but I don’t see how her reputation is harmed by bringing up Limbaugh’s attacks on her.
That to me is one of the biggest changes. My mother absolutely hated Prince, mainly because of the song Darling Nicky. I remember how incredibly naughty the lyrics seemed. Of course my mother, being a product of the 50’s, could not stomach those edgy lines. Funny thing is, after he appeared on America Idol she apologized to me because THEN she realized just how talented he is. But because he dared to put masturbation into his lyrics in the 80s, she would not even listen to him.
My mom is something of an unrepentant racist (really weird to me because there was exactly one African-American family in my hometown and composed a tiny, tiny minority in the Twin Cities back in the day). My guess is that she hated (probably still does) not for the obvious reason, but because he was a black man unafraid of being sexy. I think that’s what offended her sensibilities more than anything else.
I never played song 1, side 2 of Purple Rain if she was home.
Well, that’s a line a lot of black men had to toe, for sure, in order to be successful. And he was very, very sexy. Maybe now that he is older he is less of a threat to the mom crowd.
The “fact” that she’s a lesbian is pretty gruesome, since she’s not actually a lesbian but was simply labeled as such by some of her critics.
I don’t think she was “slut shamed” any worse than Bill Clinton was, and neither of them was shamed by the entire world. There were vocal groups of persons who took a moralistic view and “shamed” them for a variety of reasons, voicing displeasure at the sex outside of marriage, adultery, the oral sex/sodomy, the lying, the cheating, the (in their view) cheapening of the office of the President, the seediness, the potential impact on the duties of the President (e.g., by engaging in the behavior during important business with world leaders, while the President was on the phone), etc.
It would likely not have become a huge deal had they not lied about it. And, wasn’t even just “lying” that was the problem. Merely lying about an affair wouldn’t have gotten much play. It was the lying about it in the context of a sexual harassment suit, under oath, under penalty of perjury, by a bar admitted lawyer, whose testimony was relevant to the sexual harassment suit brought against him. That’s why it blew up into an impeachment thing, because he obstructed justice and perjured himself. He was not “impeached” for it, but let’s not forget that the impeachment not succeeding was not based on the falsity of the allegations. The allegations were true, and he was ultimately convicted of obstruction of justice and he was ultimately disbarred as an attorney in Arkansas.
Clinton himself was shamed like crazy, prosecuted, impeached, etc. Lewinsky received criticism for her behavior, with people making judgmental comments about her sexual activity. Mostly, that did not occur in the media, because the press and the pundits were generally very careful not to say much about her personally, and they focused on the President.
So… Your theory is that late night hosts and every comedian made several years of blow job jokes because of its impact on the office of the president?
No doubt some of the more profoundly poor professional judgement used was why they were able to make so much political hay out of it. But really it was considered funny because “Chubby girl put pepe in mouth, get skeet on dress X1,000. Har har”
Well, I simply referred to her as a lesbian because that’s what I was told upthread. (I remember the basic situation with Fluke, but nothing about her sexuality.) If not true, calling her a lesbian is misinformation, but gruesome? That’s seems a bit homophobic.
Not a threat at all to this mom, but my mom? He probably still is because racism.
The nature of the shaming was very different. For example, late night comedians and radio talk show hosts couldn’t seem to get over her weight, even though she was well within the spectrum of a healthy body type. Apparently the fact that she had sexual relations with a President gave the public a right to expect someone with a supermodel face and chiseled abs.
Even Rush Limbaugh made fun of her appearance, despite the fact that his body looks like Rush Limbaugh’s.
Didn’t mean to criticise you for repeating the “facts” you read here, but what’s gruesome has nothing to do with sexual preference, but that the misinformation spread to smear her (amongst bigots, at least) has been accepted here and elsewhere as fact.
Only 10x our GDP? That would give us in NZ a GDP per Capita of about the same as California and I’m pretty sure we’re not that well off …
It’s true. Our per capitas are about the same. 
California is the 8th largest economy in the world, with 0.55% of the world’s population. What people earn varies widely. We have some of the highest earners in the world living here, and we also have - in just Los Angeles - between 30,000 and 120,000 homeless on any given night. We housed 22% of the nation’s homeless in 2013.
Our GDP in 2012 was $1.959 T.
New Zealand in 2010 was at 139.8 B.
Our per capita GDPs both range between $38,000 and $39,000. (Hard to get matching years.)
Ah. We don’t have as big a homeless problem, but we’re not without other ills related to socio-economic disparities — our family violence stats are an international disgrace. However, , our Gini Index is in the mid 30’s, while California’s is in the high 40’s. Interesting how that gives the superficial impression that California overall is so much richer, when the wealth is just even more unequally distributed.
I was absolutely staggered by the level of homelessness when I visited SF.
I mean, the US in general seems to have a ridiculous amount of beggars, but in my experience CA takes the biscuit.
Yep. Partially because of the media industry being located in Southern California, there’s a false perception of wealth. Down here, we have Hollywood and Burbank, and all that is associated with television and movie production. Go up north, and you run into tech — but you also run into farmland.
Currently, California is in a drought - and a pretty severe one - that is focused coastally due to changes in Pacific wind patterns. That’s driven up the cost of water, and that in turn has made farming a very expensive life to have. We have some areas that are very well off and then we have some areas that are really depressed, but people outside of the state rarely realize it.
It’s also very expensive to try to buy a house here, just at a baseline level, and rental rates are way up there! So, for people on the lower end of the economic spectrum, California is a tough place to live. It’s a “make it or break it” kinda state.
