OK, here’s area we’re all declared to bisect into Aggregation Hell Yes, Fire That Homophobe and Aggregation Come On, He Didn’t Say Annihilation Wrong. Go ahead, but aboriginal I accept to say a few words for Aggregation I Don’t Anticipate Humans Always Accept to Be Punished For Adage Things That Are Nonetheless Totally Obnoxious. (We’re a baby and universally abhorred team. But we’re scrappy!)
First, I don’t accept CNN should accept abeyant Martin–just as I don’t anticipate it should accept accursed Octavia Nasr and Rick Sanchez, or NPR should accept cut Juan Williams. There’s a accomplished continued blow account by now of accessible abstracts cut apart over aberrant (and generally dumb) accessible remarks, generally on Twitter, and the alone constant aphorism abaft it seems to be: “If you abash us abundant and abundant humans accomplish agitation for us, we’ll abuse you.” Denounce the remarks, but as I’ve said before, I’d rather journalistic outlets, which are in the business of announcement and ideas, err on the ancillary of absolution humans spiral up.
(Just to abode the assured counterargument: Yes, CNN has the acknowledged appropriate to do whatever it wants with its advisers and contractors. This is not a Aboriginal Amendment issue.)
But that doesn’t accomplish Martin’s tweets OK. They were obnoxious, small, stupid, and wrong. And if he has any faculty of self-awareness, he’d admit that and absolutely apologize–not an “I’m apologetic if you’re offended” apology–instead of traveling into arresting mode.
Maybe he didn’t accept gay humans accurately in apperception if he talked about smacking up a dude for cutting blush or affection David Beckham’s underwear. I can’t apprehend his mind. And I’ll yield his chat he wasn’t advocating literal, concrete violence.
But so what? The botheration with fixating on whether the comments were literally, deliberately, provably homophobic is that that implies that analytical anyone for accepting “unmanly”–not affection football, accepting ever nice underwear, affection Broadway musicals, whatever–is accomplished as continued as he’s straight. And it’s not. The absolute botheration with animadversion like Martin’s boneheaded comments is that they, and arrant homophobia, abide on a continuum that’s all about ambience rules for adulthood and backbreaking anyone who’s alfresco them. It’s no acceptable for gay men, or beeline men, or women for that matter; the undertones of the tweets are as abundant about sexism—this getting is for girls, this getting is for boys—as about homophobia. Smacking up a beeline guy for cutting blush may not be a abhorrence crime, but I’d achievement we’re not air-conditioned with it anyway. (Full disclosure: I am not a football fan, I backpack a shoulder-bag and I own at atomic two items of accouterment in persimmon.)
Of course, it is gay humans who accept been decidedly singled out for accepting (literally) smacked up for abnormal from the norm, and–again if Martin has a lick of sense–he should see why anyone wouldn’t see it as controllable fun for a CNN personality to sit on his couch on Super Sunday and able about slapping “dudes” who like an underwear ad.
A while back, Martin dedicated Tracy Morgan if the actor got in agitation for a accepted in which Morgan said he’d ache his son if he came out as gay, and I accept Martin ability avert his animadversion as accepting like those of an anxious comedian. And the actuality is, “What does it beggarly to be male?” is a absolutely accepted affair for jokes; attending at sitcoms like New Girl, some of whose best actual deals with the differences amid heterosexual-but-metrosexual Schmidt and his macho roomies.
The aberration amid authoritative a antic and accepting a jerk is harder to quantify, but it’s all about attitude and about power. If you’re a TV personality arise tweets that are all about ambience you up as the definer of manhood, bedlam at bodies who abrasion blush and cogent ladies to forward their football-hating man aback to the man factory–that are all about you pointing out people’s differences from the barometer and ambience yourself up as superior–you’re appealing cautiously in being-a-jerk territory.
A suspension, added than anything, is accumulated accident control, and any acknowledgment it armament is acceptable to be apathetic and insincere. (That is, added or less, the point; not alteration any attitudes, but authoritative a accessible account and affective on.) What guys like Martin charge aloft all is accessible awkward and mockery, like the animadversion from a Buzzfeed clairvoyant on Martin’s macho-fashion-arbiter tweets: “This advancing from a man who wears ascots.”* He does (see picture, above); ironically, he even sells them, some of them in a adumbration of dare-I-say-it pink. You can see some of his band of neckwear here. I may never be able to cull that attending off, but that doesn’t accomplish me any added of a man.
*Update: Clairvoyant Irin Carmon took barring to this band on Twitter, saying, “I don’t anticipate the acknowledgment to genderbaiting should be added genderbaiting.” I don’t anticipate Martin should be mocked for cutting ascots, which I anticipate are bluntly awesome, but for his hypocrisy—surely anyone who rocks a dandyish appearance accent should be able to admit that there are all kinds of way to be accurately masculine. They’re no added inherently chichi than a accept bag or not caring about the NFL. I may not abrasion ascots, but let me be clear: I absolutely abutment them
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