Over twenty years ago, James Finn Garner wrote Politically Correct Bedtime Stories: Modern Tales for Our Life and Times. Meant as a satire, it takes well-known stories like Snow White and the Seven Dwarves and “rehabilitates” them for modern sensibilities. Obviously, a prince rescuing a woman is a knave, not a knight, and story lines are secondary to ideological diatribes.
In Stalinist Russia, the idea of sanitizing stories was not amusing. People found themselves banished to the Gulag or worse for writing something the wrong way. Of course, the correct way one year could become a criminal offense the next year.
Even now in China, according to a recent story in the Wall Street Journal, anyone writing certain true accounts on social media that the government finds offensive finds himself imprisoned and beaten. Naturally, most published material China meets the socialist government’s rules.
With this in mind, I found myself pondering the December 15, Modern Love column in the New York Times. It is a story of a woman with an auto-immune disease whose boyfriend married her in order to bring her under the umbrella of his medical insurance. Written several years after the fact, she acknowledges that without that medical crisis they likely would not have married. She now recognizes her marriage as a gift.
On the surface, it is exactly what the Modern Love column likes to portray; a personal, human-interest story. However, I was struck while reading it by numerous instances of concepts and sentences that should result in a flurry of outraged letters to the editor demanding that the author be sent to a re-education camp. Here are two examples.
- In the couple’s haste to be married, they needed to gather the necessary documentation and cut through City Hall bureaucracy before the office closed. Speaking of her friend, the bride comments, “Luckily, Rachel, who knows how to flirt, worked her magic on the clerk, and he pushed through our paperwork.”
What an outrage! Rachel clearly needs to be condemned for anti-Feminist behavior. Current ideology claims that women are pure, virtuous creatures who would never use their wiles or bodies to encourage a man to pay attention to them. If a woman flirts it is only because of fear that she will lose her job, not because she is an aggressor in the situation.
My harsher criticism is for Rachel’s sexual harassment behavior. What if twenty years from now, the poor, hapless clerk cannot live a healthy life when he realizes that he was taken advantage of by a woman who manipulated him? The obviously intimidated clerk should have lodged an immediate complaint.
- At the end of the article, the author writes, “After my immediate health crisis passed, I was able to look back and appreciate how much Chris had stepped up to take care of me. His passive side disappeared the moment he proposed. I had never seen him take charge like that. (It was sexy!)”
I’m sorry, but clearly this Chris is a danger to society. Politically correct ideology insists that men must be wimps. Next thing we know, this fellow will be thumping his chest and shouting, “Woman, get me a beer.” Perhaps while she was ill, the protagonist of the story wasn’t able to take care of herself, but intimating that his take-charge attitude was sexy is simply pre-historic. Instead of gratitude for his actions, she should end the article by making very clear that if the situation was reversed and he was ill, she would have stepped into exactly the same leadership role (which is quite possible). In either case, it should have nothing to do with being perceived as sexy.
Frankly, the entire notion of a column entitled Modern Love is offensive. It makes those who do not have love in their life feel unwelcome and like second-class citizens. In a proper socialist paper, there should be only carefully censored news and propaganda. There should be no whiff of humor or emotion. Like college campuses today, every word should be vetted for its ability to offend, leaving little room for anything of interest, let alone true.
Over twenty years ago, Mr. Garner’s re-written stories were seen as satire. Today, their equivalents are in classrooms throughout the world. Is there any reason to think that articles like the Modern Love one I just read, where a woman can write of her personal situation and emotions, will be allowed twenty years down the road if society continues on its current path?
Very soon we shall all be wearing glasses with 50 shades of neutral that will whittle down to 1.
What a fascinating turn of phrase, Reid.
Dear Susan,
Once again you’ve hit the nail on the head. And with humor as well. At the risk of finger pointing I would like to offer yet another example of the hippocracy of the so called pc mentality. A number of years ago the company I worked for held a week long pc meeting. Every male employee from the Pres. and CEO right on down was required to attend.
Two “drop dead gorgeous female lawyers from DC were in charge. They wore tight short skirts, see-thru blouses and spike heels that emphasized their long shapely legs. So during Q&A I asked them if they thought if they were in proper office attired.
They said “yes of course”. I wisely didn’t respond. But at trade show in Los Vegas that same year, I was approach on the street dressed similar to them and offered sex for money. However if a fellow worker had said so much as gee you look nice today he could have been brought up on charges.You may not see the humor in it but I thought it hilarious.
Brian, I certainly see the irony in it. And the stupidity of women thinking that they can change human nature by insisting that it change.
Good timing on this. I was reading Sleeping Beauty last night to my 3 year old daughter and really wondered what would happen now to a Prince who kissed a randomly sleeping Princess. I can see the metoo tweets now from Sleeping Beauty. I enjoyed reading your musing today, thank you Susan.
I definitely would not advise my son to go around kissing sleeping princesses. Somehow, I don’t think that ever would have been something I suggested.
Loved this essay, Mrs. Lapin.
Thank you, Laura. I was a bit concerned about it so it’s nice to hear someone liked it.
Well done again Susan! I find it sadly laughable that Hollyweird( the biggest purveyers of sex and violence in the media) to be SO outraged at the current fallout.
Lori, you are so right.
Oh my goodness…I LOVE your musing!!! SOOOO TRUE!! Have you listened to “Stubie Doak’s Politically Correct White Christmas?”
Our “politically correct” society is too much!! Thank you for your WONDERFUL musings always! I greatly enjoy them and the personal side of you and Rabbi Lapin! Merry Christmas and Happy Hanukkah to you and your family!
Kristy, I removed the link but I cracked up listening to it first. People can find it easily on Youtube. Merry Christmas to you.
Liberal women are still chastising the women who “betrayed their sex” by voting for Trump in 2016 instead of Clinton and they are also saying that these women’s dominating husbands told them to vote for Trump. These awful dominating men even want all women to pay for their own birth control. How dare they!
Janet, it has always amused me (it’s better than crying) that media tries to make it sound like ALL women think anything.
The premise that a man and a woman are different is becoming antiquated. The idea of an androgynous society seems to be the goal. Why is society working to erase the obvious differences and make the idea of a family obsolete? It seems as though we no longer embrace our differences as man and woman. There is a unique relationship that occurs when each person fulfills their roll in the marriage and there is no competition to prove that we can do anything the other can.
Cynthia, as in so many issues, “modern thinkers” tie themselves into knots. So feminists like Moslem societies where women face honor killings more than they like Christian or Jewish societies. We need to blur the distinction between genders but we must believe what women say and not what men say. The ideas don’t work in the real world.
Hello Cynthia–
I am sure Susan will answer too but I’ll drop in my $0.02 also in responding to your question of why society is working to eliminate differences and blur sexuality into what you so correctly describe as an androgynous society.
The reason is because the intense anti-Biblical bias of a aggressively secular society rejects the phrase “…male and female He created them…” and embraces its unholy mission of extirpating what Judeo-Christian tradition believes.
Even if we don’t always realize it, we are in a cultural battle.
Cordially
RDL
Hello Rabbi Lapin,
I so enjoy watching you and your wife speak on TCT. You explain what is going on in today’s world, and how as Christians are supposed to behave. I appreciate your wisdom.
Thank you Susan for the insight you bring through this article. We can become so desensitized to what people say and write these days. So glad to have reliable resources here with your musings to help sort out the real intentions , malice or even evil plot of these writers who’s only intention is to change how the world really works. Their heading alone is outrageous!!
I think I might be misunderstanding you, Claudia, but I in no way mean to suggest that the person who wrote the article had any agenda. She was just sharing her story. I’m not positive what title you’re talking about. The “Modern Love Outrage” title was mine.
Ms Lapin… I find this week’s column extremely entertaining and refreshing! Keep ’em coming…
I appreciate that Art, because someone else read it and didn’t get that I was being sarcastic in parts of it. I guess we all have different senses of humor.
You are dear! And smart! And funny! With sass!
I really appreciate that, Sherry.