How to Stand Up for Your Woman

I had second, third, and fourth thoughts before posting this. It's hilarious, and in another era the gag would have been something Chaplin or the Marx Brothers or the 3 Stooges (or David Zucker) would have been proud to call their own. But it's disturbing and appalling at the same time.

I remember someone once telling me about "the German sense of humor," which perhaps applies to Eastern Europe too: what is funniest to Germans is The Comedy of Pain. "Fatty fall down" and "Woman gets smacked around" are two-subgenres.

I assume that the inspiration for this video was a viral video, which I entitled, "Disproportionate Response," in a posting that got a lot of traffic, including a visit from eop.gov, which, according to internet-legends, is "Executive Office of the President," that is, Bush's desktop PC.

If you follow the link to the original "Disproportionate Response" video, you will see that, unlike in the fictional and scripted "How to Stand Up for Your Woman," the smack on the girl's face was quite intentional, and the guy completely justified in kicking their asses (which is deeply, deeply satisfying to watch). According to Swedish friends (both in real-life and in blog-life), incidents like shown in "Disproportiate Response" have become a part of daily life in Sweden and other Scandinavian countries. I know one beautiful Swedish girl in particular who was punched in the face by a Muslim immigrant right in the middle of Gothenborg's most busy boulevard --- and the Swedish men who witnessed it stood by and did nothing. The Muslim man then punched her sister in the mouth for objecting, calling them both sluts and whores. Again, no response from the Swedish men surrounding them on the street.

The sexually-liberated land of Sweden represents the opposite of Islam's aggressive misogyny and religious conservatism, and guess who's suffering? Similarly, in ultra-anything-goes Amsterdam, gay men are being advised not to hold hands or kiss because beatings by Muslim immigrants have become so common. Apparently, the grand utopian dream of a perfect Benneton world where we all live in delightful harmony is failing to occur, despite EU governments giving away money in an attempt to keep the not-natives from getting restless.

Theo Van Gogh is unavailable for comment.

Speaking of Van Gogh, another tragic example of this trend was the stabbing of Swedish foreign minister Anna Lindh while she was shopping. Again, the Swedish men stood by and did nothing. Lindh's killer, Mijailo Mijailovic, has now had his sentence commuted by the Swedish courts, and he has been removed from jail and put in permanent psychiatric care. (Perhaps he should consider a name-change, to Miloonybino Miloonybinovic, now.)

According to Mijailovic's lawyer, he heard voices in his head, "including Jesus's," that told him to kill her. (Those of you who've read your Quran may be familiar with Jesus -- he was one of God's prophets, just not the last one or the one who mattered.) I do find it interesting that the newspaper article linked here does not specify who the other voices in Mijailovic's head were that were doing the talking to him. My guess is one of them starts with M and ends with ohammed because "stab thy neighbor" does not appear in the New Testament, but "behead thy neighbor" gets a starring role in the Quran.

A google search yieds some clues. Mijailovic was born in Sweden, the child of Serbian immigrants. The second-generation of immigrants are much more alienated, radicalized and xenophobic than their parents, so maybe he was just a crazy Christian, after all, or perhaps he had flirted with Islam, being naturally drawn to misogyny and violence, or maybe he was just plain nuts.

At any rate, Europe has a problem. Theodore Dalrymple warned of it in 2002 in his seminal, must-read piece, "Barbarians at the Gates of Paris." When a friend of mine who I had sent that link to forwarded it to her friend in Paris, who was the senior correspondent for the biggest American weekly news magazine there, he replied that the article was "absurd;" that "there is no such problem;" and in reference to Dalyrympe, that, "Congratulations, you've somehow located the only Republican in France!" After the riots last summer, I took perverse delight in sending her link after link to send to him for his thoughts. His answer: dead silence. No response. Cognitive dissonance is a bitch.


,UPDATE: In response to this post, a reader has sent me a series of offensive and disturbing sexist jokes, none of which I enjoyed, and which I only offer up to you for academic purposes of examination.


SEXIST JOKE #234:

Q:What's the definition of the bravest man in the world?

The man who comes home drunk, covered in lipstick and smelling of perfume, then slaps his wife on the backside and says:

"You're next, fatty."

SEXIST JOKE #412b:

Q:What's the definition of the bravest man in the world?

The Man who walks into his bedroom and sees his wife packing a suitcase.

He asks, "What are you doing?"

She answers, "I'm moving to London. I heard prostitutes there get paid $400 for doing what I do for you for free."

Later that night, on her way out, the wife walks into the bedroom and sees her husband packing his suitcase.

When she asks him where he's going, he replies, "I'm coming too. I want to see how you live on $800 a year".

SEXIST JOKE #559:

Q:What's the definition of the bravest man in the world?

A woman was shopping at her local supermarket where she selected: 2 quarts of low fat milk, a carton of eggs, 2 quarts of orange juice, a head of lettuce, half a dozen tomatoes, a jar of coffee, and a pound of bacon .

As she was unloading her items on the conveyor belt to check out, a drunken man standing behind her watched as she placed the items in front of the cashier.

While the cashier was ringing up her purchases, the drunk calmly stated, "you must be single."

The woman was a bit startled by this proclamation, but she was intrigued by the derelict's intuition, since she was indeed single.

She looked at her six items on the belt and saw nothing particularly unusual about her selections that could have tipped off the Drunk to her marital status.

Curiosity getting the better of her, she said, "Well, you know what, you're absolutely correct. But how on earth did you know that?"

The drunk replied, "Cuz you're frickin ugly."

AND LASTLY, THE INFAMOUS SEXIST JOKE #23 (this is the one that got an Englisman deported from New Zealand in what is still referred to there, in hushed tones, as "The Incident of 1977."

Q:What's the definition of the bravest man in the world?

The Man who walks into the bedroom with a sheep under his arm while his wife is lying in bed reading.

Man says: "This is the pig I have sex with when you've got a headache."

Wife replies: "I think you'll find that is a sheep."

Man replies: "I think you'll find I was talking to the sheep."