Picture of the Day

Lena Dunham in New York City.

Also, some hipster.

(h/t WWTDD)

Quote of the Day

"I get so tired of having to cry out 'misogyny,' but that’s what’s going on in this situation. People questioning the idea that a woman could sleep with a man who defied her lot in the looks bracket hews so closely to these really outdated ideas about what makes a woman worth spending time with. Really? Can you not imagine a world in which a girl who’s sexually down for anything and oddly gregarious pulls a guy out of his shell for two days?"

-- Lena Dunham on those who say that a man who looks like Patrick Wilson would never stoop to having sex with a woman who looks like Lena Dunham's Hannah Horvath character on Girls, as he does for an entire episode last season

Trust me, Lena, there are plenty of us who are just as tired of hearing you cry out "misogyny" over every little goddamned thing, too.

I did actually see the episode she's talking about, the one in which her character comes on to a doctor played by Patrick Wilson -- an intelligent, established, seemingly normal guy, as opposed to the insufferable shitheads who populate the Dunham-centric view of Brooklyn where most of Girls takes place -- and the two wind up screwing and basically playing house for a couple of days. I didn't find the premise at all hard to believe because, what the hell, she made it clear she was completely willing and he obviously didn't have anything important to do that weekend.

Notice, though, that the two of them never left the house. In other words, he didn't go anywhere he could be seen with her -- certainly not someplace he might run into friends who'd ask, "Who's the dumpy little hipster troll and can you get her to stop talking?"

I think I hear Lena Dunham crying out again.

Adding: I got an e-mail response to this post that I just have to share. It's pretty much spot-on:

"What a baby Lena Dunham is. A big, whiny, stupid, baby. She wants all of the plaudits and credit for being 'daring' but she wants ZERO criticism. For her to cravenly cry 'misogyny' -- just because the idea of her obnoxious doughball character hooking up with a hot doctor is considered laughable to all sensible humans -- shows just how much of a coward she truly is.

I laugh at the idea that she's any kind of a hero. She's not brave in any way. Yeah, she takes her clothes off on film, but we're not allowed to have an honest reaction to her body. And I think we both know that she couldn't handle 1/100th of the criticism an actual non-famous ugly girl has to deal with on a daily basis. Normal ugly girls are just stuck being ugly and having to deal with it. They don't get to have makeout sessions with handsome actors.

I also don't think she's unfairly maligned due to her gender. If anything I think she gets a substantial amount of kid-glove treatment because she's a woman. Imagine if a male writer/actor did what she was doing. Imagine if, say, Jonah Hill wrote a series about himself as 'the voice of his generation' and had scenes of him banging Jessica Alba. He'd be laughed out of Hollywood. Jezebel would devote a week's worth of articles to him, roundly mocking him for the adolescent jerkoff fantasies he'd written.

But Lena Dunham is a visionary.

Here's the most revealing quote: 'Can you not imagine a world in which a girl who’s sexually down for anything and oddly gregarious pulls a guy out of his shell for two days?'

But see, a guy like that wouldn't be in his shell. He's a handsome doctor in New York, you really think Hannah Horvath is the best he can do on a random weekend? See that's the kind of shit that reveals how delusional Lena really is. She sees nothing fraudulent or self-indulgent in this little fantasy she's concocted. 'What man wouldn't want to spend an uninhibited weekend (probably with anal) with little old me? I'm so witty and free. Down for anything!'

I just don't think she gets that she's writing a character who's NOT on TV. She's not writing about her ideal self. She's writing about a normal, dumpy schlub of a girl who lives in a city where dumpy girls don't talk hunky doctors into bed for two days. That ain't how it works.

Here's the sobering truth that Dunham doesn't understand, the truth that none of her friends or handlers will tell her, the truth I'd like to tell her personally: this is life in the big city. You don't have the options you think you do. Maybe in Mobile, Alabama you're an 8 1/2, but here in NYC you're a 3-4 at best. I don't care what you're 'down' for. Because here in the big city a guy can find smart, funny, sexy, ballsy, hard-drinking, down-for-anything girls who are also drop-dead gorgeous or at least not trollish and irritating. Because it's the fucking city. Sorry to blow your mind, honey.

Lena Dunham the famous actor/writer probably can land a hot guy. Hannah Horvath the obnoxious shitty writer who lives in a crappy NYC apartment and ISN'T FAMOUS, cannot.

-- Julia"

That's actually a terrific point: While I actually do think there are guys in New York City -- and everywhere else -- who'll sleep with just about anybody who offers, the arrogance in creating a character played by yourself whom a gorgeous guy way above the character's station falls for completely is just breathtaking. And I've heard the theory that the entire episode is a fantasy in Hannah's head, but Dunham's snotty defense would seem to cast doubt on that possibility. Also, yes, remove the sexual component from the mix -- in other words, make Hannah a schlubby, talkative, badly dressed doof who isn't immediately making it clear that she's willing to put out -- and watch how quickly that scenario would go from laughable to impossible. M. Night Shyamalan was pilloried for being so egomaniacal as to cast himself as a writer whose work was going to change the world in Lady in the Water, but Lena Dunham casts herself as a chubby manic hipster dreamgirl who beds a really hot doctor -- helping him learn to live again in the process -- and she's a genius.

Quote of the Day, Jr.

"Again, there are no birds in the trees, apart from these, which will be eaten on Tuesday. They are yummy."

-- North Korean anti-American propaganda video

This is sincerely my favorite thing of the week. It's like one of those Tribulation 99-style cult videos I used to rent and watch while I got high back in the 90s.

You know, if the North Koreans really want to make their people believe that America is a desolate hellscape where everyone is jobless, miserable, and living in squalor, they should just show them an episode of Girls.

"This is what American women look like: homely, unable to afford clothes, and insane. Some women, such as this one, are so thin and desperate for food that in, order to survive, they are forced to eat the semen of men who haven't been able to shower in months."

Quote of the Day

"The scene is raw, it’s brave, and it’s the boldest thing we’ve seen Dunham do yet: a smart, unsanitized comedy of errors that perfectly captures the experience of being at the ob-gyn."

-- The Onion, in a story called "Next Episode Of 'Girls' To Feature Lena Dunham Shitting Herself During Gyno Exam While Eating A Burrito"

As always, the Onion's satire is pretty much indistinguishable from reality. For all the stories the site has done that have fooled a people into thinking they were for real, this may be most understandable for somebody to fall for. All you had to do was watch even five minutes of this past week's Girls episode, with Dunham's character puncturing her eardrum with a Q-tip because she's insane and Adam Driver's Ugliest Hipster on Earth coming all over his inexplicably adorable girlfriend's breasts because he's a tortured artist, or something, to realize that there's nowhere the show won't go to be unwatchable.

Yes, I once again sat through an episode On Demand because I was curious to see what all the "controversy" was about -- what was making the fingers of a million little New York City-based liberal arts grads work at warp speed banging out blog posts for Slate, Salon, Jezebel, XOJane and Feministing -- and, as usual, I was really sorry I did.

As The Onion kind of alludes to, it doesn't take much thought, talent or even courage to show ugly people doing really ugly things to get people talking.

Body Shot

Today's column for the Daily Banter treads familiar ground for me lately in that it deals with Lena Dunham. It also treads familiar ground in general right now in that it deals with Dunham's incessant nudity, a popular topic of conversation at the moment among journalists. Where it treads new ground is that it's probably going to get me called a misogynist prick.

Anyway, sharpen your knives and take a look.

Here's the opening shot:

"Here’s a little something I don’t think I’ve ever actually told anyone: Andrew Breitbart wrote to me not once but twice. Back in February of 2010 he rattled off a very strange late-night rant at me in response to something I’d written about his little Renfield, James O’Keefe. It was full of misspelled words and ended with a reference to Footloose, and it wound up getting quite a bit of press for my little corner of the internet given that it provided a flawless example of Breitbart’s pettiness when it came to taking on anyone at all who dared to write something about him and his acolytes that he didn’t consider properly hagiographic.

But a couple of weeks after that first e-mail I got another, this one reacting to a quickie diatribe I’d posted on my site that more met with Breitbart’s approval. The piece in question furiously questioned the sincerity of Hollywood’s decision to wrap its toned arms around Gabourey Sidibe and Mo’Nique, who at the time were riding a wave of critical praise for their performance in Precious, and declare them physically beautiful."

Read the Rest Here

The Girl You Don't Want

Today's column for the Daily Banter takes a second look at Lena Dunham -- and pretty much finds the same thing I did the first time around.

Here's the opening shot:

"When I first started my site, Deus Ex Malcontent, back in the spring of 2006, the original personal bio on its front page had a line in it that slammed Sarah Jessica Parker. I can’t remember the exact words right now but I basically said something about how I didn’t like Hollywood trying to convince me that she was attractive. It was, I admit, a really obnoxious thing to say right out of the gate but being that the blog was in its infancy and I wasn’t sure what I wanted it to be or what I’d eventually be writing about a good portion of the time it made sense to just come out swinging. Even at the time, though, my point was never that I didn’t like Sarah Jessica Parker — I simply didn’t like what the arbiters of pop culture were constantly telling me I should like about her. In other words, my issue wasn’t with SJP the Person, it was with SJP the Product.

I try to keep that thought process in mind these days every time I read one screed or another defending Lena Dunham."

Read the Rest Here

Banal Sex

And now, let's play multiple choice smart-ass responses, shall we?

Gawker: Lena Dunham Is Dating a Guy from That Band Fun./9.5.12

1. Look at them. If they get married it'll be declared an official holiday in Williamsburg.

2. Their baby will be like an insufferably dull version of the Antichrist -- with the 666 on his head clearly visible thanks to the shaved side of his asymmetrical haircut.

3. Wait, hasn't he seen what she looks like naked?

4. It's about time there was something funny in Lena Dunham.

Quote of the Day

"They make you hire a certain number of chicks, and they’re always the least funny on the writing staff. If my daughter has a mediocre sense of humor, I’m just gonna tell her, ‘Be a staff writer for a sitcom. Because they’ll have to hire you, they can’t really fire you, and you don’t have to produce that much. It’ll be awesome.'"

-- Adam Carolla

That Carolla is a reactionary misogynist shithead isn't news; it's common knowledge by now. But for God's sake, would articles that call him out for it and that aim to disprove his Neanderthalic theory on women and comedy please avoid citing Lena Dunham as their very first example of a really funny woman.

Girls is overrated, mumblecore crap and Dunham is about as funny as colon cancer.

I can think of a dozen women off the top of my head who are funnier than almost any man alive -- certainly funnier than Carolla -- and Lena Dunham isn't one of them.

The Unbearable Whiteness of Being (Complete)

The Full Piece that Ran Yesterday at the Daily Banter

Let’s start with the obvious: HBO’s new series Girls isn’t for me. What I mean by that is that I’m not its target audience. I’m not a millennial; I’m not female; I’m not a Brooklyn hipster who’s perpetually drowning in his or her own insufferable ennui; I don’t recognize even a hint of myself or my life in any of the dingbat characters or torturous scenarios the show traffics in. I’m sure Lena Dunham is a nice enough person, but there’s nothing about her that makes me think she’s someone I really need to take seriously as a creative talent, let alone the supposed voice of her generation (God help them all).

Granted, I lived in New York City for quite a while and I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t familiar with the kind of “girls” Dunham and her cast try to represent for the TV audience; the city is crawling with them. I just don’t think they’re interesting enough to merit the representation. On the contrary, my reaction to any encounter with them typically lies somewhere between cringing painfully and going full-on Inspector Dreyfus whenever somebody mentioned Clouseau’s name.

With that in mind, though, I think that the criticism Lena Dunham’s been on the receiving end of from some in the black and Hispanic community is unfair. In case you haven’t been following -- and for your own sake, I hope you actually have better things to do than concern yourself with this kind of “controversy” -- a host of socially conscious journalists of color, many of them female, have complained that Dunham’s show is too “white,” that none of the titular girls on Girls are black or brown. The argument is a little dumb at face value, simply because Dunham herself is white and it’s not like that’s something she can change -- and while New York City, both real and the depressing hellhole depicted on the show, is indeed a melting pot, let’s be honest and admit that it’s not exactly unlikely that people like Dunham’s character on the show and her small cadre of friends would all be the same shade of white.

Hell, the show wouldn’t be what it is -- cloying and insipid -- without the pervading stench of white privilege and the ability for characters to mumble complaints about the kind of shit only privileged white kids have the luxury of complaining about. It’s been a common refrain among critics of Girls, but it’s a show about white people problems -- and like everyone else, I say that as derogatorily as possible -- and trying to shoehorn a demographic into the equation which undoubtedly brings a different set of concerns to the table would be a ham-fisted nod to political correctness and little more. There wouldn’t be anything the least bit honest about Dunham taking that tack -- and anyone willing to admit to the world that she’s this tiresome, irritating and unsympathetic is honest if nothing else.

Please understand that I’m certainly not saying that women of color don’t occasionally obsess over some of the same trivialities that a show like Girls attempts to address; everybody has his or her own version of navel-gazing. It’s unfortunate that there isn’t a larger forum for shows that either catered specifically to black and Hispanic female audiences or were able to draw the parallels between all women without trying to force the issue in an effort to ward off exactly the kind of criticism that’s been leveled at Dunham. Those upset about the show’s lack of color, so to speak, have a point when they argue that a series like Girls with an all-black or all-Hispanic cast would very likely never be given the cachet of a time slot on HBO -- but again, it’s not like that’s Lena Dunham’s fault, and again, it’s not as if she should be required to adjust her vision for the show simply to satisfy the PC police.

It’s a show about a Lena Dunham-type character and the people she interacts with. And if you’re not included among those people, trust me, you shouldn’t be complaining. You’re a hell of a lot better off.

The Unbearable Whiteness of Being

It's being called Sex and the City for the aptly named Generation Y -- which means you probably already know what I'll think of it.

Still, does Lena Dunham's Girls really deserve all the criticism being heaped on it? No, not all. It doesn't deserve to be called racist -- insipid and irritating, that's a different story.

My latest piece for the Daily Banter takes the show apart.

Here's the opening shot:

"Let’s start with the obvious: HBO’s new series 'Girls' isn’t for me. What I mean by that is that I’m not its target audience. I’m not a millennial; I’m not female; I’m not a Brooklyn hipster who’s perpetually drowning in his or her own insufferable ennui; I don’t recognize even a hint of myself or my life in any of the dingbat characters or torturous scenarios the show traffics in. I’m sure Lena Dunham is a nice enough person, but there’s nothing about her that makes me think she’s someone I really need to take seriously as a creative talent, let alone the supposed voice of her generation (God help them all)."

Read the Rest Here

Remember, kids: To "Like" and RT is to care.