From Blag Hag:
Lindy West is a freelance writer who often writes for Slog, so I’ve grown to love her writing since I’ve moved to Seattle. She has a piece at MSNBC poking fun at the apocalyptic Super Bowl ads from last night. And this is what Penn Jillette thinks of her article:
“What a remarkably stupid cunt. Why did I read this? Strained comedy that does exactly what she’s busting. Horrible. How about not watching? This is just someone trying to hate people and be superior and having to work really hard at it. She does the same fucking joke 4 times and pats herself on the back for it. I’ve never seen any of these ads, and never will, but what a fucking talentless cunt.”
Yep. According to Penn Jillette, if a woman makes a joke he doesn’t find funny, she’s a stupid talentless cunt.
It was irritating when he was promoting a garbage piece his friend wrote about how guys will be guys, and the skeptical movement should accept that instead of trying to be welcoming to women. But this crosses the line. Gender based insults like “cunt” are unacceptable. And frankly it’s a little sad that Jillette embraces the skeptical movement and we embrace him back, yet he can go on tirades like this…without even watching the ads that the article is poking fun at. What happened to becoming informed before taking a position?
Comments
42 Comments so far. Leave a comment below.I call other guys cunts all the time, I wouldn’t say it’s gender based. Women can be dicks too ya know!
As for Mr. Jillette, bit of a crazy comment to make. He is a bit of a goober
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Do you live in the UK or Australia? In the US, calling a woman a cunt has a much more degrading connotation than calling a guy a dick.
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I’m in Ireland, we’re not too squeamish when it comes to using “bad” words these days as descriptions for people or things. It’s part of the language, people accept it, don’t become reactionary and offended any time something “shocking” is heard in a sentence. We speak our mind we use whatever descriptive expression that comes. Plus it’s fun, free. Granted a few foreign people don’t get it. We just tell them “we’re havin the craic”.
Now I’m not someone who would just call someone “something bad” to their face unless they deserved it, or was joking with them (thats the craic again there). It’s more used in description of something or someone without a second thought.
“Bad words” would be water of a ducks back to most of us here. I thought the worst thing he called her was talentless, that’s more of a personal attack.
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Don’t ever go to France then, they’re all con this and con that and “look at this con” all the time.
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We should all address each other with truly gender-neutral slurs like asshole. As in: “Hasn’t this asshole feminist got anything better to do with her time ?”
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Obviously, the fact that you have total control over how people respond to your choice of words excuses you from the tedious exercise of reflecting on why others might be offended.
Must be nice.
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“It’s now very common to hear people say, “I’m rather offended by that”, as if that gives them certain rights. It’s no more than a whine. It has no meaning, it has no purpose, it has no reason to be respected as a phrase. “I’m offended by that.” Well, so fucking what?” – Stephen Fry
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When Stephen Fry made that quote, it was in the context of justifying his position against a bill that would prosecute speech that could be construed as inciting religious hatred or violence. It seems to be a stance that comes from a fundamental belief in the freedom of unabridged speech.
In that way, I completely agree. Penn has a right to say asinine shit like this.
But!
AND THIS IS THE IMPORTANT BIT!
He does not have the right to be immune from the consequences of saying offensive crap–no more so that I have a right to be free from being offended.
Thus, if he–seemingly like Stephen above–is so willfully ignorant as to choose to attack a person’s character based solely on their gender, then it is our right to call him on this bullshit and stop supporting him.
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I don’t see the part where is supposedly attacking her based on her gender. He called her a “talentless cunt”, which if you want to go all PC newspeak is just “doubleplus untalented.” He said her comedy was strained and she did the same joke over and over again. Nowhere did he say: this person is a bad comedian because she is a woman. That’s what the overly sensitive feminist blogger made of it.
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cunt/k?nt/
Noun:
1. vulgar. A woman’s genitals.
2. offensive. A woman.
Like I said, his choice of attack was based on her gender. Should we have a discussion on gender dynamics in the United States now?
What does it signify when a member of a dominant culture (white, male, wealthy) at the top of his professional game dismisses someone’s artistic contributions using incredibly asymmetrical language like this?
What would it be like if he railed against the inane ramblings of a black american in the same way? A gay person? In any of these cases, bringing in irrelevant characteristics in order to degrade the whole person is to devalue those things!
He could call her a talentless hack–at least “hack” carries the relevant context. Her gender has absolutely nothing to do with her failings as a comic writer.
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Frankly, it’s weird to call people these names at all. I think calling a man a dick is just as insulting as calling a woman a cunt. And I think if you call someone a “cunt” you are saying that they are a female body part that is a perfectly nice part. It is, afterall, the door to life for all of us (well, for those of us born naturally and not Cesarean). And I think a man’s penis is swell, too.
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Wow. Respect for Penn Jillette: minimal to none.
Fortunately, if Lindy West is anything like the way she comes across in the pages of The Stranger, she’ll either laugh this off due to the absurdity, or wear it as a badge of pride.
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Sounds like he read he piece before he had his morning coffee.
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I used to file Penn Jillette under “celebrities whose work I admire but are probably giant assholes in person.” But my admiration has flagged, and the assholism has become his more prominent feature.
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Ugh. Such an ugly, abusive term.
Penn Jillette, while I enjoy some of the “Bullshit” shows, is such an arrogant ass. Not to mention he always sounds as though he’s talking with food in his mouth.
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Yeah, he should have used a more respectable term for a bird’s clopper.
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Who is Penn Jillette?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Penn_Jillette
Oh. A Randian. Color me surprised.
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He also spent an episode of his show defending Walmart. How lame.
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Well mrclam, you didn’t expect a multi billion dollar mega corporation to be able to defend itself now did you?
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Or when he made the ridiculous claim that there was no scientific evidence for the negative effects of second-hand smoke, taking his script directly from the tobacco companies, and ignoring the vast mountains of evidence that didn’t fit his narrative.
When it comes to politics, he’s far more journalist than skeptic: he has a narrative, and he’ll force anything he finds into it.
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He’s a magician. I’ve always watched the “Bullshit” program with an eye out for the misdirection. For example, it’s really easy to get support from the viewing audience for beating up on veganism, but that episode mainly focused on how PETA is a hypocrite because one of its officers has to use insulin, interspersed with conspicuous meat-eating and leather-wearing. PETA might be an obnoxious organization with at least one member who admits to benefiting from animal testing, but I didn’t see in that episode an argument against being a vegan. If you hate PETA and love meat, it just tells you what you want to hear and no reason to notice its misdirection. (I’m not a vegan, but I don’t have a problem with people eating what they want and sometimes asking their friends to not eat meat sometimes – who is the picky eater if you require the option of meat). The least they could do with that episode was stay on topic and expose something everyone doesn’t already know.
His primary talent is illusion, and while having made a career of showing the secrets of magic and misdirection, don’t feel like he’s your friend and you’re on the inside when he’s showing you how it’s done.
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The piece was vapid and shallow, Penn is perfectly welcome to ridicule it. For some reason cunt has become the Worst Word You Can Say On The Internet. What’s the deal with that? Is cunt worse than dick? I think it has to do with a deep seated fear of female anatomy. Anyway, for the best analysis of the Superbowl and our psycho society, look no further than here:
http://kunstler.com/blog/2012/02/all-screaming-id-no-brains-no-honor.html
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Upvoted for the Kunstler link – he’s a true internet gem.
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The reason “cunt” is worse than “dick” is because calling a woman a cunt is telling her that her purpose/value is a hole for someone to put their dick in. It’s dehumanizing.
Calling someone a dick means they’ve behaved rudely and selfishly, as a penis might if a penis was a complete being.
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“Any performer that ever sells a product on television is for now and all eternity removed from the artistic world” ~ Bill Hicks
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Oh noes!!!!
He used a mean word, lets banish him from society.
This blog’s war on libertarianism continues…
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So long as something keeps spewing shit, we’ll keep calling it an asshole.
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Cunt.
There, I’ve put it right at the top.
Now, let’s do a little Lenny Bruce and repeat the WORD over and over again until it doesn’t , y,know, piss off all the cunts out there.
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I don’t think you’re going to get women to stop being bothered by this by telling them words have no meaning. Men who call women cunts know what it means. Nobody’s ever called me that for any reason other than to put me in my place.
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A swear word is a put-down, that’s what it is: it puts you down. This whole discussion comes down to whether you consider the word “cunt” to be “just” a put-down or some kind of sexist slur. Was the word unnecessary, even disrespectful ? Sure. Would I have used it ? No way. Do I think it was a sexist slur on the part of Gilette ? Nope.
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Another remark : I find it quite ironic that the feminist blogger refers to herself as the “blag hag.” A word that is very much more used to put a woman in her place as it were because it explicitly references the failure to live up to a (male dominated) societal beauty ideal instead of just vulgarly referencing part of the anatomy. I guess it’s an “it’s OK for us to use a word” kind of thing.
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Except that “hag” (a) isn’t really used, (b) doesn’t have the strong connotation (in the US) that “cunt” does, and (c) is being self-applied sarcastically rather than bandied about in a dismissive fashion.
And yeah, it’s “just” a word, but words have meaning. That’s how language works. The point isn’t that you can’t say “cunt,” it’s that it’s such a horribly gender-based dismissive putdown (again, in the cultural setting here in the US) that employing it to describe a woman in most contexts it makes you an asshole.
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I suspect “blag hag” wasn’t chosen because the blogger wanted to be called a “hag”, but as a play on the term “fag hag”; a modern term for a single woman who hangs out with gay men.
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How ironic… “Fucking Talentless Cunt” is the name of my upcoming ‘Greatest Hits’ CD!!!!!
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And if you were in a 90s Riot Grrl band that would be quite clever. Otherwise, not so much.
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You’ve not heard my music.
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I’m glad Penn Gillette is not a movie or book critic. Imagine his negative reviews starting with, “What a remarkably stupid…”
He can juggle but he can’t grasp the pithy.
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so, all you cunts who failed to be funny in the above comments think that my calling all you cunts cunts is perfectly reasonable? You cunts don’t think its a bit over the top for the simple crime of not amusing me?
You cunts might be able to convince me that the word is no big deal, sort of like a white guy telling me nigger is no big deal since the word doesn’t hurt him but how do you justify it for simply not making one of the worlds biggest assholes laugh?
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What a bewildering thing to write. The article in question is so tame I can’t imagine what he was reading into it to make him put such a rabid tirade in print. Is he always that crabby?
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Don’t you often wish Penn would be more like Teller and remain silent. He’s smart guy and I respect so much of what he has done, but…
…Wait for it…
…Christ, what an asshole.
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You guys are funny!
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Rudeness is the weak man’s imitation of strength (Eric Hoffer). The rudeness of Jillette, while well within his rights, is more disappointing than offensive to me. I am reminded of the classic whiny-face picture of Keyshawn Johnson; “C’mon man”.
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