"Obama seems to be a nice man, and that is precisely the problem... It's better to have a sheep in wolf's clothing than a wolf in sheep's clothing."

Said Julian Assange.

That stood out to me this morning as I'm trying to understand the resignation of David Petraeus, who — as discuss in an earlier post — "presided over a moderation of the CIA's controversial drone program to take into greater account diplomatic sensitivities, a shift that sometimes put him at odds with the head of the agency's Counterterrorism Center."

Big UK lefty George Galloway fired for saying something about rape.

There's Todd Akin over there on the right, but the left is screwing up over rape too:

Mandy Rhodes, the editor of Holyrood, said the Respect party MP's remarks that Assange was guilty of just "bad manners" by failing to ask permission to have sex with a sleeping woman, had left her "frankly gobsmacked".

See? Galloway thought the incident was outside of the category that Todd Akin would label "legitimate rape" (and, to drag in another lefty, Whoopi Goldberg would call "rape rape").

[Rhodes] said it was impossible for [Galloway] to continue his column following his remark that having sex with a sleeping woman was "not rape as anyone with any sense can possibly recognise it" if she had already had sex with that man.

"There is no excuse, ever, for sex without consent, and regardless of the details of the Assange case, Galloway's comments and inappropriate language about rape per se are alarming," Rhodes said in a statement on the magazine's website....



Galloway has been roundly condemned by senior figures in his own party, by rape crisis groups and other MPs, after saying in a video blog posted last week: "Some people believe that when you go to bed with somebody, take off your clothes, and have sex with them and then fall asleep, you're already in the sex game with them.

"It might be really bad manners not to have tapped her on the shoulder and said, 'do you mind if I do it again?'

"It might be really sordid and bad sexual etiquette, but whatever else it is, it is not rape, or you bankrupt the term rape of all meaning."

Take note. That's something that if you say it, you will lose your job. It's now, officially, a topic that cannot be discussed anymore. Feminists used to have to fight to get sex without consent recognized as real rape. (Here's Susan Estrich's book "Real Rape," spelling it out in 1988 for people who were struggling with concept could bring it within grasp.) Now, you're on notice that making distinctions between types of rape could utterly destroy you. Don't talk about it.

What a victory for women in the war on women.

ADDED: There's a big difference between Akin and Galloway, and it's not just that one's a righty and one's a lefty. Akin is, I think, rather dumb, and he's obviously inarticulate. By contrast, Galloway is quite smart and articulate.

Ironically, it was Galloway who was talking about a category that could be termed — using language properly — "legitimate rape." When Akin said "legitimate rape," he was referring to the most serious kinds of incidents within the larger category of unconsented-to sexual intercourse, the acts that everyone will agree are rape.

The word "legitimate" makes it sound as though Akin were saying those acts are acceptable, but he only meant those are the acts that are properly referred to with the word rape. And this was all in the context of talking about abortion.

Akin wants to say abortion is always wrong, and he's got to deal with the widely held opinion that a woman who has become pregnant through rape ought to be able to get an abortion. How can he find a way to say no? What if it were true that when it's a really serious rape — an act properly categorized as rape — that the woman's body would repel the sperm? That would be really convenient as a way to fend off the argument that has worked so strongly against his absolute anti-abortion position. Of course, it's not true, so it's some highly stupid wishful thinking on his part.

Now, let's look at what Galloway said. He's talking about the kind of rape that's not at the core of what is reprehensible about rape. Like Akin, he's thinking about the most serious types of rape and distinguishing other acts that also get classified as rape, and he's legitimating those less serious acts. Akin was probably only trying to say that it would be good always to favor the life of the unborn over the interests of the woman (because if she got pregnant, she wasn't a victim of the harshest violence).

But Galloway wasn't talking about the innocence of the unborn at all. He was talking about the innocence of the man who has sex with a woman without her consent. He was saying that when a man is naked in bed with a woman who has already had sex with him, that man can proceed with another act of intercourse without acquiring her consent. He's saying that something that some people categorize as rape is not really rape.

So Akin and Galloway raise 2 different issues about rape. One is about access to abortion in a world where there is rape. The other is about the extent to which sexual intercourse should be criminalized. These are actually both things we should be able to talk about!

"Swedish prison. Like, I could live there, like it's nice ..."

We join the inane chatter about Julian Assange somewhere near the end of the 50th minute:



"... just because he's a rapist doesn't mean I'm saying he's some some sort of violent... It's such a loaded term...."



There's much more, of course, but that gives you a feeling for the discussion. Continue at your own risk.

ADDED: Instapundit repeats the "just because he's a rapist" quote and snarks "It's not rape-rape," which is a reference to what Whoopi Goldberg said about Roman Polanski.

AND: Back in the 1970s, beginning with the extremely influential book "Against Our Will" by Susan Brownmiller, feminist doctrine portrayed rape as an act of violence. I have been in the presence of feminists who would jump on you, quite harshly, if you said there was some sexuality involved. No, it was 100% violence. You were a heretic if you didn't accept that doctrine. I would challenge Maureen Tkacik with the proposition that if you don't think it's violence, then you shouldn't call it rape.

Mark Zuckerberg — not Julian Assange — is Time's Person of the Year.

So they stayed in the realm of the internet and picked someone who more people can agree is a hero. It's straightforward and nice to celebrate Facebook and leave Wikileaks for more serious news analysis.

ADDED:  Link to the actual Time article:

In less than seven years, Zuckerberg wired together a twelfth of humanity into a single network, thereby creating a social entity almost twice as large as the U.S. If Facebook were a country it would be the third largest, behind only China and India. It started out as a lark, a diversion, but it has turned into something real, something that has changed the way human beings relate to one another on a species-wide scale. We are now running our social lives through a for-profit network that, on paper at least, has made Zuckerberg a billionaire six times over.

Facebook has merged with the social fabric of American life, and not just American but human life: nearly half of all Americans have a Facebook account, but 70% of Facebook users live outside the U.S. It's a permanent fact of our global social reality. We have entered the Facebook age, and Mark Zuckerberg is the man who brought us here.

AND: The runners up are: The Tea Party...

In a sense, identifying with the Tea Party movement was like catching Beatlemania in the 1960s. People were drawn in for different reasons — the beat, the haircuts, the lyrics — and great gulfs of taste divided the John fans from the Paul fans, the George fans from the Ringo fans.

... Julian Assange...

He is inclined to the grandiose. Contempt for nearly every authority drives his work...

... Hamid Karzai...

There are two schools of thought about Hamid Karzai. The first is that he's a vain, incompetent, monumentally corrupt leader with serious mood-disorder problems that require medication....

... and the Chilean Miners....

A mother lode of luck and faith was involved. But the rescue also showcased a commodity even rarer today than the gold the miners were quarrying: leadership.

Ron Paul, pro-Wikileaks.

But Christopher Hitchens was talking about the document leakage, and Assange has turned himself in over the... semen leakage.

Yesterday, Christopher Hitchens posted "Turn Yourself In, Julian Assange," and today, Assange has turned himself in.

ADDED: He warned us that he was going to release his code if people rubbed him the wrong way. His DNA code.

"[I]t’s important to counter the 'haha sex by surprise those crazy Swedes' media narrative..."

"... with the fact that actually, non-consensual sex is assault and should be recognized as such by law. Consenting to one kind of sexual act doesn’t mean that you consent to anything else your partner wants to do; if it’s agreed that the only kind of sex we’re having is with a condom, then it does remove an element of consent to have sex without a condom with only one partner’s knowledge. To use another example, if you and your partner agree that you can penetrate her, it doesn’t necessarily follow that she has the green light to penetrate you whenever and however."

Feministe wants to talk about that "sex by surprise" charge against Julian Assange.

The Wikileaks Doomsday Machine.

"Julian Assange, the WikiLeaks founder, has circulated across the internet an encrypted 'poison pill' cache of uncensored documents suspected to include files on BP and Guantanamo Bay."

***

"The government has never brought an Espionage Act prosecution that would look remotely like this one."

"I suspect that has a lot to do with why nothing has happened yet," says lawprof Stephen I. Vladeck, puzzling over why the U.S. Justice Department has yet to bring charges against Julian Assange.

Sissy on "sissy."

Yesterday, I had a problem with Rush Limbaugh using the word "sissy" over and over again to express his feelings about Julian Assange. That, understandably, caught the attention of Sissy Willis. Because she's a Sissy but not a sissy, she did not react with I Feel Bad About My Name: And Other Thoughts On Being a Woman. She wrote to riff on something I said in my listening-to-Rush-Limbaugh video:

"To say men are being like women when you want to say they're being cowardly and weak — I don't like it ... Also, some chickification is a good thing. Women have a lot to offer. Think about it."

Sissy says she's been saying it for a while: "postmodern, identity-politics 'feminism'" is not the same thing as "feminization." And that makes me want to remind Rush and everyone else that there are many different manifestations of the feminine. You have something in mind when you say "chickification" or "feminization." I get it. But if you want to be able to criticize the forms of the feminine that you loathe, don't sweep all women into a stereotype. If you do, you are, ironically, acting like a cartoon of a radical feminist — a woman who thinks of men as sexist brutes.

Now, I know that Rush Limbaugh isn't a sexist. I listen to the show. I know he doesn't think women are all alike, and I think he loves women. He's first in line to promote the women who embrace conservatism. That's his thing: He loves conservatism. He's enthusiastic about conservative women in politics and critical of those who try to drag down Sarah Palin (and, for example, Christine O'Donnell). He does the thing that I do: He points it out when a liberal says something about a female conservative that liberals would call sexist if it were said about a female liberal. He notices — as I do — the way liberals expect women to be liberal and discipline us harshly when we are not.

Also, Rush isn't exactly the model of stereotypical masculinity. And I'm not just referring to the fact that he hasn't kept his body in optimum shape over the years. I'm talking about the hours of show time he's spent telling us about the details of his wedding. The times he's admitted getting emotional over some movie. And just yesterday, he went on and on about his pets. He's got 2 dogs and a cat. And the dogs are because of his wife. When he was living alone, he was living alone with a cat. A pussy!

Here I am listening — for the first time — to Rush Limbaugh talking about me.

I've got the podcast of today's show, where he's reading from this blog post of mine:



And let me invite Rush to go on Bloggingheads.tv and diavlog with me about the so-called chickification problems that plague our world today.

ADDED: Here's the show transcript including the text of what's in my video clip. Rush continues, with some talk about the Wikileaks leaks, a few paragraphs, and then:

And you have this little sissy, Julian Assange, thrown in the middle of it.  Assange is a community organizer on the world stage, and who's his enemy?  The United States of America. 

... I mean, look, to those of you who are offended by my description of Assange as a sissy, would you want him in the foxhole with you?...

Look, the chickification of our culture and society is rampant.  We've become defensive.  We've become politically correct.  We've been overly concerned with everybody's feelings about things...

Ironically, this sounds defensive. Keep thinking about it, Rush. (I want to live rent-free inside his head.)

Julian Assange — "He's a sissy; he's a waif, purely and simply an Internet creation."

That's how Rush Limbaugh talked about Julian Assange on his show yesterday. What I'm interested in here is not Assange per se or what Limbaugh thinks of him. I'm interested in the gratuitous disparagement of men whose looks and personal style fail to track the masculine stereotype:

Let's look at Julian Assange. In a contest between Janet Napolitano and Julian Assange, who do you think would win?  Big Sis, there's no question about it.  Now, if Janet Napolitano, Big Sis, can put her hands down our underwear at any airport in America she chooses, why can't she get her hands on the State Department leaker?  Why can't she get her hands around the scrawny little neck of Julian Assange and all the other people at WikiLeaks?  This little guy, this little waif, this little Peter Pan, Julian Assange, does anybody really believe that is his real name?...

I'm in the mood to listen to a sissy, and we have an audio sound bite here from Julian Assange, who looks like a sissy and is a sissy....

No, I just don't like the guy in general principles.  I don't like the name. I don't like the way he looks. I don't like the way he sounds. He's a sissy; he's a waif, purely and simply an Internet creation.

Here's the graphic:



Limbaugh seems to have a general aversion to effeminate men (not to mention mannish women), and he's not processing this rather low reflex into much of anything but the repetition of the word "sissy." I like Rush Limbaugh and have defended him many times, in front of people who tend to hate you if you say anything good about him, so I think my opinion on the subject of Rush Limbaugh has special weight. I think this "sissy" business is beneath him.

There's something in the linked rant that was worth saying. If you read the whole thing, you'll see that Limbaugh was criticizing our government for not being able to catch Assange. In that context, the apparent feebleness of the man is relevant. If Limbaugh wants to say Assange is a weak little man and he's making us look weak, that's fine. What I don't like is the implication that in general men who look small, thin, and weak don't count as real men.

Now, Limbaugh's own critics frequently, gratuitously point out that Limbaugh is fat. I'm sure that creates a temptation for the big man to swing back at little men. I'm not saying he has to resist that temptation every single time, but process it into something better than saying "sissy" over and over. The subject, after all, was strength and weakness, and that was weak comic rhetoric.

UPDATE: I get word that Rush is talking about me on today's show, and, later, I listen to the podcast of the show and respond in real time.

"It seems an unusual time to embark on a career of multiple rape."

"He certainly didn't come across as a violent man, not in the least. Julian [Assange] was clearly preparing to release more sensitive documents."