My what a douche-y week! In desperate times like these, we feminists have only one option.... A douche-off! In one corner, we have Ann "R-word tweeter" Coulter, an awful person if there ever was one. In the other corner we have Richard "God intended rape pregnancies" Mourdock, who is also terrible. Two douches enter, one douche leaves!
Some weeks you just want to burn down the whole Internet, and—well, until yesterday's torrent of hilarious post-debate memes, anyway—this has undoubtedly been one of those weeks.
Last Friday afternoon, as you might have heard, or read, or absorbed via social-media osmosis, Gawker's Adrian Chen posted a long, suspenseful post that unmasked a guy named Michael Brutsch, a 49-year-old Texan who for years has been one of Reddit's most prolific and most disturbing contributors. Known online as ViolentAcrez, Brutsch created "subreddits," or forums, with titles like "Incest," "Chokeabitch," "Rapebait," and "PicsofDeadJailbait," and oh so many more, and was one of the main curators of the lately notorious "Creepshots" forums, in which dudes post photos of women taken surreptitiously in public, in order to perv out on both the photos themselves and their nonconsensual provenance.
This isn't a Douchebag Decree about Michael Brutsch, however.
Here's a brief test of étiquette. You're a writer accused of asking an inappropriate question to a famous actor in a national magazine. Another writer takes you to task for what she sees as a history of this kind of inappropriateness. Your response?
a.) Ignore the criticism—you can't please everyone, right?
b.) Explain yourself—you really didn't intend to offend.
c.) Promptly imply that the other writer is jealous and unfuckable.
If you answered c.), hey! You must be Andrew Goldman! Step right up here to accept this week's Douchebag Decree.
Elizabeth Wurtzel, lawyer, memoirist and pretty lady, is heartbroken that you aren't trying harder to look hot. And what's worse? You're ruining feminism.
The administration Delhi Charter School of Delhi, Louisiana, ought to be red-faced right now. Why's that? Well, in 2006 the administration instituted a new policy: No pregnant students allowed in the classroom. The school reserved the (illegal) right to even force pregnancy tests on students. However, when the good ol' ACLU stepped up on the case, the Delhi Charter School claimed ignorance on the unconstitutionality of banning pregnant women from their halls and reversed their policy. Even without the government stepping in, the administration of the Delhi Charter School is guilty of body-shaming and slut-shaming their student body for ever instituting this policy, and certainly earned the honor of this week's Douchebag Decree.
The new Hooters campaign features two owl puppets—a devil and an angel—meant to represent the internal conflict many customers face when eating fried food at what is basically the world's least gratifying strip club. On the one hand, you consider yourself a nice person, but on the other hand, you want to objectify women while you eat lunch! What to do???
You eat at Hooters, duh. Also seriously, how is one guy supposed to eat all that food?
The Olympics started as an über-macho, male-only competition in ancient Greece. While a lot has changed since then, women are still facing sexism when it comes to the Games.
Louis C.K. claims he was vacationing sans Internet when the story broke about Daniel Tosh's rape "jokes." Kind of a coincidence that he'd tweet at Tosh during the whole mess without realizing it, but hey, I've missed stuff like that while on vacay too. At any rate, he came on The Daily Show last night to talk about the whole Tosh douchebacle, and the interview is a mixed bag of insights and head/desk moments.
Some weeks it's tough to choose who gets the Douchebag Decree. I'll admit that I've written posts that were a bit of a stretch in the past, or tried to cram two stories into one because I couldn't decide who was the bigger douche. This week, however, the guesswork's been done for me. You know him, you probably don't love him, you may be disgusted and/or threatened by his very presence: Ladies and Gents, it's Daniel Tosh!!!
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