The new 1950's man
I read over an article by Jason Whitlock entitled: "This is why athletes should never marry" (thanks to the reader who emailed this):
Okay, fair enough, the author talks about why athletes should not get married but what caught my eye was this comment:
As Mr. Whitlock noted, no one deserves to be murdered in the way that these men were--and that is really what the debate is about. Women are murderers too and the men are being blamed for it. A society that believes that McNair and other men had what was coming to them because of their male sex is one that is neither just nor fair. It is just that now, the genders are reversed. Men are the new 1950's women --but at some point, this will change, as men get wise and quit taking it. Women need to be held responsible for these murders in order to reduce them.
McNair, 36, was shot by his 20-year-old mistress, Sahel Kazemi, a waitress at Dave & Buster's. Gatti, 37, was allegedly strangled by his 23-year-old wife, Amanda Rodrigues, a former dancer at Scores.
I'm not dismissing the smaller, more obvious lessons: 1.McNair needed to keep his butt at home with his wife and kids; 2. Middle-aged, millionaire men shouldn't romance 20-year-old children who are looking for their lottery ticket.
And I'm not blaming the victims. McNair and Gatti did not in any way get what they deserved. No one deserves to be murdered.
What I'm saying is the institution of lying/marriage is a horrible idea for athletes.
Okay, fair enough, the author talks about why athletes should not get married but what caught my eye was this comment:
If McNair could keep his dick in his pants, he'd be alive today, and that's a fact.
As Mr. Whitlock noted, no one deserves to be murdered in the way that these men were--and that is really what the debate is about. Women are murderers too and the men are being blamed for it. A society that believes that McNair and other men had what was coming to them because of their male sex is one that is neither just nor fair. It is just that now, the genders are reversed. Men are the new 1950's women --but at some point, this will change, as men get wise and quit taking it. Women need to be held responsible for these murders in order to reduce them.
posted by Helen at 3:29 PM
45 Comments:
The comment you picked out of the hundreds at the end of that rambling article isn't stating that McNair deserved to die the way he did or that his girlfriend somehow is free of blame/responsibility.
It comes across more as the kind of comment people make whenever someone suffers after associating with bad people, exercising poor judgment or putting himself/herself in a high-risk situation. ("If only she hadn't drank so much before getting into the stranger's car..." or "If only he hadn't borrowed money from that violent loan shark..." or "If only they'd worn seatbelts...")
It's not to say that they deserved their deaths or the agony they suffered; it's lamenting the poor choices that came before. McNair's girlfriend is responsible for pulling the trigger and murdering him in his sleep; she's a murderer. I just think that what many of his fans wish is that he'd stayed true to his family and not associated with such an individual to begin with.
"Women need to be held responsible for these murders in order to reduce them."
Yes, indeed...but I wouldn't hold my breath waiting. Women's groups (e.g., NOW) are among the nation's most effective lobbying instruments, and they lean on that men-are-the-oppressors theme with all the weight of a special interest that has an effective electoral majority.
Some injustices are unlikely to be redressed in the lifetime of anyone alive today. This is one such.
one does have to plan to be disappointed.
nobody deserves to be murdered period. where i believe mcniar and such fall down is that they mistakenly use thier fame and fortune to find a younger woman to have a relationship with, and in so doing create, or be party to, a great disparity of understanding in the relationship betweenthemselves and the younger female.
i have friends who try to attract the attention of much younger women and i tell them that the only 20 year old girl who`s going to be interested in a 40+ year old man has um, issues and are after money, security, braggng rights and a younger boyfriend on the quiet.
thier egos refute this and so, every saturday, off they go to the bars looking like old men buying the young girls drinks, which they readily drink...then leave.
some of my more affluent friends play a more sophisticated version of this game, whereby they get time with younger women and occasionally sex, but no lasting relationship, because simply young women are after vastly different things than we are...other than sex, no matter how good it occasionally is.
mcnair and the like miss this sadly and occasionally drive a girl mad(der) for whatever personal reason she had and she snaps.
young girls are fragile at best, and even with boys thier own age,have a terrible time with thier emotions while dating, dringing, partying, satifying parental pressures, finding work, education..and dealing with other girls trying to eat thier lunch.
i`m no expert, but my girlfriend`s daughter has given me a crash course on spoilt brat 18 year old sociology....god help her boyfriends.
or girlfreinds.
or bosses.
or teachers.
and her mother.
but, then again, her mother was 18 once and still remembers enough to give her slack when she acts out.
i remember some years ago a young girl burned a football players mansion down for some reason. i laughed outloud.
brat.
I dunno, exhorting a guy to keep his dick in his pants lest some bad consequences ensue is just as good advice as telling a woman to lay off the sauce, don't dress like a floozie, and keep her legs closed lest something bad her way comes.
It's not blame the victim. It's observing that the victim can change their behavior and therefore avoid getting hurt/maimed/killed/raped.
Hahaha! Big bad football payer got his mansion burned down! Nyah, Nyah!
Oh look! poor widdle football player got hisself all shot by his mistress... Nyah, Nyah!
Hey! My wife of 20 years just left me for the pool boy and I have to continue paying the mortgage and give her half of my salary! < silence>
Funny, until it happens to you.
I think that it is fair to comment that McNair's irresponsibility was necessary (but obviously not sufficient) to seal his fate.
Just as I think it's fair to comment if a woman behaves in a very irresponsible way and gets raped as a result. (If she, say, gets drunk and isolates herself with a stranger).
That it is fair to comment justifies neither the murder nor the rape. It does illustrate to others (who may otherwise be unaware of potential consequences) some results of irresponsible behavior.
I agree that there's no disputing the fact that if he'd kept it in his pants, he'd still be alive. It doesn't make the crime any less or necessarily imply he deserved such a fate, it's just a plain fact.
As you see with dr.alistair and Samantha, there's always a way to blame the man. Man kills wife/girlfriend and then himself, he's a crazy, murderous bastard. If a woman does, the man drove her crazy.
Samantha - it's a familiar feminist meme that a woman should be able to go around in any state of undress she wants and act any way she wants and she has no responsibility if she's raped.
For some reason I don't see the relationship between Mr. McNair's choice to date a 20 year old single woman while he was married and his murder. Mr. McNair should have been able to have sex with as many people as he wanted without fear of his life ending prematurely.
His choice to have sex outside his marriage may not be something I would want to do, but I'm not going to get all judgmental on him. If one doesn't like their SO they should leave a voicemail that it's over and then use call block, email block, and get a restraining order if they become a problem. A spurned lover should have enough class to stay away. If one is so distraught at the end of a relationship they should seek professional counseling. This lady could have easily found a mental health clinic to evaluate her mental state.
I'm not buying into any of these grand murder-suicide domestic endings....I had to kill everyone due to the stress.... that seem to be so popular these days. Those that kill their loved ones because life gets a little rough are totally pathetic.
Well, no. Nobody deserves to be murdered, and certainly not every cheating husband should expect to be murdered whether he deserves it or not.
But a married man who conducts an affair with a woman who knows he is married is walking down a dark alley. As others have pointed out, the women involved in these affairs had problems to begin with, which is what made them such easy pickings to begin with. So,let's do the algebra. You start by finding someone so insecure that she will boink a married man. You screw with her head by making promises you will never keep. You make her dependent on you but offer no security to her. SOMETHING bad is going to happen.
There is a reason for the term "crime of passion". In McNair's case, if this woman hadn't killed him there would still be two others who had sufficient motive to do him in. So, it is undeniably true that keeping it in his pants would have prevented his murder. Really, you give three people at once the motive to kill you--you're playing with odds that no wise gambler would touch.
It is apparent that Sahel Kazemi had murder in her heart. Police say that she bought the gun she used to kill Steve McNair and herself from a convicted murderer, Adrian Gilliam.
Here's a nice, concise way of saying it:
“The best way to handle any potentially injurious encounter is: Don’t be there. Arrange to be somewhere else. Don’t go to stupid places. Don’t associate with stupid people. Don’t do stupid things.”
– John Farnam
Elusive Wapiti: "...just as good advice as telling a woman to lay off the sauce, don't dress like a floozie, and keep her legs closed lest something bad her way comes."
But this never happens. We are advised, taught, exhorted, exampled, and encouraged to "embrace our empowering sexuality" and if we take the advice and get drunk and slutty and decide later we regret it, we erase it by having the man we screwed charged with rape. And he had BETTER NOT say a word about sauce, floozie, or legs closed, or his foreordained sentence will be exponentially increased.
Michael:
You can say the same thing about any sporting activity. If you don't want to get injured don't play sports don't do sports. You can say that about travel too, if you don't want to get snookered or robbed or hurt don't leave your house.
John Farnam probably lives in his basement and wears a helmet. I'm also sure he avoids being injured.
Cham,
If you are unable to determine the existence of a happy medium between sitting in your mom's basement and cheating on your wife with an emotionally unstable woman, nothing I can write will help you out.
Fortunately, most folks manage to eventually develop some judgement and discretion, which helps them navigate through life in a reasonably sane manner.
i am clearly holding mcnair responsible for using his considerable influence over the young woman who eventually shot him....and she had to take extreme measures to balance things out.
he exhibited substantial bad judgement in missing the fact that whoever the woman was, she couldn`t carry her end of the bargain.
i think i read somewhere that she was worried that she couldn`t make her escalade payment on a waitresses salary.
she wanted her friends and family to see her in the vehicle and having the nice clothes and shoes, but needed a tired old footballer with a wife and kides somewhere to pay the bill.
a series of bad decisions were made here long before a gun was bought.
but the simple fact was that the woman bought the gun a few days before shooting mcnair, thought long and hard about it...possibly hoping he would change some behaviour she wasn`t happy with..and then finally having enough of his shit....
and there were clues.
whether we can blame mcniar for getting dead or not, we can see that propping up a psycho has the substantial likelyhood of ending like it did.
the reason why there are clear caveats against older married men carrying on with young women is illustrated by this extreme example of how these things end badly.
an older man who needs a younger woman is missing something, and so is a younger woman needing an older man.
both parties are somehow lacking and expecting the other to fix the problem.
most caught in this co-dependancy merely fight and guilt and blackmail and withhold positive strokes as leverage.
i would hazzard a guess that all of those things were going on in the weeks and months before the shooting....
....this girl was playing a harder game though.
in transactional terms this known as a hard game.
hard games end in one of two places.
court-rooms or mourgues.
and i think mcnair was probably not meeting his end of whatever bargain had been struck, either consciously or otherwise.
it`s not good to mess with crazy women.
"It is just that now, the genders are reversed. Men are the new 1950's women --but at some point, this will change, as men get wise and quit taking it."
absolutely and utterly Rong
women, especially here in the Homeland of Goddess Columbia, have NEVER experienced anything like the scapegoating, hatred, and mass disenfranchisement dumped on men over the past half-century
to suggest that the anti-male malevolence of this fallen nation is somehow a "levelling device" or "pendulum balancer" is not only absurd, it repeats the fallacious feminist dogma that women, oppressed by Those Evil Males since time began, are "only getting even" for past mistreatment
. . . only getting "their fair share" after all . . . and if you disagree with that, well you must be a misogynist/rapist/terrorist etc.
nothing will, or can, "change" as you put it, until the false premesis of Woman's Oppression (in the 1950s no less!!) is at last discarded, rather than enshrined as the primary motivator of national policy (e.g., see Stimulus Package)
unitl then, the matriarchy will reign supreme and continue to consolidate globally, based directly on its validation by a collective feminine consciousness that is forever "levelling the playing field" for "past oppression"
i was around in the Fifties, Helen, and women were not oppressed
take a slow walk thru the military cemetaries sometime
ray
@Article quote: "If McNair could keep his dick in his pants, he'd be alive today, and that's a fact."
_________
Two things...
1. That's not necessarily a fact. He may have been shot by a bruised ego he turned down.
2. When is the last time you heard of a married woman's affair that "if she could have kept her legs shut..."
Male affairs are, correctly, lynchings of men for their affairs. Yet female affairs are lynchings of husbands for their failures.
affairs are a substantial failure of character, more than a political dynamic.
one cannot betray another without betraying the self first.
confusing political process with individual psychodynamics further compounds the confusion.
Yet again we have apologists for murderous females. Thanks for so clearly proving Dr. Helen's point. I almost thought you were trying for a parody . .
". . . and she had to take extreme measures to balance things out."
". . . possibly hoping he would change some behaviour she wasn`t happy with..and then finally having enough of his shit...."
". . . against older married men carrying on with young women "
"whether we can blame mcniar [sic] for getting dead or not . . ."
Nope, no gender bias here, nothing to see, move along now. . .
Notice at no time did I omit any statements like "in her deranged mind" which would have changed the tone a lot.
"in transactional terms this known as a hard game."
Apologies to Eric Berne, but in human terms this is known as "A stone-cold psycho killer" and in CJ terms it's called "Murder in the first." And in NO case is it even vaguely acceptable to me.
See, no references to gender were necessary. And no justification or even mitigation of murderous behavior was attempted.
Now, I can say that I've known a number of folk of various ages and genders who engaged in stupid behaviors of a romantic or sexual nature. And I've advised my kids that if the person they hook up with starts acting psycho or becomes violent (or threatens violence) to "bravely run away."
What we can learn from this is once again, is
* Women are easily as aggressive as men, despite what some would have us believe
* Men can be the victims of domestic violence as easily as women can, despite what some would have us believe
* No one "deserves" to die for being stupid or having an extramarital affair
Wow.
I've never seen a bigger group of woman haters since the last time I drove by an anti-abortion rally.
Recognizing a psycho is not as easy at it seems. That's why Ted Bundy and other serial killers are successful.
The double standard is obvious and well illustrated here by dr.alistair, Michael, Troy Bierkortte, Samantha, etc. The man is in the wrong no matter the circumstances.
Dadvocate,
The double standard is obvious and well illustrated here by dr.alistair, Michael, Troy Bierkortte, Samantha, etc. The man is in the wrong no matter the circumstances.
Do you think it's possible for me to think that cheating on your wife with an emotionally unstable woman is stupid, and a college girl going commando and getting passed out drunk at a party full of strangers are both bad ides?
Can't I blame both men and women for the stupid things they do that create 'opportunities' for tragedy? Lighten up, francis. Saying a man is stupid isn't saying a woman can't be stupid.
And sorry, murder-level crazy doesn't come out of nowhere. Folks have a tendancy to ignore obvious but uncomfortable signs- signs that are best heeded. You can fault me for not being forgiving of the victim on that basis, but the signs were there for him to see.
I suppose we do have a resident psychologist we can consult-
Dr. Helen, does murder-level crazy come out of the blue? Or are signs of a deeply troubled psyche evident (even if often ignored) rather rapidly?
The contempt for males has reached such an extreme high level that many people, including other males, aren't even aware of it, not even in their own views. Look at how police are spearing men in the testicles with Taser darts and then torturing their testicles with 50,000 volts and no one thinks anything about it. No one is protesting or screaming 'TORTURE'. That's how bad it has gotten.
my belief is that, if we look hard enough, the murder-level crazy rises to the surface...but it needs special curcumstances.
the girl that shot mcnair wouldn`t have needed to con a married man into paying for her lifestyle if she hadn`t needed to play that game in the first place.
in transactonal terms she was a not-ok child of a specific sort that needed a not-ok parent to have a sexual relationship with a surrogate daughter figure.
a sort of father-daughter prostitution game with a hard game finish with them both dead.
sometimes this game only ends up in court or a lawyer`s office.
not this time.
only he and her saw the clues, and maybe a friend or an aunt or brother or long-suffering wife....
...who knows.
judges and detectives sometimes get the message, but that`s a matter of public record, not a cnn report.
Bacon, I love babys. I do not hate women, I love them too. But it is not difficult to see that women and men have many ways to avoid pregnancy, and the unborn are totally and completely dependent upon their parents and our culture for their safety.
Are you familiar with Margaret Sanger's comments and writings on race and eugenics? The women was a racist monster.
Trey
Michael,
"Dr. Helen, does murder-level crazy come out of the blue? Or are signs of a deeply troubled psyche evident (even if often ignored) rather rapidly?"
In answer to your question, yes, murder-level crazy can come out of the blue and yes, signs of a deeply troubled psyche can be ignored. For example, serial killers can appear normal to many people, in fact, part of their MO may be that they blend in with society. Yet they are violent with certain victims. Some people who are narcissistic may not be dangerous to the majority of people, but for those they think are judging them or doing them wrong, they may become violent.
Someone can be plotting your murder, and may hide the fact from you, with success, depending on how psychopathic and cunning they might be.
On the other hand, people often leave clues about being "a troubled psyche" but most of them--in fact the majority, never murder.
If Sahel Kazemi weren't nuts, she and McNair would BOTH be alive today.
Do you think it's possible for me to think that cheating on your wife with an emotionally unstable woman is stupid, and a college girl going commando and getting passed out drunk at a party full of strangers are both bad ides?
Both are bad ideas but occur commonly with no or minimal negative consequences. It's much easier to predict that if you drink a certain amount of alcohol that you'll get drunk.
It's much more difficult for a lay person to see the warning signs of an emotionally unstable person who is likely to commit murder and/or suicide. Even the experts don't have stellar track records.
LB is correct, but had McNair figured out she was nuts? Maybe he had, but too late, and was trying to break it off and that led to the murder/suicide.
I'm not sure Mr. McNair was trying to break it off. If he was why did he bother to visit Ms.Kazemi? He might have been downgrading the relationship but I doubt he wanted to break it off.
@Helen said... "On the other hand, people often leave clues about being "a troubled psyche" but most of them--in fact the majority, never murder."
____________
I've always been amused by people who, after the fact, point to "clues" that they say should have told others what was going to happen so it could have been stopped. Problem is, m any of these signs are not abnormal. Stressed out introverted college kids (Virginia Tech), a mother of 5 stressed out (Andrea Yates), socially ackwark, secluded, anti-social. I don't know if people who think they "should have seen it coming" really know what kind of police state they are asking for.
Wow, using two cases to create a rule for an entire group of people is just plain nuts.
Cham - I said "maybe". Just a guess as to what may have triggered Kazemi. He might have been visiting her to let her down gently.
Joe - you got it backwards. It's using two cases to illustrate a rule(s).
Dr. Helen, I agree with your points in general. You have pointed out the injustices handed out to men, where women have received less punishment.
For example: The 35 year old female teacher who is getting it on with her 15 year old male student. Most of the time the teacher gets one to three years in jail or probation. Now let the 35 year old teacher be a man and the 15 year old student be a girl and we know the teacher is going to do hard time. I have seen the results of these trials. I don't quite have a grasp of what happens when it's man/boy or woman/girl scenario. But I am willing to bet the male gets more time than the female. And remember, these are trials with mixed juries, males and females are sitting in the jury. Now gentlemen, we all are probably wishing or wondering where were these female teachers when we were 15 years old, right? The truth of this issue is that in either case, we have an adult engaging in an activity with a minor. Both adults are guilty. If our son for example, was the 15 year old boy with the good looking female school teacher, would we be mad or jealous? We all know the life span of a male teacher doing the same thing with our daughter could be measured in a few minutes more or less, if we found him before the police did.
Why do we feel different about this issue where it pertains to the sex of the sexual predator? And finally, we live in a society that almost without exception labels a woman with multiple sex partners a whore and labels a man with multiple sex partners a stud.
I think the American society that we live in is hard on men and women both. Some unfairness exists for both sexes in our laws and the mandates/burdens that we have to abide by to fit into our society.
However, our laws should be fair in the extreme to everyone. The prosecution of law should be applied equally, as should the punishment. That's not happening in our society though!
And when men and women murder each other, we do seem to have some very sick perceptions about who deserved what!
i have believed for some time now that men and women have been set at odds with eachother
www.henrymakow.com
henry believes that it`s an illuminati group that is doing it.
call them what you will, there is an agency that is best served by men and women not getting along.
TMink,
You're not the first person to direct me to Margaret Sanger. I assume this is because you read Lesson One of my blog: Columbine 101. Eugenics is a dumb idea. Creating a race of healthy, fit, supermen does not guarantee that they'll be remotely civilized. Preventing people who want to be feared from becoming parental role models and primary caregivers will solve much of our society's violence problem.
What do you think of this view?
Weredoomed
Todays society hard on women? I am not sure what society you live in but I have not seen any woman/girl berated for being a slut or even caring about multiple sex partners in years. Women used to police their own ranks and they don't care anymore.
Men just get the short end of the stick unless its paying money then they get the biggest end of payout possible.
As for McNair I think it is telling that less than 1 out of 10 articles about his death call it domestic violence and so many say he deserved what he got. Yet let some floozie from Alabama use a college professor for a few years to get her law degree then runs off on her kids and her husband to blow the local drama club and yet her death is domestic violence and she certainly didn't deserve what she got.
This country is just sick with feminist double standards.
Hey Bacon, I am not sure I quite comprehend your last point, sorry, it is pre-coffee.
I think violence comes from our fallen nature as human beings. So does selfishness. Put them together and you have abortion.
Trey
fallen nature. fallen from what?
all other animals rip and tear to get what they want...why not humans?
i`m not advocating, but any cursory glance at a history book will explain human nature in the purest of terms.....and the universal church it`s self is the worst of them all.
I don't see the feminists having a double standard, the "he deserve what he got" crowd is male.
The only reason that this got any media attention at all is because McNair was rich and famous.
But McNair was a lowlife scumbag before he got rich and famous for playing excellent football. No class, no grace, no manners, no nothing, and sudden riches didn't change any of that.
Why should we expect any behavioral difference from him, when adultery is common among sports superstars (okay, any kind of superstar), and why should we expect anything other than tragedy from a liaison with a lowlife like Kazemi?
'Twas ever thus. Pygmalion ends with the poor girl marrying the rich benefactor -- but that's not the way to bet, in real life. In real life, Eliza either steals Doolittle blind and leaves him, or else her brother / erstwhile slumbag lover gets involved, with predictable results.
Kim wrote: "But McNair was a lowlife scumbag before he got rich and famous for playing excellent football. No class, no grace, no manners, no nothing, and sudden riches didn't change any of that."
I met Steve at Krogers and introduced my then 6 year old daughter to him. He was a gentleman and took time to ask her what school she went to and made other small talk for about 5 minutes. All while holding only 2 steaks in his hand before getting in the checkout line. She was thrilled. I was impressed that he took much more than the time I hoped he would.
While I cannot judge his character and life, and I suspect that you cannot either Kim, on that day, Steve McNair was one of the kindest celebreties I have ever met.
Trey
Was Sahel Kazemi a lowlife? What is the definition of a lowlife?
The lady seemed to live a pretty normal life. Prior to killing Mr. McNair she had a job, an apartment, a car and friends. She hadn't been convicted of any major crimes except for a drunk driving arrest that happened in the days prior to the murder. Ms. Kazemi was dating a man who told her that he was leaving or had left his wife. This doesn't come anywhere near being a lowlife.
I agree with Cham. A "lowlife" would have a long history of problems following the rules and laws.
She did have a troubled personal history, but that is not the definition of a lowlife in my dictionary. Or in the dictionarys I consulted.
She is however, a murderer.
Trey
something that just struck me while reading about the woman who shot mcniar. she believed he was going to leave his wife.
she was playing the traditional "other woman" game, which has it`s own rules and boundaries.
there must have been a shift in the game played for there to have been a murder.
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