Did a GROWN-ASS MAN just bitch about bullying?
Holy shit, dude. Grow a fucking pair and stop projecting your adolescent weakness like this. You got bullied because you sat there and took it. And even now you don’t get it: weakness gets exploited. In every facet of our society. Stop showing the world your weakness and the world will stop stealing your lunch money.
(I don’t know what age/gender the OP is, but you get the point)
When I said that I mostly had in mind the way he’ll talk about his opponents or competitors. I’ve seen him take swipes from time to time against businessmen he’s in competition with or politicians he thinks are incompetent. Things like that.
No, what I was saying is that they’d have been better off if they’d had the ability to retaliate.
Well, lemme 'plain it to ya. I’ll use an example from my own childhood.
When I was in the 4th grade there was a kid a year older and bigger than me who along with his friends started bullying me while I was on the way home from school. They’d knock me off my bike, kick the spokes, take my books, etc. So I started wanting to avoid school and my father asked me about it. I told him what had been going on and he advised me to stand up to the kid, with the observation that even if the other kid could whip me he’d still have to take punishment himself in doing so and he’d find someone easier to pick on. So the next day I raced home and stood in the front yard waiting for him and his buddies to come along and I challenged him to fight. It seemed like half the population of the school wound up in my front yard and they formed a circle around us as we fought. It was pretty comical really, the way we were hamming it up, flying back into the crowd when punched and being shoved back into the fray again.
My father came home in the middle of all this, and once enough kids had gotten out of the way for him to get in the drive he got out and watched the fight from our front porch. Much to my surprise I beat this kid and he said “I give.” But as I was walking up the steps to our porch his buddies began shouting that he could have taken me and we should fight again. I looked up at my father and he smilingly said “You beat him once, you can do it again.” So we started up again, but after a while we became exhausted. I had him down on the ground in a headlock and was feebly punching him in the head, and he was squirming around trying to get away but had nothing left, so finally I said “I’ll give if you will” and he agreed. We stood up and at my father’s suggestions shook hands. My dad then took us to the neighborhood drug store/grill and bought us chocolate cokes and hamburgers while we got to know each other and damned if we didn’t become pretty good friends from then until I moved away the next year. Needless to say, there was less violence after than because he and his buddies had a newfound respect for me and no one else there ever picked on me either. So yeah, violence created less violence.
My father’s lesson stood me in good stead when I moved to a new high school before starting the 11th grade. In my first week there four different guys tried to provoke me into a fight but let it go once I got right back in their face and made it clear that if they wanted a fight I was up for it. They turned out to be some of the toughest and meanest guys in school and every one of them could have knocked the living crap out of me, but once again my father’s advice proved true. Because they knew they’d be in for a scrap and would suffer some damage too and they left me alone after that. Because I’m really a pretty good guy in off board life, we all eventually became friends. Plus they respected me because I stood up to them. So, while violence didn’t necessarily lead to less violence in those cases, the threat of it certainly did.
Well, frankly I think an offhand comment that someone isn’t as attractive as they used to be is a pretty mild “attack” and probably commensurate with retaliation for a slight, which, as long as we’re exaggerating the hell out of words could be called an attack too.
Because it’s retaliative, and has the goal in mind of preventing more in the future. Genuine bullies are proactive, not reactive, and their goals aren’t to dampen bullying in the future.
Thanks for reminding me of one of the other words that’s been stretched out and spread so thin that it’s lost all real world meaning. Observing that someone is no longer quite as beautiful as they used to be is not even close to misogyny. Look it up, ‘misogyny’ doesn’t mean ‘anything someone says involving a woman which I happen not to like’. True misogyny involves a dislike and/or distrust of women and a belief they’re inferior to men. Calling a multi-millionaire supermodel who’s had the best life has to offer in every facet of her life not quite as much of a babe as she used to be is hardly misogyny. It’s not even much of an attack really. It’s just an observation that everyone of us here has probably made about different people at some time, and for all we knew Trump either figured an offhand comment like that wouldn’t make into the published interview or that Klum might not even see it. Or maybe he did and his intention was to gig her for some reason. Either way, it’s pretty mild sauce when you’re considering who’s qualified to deal with Congress, the economy, illegal immigration and foreign countries.
Really? Ancient hag? Is that what he said? Or is it that what he actually said wasn’t enough to justify your ire so you had to embellish it so it rose to that level? I’ll take number two for the win, please.
Starving Artist, it’s okay for you to say that Trump was being obnoxious and rude for insulting Heidi Klum publicly while still saying you like the guy and support him. Being a jerk isn’t the end of the world, but Trump was being a jerk.
I’ve been meaning to get back to this and to thank you for this post. Your comment about the right’s reaction to criticism of Israel has given me pause, to tell you the truth. It’s a good analogy and has given me an insight I didn’t have before. It’s just unfortunate that the right has unfair and inaccurate insults and arrows of condemnation coming from a hundred different directions in the same way the left does in regard to Israel. The result is that we’re bombarded constantly whereas you guys get it only occasionally.
I do disagree though with your belief that the left doesn’t overlook illegal, destructive or harmful behavior coming from groups it deems worthy of political protection. I don’t believe I’ve ever in my life heard anyone bring up problems that are more specific to blacks, Hispanics, criminals, women, illegal immigrants or whatever, that the response of the left isn’t immediately to hurl insults involving some sort of ‘ism’. And needless to say I’ve never heard any discussion whatsoever coming from the left that even deigns to recognize these problems much less seeks to find some sort of answer, other than to just let them keep on doing what they’re doing because to try to take any sort of action to correct them would be ‘bigotry’.
Having said all that, though, I thank you again for your post. It was thoughtful and insightful and made me think about certain things in ways I hadn’t before.
I would agree that unless he was trying to get back at her for some reason to making an offhand comment that he thought probably wouldn’t go on the record, it was an impolite and hurtful thing to say.
But having said that, I’ll also say that he probably admires Heidi Klum for having the balls to publicly come after him about it like she did.
How is criticizing a celebrity’s appearance bullying?
My gosh, the whole world is turning into wusses.
Yes, misogyinstic. Judging women on their looks and giving them numerical ratings is sexual objectification. Reducing Klum - mother, entrepeneur, tv star - to her physical attractiveness, ignoring her many accomplishments in a variety of fields, is, misogynistic.
Just randomly insulting random women, while protesting that he’s totally not a misogynist, is misogynistic.
It’s also bullying because it reinforces the social norm that women should care what random men think about their looks and that women naturally get less attractive as they age.
Reinforcing the misogynistic underpinnings of our societal norms, is - wait for it - misogynistic.
I mention this merely for completeness. I’m sure you’re just as ignorant now as before I spelled that out.
Yes, that is what he said. That’s always the subtext when men insist that older women don’t look attractive any more. Her looks have “faded” because she’s older now and therefore she’s not worth as much. Slagging on women for getting old has been going on for centuries. It doesn’t suddenly mean something else because Donald said it to the NYT.
Your refusal to admit it doesn’t change the fact that, historically, aging has always been used as a way to undermine a woman’s worth.
Of course, it’s possible that Donald was also thinking of something else, in addition, when he mentioned Heidi’s fading looks. The LA Times pointed out that he was saying the same thing about Heidi ten years ago, on the Howard Stern show.
So apparently, musing about Heidi’s loss of attractiveness is an idée fixe for him. Of course, 2005 was right about the time she married Seal, and had two children with him.
Draw your own conclusions about why Donald’s musing on his pregnant wife would lead him to think negatively about pregnant Heidi Klum, who was having children with a black man. Although, I guess, since we already know Donald’s a racist, it’s not really much of a surprise.
So Donald Trump is calling Heidi Klum old and ugly? One of the most beautiful (if you judge women like that, though it’s wrong) women in the world? One who is far more beautiful (if that’s important to you) than any woman I’ve seem date or marry him? She who, at age 42, is just edging into age-appropriate territory for him? Does he know that, by the Law of Half Plus Seven, it is only now that his dating her would not be icky? Well, except his being Trump. He’s a bully AND a creep.
I, OTOH, respect her as a person, one with a fair amount of money, and one who is on the rebound. She will note that I am significantly younger that Trump, making her solidly age-appropriate, so dating me would not be icky. Except I’d still be me, not a bully but maybe a bit of a creep. 
30,000 turn out for Trump’s Alabama pep rally - that’s some impressive numbers. And a fun pic from the rally.
I don’t listen to Starving Artist about Trump because it’s clear that he has no actual principles. He used to go on and on about how nice people were to each other in the 1950s, and how much he laments that being gone. Yes, he’s romanticizing the past, but that’s his argument–that people should be nicer.
And here he is not only advocating for the guy who treats people like shit, but actually defending what he does every time he does so. He doesn’t try the more defensible technique of hating his personality but thinking he’d be able to be a good president.
But it’s nice to know that all the people who attack him are all strong people instead of being assholes. I guess a lot of Pit Dopers have the qualifications to run for president.
So? I complained about bullies. I’m not the one being bullied… at least not directly. Also, what gives you any idea that I “sat there and took it?” What’s my gender have to do with anything? Hell, what’s my age have to do with anything? There’s a 69 year old bully out there, and you’re going to talk to me like I’m a fucking child? The worse part about this whole thing, is people are letting him get away with being a dick-hole. It’s as if there’s a fight on the playground, if you’re not IN the fight, then you’re one of the onlookers chanting “FIGHT! FIGHT! FIGHT!”
The problem is, there’s no one who steps in and breaks it up, sticking up for the victim.
If you’re trying to imply that I have thin skin, you couldn’t be more wrong.
Yes, we know. You masturbate furiously to anything that you think can prove liberals wrong. You don’t in any way actually support Trump and his policies. You just like to provoke.
You know as much as the rest of us do that Alabama doesn’t matter. The Republican Convention is fixed, and the state’s 9 electoral votes are going to go Republican no matter what. And it’s not even remotely surprising that he would find a following in that state.
It’s not the hard core ultra-conservatives whose votes are up for grabs. It’s the moderates. To win, the Republican Party has to get them on board. Instead, with Trump, they are hemorrhaging conservative voters. Pretty much anyone beats Trump in the general.
Alabama is a fairly early (March 1st) primary state.
Meantime, the latest poll shows Trump widening his national lead. Those who thought that 25% is his ceiling are mistaken.
Terr, same offer I made to SA. $100 to the charity of your choice says Trump will never in this universe be the Republican nominee. What say?
No thanks. Trump is a bit unpredictable for me to bet on him. I am enjoying watching his rise and the consternation of his detractors, though. If he’s around by March 1st primary, I may go vote for him, just for warm/fuzzies.
No, that’s actually just a part of my argument. Still, it’s not an unimportant part. In that more civilized, mannered and disciplined time, people didn’t talk like sailors in public and in front of children. Also road rage and random drive-by shootings weren’t remotely a thing.
But it was also a better time because it wasn’t a mystery how to educate students. They actually learned the subjects if they wanted to pass, and everyone who wasn’t a ne’er do well drop-out-in-waiting did. Of course this required that some students be disciplined, at home or school or both, and it required mature, committed parents at home willing to devote time and attention to their kid’s schooling.
It was also a better time because hardly anyone knew anyone on drugs. Millions of lives have been ruined in the meantime, and who knows how many deaths have resulted from drug activity, both from overdoses and from the many forms of criminality associated with it. I wouldn’t be surprised if the number of deaths themselves reached into the millions.
Oh, and speaking of criminals, they were actually kept in prison for the most part. You certainly didn’t see people walking the streets still in their twenties and thirties with a dozen serious and often violent crimes on their rap sheets, after having been paroled over and over and over again. Not to mention the fact that crime in general skyrocketed beginning in the late sixties.
It’s undeniable that the pain and suffering and ruined lives caused by the liberal-driven upheaval in society that began in the late sixties absolutely dwarfs whatever difficulties were presented by the racism and sexism of the time, yet undoing those is the excuse that invariably gets trotted out in defense of everything that’s happened since.
A large part of the problem here lies in the difference the conservative mind vs. the liberal mind view things. Liberals twist off over every. fucking. thing. under the sun…as long it involves some PC issue, that is. As we’ve seen they don’t give a fuck about people victimized by criminals set loose on society or who’ve been killed or had their lives ruined by drugs, or who’ve graduated from high school unable to read or write at a first grade level…but let some conservative somewhere complain about government mandated birth control for women and it’s OMG IT’S A WAR ON WIMMIN!!! Or let Donald Trump make an offhand comment about Heidi Klum and he’s unfit for the White House (never mind of course Bill Clinton, whose treatment of women was far more sexist, sexually predatory, and vicious, than anything Donald Trump ever did on his worst day. Where were all the ** Merneith’s** whinging about women’s value then?
The fact of the matter is that Trump is not in fact an asshole and he is not in fact a bully. Liberals undoubtedly think he is because theirs is the ideology of victimhood and they reflexively make mountains out of every non-PC molehill they see, but their assertions do not facts make.
Conservatives on the other hand tend to think people who beat their children are assholes. They think that people who beat their wives are assholes.They think that people who are aggressively rude and abrasive and confrontational for no reason are assholes. (They also know for a fact that Hillary Clinton is an asshole to her underlings and the Secret Service, but they don’t try to use that as a reason people shouldn’t support her for president.)
Donald Trump is spoken highly of by almost everyone who’s worked for and with him. He’s placed many highly competent women in very important positions in his companies and he’s been defended by every woman who’s been alleged to have been mistreated by him since his campaign began.
So the fiction that he’s a sexist and a bully is just that…a fiction, and based on nothing but politics, as we readily see with the left’s behavior toward Trump vs. that of the Clintons.
Mommy, Mommy, Billy is being mean to me. Make him stop!
Grow the fuck up.
Great news for Democrats. I love it.
Anyone see the NY Magazine article about Trump? I didn’t know he had a vendetta against Jeb Bush:
In a recent phone call with a longtime friend who has been acting as an informal adviser, Trump warned: “If I’m going down, then Bush is going down with me. He’s not going to be president of the United States.”
