"Scuttling", as seen on 'Mad Men'

[F.U.Shakespeare]

@md2000

As for the Clarence Thomas thing, to get off topic, I often wondered why, if he was an out-and-out sexual bully, why a lot more women did not come forward? I would expect him to be more mercenary to helpless secretaries than to some up-and-coming qualified lawyer. They couldn’t all be too afraid if the whole power of one of the big parties in the USA would be behind them…

IMO, Clarence Thomas was not an “out and out sexual bully”. He was, at the time he was Anita Hill’s boss, (my paraphrase of William F. Buckley’s contemporary comments in National Review) a recently-divorced man trying awkwardly to engage in some ribald humor. Although I don’t agree with his politics, Thomas is a smart man who would probably prefer a woman of similar intellect. I would have had no problem supporting him if he had admitted to the aforementioned version of events.

There were other women who were ready to testify that Prof. Hill wasn’t lying. Spy Magazine at the time ran a well-documented article on this describing (IIRC) how a Senate coalition failed to sustain an opposition in the face of some pretty powerful opposition. If the official story is to be believed, Thomas was a saint and his accusers were all lying whores. I think this was a 1990-ish sign of future politics.

AFTH (Apologies for the hijack)

[mhendo]

@F.U.Shakespeare

Amid all this, publisher and feminist icon Helen Gurley Brown wrote an opinion piece stating that women were becoming too sensitive, and cited scuttling as an example of a harmless, charming practice that no one minded back in her day. IIRC, her description differed slightly from the ‘Mad Men’ portrayal: I believe she said the woman was undressed until she was only wearing her underwear, at which point she feigned fainting and the activity ceased.

Actually, Gurley Brown’s piece says that only the panties were removed, and that sometimes the woman in question (or “girl,” to use Gurley Brown’s quaint term) “pretended to faint.”

She ends the article:

I think we should come down hard on the bullies and the creeps but not go stamping on sexual chemistry at work.

Anyway, i’ve uploaded a copy of her WSJ piece to my webspace. You can get it here.

[kfraser34]

I prefer Zoidberg’s scuttling…

[chorpler]

@JRDelirious

I remember the actual HGB column and the way she described it was that the “gal” would be chased around and when cornered someone would reach upskirt and yank her undies down (…off? to her ankles, knees? She didn’t say, just that “de-pantying was the sole goal and nothing went further”… a phrase like that sticks with you!). I recall no mentioning of stripping down the person. And yes, that was the last and only mention of the “scuttle game” I saw in mainstream media until Mad Men.

Rush Limbaugh mentioned it in his book The Way Things Ought To Be, and when he was a guest on some sitcom in the mid-1990’s, playing himself, a female employee (in the show) was so irritated by the whole “scuttling” part in his book that she attempted to scuttle him, but he had the whole thing already choreographed because he had been through it before since his book was published, and gave her a fresh pair of boxers that he carried around just so he could be “scuttled”, along with an autograph saying how much he enjoyed it.

I was a teenager when I saw that episode of the show (and I don’t remember what show it was, just that Rush Limbaugh was talking about how cool it was that he was treated respectfully on a show produced by the good friends of the Clintons, the Bloodworth-Thomasons.)

After a quick Google, I think it was a show called Hearts Afire. I’m pretty sure Markie Post was on it.