CSotD: Unclear on the Concept

Mr. Boffo often uses the term “unclear on the concept” in portraying a character who genuinely just doesn’t get it.

Joe Martin should have used it today, because the term “mailman” disappeared a couple of decades ago, and the majority of actors under 40 use the term “actor” regardless of sex, just as nobody says “poetess” anymore either.

And let me anticipate a comment or two by acknowledging that some people still say “mailman” just as some people still say “golly” even when they aren’t intentionally imitating Gomer Pyle, and, yes, the Academy still awards an “Actress of the Year” Oscar, though at least they don’t call it an Oscaress.

But you’re no longer a hipster just for saying “actor” or “letter carrier” for everyone in those job categories. You’re just normal.

“Actress” and “mailman” are strictly from Squaresville, Daddio.

The relevance at this point being that, as Ed Wexler suggests, the word “creep” is still in use to describe men who boast about grabbing women’s private parts and think they’re popular with the ladies though women who know them cannot abide their creepy behavior.

So when the garbage collector announced that he was going to protect women whether they liked it or not, he got a collective groan from a lot of women and a snicker from the sorts of men who respect women.

I’m not sure how many creeps realize that their boastful “locker room talk” gets eyerolls from men over 14, or at least from men over 14 who behave like men over 14.

Steve Brodner points out something that has recently surfaced, which is that a lot of Gen Z women had never heard the Access Hollywood tape that caused a stir back in 2016, when they were too young to vote and weren’t particularly paying attention.

Well, they’ve heard it now and they’ve been passing it around on TikTok and it’s getting a more dramatic response from them than it did from their elders, since they’ve grown to adulthood in a world in which being a creep is not something to be debated and discussed.

Their mothers and older sisters marched in pussy hats to protest the creep in the White House, but the Gen Z’s may just make sure he doesn’t get there in the first place.

And perhaps even moreso if their elders explain to them who this fellow Jeffery Epstein was, since tapes have just emerged in which he talks about his close relationship with Donald Trump, which I think we older folks kind of knew about but couldn’t quite prove and took for granted anyway.

And, yes, there’s more than one source on the story:

Epstein also shared photos from the “late 90s” of Trump surrounded by “topless young women” at Epstein’s home in Palm Beach, Florida, where the disgraced financier victimized dozens of underage girls alongside his friend Ghislaine Maxwell.

Here’s a term you don’t hear very often anymore:

“Yikes.”

Point being not that he’s a creep, which remains something of a personal issue, but that, as Rob Rogers points out, he represents a conservative trend towards limiting women’s choices and, specifically, attempting to control their reproductive rights.

Which is also creepy but in a more universal rather than personal way. It’s not as if most women were going to run into him in the dressing room of Bergdorf Goodman’s, or have him come charging into another dressing room when they’re among a group of half-naked pageant contestants. Or party with him at Jeffrey Epstein’s. Or whatever.

But his leadership bids fair to interfere with their personal life even if he’s never within a thousand miles of them himself. Sort of a case of assault by proxy.

It has not gone unnoticed by his opponent, whose ad on the topic has Trump’s loyal army of incels and hypocrites up in arms, poor babies:

Pat Bagley isn’t laughing it off, suggesting that some women may be intimidated by their husbands into voting the way he wants.

While Steve Kelley (Creators) joins critics like Jesse Watters and Newt Gingrich in denouncing the idea as a violation of trust, though both Watters and Gingrich had affairs with other women while they were married, making “trust” apparently something of a one-way street.

The concept of trusting your mate to make her own choices being the point of the Julia Roberts ad but not the point of the uproar it has caused.

Thus Mike Luckovich suggests that the voting booth can be a transformative changing room into which no creeps will barge.

Ain’t they got no Googles where you live?

Lisa Benson (Counterpoint) celebrated Halloween by digging up a long-dead zombie accusation, that Kamala Harris refuses to talk to the press.

This is one of those things like “Al Gore lies” and “John Kerry didn’t earn his medals” that became an constant meme in the election without any factual basis except that, given the suddenness of her vault into the presidential role, Harris didn’t immediately begin doing in-depth interviews and, once her campaign got under way, she failed to butter up the usual Beltway media.

But once launched, she’s been a tireless campaigner, the laugh being that the opposition accuses her both of never taking questions from the press and of talking too much in her answers.

In any case, here’s her schedule for today. See if you can find any places where she gives the press access:

The press, it turns out, will have coverage at all of them and individual access at two of the nine events, and if you’d like to trace back further, try this account at Xitter.

Point being that it took about 20 seconds to pull that up.

But you had to want to know the facts and you had to bother looking.

And Mike Beckom (Counterpoint) also somehow forgot to use Google before drawing his cartoon, or possibly he didn’t try.

Again, it simply involves wanting to know the answer and bothering to look it up.

Let me Google that for you:

Huh. Turns out there have, indeed, been endorsements for Harris. Quite a few, as it happens.

Here’s a substantial list at Wikipedia.

Here’s another at Semaphor.

There are more, but the trend is obvious.

Here’s another trend: Tuesday is coming.