Saturday, May 10, 2008

Southeast Texas Assholery

Wow. Just wow. Our local paper The Beaumont Enterprise, links to a blog called The Bayou. Now, I do understand this is a blog; however, it is linked to the newspaper. Plus, its daily titles are listed in the Top Headlines section of the Enterprise's website. On Friday, the blogger (who apparently is also the editor of the newspaper), blogged about how 1 in 20 nurses in Texas have criminal histories. This, I don't have such a problem with, although the post and the links pretty much refer to female nurses only.

No, the problem I have is that the title of the post was "Naughty Nurses" with some assholish like addition on the end (I don't remember what it was now, but it was very suggestive). It also had the Blink 182 album cover with the "sexy" nurse posted as the photo to go with the post. Alone, the title is suggestive. With the picture, the post is sexist and offensive. So I posted. If anyone follows up and goes over there, I am anonymous number one as my blogger name wouldn't work when I signed in. Between yesterday and today, there have been 23 other comments. Several were extremely hateful toward my fairly-innocuous comment. Of course, what interested me the most, were the fat girl, lesbian comments. I have never had this personally directed at me, and I guess that just shows how backward my area still is, but I was really really shocked. I responded once I checked back over there today.

I cannot explain why it made me feel so badly, but it did. The comments were just such .... vitriol.

Email the editor/contributor/blogger at TheBayou@BeaumontEnterprise.com.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

I had several thoughts run through my head when reading your blog and the Gator's blog. First, your title is so succinct and appropriate. Heaven forbid an attractive educated woman be assertive and voice her opinions. What were the feminists from the 1960s thinking? It's amusing that if a woman appears somewhat intelligent, she cannot be an attractive, heterosexual woman. Isn't it a shame that some men (and clearly some women) are so threatened by a beautiful woman that shows herself to be self-possessed and literate? Perhaps what I find most amusing is how people hide behind their online personas and find it so much easier to cut down individuals they don't know. I suppose that is the nature of the internet but I love how you sparked more "upset" in your comment than the blogger did himself.