May 14th 2008
Bitch Ph.D. and Margaret Lyons at Chicagoist.com cover why John Kass’s column is offensive to women, so I won’t bother adding my perspective on that.
I certainly don’t require a newspaper columnist to absolve him of the “sin” of not seeing a movie I’d prefer avoiding. What sort of relationship do you have where you can’t say “maybe you’d have more fun seeing this with your girlfriends,” anyway? I know that’s sort of a dodge, but I can see how saying “I don’t want to see that. How about you see it with $Friend1 => $FriendN?” would be stupid. Wait. No. I can’t see that.
There’s also the Equality sitting over there in the corner, feeling lonesome and a bit ashamed of every man who’s thinking about how to get out of seeing Sex and the City. Equality would really like to kick you in the shins (maybe higher, depending on how much of a jerk you’re being about it) for every Male Viewpoint Movie you’ve ever ‘forced’ a girlfriend to see. Rudy counts, and so does Field of Dreams. It counts even if your girlfriend ended up enjoying the movie. Equality’s really a nice anthropomorphized concept, so you get one less kick for every movie a girlfriend has ‘made’ you see.
For some reason, I have a lingering feeling that if you though Kass’ column had some good ideas in it or that it was funny you’ll have some sore shins. Don’t be an asshole, watch the movie with your loved one if she wants to see it. If it’s really as horrible as you think it’ll be, think about how awesome it is that the D-Rays are 3.5 games up on the Yankees in the AL East and the Cubs have the lead in the NL Central. That should make everything better.
