May 13, 2019
"I just hate to see smart women throw their political careers away on men who only see them as the gash of least resistance."
Said Julia Louis-Dreyfus as Selina Meyer, quoted as "I just hate to see smart women throw their political careers away on men who only see them as the [slur for a body part] of least resistance" in "In satisfying ‘Veep’ finale, Selina gets what she wanted — and the final indignity she deserved" (WaPo).
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81 comments:
Does anybody use the term “gash” other than feminists?
Great show (on DVD, six seasons, is this the 7th?).
The language is properly used throughout.
Gash isn't a popular euphemism though, I'd have to see it in character context.
OK, you've convinced me, Althouse.
What did men do to deserve being condemned to live with worthless, demonic feminist cunts?
Are you sure washing the dishes will placate the she-devils?
The cunt of least resistance would have been okay. Gash isn't that close to path so it depends on knowing the cliche anyway.
I liked her as "Elaine" Once she (and Jason Alexander started opening their mouths about politics, not so much. Jerry has got it right.
THEOLDMAN
The point of the series is not woman in power but political absorption in playing to the most trivial public reactions played off against their not caring about anything they pretend to care about.
I just did the math, approx 0.02% of the US adult population watched VEEP at any one time.
Ugh, gash, my least favorite word for [slur for a body part].
I think “gash” was used once in a humor magazine. I had to think about it for a second to figure out what it meant when I saw it the first time. Feminist writers took it from there.
Veep insults 99.98$ of the population.
Yes, Nobody, I have heard gash used by a nonfeminist, as in "best gash I ever had."
“Gash” is probably a gay men’s term for something straight men think of as lovely.
"I just hate seeing anything go to waste."
I think Paglia listed gash in Sexual Personae as among the terms, suggesting none of them imply power. Probably in a penis envy paragraph.
WaPo.
Why do newspapers report on TV shows as if these TV shows are real life and real "news"? Could it be that the propaganda wings of the democratic party reinforce each another?
Democracy Dies In Darkness.
I guess I live in a different world. I don’t sleep with women I don’t like for other reasons and I would never talk about it afterwards with my friends.
Veep isn't leftist at all.
I’d never heard of that TV show until this post.
In “Long Shot” Charlize Theoron becomes the first female POTUS.
You're looking for content when there is none. Complete illustration of the depth of Julia Louis-Dreyfus "deep thinking,"
Elaine Benes:
What kind of soup did he get?
Jerry Seinfeld:
I don't know. Consomme or something.
Elaine Benes:
Consomme, hmm.
Jerry Seinfeld:
What?
Elaine Benes:
Well, that's not really a meal, Jerry. I mean, if he had gotten Chicken Gumbo, or Matzah Ball, or Mushroom Barley. Then I would agree with you. Those are very hearty soups.
Jerry Seinfeld:
Elaine, you're missing the whole point.
Elaine Benes:
What?
Jerry Seinfeld:
The meal is the act of sitting down with him. It doesn't matter what you get. As long as he's sitting in that restaurant, it's a meal.
Elaine Benes:
Was it a cup or a bowl?
Jerry Seinfeld:
You see - ah, uh...
Elaine Benes:
I'm just curious.
Jerry Seinfeld:
A bowl, okay?
Elaine Benes:
Did he crumble any crackers in it?
[Jerry exhales in exasperation]
Elaine Benes:
Did he crumble any crackers in it?
Jerry Seinfeld:
As a matter of fact, he did.
Elaine Benes:
Oh, well. Crackers in a bowl. That, that could be a meal.
[The skit was funny, but not deep. "Gash?" Need better writers]
daskol said...
Yes, Nobody, I have heard gash used by a nonfeminist, as in "best gash I ever had."
I'm guessing you heard it in college and there were beers nearby. It's an obscure term that I don't think I've ever heard in casual conversation.
Charlize Theoron is a god.
Probably in a penis envy paragraph.
She doesn’t really envy the penis, she envies the more developed cerebral cortex which is better at abstract thinking and the appreciation of the consequences of an action. So many times women say stuff that trivially suggests that they have no idea what the next step is logically. For instance the writer of this article can’t see that the obvious reaction by men is to say, “fine live alone without children or raise them yourself."
I prefer the term "split-tails" to "gash."
It's a kinder and gentler term.
Tank just learned a new word.
Don't look for deep thinking from an actress, look for it from writers. I highly recommend Veep. I gather it's a slightly tamed version of In The Loop (2009) so as to fit the US government better. In The Loop was too slapstick-profane as a diet.
Gash used to be a more popular word for cunt. I remember it regularly from the 60s an 70s.
I suspect she wanted a vulgar word but they didn't feel they could get away with cunt.
I've heard gash used, though not frequently, for a trans m to f's artificial vagina. Seems apt there.
John Henry
Paglia doesn't envy the penis but it able to list its advantages and the pussy's disadvantages, as to psychological effect on the respective sexes. There were two sexes back then.
Heard it around punk/hipster types in the 90s, and may have originated from a garrulous Australian who had lots of colorful slang words for things.
Gash and cunt aren't interchangeable, gash being highly specific anatomically. You get huge play with cunt's meanings interacting, as you have to set up in context.
Bill,
I don't think I've heard split-tail since basic training in 67
Our company commander BT1 Mason used to use it all the time.
Don't much remember it otherwise.
John Henry
There are so many rude words I have never heard before. I have learned a few from this blog that have been inserted into well thought out sentences. I never use those words and I don't understand why anyone would want to. I must live a very prim and proper life...I like it that way.
rhhardin said...
Charlize Theoron is a god.
5/13/19, 7:42 AM
A God who declared that her 5 year old boy is a girl and is letting him transition to one. Sad.
as to psychological effect on the respective sexes.
She thinks it’s the penis with those effects because even Paglia can’t admit that it’s the brain. Men develop better spatial reasoning, as a rule, than women due to testosterone’s effects on brain development, not because of target practice in the toilet bowl.
Cunt isn't metonymy ("now this cunt you've got here is not worth worrying about"), or gash would work as well, which it doesn't. The question is what rhetorical device is cunt.
Cunt has resonance of fecundity, gash is just some kind of meaningless accident.
"Bill, Republic of Texas said...
I prefer the term "split-tails" to "gash.""
I like "hatchet wound."
Pilot hole.
"Gash of least resistance" vs. "Resist we much!"
Levinas locates the mysteriousness of the erotic in the unknowableness of the future child. (Totality and Infinity, appendix)
What is erotic can't be located as an object.
“And when you're a star, they let you do it. ... Grab 'em by the gash."
Nope, doesn't work.
I was always partial to “quim” which I remember, I think from the Beatles White Album, something about the quim of the queen.
Does anybody use the term “gash” other than feminists?
Armando Iannucci wrote the line - is he a feminist?
"Does anybody use the term “gash” other than feminists?"
"Gash" was a good word choice because it replaces "path" (in "path of least resistance"). I guessed, reading WaPo's bowdlerized version, that the word was "cunt," but that would have been much less effective because it doesn't call up the phrase "path of least resistance" as well.
The top definition at Urban Dictionary is: "gash — A term for the female genitalia, implying that it looks like a hatchet wound. See: alcove, bat cave, bear trap, bearded clam, bearded taco, beaver, bermuda triangle, box, bucket seat, cake, chuff box, cockpit, cooch, coochie, coochie-pop, coose, cooter, cooze, crack, crawl space, cum depository, cum dumpster, cuntcake, cunt, cunny, donut, dripping delta, felted mound, fillet-o-fish, finger hut, fish, fish taco, front bum, fly catcher, fuckhole, garage, gates of Heaven, golden doorway, Grand Canyon, growler, hair pie, hatchet wound, heaven's door, hole, honey cave, honey pot, hot box, jaws of Hell, lobster pot, loins, loose meat sandwich, lotus, love box, love canal, lower lips, meat wallet, muff, nooch, nook, nookie, parking spot, peach, pearly panty gates, pocket, poon, poontang, purse, pussy, quiff, quim, rat trap, scratch, sheath, slash, slit, snapper, snatch, space, split, stench trench, tampon socket, temple, thingy, tool shed, tuna, tunnel, twat, undercut, vagina, vertical smile, wishing well, whisker box, womb, x, yoni."
Maybe somewhere on that list you can find something that sounds closer to "path" than "gash" does.
Maybe you think the line just wasn't funny enough, but it was as good as the "Veep" script gets. I only watched a few episodes in the first season before giving up on the writing. It was a lot of trouble listening to all the chatter. But I did watch the finale (because I read the damned WaPo article and wanted to fill in the stupid blank).
From low to high: Here's the OED:
1 d. coarse slang. The vulva or vagina. Hence: a woman considered as a source of sexual satisfaction; (as a mass noun) sexual intercourse; women considered sexually. Cf. slit n. 1d. In quot. a1735 as part of an extended metaphor.
[a1735 Earl of Haddington 40 Select Poems (1753) 22 The first stitch only, said the rake, Perhaps may make your honour ake... Wise Sally cry'd, Dear Tomie, stay; You have not stitched me half, I fear, Feel, Tomie, what a gash is here!]
1873 Romance of Lust I. 16 The pinky gash, with its fleecy hair.
1914 L. E. Jackson & C. R. Hellyer Vocab. Criminal Slang 37 Gash,..an invidious term for woman.
1918 Minutes Comm. of Fourteen 5 Mar. in K. White First Sexual Revol. (1993) 88 There was always a chance of picking up a piece of gash in here.
1925 J. Dos Passos Manhattan Transfer ii. vi. 238 This guy..was out in the hall bawlin out his gash about something.
1934 J. T. Farrell Studs Lonigan xix. 300 You're young, and there's plenty of gash in the world, and the supply of moon goes on forever.
1974 L. Gould Final Anal. (1975) ix. 105 I asked him if I could borrow The Sun Also Rises, and he said, ‘I never lend books to any gash.’
1981 J. May Many-colored Land ii. ii. 121 At least tell me the prospects for local gash... We were told that the male-female ratio here was about four to one.
1996 R. Coover John's Wife (1997) 152 She..slowly inserted it into her gash, pushing it deeper and deeper.
2009 L. Lampanelli Chocolate, Please (2010) 285 If a celeb can't flash her gash getting out of a car or adopt a Pygmy, she goes to rehab and those flashbulbs start a-poppin'.
Gash is an old fashioned term. Henry Miller used it frequently.
It went out of fashion.
"flash her gash" — now, that's a true rhyme.
"Nobody said...
Pilot hole."
Hahaha!
And I hate to see strong men weakened by the lure of an enticing gash.
The line I quoted in the post, in context, is important to the plot. The character is (spoiler alert) playing on the mind of another woman and succeeds in getting her to accuse Selina's political rival of sexual harassment.
The show certainly doesn't take the "politically correct" position that women don't lie about sexual harassment. Women are as crude, low, ambitious, dirty, and cruel as men.
The Selina Meyer character continually used highly sexual verbal aggression on everyone around her.
I don't notice the stuff about Veep that Althouse notices. It's more about incentives in government in private and in public differing wildly, and the public being idiots about it.
The characters just represent their various incentives, never glimpsing the good and the true; nor does the public.
Nevertheless there's great gotcha's and defeats and victories within the rules that they play by.
No character development that I noticed, so it's not soap opera by any means. Just plot development.
Selina isn't a role model but a foil for a part in a system. That it's a woman makes it more incongruous and aids the comedy.
Very well acted.
There's an occasional honest conversation between two players who sort of acknowledge the game in making a deal. You might be able to trace out some character development if you followed those to see if they change somehow. I haven't tried that.
"Gash of least resistance" was Willie Brown's coinage for Kamala.
Veep is very funny. It's the only show extant that comes close to parodying political correctness. There's an awful lot of Bill and Hillary and Chelsea in the Meyer family. I'm sure the writers are reliably liberal in their outlook, but you more often see the excesses of the Clintons than the pieties of the Republicans in their take downs.....Congratulations to Dreyfus. She's the only Seinfeld alumni who's topped her work there.
I like Veep, but Curb was even funnier, so there's another alum who topped his Seinfeld work in my book.
"I just hate to see smart women throw their political careers away on men who only see them as the [slur for a body part] of least resistance."
"I just hate to see people throw their careers away on users."
I think the more general would be more effective speech.
The Just say Cunt. Pussy would've worked too, since Trump has popularized it.
I haven't seen the show. Is it a comedy? It doesn't seem funny.
"The character is (spoiler alert) playing on the mind of another woman and succeeds in getting her to accuse Selina's political rival of sexual harassment."
Well, that's interesting. Maybe I'll give it a watch.
Hahaha!
Thanks, I thought that might have been one of my best jokes ever, but I worried people wouldn’t get it.
Actually it's the time integral of the lagrangian that gives the path of least resistance.
Wait, so it is OK to say cunt here? i seem to remember feeling i had to use c*nt here it if i actually referred to my notion from early 2009 that Obama was our first Cunt President, breaking countless barriers for all of us.
so let me test: Obama was our first Gash President.
sayyy, i think that works even better! salud.
wendybar said...
rhhardin said...
Charlize Theoron is a god.
5/13/19, 7:42 AM
A God who declared that her 5 year old boy is a girl and is letting him transition to one. Sad.
Her 5 year old boy isn't her 5 year old boy. If he was her 5 year old boy, and not a politically correct prop picked up in Africa, she might feel differently.
"In “Long Shot” Charlize Theoron becomes the first female POTUS."
SPOILER ALERT! Jeez.
Oh, thought the Charlize Theron has a trans son thing couldn't be right, but it seems to be:
The Academy Award-winner revealed that her eldest child is transgender. According to the actress, Jackson, 7, was assigned male at birth but told Theron four years ago that she was actually a girl.
So this started with the child was 3. Yowza. Kids say all kinds of things at 3.
You start a child at 3 and keep pushing them one way, you can teach them to be anything at 7. It's especially concerning because Charlize is single and is raising her children with her mother, who killed Charlize's father. So it seems possible there is a bit of an anti-male bias in the home.
Sex and gender in politics. The feminist cabal hated Sarah Palin. Apparently, she was too feminine, too successful, but politically incongruent with their ideology. They prefer a cat in a hat with a wicked slice.
Women are as crude, low, ambitious, dirty, and cruel as men.
Worse, Althouse. Much, much worse.
Women are as crude, low, ambitious, dirty, and cruel as men
Some women and men aspire to greater heights than others.
"Gash of least resistance" is a great line, though.
A minority feel that it is a hole of no consequence, like any other. We live in interesting times.
I distinctly recall a drunken soldier using the term "gash" in the 1978 anti-Vietnam war movie
"Coming Home", starring Jane Fonda and John Voight, among others.
Haven't heard it since.
Veep exits as it entered, with an off-color pun that gets people talking, both in the episode & in real life.
In the pilot episode from 2012, Selina Meyer ad libs a reference to a disgraced "Twitter monkey" recently fired from her staff as "hoisted by our own retard" (spoken to rhyme with 'petard', of course)." It's a hilarious line and the hue & cry that follow drives much of the episode's plot.
People who want to substitute 'cunt' for 'gash' must not like wordplay, because "gash of least resistance" is another highly amusing pun, whereas "cunt of least resistance" is merely vulgar.
Women reduced to a gash, a hole, a peculiar anatomic attribute, by other women. Here's to progress.
in the 1978 anti-Vietnam war movie "Coming Home"
Right, almost every time it’s used, its to make the utterer look bad, or to make men look bad. I suppose now it will be used ironically, but it just isn’t the kind of think a many who likes women would say. I would say that it is pretty much what a genuine misogynist would say, but they are pretty rare.
Veep was a great show. Julia Louis was amazing as Selena.
Those American women who went to Syria to become Daesh Gash have a few regrets. Rh is correct. Veep rips all sectors new assholes.
Duckman was funnier. Didn't need f-bombs either.
In the UK Gash is a fairly common deroagotory term amoung men for the vagina. Women in the UK HATE the word. Veep was written by a Scotsman so I guess that's why it's used a lot.
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