"This talk show was so elegant and respectful, that even the comment section of a video like this isn't infested by angry people shouting from both extremes of the issue."

A comment written one month ago on a video put up on YouTube a year ago: 

 

The show aired in 1970. Watch the whole thing. The person at the extreme left of the talk-show couch — who eventually pipes up — is Grace Slick. The host Dick Cavett engineers the mood — which is serious and comical, tense and relaxed. It's quite something. 

The 70s vibe is mesmerizing. Somehow the colors brown and orange dominated. And who remembers that there was once a feminist notion that women should travel in pairs so that no one becomes a celebrity?!

Hugh Hefner takes the position that maleness/femaleness is the very beginning of who you are as a person. He also attempts to bond with the feminists over his strong support for abortion rights. And he gets out his pipe and smokes up a storm. One of the feminists smokes a cigarette, and makes a theatrical point of lighting it for herself, rejecting Cavett's straight-man offer to play the old chivalrous role of cigarette lighter.

I cannot tolerate today's TV talk shows. The mood is so poisonous. One alternative is to watch half-century old talk shows on YouTube.

***

There is no comments section anymore, but you can email me here. Unless you say otherwise, I will presume you'd enjoy an update to this post with a quote from your email.

The New Yorker's David Remnick writes "Brownmiller’s treatment of the Emmett Till case reads today as morally oblivious...."

That's in "The Weinstein Moment and the Trump Presidency/The producer and other powerful men are facing repercussions for their alleged abusive behavior. Will the President?," a short essay that begins with a section on Susan Brownmiller's extremely influential 1975 book "Against Our Will: Men, Women, and Rape." Brownmiller's memorable thesis is summed up by Remnick:

“Man’s discovery that his genitalia could serve as a weapon to generate fear,” she wrote, “must rank as one of the most important discoveries of prehistoric times, along with the use of fire and the first crude stone axe.” Sexual coercion, and the threat of its possibility, in the street, in the workplace, and in the home, she found, is less a matter of frenzied lust than a deliberate exercise of physical power, a declaration of superiority “designed to intimidate and inspire fear.”

Remnick has great respect for Brownmiller's thinking, which he finds useful in attacking Trump, even though Trump used words to entice us into voting for him not genitalia as a weapon.

But Remnick needs to lodge one complaint against Brownmiller, because attacking Trump is one thing and seeming oblivious about race is another. Remnick has to put this distance between himself and Susan Brownmiller:

Some of her arguments, particularly those pertaining to race, met with strong and convincing resistance from such critics as Angela Davis—Brownmiller’s treatment of the Emmett Till case reads today as morally oblivious—yet “Against Our Will” remains an important prod to our understanding of the social order.

Man, if I were editor of The New Yorker, I'd be frantically looking for some word other than "prod." It's too soon after the talk of "genitalia... as a weapon" to be aiming anything phallic at the reader.

But here's why I'm writing this post.

Using makeup to create the look that you've been up all night engaging in dissolute behavior.

"It’s a look you get from being out all night, sweating — without looking too undone."

To achieve that perennial party-girl look, Nars kept skin clean of foundation and concealer, instead opting for a touch of greasy shine at the eyes, cheekbones and under the eyes. (“Vaseline is the best,” he said.) With a touch of shadow, he added some darkness under the eyes for a messy, day-after makeup effect....

This is the sort of thing that keeps coming back because it's something only young people can do, and anything "young" will always seem like an option. It made me think of the big "heroin chic" trend of the mid-90s ("a look... characterized by... dark circles underneath the eyes... emaciated features and androgyny... a reaction against the 'healthy' and vibrant look of models such as Cindy Crawford and Claudia Schiffer.") I was already reading the NYT, so I searched the NYT archive for "heroin chic" and came up with a Maureen Dowd column from 1996 — from the height of the presidential campaign:

In this fast-paced, channel-surfing, gigabyte blur of a world, Bob Dole wants to slow things down. Way down.... Mr. Dole presents himself as the avatar of a better time, a time of moral rectitude, unlocked doors, clean movies and Glenn Miller...

[H]e decried ''Pulp Fiction,'' though he hasn't seen it, and ''Trainspotting,'' though he hasn't seen it, for encouraging ''the romance of heroin." ''A fascination with risk and death,'' he said, denouncing heroin chic. ''The attraction of self-destruction -- if you can believe it.''

Dole was portrayed at the time as hopelessly old, a veritable corpse. Oddly, it's 19 years later, and the man is still alive (and joking about running for President).

ADDED: I'm seeing a connection between this and the earlier post today quoting 70s-era feminist Susan Brownmiller cautioning women about drinking too much and getting "trapped in sex situations."

Susan Brownmiller, author of the feminist classic "Against Our Will," has some words for today's anti-rape activists.

From an interview in New York Magazine:

I like to see activism wherever it rears its head, but this is a very limited movement that doesn't accept reality. Culture may tell you, "You can drink as much as men," but you can't. People think they can have it all ways. The slut marches bothered me, too, when they said you can wear whatever you want. Well sure, but you look like a hooker. They say, "That doesn't matter," but it matters to the man who wants to rape. It's unrealistic. I don't know what happened to the understanding people had in the 1970s....

Well, I take a hard line with victims of domestic violence, too. I feel it is my place as a feminist to say, "Get out, get out, get out of this relationship." They feel that we should respect their opinions and beliefs because they are survivors. If they can’t get out because they don’t want to reduce their living circumstances, or they don’t want to go, or they are passive people, then I am supposed to respect that. But I don’t. My feeling is "Get out."

And my feeling about young women trapped in sex situations that they don’t want is: "Didn’t you see the warning signs? Who do you expect to do your fighting for you?" It is a little late, after you are both undressed, to say "I don’t want this."

When 100 feminists protested The Ladies Home Journal, they lunged at the editor, John Mack Carter, tried to push him off the edge of his desk, and they smoked his cigars.

John Mack Carter died yesterday, at the age of 86. Do you remember who he is?

John Mack Carter, a Kentucky-born journalist who... was already a veteran editor of women’s magazines when, in March 1970, more than 100 feminists led by Susan Brownmiller stormed Ladies’ Home Journal and held an 11-hour sit-in at his office. Some of the women perched on his desk and smoked cigars. The protesters wanted Mr. Carter to resign and be replaced by a woman. They demanded that the magazine run a “liberated” issue...

That's from the NYT obituary, but let's look at the article the NYT published in March 1970:

More than 100 militant feminists staged a day-long occupation of The Ladies' Home Journal's editorial offices yesterday and demanded a chance to put out a "liberated" issue of the magazine...

Mr. Carter, who is 42 years old, said it had been an "educational" day...

Many of the 47 female and seven male editorial staff members expressed outrage and disgust as the demonstrators crowded into Mr. Carter's office at 9 a.m.

"Can we call the men who engage in this sort of sucking-up to women 'Uncle Tims'?"

Ha.

Reminds me of this Rush riff from Monday.

Look, even liberal men want to get the girl. There's something universal about men and women, the guy wants to get the girl. When your target is a liberal woman, look at what you have to do. I've been there, folks, I've been there. I've put this to the test. I've told you about this.

I actually gave a woman I was dating in Kansas City once a book by Susan Brownmiller, who wrote at the time the definitive book on rape, and her thesis was that it's not sex, it's violence. I didn't care. That's what I had to do, you know, to get a second date with this babe. It's all it was. The guy always wants to get the girl. When you have the liberal woman that you want to get, oh, Good Lord, look what you have to do.

And I love the graphic:



Meanwhile, Hugh Hefner got played:

Hugh Hefner's wedding to Crystal Harris was called off after she secretly planned to ditch the Playboy mogul at the altar in return for a $500,000 media deal...

Harris, 25, was shopping for a big-bucks deal to tell all after she ditched hapless Hef, 85, in front of 300 guests at their wedding at the Playboy Mansion on Saturday, to be filmed for a Lifetime TV special.

Staged humiliation for the reality-show ladies.

"Swedish prison. Like, I could live there, like it's nice ..."

We join the inane chatter about Julian Assange somewhere near the end of the 50th minute:



"... just because he's a rapist doesn't mean I'm saying he's some some sort of violent... It's such a loaded term...."



There's much more, of course, but that gives you a feeling for the discussion. Continue at your own risk.

ADDED: Instapundit repeats the "just because he's a rapist" quote and snarks "It's not rape-rape," which is a reference to what Whoopi Goldberg said about Roman Polanski.

AND: Back in the 1970s, beginning with the extremely influential book "Against Our Will" by Susan Brownmiller, feminist doctrine portrayed rape as an act of violence. I have been in the presence of feminists who would jump on you, quite harshly, if you said there was some sexuality involved. No, it was 100% violence. You were a heretic if you didn't accept that doctrine. I would challenge Maureen Tkacik with the proposition that if you don't think it's violence, then you shouldn't call it rape.