"There are people that come, and they’ve been on it for three years, and they’re just so tired of feeling nauseous and constipated."

"They have come to Mountain Trek to get off of it. To learn accumulated lifestyle habits, so that they don’t then gain all the weight back."

Said Kirkland Shave, co-owner of the wellness retreat Mountain Trek, quoted in "The Ozempic era is forcing wellness retreats for the elite to change/Attendees might be looking to wean off weight-loss drugs or mitigate side effects such as digestive discomfort and muscle loss" (WaPo)(free-access link).

I've never gone on a wellness retreat — though I have watched Season 3 of "The White Lotus" — but I was interested enough to click through to the Mountain Trek website and to momentarily bask in the idea of the place. But as with all travel, you have to do the hard creative work of imagining what it's really like there.

"As Kavanaugh continues, my mind starts to wander to 'The Simpsons,' with its Springfield Nuclear Power Plant and several episodes depicting..."

"... creative ways the plant has disposed of its nuclear waste. This won’t be the only time I think about 'The Simpsons' this morning, but I’ll come back to that...."

Writes Mark Walsh, in "Watching environmental law get eclipsed by Skrmetti" (SCOTUSblog).

Later, getting back to that:

"Stone became a kind of blinkered realist. His down-in-the-basement singing could sound depressed."

"Among the most pungent moments on these later albums is a version of 'Que Sera, Sera.' Stone makes it a gospel dirge, this smoky funeral march. It’s a touch bitter and sopping with rue. 'The future’s not ours to see,' he sings, as each verse unspools a childhood anticipation of what might happen someday. Stone imagines a baleful, shrugging acceptance of what is, rather than what’s possible. Possible, this version seems to ask, what’s that?"

Writes , in "Sly Stone and the Sound of an America That Couldn’t Last/The influential musician, who died on Monday at 82, forged harmony — musical and otherwise — that he wasn’t able to hold together on his own" (NYT).

Beautiful version of a song that one usually associates with Doris Day. Here's Day singing it as loud as possible in "The Man Who Knew Too Much." Here's how she sang it when it wasn't an incredibly intense scene in a Hitchcock movie. And here's a beautiful version by 2 young women on TikTok.

From the Wikipedia article about the song, I figured out that I'd heard the Sly and the Family Stone version before — every time I've seen the darkly comic movie "Heathers." It plays over the closing credits. A more cheerful version of the song plays over the opening credits.

The seeming lightness of the song has made it useful in dark comedy:

"At the Pentagon, staffers often share the meme of Homer Simpson backing into a hedge and disappearing from view to characterize their boss’s aversion to any limelight."

"But that reticence, [Lloyd] Austin’s backers say, reflects decades of cultural challenges for a Black man who has succeeded in the military by learning not to showcase too much of himself.... It has been more than a year since he appeared in the Pentagon briefing room to talk to reporters, and he usually avoids reporters who travel with him on his plane trips. Ditto for much of his staff; when traveling, he prefers to dine alone in his hotel room when he doesn’t have a scheduled engagement with a foreign counterpart. He does not like to schmooze or engage in lubricating political relationships.... He rarely bothers to defend himself to political critics.... 'We have now politicized a deeply personal and private issue in a deeply personal and private man,' Adm. Mike Mullen, who was chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff under Presidents George W. Bush and Barack Obama, said in an interview. 'We should move on.'..."

Writes Helene Cooper, in "Lloyd Austin Confronts the Perils of Being a Private Man in a Public Job/President Biden said his defense secretary made an error in judgment in not keeping the White House informed of his hospitalization. But keeping a low profile has long defined the Pentagon chief" (WaPo).

"What are some famous examples — in truth or fiction — of a character who puts a lot of effort into being able to be lazy?"

I ask ChatGPT, a propos of the previous post about the "Lazy Girl" jobs. I was influenced by a comment from Jamie, who wrote, "Heinlein wrote a story called 'The Man Who Was Too Lazy To Fail,' about a smart but lazy guy who spends his life and career thinking up efficiencies and ends up very successful."

ChatGPT answered me:

"The major Iowa newspaper that published a political cartoon depicting MAGA voters yelling racial slurs at Republican presidential candidate Vivek Ramaswamy issued a formal apology..."

"... over the weekend after the GOP hopeful slammed the depiction as 'shameful.' The Quad-City Times executive editor Tom Martin wrote on the paper’s website Friday that the 'inexcusable' cartoon was intended to 'criticize racist ideas and epithets' but instead featured a phrase that 'is racist and insensitive to members of our Indian American community.'... [The cartoon] depicted a campaign rally... Ramaswamy was drawn, saying, 'Hello my MAGA friends!' Three angry White men in the crowd each responded to his appearance with a racial slur. One screamed, 'Muslim!' getting the candidate’s religion wrong. Ramaswamy is a self-professed Hindu. Another [yelled]... 'Get me a slushee, Apu!!!' and a third [yelled]... 'Show us your birth certificate!!'"

The NY Post reports.

Before the apology came out, Ramaswamy tweeted: "It’s sad that this is how the MSM views Republicans. I’ve met with grassroots conservatives across America & never *once* experienced the kind of bigotry that I regularly see from the Left. Iowa’s ⁦ @qctimes ⁩ absolutely has the right to print this, but it’s still shameful."

Let me connect this post to the previous one, about the chant at the Drag March — "We’re here! We’re queer! We’re coming for your children!" Somebody thinks they're being very funny and they're cocooned with people who like the direction the satire is going.

Artist surprises the Shoah Memorial Foundation with murals of "The Simpsons" as Holocaust victims.

"We were not involved in the decision process, and found the painting yesterday morning along with everybody else," said a spokesperson.

Quoted in "Artist paints 'The Simpsons' characters as Holocaust victims outside Milan memorial/Shoah Memorial Foundation says while AleXsandro Palombo did not consult with them before creating the artwork, they 'don’t find it particularly harmful'" (Times of Israel).

The president of the foundation said: "We appreciate the intention behind it, and don’t find it particularly harmful." 

"Growing up in Brookline, Massachusetts, [Conan] O’Brien developed two lifelong obsessions. The first was The Music Man...."

"After O’Brien heard [Robert] Preston’s showstopping song 'Ya Got Trouble' for the first time, it wormed its way into his brain. 'I always wanted to play the Robert Preston part and do the "Trouble" song,' he says. 'I just love the "Trouble" song.' O’Brien’s other fixation was the work of filmmaker Irwin Allen, who produced disaster movies like The Poseidon Adventure and The Towering Inferno. They all stuck to a specific formula, and they were all entertaining as hell. 'The beginning is always great promise,' O’Brien says. '"We built this wonderful skyscraper!" There’s a lot of talk about the skyscraper, and then there’s always a dire warning: "You should worry about the electrical system and the smoke alarms." Don’t you worry about that! Then, there always comes the moment where all the celebrities are being brought in for the big grand opening.' Then, it all goes to shit. 'Somehow, all those things are swimming around in my head,' O’Brien says. It just took a space-age train to bring them together. 'It unfolds really naturally because once you have the idea of a Music Man selling you a monorail, you know Homer’s for it, the town’s for it. … Well, who’s going to be against it? It’s either Marge or Lisa, because they’re sensible. For me, it was Marge. She’ll be the voice of reason who senses this isn’t wise. The first part is Music Man. The second act is an Irwin Allen disaster movie.'"

From "Throw Up Your Hands and Raise Your Voice! Monorail! Monorail! Monorail! Thirty years later, Conan O’Brien reflects on the making and legacy of 'Marge vs. the Monorail,' one of the best ‘Simpsons’—and sitcom—episodes of all time" (The Ringer).

The most obvious law school hypothetical when teaching the Good News Club case has come to life with the After School Satan Club.

I'm reading "Parents slam school’s ‘sick’ Satan Club for children as young as 5: ‘Disgusting’" (NY Post).

I got there via Sarah Hoyt at Instapundit:

WHOSE CHILDREN DO THOSE PARENTS THINK THOSE KIDS ARE? Parents slam school’s ‘sick’ Satan Club for children as young as 5: ‘Disgusting’.

Sorry, but this is exactly what was bargained for when by anyone who supported the after-school Christian club, approved of by the Supreme Court back in 2001.

Either you have a special rule excluding religion or you don't. In Good News Club, a Christian after-school club had been excluded and the Supreme Court saw that as discrimination against religion. Once you get that far, you can't have viewpoint discrimination. Viewpoint discrimination is worse than discrimination against religion in general. So there now you can't exclude the Satanist club.

I used to teach a Religion & the Constitution course, and I was teaching it when the Good News Club case came out. The first hypothetical that springs to mind is an After School Satan Club. Legal decisions have consequences, and sometimes they are perfectly obvious.

 

You think that's disgusting? Some people think all after-school religion clubs are disgusting, but they lost in the Supreme Court in 2001. And some people think government viewpoint discrimination is disgusting? Get your values in order and try to be consistent.

For you edification and amusement, I've lined up 10 TikToks. Some people love them!

1. Very nice slow-motion photography.

2. This dinner makes itself.

3. AI shows "Simpsons" characters as real people.

4. You are ugly. He can help.

5. Mississippi John Hurt sings "That Lonesome Valley."

6. Buck Dancing, filmed in 1894.

7. An ocean is forming within Pakistan.

8. Teens are asked "How gay are you?"

9. An impression of a Gen Z person on their deathbed.

10. And let Ricky Gourmet help you with the overbearing heat of summer.

"Hello, I’m Tom Hanks. The US government has lost its credibility, so it’s borrowing some of mine."

 Said Tom Hanks in "The Simpsons Movie" (in 2007), quoted in "‘The Simpsons did it first’: Tom Hanks’s video for Biden likened to cameo" (London Times).

From the London Times article:

In a two-minute video released by the Biden Inaugural Committee yesterday, the Oscar-winning actor narrates the accomplishments of the Biden administration in its inaugural year — pointing to the distribution of vaccines and that “shops and businesses are buzzing again all over the country.” 

Here's the new video, which I clicked off — muttering "Oh, jeez" — at the 3-second mark: 

 

I'm going to try again to watch it, for the sake of this post, but I'm going to publish first, because I don't know how many on-and-off clickings it will take for me to reach the end. 

ADDED: Okay. I've finished. It was long, but it mainly said we're dealing with Covid and the economy is coming back. It would have worked just as well as a Trump ad. Maybe the Democrats realize they need to squirrel away the divisive issues.

"Perelman crammed every joke he could think of into every sentence and polished his pieces relentlessly until they couldn’t get any crazier."

"There’s a story that a friend called him up while he was writing something, and Perelman said, 'I’ll call you back when I finish this sentence.' He called back the next day and said, 'O.K., what do you want?' When I first read Perelman, it was completely over my head. Half the words he was using didn’t exist in the real world, as far as I knew—and I was twelve, I’d been around. I figured one of us was nuts. Later on, when I had started writing for a living and picked up a few more multisyllable words, I checked him out again. I’ve been a fan ever since."

 From "John Swartzwelder, Sage of 'The Simpsons'/The first major interview with one of the most revered comedy writers of all time" (The New Yorker).

There's a lot about "The Simpsons" in there too. For example, the key to writing Homer Simpson is to think of him as "a big talking dog":

One moment he’s the saddest man in the world, because he’s just lost his job, or dropped his sandwich, or accidentally killed his family. Then, the next moment, he’s the happiest man in the world, because he’s just found a penny—maybe under one of his dead family members. He’s not actually a dog, of course—he’s smarter than that—but if you write him as a dog you’ll never go wrong.

FROM THE EMAIL: Sean writes:

Hey Althouse, thanks for that link to the interview with John Swartzwelder, of whom I had never heard before. After reading that interview, I immediately bought his self-published novel The Time Machine Did It (Kindle edition), and am thoroughly enjoying it. Up to chapter 17 already, just put it down long enough to say thanks to you.

"Azaria, who is White..."

Is he?

I'm trying to read the WaPo article, "Hank Azaria apologizes for playing Apu on ‘The Simpsons’ for three decades." 

I've already blogged about this apology, so I'm not rehashing that. I just want to focus on the unsupported assertion that Azaria "is White." 

If Azaria is White, maybe Apu is also White. 

The question whether people from India are white has been litigated in the United States. From Wikipedia's article "Racial classification of Indian Americans": 

"This was not a two-week process, I needed to educate myself a lot. I realised I have had a date with destiny with this thing for 31 years."

"I really do apologise. I know you weren’t asking for that, but it’s important. I apologise for my part in creating that and participating in that. Part of me feels like I need to go to every single Indian person in this country and personally apologise."

Said Hank Azaria, quoted in "Simpsons voice actor Hank Azaria offers apology to ‘every single Indian person’" (London Times). 

Here's the top-rated comment over there: 

As an Indian having watched Simpsons I didn't even know I was supposed to be OFFENDED and needed to be APOLOGISED to. This woke brigade has created issues out of nothing, mountain out of molehills. Hari Kondabolu does not represent us - never heard of him and now don't even want to know him. There are 1.5bn indians and this guy does not represent even 0.0001% of Indians as most are too busy working hard to get involved in wokery. Remember Indians don't play victim (according to the race report published last week) - they don't have the time as studying, jobs, hard work, looking after family, being a good citizen takes up all the time - not enough time to protest, shout, march and scream at the govt for imaginary issues or time to be offended.

Maybe you've never heard of Hari Kondabolu either, so here's the trailer for his documentary movie: 

 

FROM THE EMAIL: Hari writes:

As a Hari (and a Singh) apology accepted. Having lived my entire 62 years in New York, I have been waiting patiently for my turn to be insulted over my ethnicity, and now I finally have gotten my chance. Thank you!

ALSO: WK says:

When Hank Azaria said "Part of me feels like I need to go to every single Indian person in this country and personally apologise," I pictured Navin Johnson in "The Jerk" handwriting an individual check to everyone who ended up cross-eyed from using the Optigrab he invented.....

A big "Streisand effect" for an otherwise obscure tweet: "Kamala sounds like Marge Simpson."

That's the entire tweet, from a Trump adviser I've never noticed or cared about, Jenna Ellis. But it's a big deal, because anti-Trumpers went big, attacking it. Why does it even matter? People like Marge Simpson, she has a distinctive voice, and somebody noticed a similar quality in Kamala Harris's voice.

The "Simpsons" show itself responded, I'm reading in "Marge Simpson claps back at Trump adviser Jenna Ellis for Kamala Harris dig: I 'feel a little disrespected'" (Fox News).

Here's the show's tweet:

Marge Simpson has something to say. pic.twitter.com/viux96bAPf

— TheSimpsons (@TheSimpsons) August 14, 2020

I guess I should congratulate the show for drawing attention to itself. It's so weird that it's still on the air. Not only is it the longest running scripted prime-time TV show, it has 10 more seasons that the show that's in second place.

I hate the idea that we're not supposed to make fun of Kamala Harris. No one unmockable should be given access to great power. By the way, she herself is always laughing, laughing when nothing is even funny. We're supposed to put up with a person laughing at nothing and also to be banned from laughing at something?! That's not my idea of America. Trump says he'll "make America great again." What's the counteroffer? Make America grim again?

"When I happen upon almost any image from one of the 'Simpsons' Instagram [accounts that post single frames from the show], I am struck by how absolutely visually gorgeous it is."

"This is, perhaps, especially true when it comes to @scenic_simpsons, with its visions of a violet car, its headlights on, cruising in a darkened parking lot full of silent vehicles; or an abstract thicket of trees, their tops as dense and foreboding as storm clouds; or a digital clock on a bedside table, its face glowing 7:59, next to an orange phone. Though they come to us via our hubbub-filled Instagram feeds, these stand-alone pictures are as quietly stunning as any made by our greatest American artists of alienation and loneliness, from Edward Hopper to Arthur Dove."

From "The Aesthetic Splendor of 'The Simpsons'" by Naomi Fry (in The New Yorker).

View this post on Instagram

A post shared by Scenic Simpsons (@scenic_simpsons) on Feb 16, 2020 at 6:59am PST

"I Watched 185 Mike Bloomberg Ads/And I figured out what this weird, expensive, suddenly ubiquitous campaign is trying to do."

Writes Justin Peters (at Slate), in case you're wondering what all those Bloomberg ads are. I was. I'd only seen a couple Bloomberg ads, because I skip ads. I avert my eyes. Sometimes I see that an ad is being talked about and I go out of my way to find it, but only because I want to blog about. I have my wits about me and I'm analytical and critical and inclined to make fun. But what's going on with the people who do let ads wash over them? I can't imagine. Are they influenced? What is Mike doing with all his money?

Well, this Slate accumulation of all the ads is a helpful place to start. I have no idea if these things are ranked correctly — whatever that means — other than that I'm sure they're not. One viewer can only give his opinion and these ads are intended for micro-targeting voters. That's what makes it interesting to get in there and find things that you know weren't made for you but for somebody else. Or to find things that appeal to you, like, for me "Big Gay Ice Cream":



I love ice cream. It's my #1 favorite food. And I'm as gay friendly as a nongay person can be. And I have an aversion to politics, so this ad is great. It does nothing but show the candidate eating ice cream, saying "mmmm," and calling it "Big Gay Ice Cream." I'm going to assume that's a brand name and not just a way to say excellent ice cream.

I notice the title of the ad is "Mike Love Big Gay Ice Cream." Is that bad grammar, intentional caveman/baby talk, or a Beach Boys reference? Mike pays so much that I can't imagine a plain vanilla mistake.

Okay, let's see what the Slate writer has to say. He ranks this ad as #10 (out of 185):

In its lonely quest to make the internet believe that Rich Mike, who wears expensive purple sweaters and spends lots of time in Bermuda, is Weird Self-Aware Mike, Bloomberg’s team has released several low-budget, shot-in-a-minute spots in which the candidate stands in a campaign office and woodenly endorses various foodstuffs and/or holidays. This message, in which Bloomberg calls out for ice cream from Big Gay Ice Cream—an ice cream store in New York—is my favorite of these, in part because never before has someone seemed so wooden and odd while touting the virtues of ice cream. Bloomberg comes across like Mr. Burns in that one Simpsons episode where he had his first taste of “iced cream.” Oh, Weird Mike, you awkward, lovable, billionaire scamp!

By the way, the real Mike Love is almost a vegan, but he says, "I will succumb to an ice-cream shake." He likes "A Cold Stone Creamery coffee shake. I have a hard time passing that up."

What's my point here? It's: Who the hell knows what is going on with all these ads sloshing around in the mind of the American voter?

"Calling signs with fingers when there are hundreds of cameras trained on you seems archaic. Yet it is traditional..."

"... and the collision of technology and tradition needs a bridge if we want to preserve aspects of the past that are the signature of the game’s heartbeat. The real consequence of the Astros scandal may be to stoke the feeling of helplessness we all feel with technology at times, always a step behind.... Maybe the values behind the rules, the 'love of the game,' are naïve. That it is idealistic to dream of a World Series ring won through pure team and individual effort; maybe we should have realized the temptation of cutting corners for spoils that can more easily be acquired with money, drugs and better technology. A rocket arm, a quick bat, a big heart, a blessing from divine sources or humility are diminished in such a world. What you came with is not enough naturally. If we do not respond by fighting for what we claim to value in fair play, such a scandal makes us beholden to the notion that the prerequisites of success are simply deeper pockets, a better pharmacist and a[n] unethical hacker. And in such a world, humanity is marginalized and no game remains. Just video. So maybe the top isn’t that shiny simply because it is the top. Maybe the top is just resting high on an ice cream cake, doomed to melt from the heat of 'do whatever it takes' ethics."

From "Baseball’s Existential Crisis/The Astros cheating scandal calls into question the fundamental values of the game" by Doug Glanville (in The NYT). Glanville was a major league baseball player from 1996 to 2004.

We talked about the sign-stealing problem last November, where I wrote (in the comments):

Signs are made out in the open. Why can’t you read them?

How is it “stealing”?

It’s looking and seeing.

I put "stealing" in quotes because stealing usually sounds bad, but in baseball stealing bases is a celebrated skill. The easiest solution to this "existential crisis" is just to accept sign stealing as part of the game, no more unethical than stealing a base. Since that route is possible, isn't the real dispute about the balance of advantages between pitcher and batter? Is the hand-wringing about ethics pro-pitcher propaganda?

Also in the comments at that November post, Char Char Binks wrote:

I know little, and care less, about this controversy, but it illustrates one of the things I hate about baseball. The game is rife with unfairness, chicanery, and outright cheating. The general ethos of the game is “it’s not against the rules if you don’t get caught”, with flexible strike zones, brush backs with a deadly weapon, corked and tarred bats, pitchers secretly altering the ball to suit their preference, and players openly “razzing” opponents with behavior that would be considered grossly unsportsmanlike in almost any other game, but that coaches teach players to do from a young age.

How baseball came to be seen as the exemplar of good, clean American fair play I’ll never know.

Psota responded:

Ha! Baseball is PERFECT as a symbol of American society's distinctive combination of "High ideals" + "low morals" approach to life. This is not a comment on Dems v GOP, Trump v Hillary,etc. Charles Dickens was writing about our peculiar national character in Martin Chuzzlewit.

What did Dickens say about Americans in "Martin Chuzzlewit"? I'm not sure, but Lisa Simpson says:

"I think we should invest in a set of The Great Books Of Western Civilization. Look at this ad from The New Republic for Kids: Each month, a new classic will be delivered to our door. Paradise Regained, Martin Chuzzlewit or Herman Melville's twin classics Omoo and Typee."

“It was [Adi] Shankar’s intention to crowdsource a script that 'in a clever way subverts [Apu], pivots him, writes him out..."

"'... or evolves him in a way that takes a creation that was the byproduct of a predominately Harvard-educated white male writers’ room and transforms it into a fresh, funny and realistic portrayal of Indians in America.' Shankar’s primary hope was that Fox would produce the script as an episode of 'The Simpsons,' but now that he has found what he calls the 'perfect script' and announces the winner of his contest, he told IndieWire that he has heard from people who work for the show that 'The Simpsons' is eliminating the character."

Metafilter.

I don't know how perfect that script really was, but by just eliminating the character with no explanation, it remains possible to bring him back whenever they want and explain it when the time comes.

Compare Roseanne. They eliminated her by killing her off, and now she can never come back... not without a really weird explanation anyway.

You could say "The Simpsons" isn't even giving its Indian character the dignity of needing his absence explained. He just becomes unseen, which is the way pop culture in the old days treated minorities. They're just not there. No explanation needed.

That's what deserves the label "microaggression." And my tag "seen and unseen."

"Physical assault definitely violates most society's [sic] idea of a moral order, which perhaps explains why aggression plays some kind of role in most humor."

"Freud theorized that humor serves as a way to dissipate sexual or aggressive tension in a socially acceptable way. Thomas Hobbes argues in the Leviathan that laughter arises from feeling superior, and that it's an extension of a feeling of 'sudden glory' arising from recognizing someone else's comparative defect or weakness.... The brain gets its wires crossed when confronted by someone else getting hurt. As a pain-filled situation unfolds, a witness doesn't experience the negative emotional valence that the person in pain does, but the brain still registers an emotional arousal. It can mistakenly categorize the sudden spike in emotion as positive....."

From "FYI: Why Is It Funny When A Guy Gets Hit In The Groin?" — a 2013 Popular Science article — which I'm reading this morning after blogging about last night's "SNL" cold open which featured "Joe Manchin" punching "Chuck Schumer" in the balls. There was a lot more in that sketch, and I didn't find any of it too funny, but in the comments to my post, Meade wrote: "in this era of That's Not Funny, at least we still have male-on-male sexual assault to laugh at."

Is hitting a man in the balls a sexual assault? It depends on the meaning of "sexual." I remember the definition of "sexual behavior" used by Rachel Mitchell (the prosecutor) in questioning Brett Kavanaugh. It specified the outward behavior and excluded intent. If you were doing the behavior — e.g., rubbing your clothed genitals against another person's clothed genitals — it didn't matter if you weren't doing it for sexual gratification. It could be mere "horseplay," and it would be "sexual behavior." That's adopting a broad view of "sexual," and that was done, I think, to take the perspective of the person on the receiving end of the behavior.

What about the man on the receiving end of a hit in the balls? First, are we talking about real life or a comedy scene? Getting hit in the balls is extremely common in comedy — it has a TV Tropes article* — and that's one reason to avoid it. But let's think about whether it should be avoided because it's not taking sexual assault seriously. We don't laugh to see a woman hit in the genitals. I don't think I've ever seen that used in comedy. It's not a cliché, but why isn't it a hilarious twist on the old cliché? We know it's not. Violence against women! And now, remember the 1970s feminist ideology about rape: It's a crime of violence, not sex. Rapists are not doing something sexual. See how that fits with Rachel Mitchell's definition of "sexual behavior."

Now, let's get back to the Popular Science article:

Besides the Freudian implications of the aggressive and sexual tension in the situation, there's also the suddenness with which a blow to the 'nads can take down even an otherwise big, strapping man.... Add that to the theories already at play with physical humor—benign violations, mistaken commitments, aggression, emotional arousal....

And you don't have women to tell you "That's not funny." It's male on male and the men are free to laugh fraternalistically.... until the women crack down on that too. And why wouldn't we? You're not taking sexual violence seriously. Or do you think it's not sexual? Maybe if we get you to think of it as sexual, you guys will stop laughing at other men's pain. And don't try to fend off the ire of women by purporting to take pride in man-on-man sexuality. The sexuality is on the rape continuum and therefore not funny in the Era of That's Not Funny.
_____________________________

* It was all the way back in 1995, that "The Simpsons" was trying to instruct us that this form of humor is so bad that only Homer Simpson is laughing:



ADDED: A reader sends a link to this example of a woman getting kicked in the crotch:



"King of the Hill" felt it could get away with that, I suspect, because: 1. It's a cartoon, 2. The woman is portrayed as stronger than men (not having balls is a super-power).