Skip to main content

Divides

In fact, while it's possible that before Hunter started speaking on her own behalf, I might have entertained the notion that she was a slightly dopey lady who fell hard for a bad man who was running for president and got caught in a very unfortunate saga, I now feel quite confident that in fact she is a borderline simpleton, fame-seeking narcissist whose self-interested grab for attention is likely doing further permanent damage to the Edwards family, including her daughter and her siblings. If her appearance on the Oprah show seemed like an unjust setup, then Hunter proved that, every once in a while, someone so amply meets all expectations for awfulness that it's impossible to muster anything other than loathing for them. (Rebecca Traister, Rielle Hunter's undeniable awfulness,” Salon, 29 April 2010)

Good girls get their consolation prize

RE: "I now feel quite confident that in fact she is a borderline simpleton, fame-seeking narcissist whose self-interested grab for attention [. . .]"

Is this the consolation prize -- ripping her, ripping people like her, apart -- for your being a "classic good girl," for there not being any way for you to "alter [your] fundamentally conscientious, perpetually guilt-ridden, grateful-for-a-job sense that [you] should always be working harder than [you] were, and that [you] [were] probably already being overcompensated for whatever [you] [were] doing?"

By punishing her, do you feel even more the good girl, feel good at last being the good girl -- the person you ostensibly regret being forced to become?

@Patrick McEvoy-Halston

Whoah, thank you for reading my work with such attention!

I don't think that my reaction to Hunter's televised revelations about her personal life have any connection to my assessment of my own professional habits. But I'm very flattered that you're such an avid reader.

Best,

Rebecca (Rebecca Traiser, response to post)


Divides

Rebecca,

If you felt the same pressure to be a good girl in your personal life as you admit you did/do in your professional, then it strikes me that what you are doing here would be working to make your compromised state less compromise and more advantage -- it would be working against efforts on your part to free yourself of deeply ingrained "good girl" inclinations -- and that anyone who is at all good, who cares about your future journeys, should point this out.

Since you only feel/felt this pressure in your professional life, then I can understand this particular attack on the "bad girl" not seeming related to your very previous post, where you railed against all that hems women into the good girl mold.

Link: Rielle Hunter's undeniable awfulness

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Discussion over the fate of Jolenta, at the Gene Wolfe facebook appreciation site

Patrick McEvoy-Halston November 28 at 10:36 AM Why does Severian make almost no effort to develop sustained empathy for Jolenta -- no interest in her roots, what made her who she was -- even as she features so much in the first part of the narrative? Her fate at the end is one sustained gross happenstance after another... Severian has repeated sex with her while she lay half drugged, an act he argues later he imagines she wanted -- even as he admits it could appear to some, bald "rape" -- but which certainly followed his  discussion of her as someone whom he could hate so much it invited his desire to destroy her; Severian abandons her to Dr. Talus, who had threatened to kill her if she insisted on clinging to him; Baldanders robs her of her money; she's sucked at by blood bats, and, finally, left at death revealed discombobulated of all beauty... a hunk of junk, like that the Saltus citizens keep heaped away from their village for it ruining their preferred sense

Salon discussion of "Almost Famous" gang-rape scene

Patrick McEvoy-Halston: The "Almost Famous'" gang-rape scene? Isn't this the film that features the deflowering of a virgin -- out of boredom -- by a pack of predator-vixons, who otherwise thought so little of him they were quite willing to pee in his near vicinity? Maybe we'll come to conclude that "[t]he scene only works because people were stupid about [boy by girl] [. . .] rape at the time" (Amy Benfer). Sawmonkey: Lucky boy Pull that stick a few more inches out of your chute, Patrick. This was one of the best flicks of the decade. (sawmonkey, response to post, “Films of the decade: ‘Amost Famous’, R.J. Culter, Salon, 13 Dec. 2009) Patrick McEvoy-Halston: @sawmonkey It made an impression on me too. Great charm. Great friends. But it is one of the things you (or at least I) notice on the review, there is the SUGGESTION, with him being so (rightly) upset with the girls feeling so free to pee right before him, that sex with him is just further presump

When Rose McGowan appears in Asgard: a review of "Thor: Ragnarok"

The best part of this film was when Rose McGowan appeared in Asgard and accosted Odin and his sons for covering up, with a prettified, corporate, outward appearance that's all gay-friendly, feminist, multicultural, absolutely for the rights of the indigenous, etc., centuries of past abuse, where they predated mercilessly upon countless unsuspecting peoples. And the PR department came in and said, okay Weinstein... I mean Odin and Odin' sons, here's what we suggest you do. First, you, Odin, are going to have to die. No extensive therapy; when it comes to predators who are male, especially white and male, this age doesn't believe in therapy. You did what you did because you are, or at least strongly WERE, evil, so that's what we have to work with. Now death doesn't seem like "working with it," I know, but the genius is that we'll do the rehab with your sons, and when they're resurrected as somehow more apart from your regime,