Time For A Dour Shower!
San Francisco's "Commission on the Status of Women" just put out a resolution demanding that NBC cancel its new TV show "The Playboy Club" and replace it with a show that "depicts women's substantive achievements."
I'm sure this has made every bigwig at Fox drop their Playboy show script -- for about five seconds, as they laughed their asses off.
Heather Knight writes for SFGate:
Set in 1960s Chicago, the show follows the mobsters and bunnies who, um, intermingled at Hugh Hefner's famed Playboy Club. Its website says it's set to premiere Sept. 19, but perhaps NBC honchos are too busy firing the actresses and burning their bunny suits to announce they've scrapped the show because seven commissioners in San Francisco voted they should.Or maybe not.
Kay Gulbengay, president of the commission, came up with the idea for the resolution and since its passage has been in discussions with the three female supervisors to advance it at the board level, too.
"I got a bee in my bonnet about it," she said. "I'm not a prude, but Playboy is sexual exploitation of women, and we don't need to go back there again. For me, it's been there, done that."
Anger about a fictional TV show that hasn't even aired yet is nothing compared to some other machinations at the commission level in the past few months.
(By the way, there are roughly 100 commissions, working groups, task forces and the like in San Francisco, and they're mostly advisory bodies made up of volunteers. Some, like the Police Commission and Planning Commission, are powerful, but most are not.)
The most infamous only-in-San Francisco example was the scrapped call at the Animal Control and Welfare Commission to ban pet sales in the city - including goldfish, guppies and hamsters.
That worked about as well. The geniuses on that commission apparently weren't able to rub two brain cells together in order to figure out that all the SF pet sales ban would do was cause SF pet stores to go out of business. (Like people wouldn't get in their cars and drive to a city without the dumb ban!)
"I got a bee in my bonnet about it," she said. "I'm not a prude, but...
"I'm not a prude, but..." is always, always the prelude to something incredibly prudish.
I just looked up the SF Commission on the Status of Women. Its stated mission:
"The Commission on the Status of Women (COSW) is a commission of the City and County of San Francisco whose purpose is to ensure women and girls equal economic, social, political and educational opportunities throughout the city."
How does this resolution advance that? Hell, in what universe do the two even exist?
Kevin at September 5, 2011 11:11 PM
Interesting that the wiki page for the UN's COSW doesn't mention where they get their money.
Crid [CridComment at gmail] at September 5, 2011 11:37 PM
See also.
And think of it next time you hear "international law" described as the highest of human aspirations.
Crid [CridComment at gmail] at September 5, 2011 11:38 PM
In Frisco, COSW is of course a government program. There's a link to something called "Friends". I don't see one for "Taxpayers".
This is the theme of that comment I wrote the other day that got swallowed: No one can imagine expressing virtue nowadays through ANYTHING except government power.
Why on Earth isn't this a private initiative?
I was reading somewhere recently that the eradication of polio was a private project, one begun by the (afflicted) President of the United States.
Can you imagine our chief executive launching something that powerful now?... Let alone without involving government?
Yes: The United States is diminished.
Crid [CridComment at gmail] at September 5, 2011 11:44 PM
Two things come to mind with this report.
First is it might be made event. The producers of show which is very likely going to flop need something to give it a preboost so what do they do is ask someone to make a hubbabub about it. Pay some feminists/group to give a damn about the show, tell them to raise a little stink and voila your show gets some publicity. Even bad publicity is good publicity. Most people will take the feminists rantings with an eyeroll and the show name gets planted in the back of a possible viewers brain.
Or the second thing. Is all these little groups and activist gatherings need to make themselves big decided to jump on the band wagon or attach themselves to something that is IN. Remember that group that decided to complain about Pepsi slim cola can change. (Amy posted about months ago). I bet there are more major things to fight about then a cola bottle change or some networks new TV show. When there are better things to fight about - abortion, women's treatment in Islam, Prostitution, sexual exploitation, heck I may not agree with but more relevant to fight about. This is slimy trying to get relevance and/or donations by protesting minor things.
John Paulson at September 6, 2011 1:14 AM
These ladies are made of up SF Supervisors and this is what the SF Supervisors do. The Superdupervisors are a group of elected officials who see their primary duty as being to purge San Francisco of all blacks, businesses, 'Rethuglicans', and people who don't have trust funds or make less then $250K per annum - and animals with fur. They like trees and want them to grow in places where they can't or shouldn't. They like space aliens and want them to land in SF first. They like gay people, but they LOVE transgendered people. All UN resolutions obtain in SF, though they're never enforced. Slave trading and the possession of nuclear weapons are BANNED in SF, unlike most places.
SF Steve at September 6, 2011 7:41 AM
Ah, yes, the feminist doesn't want other women actually choosing things she disfavors. Playboy exploits women like my company exploits me.
Joe at September 6, 2011 10:58 AM
Can't feminists just choose to watch something else? Show your dissatisfaction the old capitalist way - don't watch, it'll get low ratings and fall off the air.
Quite frankly, I think it's going to fail (along with the other ones of the era) because you can't just copy a Mad Men type show on a major network without the flexibility that AMC has, versus major stations.
This is all a waste of time. I would like to bring back Amy's point - where are all of these commissions about women being beaten and enslaved in Muslim countries?
NikkiG at September 6, 2011 11:54 AM
I hate when someone thinks they have the right to tell me what I can or cannot watch because they feel its offensive. I'm a huge fan of Hef and think he did a great job with Playboy. I was a subscriber for many years.
Tell Ms. Gulbengay that I grew tired of reading magazines geared towards women in which every article gave me explicit instructions on how to lure and keep a man. Each month was just recycled ideas on best sexual positions to keep him interested to outfits that would attract the right guy and advice on what to do if my man should look at another woman. The last straw may have been the chicken recipe guaranteed to get me engaged. If that's not insulting to women I don't know what is.
The Playboy celebrity interviews are the best. There are great articles. I also happen to think some of the pictorials were nice to look at. And I'm a straight woman. Get rid of Cosmo and Glamour and give me a copy of Playboy.
Kristen at September 6, 2011 2:07 PM
"but Playboy is sexual exploitation of women..."
Playboy? Playboy? Has she ever seen the Internet?
Cousin Dave at September 6, 2011 5:27 PM
Women's achievements? Yes, there have been plenty, but I don't see that list as any more worthy to be singled out for celebration than the list of inventions and bold deeds by left-handed redheads. It's not as though women have been an oppressed group since about 1920, unless we're talking about the Moslem countries. I'd listen to a feminist who wants us to demand changes *there*,
whether she would achieve them by boycotts, war, or anything in between.
Indeed, a good case can be made that women are the biggest *source* of oppression in modern America, even if we completely ignore such monstrous, biased, sexist laws as those which now deny due process (and many defenses which ought to be accepted) to any man accused of rape, "sexual harassment", "domestic violence", or paternity.
I'm talking about nanny-statism. It's no coincidents that the original Suffragettes were almost all the same people as the Prohibitionist movement. Drug laws, registries for those convicted of a variety of things, and overprotective safety regulation of all kinds, have dominated American and European politics for the last century, and they all were enacted only because women have the vote.
No offense intended, but in my view that's plenty of reason to take it away again.
John David Galt at September 15, 2011 2:28 PM
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