Of Twerkers and Twerkees: An Open Letter to Robin Thicke’s Mother

[This post falls squarely in the “[pop] culture” portion of TFL’s “law, culture, and academia” mandate. Regular programming will resume in due course.]

Hi Gloria. Can I call you Gloria? I understand that you were displeased by the duet performed by your son and Miley Cyrus (as you know, your boy shows up at the 3:00 mark) at the MTV VMA awards Sunday evening.

Specifically, you said:

I was not expecting her to be putting her butt that close to my son. The problem is now I can never unsee it. . . . Him? Loved it! I love that suit, the black and white suit. I don’t understand what Miley Cyrus is trying to do. I just don’t understand. I think she’s misbegotten in this attempt of hers. And I think it was not beneficial.

Gloria, I’m confused about your confusion. I mean, look, the whole obscenity concern trolling thing isn’t my bag. VMA has been doing this for years, and if you wanted to see something else, well, that’s what they have C-SPAN for. But hey, you’re certainly free to know it when you see it. Obscenity, that is.

What I don’t get is why you see it in Cyrus but not in your own son.

To be fair, it’s not just you. All the commenters I’ve seen, from Sean Hannity (“outrageous,” “downright raunchy,” and “inappropriate” for a role model) and Bill O’Reilly (“she’s a troubled young lady” and “out of control”) to Camille Paglia (whose focus is on the philistine rather than the obscene nature of the routine) have reserved their criticism for Cyrus.

A mommy blogger’s open letter to her daughter, warning her not to follow in Cyrus’s footsteps, has gone semi-viral. But not a single Mommy blogger has warned her son against following in your son’s footsteps.

To no one's surprise, Bill O’Reilly blames Cyrus’s twerking on “bad parenting,” and after Miley’s father, country singer Billy Ray Cyrus, defended his daughter, O’Reilly asked whether he should be “shunned.” Even Brooke Shields, who played mom to Cyrus’s Hannah Montana, felt the need to weigh in and demand answers: “I was Hannah Montana’s mother. I do not approve. Where did I go wrong? I just want to know who’s advising her, and why it’s necessary?” (By contrast, Shields remains “shocked” by the controversy over her own performance in the infamous “You wanna know what comes between me and my Calvins? Nothing.” ad campaign, which she shot when she was just fifteen years old (Cyrus is twenty), and which was banned by CBS.)

And yet no one blames you, Gloria, for raising a son whose music and videos are—in addition to being just as "obscene" as Cyrus’s (and just as arguably misappropriating of black culture and glorifying of drugs)—kinda rapey. Following the VMA hoopla, Cyrus's father canceled a scheduled interview with Piers Morgan at the last minute. But free from the burden of having to defend your parenting and your child, you can grant media interviews in which you accept the condolences of a shamed nation and join the #MileyGate pile on. It’s all a little reminiscent of Justin Timberlake, whose image was only barely and very temporarily tarnished by the “wardrobe malfunction” of Janet Jackson (remember her?), which he, too, apparently helped orchestrate. I don’t personally care about either Cyrus’s butt or Janet’s nipple, Gloria. But I am annoyed by the double standard involved in criticizing the female but not the male co-venturers in these manufactured controversies—the twerkers but not the twerkees, if you will—which is why I'm writing. (More after the jump.)

Gloria, you’ve been in show business for decades, as has your ex-husband and baby daddy Alan Thicke, a.k.a. Dr. Jason Seaver. So you must know that your son’s duet with Cyrus at the VMAs was just the latest piece of a tightly orchestrated marketing campaign in which the two singers shot videos sponsored by the same product placements, starring the same backup dancers, and directed and choreographed by the same person.

So you must know why Cyrus changed, mid-VMA performance, into a nude bikini that allowed viewers to more easily imagine her naked. It’s because she was performing a duet with your son on his hit summer single, “Blurred Lines,” which features several women who are actually naked, save for nude-colored g-strings.  

And I know that everyone’s all worked up about Cyrus’s use of the stadium foam finger, including its inventor. But, again, you get why she caressed your son suggestively with that foam finger, right?

It’s because your son made that “degraded” use of the foam finger part of his music video iconography. That black and white suit you like so much? It’s meant to be a pimped out referee’s outfit, and both it and the foam finger go with your son’s football-themed “Give It To U” (on which more below). See, here he is (left) directing an actress to use the identical foam finger in “Blurred Lines.” And here’s a similar scene from “Give It To U” (below).

I can see your point, though, Gloria. I mean, there was your boy, in his nice suit, minding his own business, while Cyrus shoved her wriggling butt up against his crotch. But let’s look at the words he was singing while she did that. 

I can see why Camille Paglia spared your son from her anti-philistine criticism, Gloria. For lo, the video and lyrics of “Blurred Lines” tell a rich narrative. We’re told that before your son, another suitor tried to “domesticate” the object of your son’s affection. Alas, he was thwarted because she’s “an animal,” and "it's in [her] nature" (depicting the women with dogs and lambs and having one meow at the camera is a nice touch, by the way). No matter, your son tells us, he’s “gon’ take a good girl” and “liberate” her. After all, he “know[s] [she] want[s] it.”

And in exchange for this sexual liberation, in addition to “smack[ing] that ass and pull[ing] [her] hair,” there’s just “One thing [he] ask[s] of [her]”: “Let me be the one you back that ass to. I'll give you something big enough to tear your ass in two.”

Well, Gloria, I can certainly see why you were so taken aback by Cyrus insinuating herself in your son’s personal space at the VMAs. What’s a little violent anal sex with a woman whose consent is ambiguous compared to the horrors of Miley Cyrus twerking?

But every great narrative contains within it the seeds of conflict—man versus man, man versus nature, and so on—and “Blurred Lines” is no exception. Apparently your son’s love interest is sending mixed signals. His intended “liberation” of her is thwarted by a teensy tiny stop sign delicately balanced atop her naked buttocks.

Your son’s frustration is poignant:

    I hate these blurred lines
    I know you want it
    I hate them lines
    I know you want it
    I hate them lines
    I know you want it
    But you’re a good girl
    The way you grab me
    Must wanna get nasty

Now, I’ll grant you that your boy remains fully clothed throughout his performance of this song, both in the video and at the VMAs. Congrats; very chaste of him. On the other hand, he’s paying several women to get naked and dance around him (and then profiting from it). Do you really want to hang your hat of misbegotteness on that distinction?

And then there’s his new video for “Give It To U,” which was just coincidentally released at the peak of the  post-VMA hoopla. “Give It To U” features not only numerous half-naked women your son directed to twerk around him, but also—in case it isn't clear that your son is apparently a butt man—a giant “Ass Float” (comprised of one black cheek and one white cheek; and yet somehow racial unity eludes us).

If Cyrus’s raunchiness was misbegotten and not beneficial, what do you say about your son, who says to the lucky women of the world in his new video that he has a “big d**k for yah”? (Bonus! He also has “a whip for yah”!) I mean, Gloria, Robin does realize that this was satire, right?

Admittedly, after commanding “on your back, girl” and "shake it like that, girl" (which I'm sure refers to something far less misbegotten than twerking), he does wax awfully poetic: “Life can leave a d**k loved; now you gettin’ this d**k, love.” And of course the inclusion of your three-year-old grandson in the video dressed to match his Daddy as a lothario in training really highlights the importance of family values in a way that Cyrus's performances don't. So maybe that’s the difference.

Rush Limbaugh has said that the VMA duet was “just this side of on-stage pornography.” Well,…ish. According to one well-known distinction, erotica involves sexually explicit behavior by consenting adults, while pornography depicts sexually explicit behavior in a way that objectifies some participants in the sexual encounter (almost always women) and strips them of their agency. One of the interesting things about Cyrus’s “Blurred Lines” duet with your son is that, by distributing the lyrics (if not the quasi-nakedness) equally, the VMA performance was at least a bit more egalitarian than your son’s video. Your son insisted that Cyrus “wanted it,” but she insisted that your son “wanted it” right back.

That distinction is also arguably reflected in a comparison of Cyrus’s work to that of your son’s. Cyrus’s hit summer single, “We Can’t Stop,” depicts her with friends at the tail end of a house party. The sexuality depicted in that video may count as obscene, but not, per the definition above, as pornography, because it’s all consensual free love. (Side note to Cyrus: you are not, in fact, “creating a movement.” I mean, the 1960s called: they want their sex, drugs, and rock and roll back.).

Cyrus’s video also features a skull made entirely out of French fries, and I think if you're honest with yourself, Gloria, you’ll agree that that is pretty creative and really gives the Ass Float a run for its money.

Your son has explained, of his recent work, that a “lot of [his] videos and songs have been so serious—about love and pride and relationships and hope and getting over insecurities and vulnerabilities. But lately, [he’s] just wanted to have fun and enjoy [his] life . . . .”

Director Diane Martel was even more honest in explaining her intent behind the videos: “I’ve been thinking about music videos, marketing, and the Internet for a while. I want to make videos that sell records. This is my main focus right now, not to make videos that express my own obsessions, but to make videos that move units.” Mission accomplished, Diane!

Gloria, I hate to be the one to break this to you, but until your boy started exploiting the public fascination with female nakedness and explicit and edgy sexuality—the same features of Cyrus’s performance that you seem to disdain—no one had heard of him. (I know. Ouch, right?) If you want to defend that Faustian bargain, go ahead. There’s certainly far worse out there than his lyrics and videos. (And “Blurred Lines” is, musically, great.) But like the mother of a pimp who slut shames a prostitute, it takes real chutzpah to defend the twerkee while pointing a judgmental finger at the twerker.

Comments

[anon]

All this is very academic. Really. The FL is the perfect place.
Very thoughtful. Quite enlightening.
This revelation really demonstrated some legal insight:
"But like the mother of a pimp who slut shames a prostitute, it takes real chutzpah to defend the twerkee while pointing a judgmental finger at the twerker."
Exactly.
Further evidence of the relationship between the modern law faculty and the profession they purport to prepare students to practice.

[Michelle Meyer]

Oh, anon. I assure you that no law students were harmed, nor were their tuition dollars used, in the making of this blog post.

[anon]

Oh, Michelle. So what?
I am not suprised you didn't understand my comment.
So, more specifically: your article is not funny, not relevant to this blog, not interesting and not appropriate. It reflects a belief, in currency I'll concede, that this sort of subject, and your style of writing about it, interests and delights folks in the Law Faculty Lounge.
That is so sad. Sorry you don't understand that.
Other than those observations, great post and even greater reply to my comment! Brilliant!
Clearly, you showed me the way!
Your reply has convinced me that your post belongs here.
They like it, they really like it!

[anon]

Many clients, reading a blog post like this by an attorney, would not be posting a comment: they would be sending a letter discharging the attorney.
After all, suppose the judge, or the opposing counsel or a juror read this?
Too great a risk.
Calling a woman who expressed her sort of tame opinion about a controversial performance "the mother of a pimp who slut shames a prostitute ..." is sort of, well, what word should we use?
Yes, Michelle, if you teach law, students were harmed.

[Different anon]

Really, everyone just needs to take it down a notch. Great post.

[anon]

Of course there has to be some support for this nonsense in the FL.
Let's all mimic a low life on the street in style and language.
Let's attack in a vulgar manner another woman for her very tame comment. (Attack her, on and on, and in terms totally out of proportion to what she actually said, creating a false impression and using bogus references in the process to boot.)
Let's model ethical conduct and provide a foundation for teaching good public policy by dwelling at great length in a public forum on the most meaningless aspects of low brow "popular" entertainment in an abusive manner.
Finally, let's liken a woman who expressed her sort of tame opinion about a controversial performance to "the mother of a pimp who slut shames a prostitute ..." and then pretend that comment was perfectly OK!!!
Isn't all this "GREAT"?

[Bradford William Short]

There is obviously a lot here. As I read through it, I actually agree with it more and more. The main point, that the men who engage in vile, gross, porn-or-worse, (and maybe most importantly) highly public, behavior, should be rejected for that behavior as much as the women who do these things with them (that, indeed, in the world we have been living in for a very long time, maybe we need to find nasty things to be said about the men *more*, given how many words of condemnation have been spoken about the women, to the exclusion of the men, in the past). So, yes, all sane people can concur: the men who brought about these "performances" should be condemned as much as anyone. I certainly concur in that statement.

But, maybe my own idiosyncratic situation is a good place for me to start to show what is still very wrong with this post, and also with a ton of the feminist, "egalitarian" counter-statements that are written at (ugly) times like this one. You see, as law professor and law professor market candidates go, it is rare indeed to find one who is a) 100% a strong, STRONG social conservative, and b) who, largely because of that has come to detest nearly all forms of popular music that are not country music. It is still more rare to find someone who is like that who was born on 168th Street in Manhattan, and has only lived in Boston, Pittsburgh and Washington for the 5ish years out of his 34 years alive, where he was not living near Lincoln Center in Manhattan (for the other 29). It gets even more rare if he has no evangelical background at all (I am a Catholic). But, I am such a person. I love country music, and I think nearly all other popular entertainment is filth, or worse. And so, way, way, way, way back in 2006 (it now seems like eons ago) when Miley Cyrus' career (we now see it to be her cursed career, if ever there was such a thing as a curse, and if we are sane enough to measure careers by something other than money made in them, which is one of the main ways to actually not be Faustian) began, she brought me great joy. I am not saying something like "birth of my son" joy; but, real joy. Whenever someone from the country music world, who seems to be a serious Christian, to have a decent family, and to have actual concern for patriotism, actually seems to be doing well in the world, without selling out those principles...it brings someone like me some real joy. So, for years, she and her father brought me joy. I thought, though I knew how badly these things could end, that they would not cease in doing this. That L.A. wouldn’t change them for the worse. I cared about this not because I *want* joy *for me,* but because I actually give a damn about other people's souls (boasting is a sin, but I do think I can say that I care about such things…many other Christians do, most are better than me, and probably care more), and to watch good people do well in their goodness, therefore, brings me joy.

If one had/has such views, it is beyond impossible, given the utterly horrific acts performed this week, for one to really give a rat's buttocks (yes, Christian though I am, you can now tell, I curse *a lot*...I *am* from New York City, after all!) about the other people involved in the, er, "performance" that everyone is talking about. Since sometime in 2009 or 2010, thinking about Miley Cyrus just makes me cringe...because I know, I always just *know* that she is in the news, now, for doing something that will shatter all the ideals that, when lived out, bring me joy. Everything about her, and all the women-gone-wrong like her, brings me profound sadness. NOT because I am unfair to, or hate, women, but because of the exact opposite. I actually give a damn about them. And anyone who cares about her, I mean *actually cares about her*, cannot but look at those pictures you have in this post, and not have his heart broken at the idea of all the terrible loss, and shame, and defilement.

I would guess that a lot of people in America (and even parts of the rest of the world) came closer to having a more benevolent-fan relationship with Cyrus, more like mine, from her earlier work (that was, actually work, not just porn, that actually did something to be proud of, at least sometimes, and harmless at the others, before she started doing this...filth). I can see why millions of them might now nod agreement at a Limbaugh or an O'Reilly. They aren't doing it to *disagree* with your statements of the men's absolutely equal guilt in this whole sordid matter. They are doing it because when they hear about the men, they say..."who"? They don't care about them. Their daughters first albums were all Miley Cyrus albums, and now she does *this*. Her friggin' last name is the name of the Persian King who saved/freed God's chosen people...that matters in some parts of this country still. And now...this. If memory serves, her grandfather, or great-grandfather was a Presbyterian Minister, she was born "Destiny Hope" ("Miley" was a nickname; she only legalized it, and threw out “Destiny Hope” since she has been in cursed Hollywood), in the grand Protestant tradition of being named what you will be before your Savior. (Presbyterians are Calvinists, the "destiny" probably referred to her parents' "hope" that she will be amongst the pre-destined to be the Elect in Heaven...I am reminded of the English Civil War/post-Civil War figure of Praise-God Barbon..."Praise-God" actually was his first name.) Again, given what I have just written above, no one has any reason to think that I believe in all of this (predestination is still heresy to me)...but, I love people who take these ideas seriously, and I think they are not evil ideas, and can still help bring people closer to the Place we should all be going towards.

You can't be brought into all this story of hope, and not see the events of the last week, and not have your feelings of shatteredness mostly centered on Miley Cyrus, and not on the other people who created this monstrosity. And there ain't nothin' sexist about that. It would be no different if a man, beloved by many, let everyone down. Are young girls more likely to be seen as something to be hopeful about than young boys? Maybe. Is there sexism in *this*? Maybe. Maybe society still likes its women young, and not only pure, but child-like and without effective agency, too, too much. Maybe society recoils at the breach of their purity, but also at them showing their agency, and the latter is wrong for society to do. Or maybe not. Maybe aesthetics really does favor the young female voice, and maybe there will always be concern for people like her, this way, this young, more often than for the boys. People come to love the people who sing their beloved songs. That is normal and natural. I don't know, and in a sense, and I don't care. I don't have to eliminate every possible effect of society-wide sexism on my mind before I can a) like a T.V. show, b) like watching a family that appears on specials on Great American Country (a music-television channel that is actually worth watching) or c) give a damn about a young Christian girl I learn about in those shows. I was the first, *the first*, over the past four years to point out, however bad Cyrus would stumble, people LOVED putting those stumbling blocks in front of her, and other people LOVED making money by fretting in public about her loss of morals. (If memory serves, one of the more mercenary social conservative pressure groups did a fundraising campaign off one of her early mistakes...they were, deep down, happy she was stumbling, because her stumbling paid their salaries.) And, one of my biggest regrets in all this, is the role public finger-wagers played in her path down into the muck. Time and again, if you followed her earlier outbursts (both she, and her father, have short tempers, and would counter-attack too violently, if attacked or "dissed" in public...early on I concluded that this was an unfortunate trait, especially for them...to be in the public eye as much as she was *demands* having a thick skin, and knowing when to fight your battles and when it isn't worth it to fight), you could tell, every time she got into "trouble" for something (early on, she wasn't doing anything that showed personal culpability of her own, but idiots still called her a slut), when she would then lash out at her accusers, she was changing her views of social conservatives (though, I am sure she didn't understand what was being made into her nemesis in such sophisticated language). She was furious at all these finger-waggers and moralizers, for making mountains out of molehills (or less) all in order to make money off her. She was right about that too. That *was* happening. And it *was* vile in its own right. But, I can't help but think, that she was also concluding that the very criterion that something as highfalutin as "social conservatism" was set up to defend, was wrong, was a "Puritan fraud", was fake and insincere. Very often, hideous "sexual liberation" begins there, with the wounds inflicted by idiot moralizers, who care more about making profit as moralizers than about a true application of the underlying, true, morals, on the person (very often the woman) who retaliates against her Pharisee accusers with the liberation that will shatter the hearts of the true believer social conservatives out there. So, there again, this ended up with so much being her fault, but I don't for one second think it began being all her fault. Far from it. Far. From. It.

Indeed, I don't, I can't, hate her. I just cannot look or think about her anymore. I am reminded of a line Bolt's More said to King Henry, about the matter of using the office of Lord Chancellor to help him find ways to obtain his divorce. The more and more I think about it, the harder it makes it for me to do anything but hate her, and since I do not want to hate her, I endeavor to not think of her at all. (Along these lines, I must protest a bit at all these pictures here. I know a lot of what is on Fox News is crap, but there are some things that I watch and like a lot--there are some things on Fox News that are great journalism--I have, as someone who actually views Fox News, thus, had to spend the last week trying to pay no attention to it at all except between the precise hours of 6:00 PM and 7:00 PM, and even then it has been hard to get away from these images. I can't really say that these pictures being posted here is wrong...but, dear God, do I wish I wouldn't have to turn away now even when I log on to the *faculty lounge*! Yes, I am already used to turning away from the vulgar Red Eye idiot when I tune into Special Report ten minutes early at 5:50 PM, but…the faculty lounge! Oy. Just a personal preference, I know, but a heartfelt one).

I'll end with a story from my time in high school, which will be one last way I express my disagreement with this post, and those like it. I had a friend (I eventually made him an ex-friend, because of the way he thought about and treated women) who used to make the following argument to me, especially in our senior year of high school, when we were so close to all the wonderful, totally un-regulated sex promised by one’s college years in this hideous, post-1960’s era we all live in. He would say to me "Brad, whatever you think about God and Natural Law and all that stuff, don't you think, just for equality's sake, that it would be much better in our society, if people wouldn't call women sluts for having sex with tons of guys, the ways guys get treated as heroes for having sex with tons of girls? I mean, wouldn't it be great if we could go to a bar and hear a woman, talking about all the guys she's f-cked, like they are her conquests, just like we hear guys talking about that? I mean, at least we'd be equal! You have to admit that would be progress."

This "argument" was made to me more than once, and I responded with things like "I am not one of the guys who has conquests, let alone brags about them" or "equality isn't everything that is important in this world" often enough. But, every time I did so, I wasn't really pleased with my response. (This particular ex-friend was always something of a grand ass in thinking the only valid arguments one could make against his statements, had to be made then, there!, on the spot! So, I never had a lot of time to prepare my thoughts after the question was posed to me.) But I remember once, I just said what turned out to be something that really sums up what I have come to believe in my life about things like this: things like the famous "double standard."

I said to him, "yep, that'd just be great. I should root for men making women as bad as we are, right? Maybe we can drag women right down into the muck with us, right? Then, we'd ALL be EQUAL! How wonderful! A perfect, PERFECT race to the bottom."

What is so dangerous and wrongheaded about feminist posts like this one, is that they do the same things that my horny and sexist ex-friend was doing with his "question." I do not doubt that feminists truly care about female equality, as much as I do not doubt that my ex-friend really loved in his "equality" argument that, the more women bought into it, the more action he'd get over the course of his life. But, both of them are doing the exact same thing in the end. They are taking women, dragging them into the muck that we vile, piggish, worthless, anti-Christian men already inhabit, and calling it “progress.” People can throw around the cliche that putting a woman on a pedestal is sexist as much as talking her down is, as long as she is not held to be the equal of man, this is sexist. Again, while that is certainly true to a point, it is also one of society’s worst cliches. The fact is, society needs its pedestals, and the women on them need them more. This is because people are not merely political ends, but human persons with souls. Whatever sexism is built into society’s pedestals, there is also a lot of real, true dignity built into them too. We must not destroy the latter in order to go after the former. The porn-master monsters in the demonic popular music industry (which, oh yes, let me add, is run by vile, vile, rich, rich, male, men) have harmed enough souls already, and they have taken one event of such, and shoved it in my face all goddamn week long. That is all ugly enough. I ain't letting the bastards drag down any more women without a fight. And I don't want to be lectured about equality as I pick up my sword.

(One last thing, I began writing this comment so long ago, *it* is so long, that there were no responses to it yet when I began. By now, I see some. Anyone who thinks that the opinions expressed in this post would get a lawyer fired by a client, simply because they were expressed in public, knows next to nothing about how law practice actually works, or what real clients actually care about; hint, they are not clones of the odious Paul Campos. No one in the real world cares what you think of the mother of some wretch who got Miley Cyrus to betray her better self if, a) you can kick ass in the courtroom, or b) can kick ass in doing the work of a law office. Judges REALLY don’t care. Either way. Including holding it against you. There is no canon of ethics declaring it bad to have negative opinions of parts of the music and entertainment industry, and in this strange land called “the South” most lawyers and judges would say rough things about the mother being spoken of ill here too. As for law professors bringing too much discussion of popular culture into their work, anyone who read my response can tell that I detest popular culture so much, I tend to want law professors to not talk about it for that reason alone. But, obviously, the idea that sexism can permeate law is one that has to be taken seriously as a matter of philosophical analysis (again you can guess that I take it seriously, and then often find sexism to be less the culprit than many other law professors think, after what I think is serious enough thought…this is just a long way of saying that I try to be a thoughtful conservative in discussions about women’s rights), and one place that permeation can occur is in double standards transmitted by popular culture, into things like public morality and law. So, this post is not “out of bounds,” certainly as just ONE post on this HUGE, years-long, blog. Again, if the mere presence of this post is what really offends you in this world, you need to get out more into places like Manhattan, and see things that are really offensive. You also need to get a life.

None of this, of course, changes the fact that I have big disagreements with this post, as everyone by now can tell.)

[anon]

You gotta love Bradford's opus (how long did it take to write it?) that concludes "get a life."
Note to FL: how about a word limit on comments?
The statment "Anyone who thinks that the opinions expressed in this post would get a lawyer fired by a client, simply because they were expressed in public, knows next to nothing about how law practice actually works, or what real clients actually care about" is ignorant (I mean that in the best sense of the word: lack of experience is projected, not demonstrated here) and takes the point too narrowly.
Finally, I would agree with the person who said this, in another context:
"And frankly Prof. Brophy, I cannot believe you think this is a time to make jokes .... I thought you brought onto this site serious, honest posts by historians who were telling us what they really thought about major issues and events in history."

[anon]

Post: "And in exchange for this sexual liberation, in addition to 'smack[ing] that ass and pull[ing] [her] hair,' there’s just 'One thing [he] ask[s] of [her]': 'Let me be the one you back that ass to. I'll give you something big enough to tear your ass in two.'"

T.I. wrote/rapped those words. They don't appear in the VMA video.

[impressed]

This game seems fun. I want to play too. But the rules are confusing.

How do I sometimes condemn slut-shaming and sometimes engage in self-righteous slut-shaming? Do you just alternate? Flip a coin each time?

How do I argue that a violent, kinda-rapey, misogynistic song is a cultural appropriation of an especially African-American genre? If I did that in my race relations seminar, you can bet I’d get my a** torn up from Malibu to Peribu, from Dakota to Decatur.

How do I attribute violent lyrics to the law-abiding white guy when the lyrics were by the frequently-jailed black guy who tried to buy unregistered guns and silencers from an undercover federal agent?

[UsualMisguidedFeministNonsense]

Sexploitation is bad, but only when men can be blamed for it. And it's only bad because it violates some sort of egalitarian norm. When the sexploitation comes from women, it's empowering, or sexually liberating and equalizing, or the celebrated theme of the latest episode of "Girls."

The real problem is that the object of the reprimand in this post is of the wrong gender.

The post ought to have castigated Robin's father, not his mother, for his spineless lack of manly chivalry and his failure to transmit to his boy the values that make a man a man. You predictably targeted the wrong parent.

It's a pity that feminists snuffed all that out long ago in the name of freedom, or equality, or some other misguided, self-defeating, and preposterous norm of contemporary sexual morality. You should expect much more of precisely the same. And worse.

[anon]

I wouldn't give this post the credit to call it the work of a "feminist."
In fact, this can't be determined because the post is self-contradictory, and in parts just plain false, as others have noted.
The post is devoid of any scholarly insights or perspective. Knowing really nothing about the author, but based solely on this post, the post appears to be the work of a teenager.
What is important is that this sort of thing is embraced by the legal academy, leading to a false sense that wisdom is expressed in banal and juvenile antics.
Accordingly, one senses no hint of propriety and judgment.
Serious consequences follow from the lack of critical judgment about this sort of post.
The post is yet another poorly-reasoned, crude and unfounded attack on another person and an attempt to be clever about a subject that has no place in the discourse on any serious blog devoted to subjects meaningful to a law faculty. The tone and style is, well, about on the level of the performance itself.
It should be taken down, but, I'm sure many in the faculty lounge will instead find it "Great"!
That speaks volumes.

[CHS]

There is no evidence that the "legal academy" will embrace this post, as if the entirety of the legal academy could ever be said to endorse any one thing. It was announced as a deviation from standard programming. Surely, that is allowed.

[anon]

CHS:
If a person posted a racist rant, would you condone it? (I am not saying this post was racist, although it does contain hints of a mimicry that bespeaks of a form of it.)
Your point is that not all members of any given community would agree with any given inappropriate post.
This is just sort of equivocation that leads to this sort of post. Your point may be true, but it is completely irrelevant.
You are right: some members of any given community will agree with or tolerate clearly inappropriate conduct and some will not. So what? Does that mean a community must tolerate any conduct, set no norms, enforce no sense of propriety? If a community tolerates inappropriate conduct, can it not be said that that community tolerated such conduct?
C'mon, CHS. I suspect you would not defend a clear example of racism in the same terms.
This post, in my view, is a vile and unfounded attack on another person which contains falsehoods and inaccuracies. It is juvenile in tone and substance, and in my view it is an inappropriate post on this blog, for the reasons stated above. You, of course, are free to disagree. In fact, I suspect that many if not most in the law academy would agree with you, not me, and said so.
In a doctrinaire defense of the legal academy, you say this sort of thing is "allowed" because of a disclaimer at the outset that suggested the post was outside the mainstream on this blog.
Q.E.D.

[CHS]

I have no idea what you are talking about...

[anon]

CHS:
Really?
"[CHS's] point is that not all members of any given community would agree with any given inappropriate post. This is just sort of equivocation that leads to this sort of post. [CHS's] point may be true, but it is completely irrelevant."
"[CHS is] right: some members of any given community will agree with or tolerate clearly inappropriate conduct and some will not. So what? Does that mean a community must tolerate any conduct, set no norms, enforce no sense of propriety?"
"[CHS] says this sort of post is "allowed" because of a disclaimer at the outset that suggested the post was outside the mainstream on this blog."
"Q.E.D."
In other words, that comment sort of proves the overall point. The post was outside the mainstream on this blog and in my view inappropriate.
CHS, I doubt that you really "have no idea what [[I'm] talking about."
Your response that you have "no idea" what was said above is the sort condescending cliche so typical of persons inexperienced in true debate, because your response is a concession.
So sorry that isn't understood.

[Bradford William Short]

anon, your entire list of comments here has been intellectually dishonest.

First, to make everyone aware of what actually happened in my row with Saul Cornell a little over a year ago on this site, I felt that Cornell was engaged in public character assassination and misrepresentation of the historians' debate on the 2nd Amendment in this country (and, in a larger sense, he was being false to the actual degree to which legal historians do, or do not, think Originalism can "work"). Cornell proceeded to keep it up, and in going several rounds with me, he started being so shrill in his attacks that Orin Kerr and (even) Mary Dudziak came in to criticize him for his conduct. At *that point* in the argument, Cornell started this ridiculous change in argument, stating that his entire list of attacks on originalists were really an "experiment" designed to trick people like me into reacting a certain way, and that he would be presenting his findings on us gorillas in the mist who took his statements at face value at the next meeting of the Organization of American Historians.

I wrote "And frankly Prof. Brophy, I cannot believe you think this is a time to make jokes .... I thought you brought onto this site serious, honest posts by historians who were telling us what they really thought about major issues and events in history." because I believed, bad as what Cornell was doing in the beginning was, the idea that he thought it a *defense* to say that everything he had just said was a trick or lie of some kind, all said in order to perform some kind of "experiment" on people who came to The Faculty Lounge honestly (which I do, always, when I comment), was just too much. And I thought Al Brophy, as the moderator and chief introducer, of Cornell into The Faculty Lounge bore some responsibility for Cornell's bad (dishonest, silly, literally false-faced) behavior. (FWIW, I think Cornell made all the stuff about the experiment up. I believe he got scarred that even Mary Dudziak, a fine woman, but a liberal's liberal if there ever was one, was turning on him, and he had to figure out some way to pretend he did not say everything he just had said. In either case, Cornell was being false to the readers of this blog. Either he was false in running a crooked "experiment" on us, or he was false in claiming he did so to merely save face in a row with me. To this day, I find his conduct 18-or-so months ago deplorable.)

But, all of this easily shows why anon is being dishonest to quote me in his nasty attack on Prof. Meyer here. Now, again, duh, I am a social conservative. I don't exactly get on with Mary Dudziak, Saul Cornell, or Prof. Meyer. Indeed, if Prof. Meyer has googled me, searched for me on Westlaw or Lexis or a medical database (say because I actually responded to the issues she was bringing up in her post), she has found my writings published on assisted suicide and the theory of the inalienable right to life and liberty. In these writings I say some very, very, very harsh things about her...Ph.D. adviser at Virginia. I do not take them back to this day, again, FWIW. I also did not know this when I wrote this big response to her (when Meyer first came onto the Lounge, I think I googled information on her, etc., and found this fact, which made me go..."well, here is another one I might fight with one day! heh, I really should try to be more of a peacemaker, given my religion"--but that went down the memory hole; I really wrote this comment just because the Miley Cyrus stuff was something I had been trying to avoid all week, but I am still on the new faculty market, I come into this site for job news, and just seeing this post struck a chord with me and made me want to say something). Anyway, the point is, Prof. Meyer probably doesn't expect or want my defenses of her (though, from looking at her C.V. I have none of the problems with her research that I had and have with her famous teacher's). But, she will get a defense from me anyway. Prof. Meyer's post here is the polar opposite of what Saul Cornell did. She is clearly genuinely angry that women are hated for "slutty" behavior in this society, while somehow the very men who are the other half of the sexual acts (or acting) in question get off scot free. As I made clear, I don't think that problem is as big, or as big to the exclusion of other problems with a lack of virtue in America, as she does. But it is a problem, it is a problem that has something to do with law, and Meyer is being honest in her anger about that problem. I might like what she has to say, or I might hate it (and I am actually in between). But she is not, in the least, running an "experiment" on social conservatives, to see what she can get us to say about the latest bad choices of Miley Cyrus. She is being honest, and being nothing at all like Saul Cornell. I find lying, and lying about lying, to be silly, anon. I don’t find whatever it is you call “silly” to be silly. I, frankly, don’t care what you think since you are taking shots at people from behind the shield of anonymity, and they are low-blow shots at that.

As for my "ignorance" I will leave it at this: I have never been employed as a law professor a day in my life. I am trying to be that, but I have yet to achieve that goal. That is why I talked about myself as one who is in the group "as law professor and *law professor market candidates* go." That means I have to do something to make money today. What I do is practice law. Nothing prestigious, a lot of contract work and brief/pleadings writing for distinct jobs in the NYC area, but it is law, with real clients and real conflicts forms that lead to bars to some jobs I might otherwise get. In that same time, I have come to know many associates and talk with them about things like blogs and politics and what it is like to practice at the big firms in Manhattan that I do grunt work in the basements of. I cannot imagine that any one of them would "harm" a "client" by writing what Prof. Meyer wrote here. I cannot imagine that any client would *care* that someone on their case at, say, Sullivan & Cromwell wrote this post. The only person who seems to be offended by it, is you, and since you are (natch) commenting anonymously, it is easy as pie for you to claim some Olympian, "real" knowledge of the ways judges and courts "really" are, and that they monitor things like this post, and "discharge" the "attorneys" who write them. I mean, I guess there is SOME client out there that might do that, because there is SOME client who will do anything in a country of 310 million people. But, the idea that clients are actually concerned about not having lawyers who write posts like this, in no official capacity, but only as citizens who are concerned with the status of women and other political issues all lawyers still have a First Amendment right to have an opinion on, is just plain crazy. Instead of talking about my "projection" maybe you could cite some *evidence* of clients who "discharge" in this way? I would love to hear it.

As for all your other allegations against Ms. Meyer, again, I am not in agreement with her, but she deserves defense from you. Thicke did a series of very vulgar, very public, very horrible, things with Miley Cyrus. Thicke’s Mother clearly seems to want to believe that Cyrus did them...but her son did not, or did them less, in some way. This is not credible, and it is a way for Thicke’s Mother to evade responsibility for having failed as a mother to raise her son better. (As an aside to UsualMisguidedFeministNonsense, I think you are right, Thicke’s Father is also to blame for this sordid mess, and should not be able to evade responsibility.) Prof. Meyer is clearly simply holding a woman, who made a very public statement trying to cover up her having failed as a mother in a very public way, she is holding that woman's feet to the fire. Since all of America seems to be shocked by this raunchy mess, I cannot believe anything but that most people agree with what Meyer is doing there. Whether every part of what Meyer says is right, is beyond what I am willing to defend here, but, the post, in and of itself, is clearly within bounds, and not out of bounds.

As for the length of my post, I assure you anon, I wish you wouldn't waste your time reading it, or anything else in this thread, as your contributions to it have been totally rude and besides the point. Popular culture is not off limits in intellectual blogs per se. I can't stand that Jacqui Lipton likes violent trash like World War Z, but her *one* post on zombies for every *100* on serious topics does not mean that this is a blog no different than TMZ, or that Jacqui Lipton is no different from TMZ. *That* is what I meant by "get a life"--and it is you, anon, who don't get the point. I wasn't saying your posts were nasty and rude and preposterous because of their length, or lack thereof. I was saying that if this post was really what got you righteously indignant about putting too much that is silly in what should be scholarly, then you REALLY need to get out more, and see more, even, of the Internet, let alone, you know, the world. The Faculty Lounge has its problems, but it isn't Wonkette, Above the Law or Gawker. It isn't even close. (It's main problem is that there is a paucity of serious conservative voices to go along with the serious liberal voices, IMHO.) But, anyway, length of posts should not matter a fig in arguments like this. If what I say is true, it is true, even if verbose. If false and pithy, it is still false. If you don't have time to read long posts, don't read me and move on and don't waste my time or yours complaining. And if you spend a lot of time over a Labor Day weekend going after, and going after, and going after, a young law teacher for making *one* angry, but heartfelt, post about problems in popular culture coming from sexism...you probably should find better uses of your time and "get a life."

Last, anon, you leave out that that row I had with Cornell, and to a lesser extent, Brophy, was *the last time I wrote anything on this site at all*. It has been more than a year since I have made a single comment here. Indeed, for many months I did not read TFL at all. I do not think my posts are too long for once every year-and-a-half. And since you are following this blog so closely that you can pull that out of the ether from memory shows that you are probably reading this blog every, single, day. Is that a bad use of time, that means you need to “get a life”? No. But, by your silly logic it is.

[CHS]

LOL. You may have the last word, Anon.

[anon]

CHS:
Condescending to the last!
Thanks

[TDM]

Michelle,

Great piece which raised a lot of important points that the media has disregarded in their reporting on this story, particularly the lyrics of Blurred Lines and the imagery in Robin Thicke's video. Understanding Miley's behavior in the context of the marketing of the song certainly blurs the narrative that she's out-of-control and undermines Gloria's "outrage".

I, for one, really appreciated your post.