Pharyngula::Viking orgy!

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Tuesday, October 18, 2005

Viking orgy!

PZ Myers • 17 Comments

You need two pieces of information to understand this story: our state football team, the Vikings, had a sex party on a boat; and the Minneapolis newspaper, the Star Tribune, recently hired a right-wing hack as a columnist. Put those two together, and the results are predictable: a whine about decadent liberal values. Fortunately, we've got Norwegianity to slap that nonsense down.

Increasingly, the right just runs and hides in their gated communities, burbs, office parks — whatever it takes to escape the consequences of their Darwinian social policies.

Just as the Bushies are moving heaven and earth to duck the consequences of their actions. Across the board theirs is a political movement characterized by cowardice, stealth, and rules bending (for themselves — law’n’order for the rest of us).

And when they get caught, they blame the left for our collective moral decline. Well, when this Norwegian starts going on boat sex parties, feel free to rip on me. But until then, I think it’s pretty clear which side of the political spectrum is morally lost, and it’s not the side with Cindy Sheehan, Patty Wetterling or Colleen Rowley, it’s the team with Karl Rove, Dick Cheney and Don Rumsfeld who have something to answer for. Not to mention Ahmed Chalabi, the guy with the stinky finger, or Mike Tice, the guy with the 22-inch neck and the 1-4 record.

Maybe the Star Tribune should fire Katherine Kersten and hire Mark Gisleson in her stead.

Check out the Katherine Kersten Haiku Contest on City Pages!

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Comments:

#44410: — 10/18 at 09:34 AM
Ok so I read the viking orgy article. Apart from a) behaving rudely and making unwanted approaches to staff members, b) engaging in acts with prostitutes (and thereby possibly aiding the enslaving of these women as involuntary sex workers), what's wrong with sex orgies?

After all, isn't that dear sweet bookie the republican religious right are so fond of, the bible, chock full of rampant begatting? Didn't Solomon himself have concurrent wives and concubines galore? Are they seriously trying to say that the idea never occured to the reputedly wisest man alive to try to get two or more of the ladies together at one time? Piffle, hogwash, tommyrot and bunkum! Might as well ask that I believe in their invisible deity!

It's more tiresome puritanism about sexual matters from the people that tell you to "go forth and multiply, be fruitful". The same people for whom "thou shalt not kill" is conditional on whether it involves a nation of brown people with oil or not. Note there is no commandment "thou shalt not have orgiastic sex".

Examples for our kids? If your kids only role models are the members of an American football team, then educate your damned offspring. That or have the vile little swine neutered.

#44412: — 10/18 at 09:38 AM
P.S. Apologies for use of something other than English in the above post. Solomon himself HAVE concurrent...? Oh dear. If your kidS only role models...? Oh my.

I may have to resign as a Cheif Constable of the Grammar Police.

#44421: — 10/18 at 10:03 AM

What about Grandma's conviction that sex is about love and family? What about abstinence till marriage? They're laughed out of town.

The thing I find most remarkable is not that someone would write this, but that someone is actually paying this dingbat to write this. It's actually her job. And what's worse, the media is glutted with thousands of other people just this dumb, with just this little to say, and they all seem to find some place to bloviate. At least I hope she's not paid very much.

#44423: Bob Davis — 10/18 at 10:10 AM
Sex corrupts the minds of the beautiful youthful republicans, and so must be blamed on those democrats.

I think we should accept. Let's start a whole cruise line dedicated to corrupting the minds of youthful republicans. I've got dibs on..., well, then again, never mind.

#44427: Aaron Kinney — 10/18 at 10:13 AM
Who cares about a stupid sex party on some boats? They had to return to shore? Please! Since when did lap dances and oral sex sink boats?

I cant believe that anyone would really object to an actual sex party for any reason other than being jealous that they werent there.

#44428: Kristine Harley — 10/18 at 10:14 AM
Kersten says: "But I've noticed something. Everyone sputters with outrage, but no one really articulates why. When pressed, people generally mutter something about the Vikings being poor role models for our kids."

Kristine says: "No one" really "articulates why?" I think that most people have articulated their rage quite well, and object to 1) Vikings urinating on a citizen's lawn; 2) Vikings engaging in sex in full view of the boat's staff; and 3) Vikings aggressively pressing the female staff to likewise strip and engage in sex acts.

If there is any "muttering" going on here, it's from Kersten who takes an unjustifiably dim view of the wider public who don't happen to belong to the Center for the American Experiment. She has gone from condescension to outright insult, yet somehow she expects that the rest of the stupid public is capable of reading her columns and being influenced by her profound wisdom.

#44429: Norwegianity — 10/18 at 10:15 AM
Hire me? That would be funny.

I'm every bit the partisan Katherine Kersten is, but — aside from our political differences — I admit it.

What is offensive about Kersten is that she always writes as if she's on some lofty moral plane where partisanship doesn't enter into the equation. Then she proceeds to hack out another highly partisan column.

Thanks for the nod but I'd rather have tenure at the University of Minnesota. Any discipline will do. They'd probably make me finish my Bachelor's degree, but I could just change my major to whatever was appropriate. Since they already have a squid expert in the state university system, maybe I could specialize in calamari!

: )

#44446: — 10/18 at 11:31 AM
The awful Dennet? You mean you're not one of his little pet brights?

#44447: Stephen Stralka — 10/18 at 11:36 AM
I don't suppose it's at all relevant that we're talking about a bunch of young men who are paid millions of dollars and treated like gods because of their athletic abilities. That couldn't have anything to do with their behavior, because it's not something you can blame on the liberals.

#44450: — 10/18 at 11:52 AM
No matter what Kersten says, I'd wager that the Vikes won't be getting a new stadium deal this year because they're playing really terrible football, not because of some wave of moral outrage from the fans. If you win, the fans don't care about your off-the-field behavior, as we've seen time and time again.

Rrawr!

#44451: — 10/18 at 11:54 AM
How bout them Bears!!! and don't forget the Badgers!!

#44453: PZ Myers — 10/18 at 12:10 PM
Mark -- you may be partisan, but you aren't brain-dead. That makes a little bit of difference, you know.

You may think tenure is all chowing down on calamari, but it's actually more of a daily need to minister to the demands of a few thousand students. And they all expect you to be smarter than they are, so every day is spent madly struggling to keep ahead of a gang of ambitious pre-meds.

PZ Myers
Division of Science and Math
University of Minnesota, Morris

#44490: Kagehi — 10/18 at 02:04 PM
Here is another good one in, in a similar vein:

http://www.cnn.com/2005/US/10/16/prom.canceled.ap/

So far the principal isn't blaiming left wing liberals or Darwin, just the parents, but I find it damn funny (far more so in fact than if they did blaim either). ;) lol

Personally, I agree with Louis' assessment. There are only two activities that are truely objectionable, one which is flat out rude, since the staff is 'not' there to service, just serve, and the later which is a problem due to the very fact that even where legal, prostitutes are usually not exactly going to get support from the public to defend them against ass holes that turn it from a job into a slave trade, even sadly in places where legalizing it was supposed to help solve the problem.

Any priest or shaman must be presumed guilty until proved innocent - Robert A. Heinlein

#44582: — 10/18 at 08:51 PM

Increasingly, the right just runs and hides in their gated communities, burbs, office parks — whatever it takes to escape the consequences of their Darwinian social policies.

Just as the Bushies are moving heaven and earth to duck the consequences of their actions. Across the board theirs is a political movement characterized by cowardice, stealth, and rules bending (for themselves — law’n’order for the rest of us).

I guess I missed something. Which Bushie, Darwinian social policy was it that had a boat sex party as the consequence? this is a little incoherent, in my opinion.

#44591: David Sewell — 10/18 at 09:58 PM
Yep, decadent liberals and football just go together. Remember former Sen. Zell Miller's rant after the Janet Jackson Superbowl costume malfunction: "The culture of far left America was displayed in a startling way during the Super Bowl's now infamous half-time show". Right-o, nothing that aging hippies and anti-globalists like to do better than watch and sponsor NFL football...

#44593: — 10/18 at 10:07 PM
Frumious et al:
This Canadian writer: http://www.playthegame.org/Knowledge bank/Authors/Laura Robinson.aspx
gives a convincing account of how good old fashioned sexism - a perversion of traditional male-female roles - leads to exploitive behavior on the part of pro and semi-pro male athletes. She uses junior hockey as an example (after, both she and I are Canadian), but there is no reason not to extrapolate to football etc. I don t see any evidence that liberal social values have much bearing on this problem.

#44735: Joel — 10/19 at 03:35 PM
When I see signs of a major decline in morals, it usually involves some penile icon. But that's only sexual morals: how seldom we speak about greed!

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Tuesday, October 18, 2005

Viking orgy!

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