Spitting in the Wind

In what I suspect might become a regular filler-featurette here at the Latest Obsession corner of this-a heeyah review site, is a little media spotlight on the foolishness and toolishness we are presented with every single day in America.

Yes, things like the "Flavor of Love" story from last week, idiotic entertainment news gussied up as IMPORTANT will be a regular entrant, as will Missing White Woman of the Week type of news items, and perhaps even some kind of actual news item but handled poorly by the dumb-ass, six-figure salary types like Charlie "Flag Pin" Gibson and Katie "Oh Just Shut the Fuck Up Already, You Dim Witted Ignoramus" Couric.

And in that spirit, I present this chilling bit of analysis and Top Story information as presented by one of my favorites for sheer banality, Yahoo! News (living up to its name, clearly).


Goodness, this is a pickle. Meanwhile, a bomb exploded in Pakistan outside the Danish embassy, a famous Senator, Edward Kennedy undergoes brain surgery to chop out a malignant tumor, blues-rock legend Bo Diddley died, and other and sundry actual news items have taken place. But the crack Yahoo! News team decided that the a study declaring to explain why men are afraid to marry warrants the biggest position on their site.

So many tough choices!

Well, let's visit the article, see what's doing.

Bachelor Carl Weisman ... conducted a survey of 1,533 heterosexual men to research a book aiming to give women an insight into why some smart, successful men opted to stay single....

Hmmm....what could it be? Vagina dentata? The fear that California's Supreme Court will demand they gay marry? Impossibly high standards for potential lifelong mating partners brought on by repeated viewing of online, pornographic stunt fucking? Or worries that marriage will cut into their time on Second Life or viewing LolCatz?

No, in this rigorous survey, what do we find that frightens men off marriage?

The fear that they will make a bad marriage.

"Men are 10 times more scared of marrying the wrong person than of never getting married at all," Weisman told Reuters in a telephone interview.

Whereas women will clearly rush off and marry any old guy, just so's they can get themselves a diamond ring and their Mrs. Degree. It's a strange conceit buried into Weisman's reply and the thrust of this article. Men, the thinking seems to go, unlike women, are more concerned with making a good choice rather than just making the choice for the sake of making it. The not-so subtle message here being -- shocking, I know-- that men make rational decisions and women just choose out of fearful, fretful emotions or something. Who wants to be an old maid?

Weisman said his online survey found there are three groups of bachelors -- about 8 percent who never want to marry, 62 percent want to marry but of which half won't settle for anything less than perfection, and about 30 percent who are on the fence.

Sooo, according to this hard and fast news, eight out of a hundred guys doesn't want to marry ever, thirty out of a hundred guys who maybe want to marry but maybe not, who can say, and sixty-two men out of a hundred who want to marry but of which half turn up their noses at subpar, safety women, holding out for their dream vision of Jenna Jameson meets Laura Petrie. Lots of luck with that, boys. I'm sure in a few years we can have some surveys about "Confirmed Bachelors: What Went Wrong?"

Let's take a look at more of this genius survey:

But while 72 percent of respondents said they were not afraid of marriage, about half of them said the situation that scared them most was marrying the wrong person

And the other thirty-six percent just didn't care. Right person, wrong person, whatever. They'd marry an iguana if they could, I guess.

Would the article be complete without bad stereotypes? Of course not. So, listen up, all you women who are desperately chasing Mr. Right-ish or Mr. Wrong or Mr. I-Have-A-Diamond-Ring-in-My-Pocket:

"...My best advice to single women after bachelors is to be patient. If you're in a hurry to get married you'll be frustrated," [Weisman] said.

Of course, of course. Men are afraid to get married while women can barely contain their all-consuming obsession with registering their china patterns. Other advice I'm sure Weisman could have included was don't act so smart, men like a woman to be a little bit dumb, and keep a dime between your knees for the first date and never let it drop.

Thank you, Yahoo! News, thank you for this informative and just-in-time news item. Women all over America are slapping themselves on the forehead wondering why they hadn't thought of already. A grateful nation awaits a breaking news story about recipes for fish any second now!