July 11, 2013

Phallic symbol of the day.

Oh, come on now. And this is under a headline containing a double-entendre word: "Hedge Funds Are for Suckers."



Thanks to the reader who sent me that link, with the comment: "That graphic is pretty interesting. It’s a male world in finance I guess and can’t help but wonder what a female comparable graph might elicit in the way of comments."

ADDED: What would the female image even be? Quite aside from the challenge of making the person look like someone involved in hedge funds, you'd need a deliberately sexual presentation. But I think the reader — referring to what the comments would be — means to refer to the way various media pundits would be critical if they saw a female ludicrously sexualized as a way to say something about money. And I take this to be sounding the old "war on men" theme. Why can you make fun of men and not women?



The answer, as far as I'm concerned, is that it's more acceptable to make fun of whoever is powerful and dominant — the rich and not the poor, the gloriously healthy and not the sick, white people and not black people. Alternatively, we could just never have fun with anything. Or we could be scrupulously equal in how we dish it out. But inhibition isn't too good for comedy. So what we do is: We have a lot of easy targets — the rich, the men, the white people — and then we have the more difficult topics that create a place for especially capable comedians to be edgy.