So photos recently surfaced of New England Patriots quarterback Tom Brady and supermodel Giselle Bündchen on vacation in Mexico together, hanging out and being schmoopy and generally doing the kind of things one does when one’s on vacation with one’s significant other, except that since this was Tom Brady and Gisele Bündchen we’re talking about, they’re doing it much more attractively than the average couple would.
At any rate, that’s not really a big story, unless one of the shots showed Brady missing his knee, which he didn’t appear to be. So you’d think that the news of a supermodel and her athlete boyfriend going on vacation wouldn’t be a big deal. But you wouldn’t be Boston Globe columnist Dan Shaughnessy, who sees in the basic human emotion displayed in these pictures a difficult truth: Tom Brady is totally dickless, yo.
Now, you might think that’s insane, given that the proof of Brady’s emasculation appears to be his ability to be in a mutually loving relationship with the highest-paid supermodel on the planet, which when last I checked was supposed to be the goal for all manly men to aspire to.1 But you see, Gisele appears to love Tom back, and that will never do:
Yesterday was the last straw. You know what I’m talking about. You opened your newspaper (or perhaps viewed online) and saw the photograph of Gisele Bundchen feeding Brady at poolside in Puerto Vallarta, Mexico.
That did it. The tipping point. The coup de grace. The shark jumped.
She was feeding him.
Uh, yeah, she was:
Horrible, ain’t it? Two human beings who are in a long-term, committed relationship, one of whom is offering a potato chip to the other. You see two human beings in a caring relationship. Shaughnessy sees wimpiness:
We put up with a lot. We were OK with Tom as Gisele’s errand boy, Tom bringing home the flowers, Tom walking Gisele’s dog. We were good with Tom and Gisele canoodling in the candlelight, holding hands coming out of a restaurant.
But you simply cannot have your quarterback being fed like an infant at poolside. Remember, people – this is a football player we’re talking about. This is your quarterback. Think there’s any photographic evidence of Johnny Unitas being spoon-fed? Bet Slingin’ Sammy Baugh’s wife never tried to sling any hash into his mouth.
Yeah! Take that, Brady! A real man simply steals the potato chip off his girlfriend’s plate, and then laughs when she said she wanted to eat it! A real man tells his girlfriend, “Screw you, I don’t want your frakkin’ potato chip!” A real man is an asshole. Come on, Brady, you were doing so well with the dumping of Bridget Moynahan when she got pregnant. Where’s that spark of jerkiness now?
Ever see a high school player injured in the middle of the game and have his mother run onto the field to hover over him? That’s what this is like. A guy might never recover.
Yes, that’s right: being fed potato chips on a beach while on vacation in Mexico by your supermodel girlfriend is exactly like having your parent be worried about you when you’re a kid.
Shaughnessy admits, of course, that he’s jealous (no!) of Tom for having an attractive, loving girlfriend, and complains a bit more about Brady being spoon-fed out of a Gerber jar, because, again, that’s exactly what’s this is like. And then he says something very telling:
The balanced view, of course, would be that Tom is secure enough in his own skin to let us see his sensitive side. He’s just a guy in love and he wants the world to know. It’s not his fault that the paparazzi dog his every move. He should be allowed to have private moments, just like everybody else. He shows tremendous restraint not punching out those TMZ guys.
But enough is enough.
Seriously, that’s a whole lot of screwed up there. Because yes, Tom Brady appears to be in love, and his girlfriend appears to be in love too, and the two act like they’re in love because — sit down — humans are capable of feeling love. Even the ones who are football players.
That’s what Shaughnessy objects to here. That Brady is screwing up the vibe. Men don’t love — everyone knows that. We lust, sure, we like to have sex. But love? Love is for homosexuals and women. Loving someone shows weakness. Because Tom Brady is in love, he’s now too weak to be an NFL quarterback.
Only if he proves he’s a scumbag, bereft of emotions other than lust and rage, can he be a worthy athlete. Only if he reacts to his girlfriend’s gesture of affection with cold disdain, or better, a closed fist — only then can he truly be the kind of manly man we expect him to be.
It’s a depressing way to look at the world. But it’s an all-too-common one. And that’s why this column, while repulsive, is all-too-unsurprising.
(Via Deadspin)
- Yes, I’m being facetious [↩]
Ha-ha! Stupid hu-mons. The female is showing proper subservience by feeding her male, though really she should chew it first.
I’m really not sure what Shaughnessy is trying to say. Is it that Brady’s weak because he isn’t assaulting and raping his SO? Or is it that Brady’s weak because he should be getting it on with another guy? Perhaps it’s a bit of both. Because if MAN being fed by his, preferably hawt, servile woman isn’t the picture of stereotypical hyper-masculinism, I’m not sure what is.
Is there some reason we can’t leave this guy alone, to enjoy (or not, as the case may be) his girlfriend and his potato chip in peace?
So he’s a great athlete. So let’s watch him play football. But for me, that doesn’t imbue any of his other doings with any interest particularly.
Slow news day, Mr. Shaughnessy?
Heh. Good post.
And you even used an umlaut!
He’s saying Brady’s whipped. Unlike Howie Long.
Shaughnessy’s joking. And that exposes the deeper issue at stake.
In the real world there is a humor exception to bigoty. That’s why HWBush can call a woman ugly and get away with it, while an outrage would ensue if he said that seriously. In fact this exception has become so prominent that I’d venture to say the plurality of comedy out there deals with race, sex, religion, and especially ethnicity, since comedy allows for the use of hilariously sweeping generalizations otherwise frowned upon. Comedy is the last refuge of the unnuanced.
But I’ve noticed progressives, especially feminists, increasingly don’t subscribe to the humor exception, and thus have been vulnerable to the “humorless” label. So an asymmetric war has ensued. Conservatives, like say the South Park guys, allow themselves free reign to wack liberals while liberals, whose project it is to eradicate the world from bigotry by exposing subtle and otherwise unnoticed symbols of oppression, must fight back with one hand tied behind their back.
So, for example, how does one attack Plain for being dumb and uninformed without veering into sexism or classism. Not easy when you’vespent your entire life exposing dog whistles: the theory that seemingly innocuous words are really covers for a deeper bigotry. Luckily for Obama, Daily Kos and SNL had no such qualms.
I’m generally conservative and thus adhere to the exception, but as an unprincipled libertine libertarian, I can see that progressives do have a point. Its like pornographers hiding behind the first amendment: they don’t have to defend the substance of their work. “I’m only joking,” Shaughnessy can protest. And with those 3 words he need not consider the implications of his column.
That was a really smart comment, Manju. Thanks.
Manju,
Good point, although I’d say progressives feel free to make fun of religion, partly because it’s perceived as a matter of relatively easy choice. You’re stuck with your race and birth-sex, and you have to work really hard to get out of a low socioeconomic status, but changing religion in this country is not that difficult. Palin herself is an example: she’s hopped from Pentecostal to a vague “non-denominational Christian,” without any apparent negative consequences.
Also, if HW Bush said in seriousness that a woman was ugly, he’d of course be criticized for it if she were a political official or otherwise in a role where her appearance ought to be irrelevant. But if it were her job to be attractive (e.g., if he said, “I don’t know why people say Bundchen is beautiful, I think she’s ugly”), I don’t think there’d be much criticism. It’s OK to make aesthetic judgments; it’s just not OK to bring them into spheres where they ought to be irrelevant. Whether Janet Reno was pretty was irrelevant to her work as Attorney General.
And the “I’m only joking” often is used by people who simultaneously demand that they be taken seriously as social-political commentators — Ann Coulter, for example. National Review’s Florence King wrote the best examination of Coulter ever, and explains why the “joking” defense is so ineffective for her: she’s not at all funny. (http://nrd.nationalreview.com/article/?q=OTdlZGYzODgxODQxMzZhOTRkYTQzM2U2Mjg1Y2JjNjE=)
If Shaugnhessy was joking — and I’m not willing to concede that — he fails on a more basic level: it wasn’t funny.
As a Red Sox fan, let me tell you that Dan Shaugnessey is a faux journalist. His objective is not to inform. His objective is to stir up controversy so that people who feed on celebrity and conflict (e.g., People readers) read his column and justify his salary.
“Now, you might think that’s insane, given that the proof of Brady’s emasculation appears to be his ability to be in a mutually loving relationship with the highest-paid supermodel on the planet, which when last I checked was supposed to be the goal for all manly men to aspire to.”
I think that this is the key. Brady’s an athletic, wealthy man who’s in a relationship with a supermodel. He’s won the manly contest by every important measure. Shaughnessy knows that, so he’s either moving the goal posts so he can feel better, admonishing him for not being a good enough standard-bearer, or all of the above. Both of these things are often done with humor as a vehicle.
“Conservatives, like say the South Park guys, allow themselves free reign to wack liberals while liberals, whose project it is to eradicate the world from bigotry by exposing subtle and otherwise unnoticed symbols of oppression, must fight back with one hand tied behind their back. ”
This is true, but in practice it works differently than that. Conservatives can do it without seeming like hypocrites. Liberals definitely engage in bashing others based on stereotypes used to oppress and borne from the traditional hierarchy, they’re just being hypocrites when they do. Because even now, most of the popular “controversial” comedians wouldn’t describe themselves as conservative by any stretch of the imagination — unless libertarianism and conservatism were totally conflated.
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While I agree that humor is often used as a vehicle to get away with bigoted statements, Shaugnessey’s critique is so grossly absurd that it seems to ridicule the views it superficially espouses. This is in contrast to, say, Sean Delonas, who simply makes tasteless jokes without a grain of irony, and excuses himself by saying he’s “just kidding”. Shaugnessey is not a talented or sophisticated enough writer to pull off the satire with much wit or grace, but I think the final paragraph at least indicates that all but the dullest among his audience are meant to comprehend that his commentary on manliness is a caricature of sports-fan bravado. Or maybe I’m giving his audience too much credit.