Bloggers cover nurse-in protest against The View - Blogging Baby - www.bloggingbaby.com _I'm a little late to this - The View's negative NIP (nursing in public) comments are two weeks old and the protest a week old - but after reading the comments to this
Blogging Baby post, I felt the need to make my own comments.
Let's begin by saying that when I was on maternity leave (duration=one year) a couple of years ago, I had ample opportunity to watch The View during my seemingly endless nursing sessions (ironic, innit?). Daytime TV is such shit and after watching the entire first season of CSI back to back to back it's comforting to slip into a little "lite View-ing" before watching the entire (4? 5? 6? disc) set of The Beatles Anthology. So, I have definitely watched enough The View to know exactly what it is.
It ain't good.
When I first heard the concept I was quite excited about a group of intelligent (I mean, Barbara Walters! and that Star Jones is a former attorney!) women sitting around having topical conversations. Well, intelligence enough to get you a degree or render you a successful woman in your field does not guarantee that you will have intelligent conversations.
The former attorney is always admonishing people to reserve judgement on those charged with hideous crimes, but talked about breastfeeding as gross on national television in front of a core audience of mothers.
Now, the woman who can travel to dangerous parts of the world and ask tough questions of guys like Khadafi and Castro related how uncomfortable she was when a woman nursed her baby near her on a flight. Is she for real? I guess she didn't have a production team around her to protect her from the unsightly act.
The worst part of that show is that not only does the conversation cater to the American lowest common denominator (which is different from, say, the Canadian lowest common denominator or the British lowest common denominator), resulting in inane chatter at best and dangerously unsupportive and misleading statements at worst, but the worst is the second segment of the show.
You see, the women only yap at the table for a third to half of the show. The second section of the show is glorified shilling for makers of swimwear, cheap makeup, seasonal gadgetry, horrid entertainers and the latest Hollywood or television blockbuster. In essence, they are whores for marketers and work very hard to perpetuate the out-of-control phenomena of celebrity, effectively sucking anything that could stimulate the firing of neurons in the average brain out of every televised moment.
Even creepier than the unadulterated advertorials is the fact that the entire thing is stage-managed by some balding guy sitting in the audience who the women defer to, infantilize and kiss the ass of almost continually. He's like some paunchy Svengali sitting just out of camera range who they are always trying to win the favour of.
Is he a token guy? Did these women think that noone would take them seriously on an all-chick show?
They talk like they're all for girl power and then they spend each show undermining that power.
So, way up there in the beginning of my spontaneous diatribe against The View, I said that the comments regarding the mini-shit-storm (would that be a diarhea drizzle?) that surrounded Walters' asinine comments about being made uncomfortable by an eating baby, well they all made me want to comment.
n.b. Though this particular set of comments to the particular story inspired my post, my own comments are inspired by many, many, many, many such stories and comments I've had the unfortunate opportunity to read or hear.
First:I can't understand a member of our Western culture who would take the time and energy needed to talk about being made uncomfortable by a nursing baby (this includes the people who make convincing or retarded arguments for: using a blanket for discretion, boob touching by an infant is fucking gross, that's private like masturbating or shitting, it's nice to be nice so don't offend people, blah de blah...) but never makes public statements about the offensive habits of people: whose bra straps hang out of their tank tops, whose pants are so low-waisted you can see their underwear which is invariably a thong of some sort, who wear clothes that expose their bellies, who wear pants so tight and low-waisted as to create big rolls of fat on the tops of their hips and arses.
If you are going to bitch about exposure of flesh which makes one uncomfortable, why not address the epidemic of young women who are too young to vote but routinely expose their lingerie and flesh for all to see. I'm thinking "a fool and her money are quickly parted" if you have to wax your bush to wear a pair of pants. And, while you are at it, let's address the the whorification of our female children. Whoever created
Bratz dolls needs to be tortured to death. These dolls don't just look like sluts, they looks like prostitutes!
That's worthy of bitching about, not that some baby eating made you uncomfortable, sissy!
Second:Americans wave the banner of Free Speech around like it's the holy grail, like it is the right to breathe. Unfortunately, while most Americans are smart enough to be on the internet making comments about a web story or even just pass high school, they make a huge error by equating the First Amendment, with the tenets of Free Speech, diversity of opinion and the validity of a personal opinion.
Just because you are constitutionally protected to state any old thing that comes into your brain, the personal opionion you hold is not automatically worthy of, well, anything! You can have a personal opinion, but that personal opinion is not therefore correct or valid.
Just because you believe something, doesn't mean it's right. And, further, regardless of whether it's right or not, does not mean that the universe will be better for your sharing that opinion. Most opinions are best kept to ourselves or perhaps shared with people who are legally bound to listen to the half-baked gunk dribbling from our brain to our mouth.
The First Amendment was designed, in spirit, to protect your right to publicly and privately say such things as "our government sucks", "our church sucks", "Bush appears to have an IQ less than 65", "these people are doing bad things and should be stopped". Under the protection of the First Amendment, you and the press can say those things and not be killed or have your children kidnapped and tortured. In only the most strict "reductio ad absurdum" type of reading does the First Amendment to the US Constituion protect your right to say, "boogers taste great!"
If you are going to share your opinion with people, particularly an opinion in which other people are put at any kind of disadvantage (like, say, having their source of nourishment declared an inconvenience to other people), think twice about whether sharing your opinion would advance the argument or enhance the discussion at hand. Ask yourself this one simple question to help determine whether you should hog people's bandwidth with your opinion: WILL THIS OPINION MAKE THE WORLD A BETTER PLACE?
Third:It is apparently now fashionable to publicly state that though you breastfed your genius child for 6/18/24/36 months, you actually hated it the whole damned time.
Well, aren't you a gawd-damned martyr! Yay for you!
Who cares? In talking about a baby's right to be nourished anywhere in any fashion, where does it matter that you thought breastfeeding sucked?
Perhaps you find it very liberating to admit that this thing you did was not pleasant - but wow you really did stick it out for forever because you were doing it for the good of your baby - but there are a shitload of things I do every day that I hate doing that aren't going to score me any points with anyone for admitting them in a discussion about what an asshole Barbara Walters was to make the comments she did about breastfeeding in public.
Commentor #445938: "You know, I'm all for nursing in public, as long as you are concientious of the people around you and how they might react."
Commentor #445939: "I do the dishes so that my family can eat food on clean plates and drink from clean glasses, but I have hated every minute of it. From the first moment I stuck my hands in that hot water, I just didn't feel like I wanted to do it, but I did it and I do it every day because otherwise my family wouldn't have clean dishes. Oh yeah, and my boobs were huge! I needed two blankets covering me and my baby whenever I nursed him in the closet. Barbara Walters is entitled to her opinion.It's called logic people! Learn it! Use it! Your discussions with your fellow human beings might make some kind of sense and you might become smarter in the process.
OK, I have craploads more stuff to say, but I have to stop now so that I can get some sleep. It'd be nice to be concious at the same time Kieran is.
