THE STANDARD *The week, judged by one standard — applied to everyone.*
One show this week, three stories, and the same question under every one of them: who gets consequences, and who gets a pass?
1. IT WAS A JOKE. THAT'S THE WHOLE STORY.
Women don't get to decide what's funny for everybody.
Shane Gillis went on SNL, told a joke about what women wear to the gym, and the internet treated it like a crime. The columns came out. The TikToks came out. One said if a pair of shorts distracts a grown man, the problem is his core strength. Gillis could have told that same joke in the '90s and nobody would have blinked, because it's a joke, and a joke is funny because there's some truth in it. Here's my question: since when were women the judges of what's funny? Comedians, male and female, test their material on men. Always have.
2. THEY WANT THE WORLD BABY-PROOFED.
Not for their safety. For their freedom from consequences.
The war on comedy is just one front of a bigger war on men. Comedy is masculine energy, and masculine energy doesn't get tamed. Jordan Peterson said it plainly: to think, you have to risk being offensive. This generation wants foam on every table edge. When I was a kid, nobody ran for the foam. They said stop running, and if you hit your head anyway, "bet you won't do that again." That's how you learned. Push fathers out of the house, make the man who tells the hard truth the bad guy, and you raise people who can't handle the real world.
3. I'LL BELIEVE IT WHEN I SEE IT.
They found the time to fingerprint a former president.
Federal agents searched Ilhan Omar's Washington home on October 12, and AP and CBS report they took her personal phone while a Minnesota grand jury looks at her family's immigration paperwork. She hasn't been charged, and she calls it political targeting. Fine. The courts decide that. But I've watched this country put a former president through a mug shot over a lot less noise than has followed her for years. So until I see real consequences, I'm not getting excited. Congress and the Supreme Court are the two seats in this country that seem close to untouchable.
THE BIGGER LESSON
All three stories are about consequences, and who gets to dodge them. A comedian gets punished for a joke. A generation wants the world padded so nothing it does ever stings. And the most powerful seats in the country seem to come with a pass that regular people will never see. The rule is supposed to work the same in every direction. A man who says something gets judged. A person with power who does something gets protected.
Consequences are the standard. Anybody who's exempt from them isn't being protected. They're being spoiled.
THE BOOK
Somebody spent years convincing you that a man who tells the hard truth is the problem. Unlearn it. The Angryman Standard: Traditional Relationship Solutions for the Modern Man is the deprogramming. theangrymanchannel.com/book.
Know somebody who still thinks consequences are optional? Forward this.
— The Angryman.