Tag: aziz ansari
Seeking Wisdom Amid Our Sexual Confusion? Listen To Country Music

Seeking Wisdom Amid Our Sexual Confusion? Listen To Country Music

Driving along recently, I had a heretical thought: a person could get more sensible advice about men and women from the country oldies station than the New York Times. Or from the Washington Post, The New Republic or any publication devoted to non-stop analysis of metropolitan sexual angst written by twenty-somethings from expensive liberal arts colleges.

See, I’d been thinking about “Grace,” the anonymous protagonist of a kiss-and-tell narrative in something online called Babe. Of course there was a lot more than kissing in Grace’s graphic account of a one-night-stand gone wrong with a public figure—comedian Aziz Ansari.

So anyway on the car radio came Travis Tritt’s classic country hit Here’s a Quarter (Call Someone Who Cares).

Call someone who’ll listen and might give a damn

Maybe one of your sordid affairs

But don’t you come ’round here handin’ me none of your lines

Here’s a quarter, call someone who cares.

There’s scarcely a man alive who can’t identify, if only on a vestigial level. Or, for that matter, with Tritt’s heartache song, Anymore (“I can’t hold the hurt inside, keep the pain out of my eyes anymore…”).

I’ve been lucky in love all my life, but anybody who’s never experienced rejection and heartbreak hasn’t really lived. That’s one of country music’s enduring lessons.

So anyway, according to her own account, this Grace person pursued a well-known celebrity until she caught him. She ended up half in the bag back at his place and helped him take her clothes off, at which point things evidently went bad, to hear her tell it.

There’s a country song about that, too, Loretta Lynn’s Don’t Come Home A-Drinkin’ (With Lovin’ On Your Mind), although it’s about husbands and wives. Next morning, Grace sent Ansari an angry text saying he should have responded more tenderly to her “non-verbal” reluctance. He apologized.

Next came the pseudonymous screed in Babe, pretty much a backstabbing career-assassination attempt. And still the hapless comic has continued to apologize to every woman on the East Coast. But it does occur to me that a woman who threw herself under a Travis Tritt or a Hank Williams, Jr. would likely know better than to expect whatever it was that “Grace” expected.

What’s amazed me—as an inveterate reader of novels and opinion columns written by women—has basically been two things: what naïve readers supposedly educated people can be when their ideological passions are engaged; also that nobody’s thought to turn the situation inside-out.

In literary terms, any halfway sophisticated reader would call Grace an unreliable narrator. Her version of events is highly subjective, prone to exaggeration, and her motives are suspect. Yet people prating about “unequal power dynamics” treat the fool thing as scripture.

So far, Ansari has been too much of a gentleman, to use an outdated concept, to respond in kind. But suppose he did? To wit, what if the genders were reversed, and Grace found herself lampooned by name in a comedy routine? Actually, it could happen. Most comics have a mean streak, you know.

It would cause quite a stir, is all I can say.

Which brings us to the saga of the President and the porn star, also anticipated in a country song: Fancy, by Reba McIntire.

She said, “Just be nice to the gentlemen, Fancy,

And they’ll be nice to you.”

However, the song’s “Fancy” was merely a courtesan, like a couple of Trump’s companions. But there are certain unique things about porn stars, which our naïve chief executive clearly neglected to take into consideration.

First, “Stormy Daniels” is by definition an exhibitionist, so of course she’s going to tell. Second, Trump’s bagman/lawyer could buy her off, but the non-disclosure agreement ended the moment he was elected and she realized how to monetize her notoriety.

What’s he going to do, sue her for breach of contract?

Meanwhile, the only halfway appropriate country music accompaniment for the tale of Hillary Clinton and the misbehaving spiritual advisor would have to be Dolly Parton’s Nine to Five—a perfectly dreadful song.

Anyway, I’ve got an aversion to preachers in politics. If I’d been running things, he’d have been shown the exit after the first naughty email—although none of us knows how naughty it was.

What we do know, however, is that Hillary’s getting scolded for “protecting” a staffer charged with sexual harassment after merely docking his pay and mandating therapy.

Which happens to be, as Joe Conason points out, exactly how the New York Times handled ace reporter and sexual miscreant Glenn Thrush, who blames heavy drinking.

There must be a million country songs about that.

That Bad Date With Aziz Ansari Wasn’t Really A Date

That Bad Date With Aziz Ansari Wasn’t Really A Date

Nothing TV star Aziz Ansari did during that now-infamous one-night stand constituted sexual assault. It wasn’t even a proper one-night stand. Ansari and the young woman never engaged in carnal intercourse. But the woman accused Ansari of being a sexist brute nonetheless. Herein lies a cautionary tale for all.

Given the fictional name of “Grace,” the woman told the website Babe that Ansari had ignored her “non-verbal cues” that she wasn’t interested in going all the way. The casual observer might think that sitting naked on a man’s kitchen counter — as “Grace” had voluntarily done, along with exchanging oral sex — constituted a non-verbal cue that she was game.

Anyhow, the story has aroused great interest, partly because of the accused’s celebrity, partly because he was in some ways a victim. His name got smeared across seven continents, while her identity hid under a veil.

What gives the story legs is that Ansari didn’t dispute Grace’s version of what actually happened that night, only the interpretation of what happened. Among her complaints: He served white wine when in her heart she wanted red. He rushed the check at dinner in an apparent hurry to get them back to his pad. His foreplay was accelerated and some not to her taste.

But you don’t have to read too deeply to see that Grace was offering a modern version of “Adelaide’s Lament” (see “Guys and Dolls,” circa 1950). She was expecting more gallantry than the situation warranted.

After she told Ansari that she wanted to save the actual sex for the second date, it became clear there was not going to be a second date. He intended this to be a hookup — a physical coupling devoid of emotion or long-term commitment. She, despite having behaved in the hookup mode (as a lure?), wanted this to be the start of a beautiful relationship.

Denying him sex after getting buck naked and participating in advanced foreplay was perfectly within her rights. But if she wanted a lasting romance, she should have thanked Ansari for a delightful evening at the end of dinner and headed off. He might not have called again — or responded positively if she contacted him — but that’s the risk one takes in these circumstances.

Let this also serve as a warning for male celebrities who see all the young women coming on to them at parties as easy pickings. They might avoid diving into sex with women they barely know. And when she gives mixed cues that yes, she’s interested but no, she’s not, believe the “no.” It’s not entirely fair to put the ultimate interpretation on the man’s shoulders, but that’s the reality in contemporary sexual politics.

In any event, there’s nothing stopping them from being gentlemen and forgoing the hookup culture altogether. It’s a pretty grim scene.

As for the media, they should show more reticence toward letting accusers fire away anonymously. This goes beyond the wise tradition of not naming women who say they have been raped. (Many victims hold their privacy as a requirement for cooperating with the prosecution.)

But there are cases in which hiding identities gives license to make false charges. The most notorious example was a woman’s fake report of gang rape at the University of Virginia. It destroyed the reputations of innocent male students, sullied the school’s administration and shamed Rolling Stone, which published the scurrilous claims.

“Grace’s” story didn’t even involve rape. There was no good reason here to protect the identity of one and not the other. Ansari, meanwhile, is deprived of a “guilty or not guilty” moment. He’s left with an ugly “she said, he said” following him for the rest of his career.

Follow Froma Harrop on Twitter @FromaHarrop. She can be reached at fharrop@gmail.com. To find out more about Froma Harrop and read features by other Creators writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators webpage at www.creators.com.

WATCH: Aziz Ansari Destroys Donald Trump Over Khan Family Feud: ‘You Have a Black Soul’

WATCH: Aziz Ansari Destroys Donald Trump Over Khan Family Feud: ‘You Have a Black Soul’

Published with permission from Alternet

Aziz Ansari, best known for his role on “Parks and Recreation” and as the creator of “Master of None” is relishing the election drama.

“It’s a very riveting election,” Ansari told Jimmy Fallon Wednesday, joining Fallon on “The Tonight Show” for the first time since November, when he played presidential hopeful Bobby Jindal.

“There’s like, feuds and stuff,” Ansari continued. “Right now, it’s him and the Khan family. My God, they are destroying him.”

Ansari’s parents are Muslim immigrants. Because of which, he relates deeply to the Khan family’s strggles with Trump’s policy proposals, as he stated in his June New York Times Op-Ed titled “Why Trump Makes Me Scared for My Family.”

In the widely publicized critique, Ansari wrote:

Being Muslim American already carries a decent amount of baggage. In our culture, when people think “Muslim,” the picture in their heads is not usually of the Nobel Peace Prize winner Malala Yousafzai, Kareem Abdul-Jabbar or the kid who left the boy band One Direction. It’s of a scary terrorist character from “Homeland” or some monster from the news. Today, with the presidential candidate Donald J. Trump and others like him spewing hate speech, prejudice is reaching new levels. It’s visceral, and scary, and it affects how people live, work and pray. It makes me afraid for my family. It also makes no sense.

“The Khan family is the Drake to Donald Trump’s Meek Mill,” Ansari compared. “I mean, it’s crazy. The guy makes a speech like, ‘Have you read the constitution? Let me give you a copy,’” Ansari exclaimed, imitating Khzir Khan in his speech at the Democratic National Convention last Thursday.

Fallon cracked up.

“And Trump’s like, ‘Why doesn’t your wife say anything?’ And then the guy goes, ‘You have a black soul,’ which is the coldest sh*t I’ve ever heard. I’ve never heard anyone say that. I heard that was gonna to be a line in Tupac’s ‘Hit ‘Em Up,’ and he’s like, ’Nah, it’s too mean, too much. Don’t wanna say that,” Ansari joked.

Watch:

Photo: Screenshot via The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon/YouTube 

Late Night Roundup: ‘Captain Of The Vice Squad’

Late Night Roundup: ‘Captain Of The Vice Squad’

Jill Biden sat down with Seth Meyers, and promoted the latest initiative from the White House to make two years of community college free — with Jill speaking on the importance of making education accessible as a community college professor herself.

Jill Biden also talked about how she’d prefer a better title than “Second Lady” — like, “Captain of the Vice Squad.”

Larry Wilmore examined the defeat in Tuesday’s elections of an expansive non-discrimination ordinance in Houston, Texas, due to an anti-transgender scare campaign depicting men stalking little girls in women’s bathrooms. As the newest Nightly Show contributor Grace Parra, a Houston native herself, explained: “I’m in Texas. Everything’s bigger in Texas — especially the fear of progress.”

Stephen Colbert eviscerated the new campaign books from Donald Trump and “Jeb!” Bush.

Jimmy Kimmel and his team put together a special highlight reel from the campaign trail: The many noises of Donald Trump.

And Jimmy Fallon did an “interview” with the lesser Republican candidate Bobby Jindal (portrayed by Aziz Ansari): “Absolutely, I don’t believe in global warming — in fact, I’m the only candidate that doesn’t believe in any science, period!”