First, from 2 weeks ago, this GQ article. Great one.

Then, a follow-up; this blog rant from Richard Metzger.

And both using the same illustration! An appropriate one!

As someone on Boing Boing said:


Let's call Jimbo an "ARA" henceforth.

In Jimbo's case, he actually did manage to become rich and famous, so perhaps that helped to sustain the delusion. Not that it's any excuse.

The most salient point of the GQ article is that college students, with little or no experience of the real world, are often easily led into following the Randroid ideology of self-centered morality and pseudo-intellectual hedonism. They use it to justify both their aversion to what they see as the cheap, boring "party scene," and their interest in sex, drugs, and other forms of debauchery.

I myself had a problem with this in college. What do you do when you're a reasonably well-behaved, not-so-bad-looking male student of middling popularity, and you develop a romantic interest in an attractive female student which at first appears to be mutual, only to find out (after you've already invested considerable time/effort/expense) that she's an ARA? Do you dump her on that basis alone? Or do you keep at it, in the hopes that one night you'll be able to at least get her drunk enough to forget her self-imposed ideological need to maintain impossibly high standards in men (based mostly on money and family influence), and thus get at least one fairly memorable night out of it? (Bearing in mind that ARA's, like most selfish/arrogant people, are all lousy in bed?)

The thing is, in my case I felt it would be dishonorable to keep stringing her along in the (no doubt vain) hope that she'd take pity on me once or twice, before deciding I lacked sufficient "gravitas" and "entrepreneurial motivation" to commit to even a short-term physical relationship. But looking back on it, I'm not so sure... I just feel that ARA's don't deserve to be treated with traditional or socially-responsible notions of "honor" and "decency" when they can't be bothered to even consider those kinds of things in their treatment of others.

Anyway, it's too easy to think of younger ARA's as being mostly male. Obviously no female in her right mind would ever want to date a male ARA, but if you're male and you encounter an attractive female ARA, then why not? Who knows, maybe you can talk some anti-Randroid sense into her during cuddle-time afterwards, and thereby make the world a slightly better place into the bargain.

It seems hard to believe that Ayn Rand ever got much cuddle time in her lifetime.

Well, in her case that would be a fairly safe assumption - you've got to put the whips, chains, and lubricants back into the closets and drawers as soon as possible after you do the nasty, in case your husband comes home early from his business trip to the Mediterranean. Besides, it's hard to cuddle with someone whom you're in the midst of berating for his failure to "take it like a man" and "selfishly accept pleasure in what little is allowed" him by a superior woman who isn't merely a "drunken whore."

Do I sound bitter? Damn right I'm bitter! She didn't even sign my copy of The Joy of Sex afterwards. (She claimed she didn't write it... yeah, as if!)

From the GQ article. Made me laugh.