This kind of stupidity should be physically painful

The Daily Caller was founded by Tucker Carlson, so it's not like quality journalism should be expected from it. Still, I just have to shake my head at the quality of some of the writers. One of their writers, Patrick Howley, posted an article so monumentally idiotic that it makes me wonder if Tucker Carlson even looked at this guy's previous writings before he hired him. I'm going to enjoy ripping this thing apart

He starts off by citing this report and making note of a few of its claims:

 Although objectification theory suggests that women frequently experience the objectifying gaze with many adverse consequences, there is scant research examining the nature and causes of the objectifying gaze for perceivers. The main purpose of this work was to examine the objectifying gaze toward women via eye tracking technology...Consistent with our main hypothesis, we found that participants focused on women’s chests and waists more and faces less when they were appearance-focused (vs. personality-focused). Moreover, we found that this effect was particularly pronounced for women with high (vs. average and low) ideal body shapes in line with hypotheses"

This is all the information form the report that Howley cities. The rest of the article is just him whining at how mean all the evil progressives are for not letting him ogle women. Seriously. This is the very next paragraph in the article:

This is the kind of study MSNBC commentators can hold up when they’re talking about “rape culture.” Because men are just all Bashar al-Assad and sex is their chemical weapon. Fifty-one percent of the U.S. population is a victimized group now. Don’t you know? Women are like Indians now. You can’t give them a once-over, a polite grin, and be on your way. You can’t notice the fruits of their several-hour morning project of preparing themselves to be looked at. Pretty soon, looking at a woman’s chest will legally be a “hate” crime instead of a love crime.

This is staggeringly stupid. Not only does it have nothing to do with the study he cited, it makes comparisons that make no sense at all. "Men are just all Bashar al-Assad and sex is their chemical weapon?" What the fuck kind of point is trying to make here? The part about looking at a woman's chest being a hate crime "instead of a love crime" was clearly him to trying to be witty. Unfortunately, it's not. There's nothing more annoying than a completely witless douchebag who thinks he's clever.

This is what the progressives exist to do. They take away our activities. If it’s an activity and it’s kind of fun or pleasurable, the progressives are going to take it away.

 Yeah, that's probably why it's the progressives who are calling for bans on porn, regulation of sex in the media, and abstinence-only sex ed. Oh wait, no it's not. It's the social conservatives calling for that. Most progressives don't give a shit about some cretin ogling a hot girl. They care if that girl is being continuously harassed.

Maybe catching a side glance of some cleavage on the subway isn’t for you. Fine. But for those of us who enjoy that, it’s one more thing that we’re allowed to do in this country. I’m not big on skiing, but if I see somebody walking down the street with some skis I’m cool with that. Why ban things that you might want to try sometime

Jesus Christ. You cannot be fucking serious right now. There's a huge difference between skiing and looking at a girl's cleavage. One is a fun physical activity that can reduce stress and help you stay in shape. The other is being a classless pig. If I were the owner of a newspaper and one my employees wrote something like that, I would fire his ass on the spot.

I’m not saying looking at tits is any kind of noble pursuit. But it’s one more freedom. It’s one more thing that has been allowed in this country since the time of James Madison and Thomas Jefferson. One more thing that we’re not going to be allowed to do in the progressive future.

Yeah, I'm sure that's exactly what Thomas Jefferson and James Madison intended when they wrote the Declaration of Independence. They wanted a country were all the men could stare at women's cleavage and not get in trouble for it.

Ladies, how are you going to feel when the progressives prohibit men from paying you a compliment on your walk home from the bar? You know there’s always one friend of yours who waited all night for that

Where is this happening? Seriously, in what part of the world are guys banned from complimenting a girl on the way home from a bar? In fact, what is this screed about, anyway? Wasn't Howley just bitching about men not being able to stare at girls tits? Because that's a fuck ton of a lot different than complimenting a girl. Holy shit.

Because you realize that when progressives ban things, they don’t just prohibit activities: they set a new rule that goes out through the culture that must be obeyed

And the new rule affects everyone. From the guy who now has to cover his face so as not to look at a hot girl’s tits, to the girl whose tits can no longer be looked at, to the friend of the girl who could have laughed when it happened, to the bar owner standing outside who could have lured them both in for a drink, to the husband’s small business partner who knows the story of how they met and smirks about it over dinner, to the daughter at their 30th anniversary party who decided that she just wanted to be a full-time mom and raise her kids Christian and send them to private school and she was proud of her decisions in life.

So we went from a guy starting at a hot girl's tits to a bar owner who tried to lure them in for a drink (that doesn't sound creepy at all) to a daughter that wanted to raise her kids Christian? Good God! I've seen middle school writing assignments that were constructed better than this! Seriously, how do you jump from guys staring at girls breasts to mothers raising Christian kids at private schools?

This is why conservatives will own the future of this country, and progressive leadership will fall by the wayside. Americans in nursing homes don’t like their activities being taken away. But that nurse who comes in Tuesdays for hip rehabilitation? She’s just fine.

That's how the article ends. With a complete non sequitur. Good God this is awful writing.

This guy has also written for the National Review and is on the staff of the ironically named Washington Free Beacon (which is based in Washington DC). He's even been featured in the fucking Wall Street Journal. That's right, someone in charge of one of the nation's most popular and influential newspapers saw this twerp's writing and thought, "Yeah, this is good stuff; we should publish it." This type of moronic dreck has no business whatsoever being published in an actual professional newspaper like the Wall Street Journal, and whoever allowed it to be published should be ashamed of themselves.

At the rate things are going, conservatives won't own the future of this country, Mr. Howley. You want to why? Because they keep passing over intelligent and reasonable individuals in favor of inept cretins like you who pander to the lowest common denominator. The people who should be most annoyed by the fact that idiots like Howley have a career in journalism thanks to the popularity of right-wing blogs and talk radio are conservatives. If I were a conservative, I'd be embarrassed at the people who are spearheading the movement. I'd be angry that the people who extoll the virtues I believe in have to dumb themselves down and reduce all of their arguments to platitudes and buzz words because the most popular voices in the movement think that intellect and higher education are things to be made fun of rather than admired. You, Mr. Howley, are only helping progressives by writing idiotic bullshit like this.