{"id":29347,"date":"2014-12-28T02:00:33","date_gmt":"2014-12-28T07:00:33","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/?p=29347"},"modified":"2014-12-25T15:18:56","modified_gmt":"2014-12-25T20:18:56","slug":"p-j-orourke-is-forced-to-watch-an-episode-of-girls","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/2014\/12\/28\/p-j-orourke-is-forced-to-watch-an-episode-of-girls\/","title":{"rendered":"P.J. O’Rourke is forced to watch an episode of Girls<\/em>"},"content":{"rendered":"

I think it’s safe to say he wasn’t bowled over … at least not in a good<\/em> way<\/a>:<\/p>\n

Ms. Dunham is 28. I was under the impression that \u201cgirls\u201d is a demeaning term for adult women. The title must have something to do with this hipster \u201cIrony\u201d thing, which I confess I don\u2019t understand. The root of the word irony<\/em> is in the Greek eironeia<\/em>, \u201cliar.\u201d<\/p>\n

I had my 14-year-old daughter, Poppet, instruct me in how to watch an episode of Girls<\/em> on my computer. (Turns out \u201ccontent\u201d is not completely \u201cfree.\u201d)<\/p>\n

Two seconds into the opening credits I was trying to get my daughter out of the room by any means possible. \u201cPoppet! Look in the yard! The puppy\u2019s on fire! Quick! Quick! Run outside and roll him in the snow!\u201d<\/p>\n

It turns out Girls<\/em> is a serialized horror movie \u2014 more gruesome, frightening, grim, dark, and disturbing than anything that\u2019s ever occurred to Stephen King.<\/p>\n

I have two daughters, Poppet and her 17-year-old sister Muffin. Girls<\/em> is about young people who are only a few years older than my daughters<\/em>. These young people, portrayed as being representative of typical young people, reside in a dumpy, grubby, woeful part of New York called Brooklyn, where Ms. Dunham should put her clothes back on.<\/p>\n

I lived in New York for fifteen years. No one had been to Brooklyn since the Dodgers left in 1957.<\/p>\n

The young people in Girls<\/em> are miserable, peevish, depressed, hate their bodies, themselves, their life, and each other. They occupy apartments with the size and charm of the janitor\u2019s closet, shared by The Abominable Roommate. They dress in clothing from the flophouse lost-and-found and are groomed with a hacksaw and gravel rake. They are tattooed all over with things that don\u2019t even look like things the way a anchor or a mermaid or a heart inscribed \u201cMom\u201d does, and they\u2019re only a few years older than my daughters<\/em>.<\/p>\n

The characters in Girls<\/em> take drugs. They \u201chook up\u201d in a manner that makes the casual sex of the 1960s seem like an arranged marriage in Oman. And they drink and they vomit and they drink and they vomit and they drink and they vomit.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s every parent\u2019s nightmare. I had to have a lot to drink before I could get to sleep after watching this show about young people who are only a few years older than my daughters<\/em>.<\/p>\n

[…]<\/p>\n

Consternation has also been caused because Ms. Dunham admits to, as a child, having done with her younger sister what used to be obliquely called \u201cplaying doctor,\u201d leading her to be condemned for trivializing sexual assault.<\/p>\n

And I\u2019m supposed to have an opinion about all this.<\/p>\n

My opinion is that Lena Dunham created and stars in a television series on HBO called Girls<\/em>, about young people who are only a couple of years older than my daughters<\/em>.<\/p>\n

I\u2019m looking into Women-only military schools run by strict nuns for Poppet and Muffin. I think there\u2019s one in the Philippines.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I think it’s safe to say he wasn’t bowled over … at least not in a good way: Ms. Dunham is 28. I was under the impression that \u201cgirls\u201d is a demeaning term for adult women. The title must have something to do with this hipster \u201cIrony\u201d thing, which I confess I don\u2019t understand. The […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[57,28],"tags":[255,101,43],"class_list":["post-29347","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-humour","category-media","tag-sexuality","tag-tv","tag-women"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2hpV6-7Dl","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29347","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=29347"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29347\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":29349,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29347\/revisions\/29349"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=29347"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=29347"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=29347"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}