I’d been meaning to write on Spencer Morgan’s New York Observer article Rrrowl! Beware Cougar’s Young Niece, The Cheetah for several days. Luckily, my recent bout with insomnia has provided the opportunity. Now, I suppose I could just stop writing at this point, since the title is bad enough, but the article sinks to levels that I found appalling.
I guess I could also dismiss the ravings of Mr. Morgan as someone desperately trying to sound young and hip, but he doesn’t deserve a pass. He deserves to be grounded – an appropriate punishment, in my opinion, given his mental age.
When I read articles like this, articles that portray women as desperate hunters and men as their helpless prey, I can’t help but think that these poor “men” are simply the weakest of the herd. That is, after all, the law of the jungle. Actually, it would appear, given the snippet below, that the men who escape the “cheetah” are pretty impotent as well…
“I can barely stand,” Seth said, swaying innocently on the soggy sidewalk. (Seth’s a gentleman and asked that I change the names and obscure certain details in unfurling the horrors that so thoroughly furled him that night, in order to protect the honor of a woman.) He was 24 at the time, a magazine writer.
Joel said, “O.K., I think he needs to go home.”
Dana, who was 29, said, “Let’s go get another drink!”
“I wanna go home,” Seth warbled.
“O.K., I’ll take him home,” Dana said.Joel gave Seth a “WTF?” look and said, “I’ll take him home.”
“Don’t worry about it,” Dana said, hailing a cab and then bundling Seth inside.
“I woke up with a condom still on my dick,” he told me.
Wow, Joel’s a real stand-up guy. With friends like him watching your back…
I also love the “Seth’s a gentlemen” line. Why not “Seth’s an earthworm” since he displays all the same characteristics?
And it seems Mr. Morgan just can’t help himself when it comes to slapping insulting labels on women. Check out this line: MUCH HAS BEEN made of the so-called cougar, the older dame, early 40s on up, who has developed a taste for the younger man-beast.
Older dame and animal reference in the same sentence. Priceless. But Mr. Morgan is afraid, so afraid he needs to double up on punctuation…
Good God, I thought, how many of my fellow men are at risk at this very moment?!
Good God, indeed. Is it just me, or are the number of articles like this growing? And this piece just gets worse and worse with lines like…
He added that the cheetah was not necessarily unattractive but that for some reason or another, she was not aware of her attractiveness. That said, the cheetah he had in mind was notorious for looking dreadful without her makeup on and, as with Dana, working her way through his friend group.
Notorious for looking dreadful without her makeup? With standards like these is anyone surprised by the women these guys are attracting? Seriously, if you (man or woman) find yourself in this sort of situation it’s time to look in the mirror.
All that said, I’ve saved the best line for last. Everyone sitting down?
New-media mogul and man-about-town Lockhart Steele is part of that friend group. He rightly pointed out that the cheetah isn’t just looking for whatever carcass she can haul out of the bar—incidentally, cheetahs are one of the few animals that will not eat carrion—but rather it is about women past the first flush of youth wanting to date or at least fuck “above their station.”
Where, oh where, to begin? Love the “man-about-town” description, especially since it reinforces the idea that cheetahs are hunting men “above their station.” And… could someone explain to me how someone in their twenties is past the first flush of youth? How young do these guys want their women girls? Frankly, the entire article is creepy. And I wouldn’t let Mr. Morgan, or his band of merry men, near my daughter – since she’s a teenager and obviously not past her shelf life.