A Serb makes a good wife: she can pull the cart out of mud.

March 29, 2017 2:16 PM

On "Eastern European Women", by Jasmina Tesanovic on BoingBoing.
posted by bq (7 comments total)

RAI TV is pretty terrible.
posted by infinitewindow at 2:47 PM on March 29, 2017

Strong like tractor!
posted by Mental Wimp at 3:44 PM on March 29, 2017

one of those small and awful “frozen conflict” zones, where your ethnicity doesn’t even have any proper nation for foreigners to get stereotypical about

Whoof. (Black Lamb, Grey Falcon and Between the Woods and the Water and Go Down, Moses and...)
posted by clew at 5:10 PM on March 29, 2017 [1 favorite]

Most of the current American President’s harem women have a Balkan air about them, even American-born Ivanka, the daughter / heiress who seems to be managing the Washington palace while the current wife keeps her head down in her gilded skyscraper in New York.

That's a sicker burn than most US media has managed, and it's only one sentence!
posted by GenjiandProust at 5:22 PM on March 29, 2017 [6 favorites]

"vipers"?
posted by thelonius at 5:39 PM on March 29, 2017

There's an old joke about a lonely hearts ad in rural England: "Devon farmer seeks wife with tractor. Please send photo of tractor."
posted by Paul Slade at 1:27 AM on March 30, 2017 [2 favorites]

Imma take issue with two points from this article.

RAI is second to none in kitsch, misogyny and casually racist sexism, but those values go unchallenged because Italian national TV is a closed moral universe.

Wrong. RAI comes in second place to Mediaset's misogyny and casually racist sexism. The kitsch might be a tie.

Hell has no fury like someone’s national womanhood scorned, so TV mayhem broke out over this Italian RAI TV talk show. The commentator got promptly fired from the focussed social-media rage of vengeful Italian netizens, and even her boss was purged and her show was cancelled. Italian women certainly don’t care for invidious comparisons.

Um, no. The majority of the outrage I saw wasn't "How dare you compare us to those X women." but "How dare you reduce women to such outdated stereotypes." Extra outrage whammy that it was on the state-run RAI and not on the private Berlusconiset BungaBungaSet Mediaset. Women in Italy of all nationalities deal with fairly heavy misogyny daily, but this was so exaggerated and blatant as to hit a definite collective nerve. Personally, I have a sneaking suspicion this was done to stir up some attention and it rightfully, spectacularly blew up in their faces.
posted by romakimmy at 4:09 AM on March 30, 2017 [2 favorites]