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Dear David Portnoy: Respect Is Earned, Not Handed Out Like Candy At Halloween [1]

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Date: 2025-06-11

I want credit for not using Portnoy’s Complaint in the headline. Thank you.

David Portnoy sat down with NPR for an interview to explain his vote for Trump and why he thinks men, especially younger men, voted for Trump in higher rates than in the past. It is incredibly whiny. I wouldn’t have accepted this level of whining from my boys when they were toddlers, never mind now. Portnoy’s complaint (okay, I guess I just lost the credit from the headline) is largely that the Democrats don’t respect him enough, that they are mean because he is a man. No, Davey. People don’t give you respect because you have not earned it.

Portnoy seems to think that people are mean to him just because he is a man. In his words “Guys can say a girl is pretty without being sexist”. Yes, yes, they can. Been doing it my entire life. But that’s not what you did, is it? You said, and I quote, “[E]ven though I never condone rape if you’re a size 6 and you’re wearing skinny jeans you kind of deserve to be raped right?” And when confronted about it, said, and, again, I quote, “Correct. I stand by that. I think it's a funny joke”. Ah, little Davey. So polite, so not-sexist. Never mind the harassment of women in his employ or who dislike him, never mind bragging about bringing the c-word back. (And we haven’t even talked about the sex assault allegations) Actually, Davey, and this thought just occurs to me: maybe people wouldn’t think you are a sexists twit if you didn’t say and do sexist things?

Portnoy also brings up his use of the n-word, saying “But different times …. I didn't realize the impact that it would have on some people. I won't do it again. But there is context to things. There's more texture to things. And a lot of times I feel like in this internet age, it has blown out. I mean, that clip still gets used against me. If someone doesn't like me, I hear that every time.” Well, Davey, it might be because you don’t ever apologize for it, not really. The idea that he didn’t realize its impact in the 2010s is ludicrous. I knew that shit was bad when I was a teenager in the 80s. Maybe I was just raised better. But, Davey, you don’t get to say it’s all blown out of context when your apology for it is well, to complain that it’s all blown out of context. Not good, Davey boy, not good. I suspect, and hear me out on this, that you are just mad you got caught. You know, like a toddler.

This last bit is not as serious as the others, but little Davey really seems upset that his success in business hasn’t made him universally loved. He worked hard, you see, and made it, so people should respect him. Davey. C’mon, kid, you should know better than that. First, everyone works hard. This is late-stage capitalism, mate. I paid my way through school working full time at warehouses and factories and all sorts of crap jobs. The average gig worker works a thousand times harder than you ever did. And, of course, when people who work hard try to unionize and claw back some control over the fruits of their labor, little Davey said he’d fire anyone who did the same at his companies. Yep, he tries to pull the ladder up after him and wants us all to respect his hard work. Jerk.

Little Davey wants people to hand respect to him like he was a kid at Halloween, asking for candy. It never even occurs to him that he has to earn respect, that his actions have to be worthy of respect. He is just like a toddler — whiny, demanding, thinks he is the center of the universe, incapable of seeing other people as anything other than objects in his own playground. And that is fine — for a toddler. They aren’t fully grown or socialized. That is what they have parents, siblings, and teachers for — to help them, well, not be toddlers. And that is the most infuriating thing about little Davey’s tantrum.

There are real problems facing men. Schools really have become unwelcoming. places for rambunctious kids, who tend to be boys more often than girls. The loss of well-paying blue-collar work really has hurt men more than women. There really is a culture that encourages men to be reticent and thus encourages loneliness and emotional instability. But the idea that anyone should want to be little Davey Portnoy, a toddler in a man’s body, is ludicrous.

There are solutions to these problems, most of them not hard solutions either. But holding up Portnoy and people like him as an example of masculinity is not going to help. The idea that someone should aspire to be the self-centered, whiny, entitled, toddler that Portnoy so obviously is helps no one. Being a good man, in the abstract, is not that hard. It’s the same for being a good person: work hard, look after people when they need it, be kind, be respectful, take responsibility. In the every day, of course, it can be harder to live up to those ideals. But that’s okay — no one expects anyone else to be perfect, and doing the hard things are what makes you a good person.

Portnoy and his ilk are not men. They are children — badly socialized children. The reason they get no respect is because they have earned no respect. There is no great woke conspiracy holding them back. They just aren’t man enough to do the things that other people find worthy of respect. And that is not going to change, nor should it, until they grow up and start acting like men.

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