Lorena Bobbit’s American Dream

Just somethin i read today. After the incident, Lorena turned down an offer to pose in Playboy for a million dollars. She became an activist working against domestic violence. She remarried, had a kid, brought her family to the US, from Venezuela.

John Wayne Bobbit went straight to Vegas, was arrested for various crimes including wife-beating, girlfriend-beating, and grand larceny. He had penis extension surgery, worked in porn films, had penis-reduction surgery, worked in pro wrestling for the WWE, and supports Donald Trump.

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Lorena Bobbitt’s American Dream
2018
vanity fair:https://www.vanityfair.com/style/2018/06/lorena-bobbitt-john-wayne-bobbitt-25-years
“…….
….There’s a long pause, and then he addresses the subtext of all our conversations: “I didn’t batter Lorena. And those women after Lorena—the ones who were using me, my name, as a stepping-stone—I didn’t batter them, either. I’m a Marine. I’m trained to protect people, not hurt them.”

He’s waiting for me to respond. As I scramble for a way to, it suddenly dawns on me why his eyes unnerved me so that day. They’re Trump’s eyes—small, blue, panicky. In a rush, I realize how much the two have in common: tabloid covers, the Playboy Mansion, WWE, foreign-born wives, pornographic actresses, Howard Stern. It’s beyond that, though. It’s the macho swagger coupled with the crybaby belief that the human race has wronged them, that it’s a witch hunt or that they’ve been framed, fake news and more fake news. No setting goals and reaching them through the steady application of effort; instead, it’s get-rich-quick schemes or, in Trump’s case, stay-rich-quick schemes. Forget cultivating a talent that the world might recognize you for; instead, achieve instant celebrity for being nothing other than yourself. John and Trump are the gold standard for this new kind of fame that started out as a knockoff of real Hollywood fame and has since eclipsed the original, this fame more famous than fame. And yet, much as I hate to admit it, I’m compelled by John, just as I’m compelled by Trump. I admire Lorena for her nose-to-the-grindstone, up-from-the-bootstraps ethic, much as I admire Hillary Clinton for hers. But it makes them feel like figures from a different era, an era I wish wasn’t gone but is. Somehow John and Trump are the primitive men who are, paradoxically, the modern men.

The silence between us stretches. And then John says softly, “You’re not going to victimize me too, are you?”