The original Starbuck finally has a place to let the world zzzzzzzzz...
Oh, I'm sorry. I fell asleep because this guy is so fucking boring.
Fortunately, I was young, my imagination fertile and adrenal glands strong, because bringing Starbuck to life was over the dead imaginations of a lot of Network Executives. Every character trait I struggled to give him was met with vigorous resistance. A charming womanizer? The “Suits” (Network Executives) hated it. A cigar (fumerello) smoker? The Suits hated it. A reluctant hero who found humor in the bleakest of situations? The Suits hated it. All this negative feedback convinced me I was on the right track.
The world is grateful that Dirk Benedict, and Dirk Benedict alone, gave us Starbuck and the original Battlestar Galactica. We must also thank him for the discovery of the airless void known as "space", the little pinpricks of light we call "stars", and also for the Oxford comma. That one was for you, Dirky. And seriously, fuck writers. What did they ever do besides provide logical endings and spell words correctly. Too infinitee and bezond, say all of!
I appreciate that he bravely fought for a wisecracking womanizer with balls of steel. Nobody had ever thought of that. Not once. Beverly Hills nearly burned down when a writer suggested a steely-eyed manly man crack a joke - a joke, I say! - in the middle of a stressful situation.
So we persevered, Starbuck and I. The show, as the saying goes, went on and the rest is history for, lo and behold, women from all over the world sent me boxes of cigars, phone numbers, dinner requests, and marriage proposals.
Excised are several sentences about how he managed to fight for the right to be a walking, smoking penis, which in turn led to his being named head of the United Nations of Tobacco-Scented Pussy.
The Suits were not impressed. They would have their way, which is what Suits do best, and after one season of puffing and flirting and gambling, Starbuck, that loveable scoundrel, was indeed fired. Which is to say, “Battlestar Galactica” was cancelled. Starbuck, however, would not stay cancelled, but simply morphed into another flirting, cigar smoking, blatant heterosexual called Faceman. Another show, another set of Suits, and of course, if The “A-Team” movie rumors prove correct, another remake.
I enjoy a great deal that Starbuck was canceled, because everyone else on the show was apparently a fucking extra. Another reason why conservatives may not be hired in Hollywood: their propensity to declare themselves Emperor for Life of Episode #2B102-3, "Dude Looks Like A Lady". Kind of a dick move.
There was a time, I know I was there, when men were men, women were women and sometimes a cigar was just a good smoke. But 40 years of feminism have taken their toll. The war against masculinity has been won. Everything has turned into its opposite, so that what was once flirting and smoking is now sexual harassment and criminal. And everyone is more lonely and miserable as a result.
[...]
Women are from Venus. Men are from Mars. Hamlet does not scan as Hamletta. Nor does Hans Solo as Hans Sally. Faceman is not the same as Facewoman. Nor does a Stardoe a Starbuck make. Men hand out cigars. Women “hand out” babies. And thus the world for thousands of years has gone’ round.
The part I cut out makes two things obvious. One, he's watched less of the new BSG than I have of his off-Broadway production, Fuckstick Magoo Pop Wang Dookie Dong. Two, Dirk Benedict is a giant sexist and also incredibly bitter about the fact that his supporting star roles have been usurped by writers and actors who think characters have deeper motivations than fucking.
Dirk Benedict has had his legacy supplanted by someone with a vagina. He's a manly man, and as we all know, manly men, rather than accept new developments with grace and class, whine like little babies because someone's taking their dusty old toy and playing with it. Benedict thinks he's been emasculated, while making it obvious that he had little to emasculate. The qualities he thought he embodied because he walked around chewing on a phallic symbol and hamhandedly spouting "clever" dialogue to sparkle-clad space women were the manliness of props. He knew he was a man, and still is a man, because he dressed like it and acted like it - "it" being what he thought a man should be, all bravado and cigars. However, he's an insecure child, lost and alone because someone has a cooler, shinier bike, and all the other kids are crowding around them now instead of him.
People like Benedict offend me because they walk around feeling victimized by everyone who doesn't cover themselves in the shiny patina of man-worship. They're constantly hurting because their cover for their insecurity doesn't work at all times in all places, and so they lash out. They lash out at women who break the mold of worshiping them for demoting females to the level of trash, and they lash out at men who don't want to walk around all the time like their entire self-worth is wrapped up in their erection. Mine, for instance, is totally wrapped up in my XBox Live Achievements.
Benedict has determined that one of the deepest shows on television, one that explores sacrifice, despair, hope, loyalty and a dozen other deep emotions that make us men and women and whoever else we are, is an offense to an entire gender because a better actor than him in a better show than his is a woman. And also doesn't chew up scenery like she's the goddamn Hamburglar and the ships are made of Big Macs.
Get a life. Better yet, get a job.
