"Nice Guy" Finishes Last ..... In Poetry!

And the "Worst Reworking Of A Martin Niemoller Poem" Award goes to....


......THIS GUY.


(Courtesy of Ami and later Thom.)


Some guy named Joe Tom Collins felt so beleaguered by his role of "Nice Guy" that he compared his plight to that of a Nazi Holocaust survivor. Worse, he cannibalizes this poem by an ACTUAL Holocaust survivor to do it. Here's Joe Tom's version:


When the Feminists came for the Rapists,

I remained silent;
I was not a Rapist.



When they locked up the stalkers,
I remained silent;
I was not a stalker.




When they came for the Players,
I did not speak out;
I was not a Player.




When they came for the men who they got bored of,
I remained silent;
I wasn’t a some one they were bored of yet.




When they came for me, the nice guy,
there was no one left to speak out.



If Black Lantern rings really existed, I'd want one to land on Martin Niemoller's grave so that he'd rise up from the dead and slap the shit out of this clown.


Man, I don't know where to start:


1. Feminists have a standing army with law enforcement powers? When did THIS happen? Do they also have laser satellites?


2. Given #1, wouldn't punishing all the rapists while sparing the non-rapist men be a GOOD THING?


Look, Joe-Tom-Whatever. It's a simple equation: More rapists locked up = Fewer rapists on the street = Fewer women, children, and even men raped = Safer living conditions = Win.


Without rapists, there would be less general distrust of the rest of men, which might help even YOUR chances of getting a date or even just talking to women. See how that works? And that's just covering the purely selfish end alone. Got any female loved ones, Joe-Tom? Sisters, mothers, platonic friends, whatever? Any whom you might worry about? Think how not being afraid would benefit THEM, too. You worry less about their safety, and they worry less about their safety, because they ARE safer. Win-win all around.


If all the rapists in the world got locked up, provided they received due process, I wouldn't be silent. I'd be yelling "Drinks are on me!!!"


3. Ditto for stalkers?


4. The continuum he uses (rapists=> stalkers=> etc.) completely misses the point of Niemoller's original poem. Take it from a fan of the original poem: Me. A few years back, I had even begun writing a post (since aborted) titled "First They Came For The Manga Collectors" in response to the arrest of Christopher Handley. Here's the thing: The whole point of the poem is that every group on the continuum is unjustly targeted for prosecution and/or persecution when in fact they have not harmed or threatened harm to anybody. It works for Handley's case because his manga collection did not harm or exploit actual children, yet he was prosecuted as if it had.


But rapists and stalkers? They ARE inflicting or threatening harm on others. And if you sympathize or identify with them, you might as well tear up your "nice guy" card, because you're NOT a real one.


Also, compare the punishments that Niemoller and Handley received versus the "oppression" that poor put-upon Joe Tom has to undergo. Niemoller spent 7-8 years in Nazi concentration camps. Handley went to jail. Being called a whiner, or being told "let's just be friends" or even "get lost, creep"? Not the same! Not the same!


5. Oh, I get it! The original poem is about NAZIS, and he's railing about FEMI-NAZIS! Just like Rush Limbaugh! Sounds like he's been dipping into Limbaugh's Oxycontin stash, too.


6. I notice the succession is rapists, then stalkers, and then it jumps straight to players. What about batterers, molesters, serial gropers, and sexual harassers, to name a few categories that are worse than "players"? Totally omitted. Falling down on the job there, Feminist-Army-In-Joe-Tom's-Head!


7. Being a player is ILLEGAL now? Really?


8. Also, why are "Rapists" and "Players" capitalized, but "stalkers" isn't?


9. By the way, he couldn't come up with a better tumblr design than the "facebook" template? How imaginative! No wonder women find him boring.


10. Speaking of which, using Joe-Tom's own internal logic, wouldn't "the men who whom they got bored of with" and "the nice guy" be ONE AND THE SAME??


11. Another thing women like? Guys with a grasp of spelling and grammar. You might want to employ the "spell check".


12. To prove that even a stopped clock gets the correct time twice a day, there's an actual kernel of a valid point in Joe-Tom's post. Men DO tend to get unfairly stereotyped too frequently. Even the attached cartoon itself  about "nice guys" is rife with unfair generalizations and assumptions. (Any guy who makes the "nice guy" complaint is spineless, manipulative, and has weight and hygiene issues? Really?) However, Joe-Tom: Your bitter, misogynist, meandering screed? REALLY. NOT. HELPING.




Look, I get it. I wasn't always married or blessed with a steady girlfriend. The single world can be a frustrating and often less-than-equitable place..... for all genders. And, being only human, we all, men and women, have vented our frustrations with the opposite sex (or the same sex) on occasion while we were single, often while heavily consuming liquor and/or food. I'll be frank: Many guys, myself included, have visited the "women don't like nice guys" castle at some point when they were single. The operative word, though, is "visited". The problem is when you live there.


Judging by his tumblr, not only is Joe Tom living there, he's also adding annexes. And they're clearly not up to code.