AFFotD Takes on the Women’s Christian Temperance Union

“I mean, you can run with this, but it better not devolve into a whole thing calling individual women ugly or anything.”

~Johnny Roosevelt

Okay listen, by this point you know the deal.  If you drink and can at least hollowly echo our dislike of French people, we’ll get along fine.  Hell, even if you don’t drink but are like “fuck the French” we’ll not actively dislike you (but lord knows we won’t trust you).  But if you want to piss us off, you actively try to stop people from drinking.  Or, you know, try to save baby seals or whatever.  Fuck nature, they had enough chances, this isn’t Wall Street, we’re not here to bail out idiot penguins that didn’t realize that we were shuttling oil through a dangerous sea passage.

Yeah, FUCK you, penguins.

All that being said, we try not to talk about hot button issues necessarily.  Especially religion.  Because religion will breed conversations between zealots and assholes (yeah we’re looking at you, people who make a “flying spaghetti monster” joke as soon as someone mentions church) and no one wants that.  Which is why, when an intrepid reader pointed us to this site, we were hesitant to talk shit.  At first.  We saw “Women’s Christian” in the title and said, “hold up.”  We don’t want to get into religious discussions, and we really don’t want to be viewed as misogynistic, so we were hesitant to “tear this site apart and see what final stroke will finally kill it” as our reader suggested.  But then we read “Temperance Union” and just three neat whiskeys and one Wikipedia search later, we were enraged.

Not only are these damn Jesus bitches trying to stop us from drinking…well , no, that’s the main reason why we have an issue with them.  That and the fact that their webmaster must have died in an unfortunate geocities mudslide back in 1998 because, goddamn, just look at this screenshot.

Look, we have these “intelligent phones” the youths are using nowadays!

So the gloves are off.  We’re not even declaring a blog war here, we’re starting a real life war, because these people will not be allowed to touch our booze.  No siree.  So get ready, as…

AFFotD Takes on the Women’s Christian Temperance Union

 

So where to begin with this train wreck of bad ideas, flawed principals, and weird assumptions that the people viewing the site somehow have never had opportunity or motive to download Adobe?

Uh…Thanks WCTU?

We’ll get started with their “Issues of Concern” because clearly they’re going to be against things that science will say is awesome.  And sure enough, right off the bat, “Alcohol” is number one on their list, with five points that, together, have the coherence of Muhammad Ali after a stroke.  We’re going to go through these point by point, and stay tuned because this is absolutely not going to be the only list we have in this article to make fun of the Women’s Christian Temperance Union and their absurd website.

Reason One:  AMOUNT IN EACH SERVING OF BEER, WINE, WINE COOLER, AND WHISKEY

This is what the first point of this segment tells us and, oh cute, they think people actually drink wine coolers.  That’s cute.  It also links to this graphic from the 1980’s that goes all “stern voice” to tell us that any serving of alcohol is just as damaging as another (which is totally not true, because wine coolers chemically castrate males who drink them, and are by far the most damaging, being responsible for more vasectomies and castrations than a Lorena Bobbitt).

Reason Two:  ITS EFFECTS ON THE BRAIN

Right when you think that every single point of these must also be links, this point comes in… and that’s all.  There’s no explanation, no hotlink, it’s just assuming that you’ll take that sentence fragment and run with it.  It’s like a friend subtly trying to tell you that they heard your significant other sleeps around, and they go, “So, he/she seems to know some interesting people…” as their voice trails off, and you’re supposed to come to your own conclusion about what they’re trying to say.  And if that’s the case, we’re just going to assume that alcohol affects the brain by making it more awesome.  Because alcohol is awesome.  You just got logic-ed, WCTU.

Reason Three:  FAS/FAE

The shit is that?  That’s just letters and slashes.  There’s a link to it.  But we’re not going to click it.  Because it’s probably depressing.  What’s that?  You say you agree that it sounds depressing, because it’s probably about Fetal Alcohol Syndrome?  And it’d be impossible for us to find a way to make fun of how the Woman’s Christian Temperance Union portrays Fetal Alcohol Syndrome, and we’d be monsters for even trying.  Challenge accepted.  Here’s what this thing hotlinks us to.

Holy shit!  We had no idea that FAS makes babies yawn.  That’s awful.  Also the Woman’s Christian Temperance Union.  The WCTU is awful.  They’re the worst.  They’re like the yawning-baby-suffering-from-fetal-alcohol-syndrome of political parties.

Reason Four:  THE SAFE CHOICE – TOTAL ABSTINENCE

No link for this one.  We can only assume it’s because they’ve found no evidence that avoiding alcohol entirely is actually safe.  It probably isn’t.  Did you know that every single serial killer never once tasted a good beer?  Probably?

Reason Five:  ALCOHOL #1 DRUG PROBLEM

At a certain point you have to wonder how much the Women’s Christian Temperance Union actually wants people to take them seriously.  Yes, this hotlinks to some copy/paste job from an American Medical Association report from fucking 1989 that’s basically the equivalent of “drugs are bad, mmkay” but seriously, take some pride in the wording in your goddamn hyperlinks.  At least when we write retarded sounding sentences that are missing verbs, we’re drunk.  What’s your excuse, WCTU?

Of course there are other issues of concern for the Woman’s Christian Temperance Union.  Like their permanent virginity.  Zing!  Ha ha, no man will ever attempt to sexually please them.  Anyway.  They seem to take umbrage with Tobacco, pointing out that 1- “The effects of smoking and chewing (snuff)”, 2- “Our Awareness of this problem since 1875,” and 3- “We really like sentence fragments that don’t tell you anything, and we like committing hate crimes on homosexuals” (full disclosure- that third point might not actually be on the website, but it’s implied).

They move on to illegal drugs, such as Hemp and…wait, Hemp?   Let’s click the helpful link and… really, WCTU?  You call pot “Hemp”?  Did you accidentally walk through a wormhole that brought you to our time from the 1950’s?  Oh, holy shit, you did?  Never mind then, we’re sorry we even brought it up.  Just trust us when we say, the first time you do a “google image search” make sure that safesearch is on.

You have no idea.  You have NO idea.

They additionally do not like Gambling, warning us that “Our Awareness of this problem goes back over 100 years” (…okay), and they don’t like Pornography (“Enlisting the support of parents and the community to define and eliminate this problem” which makes us think that, if they’re trying to “define” pornography, they’re probably looking at it wrong) or “Websites” (Goddamn it, the person in charge of copy for this site needed to be fired in 1993).

We’ve only scratched the surface of this site.  For example, here’s what you see on the page for “Citizenship.”

We’re not sure if it’s racist to assume that the only members of the Women’s Christian Temperance Union are 45 year old white ladies, but either way, we don’t think it’s cool of them to be hating on Snoop like that.  Because, and we’re going to go on record by saying this, we’re pretty sure Snoop Dog is not going around trying to get “urban youths” to buy “alcopops.”  We didn’t even know that he was selling “alchopop.”  Truth be told, we were kind of disappointed when we found out it wasn’t an alcoholic lollipop, and instead was just Colt 45’s version of Four Loko.  Eh.  Find a better cause, WCTU, yours is boring.

Of course, continuing through this site, it becomes less “..r…racist?” and more “..s…Sandusky?”  Especially when we get to the WCTU Young People’s Video Theater.  We’re saying this without having seen a single video on this page, but we’re 75% sure that if you are a registered sex offender and you go to this page, you’ve officially broken parole.  Because um…ummmm…

ummmmmm……

UMMMMMMMMMMMM…

First of all, you know how when you’re in a conversation and someone refers to a Jewish person as “Jew” and…it just sounds awkward?  Like, you know it wasn’t meant to be insulting or negative…but it sort of feels like it is?  Well that’s how we feel about them talking about the “Internet active youth.”  Why are they constantly using the word “youth” to describe “young people”?  That’s…it comes off as creepy, right?  Sandusky?  Right?  At least we finally found where we can email the webmaster of this travesty of a website and let her know what we think of the whole site…

We don’t really have much else to say about the awfulness of this group, of their website, and of all that they stand for…except for this segment where we are going to post the pictures of every single past president of the organization and deride them for their appearance, because while we don’t like being sexist and  (we admit) a bit chauvinist, it’s not that we think it’s socially acceptable to devote thousands of words insulting various women’s physical appearance.  Quite the opposite, in fact.  We just don’t believe teetotalers are people.

First of all, we’d like to introduce you to the current president of the WCTU, Mrs. Doubtfire Rita Wert.

Can’t you just imagine her with shaving cream covering her face going “Helloooooo”?  Do you think she’s going to get her kids back from Pierce Brosnan and Sally Field?  Since she’s president of a group that’s also against tobacco, it makes sense why she was re-writing the dialogue when she was trying to do a voice for that animated mouse that was smoking in that opening scene, right?  We’re trying to say that this woman looks like Mrs. Doubtfire, and it’s actually pretty fucking uncanny.

By the way, if you ever imagine her in the act of physical lovemaking, you medically will be unable to achieve an erection for 2 years.  Sorry to do that to you.

But now that we’ve got that future law suit on the books, let’s start from the beginning of this terrible organization.

Annie Turner Wittenmyer:  1874-1879

You know how certain stereotypical Italian grandmothers are like, short and fiery and speak in a thick accent and say “fuck” a lot?  And you know how once in a blue moon that kind of grandma is also really humorless and you know she absolutely used to beat the shit out of your parent when they were growing up, but it’s never been explicitly said that any beatings occurred?  But you know they totally did?  This is that terrifying shrew of a grandmother.  Every member of our office has an instinctive hatred of this woman and we never once had her tell us to “eat the fucking salad before I slap you hard on the dick.”  Because she’s totally said that.  Lots.

Frances E. Willard:  1879-1898

 

Frances Willard seriously sucks.  Like, okay, she was the first dean of women at Northwestern University, and yeah she was really good with like women’s rights and…  Ugh.  Fine, she did some okay stuff, but she doesn’t earn any points for being in Charge of the Women’s Crazy Temperance Uptightladies.  We’re just saying, she’s part of the reason why booze was eventually made illegal in this country for a bit (shhh, shh, don’t think about it, shhh) and from this angle she sort of looks like a parrot.

Lillian M. N. Stevens:  1898-1914

 

“Oh man, I had to go to Ms. Steven’s office after class today.”

“Oh God, Ms. Stevens?  What a frigid ice queen.”

“I know, right?  Of everyone I’ve ever met, I think she enjoys life the least.  I can’t imagine someone being so spiteful and mean.”

“She needs to get laid is what she needs.”

“Haha, that’s so fucking gross, dude.  Could you imagine?  Eww!”

Anna Adams Gordon:  1914-1925

So you know how they say that alcohol makes you think women are more attractive?  Like, beer goggles?  We’re gonna go one step further- if you ever drink alcohol, you automatically become more attractive.  Because so far we’ve not seen a single Women’s Christian Temperance Union member who has been even remotely “attractive” or “not manish.”

Ella Alexander Boole:  1925-1933

Very funny, guys, who took the wealthy socialite that gets hit in the face by a whipped cream pie chucked by one of the Three Stooges and made her picture say that she was the head of the WCTU for eight years?  Come on guys, we’re not mad, we think it’s funny, just fess up.

Ida Belle Wise Smith:  1933-1944

Dammit, and we used to love watching Murder She Wrote.  By far our favorite show taking place in the state of Maine.  Now it’s ruined for us.  Absolutely ruined.

Mamie White Colvin:  1944-1953

 

1981 movie pitchman:  “Okay, so what we do is, we come up with this story, let’s say it’s about 1944, America’s in World War II, and we have John Belushi trying to avoid going to war.  So, get this, he dresses in drag and infiltrates the Women’s Christian Temperance Union, knowing that no man would try to touch their members sexually so he’d be able to stay in hiding without being exposed.  But then he becomes their president!  Of the group!  For like, nine years!  And has to stay as a woman and be sober that whole time, and it totally sucks!”

Movie executive:  “I like all of it, except for the whole Temperance thing.  That sounds like the worst group ever to exist.  Let’s get Dustin Hoffman instead, set it in present day, and make it about an actor in drag as an actress in a soap opera.”

Agnes Dubbs Hays:  1953-1959

Didn’t Eisenhower used to dress in drag?  No?  That was Hoover?  Well too bad, we’re going with the Eisenhower-look-a-like joke.

Ruth Tibbits Tooze:  1959-1974

*The scene:  AFFotD Conference room, a dozen AFFotD writers and employees huddled around a table.  In the middle of the table is a large picture of RUTH TIBBITS TOOZE.  JOHNNY ROOSEVELT clears his throat*

JOHNNY ROOSEVELT:  Okay guys, here’s the picture.  She was the head of this whack job anti-drinking group for like 15 years.  She looks sorta like a Velociraptor seeing a chicken walk in front of its path.  What do we got?

KEIFER SUTHERLAND WHO ARE WE KIDDING JACK BAUER:  How about something like, she looks her DNA is comprised of 10 year old stale hard candies left in a candy dish for when her grandchildren never visits.  Like, is it possible for someone to genetically be not “Human” but some sort of hybrid between human and “Bowl of uneaten candy that only emphasize your loneliness as you sit in your nursing home”?

HARRISON FORD:  Okay, maybe something with that.  I was gonna go with the fact that if you take the T out of her name and replace it with a B, her name is “Booze.”  There’s gotta be room for some like, ironic humor there, right?

DANE COOK:  HEY GUYS PENIS!

ROOSEVELT:  Shit, how’d he get past our security again?

COOK:  YOU MIGHT SAY I WAS “APPREHENDED” BY YOUR GUARDS AND I HAD TO “MASTICATE” MY WAY OUT OF MY “RESTRAINTS!”  PENIS! DOUBLE MIDDLE FINGERRRRRRR!

FORD:  Oh my god, look at all that blood, the crazy coked out bastard gnawed off his hands.  Gnawed off his own goddamn hands, like a wolf stuck in a goddamn bear trap.

COOK:  HEY THAT LADY SORT OF LOOKS LIKE SHE JUST FINISHED PUTTING A SPATULA IN HER SNATCH!

ROOSEVELT:  …Goddamn it, he’s right.

Edith Kirkendall Stanley:  1974-1980

Fuck, is it too late to take back our Mrs. Doubtfire joke and use it here?  It is?  Damn.

Martha Greer Edgar:  1980-1988

Ugh, what a smug looking bitch.  You see it too, right?

Rachel Catherine Bubar Kelly: 1988-1996

Rachel Kelly sounds like it should be the name of an attractive person, right?  Like, a bikini model who drinks but not as much as she’d like to because, you know, gotta stay thin for the business.  Sure she knows it’s got a shelf life, but she’s gonna enjoy the work and the attention until her body starts to become a little less reliable by her late 20s/early 30s.  You’d think that someone with the name Rachel Kelly would look like that.

Instead, we got this grandmotherly looking woman with a head that’s just a bit too round for comfort.  Also, if you notice, the official picture they use for her on the WCTU site is just a hint out of focus.  Just enough to make you think that if you stare into the flash reflection in her obnoxiously thick glasses for long enough it might just steal your soul.  No stop looking!  Noooooo!

Sarah Ward:  1966-2006

AGHHH!  Jesus Christ, we did not expect that.  Like, if “Scary looking sober ladies” were works of art, this would be like the Mona Lisa of scary looking sober ladies.  She’s got the haircut that makes it look like she’s wearing a wig (unless she’s actually wearing a wig in which case, haha, oh God, we’re assholes).  Her teeth help prove our long held assumptions that alcohol actually cleans your teeth.  The glasses, which actually could look stylish if you turned them into sunglasses and put them on a crazy-but-hot girl.  The shirt…is that the pirate shirt from Seinfeld?  Right?  God, you temperance ladies are a mess.

Rita Kaye Wert:  2006-present

So there you have it, ladies and gentlemen.  Now you know that, apparently, the Women’s Christian Temperance Union still exists (you were surprised, admit it), you know that we are able to spend 3,000 words insulting it, and you learned that we can be kind of dicks when describing women who are not viewed to be conventionally attractive (but only if they try to stop people from drinking liquor).  And you also know that our writers wrote this entire article while hungover out of our mind, having just woken up from our Christmas office party.  And yes, we appreciate the irony there.