Archive for the ‘Sexism’ Category
War On Women Wisconsin Edition: Slut Shaming Is Okay When Feminists Do It
Monday, April 16th, 2012
Governor Scott Walker’s campaign spokeswoman Ciara Matthews finds herself on the receiving end of misogyny by feminists and leftist press.
Her crime? She waited tables at Hooters while going to college. Steven Elbow asks the penetrating question:
But to the direct question: Were you a Hooters girl? She said, “I was.”
Matthews said she waited tables for the popular restaurant chain — which features tasty chicken wings and waitresses in short shorts and low-cut tops –- while attending college at the University of Nevada-Las Vegas.
“So you guys want to write a story that I waited tables in college,” she said. “I’m confused as to why that’s a story.”
Well, she may have a point. What makes news is not always easy to pinpoint. But as we say in the biz: You know it when you see it. [Emphasis added.] And with a recall election looming in which she will often be front-and-center as Walker battles to keep his job, details that might otherwise be ignored become interesting.
Like porn? So, working at Hooters is like story porn? That’s the allusion that this writer made:
The phrase was famously used by United States Supreme Court Justice Potter Stewart to describe his threshold test for pornography in Jacobellis v. Ohio (1964). Obscenity is not protected speech under the Miller test, and can therefore be censored.
I shall not today attempt further to define the kinds of material I understand to be embraced within that shorthand description ["hard-core pornography"]; and perhaps I could never succeed in intelligibly doing so. But I know it when I see it, and the motion picture involved in this case is not that. [Emphasis added.]
—Justice Potter Stewart, concurring opinion in Jacobellis v. Ohio 378 U.S. 184 (1964), regarding possible obscenity in The Lovers.
The expression became “one of the most famous phrases in the entire history” of the Supreme Court.[1
Nice.
But that’s just the beginning. Jezebel publishes a provocative picture of Ciara. Because, you know, conservative women get what’s coming to them.
And Ciara’s story comes on the heels of feminists doubling down on attacking Ann Romney.
Bill Maher gets in on the act.
Oh, and don’t forget Amanda Marcotte and the feminists over at Pandagon. Some women are more equal than others, just ask Amanda.
And then there’s Time Magazine’s Judith Warner piling on Ann Romney, too. Her implication is laughable. As though, she, Judith Warner, is somehow more touch with the suffering masses than Ann Romney.
And finally, because what would your day be like without Roseanne Barr’s opinion, the comedienne weighs in. It’s what you’d expect. More privilege bashing from a woman who is unbelievably privileged.
On the positive side, one feminist, Wendy S. Goffe at Forbes, said this:
I thought of all this when the news broke recently about Democratic strategist Hilary Rosen’s comment that Ann Romney “never worked a day in her life.”
I don’t know Ann Romney, but as a working mom, I don’t know how she found the time to raise five children. And by the way, Ann Romney has multiple sclerosis. Her life sure sounds a lot harder than going to an office, where someone else makes the coffee, and I know my daughter is well cared for by a nanny that is the closest thing to Mary Poppins in the 21st century.
As a Democrat, I am simply embarrassed by that comment. Rightly distancing himself from Hilary Rosen, President Obama came to Ann Romney’s defense, and the defense of all stay-at-home moms, saying that “there’s no tougher job than being a mom. . . Anybody who would argue otherwise, I think, probably needs to rethink their statement.” I am proud to have a president who is in touch with his constituents, regardless of political party or appearances.
I also feel privileged to have the job that I do and the ability to hire a nanny. Frankly, I don’t have the skills to raise five children.
Many liberals are wholly hypocritical about how they treat conservative women–whether they’re young, beautiful up-and-comer working outside the home women or middle-aged, working inside the home moms.
They hate conservative women and attacks are fair game.
That’s too bad because it seems to be the opposite of what the Women’s Movement was supposed to be about.
Says Goffe:
None of us lead the lives our appearance suggests. We each lie in bed at night with our personal terrors as to what life could be, or about what life is like right now, and whether we have the strength to get through it. Clothes and money rarely can make that go away.
The women’s movement loses all credibility with it’s “choices for me, but not for thee” and creating the abortion litmus test.
When conservative women are destroyed because they dissent from popular feminist opinion, all women lose. Why can’t liberal women see this?
Thanks for the links Hot Air (Ed has more at the link about the Wisconsin tax deal and recall election), Insty, and Ann Althouse.
Pinterest Is Sexist….Against Women Says Forbes Feminist
Wednesday, April 11th, 2012
Pinterest is sexist….against women. Seriously, that’s the position of Victoria Pynchon who says:
Pinterest Frames Women’s Interests within Tight Gender Boundaries
Go on over to Pinterest and try to find a category for business, marketing, management, entrepreneurism, politics, activism, reproductive choices, negotiation, finance, investing, law, consulting, journalism, or pretty much anything having to do with women working for a living.
This is, in a word, ridiculous.
Go to Barnes-N-Noble and what do you see? Racks of home improvement, cooking, house and garden, and fashion porn. That’s right, porn. It’s fantasy for the average woman, who comes home to her crappy couch and Hamburger Helper.
Where does she come home from? Work. What does she read because the last thing she wants to do is watch the news and/or think about business? Traditional Home, Better Homes & Garden, or in my bigwig President of a division at a Fortune 500 corporation sister: Rolling Stone (I know, I don’t get it either) and Conde Nast Travel or something.
What’s in these magazines? Beautiful pictures, mostly. Some human interest stories. Tips for living.
Why, just like Pinterest!
Yesterday, President Obama’s Pinterest team pinned some garbage about how awesome he is and so I trolled the pins. I linked to the truth. I disputed on a factual basis. No one disputed the facts, mind you. They disputed whether I should be talking about politics.
“Pinterest is a happy place,” one pinner said.
Okay then.
I’m figuring that Pinterest has done tons of market research and knows exactly what women want. Just as random porn sites know exactly what men want.
Is this a gross overgeneralization? Of course.
I noticed the constrained categories on Pinterest, too. Eh. I’ve worked around them. I have a Best Practices business page. I have a Tech Talk page. I have an America the Beautiful page. And then there’s the Politics of Freedom page.
They have lots of followers. My recipes page has more. Yes, I’ve used some of them–even women who own a couple business have to eat, and horrors! might like to cook.
What seems sexist to me is that a woman would consider a site dedicated to what most women consider interesting discriminatory.
After years of attempted gender reconstruction, and after years of women working (and nearly 80% of women do), women are still wired as women. That is, what stimulates them visually is, say, different than men. And that’s okay.
Being a girly girl is okay. I say that as a woman who has always liked “guy stuff” more–Google search metrics pegged me as a 50 to 60 year old man interested in technology and politics.
What bothers me is that to be a feminist, one cannot have traditionally feminine interests without being perceived as “less than”. Who is discriminating again?
If the majority of women like gardening, cooking, home improvement, kids crafts, and fashion, what do I care? Really? Why in the world should the difference bother any other woman?
I suggest the tomboys among us embrace Pinterest. It’s finally a female-dominated social media platform. It’s beautiful in form. It’s aspirational in substance.
Pinterest has the men joining in droves, too. As the demographics even out, categories will probably be added. Why? Because the market demands it.
It’s not discrimination. It’s Marketing 101 in practice.
But really, if men have to submit their boards to categories of the Matriachy’s standards, is that so bad?
Updated:
My friend Adrienne Royer says this:
There’s so much stupid here, I don’t know where to begin.
1. Pinterest is still in beta. You MUST ASK FOR AN INVITATION. The women who are there are there because they want to be. Pink, lace and pretty houses aren’t being forced down their throats.
2. You’d think a writer at Forbes could do some research. Pinterest was started by a group of guys. Unless these men miraculously understand women better than any XY chromosome in history, the adoption of the site by women was purely accidental.
In fact, Pinterest was started to be an idea board for creative thought leaders. The main founder has a degree in architecture and worked at Facebook. He was into design, typography and photography. He thought the site would take off in the creative class.
The way women have taken to it has shocked everyone, including Silicon Valley.
3. The real story isn’t that Pinterest isn’t forcing the patriarchy down our throats. The real story is that women love social networks, the ability to share information that is vetted by trusted people and the ability to research. The real story is how Silicon Valley is still a boy’s world and women are pretty much shut out. Right now, there are all kinds of venture capitalists scratching their heads and wondering how Pinterest became some popular because none of them ever thought about designing a social network that would draw women.
Why aren’t they harping on that?
Bill Maher’s Selective Outrage Over Outrage
Thursday, March 22nd, 2012
Bill Maher, liberal, pretend libertarian and over all, failed comic, decides, finally, that the outrage over, well, everything, has finally all become too much. From his editorial in today’s New York Times:
When did we get it in our heads that we have the right to never hear anything we don’t like? In the last year, we’ve been shocked and appalled by the unbelievable insensitivity of Nike shoes, the Fighting Sioux, Hank Williams Jr., Cee Lo Green, Ashton Kutcher, Tracy Morgan, Don Imus, Kirk Cameron, Gilbert Gottfried, the Super Bowl halftime show and the ESPN guys who used the wrong cliché for Jeremy Lin after everyone else used all the others. Who can keep up?
This week, President Obama’s chief political strategist, David Axelrod, described Mitt Romney’s constant advertising barrage in Illinois as a “Mittzkrieg,” and instantly the Republican Jewish Coalition was outraged and called out Mr. Axelrod’s “Holocaust and Nazi imagery” as “disturbing.” Because the message of “Mittzkrieg” was clear: Kill all the Jews. Then the coalition demanded not only that Mr. Axelrod apologize immediately but also that Representative Debbie Wasserman Schultz “publicly rebuke” him. For a pun! For punning against humanity!
The right side of America is mad at President Obama because he hugged the late Derrick Bell, a law professor who believed we live in a racist country, 22 years ago; the left side of America is mad at Rush Limbaugh for seemingly proving him right.
If it weren’t for throwing conniption fits, we wouldn’t get any exercise at all.
Please stop apologizing, Maher implores.
Here’s how the right’s outrage machine got started Mr. Maher–just for your edification. (I will admit, I worried about this tactic for fear it would stop being ironic and become the New Right’s political correctness.)
See, for years, decades even, the Left’s number one weapon in its arsenal has been outrage over nothing. Let me make a list:
Silent Spring (Environmentalism outrage)
The new Ice Age (Environmentalism outrage)
Sensitivity training (racism, sexism, minority outrage)
Poisoned apples (Environmentalism outrage)
DDT (Environmentalism outrage)
Any kind of cultural joke…ever. (See isms above)
Words, and worse, ideas, started to be censured. Like the prohibitionist knitting circle of yore, leftists have cluck clucked their way into power by being the church ladies aggrieved at every blond joke, straying eye, proper use of word (niggardly!!!), scientific disagreement, and on and on.
In response, the right of center side decided to throw the selective outrage back at them.
There’s a lot of pent up fury. How would you feel about being hectored over every meaningless and stupid aside (MACACA!!!!).
So, conservatives through New Media, are holding the left to their own race-baiting, sexist, offensive-language standards.
Big surprise! The left turns out to be more racist, sexist, degrading, closed-minded, and ugly than the right–something that minorities who have defected from the left know all too well.
And now, when Bill Maher is finally taking some heat for being the sexist jackass that he is, he’s crying foul.
In the years before New Media, everyone just wink-winked and chortled at how edgy and clever and brave Maher was while castigating conservatives who said far less offensive things.
Restricting speech on one side was such a great tool. Everyone hated conservatives and laughed at liberals. And then they realized they were the butt of the joke.
Now, liberals are hated too.
You’re welcome.
Liberals have themselves to thank for this fine politically correct mess.
See, I’m a free speech absolutist. Do I think it’s despicable to make fun of Sarah Palin’s kid and calling him a “retard”? Yes. Do I want to be able to use the word “retard”? Yes.
As in, Bill Maher is a retard.
To have any credibility whatsoever, he should have been decrying the politically correct war on words from the left years ago, but of course, that didn’t serve his political ends.
My concern on the right is that we’re becoming as bad as the left–that is, we’re actually starting to believe the outrage we’re pouring at the left.
My concern is that rather than being outraged at the leftists phony outrage and throwing it back at them, we’re becoming as politically correct and insufferable as them.
As long as Sandra Flukes exist and screech about inequality over nothing, the right has every reason to thrown their hypocrisy back at them.
The minute, though, we buy into political correctness and start being just like the lefty church ladies we loathe, the whole battle has been lost.
Humor, art, science, technology can only thrive where new, outrageous and edgy words and ideas thrive.
Conformity of language is conformity of culture. Stasis.
Free speech. Cherish it.
It would be nice if Bill Maher could have found his outrage at outrage when the leftist outrage machine has survived on outrage fuel. But then, Bill Maher’s not a great mind or comedian. The irony is lost on him.
Updated:
Bruce of The Conservatory notes what Maher really wants:
In essence, Maher wants to be able to say anything he wants and not have to apologize for it.
I agree.
Please, do so. And don’t apologize. That is fine with me.
But … and you knew there had to be one … that doesn’t mean what you say is consequence free. You still get to pay the price for what you say.
That’s really what Maher wants to see go by the boards, make no mistake about it. He really wants no-penalty “free speech”.
Sorry, no such thing. Never has been, never will be.
Updated again:
Great piece from Dorian Davis: Get a sense of humor.
The Culture War IS The Fiscal War: Feminism And The Big Slutty Lie
Monday, March 5th, 2012
People like to separate fiscal conservatives from social conservatives. It’s impossible to do.
The nut of Sandra Fluke’s argument is this: pay for my contraception. If it doesn’t work, pay for my abortion. If I decide to have the kid, but not work and do something like “community organizing” or “reproductive rights activism”, pay for my lifestyle choice. [More on Sandra Fluke here.]
And herein lies the problem with a purely libertine argument: Someone has to pay for all this freedom.
True personal liberty comes with a lot of personal responsibility.
The way it stands now, though, feminists are pushing for the state to take care of everything.
At the least, a man should pony up a condom to have sex, but no. A woman is too afraid to have this discussion, evidently, and refuses to force the man to buy and wear a condom. Were she mature enough to have this conversation, her sex life would be “free” so long as the condom wasn’t defective or broke.
Then, of course, whether the woman is on the pill or using condoms, there’s always contraception failure. The woman will have to live with the STD or baby consequences. And again, she’ll want the taxpayer to pay for that, too. Antibiotics and prenatal care aren’t free, after all. Worst, she wants people of conscience to pay for her abortion. They, in turn, feel forced to pay a hitman to kill an innocent person.
A truly “free” woman would pay for her choices, but the fact is, that these choices can all be very expensive.
In the past, when sex was more the provenance of two monogamous and committed people, the man and woman would negotiate these things. And if a “mistake” did happen, the man would “do the right thing” and marry the woman.
Old fashioned? Maybe. Cost effective for the taxpayer? Absolutely. Good for the fabric of society and for that child? No question.
Barack Obama and his merry band of slutty misfits want to have all the fun and none of the responsibility of the consequences should things not go just the way they’re supposed to in the sexual arena (and when do they ever?).
So, in the last year of a horribly failed presidency, President Obama wants the focus to be on “contraceptive rights” when there are no such thing. It’s a great way to distract from the statist policies he’s employing: He wants to diminish the role of faith in the public space, and in the place of men/husbands/fathers, he wants an all-powerful state to pay for, mold, and control the next generation. Or kill them.
If this fight feels primal and visceral, it is because it is. The cultural war that the left has started has had dire public policy consequences. The welfare state has failed.
We have a nation of fatherless children living in poverty because their mothers bought the feminist lie that having sex like a hound-dog man, outside of marriage is “empowering”.
Single mothers are faced with the bitterness of powerlessness.
Defend that, liberals. Explain how living in poverty, alone, with multiple children, no education, an STD and no father is better than a two-parent family, feminists.
Answer: It isn’t.
There will be no apologizing from me. The feminist movement as symbolized by the useful idiot Sandra Fluke has lied to and cursed a generation of women. Meanwhile, putting future generations of responsible tax paying men and women on the hook. [Update: Dana Loesch on faux rage.]
The culture war is a fiscal war. And America’s children are the losers both ways.
Teri Cristoph of Smart Girl Politics to Women: You’re Being Used. Teri says:
Knowing that women voters are leaving Obama, the left has deliberately waged a war designed to scare them into thinking their birth control will be taken from them. EMILY’s List calls these disenchanted women voters “defectors” and they’ll stop at nothing to get them back.
The use of the word “defector” by the left is supremely insulting. A defector is someone who switches allegiances, usually in a manner deemed to be traitorous. Got that? If you are a woman who voted for Obama in ’08 but don’t like what he’s done as president and don’t plan to vote for him again, you are considered a traitor by the left. Newsflash: Women are not born with a genetic allegiance to the Democrat party and its liberal causes. Plenty of us prefer to think for ourselves.
Democrats are running scared knowing that a significant number of women are wise to the fact that the economy has tanked, true unemployment is around 25 percent, and our president is wholly unequipped to deal with any of it. They also know that women voice their discontent at the ballot box. So they are waging this war against women. They use people like Sandra Fluke to distract from the real issues at stake this election season. They use women as pawns in their political game.
Yes, there is a war against women in 2012 and it’s certainly no fluke.
UPDATE & ASIDE:
What Rush Limbaugh should have done in the face of the attack by Mean Girls (emphasis on girls–women don’t act irresponsibly and then want to be personally bailed out):
There are many conservatives who unfortunately allow the left to take their morality and use it to stifle their dissent. Limbaugh should have gone on the attack. He should have said “no apology” and exposed her for the partisan hack that she is. Do I care if Fluke fucks 50 guys? No, but I do care if she uses her position to gang up with other mean girls (and guys) to ram a political mandate down the throats of companies who do not believe in what she is peddling.
Standing up to mean girls is hard. I am in the process of writing a book on men’s attitudes towards marriage and society and it is damn hard to get individual men to be interviewed. If I ask questions on the internet or in an anonymous setting, I am flooded with comments from men. I recently had over 3200 men answer a poll about paternity fraud, but try to get just a few men to talk in person? That’s tough. And most are very concerned that their name will not be published. I don’t blame them. The mean girls are out in society in full force.
If Rush Limbaugh can’t stand up to the mean girls, who can?
Via Instapundit
More on Fatherhood from LaShawn Barber.
Forced Abortion: “I had no choice”
Sunday, October 16th, 2011Good old Brian of TRScoop sent me this video and I’m going to include it as a post because I want the permanence. It’s a clip from Blood Money talking about the concept of “pro choice” when many women say, “I had no choice.”
My first patient in practice told me of her experience of being forced to have an abortion. In fact, of all the many women (and many you’d never guess) who had abortions, only one woman told me she was happy she’d done it and would do it again if she had the choice.
The majority of women say that parents, boyfriends, and worst of all, husbands forced the woman to abort the baby. The trauma is devastating and long lasting.
It is a lie that women are getting to choose. Many women are victims of abortion–it is used against them.
Please watch this video and share it:
So many terrified women in crisis just need one person who will say, “It will be okay.”
Just one person.
Thankfully, I see the younger generation turning against the abortion culture. They have lost siblings to abortion. It is real to them.
We need a return to honoring adoption. Adoption is a wonderful gift–both to the child and to the adoptive parents.
Maybe I’ve Had It Wrong All Along: I Shoulda Been A Guy Blogger
Tuesday, December 15th, 2009Is a woman an “Uncle Tom” if she writes under a male pseudonym? What if she gets paid more and seemingly more respect by doing so?
Also, would a woman write differently if she “wrote like a man”. If I didn’t have the cultural pressures, would I write differently? More forceful, more tough, maybe?
Here’s what prompted this post:
A blogger for Copyblogger, who wrote under the name “James Chartrand,” outed herself as a female, explaining that she chose a male name to earn more money and get more respect in her career.
Years ago The Blogger Formerly Known As James Chartrand (who declined to identify her real name) hit a plateau in her career. She couldn’t command a higher rate. She lost gigs she should have gotten. Things were looking grim. So she distanced herself from her existing company by choosing a pen name: “I picked a name that sounded to me like it might convey a good business image. Like it might command respect.”
She chose a male pen name. Ha, more like penis name!
Choosing a male pen name seemed to fix everything for James Chartrand. She put food on the table for her kids and get a mortgage for her house near her mom.
This blogger, a woman, came to this conclusion:
Honestly, there is something rather Uncle Tom-y about Chartrand hiding behind the opposite gender. By assuming the identity of a male writer, she skirted the discrimination against women entirely while doing nothing to change womens’ lot. She just left the glass ceiling standing there, rather than shattering it.
Sure, “passing” was Chartrand’s choice, and as Charlotte York would say, she chose her choice. But it showed no solidarity for other women at all. There’s plenty of female writers out there who confront the marginalization of women head on, pointing out how with factual data how they’ve been shortchanged, asking for raises, taking their brilliant work elsewhere if their bosses refuse to budge. But “James Chartrand” took the easy way out.
Eh. I don’t know. If I wanted to make a lot of money, I’d “sell out” and be a mommy blogger and talk about my kid’s poop or the fact that I forgot part of my kid’s homework or that my jeans are tight or whatever else was personally ailing me at the moment. As far as I can tell, being snarky, female and into fashion, celebrities or some other (what I consider) trivialities can net a gal big bucks.
Or, I could sell out and go anonymous male and people would give me more respect and more money.
Maybe.
How The Left Went Wrong By Not Getting It Right About Sarah Palin–UPDATED
Tuesday, December 8th, 2009Sarah Palin turns out to not be the mindless, soulless creature the left painted her to be during the 2008 election season.
The liberal press, the leftist bloggers, and the activists who hate Sarah Palin succeeded in turning Sarah Palin into a cartoon during the election cycle and many people were inclined to believe them. Sarah Palin interfered, at the time, with what voters wanted at the moment: young, hip, new, black. If she was turned into a moose-killin’, baby-making, no paper-reading, dummie, then people could justify a decision they already wanted to make. And that strategy also worked only as long as the man they elected, Barack Obama stayed young, hip, and new.
Reality hit President Obama who had the misfortune of having to live up to sky-high expectations. But don’t feel too sorry for him. They were his own creation and they came at the expense of women like Hillary Clinton and Sarah Palin. As his star fades, people look around and see what they passed over.
Sarah Palin is looking better.
Her new book Going Rogue has sold 2.7 million books and counting. I have it and continue to read it and the more I read it, the more I like Sarah Palin. And that’s the whole point of the book, really: to get Sarah Palin back to neutral public perception ground; to humanize her. She was a cartoon. Now, in her own words (and after reading it, I don’t know how anyone could capture the cadence of rhythm of her rhetorical and prose style, it’s so unique) she’s saying who she is. And she’s believable. And she’s not stupid.
And she’s normal.
The bar was set so low for Sarah Palin, that she’s surprising everyone, including the press. People are even rethinking the Katie Couric interview and Ms. Palin made a really good point: Why not release all the tape, unedited and uncut? If Sarah Palin comes off as such a complete moron, it should harm Sarah Palin worse, not make her look better. A win-win for the left and the press, but Katie Couric won’t release the tape. Too bad, it makes Katie Couric look more like a partisan hack, if that were possible.
Over the next year, I’m guessing that Ms. Palin will just be not scary. In the mean time, she’s hopefully boning up on foreign policy, philosophy, etc. There are hints in her speeches that she’s doing just that.
The press and left will still call her stupid. They did that with Ronald Reagan (doddering grandpa) and Gerald Ford (fumbling moron) and George W. Bush (blathering idiot). Why? Because anyone who disagrees with leftist conventional wisdom is, by definition, stupid. So, once again, the bar will be set so low, even a McChimpyhaliburtan can leap it.
President Obama (dithering on Afghanistan) and the Climategate folks and the Congressional Dems cutting of grandma’s healthcare, have destroyed any reverence for pseudo-intellectualism. Pointy-headed smart looks ineffectual and maybe even evil.
Americans like a pragmatic, action-oriented politician. Smart enough, but not waffling (Obama), haughty (Kerry), and humorless (Gore). By over-selling intellectualism and reducing enemies to mindless dunces, the press and left are themselves, the caricature.
Sarah Palin is turning into a real, fleshed-out human being. Now that she’s established a bare minimum, she can turn toward policy questions. And she has. She has been a fearless critic or encourager depending on President Obama’s policy choices. And if the President keeps making poor choices, her criticism will look genius.
The Left made a big mistake scorning Sarah Palin. They created a solid core of adoring fans and created an image so cartoonish, that she is bound to exceed expectations.
UPDATED:
Andrew Malcolm of the LA Times Top of the Ticket notes the juxtaposition:
Obama’s new Gallup Poll job approval number is 47%. Last month it was 53%.
Regular Ticket readers will recall how in this space in late November we pointed out that Obama’s closely watched job approval slide was coinciding with Palin’s little-noticed rise in favorability. And it appeared they might cross somewhere in the 40s.
Well, ex-Sen. Obama, meet ex-Gov. Palin.
The new CNN/Opinion Research Poll shows Palin now at 46% favorable, just one point below her fellow basketball fan.
Michelle Goldberg Has A Snit On Bloggingheads, Ann Althouse Calls Her Rhymes-With-Snit
Saturday, November 28th, 2009I got lost in the vortex of Bloggingheads hell and ended up listening to Michelle Goldberg and Ann Althouse yelling at each other. Michelle threatens to bail on the call when Ann pins her down on her inarticulate defense of Barack Obama’s memoir Dreams Of My Fathers. Michelle can’t defend analogizing Obama to Tolstoy and threatens to bail. She smoothed her hair and soldiered on.
The whole conversation was quite illustrative of liberal thought. Or rather, liberal emotionalism. There wasn’t much thought to be had, although Michelle knows her way around 25 cent words. I found myself rolling my eyes. A lot.
So, according to Michelle Goldberg, the Obama-voting Ann Althouse is a conservative. And according to Ann, she’s miffed that Bloggingheads couldn’t find one conservative to defend Palin. That is a valid criticism. Really, Bloggingheads, is there no one who can defend Sarah Palin or is it that you just don’t like conservatives who might defend Sarah Palin?
For what it’s worth, Ms. Goldberg, Ann is a social liberal and libertarian who supported the war effort after 9/11. How, in anyone’s world, does that qualify as a conservative? Mind you, I’m glad to have Ann Althouse’s voice and like her and respect her views. Still, she voted for Barack Obama which to me was a vote for a man weak on foreign policy, indecisive even, and an economy-killing statist. She was not alone in her vote and those from the middle who swung to favor Barack Obama did not win me to the cause of moderation. That vote simply struck me as naive. Still does.
So, whatever, I was watching Bloggingheads and so clicked on Michelle and Ann to see what they talked about. Topic: Sarah Palin. Ann thought Sarah was dumb (I had read her review and thought it harsh). Since Ann finished the book, her review was more charitable. Michelle Goldberg’s feelings of hatred have abated somewhat but she still vehemently dislikes Sarah Palin. She trots out the old trope, “But she’s really good for the Democrat party.”
Between Ann and Michelle, they decide (Ann with a self-aware sparkle in her eye, Michelle utterly beyond self parody) that Sarah Palin is stupid as are those who support her. But don’t say anything about the elites being obnoxious. That characterization is so undeserved. They are people like you and me; they’re just better people.
“She has a reputation for mendacity,” says Michelle Goldberg of Sarah Palin.
“Reality has a liberal bias,” says Michelle regarding why the AP has 11 fact checkers on Sarah Palin’s book, but none of Barack Oama.
“She is a screen onto which conservatives project hopes, just as Barack Obama is a screen onto which liberals project hopes,” says Ann Althouse
“I don’t want to be saved. I want a President to take care of things….preserve us,” says Ann Althouse.
Michelle responds,”And that’s what we’ve got” [in Barack Obama].
You need to watch this interchange if only to get a better understanding of why Barack Obama will always be popular with a certain segment of the population. His actions don’t matter. If he never acts, that’s a bonus because it demonstrates his urbane thoughtfulness. His inaction is a sign of his intelligence. Dithering is nuance because people who take direct action, by definition, act without thinking. Can you see how a liberal would think that Barack Obama is fabulous? One of his greatest weaknesses, the weakness that could land America in the worst position and is doing just that, is actually a strength.
In short, Barack Obama can do no wrong because he is doing nothing.
Sarah Palin And Identity Politics: Using The Left’s Standards Against Them
Tuesday, November 24th, 2009Identity politics grate on most conservatives, or they did until Sarah Palin came along. Most conservatives who loved Sarah Palin, didn’t love her because she was the best looking woman on TV–forget in politics. Most conservatives loved her conservative ideals and her connection to average Americans.
And her ideals, connection, and her beauty, provoked rage on the left. Still does. And so, they attacked her and her family. Nothing was out of bounds. Major news organizations were reduced to screaming like gossip rags. It was disgusting.
It was sexist. It was classist. It was everything the Democrats and leftists claim to be against.
And so, conservatives started fighting back. Every perceived slight, injustice, denigration, and revealing act of hate was highlighted and pushed into the liberal left’s face. It was galling to see feminist women defend the treatment Sarah Palin received. It was embarrassing, as a woman, that this sort of thing still flew–that women would be reduced to their own worst caricature: catty, vicious, and petty toward other women.
Liberals now wonder why conservatives jump to play the sexism card. Are they kidding? After decades of excoriating men for their piggish ways, after whole reeducation programs at work about what is, and what is not, “appropriate” behavior, these clucking, self-righteous people wonder why their own, politically correct rules are being turned on them now?
And yet, they seem incapable of seeing how Sarah Palin has been savaged in the media. There is a concerted lack of empathy and certainly no such thing as fairness.
The liberals have done more to push back the treatment of women than any conservative man. The cliché is that conservative men are backward, sexist cretins, just one step beyond knuckle-dragging missing links while liberals are enlightened, open, tolerant, loving righteous people. So when liberals engage in rank sexism and then defend the obnoxious behavior, it sets things back for all people trying to be judged for the content of their character.
Liberal men and women have been the sexist police for years. They are the knitting circle ladies waiting for an infraction and smacking the hairy knuckles hard for failing to obey the p.c. rules. But when push comes to shove, they’ll use any method, including demeaning and sexist methods, to achieve their political ends.
Conservatives won’t stop calling liberals on their sexist ways. Why should they? Political correctness is used as a cudgel against conservatives. Every conservative is one “macaca” or Strom Thurmond praising speech away from being banished for life while liberals can spew any vile word and not only be not vilified, but praised for their actions–as long as it’s a conservative who’s on the receiving end of the hate.
Identity politics have a pernicious effect on an achievement culture. People are elevated based on color or ovaries or culture or whatever the p.c. police believe lacks. So more qualified people are looked over in favor of superficial characteristics. This is the world the left has wrought.
Their pique at perceiving Sarah Palin as just such a candidate is really too much. They created identity politics. Now, they can live with the rules they created.
Sexy Sarah Palin: Leftist Sexists At It Yet Again–UPDATED, UPDATED AGAIN
Monday, November 16th, 2009How ribald can you be? Newsweek will show you:
The CBN’s David Brody says:
You’ve got to hand it to the folks at Newsweek. They have accomplished being biased and sexist at the same time. Quite a feat. This cover has got to be a new low right? They don’t use a photo of Palin on the campaign trail. No instead they take the sexy Runners World photo. Yes she posed for it but don’t tell me they didn’t purposely use that photo to make a point? I predict this cover will become a bigger story over the next 24-48 hours and let’s face it. This isn’t JUST about media bias. This cover should be insulting to women politicians. Where’s the sexy photo of Mitt Romney? Why not a picture of Tim Pawlenty with an unbuttoned shirt relaxing on a couch in the Twin Cities?
We see Obama with halos hovering over his head. We see Sarah in running shoes. The whole purpose is to diminish, denigrate and destroy a woman who differs politically.
As if fair-minded Americans needed more evidence of press bias.
Updated:
Sarah Palin responds to the cover from Facebook:
The choice of photo for the cover of this week’s Newsweek is unfortunate. When it comes to Sarah Palin, this “news” magazine has relished focusing on the irrelevant rather than the relevant. The Runner’s World magazine one-page profile for which this photo was taken was all about health and fitness – a subject to which I am devoted and which is critically important to this nation. The out-of-context Newsweek approach is sexist and oh-so-expected by now. If anyone can learn anything from it: it shows why you shouldn’t judge a book by its cover, gender, or color of skin. The media will do anything to draw attention – even if out of context.
- Sarah Palin
After this post got fed to Twitter, I got into an argument with a leftist feminist there about this cover. She brought up Hillary Clinton. She believes that Sarah Palin did this to herself by posing for Runners World. What serious politician or man would pose for that sort of cover?
What serious newsweekly would put a degrading picture, say of Obama frolicking in the surf or Bil and Hill dancing in the sand for the camera, on the cover of a magazine? Only conservative politicians need worry about being portrayed as trivial and sexy (Sarah), mean and old (McCain), mean (Cheney), mean and stupid (GWB). A Democrat gets gravitas-portraying treatment.
Always.
And that’s why conservatives view the press as biased. They don’t even attempt, even feebly, to hide it anymore.
UPDATED AGAIN:
Well, I knew this story had legs. Sorry, couldn’t help myself. Anyway the feminists are coming out against Newsweek. It’s about damn time. It is heartening to see them facing this bias. Women should be evaluated on their content, beliefs and actions. When Sarah Palin is reduced to her legs, the men don’t have to evaluate her on her merit.
Julie Millican of Media Matters [!] says:
There are a lot of legitimate reasons to criticize Sarah Palin, her new book, and her policies, but you don’t have to stoop to sexism to do it. Newsweek’s November 23 issue, however, does just that by publishing on its cover a photo of Palin in short running shorts and a fitted top, leaning against the American flag. Making matters worse is the equally offensive headline Newsweek editors chose to run alongside the photo — “How Do You Solve a Problem like Sarah?” — presumably a reference to the Sound of Music song, “Maria,” in which nuns fret about “how” to “solve a problem like Maria,” a “girl” who “climbs trees” and whose “dress has a tear.”
When will the media stop this degrading nonsense? I think it’s when those within the ranks start holding them accountable. That’s happening, thankfully, at long last.
