Re: This Is Bad

1

It's like she walked into the Washington Post newsroom and silently took all her clothes off.


Posted by: Beefo Meaty | Link to this comment | 03- 2-08 10:34 AM
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I'm about 10% convinced that this is a planned effort to give Hillary a boost in the upcoming primaries

Gawd, you're a psycho. (I wondered that, too.)

but this does seem like an established genre.

I was wondering over at Yglesias's place how much of this genre is a function of the age of the editors or the readership. A lot of the issues seem like old ones that have either been dismissed as idiotic or previously tabled ones. It feels like the rehashing of some bizarre fight from the 50's or 70's. (I note that the picture of Charlotte Allen indicates she's at least 65+.) There's something off--as with the previously referenced Althouse piece--about arguments that are this bad. (Which is, I admit, part of why I wondered about this being an effort to boost HRC. But that's the thought of a psychotic. Right?)


Posted by: SomeCallMeTim | Link to this comment | 03- 2-08 10:39 AM
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I can't bring myself to click through the links.

Jay Rosen at Press Think has been doing an interesting analysis of why newspapers choose to print some stories (e.g. the McCain/lobbyist one). One of his commenters has a pertinent observation:

[The New York] Times is dancing in front of a mirror here, trying to move in ways that telegraph to a somewhat imaginary audience that it is a truly supple paper -- iconoclastic toward its own perceived liberal image (if the "facts" of a story require that it be so) and certainly capable of seeing all sides of all issues.

That's it. Newspapers publish this stuff because they like to think of themselves as fair, and garbage fake contrarianism like this plays right into that fond self-image.


Posted by: Witt | Link to this comment | 03- 2-08 10:39 AM
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You couldn't write this shit about blacks (or even muslims, maybe) and keep your job

...unless you worked for Ma/rty Pe/retz.


Posted by: mano negra | Link to this comment | 03- 2-08 10:43 AM
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Newspapers publish stuff like this to generate controversy.

If it bleeds, it leads.


Posted by: will | Link to this comment | 03- 2-08 10:43 AM
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...unless you worked for Ma/rty Pe/retz.

Fair enough. Indeed, you could (and they do) publish it in any number of right of center publications. You don't have to look very far to find arguments about, for example, Muslims not understanding argument and respecting only force. But I'd be surprised to find it in a SCLM paper (though, thinking about it, the Post is the Krauthammer's paper, and the NYT has a number of people who write similar, if not so obvious, things.)


Posted by: SomeCallMeTim | Link to this comment | 03- 2-08 10:46 AM
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the things most important to life at which nearly all of us excel: tenderness toward children and men and the weak and the ability to make a house a home.

Well, I get along with kids, anyway. And if we can redefine "make a house a home" to mean "make a place look and feel really lived in,"* I suppose I very narrowly qualify as a woman in this writer's world.

*And if we also define "make a place look and feel really lived in" to mean "turn a perfectly ordinary domicile into a pit of chaos and clutter."


Posted by: Di Kotimy | Link to this comment | 03- 2-08 10:49 AM
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I'm about 10% convinced that this is a planned effort to give Hillary a boost in the upcoming primaries

Gawd, you're a psycho. (I wondered that, too.)

Good gravy, so did I. How sad for us.


Posted by: oudemia | Link to this comment | 03- 2-08 10:49 AM
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Oh, it's in the Washington Post. I had worried that it might have appeared in a serious venue.

Nothing to worry about, really. The Post, the tabloids, the Scaife papers, the Moonie Times, etc. have always been full of that kind of stuff.


Posted by: John Emerson | Link to this comment | 03- 2-08 10:52 AM
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And if we also define "make a place look and feel really lived in" to mean "turn a perfectly ordinary domicile into a pit of chaos and clutter."

There are other definitions?


Posted by: OneFatEnglishman | Link to this comment | 03- 2-08 10:53 AM
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"Turn a perfectly ordinary domicile into a pit of chaos and clutter."

A top bachelor can do that without the help of kids. "After four years without dusting, it doesn't get any worse": Quentin Crisp. Other Hall of Fame bachelor housekeepers included Erik Satie and Charlie Mingus.


Posted by: John Emerson | Link to this comment | 03- 2-08 10:55 AM
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The Post editorial page is reaching Wall Street Journal levels. That said, the "women trashing women" genre is a well established route to publication. See: Maureen Dowd, Caitlin Flanigan, Linda Hirshman. Women arguing about how much easier minorities have it will do in a real pinch. See: some of the recent Clinton v. Obama pieces.

I guess the idea is it's "provocative" but they would not publish a piece quite like this about how blacks are genetically inferior. There would be more attempt to dress it up in pseudoscience & cover the controversy.


Posted by: Katherine | Link to this comment | 03- 2-08 10:56 AM
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I think someone must have read the most recent Unfogged discussion about calling things misogynist and thought: "Those poor kids, let's give them something really nice and unambiguous they can all enjoy together."


Posted by: redfoxtailshrub | Link to this comment | 03- 2-08 10:58 AM
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6: Is it actually possible to "understand" force? Wouldn't we normally view "sending a message" through force to be a roundabout method?

I suppose we could view "sending a message" through force as a kind of Pavlovian conditioning, but under classical Pavlovianism, it seems like the rewards and punishments were closer in time to the relevant actions. And it wasn't all aversion, as our bastardized Pavlovianism seems to be -- there were rewards. Perhaps we could start training Muslims to salivate at the sight of an American flag? Perhaps rig an IED to give them a mild electric shock so that they'd be afraid to touch it and so would be unable to place it? Maybe give them little stars for each day that they don't attack an American convoy?


Posted by: Adam Kotsko | Link to this comment | 03- 2-08 11:03 AM
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I like this part: A study published in 1998 by the Johns Hopkins schools of medicine and public health revealed that women clocked 5.7 auto accidents per million miles driven, in contrast to men's 5.1, even though men drive about 74 percent more miles a year than women.

What do you mean even though, it's a fucking ratio. Anyway, it makes sense that you would have fewer accidents per miles driven if you drove more, because good driving partially depends on experience. Agh.

I really don't know why the post prints this shit. Are they hurting that bad? Is there no other controversial opinion they could think of to give voice to? This doesn't even count as an opinion.


Posted by: m. leblanc | Link to this comment | 03- 2-08 11:04 AM
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"I really don't know why the post prints this shit. "

Cat fight! Rowr!


Posted by: Fred Hiatt | Link to this comment | 03- 2-08 11:05 AM
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That probably explains it.


Posted by: m. leblanc | Link to this comment | 03- 2-08 11:07 AM
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Perhaps rig an IED to give them a mild electric shock so that they'd be afraid to touch it and so would be unable to place it?

I initially read that as IUD. Ouch!


Posted by: Di Kotimy | Link to this comment | 03- 2-08 11:11 AM
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They would not publish a piece quite like this about how blacks are genetically inferior.

See "Burn shit down".


Posted by: John Emerson | Link to this comment | 03- 2-08 11:11 AM
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not mind the fact that way down deep, we are I am . . . kind of dim a fucking idiot.


Posted by: asl | Link to this comment | 03- 2-08 11:13 AM
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What do you mean even though, it's a fucking ratio. Anyway, it makes sense that you would have fewer accidents per miles driven if you drove more, because good driving partially depends on experience. Agh.

Or age, I imagine, with women living longer. Or even age at which various social forces entered the picture: feminism (or something like it) leads to more women learning to drive at a later, etc. And don't women have lower ins. rates, in any case?


Posted by: SomeCallMeTim | Link to this comment | 03- 2-08 11:24 AM
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Personally, I think 1/3 as likely to kill someone trumps slightly higher % of fender benders. And yes, women have lower insurance rates (though the difference may fade as drivers get older).


Posted by: Katherine | Link to this comment | 03- 2-08 11:25 AM
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Writing out the full length parody of this, substituting "blacks" for "women," would produce a hysterically offensive piece of writing "Frankly, as an African American, I miss the old Jim Crow days, when shuffling Negroes smiled as they shined the shoes of white folks, because, who knew, maybe they'd give you a quarter."


Posted by: rob helpy-chalk | Link to this comment | 03- 2-08 11:27 AM
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Helpy-Chalk nails it.


Posted by: mrh | Link to this comment | 03- 2-08 11:31 AM
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Charlotte Allen eviscerates women. I love it.

oh yeah

bitches got fuckin told

that ought to shut em up for a while

you're one of the good ones, Kathryn Jean Lopez, you and Charlotte Allen and maybe that Flanigan chick, you're not like the rest, I feel like I can have a reasonable and scientific dialogue with you about what's wrong with those other bitches


Posted by: felix | Link to this comment | 03- 2-08 11:35 AM
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Oh, heavens to betsy. There's not even anything to talk about with this one, is there, beyond what on earth the editors were thinking.


Posted by: LizardBreath | Link to this comment | 03- 2-08 11:36 AM
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Hey, you troll your own blog. They're just the pros.

On CNN the other evening they posted a lovely viewer gem explaining how she gets moody, and her husband even says she's moody, and she knows all women are this way, so Hillary shouldn't be President. I find the fact that CNN thinks this is a worthwhile opinion (contrast this with the hypothetical "I'm black, and I'm too ignorant to be President, therefore Obama shouldn't be President") absolutely appalling.

As far as Charlotte Allen goes, my initial response was 'speak for yourself, bitch. Not my fault you're surly.'


Posted by: Cala | Link to this comment | 03- 2-08 11:36 AM
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I wish the Corner had comments, then I could just cut and paste instead of going to the trouble of guessing what their readers are thinking.


Posted by: felix | Link to this comment | 03- 2-08 11:38 AM
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What do you mean even though, it's a fucking ratio.

Heh, yeah, I reread that a couple of times too.

Witt's quote in 3:

[The New York] Times is dancing in front of a mirror here, trying to move in ways that telegraph to a somewhat imaginary audience that it is a truly supple paper -- iconoclastic toward its own perceived liberal image (if the "facts" of a story require that it be so) and certainly capable of seeing all sides of all issues.

That's plausible on the face of it, or in general; the Allen piece, though, partakes of that thing we know so well: deep irony. It's 'hip' in that sense, operating from an irony that's an inch away from trolling. Some of the other things one sees in this genre aren't so clearly ironic.

Of course I'm remembering our discussion of what's going on with the ridiculousness of so many of the Modern Love columns.


Posted by: parsimon | Link to this comment | 03- 2-08 11:38 AM
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Also, I am sick to fucking death of women with careers, nannies, and speaking gigs going on about how blessed the fairer sex is to be able to make a home and how it's just not feminine to want to use your brain. In fact, why don't I pay her lots of money to tell me how immoral it is for me to have a job.


Posted by: Cala | Link to this comment | 03- 2-08 11:40 AM
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Ma/rty Pe/retz

God dammit, people. Marty Peretz, Marty Peretz, Marty Peretz.


Posted by: strasmangelo jones | Link to this comment | 03- 2-08 11:43 AM
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*poof*

Yes?


Posted by: Marty Peretz | Link to this comment | 03- 2-08 11:44 AM
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31: He's going to climb out of your bathroom mirror now and sit the nicest chair in your living room and start talking about what's wrong with Arabs, and you're never going to be able to shut him up or get rid of him.


Posted by: felix | Link to this comment | 03- 2-08 11:46 AM
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Oh dear, I tried to warn you, but it's already too late.


Posted by: felix | Link to this comment | 03- 2-08 11:47 AM
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15: I also like the bonus homophobia in that paragraph: "Those statistics were reinforced by a study released by the University of London in January showing that women and gay men perform more poorly than heterosexual men at tasks involving navigation and spatial awareness, both crucial to good driving."

Because clearly liking to have sex with men makes you a woman. What?


Posted by: Josh | Link to this comment | 03- 2-08 11:56 AM
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33: You mean he's going to turn into my mom?


Posted by: strasmangelo jones | Link to this comment | 03- 2-08 11:57 AM
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24: I was just following through on Ogged's original suggestion. Really, I was trying to encourage someone to actually write out the full parody, for the same reason I really wanted someone to write out the full parody of liberal fascism.


Posted by: rob helpy-chalk | Link to this comment | 03- 2-08 11:59 AM
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A full parody would have to do more than just substitute "blacks" for "women" and so on. The Allen article is pushing a series of specific buttons, issues that have already been subjected to intense debate, sometimes with an ultimately lingering thought in the minds of some who are too polite to say so that, still, there's something in it. That women are inclined toward caretaking roles, for example.

To swap that stuff out for black issues, you'd have to work in something like the (deeply fraught) question whether African Americans really are or aren't playing the victim card. That'd be a hell of a painful thing to write/read. Of course, I'm not sure you'd be writing a parody of the Allen piece then.


Posted by: parsimon | Link to this comment | 03- 2-08 12:11 PM
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I could probably parody it. But I'd find it extremely distasteful.


Posted by: Cala | Link to this comment | 03- 2-08 12:14 PM
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maybe they really believe this stuff, in which case one really is tempted to vote for Hillary

At long last. Comity.


Posted by: bitchphd | Link to this comment | 03- 2-08 12:14 PM
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(Ironically, as I'm reading this article, I'm listening to TAL's show about testosterone.)


Posted by: bitchphd | Link to this comment | 03- 2-08 12:15 PM
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Rob, if you paypal me $5 I'll write as offensive a parody as you like.

(I suspect this is how Charlotte Allen got started).


Posted by: felix | Link to this comment | 03- 2-08 12:17 PM
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Have you read the Hirshman counterpoint? Women are fickle, dontcha know.


Posted by: Blume | Link to this comment | 03- 2-08 12:18 PM
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Reading this self-hating old biddy go off on other women, and noting that, because it's about women, the editors probably thought it was a cute "lifestyle" editorial rather than a trolling hate piece, I just cannot fathom why newspaper readership among women is so low.


Posted by: Magpie | Link to this comment | 03- 2-08 12:18 PM
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No man contracts nebulous diseases whose existence is disputed by many if not all doctors

Unless he's a super-macho military vet.


Posted by: bitchphd | Link to this comment | 03- 2-08 12:19 PM
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Does anybody here work for a newspaper? Is even 10% of the reason that something like this gets published inertia?

Do editors just get endless loads of stuff like this coming across their desks, and when they recognize a name, it's just less hassle to print that one, no matter the content? I am quite prepared to believe that when the gatekeepers feel overworked and worn out by the press of daily deadlines, they follow the path of least resistance.

If that's even a little bit true, part of the answer is to start stuffing the pipeline with better material. I just wrote to my local alt-weekly about printing people like Lindsey Beyerstein.


Posted by: Witt | Link to this comment | 03- 2-08 12:20 PM
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You people reading this online are spared seeing it next to Hirshman's piece, and might (I'm not going to click through, dammit) also be spared the little about line, in which Ms. Allen says she plans to spend her fee for this article on another pair of shoes. That probably counts as humor at the Manhattan Institute.


Posted by: Nápi | Link to this comment | 03- 2-08 12:22 PM
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Charlotte Allen is a graduate of Stanford and Harvard.

She's not "kind of dim." She's just a spoiled, simpering liar.


Posted by: bitchphd | Link to this comment | 03- 2-08 12:23 PM
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I was going to write a comment here, but it turned into a post instead.


Posted by: Kieran | Link to this comment | 03- 2-08 12:23 PM
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43: Oh the Hirshman article is super gross. Women are fickle because they are not voting in a unified block for HRC as men and blacks are for BHO. Dumb fickle wimmins!


Posted by: oudemia | Link to this comment | 03- 2-08 12:28 PM
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Publishers and have default standards which determine what kind of thing they're willing to print unexamined, and in today's world these default standards are consistently faulty.

For example, if I were an editor I would be all to happy to print left wing smears, conspiracy theories, conjectures, and long-disproven claims. All too happy! Like a pig in shit!
The faultiness of my defaults would be widely recognized. The Post's defaults are also fucked, but not everyone knows this. They're the center-right version of me.


Posted by: John Emerson | Link to this comment | 03- 2-08 12:28 PM
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(Hirshman is being inflammatory, as usual, but she's actually making an interesting observation based on demonstrable fact--women *have* split between Obama and Clinton, and they've done so partly along class lines. Yes, the inflammatory "women are fickle" tagline is going to be the one people remember (including us, apparently), but her article is very different than Charlotte Allen's.)


Posted by: bitchphd | Link to this comment | 03- 2-08 12:29 PM
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32: so that's why we googleproof.

Voldemort!


Posted by: katherine | Link to this comment | 03- 2-08 12:29 PM
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52: by "women" do you, per Hirshman, mean "women who aren't black"?


Posted by: Beefo Meaty | Link to this comment | 03- 2-08 12:32 PM
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52: but the "women are fickle" is why she gets published on op-ed pages so much more than better feminist writers who don't do that stuff.


Posted by: Katherine | Link to this comment | 03- 2-08 12:32 PM
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The first two sentences of the Hirshman seem pretty informed by woman-hate to me.

Maria Shriver sure has great hair. Stepping up to the microphone at a girl-power rally in Los Angeles on Feb. 3, California's first lady tossed her tawny tresses with authority and instructed Golden State women to vote for Sen. Barack Obama in the Democratic presidential primary on Super Tuesday.

Posted by: oudemia | Link to this comment | 03- 2-08 12:32 PM
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Depressing as it is, several of the so-called myths about Negro mental inferiority are true. Countless studies have shown that even when variables like income and socioeconomic status are considered, blacks consistently score lower on IQ tests.

I am perfectly willing to admit that I myself am a classic case of black mental deficiencies. I struggle to use English correctly, preferring the jazzy rhythms of Ebonics. I am prone to violent outbursts. I have scraped by due to generous affirmative action policies and my athletic talent, one area in which it has been shown that blacks like myself do have a distinct advantage over whites. (Evolutionary just-so stories explain this. White men tended to live in colder Northern climates, where the ability to invent tools to construct warm shelter and clothing were highly valued. On the African veldt, the more hospitable climate meant that the ability to run long distances and chuck spears at elephants conferred a distinct survival advantage.)

I don't mind recognizing that the black men I admire most: Frederick Douglass, Martin Luther King Jr. were outliers. Misguided outliers, I might add, for their struggles to liberate the Negro from his white masters have forced him into an evolutionary niche for which is is not suited. Let us use our talents - our music, our dancing, and our strength - and leave the governing to the white man.


Posted by: Cala | Link to this comment | 03- 2-08 12:33 PM
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54: I mean what I've read about the statistical breakdowns--54% of women voted for Obama here, blah blah. I assume when the stats say "women" they mean women of all races, no?

55: Yes, this is a good point.


Posted by: bitchphd | Link to this comment | 03- 2-08 12:34 PM
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I wish there was a good phrase to say, "This is the female equivalent of a minstrel show" because I find myself getting angry at women for that kind of partriachal participation all the time.


Posted by: heebie-geebie | Link to this comment | 03- 2-08 12:37 PM
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48: Once again, someone's who's found her niche shitting on anyone who would emulate her. No, no darling, you stay home. I must write my books. Ta now!


Posted by: Cala | Link to this comment | 03- 2-08 12:37 PM
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I don't mind recognizing that the black men I admire most: Frederick Douglass, Martin Luther King Jr. were outliers. Misguided outliers, I might add, for their struggles to liberate the Negro from his white masters have forced him into an evolutionary niche for which is is not suited.

One nice touch in the piece is the way she segues from " there are proportionally more men than women at the extremes of very, very smart and very, very stupid," at the end of one paragraph, to "I don't mind recognizing and accepting that the women in history I admire most -- Sappho, Hildegard of Bingen, Elizabeth I, George Eliot, Margaret Thatcher -- were brilliant outliers," at the end of the next. Male freakish geniuses (and even male morons!) reflect well on men in general. Female freakish geniuses are just freakish, and serve only to remind women of their essentially sub-par nature.


Posted by: Gonerill | Link to this comment | 03- 2-08 12:38 PM
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59: To steal from someone else, a menstrual show.


Posted by: oudemia | Link to this comment | 03- 2-08 12:39 PM
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Black voters of all socioeconomic classes are voting for the black candidate. Men are voting for the male candidate regardless of race or class. But even though this is also a year with the first major female presidential candidate, women are split every way they can be. They're the only voting bloc not voting their bloc.

58: I think Tweety was referring to Hirshman's tendency to do things like the above. "[Women] are the only voting bloc not voting their bloc"... except for those black voters she mentioned above who happen to also be women.


Posted by: Blume | Link to this comment | 03- 2-08 12:39 PM
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Black voters of all socioeconomic classes are voting for the black candidate. Men are voting for the male candidate regardless of race or class. But even though this is also a year with the first major female presidential candidate, women are split every way they can be. They're the only voting bloc not voting their bloc.

58: I think Tweety was referring to Hirshman's tendency to do things like the above. "[Women] are the only voting bloc not voting their bloc"... except for those black voters she mentioned above who happen to also be women.


Posted by: Blume | Link to this comment | 03- 2-08 12:40 PM
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a menstrual show.

Awesome. I wish I'd thought of that.


Posted by: Gonerill | Link to this comment | 03- 2-08 12:42 PM
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Black voters of all socioeconomic classes are voting for the black candidate. Men are voting for the male candidate regardless of race or class. But even though this is also a year with the first major female presidential candidate, women are split every way they can be. They're the only voting bloc not voting their bloc.

58: I think Tweety was referring to Hirshman's tendency to do things like the above. "[Women] are the only voting bloc not voting their bloc"... except for those black voters she mentioned above who happen to also be women.


Posted by: Blume | Link to this comment | 03- 2-08 12:43 PM
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Men are voting for the male candidate regardless of race or class.

WHAT?


Posted by: Witt | Link to this comment | 03- 2-08 12:43 PM
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65: Stolen from Lindsay Robertson of lindsayism.com


Posted by: oudemia | Link to this comment | 03- 2-08 12:43 PM
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62: hee! But I don't know if it would make a woman cringe the way I want.

There's no concept that you're selling out your sisters, among women in this country. That when you participate overmuch, in reducing yourself to your body, or writing imbecilic op-eds, you're making the status quo a little solider and making things worse for other women.


Posted by: heebie-geebie | Link to this comment | 03- 2-08 12:43 PM
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I got Blume on my side!


Posted by: Beefo Meaty | Link to this comment | 03- 2-08 12:43 PM
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(Sorry! Too dim to run this typing machine.)


Posted by: Blume | Link to this comment | 03- 2-08 12:44 PM
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I really hate the compression involved in describing diversity of opinion within a group in terms of inconsistency of an individual. Fuck "fickle". (And I have a feeling that the class demographics are a little bit more complicated than suggested in the Hirshman piece. I suspect that SES and age are not independent variables when it comes to questions of which voters are registered Democrats who it to the polls, for example.) But it's true, Hirshman is no Charlotte Allen.

Either way, though, the argument starts with "women sure are weird for liking Obama; what's their problem, anyhow?"


Posted by: redfoxtailshrub | Link to this comment | 03- 2-08 12:44 PM
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Ioz does a parody from the gay angle.

http://whoisioz.blogspot.com/2008/03/like-so-totally.html


Posted by: Asteele | Link to this comment | 03- 2-08 12:45 PM
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58: I think Tweety was referring to Hirshman's tendency to do things like the above. "[Women] are the only voting bloc not voting their bloc"... except for those black voters she mentioned above who happen to also be women.

And why aren't white men voting en masse for Clinton? What are they, race traitors?


Posted by: redfoxtailshrub | Link to this comment | 03- 2-08 12:47 PM
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69 -- No, we should rejoice that professional right-wing hackery is open to women. Land of Opportunity!


Posted by: Nápi | Link to this comment | 03- 2-08 12:47 PM
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60: Once again, someone's who's found her niche shitting on anyone who would emulate her.

The instance of this that still chaps me was Maureen Down and Diane Sawyer acting like Judith Steinberg's choice to concentrate on her freaking career and patients instead of her husband's campaign was some kind of strange unwomanly choice. I don't know why, but that one really stood out for me.

And the error on describing the gender differences on accident data, see it just serves to prove her point....


Posted by: JP Stormcrow | Link to this comment | 03- 2-08 12:48 PM
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I also like the bonus homophobia in that paragraph: "Those statistics were reinforced by a study released by the University of London in January showing that women and gay men perform more poorly than heterosexual men at tasks involving navigation and spatial awareness, both crucial to good driving."

Because clearly liking to have sex with men makes you a woman. What?

I think the actual hypothesis is that their gigantic penises throw off their sense of balance.


Posted by: SomeCallMeTim | Link to this comment | 03- 2-08 12:49 PM
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Wouldn't that be kind of awesome if she deliberately planted the math error to entrap people on the fence?


Posted by: heebie-geebie | Link to this comment | 03- 2-08 12:51 PM
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Heebie, I want to propose we call them whores, but sadly that's not okay.

72 is also something I agree with entirely.

Interestingly, y'all, I'm currently writing a week-long three-part dialogue about the whole "should women vote for Clinton" question. I hope I'm not making horrifically offensive statements in my own pieces. (Other than the fact, which I do point out at one point, that the entire exercise is problematic.) I promise to link y'all when it's done and I hope you'll tell me what you think.


Posted by: bitchphd | Link to this comment | 03- 2-08 12:52 PM
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I also like the idea that the men on the veldt were calculating spear trajectories.

Yes indeed, evolution has necessarily provided us brawny providers with the innate ability to solve differential equations. Just so!


Posted by: Beefo Meaty | Link to this comment | 03- 2-08 12:53 PM
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B you should throw in some local Philly color so it's better targeted at the remaining primary voters.


Posted by: Beefo Meaty | Link to this comment | 03- 2-08 12:54 PM
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There's not even anything to talk about with this one, is there, beyond what on earth the editors were thinking.

We could talk about how women's groups might use this moment to both themselves and the larger world a great good, and get Hiatt moved.

But it's true, Hirshman is no Charlotte Allen.

That is, she's horrible in her own special, snowflake, way. Whatever. They're both old; another problem that should solve itself with sufficient time.


Posted by: SomeCallMeTim | Link to this comment | 03- 2-08 12:55 PM
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83

This is very interesting.

The essential point that I think these tables show is that the Democratic Party simply is not as divided into opposing economic, gender, and ideological gaps as many have argued. Obama comes in with 51% in his best income group, and 44% in his worst. Clinton's best income group is also 51%, and her worst is also 44%. Overall, that really isn't much of a gap, and the ideological gaps are even smaller. Obama's range is 48%-52%, while Clinton's range is 43%-47%. Even in terms of gender the gap isn't actually very wide. Obama does 8 points better among men than he does among women, while Clinton does 8 points better among women than men. I stand in awe at such massive division within the party.

Posted by: oudemia | Link to this comment | 03- 2-08 12:55 PM
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If you are inadvertently offensive, I promise that I will parody you.


Posted by: Cala | Link to this comment | 03- 2-08 12:55 PM
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69.2: Heebie's correct, there's no concept like that, for better or for worse.


Posted by: parsimon | Link to this comment | 03- 2-08 12:56 PM
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"Whore" is kind of almost dead-on, conceptually and triggeringly. The only problem is that the shame associated with it is slut-shame, instead of shame-of-letting-down-other-women.


Posted by: heebie-geebie | Link to this comment | 03- 2-08 12:56 PM
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81 -- And go to Pittsburgh! One hears so many nice things about it!


Posted by: Nápi | Link to this comment | 03- 2-08 12:57 PM
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84: Thanks!

86: Trophy wife? Mistress? Bimbo?


Posted by: bitchphd | Link to this comment | 03- 2-08 12:59 PM
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In fact, I really like "bimbo." What say the rest of you?


Posted by: bitchphd | Link to this comment | 03- 2-08 12:59 PM
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I don't see how "bimbo" avoids slut-shaming either.

How about "mercenary"?


Posted by: Cryptic Ned | Link to this comment | 03- 2-08 1:00 PM
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Mmmm. You need a word that conveys not just selling out, but selling out so the boys will like her.


Posted by: Cala | Link to this comment | 03- 2-08 1:01 PM
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I think that without the underlying solidarity, there's not a good way to chastise someone for a lapse in solidarity. Someone should write a really great, influential op-ed about this and get it published in the Washington Post.


Posted by: heebie-geebie | Link to this comment | 03- 2-08 1:03 PM
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91: Isn't "bimbo" that? Are bimbos sluts? I thought they were just stupid. Like this Charlote chick prides herself on being. And simpering towards guys. Which dittto.


Posted by: bitchphd | Link to this comment | 03- 2-08 1:05 PM
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A bimbo is a slut who is a slut not for her own enjoyment but in order to please guys. Even worse than a regular slut.


Posted by: Cryptic Ned | Link to this comment | 03- 2-08 1:07 PM
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Could we say that Allen is a member of Ladies Against Women, and more controversially, Hirshman is in Womyn Against Women?


Posted by: Katherine | Link to this comment | 03- 2-08 1:08 PM
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93: No, they're also supposed to be slutty. That's one of the problems with our attitude toward women -- any insult conventionally directed at a woman seems to always acquire a secondary meaning of either 'slutty' or 'can't get a man'.


Posted by: LizardBreath | Link to this comment | 03- 2-08 1:08 PM
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I don't think bimbo's a good choice at all. The connotations all go with essence rather than behavior. You aren't putting on a bimbo show, you are a bimbo, which is to say that a bimbo is taken to actually be dippy, easy, pointless, airheaded.


Posted by: redfoxtailshrub | Link to this comment | 03- 2-08 1:08 PM
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That's one of the problems with our attitude toward women -- any insult conventionally directed at a woman seems to always acquire a secondary meaning of either 'slutty' or 'can't get a man'.

Sure, any insult directed by men at women.

Are there insults that women habitually use among each other? "Cat" I remember from old movies. That's not related to women's relationships to men.


Posted by: Cryptic Ned | Link to this comment | 03- 2-08 1:09 PM
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Why is "sellout" so inadequate? If it's good enough for Public Enemy....


Posted by: SomeCallMeTim | Link to this comment | 03- 2-08 1:10 PM
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I get all wrecked talking about Hirshman, because I still agree with her about some stuff, despite the misogyny. Someone like Allen is just being hateful; Hirshman has some interesting stuff to say about gender issues, not all right but not all useless, and she's also got a real problem with women.


Posted by: LizardBreath | Link to this comment | 03- 2-08 1:10 PM
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'can't get a man'

Well, Tim keeps pointing out (oh, maybe just once) that Allen and Hirshman are both old.

You could say they're performing bimbo. I like the ungrammaticality.


Posted by: parsimon | Link to this comment | 03- 2-08 1:11 PM
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I agree that "bimbo" describes someone who prides themselves on being stupid.

One of the frustrating things about a person like this is that all of their coping strategies involve helplessness and infantility, and so calling them out on it doesn't cause them to own up and act adultlike; they fall back on the helplessness crap.

How does a group of conscientious people go about raising the value of acting like an adult?


Posted by: heebie-geebie | Link to this comment | 03- 2-08 1:12 PM
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Fembot.


Posted by: Gonerill | Link to this comment | 03- 2-08 1:13 PM
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That's one of the problems with our attitude toward women -- any insult conventionally directed at a woman seems to always acquire a secondary meaning of either 'slutty' or 'can't get a man'.

Indeed. Even "slut" originally had no sexual connotations.


Posted by: teofilo | Link to this comment | 03- 2-08 1:14 PM
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We had a girlfriend in college who played bimbo whenever we wee around a certain group of dudes; we used to refer to it as her "Little Nell act," as there was a particular quality of infantilization that seemed to be at the core of the show. It was fucking disgusting.

I have a hard time discussing HIrschman too for the same reasons as LB.


Posted by: Sybil Vane | Link to this comment | 03- 2-08 1:14 PM
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98: Oh, that's interesting -- you're right: someone catty is just maliciously treacherous, but neither necessarily slutty or repulsive.


Posted by: LizardBreath | Link to this comment | 03- 2-08 1:14 PM
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I'm pretty sick of op-ed pages deciding that the debate is between feminist misogynists and anti-feminist misogynists. Having Hirshman to "balance" Allen means that people who represent me are entirely excluded from the discussion. She is a tool of the patriarchy as far as I'm concerned, & an extremely sloppy writer & thinker. But at least she's not a deliberate collaborator & does ocasionally make a real point, so yeah, she's preferable to Allen.


Posted by: Katherine | Link to this comment | 03- 2-08 1:14 PM
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Why is "sellout" so inadequate? If it's good enough for Public Enemy....

It's fine, and it really is the point, only there's just no underlying sense of solidarity among women, so it's empty.


Posted by: heebie-geebie | Link to this comment | 03- 2-08 1:16 PM
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I'm sick of the Washington Post wasting its precious space on the posturing of bimbercenaries.


Posted by: Cryptic Ned | Link to this comment | 03- 2-08 1:16 PM
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Yeah, but catty stereotypically involves fighting OVER a man.

Fembot is better. Allusions to stepford, etc.


Posted by: Katherine | Link to this comment | 03- 2-08 1:16 PM
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101: I'm pretty sure all that Tim meant was that they were having arguments that sound as if they belonged in 1965, and that's partially because they were around and capable of arguing in 1965.


Posted by: LizardBreath | Link to this comment | 03- 2-08 1:17 PM
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But how do you increase the underlying solidarity, so that any of these terms have any weight?


Posted by: heebie-geebie | Link to this comment | 03- 2-08 1:17 PM
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107: Wait, what are you suggesting? Non-misogynists? How would that work?


Posted by: LizardBreath | Link to this comment | 03- 2-08 1:18 PM
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Yeah, but catty stereotypically involves fighting OVER a man.

I thought it meant in general, gossiping in order to tear each other down. More concerned with status within the group of women. Of which the rivalry over men is only a part.


Posted by: Cryptic Ned | Link to this comment | 03- 2-08 1:18 PM
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97: Huh, okay. I always think of the bimbo thing as being very much an act.

Hirshman has some interesting stuff to say about gender issues, not all right but not all useless, and she's also got a real problem with women.

Agreed. I've mentioned this before; a few years ago, I heard a talk by a woman who teaches at a small Ohio college in which she said that if feminists don't come to terms with our own internalized misogyny, we're not going to get very far. I really thought that was a very wise statement.


Posted by: bitchphd | Link to this comment | 03- 2-08 1:19 PM
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114: But it does involve substance-less squabbles. And when women are interacting in a content-free discussion, the default subtext is attention from men.


Posted by: heebie-geebie | Link to this comment | 03- 2-08 1:20 PM
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I'm not sure if this indicates internalized misogyny or not, but the comment I most frequently bite back is "Meee-ow!", directed at something malicious from another commenter. I usually want to direct it at men, but that gets into the 'insulting a man by calling him a woman' area, and that doesn't work either.


Posted by: LizardBreath | Link to this comment | 03- 2-08 1:22 PM
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(Re. insults of women that don't have, necessarily, to do with their fuckability--well, there's always "bitch." But I refuse to let us use that one for the Allens of the world.

I don't like "fembot." Maybe I could get used to it, but part of what bugs me about it, I think, is that it has (to me) overtones of implying that femmyness is, in and of itself, bottish. Which maybe it is. But still.


Posted by: bitchphd | Link to this comment | 03- 2-08 1:22 PM
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i don't like parodies, i think parodies only reinforce the parodied point of view, that black parody was awful, really, not a laughing matter
i'm not sexist or feminist
i don't understand why the westerners always need to state something extreme
if sexist they say women are dim, inferior
if feminist they are aggressively reverse mysogynistic
i think men and women are different and incomparable, and it's fine
if you love and respect your mother you'd never say anything mysogynistic, women can't drive so what, why this is a criterion to evaluate someone,
like can you give birth then, you can't, you must be inferior then, very strange logic
and why women's anatomy should be discarded in the discussion, it's a real factor
men achieve more, but i doubt they'd achieve what they achieve without women in their life, for
every Eisntein there was Mileva to help, support, inspire or even guide him
bimbo is 'poor person' in japanese, i don't know may be it has different meaning here


Posted by: read | Link to this comment | 03- 2-08 1:22 PM
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116: It doesn't need to be substance-less or content-free, does it?

I hope some actual woman comes in to come up with another example now.


Posted by: Cryptic Ned | Link to this comment | 03- 2-08 1:23 PM
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OK then, "sister of patriarchy" is a 70s classic.


Posted by: Gonerill | Link to this comment | 03- 2-08 1:23 PM
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I can't find Hirschman's piece in the online version ....


Posted by: Sybil Vane | Link to this comment | 03- 2-08 1:24 PM
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But how do you increase the underlying solidarity, so that any of these terms have any weight?

The solidarity problem, I suspect, is in part a function of the size of the group, and the consequent wide array of material and social conditions that women fall in. You are beginning to see, I think, the same fracturing happening among African-Americans for the same reason. I'm not sure it's a solvable problem.


Posted by: SomeCallMeTim | Link to this comment | 03- 2-08 1:25 PM
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some variation on "Uncle Tom", maybe? or, "house...."--maybe a "house cat"? "house kitten?"


Posted by: lurker | Link to this comment | 03- 2-08 1:26 PM
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The real issue is the wanting to be the only woman in the room thing; enjoying being a token. Can we call them tokens? Oh look, Allen's enjoying being a token again?

Courtesan? Concubine?


Posted by: bitchphd | Link to this comment | 03- 2-08 1:26 PM
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i don't understand why the westerners always need to state something extreme

Jeez, read, "always"? Cut it out. The people in this discussion often try really hard to present things in a nuanced, balanced way.

And I don't think the Allen piece is a parody.


Posted by: heebie-geebie | Link to this comment | 03- 2-08 1:27 PM
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Sibyl, here's the Hirshman piece.


Posted by: bitchphd | Link to this comment | 03- 2-08 1:29 PM
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124: "kept woman"?


Posted by: bitchphd | Link to this comment | 03- 2-08 1:29 PM
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Hirshman seems to permanently feel about women approximately the way I feel about American voters right after the 2004 election: "christ, we deserve what we're about to get." There's a small element of this that's understandable, but despising the voters is a dead end for good liberal politics, & despising women is a dead end for feminism. And while lots of us have had those feelings about U.S. voters, no one would think it was a good idea to write a series of op-eds about how contemptiblu stupid American voters are & the solution for us was to be less stupid.


Posted by: Katherine | Link to this comment | 03- 2-08 1:30 PM
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Really, you're looking for something like "Oreo" or whatever. All I can imagine is something like xxy or "extra-chromosome."


Posted by: SomeCallMeTim | Link to this comment | 03- 2-08 1:30 PM
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126: That was directed at me, not Allen. I am the horrible racist.


Posted by: Cala | Link to this comment | 03- 2-08 1:31 PM
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It is like Oreo. Like people who are stroking men's egos. Maybe "patriarchy-strokers". Hey Allen, quit fluffing the patriarchy.


Posted by: heebie-geebie | Link to this comment | 03- 2-08 1:32 PM
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123: It's a particular problem? difference? between women's experiences and other minorities. If you're black, you can build solidarity through having all your closest social bonds with other black people. Straight women are in romantic relationships with men, all women have male family members -- the social facts that would tend to lead to solidarity building are different.


Posted by: LizardBreath | Link to this comment | 03- 2-08 1:32 PM
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Hirshman has some interesting stuff to say about gender issues, not all right but not all useless, and she's also got a real problem with women.

Hirshman blows. That you need a voice like hers is, itself, a pretty good indication of a sexism problem. Nobody eats the poisoned fruit unless it's the only food available.


Posted by: SomeCallMeTim | Link to this comment | 03- 2-08 1:32 PM
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"Goomah" or "Mrs Thomas Sowell."


Posted by: FL | Link to this comment | 03- 2-08 1:33 PM
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if feminist they are aggressively reverse mysogynistic

You know that most of the women on this site are feminists, yes? Do you think we're "aggressively reverse misogynistic", by which I assume you mean, "man-haters"?


Posted by: bitchphd | Link to this comment | 03- 2-08 1:33 PM
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Thanks, B. Kept woman is my favorite so far, but it has a kind of funny class twinge to it.


Posted by: Sybil Vane | Link to this comment | 03- 2-08 1:33 PM
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only there's just no underlying sense of solidarity among women

What constitutes solidarity will differ quite a bit among women; I'm not sure what solidarity would look like.


Posted by: parsimon | Link to this comment | 03- 2-08 1:33 PM
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129: Yeah, exactly.


Posted by: LizardBreath | Link to this comment | 03- 2-08 1:33 PM
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kept woman also has a sexual connotation, but that's probably not avoidable. I still like "Ladies Against Women" though.


Posted by: Katherine | Link to this comment | 03- 2-08 1:34 PM
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Hey Allen, quit fluffing the patriarchy

Ha!


Posted by: Sybil Vane | Link to this comment | 03- 2-08 1:34 PM
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I'm kind of liking fluffer. It seems appropriately pejorative. Is it problematic in some way I'm not thinking of?


Posted by: Witt | Link to this comment | 03- 2-08 1:34 PM
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OT: Even more dead in Gaza.


Posted by: strasmangelo jones | Link to this comment | 03- 2-08 1:35 PM
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137: Isn't the class thing part of the point? Like, servicing the guys in power?


Posted by: bitchphd | Link to this comment | 03- 2-08 1:35 PM
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What constitutes solidarity will differ quite a bit among women; I'm not sure what solidarity would look like.

True; I doubt solidarity would look totally homogeneous. But I'm picturing a light sense of loyalty among women and general recognition of a sexism problem.


Posted by: heebie-geebie | Link to this comment | 03- 2-08 1:35 PM
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Fluffer's not bad!

Isn't the sexual connotation part of the *point*? I mean, it's flirtatious. It's part of a "boys, pay attention to meeeee, not those other girls" thing. Sex *is* part of it.


Posted by: bitchphd | Link to this comment | 03- 2-08 1:36 PM
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Mmmm. You need a word that conveys not just selling out, but selling out so the boys will like her.

"She's different with boys".


Posted by: Martin Wisse | Link to this comment | 03- 2-08 1:36 PM
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142: Just the usual slut-shaming problem -- insulting a woman one disapproves of by saying she sucks cock is problematic.

This is how feminists get humorless. The only way to say anything punchy and funny is to piggyback on cultural norms. When the cultural norms are the problem, you end up peeling everything back to first principles and talking like you're at a seminar all the time.


Posted by: LizardBreath | Link to this comment | 03- 2-08 1:36 PM
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143: Oh, we don't care about that kind of thing. We leave those worries to the men.


Posted by: bitchphd | Link to this comment | 03- 2-08 1:37 PM
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148: But a "fluffer" is practically not categorically female. It's the guys own hand, a nearby guy, a whatever, that just helps an erection stay hard.


Posted by: heebie-geebie | Link to this comment | 03- 2-08 1:39 PM
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Allen! Quit helping the national erection stay hard!


Posted by: heebie-geebie | Link to this comment | 03- 2-08 1:40 PM
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Frankly, even as a woman, I miss the old sexist days, when stewardesses were stewardesses: pretty young things in cute mini-suits and little heels who oozed attention onto everyone-because who knew? They might end up marrying one of the passengers .

I'm old enough to remember "the old sexist days"; clearly, Charlotte's memory is failing. No stewardess "oozed attention onto everyone" - they routinely paid attention to male passengers and ignored female ones. After all, it was men who were in business, who had the money, who were the clients of the airlines. [And who, in Charlotte's eyes, were marriage material...for a woman who purportedly has a brain, she doesn't seem to grasp the contradiction in that last sentence.]

Personally, I object to calling her a cat. Cats are pleasant creatures who do not go about dissing their own. She's a a frigging turnskirt, a quimsling, not a nice furry animal who allows people to share apartments with it.


Posted by: DominEditrix | Link to this comment | 03- 2-08 1:40 PM
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148: Wait, what? Are we talking about the same thing? I thought the fluffer was the offscreen person in p0rn who was responsible for keeping the male lead, ahem, engaged between scenes.


Posted by: Witt | Link to this comment | 03- 2-08 1:40 PM
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I can't wait to vote in next week's primary erection.


Posted by: heebie-geebie | Link to this comment | 03- 2-08 1:40 PM
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144: right, that aspect of the class thing works the way you mean it too. I meant more that a 'kept woman' is for me a figure of some intrinsic sympathy because I tend to hear an implication of total economic disenfranchisement.

That Hirschman piece is surprisingly similar to that Brooks piece from a few weeks ago which posited Obama as Whole Foods to Clinton's Safeway.


Posted by: Sybil Vane | Link to this comment | 03- 2-08 1:41 PM
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nuanced way
could seem like laughing behind someone's back
the same thing i'd say about parodies

well, i don't want to argue today, i should have found a buddhist temple nearby to pray after my mom, today was her 10th anniversary, um mani badmi khum
but there is no temples here


Posted by: read | Link to this comment | 03- 2-08 1:42 PM
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Witt is totally on top of the porn scene.


Posted by: John Emerson | Link to this comment | 03- 2-08 1:43 PM
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[Redacted as regretted by Heebie. And it didn't quite make sense. No one get any ideas about non-privacy related redactions being generally available. LB]


Posted by: heebie-geebie | Link to this comment | 03- 2-08 1:44 PM
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Sorry, I wish I hadn't posted that. LB, could you erase it?


Posted by: heebie-geebie | Link to this comment | 03- 2-08 1:45 PM
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153: That was what I thought too, except that I understood the conventional methodology to be the administration of oral.


Posted by: LizardBreath | Link to this comment | 03- 2-08 1:46 PM
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159: Just this once. [FTR, it was pig latin, and I believe was garbled -- seems to be missing a word.]


Posted by: LizardBreath | Link to this comment | 03- 2-08 1:48 PM
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133: I think it also ends up that, because the class is so big, and because the disparity in conditions can be so great, the way sexism might most relevantly be expressed to different members might vary a lot. So at the top of the income/career scale, the problem might be that rules applied neutrally are still written by men, and so do not take into account a host of factors that just do matter in women's lives. Down the scale, it might be that the problem is that the rules are not applied equally. Further down the scale, I can imagine that the real problems exist in the home, not the workplace. This might also vary by region as well. And so onl.

I suppose one way I think of the issue is that I assume that to the extent there is a "feminist friendly" political party, I assume it's the Democrats. Yet only slightly (IIRC) more women vote for Dems than for Republicans, and the biggest class of women (and the one that I expect to see most feministically inclined) vote 10% the other way. There are some other things going on there.


Posted by: SomeCallMeTim | Link to this comment | 03- 2-08 1:48 PM
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148: The problem is that we don't need to find a name for women who do this, and it's troublesome to throw yet another female-directed epithet into the mix. The language provides a host of ways to describe what's wrong with what she does in that article (I'm talking about Allen, leave Hirshman aside because I don't want to get into it): disingenuous, regressive, too clever by half, self-serving, irresponsible.


Posted by: parsimon | Link to this comment | 03- 2-08 1:49 PM
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I promise not to ask again! Thanks.


Posted by: heebie-geebie | Link to this comment | 03- 2-08 1:50 PM
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Can we call them tokens? Oh look, Allen's enjoying being a token again?

"I'm a Barbie doll but I've got brains!"


Posted by: snarkout | Link to this comment | 03- 2-08 1:51 PM
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163: That's about right.


Posted by: LizardBreath | Link to this comment | 03- 2-08 1:51 PM
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disingenuous, regressive, too clever by half, self-serving, irresponsible

Other words hurt more. The word isn't supposed to be an argument; it's supposed to be a cudgel. "Hooker."


Posted by: SomeCallMeTim | Link to this comment | 03- 2-08 1:56 PM
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160: Clearly my understanding did not go far enough.

I kind of agree with parsimon in 163, but at the same time the original request was for something equivalent to minstrel show. Which I think is a usefully specific insult.

Voluntary tokens?


Posted by: Witt | Link to this comment | 03- 2-08 1:58 PM
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You need a word that conveys not just selling out, but selling out so the boys will like her.

There's a German word that comes close: stutenbissig, or "mare-bitey". It literally refers to a female horse that nuzzles stallions but bites other mares. It is used to describe a woman who is hypercritical of other women.


Posted by: Knecht Ruprecht | Link to this comment | 03- 2-08 1:59 PM
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[Redacted as regretted by Sifu. This is the last one, though! No fooling. LB]


Posted by: Beefo Meaty | Link to this comment | 03- 2-08 1:59 PM
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Could you delete this message, please? Thanks in advance.


Posted by: Zippy | Link to this comment | 03- 2-08 2:01 PM
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167: We're back to the same problem. For a word to be a cudgel, it needs to buy in to the same misogyny that makes Allen's piece so bizarre. We're stuck being humorless™.


Posted by: LizardBreath | Link to this comment | 03- 2-08 2:01 PM
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Hmm... Women are worse drivers than men, yet have "an excellent memory and superior verbal skills". Doesn't this mean that women should be in power and men should drive them around?


Posted by: feldspar | Link to this comment | 03- 2-08 2:01 PM
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62, meet 5.


Posted by: Knecht Ruprecht | Link to this comment | 03- 2-08 2:02 PM
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Right - the difference between "fluffer" and "cock-sucker" is that "fluffing" doesn't connote slut-shaming. It just describes maintaining the status quo. The hard, veiny status quo.


Posted by: heebie-geebie | Link to this comment | 03- 2-08 2:02 PM
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170: Rat bastard forger.


Posted by: LizardBreath | Link to this comment | 03- 2-08 2:03 PM
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171 was pwned by 170. Could you delete it please?


Posted by: Zippy | Link to this comment | 03- 2-08 2:03 PM
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[redacted at the request of C****** N**, and not just that, but also credited to a different commenter - whoo, this one was embarrassing]


Posted by: Btock Lamerf | Link to this comment | 03- 2-08 2:04 PM
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[Redacted. Quit revealing the secret conspiracy behind the redactions, Sifu! LB]


Posted by: Beefo Meaty | Link to this comment | 03- 2-08 2:04 PM
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Cats are pleasant creatures who do not go about dissing their own.

The former, yes; the latter, not so much.


Posted by: bitchphd | Link to this comment | 03- 2-08 2:05 PM
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160: A mouth is a mouth is a mouth ... why assume women?


Posted by: soup biscuit | Link to this comment | 03- 2-08 2:06 PM
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We're stuck being humorless™.

ATM


Posted by: soup biscuit | Link to this comment | 03- 2-08 2:07 PM
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I can't help reading "Charlotte Allen" -- whom I've never heard of, although I guess she's been writing this sort of thing for a while* -- as "Charlotte Simmons", perhaps based on Wolfe's scandalous acceptance of female sexuality and almost mystical ability to stay on the bleeding edge of American culture.

* I see that she was a contributing editor at Lingua Franca, perhaps partially explaining the tendency of Arts & Letters Daily to be a neocon-enabling piece of shit blog.


Posted by: snarkout | Link to this comment | 03- 2-08 2:08 PM
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For a word to be a cudgel, it needs to buy in to the same misogyny that makes Allen's piece so bizarre.

Buy into just a bit of it--for only "special" women--and enforce a rule that only female-on-female misogyny is OK. Come to Dark Side, LB.


Posted by: SomeCallMeTim | Link to this comment | 03- 2-08 2:09 PM
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Hm. "Fairest of them all"? "Evil queen"?? Or does that sound too gay?


Posted by: bitchphd | Link to this comment | 03- 2-08 2:10 PM
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184: Tim's making a good point. I mean, arguably, "minstrel show" has the same problem as a lot of the terms we're considering--after all, folks needed to make a living, it wasn't their fault, etc.--but no one worries about that. It occasionally gets pointed out in more academic or critical kinds of discussions, but as a general rule of thumb, it works pretty well.


Posted by: bitchphd | Link to this comment | 03- 2-08 2:13 PM
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172: We're stuck being humorless™.

It's not humorless to describe the failings, indeed the betrayals, in Allen's piece in non-gendered terms! Mere dime-store mockery has a limited shelf-life, you know.


Posted by: parsimon | Link to this comment | 03- 2-08 2:15 PM
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186: Not to derail the discussion, but does anyone seriously make this argument? Like, people couldn't make money in vaudeville or burlesque* or whatever, so they just had to make a living doing minstrel shows?

(*Leaving aside problematic aspects of these genres.)


Posted by: Witt | Link to this comment | 03- 2-08 2:16 PM
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Dog and pony show. (I don't actually know what that means, I realize.)


Posted by: parsimon | Link to this comment | 03- 2-08 2:17 PM
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So nobody's going to suggest "lap dance", eh? Well, I still think it doesn't work for various reasons!


Posted by: Beefo Meaty | Link to this comment | 03- 2-08 2:17 PM
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188: I'm thinking of blacks who played stereotypes, or minstrel-type characters. The mammies, Stepin Fetchit, etc.


Posted by: bitchphd | Link to this comment | 03- 2-08 2:25 PM
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I'm sticking with "fluffing the patriarchy." I think it captures what I want to say. Unfortunately, I don't think I can say that to my students.


Posted by: heebie-geebie | Link to this comment | 03- 2-08 2:25 PM
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Maybe you can tell your students that it means that the token women are acting like pets. You know, soft, fluffy. Not human.


Posted by: bitchphd | Link to this comment | 03- 2-08 2:29 PM
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"pets", penthouse used "pets".


Posted by: MrBitchPhd | Link to this comment | 03- 2-08 2:34 PM
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You could say Charlotte is a misogynist pet.


Posted by: MrBitchPhd | Link to this comment | 03- 2-08 2:35 PM
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Hirshmann's explanation about why women might prefer Obama to Clinton almost descends to the level of Charlotte Allen. Essentially, rich women care more about shoes than anything else:

Or it could just be that women with more education (and more money) relate on a subconscious level to the young and handsome Barack and Michelle Obama, with their white-porticoed mansion in one of the cooler Chicago neighborhoods and her Jimmy Choo shoes.

Posted by: Bostoniangirl | Link to this comment | 03- 2-08 2:36 PM
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I'm thinking of blacks who played stereotypes, or minstrel-type characters. The mammies, Stepin Fetchit, etc.

And instead of shucking and jiving, the stars of the menstrual show suck and gibe.


Posted by: Knecht Ruprecht | Link to this comment | 03- 2-08 2:37 PM
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196: Because we don't relate to a Yale-educated, successful, wealthy woman who I'm sure buys her shoes at K-mart? What?


Posted by: Cala | Link to this comment | 03- 2-08 2:41 PM
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198: who live in a sadly unporticoed non-mansion in blue collar Chappaqua, NY.


Posted by: Beefo Meaty | Link to this comment | 03- 2-08 2:45 PM
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I apparently am a lady, because I didn't know what fluffer meant.


Posted by: Katherine | Link to this comment | 03- 2-08 3:07 PM
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200: But a member of Ladies for Women.

(I am now picturing you as Lacey Davenport. Don't worry, it'll pass in no time.)


Posted by: LizardBreath | Link to this comment | 03- 2-08 3:09 PM
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Ladies Who Don't Get Out Much.


Posted by: Katherine | Link to this comment | 03- 2-08 3:09 PM
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200: I didn't either, Katherine. (Not saying that that makes me a "lady.")


Posted by: Bostoniangirl | Link to this comment | 03- 2-08 3:10 PM
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Fluffing is not nearly so glamorous in person.


Posted by: Beefo Meaty | Link to this comment | 03- 2-08 3:10 PM
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Ladies Who Lunch Alone?


Posted by: Cryptic Ned | Link to this comment | 03- 2-08 3:10 PM
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It's also hilarious that another organization this Charlotte chick is involved with is the "Independent Women's Forum," which as far as I can tell seems to be an organization dedicated to keeping women as dependent as possible.


Posted by: bitchphd | Link to this comment | 03- 2-08 3:17 PM
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180: They fight with, eat with, mate with, sleep with, teleport with, but I have to have a cat who compared its fellows unfavourably with, say, dogs.

And as soon as I repaint my kid's room and the dining room, I am getting a cat again. I so need a cat...


Posted by: DominEditrix | Link to this comment | 03- 2-08 3:18 PM
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I apparently am a lady, because I didn't know what fluffer meant.

Yet another point for the unfogged educational committee.


Posted by: soup biscuit | Link to this comment | 03- 2-08 3:22 PM
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heebie: "Fluffing the patriarchy's...pillows"?

Next topic: finding a less seminar-y name for consciousness-raising groups.

On another note, if a big head prevents irrational hyperventilation about politics, how does she explain Chris Matthews?


Posted by: | Link to this comment | 03- 2-08 3:25 PM
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"Independent Women's Forum," which as far as I can tell seems to be an organization dedicated to keeping women as dependent as possible.

It is a/the AEI-type feminist (or "feminist," as the case may be) group. I think it's about 15 years old.


Posted by: SomeCallMeTim | Link to this comment | 03- 2-08 3:31 PM
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One key difference between Allen and Hirshman: Allen is an opportunistic hack, while Hirshman is a naive ideologue.

Allen probably doesn't believe half of what she's saying the that piece, but she's willing to say it anyway in the service of discrediting the candidacies of both Obama and Clinton. I doubt very much that reports of women "falling for" a GOP candidate would have prompted Allen to write a "women are stupid" piece. Oh no. In that case it would have been something along the lines of how real women, the authentic non-elite women of America, are obviously much smarter than their liberal feminist elite Democractic-voting sisters.

I think Hirshmann does believe every word that she writes, and is genuinely clueless about the ways in which her approach to women and power draws upon and reinforces misogyny. It's not that she hates women, I think, it's that she's angry with them for not behaving the way she expects them to. And she is (at least partially) blinded by her overly individualistic frame of reference. She doesn't seem to understand that the members of no demographic category are going to act as though they had "formed a meaningful political movement" unless and until that meaningful political movement has already been formed and sufficient numbers have signed on to its agenda. So she ends by blaming women for having the wrong motivations, following the wrong incentives, and etc. If her issue is "Why aren't there more women in positions of power?" (which I think is a good question and an important issue), she should be looking at larger social and economic and political structures and etc., instead of falling back on feminine character flaws (so: as voters, women are fickle, or, in the case of the "back to work" stuff, women are lazy and lack ambition).


Posted by: Mary Catherine | Link to this comment | 03- 2-08 3:41 PM
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Treacheress / Quislette / Patrislut ?


Posted by: TehMeh | Link to this comment | 03- 2-08 3:45 PM
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Again, that's very much what I think is going on with Hirshman.


Posted by: LizardBreath | Link to this comment | 03- 2-08 3:46 PM
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(The 'again' referring back to Katherine's 129.)


Posted by: LizardBreath | Link to this comment | 03- 2-08 3:47 PM
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[Redacted. Sifu if you don't stop making fun of my non-standard comment referencing I'm going to clock you. LB]


Posted by: Beefo Meaty | Link to this comment | 03- 2-08 3:49 PM
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You know, we do have a rule against impersonation. I set myself up for it, but keep it to this thread, okay?


Posted by: LizardBreath | Link to this comment | 03- 2-08 3:53 PM
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You did totally set yourself up for it.

NOTE TO EVERYBODY: THAT WAS ACTUALLY ME LB DIDN'T REDACT ANYTHING IF I WAS GOING TO SAY TERRIBLE THINGS THEN PROBABLY I'D JUST HAVE TO LIVE WITH IT BECAUSE HONESTLY THINK OF ALL THE TERRIBLE THINGS I'VE ALREADY SAID THAT I HAVE TO LIVE WITH YRS, SIFU


Posted by: Beefo Meaty | Link to this comment | 03- 2-08 3:57 PM
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210: I actually knew that.
211: I think this does a good job of summing it up, actually.


Posted by: bitchphd | Link to this comment | 03- 2-08 4:00 PM
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I was impersonating Sifu in 217.


Posted by: ben w-lfs-n | Link to this comment | 03- 2-08 4:01 PM
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Did you guys like my w-lfs-n impersonation just then?


Posted by: Beefo Meaty | Link to this comment | 03- 2-08 4:02 PM
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217: Actually, Sifu's the meekest, most harmless of commenters. I follow him around and edit terrible things into his comments.

Or, at least, I may start.


Posted by: LizardBreath | Link to this comment | 03- 2-08 4:02 PM
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You need a word that conveys not just selling out, but selling out so the boys will like her.

The phrase "She's with the band," comes to mind, but that also carries connotations of slut-shaming that maybe aren't desirable.

the Allen piece, though, partakes of that thing we know so well: deep irony

Just to leap to the defense of irony for a moment, not so much. To be writing ironically (facetiously is probably the more accurate description), Allen would need to recognize that what she was writing wasn't, on some level, true. Publications like Vice magazine write offensive things in this manner, but they also signal, ambiguously, that they're only writing to offend the offense-takers. Therefore the irony. Allen, OTOH, (I think) is either writing what she believes to be true or is writing what she wants other people to believe is true, i.e., propaganda sans lulz.


Posted by: Populuxe | Link to this comment | 03- 2-08 4:05 PM
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i don't like parodies, i think parodies only reinforce the parodied point of view, that black parody was awful, really, not a laughing matter

IIRC, Roland Barthes agrees with read on this point.

She's already got cummings in the bag; now all she's got to do is reach out to Beard on Bread and she'll have the Triple Crown sewn up.

(It was a very funny and dead-on parody, Cala. On a larger level, I think parody as politics is less successful than its hip adherents want to believe.)


Posted by: Wrongshore | Link to this comment | 03- 2-08 4:22 PM
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It's not that she hates women, I think, it's that she's angry with them for not behaving the way she expects them to. And she is (at least partially) blinded by her overly individualistic frame of reference.

I'd be more sympathetic to that reading if Hirshman actually looked to her own "individual" life to see and acknowledege the ways in which she failed to live up to the standards she espouses. And maybe reflected on the trade-offs that she's asking others to make. Just a little bit.

Also, I don't trust her with the data anymore.


Posted by: SomeCallMeTim | Link to this comment | 03- 2-08 4:25 PM
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Tim, what was the thing that she got really wrong that Mark Schmitt called her on?


Posted by: Bostoniangirl | Link to this comment | 03- 2-08 4:27 PM
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223: I am committed to nothing except my ability to parody everything from LOLcats to idiot columnists.


Posted by: Cala | Link to this comment | 03- 2-08 4:33 PM
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The analogy may be a bit strained, but I can't help thinking that in the same way that William F Buckley gave cover and apparent legitimacy to haters of all stripes, someone like Catherine Allen does the same specifically for misogynists. The term Buckleyette comes to mind, but it's not that good.


Posted by: JP Stormcrow | Link to this comment | 03- 2-08 4:34 PM
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I commissioned the parody, so I take full responsibility for all offense it caused.


Posted by: rob helpy-chalk | Link to this comment | 03- 2-08 4:37 PM
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[Redacted. Sifu has established a blog where redacted comments are posted. It's a seekrit blog and you need permission. If you want the permission and password email Sifu, or show up at his house around 11:30 at night and demand it. His address is {redacted}].


Posted by: John Emerson | Link to this comment | 03- 2-08 4:37 PM
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225: CT discussion of the same with links.


Posted by: SomeCallMeTim | Link to this comment | 03- 2-08 4:43 PM
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[...] no one would think it was a good idea to write a series of op-eds about how contemptiblu stupid American voters are & the solution for us was to be less stupid.

Actually, didn't the Post (or was it the NYT?) recently print just such a piece, plugging a book making the point about the essential stupidity of the American people at much greater length? I can't remember the author's name now, which merely proves her point.


Posted by: Matt McIrvin | Link to this comment | 03- 2-08 4:45 PM
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Thanks Tim!


Posted by: Bostoniangirl | Link to this comment | 03- 2-08 4:46 PM
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I think 'right wing hack' is perfectly appropriate, and not gendered. Oh sure, it doesn't reach the full extent of the gender treason on display, but it's insult enough. And anyway, anti-feminist is adequately included within 'right wing hack.'


Posted by: Nápi | Link to this comment | 03- 2-08 5:06 PM
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La donn' e mobile, qual piuma al vento!


Posted by: Duke of Mantua And his new best friend, Linda Hirshman | Link to this comment | 03- 2-08 5:09 PM
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228: It was a awesome parody.


Posted by: Wrongshore | Link to this comment | 03- 2-08 5:10 PM
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Catch more of Charlotte* Allen's work at her blog: Stuff Real White Women Don't Like.
#1 Women., #2 Hilary Clinton, #3 Feminists, #4 Men Who Support Feminists, #5 Liberal Religions, #6 The Jena 6, #7 Barack Obama, #8 Math, #9 Political Correctness, #10 People Who Don't Like Larry Summers.

[*In 227 I wrote 'Catherine' instead of 'Charlotte', requesting auto-redact please LB.]

**


Posted by: JP Stormcrow | Link to this comment | 03- 2-08 5:15 PM
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This is just a standard retro-annoying Mars and Venus gender piece taken 10% more extreme to justify an attack on Obama and Hilary. It has all the standard fake-helplessness tropes no one could take seriously, plus the stuff on the husband's silly failings as well.

My favorite parts are A) the slam on "Eat, Pray, Love", I hate that book, and B) where she tries to show women are worse drivers than men and actually shows precisely the reverse.


Posted by: PerfectlyGoddamnDelightful | Link to this comment | 03- 2-08 5:18 PM
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Holy shit, that comments in that Crooked Timber thread (Tim's 230) are a trainwreck.


Posted by: snarkout | Link to this comment | 03- 2-08 5:19 PM
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231: Matt Taibbi and Mark Ames have built not one but two careers out of telling American voters how contemptibly stupid they are.

e.g.

Mencken did well out of contempt for the American voter too, I suppose.


Posted by: felix | Link to this comment | 03- 2-08 5:20 PM
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You couldn't write this shit about blacks (or even muslims, maybe) and keep your job.

Don't kid yourself -- you could write stuff ten times worse about Muslims and get promoted. This stuff is about patronizing women, not killing them.


Posted by: PerfectlyGoddamnDelightful | Link to this comment | 03- 2-08 5:21 PM
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At brunch, a friend reported that her Latina co-workers were down with Hillary -- "She's for my people. I don't know about him" -- until my friend forwarded them the will.i.am Yes We Can video, which turned them around (after moving them to tears).

I don't actually have contempt for this as a form of decision-making. Most of us make emotional connections and backfill with reason.


Posted by: Wrongshore | Link to this comment | 03- 2-08 5:24 PM
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In the comments of the Crooked Timber thread on this op-ed, someone linked to Allen's last op-ed for the Post, a bizarro piece about living wills and how they're a tool of elite liberal consensus that will surely lead us to a Logan's Run future. It contained the following sentence, which in a better world would surely result in people being removed from the public sphere lest they hurt themselves with a fork or a ping-pong paddle or something:

Myself, I'm with Slate blogger Mickey Kaus.


Posted by: snarkout | Link to this comment | 03- 2-08 5:32 PM
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I hope it wasn't the second Will.i.am video.


Posted by: slolernr | Link to this comment | 03- 2-08 5:33 PM
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243: The John McCain one?


Posted by: Wrongshore | Link to this comment | 03- 2-08 5:36 PM
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Columnists get and retain position based on the stringent but bizarre requirement to produce on deadline a contracted word count of adequate grammar and consistency—and that's it. Yes, it's harder than it looks, but it's not the same as being right or even non-stupid.


Posted by: slolernr | Link to this comment | 03- 2-08 5:38 PM
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244: No, the one with all the creepy chanting and no actual Obama.


Posted by: slolernr | Link to this comment | 03- 2-08 5:40 PM
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222: To be writing ironically (facetiously is probably the more accurate description), Allen would need to recognize that what she was writing wasn't, on some level, true.

Hi Populuxe! We have a difference of opinion on this: I don't think she believes a lot of that stuff. To settle it, we'd have to read more of her writing; I'd just as soon not.


Posted by: parsimon | Link to this comment | 03- 2-08 5:44 PM
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I think that Obama's campaign is allowing a lot of people to make a political choice for no particular reason. His bipartisanship could just be a sly way of getting apolitical centrists and whim voters on board cheaply (for them) -- they can say that they were supporting an end to rancor. He's likewise made it easy for Republicans to switch without actually becoming Democrats.

One Fat Englishman thinks he;ll be a Tony Blair. Can'r say that's impossible.


Posted by: John Emerson | Link to this comment | 03- 2-08 5:57 PM
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I am very ready to get back to objecting to a Democrat.

BTW, Emerson, I'll be passing by Wobegon in July. (Assuming that flights remain cheaper into Minneapolis than into Fargo.) Meetup?


Posted by: Wrongshore | Link to this comment | 03- 2-08 5:59 PM
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248: that is his genius.

We already had our Tony Blair in Bill Clinton. There is no longer a major left party to take to the right. Instead, the hope for Obama is that he'll be a Reagan -- someone who makes left politics seem sunny and inoffensive.


Posted by: PGD | Link to this comment | 03- 2-08 6:09 PM
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or: might be his genius. He's not proven as yet.


Posted by: PGD | Link to this comment | 03- 2-08 6:10 PM
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Hey, you got your Tony Blair in my Bill Clinton!
Hey, you got your Bill Clinton in my Tony Blair!


Posted by: heebie-geebie | Link to this comment | 03- 2-08 6:15 PM
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249: Yes, should be possible. I could put someone up overnight here easily, or we could meet Frowner, Minneapolitan, and others in MPLS.


Posted by: John Emerson | Link to this comment | 03- 2-08 6:36 PM
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250: Agreed, but Obama could be another Bill Clinton. Shit, maybe he'll even screw Hillary. Tabloid paradise!


Posted by: John Emerson | Link to this comment | 03- 2-08 6:38 PM
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247: I was intrigued enough to read a few of her things. I do think that part of her "thing" is the purposeful shock statement (but mild by say Anne Coulter's standards). Per my link above she writes a bit for The Weekly Standard. One of my favorite lines is from her review of a book on Elia Kazan (empahsis added):

Elia Kazan has always been hot, in my book, because he did two great things: He directed On the Waterfront (1954), one of the best American movies ever made, and he stood up to the (then, as now) irritatingly ultra-left Hollywood establishment in 1952, when he gave the House Un-American Activities Committee the names of eight Communists in the entertainment industry whom he'd known back in the 1930s.

Her real concerns seem to be about religion, for a trip to la-la land here is an interview she did for BeliefNet with Anne Coulter on Godless. Anne shows her it's really done.


Posted by: JP Stormcrow | Link to this comment | 03- 2-08 6:39 PM
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In memory of Anne Shirley, I should say that Ms. Coulter lacks the terminal 'e'.


Posted by: LizardBreath | Link to this comment | 03- 2-08 6:43 PM
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Completely OT: Can anyone here translate "This is a dead parrot" into Latin?


Posted by: DominEditrix | Link to this comment | 03- 2-08 6:48 PM
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257: Sorry, this isn't a helpline for Monty Python translators.


Posted by: John Emerson | Link to this comment | 03- 2-08 6:49 PM
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the second will.i.am video sort of blows. Viva Obama is excellent, though.


Posted by: Katherine | Link to this comment | 03- 2-08 6:52 PM
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"We Got the Mo" is pretty adorable, too.


Posted by: A White Bear | Link to this comment | 03- 2-08 6:54 PM
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Yeah, John, but I'm making a dead parrot birthday cake for a friend. Help!

Is est psitticacus mortuus is the closest I can figure. Can anyone confirm that?


Posted by: DominEditrix | Link to this comment | 03- 2-08 6:55 PM
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Completely OT: Can anyone here translate "This is a dead parrot" into Latin?

psittacus deliciae meae puellae mortuus est.


Posted by: ben w-lfs-n | Link to this comment | 03- 2-08 6:58 PM
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"is" is "he"; if you want "this" go for "hic".


Posted by: ben w-lfs-n | Link to this comment | 03- 2-08 7:00 PM
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262: Ben made a funny.

(We translated the "dead parrot" skit into Russian in high school.)


Posted by: oudemia | Link to this comment | 03- 2-08 7:00 PM
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I'm sorry, we're fresh out. Could we interest you in a Greek translation of "This is a dead fish"?


Posted by: John Emerson | Link to this comment | 03- 2-08 7:01 PM
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264: That was cute.


Posted by: A White Bear | Link to this comment | 03- 2-08 7:02 PM
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Esta mitad de una abeja se llama Éric.


Posted by: Stanley | Link to this comment | 03- 2-08 7:04 PM
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Stanley, either you are very weird or I didn't read this thread carefully enough.


Posted by: A White Bear | Link to this comment | 03- 2-08 7:06 PM
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231; That book has been getting a lot of press.

As near as I can tell, the conclusion of the book is that Americans are no longer able to appreciate rational argument, and the evidence is entirely anecdotal.


Posted by: rob helpy-chalk | Link to this comment | 03- 2-08 7:10 PM
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268: Yeah, I'll cop to being pretty weird. Also, this and this (cross-posted at Standpipe's blog).


Posted by: Stanley | Link to this comment | 03- 2-08 7:12 PM
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(Thanks! I feel dumb.)


Posted by: A White Bear | Link to this comment | 03- 2-08 7:14 PM
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don't have time to read it all now, but anyone suggest "stepsister" or "playing the stepsister?"


Posted by: ogged | Link to this comment | 03- 2-08 7:22 PM
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Grazie.


Posted by: DominEditrix | Link to this comment | 03- 2-08 7:26 PM
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269: Holy shit, the illustration on the first page of that link is hysterical: we had a part-timer at the bookshop for a while (recent high school grad bound for Dartmouth or Brown, I forget) who might as well have been that guy searching for the book, iPod glued to his brain.

No, I haven't actually read the linked article yet.


Posted by: parsimon | Link to this comment | 03- 2-08 7:33 PM
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that comments in that Crooked Timber thread (Tim's 230) are a trainwreck.

Aren't they always?


Posted by: bitchphd | Link to this comment | 03- 2-08 7:49 PM
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She's a a frigging turnskirt, a quimsling

Nicely done. Original?


Posted by: Hamilton-Lovecraft | Link to this comment | 03- 2-08 7:52 PM
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Hirschman is a prissy motherfucker, it turns out.


Posted by: John Emerson | Link to this comment | 03- 2-08 7:57 PM
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I don't think she believes a lot of that stuff.

Mm. I remain agnostic on whether Allen "really" believes what she writes. I wouldn't be surprised to learn that she doesn't. But she writes as if she does and, as I can't see any subtle signals that she doesn't, it isn't irony, it's hackery/propaganda. That's my only point.

But I don't want to make too much of that because whatever it is, we agree that Allen is wrong, offensive, and asinine.


Posted by: Populuxe | Link to this comment | 03- 2-08 8:39 PM
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I really do like "Ladies Against Women" for this sort of shit.


Posted by: Jackmormon | Link to this comment | 03- 2-08 8:41 PM
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"playing the faithful helpmeet"


Posted by: eb | Link to this comment | 03- 2-08 8:42 PM
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The derogatory term in the LDS community for a woman who embraces a cardboard role is "Molly Mormon." I doubt this'll help much.


Posted by: Jackmormon | Link to this comment | 03- 2-08 8:46 PM
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Are the Mormon couples with first names of Molly and Jack?


Posted by: eb | Link to this comment | 03- 2-08 8:47 PM
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Maybe!


Posted by: Jackmormon | Link to this comment | 03- 2-08 8:48 PM
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279: yes! It's also useful for describing other groups, such as: Male Op-Ed Page Editors For Ladies Against Women.


Posted by: katherine | Link to this comment | 03- 2-08 9:51 PM
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I don't know if anyone's suggested this yet, as I've only read through 155 or so, but how about saying that Allen is "in Bimbo" to synthesize parsimon's and B's suggestions?

It immediately suggests that the whole deal is an act, references "in blackface" (which is basically what this whole faux-bimbo schtick is, female blackface for a white male audience), and I like that the rhyme with "in limbo" subtley reminds everyone that Allen's just suggesting the whole female gender bend over for male amusement.


Posted by: Po-Mo Polymath | Link to this comment | 03- 2-08 10:18 PM
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the second will.i.am video sort of blows.

Yes, but considering the competition...


Posted by: apostropher | Link to this comment | 03- 2-08 10:25 PM
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I am unfortunately much too tired to read through this thread, but yeah, stuff like this reminds me that I don't really understand why Hillary doesn't have even more of women's votes. The evident sexism from Charlotte Allen is just a reminder that women are *not equal* in this country. And they're worse off in much of the world. I know I'm selfish enough that if I were a woman, that would be reason enough for me to support her as long as I was anywhere near her politically. Hillary may well be the only chance to vote for a woman for President for a very long time.

Similarly, if I were a black man I'd vote for Obama because of the perceived benefit to myself. If I were a black woman, I think I'd go for Hillary.


Posted by: Michael | Link to this comment | 03- 2-08 11:14 PM
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286: I like that the second one has a reaction video (apparently a 2-girls-1-cup reaction vid with the Hillary 4U music instead).


Posted by: A White Bear | Link to this comment | 03- 2-08 11:18 PM
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The evident sexism from Charlotte Allen

Even if you're not up on the scientific research - a paper Mr. Summers cited demonstrating that, while women overall are just as smart as men, significantly fewer women than men occupy the very highest intelligence brackets that produce scientific genius - common sense tells you that Mr. Summers has got to be right. [...] As with the other leading totalitarian ideologies of our time, Marxism and National Socialism, the tenets of ideological feminism need not be argued but merely asserted - and then enforced by any means necessary. Critical examination of those tenets is not permitted, as Mr. Summers has learned to his detriment.


Posted by: apostropher | Link to this comment | 03- 2-08 11:19 PM
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"Common sense" is so useful!


Posted by: A White Bear | Link to this comment | 03- 2-08 11:20 PM
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in other news of things I don't understand, this NYTimes lede:

Obama Backers Urge Clinton to Exit if She Loses

seems amazingly even more mundane and unsurprising than the paradigm "Dog Bites Man". Yet it's on the front of the websites for the NY Times, Google News, and and TPM. WTF?


Posted by: Michael | Link to this comment | 03- 2-08 11:29 PM
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amazingly even more mundane and unsurprising

It's been almost two weeks since the last primaries and nothing much interesting has happened aside from 3am nig ad. They're struggling to fill space.


Posted by: apostropher | Link to this comment | 03- 2-08 11:44 PM
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Don't Americans need to know more about the new President of Russia? You know, prez. medva....ah, who really cares?

I saw a pony yesterday that was done up in glitter.


Posted by: Michael | Link to this comment | 03- 2-08 11:53 PM
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Speaking of Medvedev, I had been thinking that that name sounded familiar apart from the recent news, and when I was at my mom's house today I realized that it was because this book is on the bookshelf in the living room there at about eye level. It's a big book, so the author's name is very noticeable, and I must have seen it all the time growing up.


Posted by: teofilo | Link to this comment | 03- 3-08 12:28 AM
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Medvedev is 5'4". And he's only three years older than me.


Posted by: apostropher | Link to this comment | 03- 3-08 12:49 AM
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Usually you have to be much older to get that short.


Posted by: A White Bear | Link to this comment | 03- 3-08 12:55 AM
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John McCain is 37 inches tall.


Posted by: apostropher | Link to this comment | 03- 3-08 1:07 AM
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Pure presidential concentrate!


Posted by: A White Bear | Link to this comment | 03- 3-08 1:19 AM
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But that doesn't mean he can't have a baby.


Posted by: apostropher | Link to this comment | 03- 3-08 1:41 AM
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If he does, he's got the woman vote locked up right there.


Posted by: Walt Someguy | Link to this comment | 03- 3-08 1:45 AM
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-s or are,
136 sorry to not answer your question yesterday
yes, i know that you are feminist, not 'man-haters'
i did not try to be deliberately rude, just wanted to say that no need to go to extremes
if there is a real cause i always support feminists,
if they are defensive against every minor unimportant or imaginary causes (like that reading into pyjama with nig in case of racism, bad example, i know) i think it would hurt back women, hurt may be too strong, but anyway it would undermine the movement, so said that - reverse-mysogynistic
may be should add another word reverse, rrm, don't know if there is a term for that


Posted by: read | Link to this comment | 03- 3-08 6:19 AM
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Phew, turns out the whole Charlotte Allen thing was just a joke. You feminists are so humorless


Posted by: politicalfootball | Link to this comment | 03- 3-08 11:13 AM
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302: Per 236 then I guess we can say that the whole "Charlotte Allen" persona is a joke, right?


Posted by: JP Stormcrow | Link to this comment | 03- 3-08 11:19 AM
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Good for Calderone for putting Pomfret on the record, but Calderone apparently didn't ask any followup, such as: "Um, why is it funny to joke about the inherent inferiority of women?" Or "When you saw you didn't get the piece that you had commissioned, why did you run it anyway?"


Posted by: politicalfootball | Link to this comment | 03- 3-08 11:40 AM
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