You've Come a Long Way, Baby
July 21, 2011 by Ben Crystal
Sometime after June Cleaver turned in her apron and retired to guest spots on “The Love Boat,” the feminist movement took center stage in what some called “the gender wars.” I wasn’t around during the nascent years of feminism, but I’ve always thought that the boys lost to the girls right about the same time we started pretending we liked movies with Sally Field — and without the Trans-Am.
Like any conservative, I’m of the opinion that skills and dedication ought to determine merit, and merit ought to determine advancement. As an example: When self-described “journalist” Joe McGinnis rented the house next door to Sarah Palin in order to conduct “research” on her family, liberals cheered the move, while reasonable people saw it as exceptionally creepy. If someone set up camp next door to Rachel Maddow, liberals would shriek “stalker!” or “sexist intimidation!” while conservatives would assume the poor sap lost a very big bet.
Unfortunately, as is so often the case with socially activist philosophies, one side of the political spectrum has convinced itself that it is the only appropriate partner for the movement. And as is so often the case with one side of a political spectrum “claiming” a social ideology as its own, the cause has been grossly perverted. Thus, the message of the current “feminist” movement, co-opted by the left as it is, isn’t one of “equal opportunity for women,” or even “gender should not be the sole factor in (whatever) decision.” Instead, feminism shouts from the rooftops about equal — or superior — treatment for liberal women. And they don’t mean: “The dumb broads who think raising a family is empowering are on their own.” They mean: “The dumb broads who don’t think the way we do are beneath scorn.”
And not only does the Democratic-feminist cabal despise women who don’t share their particular brand of lunacy, they rarely take issue when Democratic men make spectacularly misogynist remarks about conservative women. On those oddly frequent occasions when a party mouthpiece like Bill Maher (who evidently struggles with some serious mommy issues) channels… well… Bill Maher, the liberal community erupts in debate. It strikes me that when a conservative mocks Secretary of State Hillary Clinton without so much as a nod to her gender, the liberal community stands shoulder-to-shoulder in levying sexism charges against him.
Maher is particularly interesting given that he relates to women only slightly less dysfunctionally than Ted Bundy. For the sake of decency, I will refrain from repeating his remarks about Sarah Palin. Suffice it to say, if I used language like that — even about Hillary Clinton — my mother would fly down just to smack the fool out of my mouth. MSNBC’s morbidly obese lunatic Ed Schultz called Laura Ingraham a “slut,” and MSNBC needed 48 hours of navel-gazing before deciding Fat Eddie needed some time in the corner. The evening of President Obama’s State of the Union speech, Chris Matthews spent the better part of an hour talking about how much he hates Representative Michele Bachmann. Given the content of the speech Matthews was supposed to be analyzing, he needed something concrete and defaulted to 45 minutes of woman-hating.
Even the gals get nasty when the target isn’t the right kind of “strong woman.” Late last week, Janeane Garofalo, who manages to make a living as a comedienne despite being about as funny as a colonoscopy, took shots at Bachmann by attacking Bachmann’s husband — a man who has in no way tried to insert himself in the national political discourse. Try to imagine the liberal response should a conservative commentator make cruel and unfounded remarks about — say — Representative John Conyers’ wife… oops, the Federal courts have killed any chance of that.
If Bill Maher, Chris Matthews, Ed Schultz, Markos Moulitsas, Lawrence O’Donnell, Paul Krugman or even Janeane Garofolo wants to take issue with conservative women on a political level, then they’re welcome to it. Their fact-deficient rants usually offer great material for our weekly Great Eight. But they should keep the hypocrisy to a dull roar, focusing their disapproval on their targets’ politics — not their genitals.
–Ben Crystal
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