Dirty Hippies and Ugly Feminist Dykes

It's been a good 35 years since the American youth counter-culture resisted the Vietnam War and loudly demanded action on the issue of civil rights, and in all that time, these two lame stereotypes are best conservatives can do. Anti-war types don't bathe, enjoy Phish and Burning Man and smoke lots of weed. (Okay, so that last one is pretty much true...)

And, of course, any woman concerned about her own civil and personal rights, her ability to earn a fair wage and her station in society is a man-hating, uptight, sex-averse, ugly shrew. I mean, there's nothing new to this...It's the same lazy caricature that's always been around...

And it's exactly this lazy crap that provides the focus for National Review editor Kate O'Beirne's latest book. Get ready for this title. Women Who Make the World Worse.

It may be even more stupid than that Bernie Goldberg tome of last year about the people who make the world worse. What is it with conservatives and making Enemies Lists? Why can't they just keep this shit to themselves like a normal goddamn human being? I mean, we all have people we can't stand with whom we must occasionally interact. There are people who come into the video store all the time who I want to punch directly in the face every time I see them, but I don't. And I'm not out writing a book about how much I hate them, either.

Just a blog post. But I don't name names.

So who are these women who make the world worse through their uppity-ness? Let's take a look at the book's cover and see.



Why, look, it's Ruth Bader Ginsberg...A powerful woman rising to a position of great legal authority through the use of her intellect, savvy and perseverence? FUCK THAT BITCH!

And next to her, good old Hillary, drawn to look rabidly demented with teeth like Matt Dillon in Something About Mary. Next to her, is that...is that Jane Fonda? Holy shit, Kate, that was fucking decades ago! She hung out with the VC for like one afternoon! Can we please, for the love of God, and all thing's holy, just get the fuck over this thing? I mean, she was in Klute, right? That's a pretty cool movie. Can't we just let bygones be bygones?

Finally, Carrie from "Sex and the City." Because a young woman who not only enjoys sex, but manages to profit from it somehow, makes the world worse.

Actually, this really surprises me. Carrie, proudly single though she might be, represents the classic conservative archetype for the contemporary urban female. Sure, she's capable of looking strong, attractive and independant, but she's really just looking to settle down with a nice guy who will take care of her. It's not real freedom of destiny Carrie was after, but the freedom to date around until she met just the right wealthy hunk.

Plus, she loves shopping. What's more conservative than that?

And, people, that's just what's odd and offensive about the cover. Check out some of these excerpts, compliments of Daily Kos:

I have long thought that if high-school boys had invited homely girls to the prom we might have been spared the feminist movement. We live with the destructive feminist agenda because the fathers or husbands of so many of them, including Betty Friedan, Gloria Steinem, Germaine Greer, and Jane Fonda, never failed to fail them. The views of these angry, abandoned women inform the modern women's movement.

I don't know...It's not really fair to use someone's personal, family background against them in an argument in this way. Like, "you're only saying that because your daddy ran out on your family. If you had a nicer dad, you wouldn't care about equal treatment."

I mean, Kate O'Beirne only wrote this book because she's a fucking moron who has no idea what she's talking about, but I try not to use that against her.

The persistent fable that women are denied equal pay for equal work has been a never-empty tank of gas that fuels feminism. A sympathetic public is largely unaware that the claim that women face widespread wage discrimination is a myth aggressively advanced by feminists. Disparities in wages exist between women with children and men and single women. This is not sex discrimination, but if that were better understood feminists would have to get real jobs.

Wait...what? This argument doesn't make any senee at all. Yes, a disparity does exist between women with children and men, and women with children and women without children. That's the whole problem, you fool. She claims the idea that women don't get equal pay is a myth, and then claims that, well, it's true, but they don't get equal pay for very good reasons. You can't have it both ways...can you?

Oh boy. Hillary Clinton is a committed feminist. She's a true believer in the grievance agenda and promotes the myth of stunted progress for women's equality. She would reliably be one of the women who make the world worse by endorsing all of feminism's pet causes -- strict sex quotas for college sports, "girl power" in our schools, the "epidemic" of domestic violence, abortion on demand (despite her phony rhetoric), universal, federally funded day care, enforced "equal pay for equal work" and women in combat.

Holy crap...This woman is making my ears bleed with the sheer power of her cluelessness.

"Grievance agenda"? Is this the new euphamism. Feminists don't have legitimate concerns about protecting their civil rights, they simply have a "grievance agenda"? What's so wrong with that? Everyone have has a grievance has an agenda - to eradicate whatever is causing them grief.

Also, how does "girl power" make the world worse? I'll admit, it's kind of annoying, a term that was always kind of meaningless but is now extremely meaningless because it was so overused for a while there. But did it really make the world worse? I mean, sure, The Spice Girls sucked, but "The Powerpuff Girls" was pretty cool, so doesn't that kind of even things out?

Also, this term..."Abortion on demand." This term is really really stupid. You're either going to have legal abortion or you're not. Regardless, every medically-induced abortion is "on demand". What, you want doctors to show up at your house to abort your unborn fetus randomly? Like in some bizarre Monty Python sketch...

"Evening, mum, we're just here to abort your baby."

"But I don't want an abortion. I want to have my child!"

"Sorry, but your number came up, and we don't have abortion on demand in Britain, so I'm afraid we'll just need to remove that baby post-haste, unless you've completed Form 12-B."

"Form 12-B?"

"Yes, the Abortion Off Demand Don't Abort List."

I could go on like this, but you get the idea...

Also, the quote-unquote epidemic of dmoestic violence...Does The National Review really dispute the notion that there are a lot of battered women in America? Really? Don't most Americans personally know at least one woman who has been involved in an abusive relationship? I know more than one, myself. Is this really the sort of lie you can get away with? Won't everyone who reads this woman on domestic abuse know immediately that she's full of shit?

Anyway, it seems like a lot of liberal bloggers in the past few days have been taking Katie to task for her book, and the National Review Online has hilariously struck back.

They seem to take offense to the idea that Rena over at Daily Kos referred to NRO as a "den of rats." I think that overlooks the clear fact that a number of their contributors - particularly John Derbyshire - are extremely rat-like.

This post itself was really in response to a request from the great political blog firedoglake, which asked for bloggers to provide their own insights into Kate's particular psychosis.

I'll leave you with this thought...As much as conservative nutjobs like Ann Coulter want to screech that feminists are ugly chicks in need of a date to get over their need for equality, which side of the political spectrum is hotter?

Conservatives have the Deep South and some parts of the Midwest. They have farmers and factory workers, NASCAR fans and Wal-Mart shoppers. Liberals have the coasts, and nearly all of the big American cities.

They have Texas, but we have Austin! They (barely) have drunk FSU skanks, but we have UCLA wannabe models and bookish-but-deeply-sensual NYU co-eds.

I mean, you think Angelina Jolie's going to any Heritage Foundation lectures soon? You think Jessica Alba's logging on to Billy O's website for some Factor Gear? Okay, maybe that's not fair...Jessica Alba probably doesn't know how to use a computer. Or, you know...read...