Tom Watson (the blogger, not the golfer) mentions me as a woman hater (h/t Jeff Goldstein of Protein Wisdom) for my characterization of Amanda Marcotte as a “delusional bitch,” which analysis I defend in the comments. Meanwhile, James Wolcott of Vanity Fair links approvingly to him for comments regarding not Amanda, but Hillary. As Watson also points out, Danny Glover of Beltway Blogroll took his suppositions about vanished Pandagon material a little too far. Glover subsequently apologized.
What I wonder is, why doesn’t Amanda Marcotte apologize for her statements regarding the Duke matter? Why shouldn’t she? What has she got to lose?
Oh, hey! Jessica at Feministing, who owes the Duke Girl’s Lacross Team some grovelling, comes out tough-talking. It’s funny how macho they think they are. Quien es el mas macho? O! senor, desculpenos! O! senor sara l’Amanda!
Gee, look! It’s Feministe Jill using the same title! It’s like a potty-mouthed battle cry:
Don’t Fuck with the Pink Mafia
How tough! How concerned to create a space for identity outside the violence of the phallogocentric order! Mafia! La cosa vostra, eh?
Let’s take a look at the womanifesto:
Amanda is getting all kinds of shit around the blogosphere for having the audacity to (a) be an adult woman, (b) use adult language, and (c) accept a job with the Edwards campaign. They’ve called her a “liability†and accused her of deleting and hiding posts (some of the missing posts are easily searchable in the Pandagon archives; others were eaten by the internets, as Ezra explains). So Amanda has a potty mouth and a handful of mouth-breathing wingnuts don’t agree with some of her opinions
No, you idiot. We’re pissed because she’s a lying sack of shit who won’t retract the libellous statements that she’s made about the Duke Lacrosse Team, and still can’t bring herself to believe that the overwhelming evidence demonstrates that, despite the fact that they are male lacrosse players, they did not commit the crimes that she and others claimed that they did. If she were capable of admitting publicly that she was wrong, and apologizing, as that mouth-breathing moron Danny Glover apparently could, then she would not be the infantile puddle of twaddle that she is, and she wouldn’t attract my, at least, scorn.
She accuses the Duke Lacrosse players of rape because it fits her narrative, and therefore must be true. You accuse wingnuts of going after her for reasons that have everything to do with your narrative, rather than the facts. Of course, you are always the victims, despite wanting to send these innocent morons away for 30 years for crimes they didn’t commit. And the Women’s Lacrosse Team, who happened to be right? Hey, stopped clock, 2 times a day, you geniuses.
Why cannot Amanda apologize? Why cannot Jessica?
Because they are not adults. They are not serious human beings. Until they cop for what they’ve done, they don’t deserve any esteem at all. Instead, we’ve got Amanda burying her posts. Why? Is she afraid that she’ll be treated as unfairly as the Duke guys? Is she afraid that she has as much to lose? Is she afraid that her actions will be misinterpreted, or her statements misreported?
Poor thing.
What? Not even a link for Jeff’s hat tip?
Hey, have you noticed that the same people who want us to believe that nothing Marcotte has said or done previously matters now are the same people who crucified Jeff Gannon for prior unrelated behavior?
Thanks, Rob.
Pablo–
That way lies madness.
Have you also noticed that conservatives in scandal tend to go to ground so as not to be an albatross around the neck of their team, while liberals prefer to lie and screech about their victimhood?
6 words that pretty much sum up a political philosophy.
Just being an ass.
“To thine own self be true” and all that.
I like that about he internet, too. It is a very ass-friendly environment.
PuffHo is revising history, claiming that Amanda hasn’t deleted anything, despite her “I deleted this and here’s why” proclamation. Meanwhile, Arianna herself is hot under the collar over the notion that Joe Klein Seeks to Master the Art of Revisionist Journalism (Forgetting He Lives in the Time of the Internet)
Never being able to resist bashing Michelle Malkin, another PuffHo ‘tard decides it’s all about the word “fuck” and not at all about racism, sexism and bald faced lying.
Pablo,
I’m thinking that if you’ve got the time, that’s worth a post, man.
Good grief! I cannot stand reading those back and forth comments. There is simply no arguing with someone who has already boxed you in a sterotype. You are a “woman hater” and a “wingnut” and nothing you are going to say or write will make one bit of difference to them.
In reality there are many things we could have learned from the Duke debacle. So many things about race, gender, the legal profession, and politics. Not to mention the one thing the feminists never brought up in the whole issue, the degradation of stripping and what brings women to it. (please! no jokes! As difficult as that might be for you guys!)
It might have been nice to have a discussion about these things with people who have a different political view than I do, but that is impossible with people like Amanda and Tom who simply look down on people from the other side of the political spectrum. They won’t simply answer your question because you are not worthy of anything but their contempt.
Who can stand this? Certaintly I cannot.
One more thing. This really isn’t about Amanda deleting or not deleting her posts. This is about a blogger who has clearly, but anyone’s standards, gone beyond a writing style that is acceptable by decent journalistic standards. This is not comedy central, this is not some nasty HBO special. This is a PRESIDENTIAL campaign.
John Edwards, while I disagree with just about everything he stands for, I still expect him and those who work for him to behave and write and speak in a decent manner. Is that really too much to ask? I can only think that he really had no idea how this woman writes.
Don’t miss the Amanda lovefest at Feministe.
Jill, who I find a bit naive but nonetheless a conscientious progressive commentator, disappoints, and writes of Marcotte:
I would disagree with this assessment, and rephrase it thus:
Marcotte raises conservative ire because she is an unreconstructed demagogue who smears regularly and then ducks for cover when the intellectual going gets tough, deleting comments, banning commenters, and attributing, ubiquitously, the worst motives to her debate opponents—motives that move between the cliche and the paranoic, the mundane and the insane, but motives that, whatever form they take, always strive to replace the claimed motives of her interlocutor.
Her writing, far from being compelling, is an admixture of profanity and inanity, its goal to shock rather than to inform, to accuse rather than engage.
Her idea of “universal human rights” would seem to exclude large swathes of the public—conservatives, religious folk, women who hold differing views on the goals of feminism, people who believe in a traditional definition of marriage, etc. She sees in each person who doesn’t agree with her someone who is restricting the rights of people not like them, while (ironically and blindly) she misse the fact that she longs to do precisely what she accuses others of doing: namely, silence those with whom she disagrees.
Were she truly “thoughtful,” she wouldn’t have continued insisting upon the guilt of innocent men, nor would she attack those who stood up to a prosecutor whose agenda became increasingly clear as time passed.
Instead of berating the Duke women’s lacrosse team as sellouts to the sisterhood, she would have applauded them for their willingness to stand up to what they thought was a great injustice—which, considering the feminist and liberal reaction, not to mention the reaction of the faculty in advance of the facts—was an act of bravery befitting true feminists, who stood up for what they believed and refused to be bullied into taking the easy road of picking up torches and pitchforks and going after “white male privilege.”
I like and admire Jill’s writing. But Marcotte is a fraud, a particularly nasty one at that. To say that she avoids being unnecessarily cruel and petty is an insult to the intelligence of anyone who has ever read Pandagon.
RWS,
That is why I keep on pounding on this point: they owe certain parties apologies. If they give them, I’ll drop the subject and leave them to their idiocies again.
Yes, Jeff, I know. I don’t know the lady, but I find the chest thumping absurd.
Let it be noted, I am speaking for myself, and that my opinions do not necessarily reflect the opinions of Protein Wisdom or its sole proprietor.
Nobody who regularly relies on the “shorter” trick to engage their version of the opponents argument rather than the actual argument can be called “a compelling writer, a brilliant thinker”. That is Amanda’s bread and butter.
Anyone else completely not surprised that Amanda’s Flickr pages, to which Dan referred this morning, consist mostly of photos of her cats?
Which is to say: she’s a cliche.
Well, that is compelling if you’re an idiot. Hence, her audience and popularity therein.
Jeff wrote:
Jill, who I find a bit naive but nonetheless a conscientious progressive commentator,
A what?
From Jill:
“..and if there’s anything that’ll make a wingnut’s little soldier abandon his post, it’s the idea of an actual, real-live human woman who can speak and who has a mind of her own (also, what is it with conservative bloggers and the Shannon Elizabeth thing?). Of course, if he had bothered to actually read Amanda’s blog instead of using one sticky hand to browse her Flickr photos, he would have seen that the Shanon Elizabeth thing was tongue-in-cheek,..
The reference to the Shannon Elizabeth thing was a link to one of many of Jeff’s posts regarding Shannon. So Amanda’s post on Shannon Elizabeth was “tongue-in-cheek,” but with Jeff’s post it’s just one of those rightwing guys who, not to put it as crudely as she does, pleasure themselves.
Rightwing men can’t handle a real woman. Gee, Jeff is that true? Is that thoughtful? Do you think she is kidding? I don’t think she is. And I think you give her far too much credit.
Well, there were some photos of her dogs too- at leat I assumed they were dogs. They had been “dressed up” in some sort of hat, which is demeaning and anti pettist behaviour which most children grow out of before primary school.
The rest of the snaps seemed to involve spaced out seventies dweebs, some Iowan grandparents and a touchingly unflattering portrait of the author herself.
I see “coturnix” still can’t spell misogynist. Or maybe he thinks it shows revolutionary courage to go on getting it wrong. That’ll show that Collins asshole.
tw didn’t 13. did so. didn’t. did.
Cat photos. What were the odds?
That’s not even a pathetic accusation.
What can that be called? SUB-pathetic?
Jill: Dear Diary: Amanda told me she teaches people “real life.” She said, real life sucks losers dry. You want to fuck with the eagles, you have to learn to fly. I said, so, you teach people how to spread their wings and fly? She said, yes. I said, you’re beautiful.
Let’s go with “moronic”. Jill and Amanda are both “brilliant thinkers” of the left. In other words, they’re both idiots on a par with idiot luminaries like Steve Gilliard and John Aravosis.
And saying so makes me racist, sexist and homophobic, all in one fell swoop. If you’re a moron. Which means I can direct you to the quarters from which those charges shall emanate, except you already know where they are.
Let them carp, spin and lie their asses off. Sunlight is the best disinfectant, and the internet never forgets.
Eventually, the adults are coming home, and it’s gonna get ugly. By which I mean hilarity will ensue. Stay tuned, sports fans!
FTFY!
Jeff:
Truer words have never been spoken. This should be shouted from the rooftops. If there is a better definition of true Feminism, in particular, and Classical Liberalism, in general, I’ve never seen it.
Bravo, Jeff. Bravo.
TW: cold14. Actually, it’s cold8, right now, and dropping quickly.
To add on to what RWS says above concerning Jill, let’s not let her immaturity give her a pass on bigotry
Now, substitute any minority of your choice for “military” and tell me that’s not bigotry?
“Pink Mafia” indeed….these
vaginapussy warriors wouldn’t last three hours in a toe-to-toe showdown with actual women who they keep claiming to be…“Eagles may soar, but weasels don’t get sucked into jet engines”
Ricky Gervais.
Jeff, by the way, your deconstruction of Ms Marcotte above is a jewel of its kind. Sustained invective without heat. Masterful.
Jill on Amanda:
Patterico serves up some classic pearls of Amanda’s intelligence and eloquence. Feel the love:
The helmet haired Breck boy made his millions selling juries on the victimhood of his clients. It is only fitting that his presidential campaign should self destruct by importing one of the more toxic byproducts of the culture of victimhood.
My booze-pals and I have a standard rhetoric-deflator we whip out on each other when the circumlocutions around calling a woman out for being an asshole get too knotty: “She’s not going to fuck you.” Needs to be said here.
Disturbing weakness for Jill aside (but she’s a naive Nazi!), this here
is a terrible thing to say–for a “true feminist” reason.
Recall that the lacrosse girls were joined only by a handful of us more-right-wing-than-right-wing woman-haters in calling bullshit on this–and it was self-evidently bullshit from day one, a fantasy crime that exists only in feminist mythology (which again I note, as well-evidenced by this case, is highly early-1900s Progressive lynching-era anti-black and -Jewish propaganda influenced…but who cares).
And/but/so, no feminist, “true” or true, got this right. Some have been embarrassed by reality and lately pocketed their nooses, but none said “That’s a fucking crock” from the beginning. But it always was a crock. And it could not have been otherwise. Bigfoot doesn’t come out of the forest, Jews don’t make goyim-blood soup, and white men don’t gang-rape black women (or any women, really…just other white guys). It doesn’t happen. Ever.
What the lacrosse girls did was a fine thing, and brave, but that bravery is theirs, and there’s nothing feminist about it. They were on my side in this, too, but I don’t claim them as evincing the bravery of “true anarchists” or “true antifeminists” just because they happened agree with me about the government and their professors being wrong. I don’t know why they did it, so I can’t take it–use them–for my own purposes. Your signing them up for your “true” feminism is just as groundless and dehumanizing.
(Yes, I know that’s not your point. But it’s in there.)
What her silly defenders just can’t understand is that Marcotte lied about the Duke case. They can pretend she’s gotten all kinds of flack for….her language or whatever. But she actually said some people have committed rape when they haven’t. That’s all it is. Can’t wait for the lawsuits against her.
My take:
What Jeff said, with the addition of: I think Amanda Marcotte is a woman of indifferent looks and vile disposition. If that adds up to “ugly”, so be it.
It ain’t the addition of profanity, it’s the substitution of profanity for…well, most of rational thinking.
Sparkle, it’s good to hear your voice – and I completely agree with you: for me, it’s about Edwards’s incredibly bad judgment, which alone renders him un-presidential (as if we didn’t know that already). Amanda Marcotte is… irrelevant. In every way I can think of.
I don’t care what kind of language she uses, how many straw men she keeps in her closet, what her cats or dogs wear, or how irrational she actually is under the guise of Speaking Truth To Power – except insofar as how any of these factors should have disqualified her from contention in any presidential campaign. (OK, maybe not the “dressing up animals” thing, which is stupid but harmless, I guess.) But Edwards thought they were all hunky-dory.
TerryH,
Thanks for reminding me of why Amanda has no business writing for anyone but her pathetic following. “Punished with babies..” Does any more need to be said to illustrate what a sad perspective on life she and her ilk have?
Babies are our greatest gift. Nothing compares. To believe they are “punishment” is one of the most deeply disturbing things I have read on the internet. And that is saying alot.
re: TerryH’s cite of Paternico:
Oh contraire Amanda, I think all of humanity is glad you won’t be having children, and I for one will gladly help pay for your birth control pills to keep it that way. CAn we take up a collection here at PW?
Helloooooooooo,
Internet Archives here – you know, Wayback.
I checked:
Jesse started Pandagon.
Ezra came on board
Amanda was named a guest blogger by Jesse on Feb 28, 2005.
She never left.
Jesse mentions in his post that Amanda’s other blog is mouse words.
I have those pages archived, too.
http://web.archive.org/web/20050301033816/http://www.pandagon.net/
–
Something at least a few of us knew without having to check the archives, thanks.
Uhhh … Huh? Are you serious? Am I missing something here? Did this just vault to the top of the stupidest-thing-anyone-has-ever-written list?
BoZ writes:
This only works if you have a vested interest in defining feminism in a certain way, or setting it opposite “antifeminism” or some such—that is, as a particular ideology rather than as an extension of what our country stands for: equality of opportunity and equality before the law. Why I called them true feminists is precisely because they are. They are feminists in the same way I’ve called myself a feminist and Cathy Young has called herself a feminist.
I am not using them for any purpose. Instead, I am showing that those women who didn’t rush to judgment or jump on the establishment feminist bandwagon are, by default, the real feminists. And that is regardless of whether or not they self identify that way.
Because it is my belief that feminism is just a gendered form of Constitutional fealty (as those who read the great “feminism/anti-femism” debates here will already know), and so it is not so much a movement one joins, as an American, but one that others who ascribe to a different take on “feminism” actively resist.
Nuke ‘em–
It’s a contender, for sure.
Hmm. There’s an interesting subtlety of which I think most people are not even aware. By default, as an American who believes in the Constitutional rights of all Americans, you are a Feminist. You must actively disengage yourself from the conversation of what it means to be an American in order to not be a classical Feminist.
Awesome.
I have my moments.