Barack's BigBusinessGiveAway to the insurance and pharmaceutical conglomerates masquerading as "health care reform" is what woke the sleeping beasts.
The biggest greased pig to run through the county fair was, no surprise, Katha Pollitt.
Katha, for those who don't know, endorsed Barack Obama in the Democratic Party primary. To do so, non-Democrat Katha joined with such other feminist luminaries as Minnie Mouse and, no doubt, Barack's chief speech writer pictured above groping a cardboard Hillary. Let's drop back to March 2nd:
In other news can we all get the word out that Katha Pollitt (distorting, in the Los Angeles Times what Gloria Steinem said) is not a feminist? Can we all point that Gloria Steinem didn't say anything racist but that, in 2002, Katha Pollitt stuck her big, broken nose -- on that chunky, chicken fat face, into the NAACP's campaign against the lack of positive African-American portrayals on TV and said it didn't matter? Katha Pollitt's a racist more infamous today for being so damn pathetic that when her lover left her for another women, she started stalking them. She's pathetic, she's not a feminist and she's no friend to women. She couldn't write one word in 2006 about the gang-rape and murder of Abeer by US soldiers. When the criticism became too intense by the middle of 2007, she acknowledged Abeer in a half-of-a-sentence. That's not a feminist. That's a woman writer who plays at being the in-house feminist at a magazine that published 491 men to 149 women in 2007. The mainstream media should especially take note of that because Katha never called it out -- the same Katha who recycles the "___ paper has only __ female columnist and ___ men!" She can point that corpulent finger at others but she can't do a damn thing to help women at her own magazine or even publicly call it out. Dumpy got dumped for a reason. And the Los Angeles Times shouldn't pimp a list of 'feminists' without noting that it's men and women, it reads like "Reds for Bambi" (nothing wrong with that but don't hide it behind "feminists") and has included such notable (and genuine, we're sure) authentic signers as "Minnie Mouse."
We need to remember that moment because Silly Katha always wants to present as a feminist but she's not one.
You need to grasp that.
You need to grasp that she's full of s**t and deployed herself on behalf of Barack Obama and that included repeating the false charges of "racism!" at anyone who wouldn't kiss the pinkie ring of St. Barack.
We need to remember what was done to Gloria Steinem.
Not because Gloria's infallible or perfect. She's neither, she's a human being as flawed as any of the rest of us.
But she wrote a column embracing sisterhood and she did it when Hillary Clinton was running for the Democratic Party's presidential nomination. So it was important for her to be destroyed. She had to be ripped apart, she had to be taken out. Otherwise, Hillary's New Hampshire victory might be repeated elsewhere.
Now you had Bill Moyers and all the other whores yammering away repeatedly about the 'historic' nature of Barack Obama's run (no bi-racial male had run for president before, as far as anyone knows) while ignoring Hillary's historic run. Someone like Gloria could do real damage to the efforts to portray Hillary as the status quo and Barry O as fresh and lovely as a bottle of Summer's Eve. So Gloria had to be taken out and a lot of non-feminist stepped forward to do the hit job because too much was at stake to leave it to the boys and risk the sort of backlash that followed the dog pile on Anita Hill which drove American women to the polling booths in huge numbers.
No, to really work, the hit had to be done by women. Which is how Lie Face Melissa Harris Lacewell emerged from the gutter and how Katha Pollitt showed up to begin with.
This is something that should never be forgotten. There was so much that went down in 2008 that it's very easy for things to fall through the cracks of our collective memories, but we must not forget this aspect.
If we'll remember, we'll know to develop thicker skins so that false charges of racism won't fret us in the least. There was never a reason for anyone to get bogged down in that charge other than the need -- a stereotypically feminine need -- to be liked. Who the hell cares if fat ass Katha falsely calls you a racist?
At the end of the day, you still haven't embarrassed yourself by stalking your old boyfriend and his much younger and more attractive partner the way Katha did. You haven't proven yourself to be a personal and professional joke. So who the hell cares what some grossly obese nut case who 'writes' the sort of bad 'poetry' most girls outgrow by the age of thirteen? Most of all, you'll grasp that you have to fight because, when it comes to the 'opinionators,' you really are all alone.
So why does it come as such a shock
To know you really have no one
Only a river of changing faces
Looking for an ocean
Gloria did what Gloria always does and what no feminist should ever do again: She fell back into explaining why she wasn't what she was falsely charged.
Here's reality for most aggressive men, if 'George' slugs 'Andy,' Andy doesn't stop a moment and try to explain why he shouldn't have been slugged, he hits back.
It's past time that women started doing the same.
What Gloria should have done was not refute the charge, she should have made the people charging her falsely with racism explain themselves.
"You're accusing me of racism based on what?"
That's what should have been tossed as Katha, Lie Face Melissa and all the other Bitches for Barack.
The other way to go was simply to ignore it. It's a false charge and anyone remotely in the feminist movement at any point in the last forty years would not for a moment buy that Gloria was a racist. Her life's record speaks for itself.
By refusing to ignore the charge and by refusing to demand that someone making such an accusation support their accusation in some form, Gloria was stuck saying, "I'm not, I'm really, really not." It was a trap she fell into. It immediately took one of the strongest voices for Hillary and wrapped her up in something else completely.
The response, if we could go back in time, for Gloria to make was, "F**k you and your false charges! F**k you and your race baiting!" And then Gloria should have returned to advocating on behalf of Hillary.
Instead, Barack campaign staff would go on to brag that they 'cowed' Gloria.
Robin Morgan did a brave thing early in 2008. Robin saw what was done to Gloria and decided that, in spite of, she'd stand up and speak out. And the response was to also tar and feather her as a racist. Laura Flanders, always the second string because she is so very pathetic (but fate has finally handed her the face she deserves -- a face made for radio), showed up to inform the world that Robin was a feminist . . . yes . . . but an American one.
Laura Flanders, the self-loathing lesbian who floated across the Atlantic like some sort of trash heap barge from England, wanted you to know that Robin Morgan just wasn't 'global' enough and was so very, very provincial.
Robin, like Gloria, couldn't take the false charges.
Their actions after May 2008 were really sad and that's another story (for example "Sour Grape Girls"). But it needs to be remembered what happened. It needs to be remembered because it will happen again.
In fact, it already did.
That actually was what the Stupak amendment to the bill the House passed two Saturdays ago was.
And goodness if this effort to do away with reproductive rights and Barack's snippy remarks ("I laid out a very simple principle, which is this is a healthcare bill, not an abortion bill") didn't really underscore that all over again.
They trickle through your leaky plans
Another dream over the dam
And you're lying in some room
Feeling like your right to be human
Is going over too
But, as the joke about NBC Must See Thursday repeats went in the nineties, "It's new if it's new to you." And it was all so new to Professional Cry Baby Katie Michelman who showed up expressing shock on the pages of The New York Times in a co-written column, "The Democratic majority has abandoned its platform and subordinated women’s health to short-term political success. In doing so, these so-called friends of women’s rights have arguably done more to undermine reproductive rights than some of abortion’s staunchest foes. "
Poor, stupid Katie. We'll never forget the sight of her crying in the halls of Congress as a Bushy got confirmed to the Supreme Court. It was typical Katie Michelman -- a grossly ineffective spectacle. That moment seemed to sum up her entire activist career. Katie was shocked last week.
Of course feminist who care about abortion were shocked in 2007 and 2008. That's when Katie endorsed John I-cheated-on-my-terminally-ill-wife-and-made-plans-for-Dave-Matthews-to-perform-at-my-upcoming-wedding Edwards. There was a woman in the race, Hillary, but Katie just knew John was the man for her.
Silly, Kate, always looking for some man to rescue her.
Then John Edwards was nudged out of the campaign via some prods from Barack's campaign and 'feminist' Kate was declaring she'd endorse Barack I-call-female-reporters-sweetie-and-belittle-them-in-so-many-other-ways.
Bitches for Barack like Katie wanted you to know that Barack could understand all about abortion because he was a father to two girls. And Hillary, having both a daughter and her own uterus, apparently suffered from 'hysterical womb' or some other male invented 'malady' that prevented her from grasping the importance of reproductive rights?
See what we did? We took a swipe at Katie. She was one of the Bitches for Barack and, goodness knows, we never tire of telling the story of her crying in the halls of Congress. This despite claiming that we all need to focus and remember to prevent repeats in the future.
But see, we take a moment to think about it and we remember how we also love to share the story of how she got muscled out of her planned Congressional run. And, boom, it is the same point. Women either learn to fight or they don't. They either learn that some people (men and women) are going to say bad things about them or they don't. They either learn to cope with that and accept that or they end up paralyzed and weak.
Well some are going to knock you
And some'll try to clock you
It could be you next time and do you really want to just cry in public or do you want to learn to fight back?
You want to wait for some man to rescue you or do you want to rescue yourself?
After you answer that question, ask whether you want to stand up for yourself?
You can't do that from time to time. You either stand up for women's rights every day or not.
Katha Pollitt's not a feminist. As was noted here in September 2008:
Now maybe everyone's decided to take Katha Pollitt's stated oath which she revealed when she felt 'forced' to call out Tom Hayden's latest sexism last April: "I want to do my bit for Obama, so I vowed I would give up attacking Obama-supporting progressives for the duration of the presidential campaign." Guess what, Katha, we don't do our "bit for" feminism by staying silent. That was in April that she broke (and announced) her vow -- one she's gone back to. So, basically, at the start of the year, Pollitt's admitting, she decided to let sexist attacks from Barack's campaign and his supporters slide until after the election. Wow. Note that she wasn't planning to bite her tongue for just one week or even one month, she was planning to bite her tongue for nearly a year to do her "bit for Obama." Maybe Katha needs to redefine herself? She's no longer a feminist, she's an Obamist.
And the Obamist has continued to conduct herself that way. It's why she who seems to forever be writing about Title IX never found time to call out Barack for his all male basketball games and his all male golf games (this month, after over thirty golf matches since becoming president, Barack finally allowed one token woman to participate -- we're sure they sprayed down the equipment with Old Spice as soon as she departed). That never bothered Katha.
But the House Amendment (or maybe being stumped in the midst of composing more free-range verse) finally led Katha to weigh in. It's a hilarious column. "Many of us," Katha pants, "didn't vote for Hillary Clinton in the primary because the goal of electing a woman seemed less important than the goal of electing the best possible president. Only a self-hater or a featherhead didn't feel some pain about that." Excuse us?
See, that's where we show you how to respond to lies.
You don't start defending Hillary. We could do that. But what's the point? We're dealing with a liar named Katha and the point is to confront the liar.
Make the liar prove their point.
In this case, Katha, you declared of Hillary "that she and Barack had few relevant policy differences." Did you forget writing that? Now you want to claim "best possible president"? WTF, lard ass?
And do you think we've forgotten "Why I'm Supporting Barack?"
No f**king way, you lying sack of s**t.
You said then that they had very small differences on domestic policies but felt Barry would be "less bellicose" on foreign policy.
You felt, on foreign policy, that she'd be pressured to 'out macho a man'.
So in other words, you projected on her what you think a woman would have to do. In other words, you used her gender against her?
Doubt us?
Hillary Clinton is her own person. That's always been clear.
But in that column, Katha, you spent more time on Bill Clinton than you did on policy. You decided that Hillary would be the same as Bill and do what Bill does just because she was married to him.
Now, Katha, we fully grasp that a pathetic stalker like you easily gives away her identity to any man (we understand you still do that and also to your teenage daughter in your desperate attempts to remain the Charlotte Rae of a generation). But blaming a woman for what her husband did or does or assuming that a woman would 'toe the line' of her husband? That's blatant sexism.
Maybe if you'd put down the powdered doughnuts for a second, you'd grasp that.
And while you whine in your most recent column about how the Democratic Party has paid too much attention to these people who don't support abortion, you tend to omit the part about how Barack big-tented those people into the 2008 election, now don't you? Don't you?
That is how you handle it. You don't go into, "Hillary would have been better --" You don't go into anything except what the liar is saying and how it contradicts with reality and even with the statements the liar made earlier.
You call them out on their s**t and you don't play nice. And you don't fret that when you walk away they'll call out "bitch."
They open and close you
Then they talk like they know you
They don't know you
They're friends and they're foes too
-- "Trouble Child," written by Joni Mitchell, first appears on her Court & Spark album.