Sunday, February 15, 2009

Go ask Phallus, Phallus Walker Red

Calling it a blast from the past, DC Indymedia recently reposted an embarrassing piece of garbage that ran in The Guardian [PDF format warning, click here] April 1st of last year -- what an appropriate publication date for anything with Phallus Walker's byline.



The purpose of the garbage was for Communist Phallus Walker to destroy Hillary Clinton's primary run -- no Communists really shouldn't have a say in a Democratic Party primary.
ER


Phallus is an immensely untalented writer whose only critical success came when she was able to pass off stilted writing as the character's "voice" in the first-person The Color Purple. Like many a Communist Party member, her writing services the Party and not the muse. It's bulky, cumbersome and rarely floats. Which makes for intensely bad reading but makes her goals very clear.



In her attack, Phallus was attempting to smear Hillary and any White feminist supporting Hillary.



I wish I could say white women treated me and other black people a lot better than the men did, but I cannot. It seemed to me then, and it seems to me now, that white women have copied all too often the behaviour of their fathers and their brothers.

[. . .]

I made my first white women friends in college; they loved me and were loyal to our friendship, but I understood, as they did, that they were white women and that whiteness mattered.

[. . .]

It is a deep sadness to me that many of my feminist white women friends cannot see him, cannot hear the fresh choices toward movement he offers.

[. . .]

It is hard to relate what it feels like to see Mrs Clinton (I wish she felt self-assured enough to use her own name) referred to as "a woman" while Barack Obama is always referred to as "a black man."



Phallus' garbage just got worse and worse but, in the above, you see the orders handed down from Party leaders. Note "Mrs Clinton," not "Ms." Note how Phallus works overtime to strip Hillary of any feminist credentials and then has the nerve to claim "I wish she felt self-assured enough to use her own name". Hillary's been billed as Hillary Rodham Clinton for the bulk of her life. It's generally shortened to Hillary Clinton and that's no more her fault than it's Glen King's fault that the press dubbed him Rodney King.



Phallus really doesn't like women and never has. She tolerated some feminists (White and other races) because they were the ones who could help her promote her bad talents. But she's only ever had time for women she could use.



She's done damn little to ever help women and, in 2008, she showed up to execute Party orders: Phallus, who the hell are you?



She's a Communist who has made a career out of excusing the abuses of authoritarian males. As we've noted before, she's an apologist for Fidel Castro imprisoning gay men. In the same article, we explained that Christian women really need to not to use the term "womanist" that was popularized by Phallus.



Phallus mentioned that term in her April Fool's column as well: "When I offered the word 'womanism' many years ago, it was to give us a tool to use, as feminist women of colour, in times like these." No, it was not. Phallus needs to grasp that just because a periodical ceases publication does not mean it vanishes. Translation, the reasoning she originally offered when popularizing the term all those years ago still exists. Popularizing the term that she did not coin -- it was a Party term as the Communist Party worried about the growing rise of feminism (in the 20th century the Communist Party was hostile to feminism and women's rights).



"Womanist" was meant to dilute support for feminism, to splinter it. Walker popularized it, she did not originate it and it's early beginnings are documented in Party publications before Walker ever began using it.



Party girl Phallus wanted to talk about the suffering of women of color. And that really was hilarious because Phallus runs with White people and has always done damn little to help African-American women. Or does she think the insulting attack she penned on Terry McMillan ("This That I Offer You") was 'helpful' to another African-American writer? If so, she might try explaining how she smears McMillan with "PMS" as a 'reason' for her actions?



"This That I Offer You" was the perfect example of what a liar Phallus Walker is. In that essay, she not only attacks Terry McMillan (author of Waiting to Exhale, How Stella Got Her Groove Back, etc.), she also tries to glorify herself as someone above attacking others. She rips Terry apart and then turns around and tries to make herself once-the-victim, now-wiser. She does that via a lie regarding Langston Hughes. It is true that Phallus worshipped Langston -- Langston did, after all, have a penis and that is what Phallus grabs onto.



In poor Phallus' fanciful, fact-free essay, she's the victim. She and Langston had a correspondence and then, one time, she wrote him a very urgent letter and heard nothing back from him ("A week or so went by.") and she stewed and wondered what had she done to hurt Langston, to make him shut off contact with her. Then "I received a letter with his return address but not written in his wonderful bright-green ink. I opened it with a troubled heart. Langston Hughes had died, I was informed, before receiving my letter, but the writer knew he had thought highly of me. This was an invitation to his funeral." Note how Phallus has to include the "he had thought highly of me" to stroke her own ego. But if you get stuck on that detail, you miss the other realities.



A lot of people do because Phallus has been lying for some time. She's taken to reinventing her life and confusing many as, in some versions, she meets her first (and only) husband in Jackson, Mississippi. No, that is not how it happened. They were married in New York City and they moved to Jackson -- becoming the first (publicly) interracial couple in Jackson. Want to provide the timeline, Phallus?



No, she doesn't because it destroys the 'creative' 'facts' in her allegedly non-fiction essay. How did, for example, Phallus miss Hughes' death? Why did a letter in the mail bring her the news? Hughes died May 22, 1967 (after having had surgery May 12th -- surgery someone as 'close' as Phallus might have been aware of in real-time were she not always so self-obsessed). May 23rd, the following day, The New York Times published their lengthy obituary . . . on the front page. Hughes' death was news -- national and international. It was noted by papers, radio and TV (the documentary Looking for Langston opens with a radio broadcast explaining Hughes' passing). Will Phallus explain how she missed the news?



She also wants people to believe she received a letter in the mail inviting her to the funeral. That is a lie. Hughes died May 22nd. The memorial service (he was cremated) was held in Harlem's Benta Funeral Chapel May 25th. Phallus wants you to believe she was invited to the funeral and invited by mail. She also wants you to believe that a front page obituary on The New York Times, about a man she was allegedly so close to, somehow escaped her attention.



It's laughable. And she wants to claim, while offering these bold-faced lies, that this essay is to impart wisdom and truths ("Langston's death taught me") but the only thing it conveys is that she will lie about anything. Nothing is sacred to her and she will use any and everyone she can to self-promote.



She counts on no one willing to ask her questions, on no one willing to pin her down. She counts on her memories of funerals in Georgia -- which often took place many, many days after the deaths -- to be the universal and to cover for her. She counts on your not knowing where she lived. She counts on your not knowing that Langston Hughes was one of the most famous poets in the United States and that his death was big news. Most of all, like any good con artist, she counts on you believing her.



That belief is how she can serve up Sent By Earth: A Message from the Grandmother Spirit After the Bombing of the World Trade Center and Pentagon. The Grandmother Spirit? Are we all laughing yet?



Phallus is a grandmother. One that has refused to ever meet her grandchild. One that cut out her only child, Rebecca Walker, because Walker had the nerve to reveal that the Earth Mother wasn't all that motherly. (Walker bit her tongue a great deal. Phallus should be very grateful that Rebecca wrote a professional book and not a Mommy Dearest type page turner.)



To be clear, a female artist does not need to be a good mother (or even a mother). Many have been bad mothers. (And many men have been bad fathers.) But it is an issue when you market yourself as something you're not. That disconnect (popularly known as "lying") has long been a staple in literature, film and the theater. And readers and audiences regularly root for the liar to be exposed.



So it's really surprising Phallus has continued to self-represent as the Earth Mother, even after her own failures as a parent have been well documented. But she cast herself in the role and she'll be damned if she'll play anything else. It's as comical -- and cringe inducing -- as Bette Davis' audition scene in The Star. (Davis was playing a character based on Joan Crawford.)
Stepping


If Phallus found no real joy in motherhood (she didn't) and had no real skill for it (ibid), the question becomes why present herself as the Earth Mother? Because the couple, the mate, the attachment to the male. That is what's left of the role once you've stripped children out of the equation and Phallus is all about the male. Worshipping the male, lying for the male, excusing the male, building the male . . . She has repeatedly ripped off women and stabbed them in the back in order to build up a man. She will do so until she gasps her last breath.



Phallus can't change her nature.



"The world has changed," Phallus wanted to insist when Barack was inaugurated. The reason for that is Phallus is a 20th century Communist who worships authoritarianism. It's why she supported Barack and it can be found in any exchange or comment she writes or makes.



Our personal favorite example was when she was Amy Goodman's Pravda on the Hudson co-host for the inauguration and she encountered Grace Lee Boggs. Boggs, like most 20th century Socialists, supported Barack. And in their exchange, Phallus and Grace, you saw the differences between the two camps. Phallus wanted to read her bad poem (that throws in nods to many famous works by Communists including the play Awake and Sing) and then wanted to start gushing about her man, wanted to start licking the phallus in worship.



There was Phallus whining about what was being asked of his family (Phallus is aware Barack chose to run for president, right?), insisting, "We're asking a lot!" She couldn't stop listing her Favorite Things About Barry ("One of the things I love about him is . . .") and tossing out her coded language ("a collective") and inverting the relationship in a democracy so that "we have to reflect that best that he sees in us" . . . As Phallus babbled on, embarrassing herself to the point that you half-expected her to begin masturbating on air, Grace interjected that the "concept of a messiah" is a problem. Phallus realized she'd gone too far (revealed too many Red authoritarian roots) and attempted to introduce a new catchphrase she had just "come up with" but Grace kept cutting her off and explaining that the people are what matters.



For Phallus only a male leader matters. The same Phallus that worships and excuses Fidel has already begun her worship and excuse of Barack. Why not? That's what her strand of Communism believes in: Big Daddy.



And she's perfectly comfortable denying and betraying women to worship the phallus. In her hideous April's Fool column, find any moment where she, a woman in an interracial relationship who gave birth to a bi-racial child, even mentions Ann Dunham. She never does. She has no use for that White woman.



The same way she bristles anytime she's ever asked about Zora Neale Hurston's friendships with White women. ("Personally, I do not care if Zora Hurston was fond of her white women friends," she snapped at John O'Brien for his 1973 book Interviews with Black Writers. In the same interview, she blows off his question about whether or not women writers influenced her more than males -- for the obvious reason that nothing influenced Phallus more than males.) And Zora's an interesting point all by herself.



Phallus has chosen to live in a predominately White world -- check the colleges she's taught at, for example. And what has she really ever done for women of any color? Not Zora, not a dead woman. For living women, what has she done? She's perfectly happy picking up the phone and asking for favors. But what does she do?



She ripped apart Terry McMillian. What emerging African-American woman has she championed? What woman -- of any race -- has she brought out?



Phallus doesn't help women. She harms them, the same way she harmed her own daughter. The same way she made 2008 about attempting to inflict harm on the feminist movement -- the movement she was more than happy to use to self-promote.



Proposed Gold Plated Rule for the 21st Century: Those who give nothing, get nothing in return.



Meaning those women who give nothing to other women, those women who actively rip apart other women to build up a man, those women who trash the feminist movement while feeding off it, get nothing. They get cut off. They get informed they are not a part of the feminist movement.



Phallus is a liar. She was born a liar. She's a bad liar and we didn't have to walk you through her awful 'factual' Langston Hughes' yarn to prove that -- we could have just steered you over to Temple of My Familiar, for example.



"Womanist" was not her phrase. She didn't invent it. The Communist Party invented it and she popularized it (and began popularizing it a few years after it was already appearing in Party literature). Womanist -- then and now -- was about destroying feminism. It was about sewing divisions.



When her actual career is examined, Alice Walker's done nothing for feminism. She has promoted herself, she has harmed many women and she's never passed up the opportunity, Communist Party girl that she is, to worship the phallus and create an authoritarian, Stalin like figure she can prostate herself before.