MOMocrats WTF of the Day: What's Up at the Washington Post?

One of the reasons newspapers publish op-ed articles is to create controversy.  Radical articles create buzz and generate letters and, they hope, increase readership (read: more advertising dollars).

But this weekend, the Washington Post may have crossed that a line by choosing to publish two articles that could possibly alienate its entire female readership.

The two pieces read in conjunction with each other suggest that woman voters are fickle, swooning teen-age girls when it comes to politics. 

The articles -- For Hillary's Campaign, It's Been a Class Struggle and We Scream, We Swoon. How Dumb Can We Get? -- could set all us XX-ers back decades. I was at a conference with a room full of feminists this weekend when these two pieces were copied and circulated.  The room feel silent as we read and when we were done we all shared a group "WTF?" moment.

It's bad enough when the misogyny comes from men, but ladies, you're not really helping us here. 

Read these for yourselves and discuss!

Now if you'll excuse me, I have to decide if I want to go flip my hair around or if I should watch some Grey's Anatomy reruns and swoon over McDreamy.

Joanne tries to keep her fickle girliness to a minimum over at her place, PunditMom.

Comments

[cynematic]

Linda Hirshman, please consult a thesaurus. How about women voters as 'discerning' and 'diverse' instead of gender-freighted 'fickle'?

And how is the Iraq war vote not a working class woman voter's issue? It's mostly Latino, black and working white men (and a small but not insubstantial number of women) who are serving and being ill-served by their government. Those are brothers, cousins, uncles, and fathers returning as vets with scars of all kinds and barely given adequate health care or benefits in return for their service. Sisters, aunts, and mothers returning from service too, and trying to step back into civilian life and second and third shifts. It's working class people whose safety net has gone completely missing due to billions siphoned off for war funding. Or underfunded social programs in general that have gone begging.

Could there be another way to look at well-educated women voters who overwhelmingly support Obama? A point about voting across class lines, or racial lines, or gender lines, perhaps? Women making themselves heard on a mandate against the past 8 years and for something else? I don't see any of that as 'fickle,' unless by some public relations chestnut intuited by Mark Penn, Clinton's strategist, all women were supposed to vote only for a woman.

I personally think it's great that a lot of women voters are voting with their progressive politics and not their chromosomes.

Charlotte Allen, you lost me at paragraph 3, paragraph 6 at the outermost. Not sure what your pop culture and dubious social science critiques have to do with elections, the candidates, or women.

WTF indeed.

[Julie Pippert]

Got annoyed reading and bailed.

She opens with a line about Maria Shriver's HAIR!!???

Can I say blech on the air? On the record?

My vagina, fwiw, it not part of any bloc, thank you very much. I'm not a part of that generation. I tend to think with my *brain* thank you very much. Which decides based on issues, not chromosomes.

WTF indeed.

[Gunfighter]

For what it's worth, ladies, I found the article offensive as well.

[PunditMom]

The thing that never ceases to amaze me is that they can get op-eds placed in a high-profile paper like WaPo with such nonsense. I say it's time we start submitting our own op-eds that actually make some sense!

Or is that just crazy talk?

[Jennifer James]

Yeah, I read the We Scream, We Swoon article and was clueless. I looked to see who wrote it and was stunned it was a woman. It was all so pointless.

[LawyerMama]

I'm glad you wrote about this Joanne. When I read the Linda Hirshman article I just sort of harumphed and dismissed her with a wave of my hand. (Which, after all, is what she does to us.) I know she's going to be intentionally obtuse and cherry pick her facts to make her point. OK, Linda, we get it. You think we're irrational creatures. We get that. Most of the world doesn't agree, so stop trying to piss us off to sell books.

But the one by Charlotte Allen on top of that just made me want to scream in rage! If she'd been in front of me, I probably would have punched her. Not a very "feminine" reaction, is it? I know she's trying to court controversy but what disturbed me is that she seems to be bragging about her own incompetence and trying to assign it to her entire gender. Project much, Charlotte? I, for one, don't see myself ever bragging about an inability to perform math beyond simple addition. My mother (a high school, and sometimes college, MATH teacher) would be appalled!

[debbie - i obsess]

I wrote a letter to WaPo asking for her resignation, as well as a sincere apology from the editors for having allowed such a piece to be published.

I don't expect any results, but I had to write it.

[Glennia]

The WaPo editor is not saying the Charlotte Allen piece was meant to be "tongue in cheek." Interesting, because I always thought that meant "humorous" or "funny" not "written by a mental patient who missed dose." Consider me schooled!

Linda Hirshman can suck it. I think I am going to take out my Bedazzler now to make a t-shirt that says that. Anybody want one?

[Robyn]

A part of me wants to write a thank you letter to the WaPo for showing how mysogyny is alive and well in grand US of A.

If she had written instead about people of color, Jews, or even homosexuals, the public would be outraged. And she most likely would have been fired.