well i don't know where to start.
i read a note to maureen dowd for women's history month over at the common ills and while i agree with clara (community member who highlighted dowd), i don't really agree with dowd's column on sunday.
nor do i agree with all the sudden fretting over where are the girl bloggers!
well a lot of us gals are writing. are we all writing about politics, no. but there's jude of iddybud who i discovered through the common ills and there's christine at ms. musing (ditto). there's girl blogger of baghdad burning (ditto). there's katrina vanden heuvel. (ditto.) there's ruth conniff (ditto).
now let me name the male bloggers i know. greg palast (knew of him on my own). dahr jamail (found out about via the common ills). ari what's his name at the nation. (ditto.) no offense to ari for forgetting his last name. but when i look at him i think 'long, lean cock that he really knows how to use.' so that's how i think of him, ari long, lean cock. bob somerby is some 1 i learned about via the common ills. there's ron of why are we back in iraq? and there's luke of wotisitgood4 (ditto and ditto). there's danny schechter (ditto).
so that's 6 men, 5 men.
now maybe if i lived in the echo chamber of the mainstream media, i'd know of more bloggers and maybe they'd all be male, but, hey, maybe it has to do with the company you keep, you know?
could we use a little more publicity? sure. but that's not really any thing i have control over, is it?
i mean, do you see cjr daily highlighting this blog? highlighting the 3rd estate sunday review? highlighting a winding road? highlighting the common ills?
no. no. no. no.
as the 3rd estate noted in their wonderful editorial, you had to apparently "cluster fuck" with the brian and tommy from cjr daily to get mentioned in their 'blog report.'
now, hey, no 1's ever going to call me prude, but i do draw the line at cluster fucks.
the problem isn't that women aren't blogging, the problem is that when the mainstream media elicts to comment on blogs, they go with the same attitude they've always had which is
'does HE look like me?' which is why you see a bunch of white male who may or may not have a receding hairline.
that's got nothing to do with me. it's got nothing to do with ms. musing or katrina or jude or ruth. it has to do with the cjr daily blog report which, for the longest time, was the only blog report around that the mainstream media noted.
if there's a problem, don't slam the women, slam the media. and slam cjr daily because they sat on their fat asses for over 2 months while people were saying 'open up the blog report!' and then they tried to act like the news that there might be something wrong with their blog report had just come to them.
they lied and they also lied when they didn't disclose they were talking up their friends in the blog report. it's called conflict of interest and it's a journalistic no-no.
and these are the watchdogs? the gatekeepers who have created the attitude that there are no women out there blogging (or people of color). they controlled the debate and they need to take the blame for it.
not some woman who's blogging. they have been silent, they have been silenced.
and if you didn't get why there was so much anger about the cjr blog report it was because cjr is supposed to stand for something and not be another cokie roberts doing shout outs to wal-mart because her brother lobbies for the company.
cjr daily needs to do an apology. not a 'hey this just came to our attention.' they still haven't told their visitors that the blog report relied almost completely on brian and tommy's cluster fuck buds.
slate's doing a blog report now. and if you caught cjr daily's whine on that you know that cjr daily feels like they own a patent on the blog report. but slate may be able to make a difference. thus far they've done a better job. (i haven't checked them since friday.)
or how about air america. week after week the majority report gives you bill scher, atrios and kos. where's the woman on there. they had jessica of feministing on once. but every week they offer three 3 known for their blogs. and all 3 are men. is that my fault?
is it my fault that we get more male guests on majority report than we do female?
it's not that women aren't blogging, it's that the same old bullshit standards of who gets picked to play on the team is working the same bullshit way.
back to maureen dowd. here's where i disagreed with her. she mentions the cat fight between susan estrich and michael kingsley. susan's winning that fight because kingsley's such a simp.
dowd and i disagree on that. but here's where i really think she's off base.
she's talking about the attention that estrich has drawn to herself and how 'given the appalling way she's handle herself, susan . . . is the last person michael, a friend of mine, should hire.'
what the fuck, maureen?
estrich wrote some thing. weeks ago. and you're writing about it now.
do you not get it?
that's what op-ed writing is.
estrich wrote some thing that whether you agree with her or not got attention and continues to get attention. simpy, wimpy kingsley should try to suck it up and hire her. she's obviously got what it takes to write an op-ed.
it struck me funny that dowd's entire column is about how clinton and others were mean to her. how they felt she was unwomanly.
and yet, here she is playing taste patrol with susan.
look mo do, i get it, mikey's your pal. point made. but love your writing though i do, you are flat out wrong. estrich proved she can get attention. she got your's. that's what op-ed writing is about. and as a woman who wants to whine (sorry, maureen, it comes off as whining) about a man can criticize a man and it's not the end of the world but when you (maureen) do it, you're a woman so people rush in to slap you on the wrist.
uh, mo do, what did you just do to susan?
and i've never worried about being called a harridan or a harpy or a whore or a slut.
i'm sorry that dowd has. i'm sorry that it paralyzed her early on.
but damn, i put 'screeds' in my title. and 'attitude.' and i did that for a reason.
and there are women who have been at this a lot longer than me.
if they don't get recognition, it's because the media refuses to give them recognition. it's not because they don't exist.
so let's stop hand wringing over why women are afraid to write strongly. ellen goodman hasn't been paralyzed. molly ivins hasn't. ruth conniff hasn't. i think we all owe a strong debt to gloria steinem who long ago publicly said this is who i am and has said so repeatedly since. no, she didn't do 'screeds' (though male reporters - and chicken shit female ones seeking male approval - tried to act as though steinem was literally screeching). but she did say this is who i am. and she's said that repeatedly since.
and it's carved out a space for all of us to say 'this is who i am.' we aren't carbon copies of steinem. some of us are less well spoken, some of us are more vulgar, go down the list. but she
said 'i won't be part of your paper doll world where you cut off my edges and reduce me to just another pretty.' and that cleared the space for us to all be who we were and journey to find out who we were.
maybe if mo do had sought a little less approval from her mikeys (i'm thinking of 2), she wouldn't fret so over male opinions.
i don't. kat doesn't. we talk a lot and every time a review of her's goes up over at the common ills, she can count on being trashed by a number of men who say 'you don't get music!' because she's not going to evaluate on their terms. that's not kat's problem. that's their problem.
i enjoy maureen dowd. i think clara was right to note her for women's history month. but i think dowd would do better by her readers if she wrote about the system and not about her reactions to a system she doesn't really acknowledge.
why is she so concerned if some 1 calls her harridan anyway?
because she's defining herself on masculine terms. it's tired. but it does explain why, when she felt scared, she ran to a daddy figure (howell raines) and not to a friend (male or female).
note: (as c.i. says) when i went back to do links i saw that ruth conniff had a new entry up. she's also addressing this topic. i'd recommend you read what she has to say. we're coming it at the same topic but slightly differently so you could get a fuller picture by noting ruth's entry as well as this 1.
