Tagline: Little Light
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[...] [UPDATE 9-30: Generating readership: Firedoglake.blogspot.com appears to have deleted to a post sometime in the past couple of days. (Now, it seems to be there). However (in case it dissapears again) Bitch Lab has a screen capture of the cached copy here. Be sure to scroll to the first comment. ] [...]
[...] Or why you need to hate yourself and how We all judge people (via), how we dress, the way we comb our hair, little things really, but have you ever noticed how big a deal we can make out of those little things? For instance, a man may walk a certain way or sleep with a certain gender and suddenly people start labeling him “gay”! The reason I bring this up is to highlight the carefully guarded secret that feminists don’t want you to know: Everyone is judging you, that stranger you passed in the street, your parents and loved ones especially. [...]
Jane Hamsher Mildred Speaks: The importance of hating yourself at PunkAssBlog.com
[...] In my round-up of Blog Blackface-gate, I included a number of links to FDL archive posts. It appears that someone has been tinkering around with the idea of deleting some of the more vicious tasteless stuff. Over the weekend, this post went away (thanks to bitch | lab for grabbing a screen shot) but it is now back up. This is evocative of what happened on Aug 2. After the outcry on the blogs (particulary in the comments at Huffington Post and FDL) the graphic breifly went down (as noted by the commenters at FDL and several right-wing blogs who were watching the incident). A short time later it reappeared and stay up for some time until it was finally taken down permently, presumably at the request of the Lieberman Campaign. However, the original Blackface Joe, which was once hosted here, has now dissapeared from the FDL servers. [...]
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Ha, good catch. Since the page is still stored in the memory of my browser, I was able to capture the two haloscan comments that went with the post:
*******************
firedoglake comments
Hey, you leave her alone!
I used to love Courtney when she was mucha blousy. Try to imagine if she’d looked like a model when she made Pretty On the Inside. She would have seemed as annoyingly calculated as Elastica or something.
But early-90s Courtney’s extra chunkage (and snarly interviews and smeared makeup) were endearing. She was nuts, of course, but she was mostly hurting herself, not you. (And we all know what a showbiz turn-on that is!)
When Courtney became an anorexic fashion skank, I wept bitter tears. I imagined that whatever savage force of will driven her to Live Through her various Thises also drove her into freak diets, Versace spreads, monster rages, and claw-fingered grasping after “respect.”
I think her self-image was keeping her skinny all these years. That self-image was just as broken when she was 90 lbs as it had been when she was sloppy fat. But now she thought she was winning because she was skinny. What she was left with was manic depress
roy edroso | Homepage | 01.25.05 - 8:50 am | #
…. gurgle, comment cut.
What I meant was — if she doesn’t give a shit what she looks like now, maybe it means she has ceased to obsess about her self-image. Good for her!
roy edroso | Homepage | 01.25.05 - 8:54 am | #
Agreed — “Pretty on the Inside”-era Courtney was the only time she’s been vaguely interesting as a performer. And her tenure as a Versace fashion victim was indeed a sad travesty. But she has spared no pains to badmouth me (we’ve never met) & I guess I’m just not a big enough person not to smile over something I just KNOW she is not happy about.
What I am happy about, however, is that Roy Edroso made a visit & is commenting on my blog! I’ve arrived.
firedoglake | Homepage | 01.25.05 - 12:10 pm | #
Gasp! I didn’t know you was a celebrity.
Thinking better about it, I do shut out a lot of bad things about CL when I think about her. The scene at the ACLU Awards in Kurt & Courtney is just so awful. I even knew a guy that went out with her whose reports confirmed the worst I’ve heard.
Why? I guess I just have a soft spot for crazy women — though, these days, from a great distance.
roy edroso | Homepage | 01.27.05 - 10:56 am | #
Hardly a celebrity. If I was, the fawning Courney would be kissing my ass, a la Gwenyth Paltrow. She is something of a bully and only attacks people she thinks will not be able to do any damage in return. You’re right, I do feel a little bad about the fat jokes. But since it’s Courney…well, not much.
firedoglake | Homepage | 01.27.05 - 11:11 am | #
Also, Colin McEnroe has made this fiasco required reading for a class he is teaching at Trinity. So I will redirect broken link traffic here.
[...] [UPDATE 9-30: Generating readership: Firedoglake.blogspot.com appears to have deleted to a post sometime in the past couple of days. (Now, it seems to be there). However (in case it dissapears again) Bitch Lab has a screen capture of the cached copy here. Be sure to scroll to the first comment. ] [...]
[...] Or why you need to hate yourself and how We all judge people (via), how we dress, the way we comb our hair, little things really, but have you ever noticed how big a deal we can make out of those little things? For instance, a man may walk a certain way or sleep with a certain gender and suddenly people start labeling him “gay”! The reason I bring this up is to highlight the carefully guarded secret that feminists don’t want you to know: Everyone is judging you, that stranger you passed in the street, your parents and loved ones especially. [...]
And JESUS would you look at the amount of unsharp mask that woman was wearing? Who’s her photoshopper?
You know, Go Fug Yourself really does that sort of thing much better, if that is the sort of thing one is looking for.
I think she’s just off her head, is Hamsher. and of -course- she’s responsible for -fucking- Tarantino and that godawful piece of crap “Natural Born Killers.” yay: just what we needed: more nihilist-misanthropic chic. Even better in politics than popcult! blegh.
[...] In my round-up of Blog Blackface-gate, I included a number of links to FDL archive posts. It appears that someone has been tinkering around with the idea of deleting some of the more vicious tasteless stuff. Over the weekend, this post went away (thanks to bitch | lab for grabbing a screen shot) but it is now back up. This is evocative of what happened on Aug 2. After the outcry on the blogs (particulary in the comments at Huffington Post and FDL) the graphic breifly went down (as noted by the commenters at FDL and several right-wing blogs who were watching the incident). A short time later it reappeared and stay up for some time until it was finally taken down permently, presumably at the request of the Lieberman Campaign. However, the original Blackface Joe, which was once hosted here, has now dissapeared from the FDL servers. [...]
I just couldn’t get over how fucking racist Maha Blog is. Somebody PLEASE tell me that you can wipe that smarmy grin off her Buddhist face with some Buddhism that refutes her bullshit explanation for racism is just afantasy that we can think away or some horse shit.
PLEASE?
That woman — oooooo. I was so angry after I read it Saturday, I wanted to spit. Someone poured out her heart in comments and Mahablog just walked all over her heart with cleats on.
Yeah, I heard about that. I think she may have misinterpreted the whole “if you meet the Buddha on the road, kill him” business; i.e. i think she missed the first clause and is focusing on the “kill him.”
ask Zuky, or Terence at Republic of T; I think they both had a few things to say about that, actually.
(i am loving zuky’s blog more and more the more i read)
http://www.zuky.net/
http://www.republicoft.com/
meanwhile: I take it back wrt Go Fug Yourself; actually as far as I know they’ve never made fun of someone simply for being fat, or for more-or-less permanent physical features in general: pretty much they stick to what they see as hideous fashion choices. Still mean as hell, but they stick to their own code better than some I could mention.
and for fuck’s sake, CL is not exactly the Hinderberg in that photo. Lord knows there are all sorts of other ways in which to mock Love’ appearance all the time; but goddamit, well, speaking as another woman with a “weight problem:” fuck you, Jane Hamsher, you spavined little bilesack.
…o i see, A list or at least wanna-be infighting. zzzzzz.
goddam but i hate starfucking.
how’d she get to being the tarantino-maker, anyway? Was she born with connections or did she claw her way to the top there, too? just curious.
good point about Fug, yeah.
and, yepper. so what if she was the hindenberg? it’s fucking uncalled for.
i think fug is funny, but i wouldn’t raise what they do to the level of principle as political strategy or anything.
i’ve sat and watched leftists on a discussion list fun of people’s clothes for years. i never had any idea people were that mean. they were making fun of the ordinary people.
i refuse to ever get together in person with any of them after that — something which came to a head after a so-called friend who, because of her stereotypes, felt she had to explain to me that i shouldn’t wear bright colored nail polish to a job interview.
she’s no longer a friend and, whereas I once wanted to hold a big party to finally meet all these folks, I will *never* do it now. They simply revealed what mean spirited nasty judgmental fucks they are over and over again.
I saw friends in the “in group” do that to people in high school. I thought it would fucking go away once people grew the fuck up. apparently not.
Belledame — I caught that little snippet about women with “weight problems” as well. And I would guess that by her standards, any woman who is more than a size “2″ fits that bill. CL was just out of rehab for christ’s sake, and Jane as a self-confessed former addict piles on her anyway . . .
And Maha. Don’t even get me started. When she defended Hamsher during the start up of the blackface thing back in August (”About that Graphic I & II), I tried to suggest that it may be that Jane is, like most white people in this country, on some level tacitly racist — that is unaware of the tacit assumptions she holds which informs her own unacknowledged racism (such as attitudes regarding what a woman’s body should look like!) Maha told me that I was rigid and judgmental. And uninteresting. I was totally blown away, because I really tried to be even in the way in which I described how it works, even sharing a personal story in how I got called out on my own (unconscious) racism, and what a valuable learning experience it was, albeit somewhat humiliating.
She’s got a real thing about being a victim (she keeps equating depression, spousal abuse and childhood sexual abuse with being oppressed by racism). Its sad in a way because I would never want to diminish any woman’s suffering in this regard, but she still doesn’t get that a white woman who suffers from these things has a much better chance to overcome them than does an African American woman. And these kinds of problems certainly do not dog her when she steps out her front door in the same way that skin “color” does.
After all, not only was she (along with many other white women) invited to eat Clinton’s fried chicken, and not only was there NOT a POC blogger there, but not a single POC woman was even invited.
sun runner
While I completely agree with criticisms of Maha for the way she tried to derail the conversation by saying, “What about my oppressions!” as if it’s Ok to point her finger to another system of oppression in order to avoid answering to her own behavior.
not cool.
but I think what does loose folks is this:
1. if — IF (and it’s a huge if) — one does not prioritize oppressions, and that’s not true for everyone, so disregard if so. But if you are a person who does not prioritize oppressions, then we should probably avoid language that make it seems as if dealing with racism is somehow worse than or more onerous for someone who is dealing with gender oppression.
It’s like it’s a prize to only have to deal with one oppression. I don’t think that’s where we want to go, is it?
Does that make sense to anybody or am I all washed up?
In other words, I think it’s really important to examine how oppressions work differently and also how they manifest in very similar ways.
And, in general, I think she would say that yes, she does find them dogging her everyday she walks out of the house. If you’re a woman, you are dogged by cat calls, people pointing and laughing if you’re overweight, etc. — all the myriad things we deal with as women. Those things are different because we may also experience the sexism through the lens of race, ethnicity, disability, bu it’s not really a contest where we find the person who has all the major oppressions and point to her and say, “There! The subject of history. She is more oppressed than *anybody* so shut up shuttin’ up about your issues people!”
Which all ties into Janet Halley again, interestingly enough. But more on that later.
I’ll probably have rotten fruit and vegetables thrown at me for saying the above. But I want to reiterate that what I’ve said only applies to some who is interested in what is called intersectional analysis of race, class, gender, ability.
Sometimes, people do prioritize one analysis over the others — focusing on race and ignoring gender, class, ability.
That’s cool by me. I mean — it’s not, because I think it’s unproductive. But there’s not much I can do about it. The person who supports that position isn’t someone with whom I can share much of a conversation. I can only listen and learn and test my own views, improve myviews, and strengthen my own position — in favor of an intersectional or what Halley calls a convergentist apporach to left politics.
I get your point about how futile it is to priortize one form of suffering/oppressioin over another — in general. One would hope that all of us who have suffered (been rendered powerless) in one way or another would take from it the ability to feel empathy for that of another.
But that is not what Maha did. She said that because Jane didn’t intend to be hurtful to African Americans, any POC who took offence had a problem. Not Jane. And not here for thinking or saying such a thing. When people tried (quite gently at first) to demonstrate that she did not “get” how racist and hurtful the use of blackface is, she resorted to illustrations of her [one presumes] own experiences to say that they had no right to suggest that she (of all people!) may need to think a bit more deeply about the use and misuse of racist imagery — and then, adding insult to injury, turned around and called a number of POC commenters racist when they tried to to be more illustrative.
I am white. I have experienced sexual oppression/abuse — there are not many women (if they are honest with themselves) who haven’t. But those experiences do not immunize me from being racist at times, any more than a “nice well meaning guy” is not sometimes a sexist asshole, even when he doesn’t mean to be. And he does not have a right to call me sexist when I point out that most men (and all men who haven’t grappled with the issue consciously) are in some way sexist — even when they think they are not.
To take the analogy a step forward, a lot of men were abused as children. They suffer the scars, just as all people who have been abused do. But if they are white, they are immune from being routinely discriminated against, or dehumanized in the way that women are, particularly if they are economically and educationally priveledged.
So, while I would agree with you that setting up a suffering meter is meaningless, for a white woman to equate her — perhaps greivious suffering and oppression — to those who fall lower in the social pecking order does not wash. And it is also very telling that it seems that she very particularly went after those who tried to use examples from their own personal lives (I am thinking particularly of bint alshama) to illustrate the point that just because someone doesn’t mean to be insulting, doesn’t mean they aren’t (if I could get a hundred dollar bill for every man who told me that I needed to get a sense of humor when he said something sexually insulting, I would be a wealthy woman!).
Sunrunner –
oh, absolutely agreed. that is why I said at the outset that Maha was wrong.
I just think that it doesn’t help by using language that implicitly supports the game of “more oppresseder than thou.”
no one intends to do this, I don’t think. it just happens and part of that is because we subscribe to subordination theories where power is always conceived of as a binary.
Interesting about the ads on DKos. Not that’s there’s anything wrong with that of course, but it sure does take the air out of my theory that the site’s rise was built purely on content.
I’ve always had an issue with Hamsher’s attacks of people based on appearance, especially when those people are women. Besides continuing the narrative that women are their always imperfect bodies, I just think it’s an ineffective criticism.
Which is what make Darksun’s post ironic. It’s a interesting/comprehensive post on all-things Hamsher so it’s a shame that she had to open it by making a crack about Hamsher’s botoxed face and studied thinness (which, what exactly is that?)
Anyway, this zero-ing in on Hamsher from various and sundry blogs feels like a take-down to me. I don’t read FDL as much as I used to and yeah, Hamsher has made some world class blunders, but I’m not getting this sudden lust for pointing out her every misstep. Am I misreading tone here?
JK–
I must have missed the botox opening or didn’t understand it since I haven’t seen Hamsher often enough nor would I know what a botoxed face actually looks like.
I certainly don’t intend to do a take down on Hamsher. Didn’t think anyone was really. I like Sunrunner’s post (donna’s?) because it was a sort of central repository to everything that went down over that event.
and i have no problem with advertising, either. “Fat Old Jewish Guy in the Projects” and many other blogs advertised on other blogs to help boost traffic.
I personally think people should stop fucking APOLOGIZING for “whoring” their blog. I personally appreciate it when people point me and others at things they’ve written, especially when I’m too busy to get out of my own backyard and even open up my feed reader for a looksee.
are other blogs zeroing in on Hamsher? I haven’t been out much lately. :)
I agree thouhg that it’s unfortunate if that’s what’s going on. It turns what is a structural issue of racism in Bloglandia in general into a personal issue of JH having a “bad” personality or some horse hockey. *THAT* gets under my skin because it allows people to conveniently think that “that one over there. The bitch? The botoxed up bitch. the skinny one. SHE is the racist. See her! See. She’s 3v0l! Bad.”
Which then always makes me think of my favorite line in House of Games: “Can’t bluff someone if they’re not paying attention.”
>i think fug is funny, but i wouldnââŹâ˘t raise what they do to the level of principle as political strategy or anything.>
Oh, sure. Exactly. Which is another reason why in some ways I have more respect for them than I do for people like Hamsher. They don’t pretend to be anything other than what they are.
and well yeah, exactly: what if she -was- the Hindenberg? that was my own knee jerking, I expect, at yet one more instance of a woman who’s very probably thinner than I am being mocked as ENORMOUS. yeah, in theory, fat positive! i love my body just as it is! no sore spots left at all, no! uh.
did I mention that I am rapidly falling in hate with Hamsher?
>felt she had to explain to me that i shouldnââŹâ˘t wear bright colored nail polish to a job interview.
God, what a ’stain. and, hey. lord knows how many faux pas I’ve made going in for interviews. i tend to suspect that being FAT would be another one.
all those loose women, tsk tsk. with their floppy flesh and sloppy attire and loud voices and loud…colors. we’re only telling you this for your own good, dear. p.s. I R a Feh-muh-neeeeessst!! in fact not only am i more of a lady than you, I’m a better feminist than you!
-boint-
>Anyway, this zero-ing in on Hamsher from various and sundry blogs feels like a take-down to me. I donââŹâ˘t read FDL as much as I used to and yeah, Hamsher has made some world class blunders, but IââŹâ˘m not getting this sudden lust for pointing out her every misstep. Am I misreading tone here?>
I dunno about taking her down. I’d never read FDL much at all. but the excerpts of her various oeuvres are seriously beginning to press a number of my personal buttons. I have…issues…with certain kinds of personalities, let’s put it that way, which, it is beginning to look she is/has one of them, to me. in addition to my issues about the particular subjects of mockery.
but yeah, obviously, the problem here is structural; it wouldn’t be fixed by just deep-sixing Hamsher. someone else will just grab the red scrunchie and carry on in the same vein, more or less. and in a way, her (and T-Rex’s, and maybe Maha’s, and a couple of others’) nasty vindictiveness is kind of a gift: it makes the underlying structural racism here more obvious to more people, perhaps, than it would have done otherwise. the more “genteel” people who smile and smile and yes-but the whole thing to death, are they any better? maybe personally, but that doesn’t make the problem here any closer to being fixed. at all.
I just, you know, feel like I can both see the structural problem here and also think, “goddam, this particular person is a giant ’stain. Yuck.”
>SheââŹâ˘s got a real thing about being a victim (she keeps equating depression, spousal abuse and childhood sexual abuse with being oppressed by racism). Its sad in a way because I would never want to diminish any womanââŹâ˘s suffering in this regard, but she still doesnââŹâ˘t get that a white woman who suffers from these things has a much better chance to overcome them than does an African American woman. And these kinds of problems certainly do not dog her when she steps out her front door in the same way that skin ââŹĹcolorââŹÂ does.>
Well, right: one of the most maddening things about this sort of gambit is that it suggests that it’s an either-or situation. When in fact,
1) there are WOC who have not experienced these things, and while they may be privileged/fortunate/what you will in that regard they -still- are subject to institutionalized racism in a way that you, white woman, are not; and institutionalized racism is in fact the particular subject at hand here, I’m afraid, although you’re more than welcome to talk about the other stuff in -other- discussions, because, yes, that’s important -too-;
2) there are WOC who HAVE experienced these things; and what that means is that yes, they share that in common with you, but there STILL is a difference, because of that -additional- problem of institutionalized racism (see #1).
grr argh.
Right, there were missteps all around when it comes to who was invited and especially how they responded to subsequent criticism. I’m guessing that Jane got some extra spotlight because of Liza’s earlier criticism of her use of blackface and TRex’s disgusting response to her post, but the zeroing on Jane, esp in DarkSun’s post, felt unbalanced (in the way it only highlighted arguments/posts that supported her take) and excessive to me. Overall, I still like Jane’s voice and admire her for what she has worked to accomplish politically.
In the end though, I’m glad this created a fracas because while people dug in their heels in the midst of the debate, I can’t help but believe that some progress was made, which wouldn’t have been made had this been a quiet and civil conversation.
I say this having watched last night a show on the fight for civil rights during the late 50s/60s. On the show, they played a tape of a measured conversation between JFK and the governor of Mississippi about how they could calmly and quietly integrate UMiss. In the end, the riots came.
JK — OK, Botox & collegen — I live in NYC and I have a pretty good idea of what it “does” to the face (Hamsher is 47) as I work in an environment heavily populated by such women. She and Couter have the look that these women aspire to. And I gotta tell you, it is effective if done well, as many of her male readers were shocked, I tell ya, when her real age was printed in the NY Times. The fawing (oh, jane you are so hot!) is all in the comments. As a woman who is often considered “attractive” I would’ve been totally creeped out by such attention — particularly if I wanted to be taken seriously for my ideas. In my original post, I linked to the CL post pictured above in which she consciously goes after CL while unconsciously taking a stab at women with “weight problems” and also to another post in which she calls a conservative author (whose ideas are indeed noxious) a “sandpaper snatch.”
A huge part of Coulter’s appeal to her fans (sophmoric, rightwingers) is her teeny-girlish looks (do you think that if say–Bay Buchanan–said that stuff about the Jersey Girls, people would’ve still loved her for it?) which are “not natural” but carefully cultivated — right down to a particular posture and mannerisms. No, a “certain look” (the ultimate fragile white girl, if you will) is essential to the schtick. So, within that context, botox and collegen is a fair topic of conversation, imo.
(and yes, if a woman wants that stuff, then by all means she should have it, and I generally have good enough manners to not think less of her if she does!)
Studied thinness: bad writing — but the likelihood that either Coulter or Hamsher is as thin as they are (at their age, again) without in some way working at it (Coulter is reputed to be a very heavy smoker, for instance). You can’t pull of the “it-girl” look without being so slender (Katherine Hepburn, Gwyneth Paltrow etc).
Anyway — I admit, honing in on Hamsher’s appearance is pretty trivial, when taken alone, but when looked at as part of a larger pattern . . . I do think it is relevant. And also because it is so damn important to her!
Deep-sixing Hamsher: I am only one very small blogger — my readership rarely goes over 200 a day. Until I wrote my post, the only person from the left that I know of who had the temerity to say anything really hard to say about Jane Hamsher (most of the writing was directed at Trex and FDL) is Liza Sabater of Culture Kitchen. Hamsher owns FDL, choses the writers, and runs it as though she were producing a movie and what I wanted to do was to show that the TRex post was part and parcel of a larger over all pattern/trajectory at FDL. Which is one of the reasons I went for her has hard as I did — her method is to attack, attack, attack (and having the good fortune to afford ads. Of course she paid for them herself, she could easily afford it. And I don’t have a problem with people buying ads either. BAGNewsNotes, one of my favorite blogs advertised on Digby for a long time.) — while being guilty of the very things she attacks others for.
At the same time, I thought it worth noting that it really does look as though she is intent on becoming a kind of “Democratic Party” political celebrity. FDL is raising enough $$ to be taken seriously by the Dem party likely the real price of admission to that lunch, she is cultivating political celebrities (every week, several make guest appearances on her site) and in the vein of Michelle Malkin and Coulter she keeps the troops rallied through cultivating and fanning inflamatory rhetoric. (now, I will say that it is not now anywhere near as bad as Malkin’s site or Coulter’s columns, but who knows where it could go?) The right has been rightly and roundly criticized for not speaking up against Coulter and now she is all over the airwaves making reasonable conservatives look like idiots (and there are a few left–what used to be a moderate conservative is now an Independent voter).
Belledame — there is a structural problem if we (yes, our tiny little voices) allow it to stand. I can’t recall if any conservatives of note really went after Coulter and Limbaugh when they were getting started. Old fashioned conservatives (which are practically extinct now — but I think of people like my grandparents who raised children during the depression and the war) would have more of a voice and a presence now, and not what we see now. I would hate to see a similar thing happen on the left, were it to actually gain power. It could if Hamsher was responsible for driving the tone of the discourse back in the 80s, for instance.
So I do think that people like Maha and Hamsher need to be called down hard on their racist/classist/sexist shit — by us — their natual allies — before they get too big for their britches (and both are intensely ambitious, that much is clear). Perhaps they are an unstoppable force, so I would like to think that if the clamoring from the hoi polloi becomes loud enough they will learn a few lessons.
It is worth noting that my post was picked up by Colin Mc Enroe — a CT journalist who followed the Lamont-Lieberman primary carefully for a class he is teaching at Trinity College on blogs — because of the other content I am sure! Most of Coulter’s cable news sound bites (at least until C& L), Media Matters and Think Progress started archiving them on the net) have dissapeared. Hamsher will not have that luxury as she makes her way forward.
So, my hope is that the blackface incident as well as FDL’s role in the fall out from the white blogger lunch will be remembered, because it should be instructive - particularly to those who have been so incredibly silent.
Just one more thing: I do not want to imply that everything written by Hamsher or by FDL writers is bad (well, I could do without Trex in general) — in fact the reason I read so much of it was because of the excellent Plame coverage by Christy Hardin Smith (and I would also say that almost everthing written my Christy is worth reading). Hamsher deserves kudos for providing Christy and the many brilliant commenters with a platform. But I don’t need to go on and on about their strengths because so many others have. But, Jane Hamsher has some major blind spots — which are not only harmful to herself, but to others — which need to be pointed out.
In the end, I don’t think anyone is heartless enough (and I include Jane Hamsher and TRex in this) to really go down the Malkin - Coulter road without being eaten alive by both of them. Jane may make movies about serial killers, but Coulter and Malkin really live it. But Hamsher (and others) could do terrible harm to “out side” if they get away with thinking they can. For some reason accusations of hypocrisy roll of the right like oil on teflon, but stick to the left like glue.
Sunrunner –
you make me glad I avoid democratic politics like the plague. i tried to get involved in a look progressive group, but a few months after I did, I was sent an email asking me to help support a democratic candidate who was proud of her record implementing Clinton’s welfare reform policies in the state of FL.
my jaw dropped.
This? This? This is progressive? A candidate is writing to ask for my support based on her sterling fucking record of dismantling a program — the results of which fucked over the lives of more people than I can count.
i was steamed.
i simply can’t bring myself to go anywhere near anything that smacks of DailyKos, netroots, or the Democratic party.
may they all self-immolate and the sooner the better.
if it wasn’t clear in #26 — it was a democratic candidate (local) being put forward by a member of a progressive coalition to which I belonged or had once wanted to belong. they wanted my support to help get her some netroots support.
bithchlab - I know exactly what you mean and I couldn’t agree more!
When it comes down to winning at all costs (ie, the backs of those who are simply struggling to get by) then we are no better than all those “thems.”
And that cannot be acceptable.
Sunrunner –
heh. I think it made the person who’d asked for my support confused to learn that I was among the many people I knew who’d been fucked over by welfare reform, thank you very much!
I mean: i didn’t have a chance to get fucked over b/c it was non-existent.
The candidate wanted to hear my story. I told her that she and her assistants could do their own fucking homework ’cause there are reams of research papers done on the problem, there are reams of articles and opinion essays. Library? you heard of the library Ms. Candidate? As far as I was concerned, she could get off her ass and figure out the “issues” on her own dime and time, not mine.
Sunrummer: I find that everyone has their defense of why their criticism of a woman’s appearance is valid. I just avoid it altogether because it always strikes me as reducing females down to their physical bodies, which, for me, feeds into the whole concept of controlling those same bodies and then I starting getting twitchy.
I disagree that a “huge” part of Coulter’s appeal is her appearance (which, natch, she is vilified for by critics on the left because she supposedly looks like a man–nice, huh?), though I would say that people who are considered attractive do tend to be more successful so it doesn’t suprise me that Coulter and other pundits like her tend to be above-average in appearance.
Also, I didn’t realize until I just clicked on the link again that you wrote this post in September. So yeah, you probably are the first to put together such a comprehensive critique of Jane and FDL, which given their size, influence and history of controversial statements absolutely makes them fair game.
Anyway, I shouldn’t have been so dismissive of your post (lol–I thought this was a private exhange between me and a handful of BL posters–I didn’t know you would actually be reading along AND participating!). It’s a very worthy effort that would bring anyone completely up to speed on this whole messy fiasco. (And I too wish they would give TRex the boot!)
sunrunner: you’re in NYC too? -waves- I guess I did see the Brooklyn reference, come to that. damn, so many cool New Yorkers blogging! REPRESENT!
anyhoo: yeah. I know opening up this line is gonna take me back into an ideological (or something) difference I have with BL, but I do think that there is a way in which one can see pathological narcissism (yeah, DSM term, but there are layman’s ways of getting at this as well which i think are also effective) as a structural problem in itself.
well, Christopher Lasch wrote about that, “Culture of Narcissism;” and while I disagree with a lot of what he has to say–he’s quite reactionary in many ways–I think that “culture of narcissism” is a very apt term for what the U.S. is today, or a goodly part of what’s wrong with it, at any rate.
…ooh. just googled “structural narcissism” to see what I might come up with, and came across this blog:
http://www.antipopper.com/
looks…interesting. BL, looks like this one might float your boat as well. Linking and gonna come back to it.
Oops, Sunrunner….sorry dreams of tropical beaches and rum are running (ha) through my head.
Belledame –
*sigh*
i read culture of narcissism years ago. mentioned it way back. also write a lot about larry hirschorn’s work, not to mention psychoanalytic history *and* Eli Sagan’s work on pscyhological and moral development which, if you google, you can see he wrote an entire book arguing that personality formations accompany particular structural social arrangements in a society — and he took the very long view of history here. (he’d probably be laughed at today for such Grand Theory)
additionally, there is the entire Frankfurt School — the topic of my thesis — and their authoritarian personality studies re: fascism. Those studies tied into the work of Stanley Milgram for instance. A lot of it also was issued in the form of studies of people and their response to long-term unemployment, a situation that faced entire towns in Germany during the 20s. Some of their work on people’s personal experiences and psychological responses to strucutral unemployment because the basis for the Authoritarian personality studies later.
amazingly enough, i read all this stuff as part of the study of sociology.
in sociology it’s both/and: people make history, just not in any way they please.
What Christopher Lasch said, by the way, was not that there are *certain* people who are narcissists but that we *all* are by virtue of this culture. That is the favored theory of a former prof of mine as well. In fact, he thinks blogging is a perfect example of the culture of narcissism — and he means that in the complex way Lasch meant, not in the colloquial way where narcissism means “self absorbtion.” He means that blogging is a good example of people having no boundaries — of confusing their self with the world (grandiose narcissism) or immersing their selves to the world (narc type I’ve forgotten). In either case, bloggers are hopeless narcissists all the way down — everyone is.
All right, all right, you already knew about all this stuff. Mea culpa. I know not whereof I speak. O.K.
There are a lot of theories about “narcissism” really means even w/in psych, is the thing. Yes, obviously it doesn’t mean the same thing as the pop-understanding of “self-absorbed” or “self-promoting” or “vain.” But for instance: (and I don’t remember where Lasch comes in on this, although I have my suspicions): the question of whether pathological narcissism (as per the DSM) is simply a more extreme version of “normal” narcissism, or whether in fact it’s another animal altogether. Related: whether it’s a case of arrested development (i.e. all children of a certain age are “narcissistic”) or whether in fact the path to pathological narcissism starts even at that young age; and/or in fact that what we call pathological narcissism is -not- the same thing as what we see in children of that age, at all. (for xyz reasons; i have all that shit lying about somewhere).
Or, well, you’ve read Fromm, too, right? His take on “malignant narcissism,” I also take that on board. That would no doubt be closer to the Frankfurt school’s; certainly he talks a great deal about the authoritarian personality. And while he uses his definition of “malignant narcissism” to remote-diagnose certain key individuals (most notably Hitler–hey, it was way before Godwin’s Law), he does tie the individual manifestations of the “insane” individual to what he sees as the “insane” society.
Anyway: no, we’re -not- ALL narcissists, or at minimum, there has to be a continuum. If it is possible to distinguish the “not-or-at-least-less-narcissistic” culture from a narcissistic one (macro), then it is also possible to distinguish the “not-or-at-least-less-narcissistic” -person- from a truly narcissistic -individual- as well.
and Fromm’s point, I believe, is that while it is impossible to separate out a malignant narcissist from the overall culture…
(actually I think Fromm emphasizes a sort of moral choice as well, more than say Alice Miller does)
but, his concern–certainly others’, I know -my- concern– is also that the malignant narcissist in a position of -leadership- can be devastating. It -does- make a difference.
…so, to go to the obvious, godwin and all: Hitler. Nope, didn’t come out of a vacuum. Authoritarianism, micro and macro. Among other things. Miller’s got one theory of how that milieu came about (her talk of “poisonous pedagogy”). Fromm’s got a different one. They both speak of “narcissism;” they both connect the micro with the macro. But at the same time: Hitler was not interchangeable with -anybody.- He wasn’t a unique monster, as people would like to believe; but he wasn’t just like everyone else either. He was like a -lot- of people; with the additional gifts/curses of right place right time and a lot of charisma. And even the…other people…everyone has a little Hitler in them, I think that’s true, yes. But at the same time: it isn’t -everyone,- no. There is a difference, and it can be found at the individual level all the way up to the macro; one can argue about where that difference is located or what causes it, but there -is a difference.- I do believe that is important. Yes.
>people make history, just not in any way they please.
I don’t know anyone who says they do make it in any way they please. I certainly haven’t. And yes, I -also- think it’s both/and. Our emphases are different is all, I think.
>n the end, I donââŹâ˘t think anyone is heartless enough (and I include Jane Hamsher and TRex in this) to really go down the Malkin - Coulter road without being eaten alive by both of them. Jane may make movies about serial killers, but Coulter and Malkin really live it. But Hamsher (and others) could do terrible harm to ââŹĹout sideââŹÂ if they get away with thinking they can. For some reason accusations of hypocrisy roll of the right like oil on teflon, but stick to the left like glue.>
Well, that’s just it. And ironically enough, it’s mirror to the exact same problem that drove most of ‘em to blog in the first place, supposedly: namely, the Democrats keep losing because they try to be like Republicans Lite.
Thing is, as we know, if people want Republicans, they’ll vote for Republicans. Duh. And the people who really -don’t- want Republicans are gonna be turned off and disgusted; tepid at best, “hold your nose,” etc. “We’re just like you, but not quite so much.” This does not work so well. Never has done.
What some people fail to realize is that this extends beyond -issues.- This is also about more ineffable things.
Well, no, actually, it’s pretty straightforward: the Republicans have become the party of bullying assholes. If people want bullying assholes, they’ll go to the source. If you’re not quite as much of a bullying asshole but otherwise indistinguishable, you’re gonna get clobbered, same as you will if your position on issues is just -barely- distinguishable from that of the Republicans.
but at the end of the day, you know, I have a feeling that these people…well, we’ll see. Maybe they’ll learn better and rein it in.
Thing is, I have this suspicion that while there is obviously a political rationale behind this behavior, it probably is at bottom just that: a rationale.
iow: I think, you know, wrt assholery: anyone can trump it up, given the right circumstances; but for some people it comes just a bit more easily than others. Given the right circumstances. Yes.
The other problem is that a lot of people don’t really distinguish between “blunt and forceful, earthy, even angry and maybe sweary” and “bullying asshole.” That whole “civility” thing again. You complain about behavior like this, and inevitably some happy asshat comes back with, “oh, here come the lily-livered whiners, wanting us to be nicey-nicey. This isn’t a tea party, and you’d better learn that now.”
Well, no SHIT it’s not a tea party; the problem isn’t that you aren’t being polite, okay; the problem is that you still haven’t noticed what’s actually being served. Poison. A bit different from brewskis and brawls, that.
Discernment is a fine thing.