Round #8,624 of MSNBC’s War on Sarah Palin – Ding! Ding! Ding!
November 13, 2009
by Contributor
|The opinions expressed herein are those of the author, and not necessarily those of The New Agenda.
Here we go again… I don’t even know what to say about the video from MSNBC’s Morning Meeting with host Dylan Ratigan. Will the war on Sarah Palin ever end? I’m starting to wonder if they are just trying to wear us all down so we will just stop fighting sexism entirely? Ok! We get it, you hate Sarah Palin! But the war on Palin isn’t really the only point is it? It’s the “sexism is okay if we just don’t like you” war on women that is exhausting. Do I even need to list what is offensive in this video? I’m so tired of pointing out what seems like the obvious, I thought I would ask for your help!
Here is a quote from Dylan Ratigan to get you started,
“What is it about Palin that drives America wild? We at the Morning Meeting have some ideas on why America is infatuated with Palin. And to have some fun, we have Time magazine writer Jay Small Newton. She covered Sarah Palin on the campaign trail and our own Contessa Brewer is with us as well. And, so, let us commence the conversation. [Reading off the Morning Meeting top ten list.] The tenth reason why she’s people are so obsessed with her, Jay, we say is because we say she is the strongest man in the Republican party. You agree with that?”
Take a look at this video and tell us what catches your eye from the most recent round of sexism in the media? Please tell us what you think…
Please refrain from even linking to clips of MSNBC. Their staff has all the moral instincts of the average gang rapist and they have demonstrated that time and again. MSNBC is to women what the KKK is to blacks. Just delete them from your cable line-up. They are a media monstrosity and, I hope, a passing aberration.
Once again, anyone who says that men like good-looking women is living on another planet someplace. There’s nothing they hate more than someone they want to stick it to.
And again, no species that has such contempt for the means of its own reproduction will survive for very long in the evolutionary scheme of things.
It’s also funny how the idiots in the third wave-type sites who are ridiculing her for daring to be pretty behave when the subject of their own bodies comes up. How many posts about how porn is empowerfulating have we been subjected to on that end? How many posts about shoes and dresses have these fools made, called to task for being trivial and pointless by “killjoy” feminists who were then told that It Is So Feminist!!!!!! to blog about cute shoes and dresses and looking great because “the patriarchy” has done women a disservice by saying you can’t be hot and smart at the same time!
And then what do they all do when THEY get a chance? Rip Palin up one side and down the other for being precisely that: pretty and accomplished. (Plus having a husband they’d all slit each other’s throats for.)
BIMBO! WHORE! SLUT! PATRIARCHAL TOOL! They can’t WAIT to shred her to bits for being thinner and prettier than they are — just like the patriarchy that they purported to oppose and are actually just a big part of in the end.
The next time one of them says that being pretty or sexy shouldn’t be a crime when they blog about their underwear, remind them: “Unless you’re Sarah Palin. Then looking great means you’re a stupid, brainless fuckdoll bimbo who can’t be taken seriously. Right?”
If porn is so empowerfulating, then why are these pictures of Palin in a swimsuit being used to degrade and humiliate her? And why are “feminists” buying into it?
Could it be because she looks better than they do, and they just can’t stand it? I’m not saying that feminists are all ugly; that’s an old canard that needs to get put to bed. But I am saying that these stupid young people are doing what women have done for years, and what real adherence to feminism requires that they give up: hating and envying women who can attract men better than they can, because they believe that’s all the power they have going for them.
They aren’t feminists. They are just another cadre of backstabbing little catty stereotypical Mean Girls straight out of junior high who insist that their push-up bras and fuck-me pumps are empowering and feminist, while that other bitch’s hair and makeup is patriarchal. Amanda Marcotte can so be smart and sexy … but that Republican woman can’t!
It’s all just Bitch vs. Bitch in their minds. Smells like patriarchy to me.
I thought it couldn’t get any worse than Keith Olbermann and his guest calling Sarah a “giant douche nozzle” a weeks back on his show…but now MSNBC is posting fake photos of Palin(the bikini/shot-gun photo and the mini-skirt photo are both fakes)…at some point soon, this is going to denigrate into a full-out dehumanization of Sarah Palin. It’s gross, indecent and sad.
janis,
you actually brought tears to my eyes with that beautiful retort regarding pornography. god bless you…
and this single blog post is a spot on synthesis of the post fems vs. real fems I have ever read. ever. ever.
janis for president, sarah for vice
see, I got so emotional I couldn’t even write…
what I meant to say was “and this single blog post is the most spot on synthesis of the post fems vs. real fems that I have ever read.” and I mean it….
It would be typical except they haven’t used the word “drama” yet
I don’t want to be president. I want to be empress. My word is law. None of this Magna Carta shit.
I’d be a GREAT despot, because I’m lazy. Left to my own devices, I’d never get out of bed before 9am. What kind of damage could a person like that do? Tyrants are all morning people. I bet Hitler was up by 5am every day.
First of all, how is the media allowed to post photo-shopped pictures of Palin? They actually have fake pictures up and are passing them off as real! Could you imagine if they took Obama’s head and posted it on a different body? No I couldn’t imagine it because it would never happen.
how many millions you need to sue MSNBC. Hope Sarah makes that type of money and uses the new gender hate bill.
Monarch like your comparison KKK and MSNBC. it is a hate crime.
and Janis great comments again.
what drives these guys nuts?
envy for her beauty? a beautiful woman has to be their sex object, anything else cannot go, it would turn patriarchy upside down
fear how she can give a voice to what millions of Americans feel – the ones who are not cheering for Obama,
the story of a woman who can raise to the top against all odds – and this is reserved for the male species in our society, a woman has to work herself to the ground for every step on the way
“what drives these guys nuts?
envy for her beauty? a beautiful woman has to be their sex object”
Envy is what drives her female detractors nuts. The fact that womanhaters conflate sex and violence is what drives the men nuts.
Basically, the men who conflate hating on her and fucking her aren’t nuts by male standards, only by female ones. They can’t tell the difference between fucking her and degrading her. That old feminist chestnut that “all sex is rape” is oversimplified. What they meant was that, in a world where patriarchy is the single overriding principle, men can’t tell the difference. Women can … unless they are the brainwashed idiots at Feministing and other like blogs, where they think rape fantasies are just peachy good fun.
Feminism was always accused of wanting to make women into men. Looks like it worked. Now, we have a bunch of women who think porn is great, rape is sexy, and men matter more.
I hear you, Janis.
Envy may be what makes some women attack other women, but it’s complicated patriarchal envy. Women are trained from day one to view other women as a threat. Another woman is going to take you stuff, your husband, your security, your power, and leave you destitute, homeless, and alone. If you think about it, it’s really insidious to put “sexy” fake photos of Palin up because it’s designed not to titillate men, but to inspire hatred of her from other women.
I think for the women it’s envy / competition mixed with classism. I know of a very beautiful blogster who HATES Palin and went off on her for her clothing choices, her style of makeup, her glasses. She scoffed at the thought that she of all people would be jealous of Sarah Palin! Sometimes a beautiful woman who considers themselves part of the uppercrust or the creative class looks down on a beautiful woman who is working class or simply poor.
I think it goes like this in their heads – How dare anyone be impressed with that woman! She’s garbage!
It’s disgusting.
[...] The New Agenda: Here we go again… I don’t even know what to say about the video from MSNBC’s Morning Meeting with host Dylan Ratigan. Will the war on Sarah Palin ever end? I’m starting to wonder if they are just trying to wear us all down so we will just stop fighting sexism entirely? Ok! We get it, you hate Sarah Palin! But the war on Palin isn’t really the only point is it? It’s the “sexism is okay if we just don’t like you” war on women that is exhausting. Do I even need to list what is offensive in this video? I’m so tired of pointing out what seems like the obvious, I thought I would ask for your help! [...]
yttik, I think everyone’s getting off on it — and yes, the damage it’s doing to women is worse than what it’s doing to men, because that is the damage that keeps us from fighting back. I don’t buy that crap anymore than it’s all men’s fault, even with as much contempt as I hold them in. We’ve been garbage for one million years of human history, and … it’s always someone else’s fault? Really? I used to get so angry at primate ethology arguments against women’s equality, but they are starting to make ugly sense. In ANY troop of primates (and please don’t bring up bonobos, we’re plainly more chimp than bonobo by any stretch of the imagination), the males outrank ALL females, and females NEVER fight back. The only creatures a troop’s females will attack are the females of another troop.
That’s it. That’s it right there. That’s what we are. And that’s why we’ve been garbage for a million years, and will be garbage for a million more. Because when the balance sheet is tallied at the end of the day, WE think it’s more fun to watch the bitch get hers than to fight back against our actual oppressors. Because we screw and give birth to the damn things and hence are incapable of holding them accountable.
Phyllis Chesler may be a bit intense, but that book of hers was right, about woman’s inhumanity to woman. I remember hearing about the horror-oh-the-horror of those hideous places in other parts of the world where women lose count of how many times they’ve been raped, where nine year old girls are raped to death, and where ALL men are soldiers and ALL soldiers are rapists. I remember asking once out loud how that might have gotten started, and that it probably started slow and unoticeably, with only some women getting raped, women outside the troop — and where the women in the troop cheered it on or blamed those sluts for tempting their innocent boys … (You can imagine the way I was shouted down.)
But those women in those hellhole countries found out fast that it doesn’t work like that. You may think your menfolk are properly punishing the sluts who deserve it, but what THEY think they are doing is smashing pussy! All pussy, everywhere! Because they find it fun. And when you give them permission to do it to one woman, you give them permission to do it to all women.
So it starts to get out of hand, if I may be flat-out sarcastic instead of trying to hide it. The men start *gasp!* raping worthy women! Who don’t deserve it! *hankie clutched to chest* Women like me! Why, however did that happen!
Then we get Eve freakin Ensler wandering around interviewing a zillion women who’ve all been raped with shotguns and making poetry about it. Of course, now we also have Eve Ensler ganging up herself on the Bitch Who Isn’t Part of the Troop in that foul, loathesome Palin-attack book. Looks like the abyss she stared into sure did stare back into her, all right.
Women let this shit happen. Repeatedly. To other women. Then, we turn around dewy-eyed and pained when it ends up in our laps, as it always does.
So anyhow, this is just a long, rambling way of agreeing with you. The damage shit like this does in encouraging women to hate on other women for selfish, male-centered reasons is indeed worse, and it’s what is condemning us.
Janis, I love your comparison with the primates. That’s it! Women will attack other women who are “outside their troop”. Lovely that we haven’t advanced much beyond the primates, isn’t it?
I don’t think it is about her beauty at all, or her looks period, which is a glaring red herring, a safe hating zone for men and women; something to talk about so that they can’t admit they hate her because she is a woman.
You are all subsidizing MSNBC and other channels like it every time you pay your cable bill here is a link to a web site that is working hard for cable choice so that Americans don’t have to subsidize content they find offensive by paying for huge bundles of programing. http://www.parentstv.org/PTC/cable/main.asp
Yes these people are Republican and they are religious and they also did the violence against women in entertainment study all while the liberal Democrats spew misogyny and pump it into your home. PTC have a law suit working it’s way through the courts to put a stop to content bundling and they could use some donations. At times like this it is probably prudent for feminists to link up with people whose behavior actually works toward the good of all women and put these twits out of business rather than trying to turn Democrat men into something tolerable by talking with them or protesting their behavior.
just listened back after sme of you really got of on the female commentators. the guy who asks the questions is ugly aggressive and trys to lead the two females into Palin bashing. For the most part they stay put, let him bounce of and only at the end have some dismissive laughs at Palins’s cost.
I find him outragious, doing his best to become a clone of Mathews Olberman.
He is setting the stage for the witch hunt. containing her as beauty with sex appeal and no word on her politics.
on my commutes I listen to C-span. they had a call in question “who is reading the book and why?”. all the democrats and independents calling who were reading were very defensive. study the enemy or giving advice how she could come back into politics particularly asking she should not criticize the McCain campain. the message I am seeing in all this is, to deny her a place in politics.
remember women in politics have to be spinsters and ugly enough to not get a family. the way the old caricaturists draw the suffragettes.
to Kiuku. thought about the beauty as red herring. I too think the beauty is used. for Hillary MSM tried to sell her as ugly, with photo shopping, looking at the worst surprise moments. to me many of our heroines Sarah Palin, Hillary Clinton, Geraldine Ferraro, Madelaine Albright, and many others look just great. the male talk about beauty is to put us in place and this place is not in politics. they want their boys club. and the female journalists are used against arguments of sexism. But still in the current video, the female journalists were much more cautious than in 2008.
I have to point out that this problem you see with men not wanting little ladies in the political mens club unless they are there to be pretty is not a nation wide problem. I am from Washington state, we have two US Senators who are women and the Governor is a woman and our new chief Justice is a woman on a court with 4 out of 5 judges being women. None of them are legacies. The sexism problem you refer to is coming out of New York and DC and is centered in the Democrat party it is ugly and it is backward and also pervasive. So I want to encourage you that what you see going on back there is not some natural state of affairs it is an aberration. I don’t really know what to suggest to help the problem since east coast folks like to believe they are forward thinking and ahead of everyone else. But to us folks in Washington the east coast culture looks very backward.
[...] nothing wrong with using a picture from Runners World for their cover story. MSNBC is well, being MBNBC, and showing their inner-misogynist so familiar to us from [...]
Leave your Response
Supporting women.
Ending sexism.
Finding common ground.
We’re in the Media »
Click to see our latest stories in the media
More Stories »Recent Comments
The Latest from our Blog
Archives
Blogroll
Find the New Agenda Online
Subscribe Entries (RSS) | Comments (RSS)
The New Agenda is a 501(c)(4) organization dedicated to improving the lives of women and girls by bringing about systemic change in the media, at the workplace, at school and at home. More...