Thursday, March 29th, 2007
Annie get your legal pad…
They’re talkin’ ’bout
The night Althouse went crazy
The night Althouse spewed pea soup
To get out of bein’ called on her bullshit
There’s no depth to which she wouldn’t stoop
Okay, maybe I shouldn’t be trivializing the subject I’m about to rant about by putting it to “Weird” Al Yankovic lyrics, but there it is.
Yes, I’m going to be talking about the Ann Althouse vs. Garance Franke-Ruta dustup. In particular, I wanted to discuss one aspect of the Jessica Valenti Breast Controversy™. What really gets my goat about the whole exchange is that she seems to think that it’s okay for her to hyperventilate over the slightest criticism of her over-the-top ad hominem attacks on legitimate feminists for the crime of being seen with an alleged sexual harasser, and then turn around and dismiss out-of-hand complaints about actual felonious threats and general misogyny as <Althousian sneer>so much clutching at pearls</Althousian sneer>.
Listen Ann, let’s do a little thought exercise here. Those offensive comments over at AutoAdmit that you deride as “boys being boys” - comments that, quite frankly, make me ashamed to have a Y chromosome - aren’t as nonthreatening as high-school yearbook photos or appearances on Candid Camera, where the mark at least had some idea of what was going on and could thus be a good sport about it. Oh, no. This was clearly delving into Monty Python-esque “wink-wink-nudge-nudge-say-no-moah” territory. (Candid photographs, eh? He asked knowingly.) Exhortations of the sort that would earn the pervert a well-deserved scream of “Chikan!!!” on a Japanese subway.
So here’s the integrity check, Ann. If you had been subjected to constant online harassment that frequently goes below the belt, so to speak, along with threats against both your life and your person, to the point where you have to bow out of a technical conference you’re scheduled to speak at out of fear for your own safety, wouldn’t you “get a little hysterical” and demand police protection? Judging from your reaction to Garance’s probe, I’d say the answer is yes.
And yet you wonder why liberal bloggers consider you to be a strawfeminist.
