Fuck You Douglas MacKinnon

I've mentioned before (last post, actually) that there are certain, un-critical view-points I cannot tolerate. It's not that I'm adverse to the other side. If the other side is willing to argue critically and thoughtfully, and not heap a bunch of conservative, sexist, racist, bull-shit, rhetoric at us. Unfortunately, this article, courtesy of the Huffington Post, does not qualify as a critically analyzed position, but as pure sexism only thinly veiled as presenting the "other side".

Sarah Palin has stepped down from her position as governor of Alaska. Everyone knows this by now. Todd Purdum, writing for Vanity Fair, fairly well attacked the crap out of Sarah Palin. In general, nothing makes me happier. I despise Palin with every cell of my brain capable of analytic thought (which I like to think is most of them). But I'm not here to write about that Vanity Fair article (I don't read that magazine anyway, and it has its own problems). What I want to talk about is Douglas MacKinnon's response to Vanity Fair.

First, Doug tries to cover his ass by reminding readers that he once defended Bill Clinton, and then writes, "I will attempt to do the same for Governor Sarah Palin knowing that such a defense will be met with visceral anger and contempt by a great many readers of this site." Right you are, Doug, right you are. But guess what. It's not your defense of Palin as such that's so vomit-inducing. Is your reduction of all women to their shared vagina that makes me want to slap you with your own overblown member.

Dougie asks "Why do so many alleged feminists and female members of the mainstream media openly and gleefully despise Palin?" (emphasis is mine). Because, don't you know all of you silly alleged feminists, Sarah Palin has a vagina, and you all have vaginas, and anyway, isn't that particular part of your anatomy what you're obsessed with? How can you throw a fellow vagina-possesser under the bus? I thought you all were supposed to be on the same side. Never mind that Palin stands in complete contradistinction to everything a thinking feminist stands for. If you were a real feminist, you'd support whatever sorry excuse for a candidate some old white man munificently gives you, as long as she's female (haven't we proven that McCain's logic on this point didn't quite work out?).

And if this argument weren't sound enough, continues Doug, I have an anonymous female friend who's a psychologist with completely undisclosed credentials to back me up (really, Doug, really?). And you know what she says? She says that Maureen Dowd and all of you other pretend feminists are (wait for it)...jealous:

"Dowd 'may be threatened or envious of Palin...or both. As an aging but still attractive woman, Dowd may resent Palin's good looks. Further as a single woman of a certain age, she may be envious that Palin has a husband, a family, and has carved out an accomplished political career." Totally. That's why I disliker her, too. She's just too damn beautiful and I feel threatened. You got me. And while Doug is a self-proclaimed sceptic of psycho-babble, this particular analysis, he says, seems plausible. Right.

But guess what, it's not only pseudo-feminists under attack here for being female. It's Palin, too. Because guess why liberal men don't like her. It's not because she's the political anti-christ, with the reasoning skills of a gnewt (Gingrich or otherwise). Nope, it's because they secretly want to bone her:

"With regard to why Purdum, David Letterman, and other liberal males continually go after Palin, the answer might be as easy as they secretly lust after her while also seeing her as the 'girlfriend of the quaterback' they could never get in high school. Seriously, look at the "men" [I guess they're only hypothetical men, which makes them what? Women?] who belittle Palin on a regular basis. For the most part, they fit the description of "the pencil-neck geek" from high school. Are they now trying to make Palin pay for their long-ago inadequacies?" Christ. Jesus fucking Christ.

I said it once and I'll say it again: Fuck you Douglas MacKinnon. And no, I don't disagree with you because I want to sleep with you. I disagree with you because you are full of the worst kind of shit. The misogynist kind of shit that reeks of reducing all women to their shared baby-making parts. If you want to be controversial and get a conversation started, how about beginning with an actual argument, you know, the kind with a provable thesis statement bolstered by data that might actually further discourse in this country instead of stopping it in its tracks. This is the kind of meeting in the middle I just cannot do.