Still sexist after all these years

A larger image of the cartoon available at Cornell University Library.

Egalia of Tennessee Guerilla Women stopped by to comment on Olberman's misogynistic hate speech against Hillary. So I popped over to TGW and found this:

Who is Keith Olbermann? With the aid of the in-your-face caption: A Slut and Battery, Keith Olbermann reports in the video clip (2006) below that Paris Hilton was "punched in the face." To the laughter of the boys in the background, Olbermann opines that Paris Hilton has "had worse things happen to her face." Taking vicious shots at young celebrities is a routine feature on Olbermann's show. But there is one rule, Keith's shots are always fired at women. Cuz, just like in the 1950s, girls are sleazy sluts and boys are honorable studs.

Egalia has the KO video clip. She also quoted Sandi Burtseva from 2007. The grafs that jumped to my attention via Burtseva were her insights into KO's denigration of Paris Hilton:

Regardless of how astute his political criticism is, I am no longer willing to tolerate Keith Olbermann’s misogyny. Olbermann has a nasty habit of making sexist, derogatory statements about female celebrities. The things he’s said are shameful and should never have been uttered, let alone on television. While he is certainly not alone in his reprehensible treatment of women, Olbermann is widely admired by progressives; unlike other trashy gossip commentators, he must be held to progressive standards....

...Bloggers pointed out that he kept [“A Slut and Battery" regarding Paris Hilton] on the screen for 20 seconds of a 32-second clip, but I don’t see the relevance. Even if he’d only thrown it up long enough to read, this caption (coupled with the vitriol he spewed) tells us everything we need to know about Olbermann’s attitude toward women:

• He thinks it is acceptable to judge women for their sexual choices.
• He thinks women who make particular sexual choices are to be taken less seriously when they claim to have been assaulted.
• He thinks it’s amusing to, um “cleverly” invert a phrase often associated with domestic violence and use it to belittle women.

My former admiration notwithstanding, I dismissed Olbermann then and there, but it seems many others have been willing to give him a second chance. It is my unfortunate duty to note that Olbermann persists in his misogyny.

On Monday, Olbermann devoted some airtime to that most important of world events: Britney Spears’ hairstyle choice. (Story number two, for anyone keeping track, was a similarly distasteful, if slightly more reserved, bashing of the late Anna Nicole Smith. He began his coverage by calling Spears a “pop tart and went on to opine that “… the question now turns to what was she thinking, if not what was she on…”

In the eyes of Olbermann and his ilk, Spears made two mistakes: She dared to be overtly sexual and she dared to shed one of the defining markers of her femininity. I neither know nor care how much sex Spears has and with whom, or why she shaved her head, but I have this radical proposition: In spite of the fact that she’s made sexy music videos, Spears’ body is her own and should not be subjected to Olbermann’s disgusting views.

Both Burtseva and egalia alerted me to something I did not know, not being a KO or MSNBC viewer: Olbermann's pattern of misogyny.

More disturbing, the SCLB's A-List Blog Boyz have watched KO's sexist inclinations and either didn't notice or shrugged indifferent. Misogyny on display? Where? Last, year, Jessica Valenti at Feministing exhumed the Orange Sippy Cup™ King's brain-dead denial:

Markos on Kathy Sierra and female bloggers being harassed and getting death threats:

Look, if you blog, and blog about controversial shit, you'll get idiotic emails. Most of the time, said "death threats" don't even exist -- evidenced by the fact that the crying bloggers and journalists always fail to produce said "death threats".

So let me get this straight: blogging about the oh-so-controversial world of software development means you should expect to get death threats. After all, nothing brings out the crazies like tech-talk. And besides, she probably made it all up anyway.

...Email makes it easy for stupid people to send stupid emails to public figures. If they can't handle a little heat in their email inbox, then really, they should try another line of work.

I mean come on, if you can't handle your address and social security number being published along with threats of rape, hanging, suffocation and death--you're a fucking lightweight.

Seriously though, it's one thing to argue--as Markos does--that a blogger code of conduct would be ineffective. Fine. But dismissing online misogyny and Sierra's experience (without even bothering to do any research on the subject, to boot) is reprehensible. Though predictable given the source.

I unplug when I paint as I did last year for an art exhibition and I missed, as we headed into the primary season, a key understanding: misogyny has been festering amongst the fauxgressive patriarchs of the SCLB. Unleashing it like a volcanic eruption, they targeted Hillary Clinton with a vengeance.

Why is it mostly up to female bloggers to call out sexism? Is anti-feminism so entrenched that fauxgressive men can't shake the legacy of patriarchy to invade, subvert, colonize, and oppress? Is it what Jeff Fecke of Shakesville reiterated in the blindness of privilege?

It takes work to see evidence of oppression when one is not the one being oppressed. It is far easier to simply ignore it, even when one knows one shouldn't.

Also at Shakesville, Melissa McEwan blogged about "a very common misperception that sexism is subjective." Go read her essay. I couldn't do it justice with a fragment.

Some progressive men get it. A few male bloggers I read regularly--Tom Watson, Joseph Cannon, Bob Somerby of The Daily Howler, and Jeff Fecke--do (and certainly more than I follow). Why can Watson, Cannon, Somerby, and Fecke identify and criticize sexism but WKJM and the Orange Sippy Cup™ King don't? Keith Olbermann doesn't but he's an imperious cog in a media machine that rewards ratings, ad revenue, and corporate profits more than truth and justice. I expect better from the liberal blogosphere. The best explanation that I've read recently came from Anglachel:

...why are so many middle and upper-middle class men, typified by the A-List Blogger Boyz, who claim to be progressives such virulent anti-feminists? My answer is rational self-interest, also known as weeding out the competition.

Another way of putting it is why, if white racism is so persistent in this nation, why does this slender sliver of America appear immune to its siren call? Why does Hillary Clinton scare the crap out of the guy who kidnapped Josh Marshall, but he feels no anxiety (that he'll admit to) around The Precious? We can go into analysis of oedipal fantasies and the pervasive influence of patriarchy, yadda yadda, but my point is that this cohort of dudz is exactly the one that claims to be "post-" all those nasty -isms.

The answer is surprisingly simple. They face a lot of competition from white women for their social and economic successes, but not very much from black men. They get a lot more payoff from bashing, dominating, and fucking over women than they do from doing that to men of any color. They can get solidarity from the guyz against the hos. This cannot fully explain the anti-feminist behavior of self-identified liberal men, but it's one hell of a contributing factor.

In Maslow's hierarchy of needs, survival trumps self-actualization. Elbows starting flying when the watering hole gets crowded. All the talk about post-partisan unity gets lost in the mud because vision doesn't address the reality of the oppressed; one must design solutions with a commitment to execute them. When those solutions undermine the privileged class that's fighting to control the watering hole, commitment evaporates. Poof!

Until women and men who love women commit to solving "all those nasty -isms," sexism will to continue to thrive. So who's ready?

CREDITS: Fauxgressive, a term I picked up from Melissa McEwan of Shakesville, where one can also read Jeff Fecke.

Olbermann's answer to WWTSBQ

Anglachel doesn't mince words. And neither do I in agreeing with her. Keith Olbermann's solution to WWTSBQ is to kill Hillary and it's unmitigated hate speech:

Other blog posters have stepped around the obvious intent behind Keith Olbermann's recent verbal assault on Hillary Clinton. I know why. It's a hell of a step to take. I've spoken extensively about the irrational and boundless fury at this woman who has done nothing to deserve the outrages inflicted upon her. I've blogged before on the level of violence in the reaction to Hillary Clinton. I've blogged on how the shame of the Left when confronted by her - shamed by how she has been trashed, shamed by how badly she beats their darlings - underlies the demands that she be eradicated from politics, a symbolic honor killing....

...What Keith Olbermann said yesterday is not symbolic. He flatly said a (male) Democratic super delegate should take Hillary Clinton into a room, and only the man should emerge.

Keith Olbermann is openly advocating the murder of Hillary Clinton.

We need to say this. It does not preclude talking about the other elements that may be subsumed under that final act, that she would also be battered and raped, but the clear message sent out by Keith Olbermann is he wants someone to murder this woman.

Over the months, I have read various bits of bullshit talking about how "people" are "worried" that Obama might be an assassination target. This is such an obvious line of sensationalistic crap from his campaign to try to create a false aura of danger (Quick! Flock to Barry's defense! Those terrible white racists are gunning for him!) when there has been nothing in the public realm to back it up. Let me be perfectly clear. I think it is probable that there is some nutcase out there who would like to try to assassinate Obama, and I think this because there is always some nutcase out there who thinks killing a public figure is a peachy idea. Or just some nutcase who wants attention - remember the would-be suicide bomber at Hillary's New Hampshire office? However, certainly within the liberal blogosphere and the MSM (I do not venture into the wingnut fever swamps), there is no drumbeat for violence against Obama.

This is not the case with Hillary. I have myself read comments advocating rape and murder. I have read main posts saying she was inciting violent acts against her, or saying they could "understand" the position of those who wished violent harm to befall her, her husband and her daughter. The descriptions of what Obama should do to Hillary verge on the pornographic. Not a day goes by that some prominent voice on the left or in the MSM does not demand her submission, subordination and public humiliation.

Anglachel is right to point out these attacks on Hillary for they speak to the evil--yes, it is evil--of the pervasive battering of females and the resentment of women's autonomy and authority. Violence against women in America borders on epidemic, part of the war on women worldwide. At least one in three women experience abuse by an intimate partner at some point in their lives.

For Keith Olbermann to trivialize this harsh reality with a veiled threat against Hillary isn't funny. It's dark, criminally-negligent speech implying that violence against women is OK. His words promote immoral behavior forged by old patriarchal attitudes: women who won't do what men want can be controlled through physical, emotional, and verbal abuse. In his attack on Hillary, Olbermann suggests if a female co-worker competes for a man's job, intimidate her, and if necessary, take her out. In Keith's dog-eat-dog world, the dog reserves the right to beat the b***h. Olbermann needs to go as well as the other NBC/MSNBC misogynists of Jack Welch's Lost Boys Club.

These unrepentant news men perpetrate immeasurable harm when they approvingly disseminate gender-based bashing. What kind of role models are they for anyone to see and hear and most especially for our youth to witness? I rarely watch NBC and I refuse to subscribe to programming that would bring MSNBC into my livingroom. I don't want to subject myself, my partner, or any young person to the sexist crap that flows off the chauvinistic tongues of Matthews, Scarborough, or Olbermann.

Anglachel also articulated a double standard in the SCLB: "Any blogger who fails to condemn Olberman for this blunt and unequivocal statement has no business writing a critical word about Bush and Cheney's torture policies, because you would be just cool with it being done to this individual simply to be rid of a political rival." Just as hypocritical is denouncing racism while enabling misogyny to flourish in their own commentary or discussion threads. I don't recognize the Obamasphere as being liberal anymore due to its sexist bent with the exception of a few bright spots, e.g., Digby (a woman).

The perverse idea that anything goes in politics--including an unforgivable jest that physical harm to one's opponent is an option--is never acceptable or justifiable, shouldn't be condoned or ignored. Keith demonstrated by his hate speech against Clinton that he's shameless and a sham as a "journalist."

We can collectively stop watching NBC, its local TV affiliate, and its cable TV extension MSNBC to send the message that we won't tolerate hate speech. Don't lift a finger to enrich their ratings unless it's to tune in long enough to make a list of advertisers to boycott.

If you want to change the sexist, misogynistic speech on the air waves, stop buying the advertised products or services on the offending media outlet. And tell the advertisers why you aren't purchasing. At the very least, complain to the advertiser about the media channel. The Religious Right and its minions have used this technique to attack LGBT-friendly activities such as Gay Day at Disney. Unlike them, our cause is just--not to inject discrimination--but to decry sexism and verbal violence in the news media, to ultimately foster a healthy, safe environment.

Before anyone gets up on the high horse of the First Amendment, criticizing a tactic to inform advertisers of dissatisfaction with their choice of media, a reminder: boycotting and dissent is also free speech. Shall we use the First Amendment to lift us all up or to oppress? Which would you reward? It's a choice we all have the right to exercise.

Pull the plug on Keith. We all can pull the plug on NBC/MSNBC. Let's do it.

UPDATE: A lame apology from Olbermann, "It is a metaphor. I apologize: the generic 'he' gender could imply something untoward." I'm not buying it. The generic would have been superdelegate or someone. Explaining he as the generic gender reinforces the old patriarchal attitudes that empowered Olbermann to suggest taking Hillary out in the first place. Go Cheney yourself, Keith. How's that for a metaphor?

Firestorm edition

Maybe Rembrandt didn't have this in mind



Teh best -- James Wolcott believes that Republicans fear running against Clinton more than Obama. "And now along comes Wayne Barrett in The Village Voice, persuasively arguing and methodically documenting that the original Obama infatuation emanating from such untrustworthies as Robert Novak, Rush Limbaugh, William Bennett, George Will, and others was indeed a hydra-headed head fake. . . With their lipless smiles and lidless eyes, conservative connivers don't even bother to disguise their duplicity, so proud and gleeful are they of their little tricks. And why shouldn't they be, when so many liberal bloggers and pundits are ready to fall for them?"

Finally! One of the A-List bloggers wised up and "noticed how the Obama campaign is manipulating the toxic charge of racism." Lambert quoted Kevin Drum, "[T]he current attempts to tar Hillary as a racist have gone way, way over the top. They’re revolting. . ." and then asked some follow-up questions. For example: "3. Now that we’ve talked about racism, when can we talk about misogyny?" Hmmmm?

What Big Tent Democrat said: "If Ferraro was trying to do some dog whistling ['to white voters who resent affirmative action'], she sure picked an unusually ineffective forum for it. It's way more likely that she just blurted out something dumb to a local reporter, and then got her dander up when people started piling on about it. That's no excuse for saying something dumb . . . but it's pretty unlikely that Ferraro had any serious dog whistling agenda here." (Talk Left)

Geraldine Ferraro says the Obama camp owes her an apology. Watch the video.

How dare Avedon tell the truth! Responding to Ferraro's remarks about Obama, Josh Marshall asked: "Can anyone seriously claim that it's an asset to be an African-American in a US presidential race?" M'yeah. As Avedon astutely observed: "No, of course not, because there is no excitement whatsoever about the idea of a black candidate who has a credible shot at the presidency, and there is not one single person in the world who has ever hoped someday to see a black president sworn into office, and not the faintest hint that anyone, anywhere, would have felt the least bit more interested in a less-than one-term Senator with an undistinguished record in the Senate because he was black. . . So far be it from me to suggest that in this moment, with this man, yes, being black just might be an advantage for Obama in winning the Democratic nomination." Wheeee-ooo! Good on ya, Avedon.

Rudov rundown -- Like blogger CLD and me, Melissa McEwan took issue with Professional Douchebag Marc Rudov and his answers to O'Reilly's question, "What is the downside of having a woman become the president of the United States?" Somehow, we women missed the memo about the "female agenda," and with Melissa, we "eagerly await O'Reilly and Mark Rudov exploring the downside of having a man become the president of the United States, and whether the men currently in the running, especially John McCain, have a male agenda."

On the Hill -- Can it be true? Congressional Democrats are growing spines? "The House on Monday filed a civil lawsuit against former White House counsel Harriet Miers and White House Chief of Staff Joshua Bolten in an effort to get them to comply with a congressional subpoena to testify about the firings of nine U.S. attorneys." Then came news that "House Democratic leaders are readying a proposal that would reject giving legal protection to the phone companies that helped in the National Security Agency’s program of wiretapping without warrants." We'll see if their spines stiffen.

Gay panic in Oklahoma -- Remember the totally unhinged Sally Kern, the lawmaker who likened gays and lesbians to a threat worse than terrorism? Queerty reported that Kern may have a gay son. Their "digital detective work dug up numerous postings naming Jesse as the outcast offspring" when he attended OBU and was "expelled for making inappropriate advances in the library toilets." Whoa. Now let me get this straight, er, correct. Sally is a Christian married to a Baptist preacher? Lawd, lawd. Save us from your people. (Via)

Shooting at church -- "Congregants consider homophobia as a possible reason behind a shooting at the Metropolitan Community Church in Shaw on Friday evening, WJLA reports. MCC serves a predominantly LGBT congregation, and this marks the second time in recent history that the church was the victim of gunfire." The DCist

10 tips to aid the prevention of school bullying: One example: "If it's sexual harassment, call it sexual harassment; if it's homophobia, call it homophobia; and so forth. To lump disparate behaviors under the generic "bullying" is to efface real differences that affect young people's lives."

Who is John Hagee? Eric Alterman asked rhetorically. Answers.

A spring popped out of Keith's head -- And Taylor Marsh promptly snipped it off: "...Keith Olbermann is going to do something no other anchor could dare try. He's going to go on the air to single out Hillary Clinton's campaign, which is being hailed as the first ever special comment to target a Democrat. If Mr. Olbermann really was trying to live up to his sign off, which steals from Edward R. Murrow, he would also include in his special comment a word about Obama's camp and their continual sexism, starting with Jesse Jackson Jr. way back in New Hampshire, or Obama's 'hoodwink - okey-doke' talking points, which I assure you Mr. Obama will not drag out for Pennsylvania, as well as the threats and robo-calls against African American congressmen who were threatened and called 'uncle Tom' for supporting Clinton." Ouch!

Crooks and Liars posted the video and the transcript of Olbermann's special comment on Sen. Clinton. What's there to say to Keith? How 'bout, "Good night, and f**k off!"

Florida re-vote plan released -- Courtesy Jeralyn, the Jan. 29 results, maps, and commentary. Gee, I wonder what my friend CLD thinks about it?

Shhhhhhhhhh!: "The Pentagon on Wednesday canceled plans for broad public release of a study that found no pre-Iraq war link between late Iraqi President Saddam Hussein and the al Qaida terrorist network." Reporters will have to request copies to read the findings and the study will not be available on the Internet. "But the study, based on more than 600,000 captured documents, including audio and video files, found that while Saddam sponsored terrorism, particularly against opponents of his regime and against Israel, there was no evidence of an al Qaida link." McClatchy

Lest we forget the war in Iraq -- "While civilian deaths hit an low of 20 per day in January," March totals are "up to 39 daily.” TP