Tom Watson

Amendments of Failure

Gay Marriage Protests, originally uploaded by jvadnais.

Some pundits took the passage of seven out of eight state initiatives banning gay marriage as a sign of the socially conservative cast of the American electorate, and a warning to those wild-eyed, man-on-dog Democrats to move quickly to the center. I took it a different way. To put it simply, the social conservatives are running low on ammunition.

The bigoted anti-homosexual streak through America has grown ever narrower in my lifetime, but it's still enough to get some folks all bothered, still enough to put silly amendments denying civil rights on the ballot, and still enough to prop up the dying far right religious party that used to be the GOP since Reagan.

But the all-in throw of the gay marriage haters - indeed, Mitt Romney's pathetic fliperoo to try and become the David Duke of sexual orientation - is, to me, a clear sign of desperation.

Fear-based, biblical legislation is a total flop in this country of late. And demographics are the reason. The boomer generation is beginning to move from pure money-making to society-changing mode, windmilling their arms like 60-something Pete Townshend as they get back into the activist business - this time without the tie-dye and acid, but with every bit of the pure confidence in their mission they once displayed on campus. It's a socially liberal generation, by and large; economics, foreign policy and other matters are more disparate.

Then too, the young people on the way up also display a pure form of tolerance that bordered on bored disinterest (this thrills me, frankly). When my kids are my age they'll look back and laugh at the ludicrous idea of constitutional amendments against gay marriage. Dad, were you crazy?

Finally, there are the libertarians to contend with. In the still-smoldering wreckage of the Republicans of Reagan, a small band of constitutionalists remains. They abhor government injection into private life more than almost any other action by the public sector and they're in direct opposition to the interventionist religionistas. Question is: when do they speak up?

No, these lame amendments (and let's pause for a cheer for the great state of Arizona, which rejected the proposition) were one of the last big gasps of the intolerance agenda. I believe they'll be relegated to an annoying and vocal minority. Let's work for it.

Built Ford Tough

A fortnight after I finished it, Richard Ford's trilogy-ending novel The Lay of the Land is still with me. And yet, I cannot tell you what happens in the book, what plot developments drive the last chapter in the saga of Frank Bascombe, what the story really is. There are some bits about a funeral, cancer treatment, real estate sales, and broken marriages. A lot of driving around New Jersey. And there's a violent ending that doesn't fit at all. But like a good cover of an old blues song, the latest Ford does not get by on what happens in its 800-plus pages, but how it makes you feel.

Here's how: thoughtful. Even more mortal. A little sad. But ultimately less cynical. A strange combination, and that's the book's brilliance.

It's been a long road for the failed sportswriter turned real estate agent, Frank Bascombe, a native of the south who finds himself in suburban New Jersey with two failed marriages, two wayward children and the memories of a third who died in childhood. He's old, has prostate cancer, and is aware that the country is going to hell. The time of the book is the Thanksgiving weekend of 2000 as the Florida recount saga drags on and Bush gets closer to his illegitimate Presidency. Bascombe leaves beach-front in a fictional Jersey shore town north of Barnegat Light and south of Asbury. He sells house and owns his own small agency.

And he faces the existential crisis of late middle age, which, in typical fashion, Ford dubs the Permanent Period. Age-wise, I'm always a period behind - I'm still in the Existence years. But the Permanent Period looms. For most of the book, Ford's inner voice tries to claim that it's not that bad, really. A lack of drive, the surrender of ambition, the acceptance of mortality are all good things - or so the protagonist thinks.

Then the crisis - first emotional, than physical (in a wacky Miami Vice sequence involving the Russian mob) and it's not all right. And Ford settles in the accept one thing and one thing only, to place it above all others: human love.

That will disappoint some of Ford's followers, who see him as the successor to the hopelessness of writers like Richard Yates, who is clearly a major influence. Yates found mainly hopelessness in modern American suburbia, an empty landscape. His followers may feel that leaving Frank Bascombe a happy man is like grafting a Disney ending onto Citizen Kane. But I think at the end of this major work - which included The Sportswriter (1986) and Independence Day (1995) - Ford follows the other major influence, fellow southerner William Faulkner, who found light in august and hope against the odds.

Ford's Bascombe has never seemed to care, until he does. I'm not sure this is the novel Ford could have written at a younger age. But it's the one we have now. And with its 2000 mindset and foreshadowing of 9/11, it's most welcome indeed.

Anti-Feminism on the Left III

Do Jane Hamsher and Christy Hardin Smith have conservative operatives in their midst? Has FireDogLake - arguably a top five liberal group blog - been infiltrated by dirty tricks squads of the right? More directly, does FDL blogger Pachacutec work for Karl Rove?

I ask because of the reckless, misogynist post that appeared this morning in my regular blogroll (I'm a big FDL fan, most of the time) about Democratic Congresswoman Ellen Tauscher of California. Tauscher is a so-called Blue Dog Democrat, a centrist type who has often voted with the Republicans on military issues. She may well be due a primary from the left in her district in San Francisco's progressive suburbs. But she is certainly not due a vicious attack on her gender, dressed up as "snark" by a leading liberal blog. Here's the slime, headlined " FDL Late Nite: Whore, n., 1. A prostitute. . ."

You know, sometimes I'm an old fashioned sort.  I can appreciate tradition.  I certainly believe in hard work, and positively adore the craft of genuine professionalism.

In that spirit, I bring you an underappreciated practitioner of the world's oldest profession, a woman in congress Congress, Ellen Tauscher.  She can slurp the gnarly nub of power with the very best, gamely grinning to the gushing finish:  a working girl's working girl.  Howie calls her, "a bribe-taking corporate whore and shit eater who has guaranteed herself a nasty primary in 2008."

I hope Peter Daou is reading this, because his boss may well have to face this kind of sexist attack beginning next year. It's so bad, so poorly executed, that it really does appear to be a clumsy Republican efforts to pollute a top Democratic blog. These posts are permanent, folks. They give aid and comfort to the other side. They make our side look surly, sexist, hypocritical.

To put is another way: are you stupid? Or just insane?

There's a better than 50-50 chance that the broad center-left coalition in this country, organized as the Democratic Party, will be running a woman for President in less than 20 months. The leading Democratic elected official in the land is a woman - and we need her.

This is the third post in an unfortunate series (parts one and two) and you know, I'm going to continue; people are of course free to write and blog how they wish.

But in a world where a hero like Mukhtar Mai of Pakistan overcomes court-ordered gang rape and a corrupt regime to help educate the children of her attackers, we kid ourselves that we're advanced enough, cool enough, hip enough, or evolved enough to throw around this low-brow gender-based garbage and think it won't stick - to us, to the left, to the Democrats, to our candidates, to our movement.

UPDATE: FDL blogger TRex used the C-word this morning to describe a conservative pundit (in an otherwise excellent post on the hopelessness in Iraq), and one commenter called him on it:

You will probably not see this, TREx, but I gotta object to the C word, even when used with regard to Ingraham.

It’s the only word I don’t use. It’s the only one that makes me go “ohhh” and stop reading. If my survey is correct, 9 out of 10 women feel the same.

Ifya wouldn’t mind, could ya lose it outta your vocabulary, at least here?

Makes me stop, too. And angry. I left a comment, also protesting the word. They chose not to approve it in moderation. Very FreeRepublic-like. No answer at FireDogLake.

UPDATE II: The grown-ups at FDL have been busy. The C-word has been edited out of the post. And James Wolcott comments: "Sexism is second nature to so many on the right, which is why those on the left have to ensure that their antennae are acutely tuned to the misogynistic jibes thrown at Nancy Pelosi from everyone from Maureen Dowd to Dennis Miller." Exactly.

UPDATE III: TRex corrects the record on the late editing on his post, and calls me the C-word in comments. As in "miserable, little..." Then he calls me Ned Flanders. Clever that.

UPDATE IV: The action is all in comments folks, with Jane Hamsher, Christy Hardin Smith, and Pachacutec all weighing in with strongly-held opinions.

UPDATE V: Final update folks. Jane Hamsher has opened up a post over at FireDogLake based on this one. I've put some comments there and would invite those here to do the same. Also, a wonderful post by Shakespeare's Sister with another great set of comments is here. And Neddie Jingo has great one too.

Blonde on Bond

Three minutes into the interminable Casino Royale, and the kid leans over to me and asks: "Dad, has the movie started yet?" This has never happened before in the history of Bondage and I'll admit I was somewhat in doubt myself. Usually in the Broccolli family franchise, the customer is never uncertain as to whether the previews have ended and the main action begun. But this was different. The silver hues, the BBC-style video angles, the weird television music. Was this another commercial, a tie-in to the new James Bond flick, a spot for expensive watches?

And are you trying to tell me that's James Bond up on screen - a hulking blonde who looks like a back-up linebacker for the Chargers, and sounds like one of the extras in Tony Blair's cinematic cabinet in The Queen.

Speaking of The Queen, it was wonderful, driven by Helen Mirren's spot-on portrait, which gives a person known more as a tourist postcard than a human being some real, emotional depth. As the Bond dreck dragged, I was thinking of The Queen and about the Blair era - both these flicks are really Tony Blair vehicles.

One's a throwback to when Tony Blair actually mattered, and the other is a fantasy that pretends he still does.

In the Elizabeth-Diana spectacle, Michael Sheen portrays a bounding, tail-wagging, eager terrier of a Prime Minister - fully three-dimensional as the young, suburban emblem of a younger, suburban nation. Pre-9/11 Britain was proud of its boutique size and the speed with which it could adapt to the modern. It was like the cool, smart ad agency next to the plodding old-world behemoths. (I remember vividly the kangaroo steaks in a St. John's wood dungeon-bistro, followed by a wild ride to the museum of cinema, closed for a strange dot-com party in the late 90s).

Blair is, of course, not represented in Casino Royale, but Judi Dench serves well in the portrayal (by far the best in the film) of an England beholden to America, of an intelligence agency that is easily compromised, of a Cool Britannia that has gone all cold, and gray, and failed. Terrorism is the enemy in this Bond, but it's a terrorism driven by greed - white Europeans control the more dangerous, darker-skinned elements; indeed, there's a broad hint that 9/11 itself involved a plot to short airline stocks.

In another way, Casino Royale is the perfect analogy of the Tony Blair tenure - it's too bloody long by far. The movie drags on and on and on, with several false endings, an endless game of (ugh) poker, and two - yes, two! - evil guys with only one good eye. It also features long and luscious shots of the flesh of this blondie Bond Daniel Craig (who may be best remembered for his role as a Brit bounder in one of the excellent Sharpe dramas of a decade ago; in that episode, Sergeant Harper kills Craig's character off with alacrity - the deaths in Casino Royale take much longer). I remember when this treatment was reserved for the Bond girls, and in smaller doses.

Ironically, a much thinner and less-buff Craig played a tormented Jesuit priest in the 1998 bio-pic Elizabeth. No double-0 status then, but a real role.

Then too, this Bond epic is one long (long, very long, unending) commercial - product placement is everywhere. Sony, Ford (Ford?!), Ericsson, and Virgin are splattered about more than the bad guys' blood. Look! There's Sir Richard Branson setting off the alarms at the airport security check-point....clever.

The blonde Bond doesn't work; nor does the back to the future pre-007 concept. This is no legitimate successor to Connery - it barely stacks up the George Lazenby.

And if I thought Bond's blonde locks were sacrilege, imagine the disgust my kids felt watching the previews for the forthcoming Harry Potter epic. "Dad, Harry Potter has a buzzcut!" sputtered the little guy. Is nothing sacred?

UPDATE: Jason has a post on how Bond doesn't make sense in the post-Cold War world, how hw's just another action hero who could be portrayed by Vin Diesel - which reminds me of the best line in the movie, when Dench's M proclaims: "Christ, I miss the Cold War." Shades of Condi, I'd say. Here's Jason's review in a nutshell:

As exciting as the action set pieces are (and most of them are very good), they can't distract from the ludicrous spectacle of MI6 and the CIA fighting the global war on terror by sending not-so-undercover agents to play Texas Hold 'Em in Montenegro. (Next up, Bond goes head to head with Bin Laden in a high stakes match of Rock, Paper, Scissors in Cannes.) Despite the fact that most of the events of Casino Royale come straight from the novel, they lose all meaning when ripped from the context of time and place. The grim, vaguely S&M gay torture sequence that once packed cultural punch as an expression of guilt over an unchecked libido, now is just a weak excuse for a cheesy one-liner. Meanwhile, the plot twists of the original novel are reduced to an interminable 40-minute coda whose storytelling is so obtuse as to be almost unfathomable.

The Giving Season

Over at Huffington Post, I've been blogging lately about trends in the philanthropic sector - basically since covering the Clinton Global Initiative in September. It's part of my regular gig, yeah, but it occurred to me that readers here might be interested in the confluence of charity, business, politics, and the consumer marketplace - so here's the rundown with links. Some decent comments there and of course I'd always love more:

Consumer Philanthropy: This Holiday Season, You Are What You Give

Exploding Philanthropy: Moguls Spur a Rich and Unregulated Marketplace

Exploding Philanthropy: Consumer Brands Key Giving

Exploding Philanthropy: What the Clinton Party Really Meant

And yeah, that really was me you mighta seen on CNN this morning talking about this very subject.

The Tagalong

Grasshopper and I don't know each other at all. Indeed, she thinks I'm not the most approachable sort. Probably unfriendly. Arrogant? She may think so. And maybe I lived up to the billing. After all, she "tagged" me with one of those list things a couple of weeks ago and, well, I put it off, claiming that I was too busy with all the election blogging. Here's how she tagged me:

I'll go out on a limb and tag someone who has never heard of me or doesn't like me or finds this meme stuff frivolous; this will shame me for weeks. And even after I finally recover my equilibrium no one will ever invite me to play their reindeer games again.

Hmm. This very evening my own brother said I was pessimistic. I disagreed vehemently. Cynical? Check. Jaded? Check. Possessing an inherently negative view of the future? Negatory, little brother. I'm an optimist and I laugh easily. And besides, frivolity appeals. And I was particularly taken with one of the nine points that Grasshopper believes readers who find interesting or surprising about her - this being the meme - and found we shared success in Knights of Columbus contests. She won such a tilt at age 13 for an essay on "What Being a Christian Means to Me." I won a KofC poster contest on dental health (ironic for those who know my crooked smile) at age seven. So we have that in common at least.

We also share the same reaction to a gauntlet gently thrown - reluctance and then the pick-up. So here, two weeks late, are nine "interesting things about me that you may or may not know" and then my own tagging.

1. I was born on the day after John Glenn's historic earth orbit, and the day the first Mets reported to spring training in Florida.

2. My grandfather was a fighter pilot in World War I and served on the staff of General John J. "Black Jack" Pershing.

3. My favorite Disney character is Donald Duck. Looney Tunes? Daffy Duck. Go figure.

4. I met my own true love - the Brilliant Artist - in storybook fashion. I was 19, she was 18 and I was playing in a pick-up band at a party she was attending. Punk rockers, we were. She wore a pink sun dress and I picked her out of the milling crowd and sang the only slow song in our set to her. It was Great Big Kiss, Johnny Thunders version. I got the girl and the kiss, and it's been 25 years. Still have the guitar, too. Lucky me.

5. I have known several of the commenters on this site since they (and I) were in the single digits. See if you can figure out who.

6. I play in band. Here's the Website. There's a video there. Don't tell anyone. It's just for fun.

7. In 1989, I was the executive editor of The Riverdale Press, a great community newspaper in the Bronx. I got a call from Buddy Stein before dawn on a February morning. The paper had been firebombed and was burning. I jumped out of bed and drove like a maniac down to the offices, still smoldering on Broadway across from Van Cortlandt Park. Everything was gone. But we rallied and never missed an issue. A radical Islamist group with ties to Iran took credit for the bombing in a call to the FBI, but an arrest was never made. It's considered the first violent act of Islamic terrorism in the United States.

8. I have had only three full-time jobs in my life. And I loved all of them. (But I've written for more than two dozen publications, so there's some itinerant in me).

9. I am a lifelong New Yorker and have only lived in and around Gotham for all my days.

Now, whom to tag? In the spirit of the nation's new-found bi-partisan spirit, I'm gonna step across the aisle and tag Tony Alva, who seems to have a partially-tapped wealth of personal stories to share. Tony, take 'er away. (And Grasshopper, thanks for the patience - and to Claire and Jennifer for setting the string).

I Killed, Jerry, Killed!

So the man who played Kramer has now ruined the pleasant quietude and well-timed chuckles of the Seinfeld reruns for millions of shut-ins, er, fans. If nothing's on, Seinfeld's on. But does knowing that Michael Richards harbors some vile racial hatred destroy the experience? Is he our sitcom Ezra Pound? Well, it does take the edge off. And it may well diminish residuals along with reputation.

Everybody has something to say about this K-K-Kramer, but I liked Joe Gandelman's take the best. Joe's a working ventriloquist as well as the man behind The Moderate Voice, and he plays scores of gigs per year. And he knows from bombing:

I'm not on the same level as Richards or Seinfeld, but I can say that every performer has stories of bombing. There is even a book that deals with the highs and lows of stand up — a book called "I Killed" which I'm reading now. Check it out.

Read bios of comedians and they all have stories of performances that were Performance Hell. Clearly, Richards was not doing well in the minutes leading up to his poor choice of how to proceed. If a performer starts to "bomb" it is an excruciatingly lonely experience; the performer can't just say "Oh, well, you hate me tonight, so goodnight!" but they have to try to salvage the performance. That entails experience, fall-back performance strategies...and also a lot of LUCK. The phrase "flop sweat" reflects a performing reality in cases such as this.

I have my own share of horror stories. One was doing a show for an audience clearly composed of people associated with organized crime. They did not want a show at all (but I had been contracted to do one). Many years before I went into ventriloquism fulltime I did a song parody satire at the piano in New Delhi. And the wife of a high American official was very angry at jokes that poked fun at anyone. In my own case, in the these-days-rare cases where a "bad show" happens I shift to alternate strategies, move set segments around around, etc. If it doesn't work? I complete my show, smile graciously and leave when it is over. I would NEVER use name calling. Why? The comedian has to try to win over the audience. Just name calling turns the audience against the comedian.

A few putdowns usually will do, and I've seldom had to use those. The great ventriloquist Jimmy Nelson had one line he'd use if he had problems from a heckler. His dummy Danny O'Day would say to the heckler: "Who's working your string?"

Mrrrrrrrrrreow!

Cat. Fight.

All Tickets, Please

Metro North GCT, originally uploaded by Jim Van Meter.

In the evening, the commuter train headed north can be a lively, convivial snuggery, particularly late in the work week. Drink glasses clink in the friendly cocktail joust - imagined, of course, as the containers are largely aluminum and often swathed in paper bags - and there's the day's-over banter of anticipated leisure just at hand. If not happiness, then relief; the slight easing of the career and the mortgage at bay, briefly in the speeding cars.

Then there are the unhappy, the morose, the bitter. They too have their place on the evening ride, spouting loudly into cellphones, reading through a late brief, pecking like mental patients on their Blackberries as if the world really cared. These angry and driven ones are also part of the late-day crowd, which is active, engaged, and noisy.

By contrast, the early morning train is the sacred ashram of the commuter towns, a reverent place where people whose lives are recorded by the quarter hour in Outlook can retire, and read, and think.

Do not break the silence - do not chat loudly or prattle on via mobile or blow out your own eardrums while subjecting neighbors to a dissonant static inflicted by iPod - or prepare to suffer the riders' common sneer, their joint but silent censure. Watch the eyes as they roll. The mouths as they turn downward. The shared glances that say: "this one's too damned much, didn't someone tell her the rules?"

Morning riders want to read the sports, dig into their Richard Ford, or laugh (silently) at the foolishness of David Brooks. They want to make a few notes, focus on the challenges ahead. Or they want to doze, to look out the window at the same kabuki landscape: the same towns, the same backyards, the same warehouses, the same Bronx, the same Harlem. They roll by. They're cues that the track hasn't changed, that it still leads to Grand Central, that work and a paycheck still await. Visual mantras of the daily grind.

All the morning cars are quiet cars, as this is the time for introspection or the head-on fatigue that comes from too little slumber. For 29 minutes or 47 minutes or 73 minutes if you live in the farmlands of the Valley, commuters can sink without fear of conscience into their own, private reverie. They can think. Just let the thoughts wander, little markers like those on the hillside at Woodlawn.

This is not the active commute, either. Happiness and anger, distress and elation are all muted. We keep it together, because we're at the start, not the end. The best way to observe this silent morning sacristy of business at rest is in the tunnel on the long, dark approach the Grand Central. There, the various lines get packed together, and the trains must often wait in the recesses for a few minutes until the path can be cleared to Lower Level 111 or Track 29 upstairs.

Looking from one car to its neighbor in the darkness, the dim light shows the other riders. A red car: are those New Haven people really different from me? They seem to read the same newspapers. They seem to snooze and lean on the windows. And they seem to stare back, wondering about those Harlem Line types and their lives in Fleetwood and Tuckahoe and North White Plains.

It's hazy in those tunnels in the morning, and the glass on the older trains isn't what you'd term clear. So the opposing crowd of packed-in commuters is shown in loose expressionist tones, dabs of gray and red and green that form the whole - the painted mirror of our lives. Lately, the trains have been overcrowded. This is caused, the railroad tells us, by wet leaves on the tracks. So the ride is less pleasant and many people stand. It can drag on, uncomfortably.

The conductors jump on the PA to remind us to be neighborly and not place our bags on the middle seats so that someone can claim them (always the choice of women, and some grown men of last resort). Sorry for the delay. This train's short four cars. Sorry for the inconvenience.

Generally, if I'm well-seated - my first choice is always the window - and have my music on (quietly) and the paper on my lap, a commute extended by five or ten minutes can feel like a gift from the heavens. More time to read. More time to think. And the very pleasant but short-lived feeling that I've postponed the world.

More Anti-Feminism on the Left

Nancy Pelosi's rough beginning as Speaker-Elect of the House caught a fair level of criticism and analysis; I suspect the tough battle over her No. 2 will fade by the time the new class is sworn in during the January storms, when the focus will shift to Bush v. Democrats in earnest. But there's a sour taste that remains, the flavor of something that is unfortunately infecting the so-called enlightened, liberal left - creeping and creepy anti-feminism.

You see, progressives all too often frame their self-criticism in sly sexist terms while overtly lambasting far-right women as nothing better than Republican whores.

And I'll say it here at the top, this has to stop for a couple of reasons: one, it's obviously wrong and well beneath the lofty goals of progressive politics. And then there's the undeniable fact that within the next year or so, there's a better-than-even chance that we'll all be working to elect the first female President of the United States.

Of course, there's always Maureen Dowd's overt lack of respect for any politician not carrying the Y chromosome. Her self-hating misogynist dismissal of Pelosi this week? Madam Speaker-Elect "throws like a girl." That Dowd remains the top Washington columnist for the best newspaper in the world despite her frantic anti-feminist views is as strange as some of Arthur Sulzberger's other talent choices. But I'm sick of waking up to see Dowd take her last-generation, life was better in the cocktail-swigging 50s, women must know their place attitude splattered across the Op-Ed page. (Luckily, that page is becoming ever less relevant thanks to the NYT's incredibly stupid decision to place opinion behind a paid firewall; hence no link here).

Non-opinion coverage also holds women to a different standard, injecting sexist attitudes into every-day copy. Last week, the AP described Pelosi in a photo caption from Capitol Hill as "...dressed in an Armani acqua blue-grey pantsuit as she heads towards her first news conference since Election Day." John Aravosis called it out on AmericaBlog, and lefty bloggers are understandably sensitive on sexism directed at the 66-year-old woman who will be third in line to the Presidency.

Last week, Rolling Stone editor Benjamin Wallace-Wells asked aloud on the Washington Post editorial page whether American politics was more racist than sexist, and whether by extension if Hillary Clinton or Barak Obama had the higher mountain to climb. But he clearly lost his feminist readers with this line:

Repression of blacks was the stuff of massive state-leveraged cruelty -- the police dogs and fire hoses -- while repression of women in this country was made of quieter stuff: bras, aprons and constitutional amendments.

This kind of casual sexism astounds feminists; as Jessica at Feministing wrote in understandable sputtering anger:

While the characterizations of the civil rights and women's movement are both generalized to the umpth degree...bras and aprons?! Bras and aprons?!  Seriously?

It's nice to know that a movement that helped women obtain the right to control their own bodies, created a national discourse on domestic violence and rape, and challenged sexual harassment and workplace inequity (just to name a few accomplishments) can be reduced to two words--pieces of clothing, at that!--bras and aprons. Lovely.

And yet. Yet. Yet. Yet. Sexism in what some call the post-feminist age is generally accepted, even in the most active leftist salons - especially when it's directed toward conservative women.

Take a recent post by the prolific TRex at the A-list progressive blog FireDogLake. Entitled The Republicans’ Mad Cow Problem, the post looks at the legal problems of right-wing talking heads Laura Ingraham and Ann Coulter, whose opinions I personally find hateful and rather stupid. Nonetheless, here's a taste of TRex's language:

Not only do both Laura Ingraham and Ann Coulter share a colorist and perhaps a Clydesdale or two in their respective family trees...

And certain very, very special little girls named Ann who always get what they want...

Here's a woman who is so eager to snatch the Reich Wing Blonde Princess of Power tiara from Ann Coulter's head that her fingers twitch in her sleep...

Enjoy it, Laura, this may be the only time in your life that a sitting US Senator ever addresses you by name except to say, "Your money's on the dresser, Blondie."

Whatever you think of the radical, strange Coulter and the angry, ill-informed Ingraham, what does their sex have to do with their arguments? Yes, their looks have something to do with their television popularity, no question. Hey, that's life among the ratings-conscious. But do we really win converts by attacking their gender? Especially when we know what's coming against Speaker Pelosi and Candidate Clinton - and all the women who run for City Council, Assembly, or State Senate?

On the very same blog, Taylor Marsh bites back at those who would attack Pelosi based on her sex, and quotes Eleanor Roosevelt brilliantly: "Every woman in public life needs to develop skin as tough as rhinoceros hide."

Yet a couple of clicks down from that quote, you'll find Republican women derided as cows and hookers. Very strange.

A commenter dared to challenge's TRex's sexism:

Maybe I’m just no fun, but I think calling women “cows” and “harpies” and suggesting they have equine ancestry is EXTREMELY SEXIST.

It’s on a par with calling Armstrong Williams or Michael Steele a monkey. You’d be called out for being a racist, and deservedly so. We jumped all over George Allen for his ‘macaca’ comment.

I think we can make the point that Coulter and Ingraham are vile without resorting to gender-based insults that have nothing to do with the actual issues.

But was answered thusly:

some women are cows, harpies, whatever, and invite such descriptors. the two aforementioned are sooooo reprehensible they challege the erudite to find meaningful definition. cow and harpie? they are what they are, and deserve what they get.

Yeah, the erudite are challenged to avoid sexist slurs - as Bush would say, it's hard work.

Or maybe, as Shakespeare's Sister suggested in a post on Fox News host Mort Kondracke calling Pelosi "the Wicked Witch of the West":

It's always so nice to let the ol' hair down, do away with the cumbersome pretenses of a civilized society, and expose the raw, unapologetic sexist lurking in all of us.

So it's all in good fun - except that is hurts the cause. The lame, baseless politics of Coulter and Ingraham are easy to deflect on their merits without calling them whores. The political tactics of Nancy Pelosi should be debated without regard to her designer duds. And Hillary Clinton's fitness for the Presidency should be argued with no thought to whether the country is "ready for a woman President."

Haven't the men had their chance?