3/16/2012

Conservatives Are More Concerned With Twats Than Vaginas:
According to almighty Nexis, Fox "news" has mentioned the word "ultrasound" once in the last month, and that was from Juan Williams, in his role as Fox's designated not-insane-sort-of-moderate guy, talking about "invasive ultrasounds" to Bill O'Reilly. However, the name "Bill Maher" appears on 48 different segments, sometimes multiple times, more than once a day, every time being some reference or other to that time a year ago when Maher called Sarah Palin a "dumb twat" on his HBO show and a "cunt" during his stage show. Maher donated a million dollars to President Obama's Super PAC, which allows Republicans to tie Maher to Obama. Mostly, though, it's meant as a kind of sexist equivalence to Rush Limbaugh's sustained, mulit-day verbal assault on Sandra Fluke, who, according to conservatives, was a total cunt for wanting to express an opinion on contraceptive coverage. It was a way to draw fire away from Limbaugh.

By the way, the phrase "t-word" appears nine times on Fox. It was not short for "transvaginal."

In other words, the right-wing commentariat is way more concerned about assaultive words for "vagina" than actual, physical assaults on them. It's so absurd that Peggy Noonan, in her latest "column" (if by "column," you mean, "laughably earnest stupid shit"), says that the real "war on women" is not all this silly discussion about abortion limitations and contraception coverage. Oh, no, it's really liberal men saying mean things about Sarah Palin and Michelle Bachmann. Noonan might wanna check with Hillary Clinton while you're talking about comedians and pundits being sexist dickheads to a woman who happens to be a public figure.

And Noonan and Michelle Malkin and Sean Hannity and every other right-wing woman who has jumped on the "dumb twat" train might want to talk to women who are forced, by laws that are proliferating around the country, to endure a kind of mental and physical torture in order to get a legal abortion, performed by doctors who don't want to do the torture, but must under penalty of loss of license. They might wonder what's more sexist: saying that Michelle Bachmann is a "bimbo" or the governor of Pennsylvania saying that women forced to have an ultrasound "just have to close your eyes" if doing so is a burden. But they won't.

When women on the left complain about sexism in words, written and spoken, sometimes about this very blog you are reading now, you pigs, they are doing it from a consistent position of defending women's rights. When women on the right do so, it's done as a way to discredit the left. "See," they say, as Noonan does, "Bill Maher may say he supports feminist causes, but he said, 'Cunt.'"

Meanwhile, they'll use it as a way of negating the words of Limbaugh and Dennis Miller and other conservatives. But, more importantly, they'll use it as way of pretending to care about the place of women in America while saying not a peep about government-mandated medical procedures. They'll condemn the "twat," but not defend vaginas or the women who own them.