5/25/2012

This S.E. Cupp Thing:
Among many women and more than a few sympathetic men on the left and right, there's been mucho outrage over Hustler magazine depicting New York Daily News columnist and Ann Coulter 2.0 (devolved version) S.E. Cupp with a dick in her mouth. The title of this oh-so-scathing satire is the oh-so-subtle "What Would S.E. Cupp Look Like with a Dick in her Mouth?" And there's the photoshopped image of said Cupp with said dick in said mouth.

This has led to an expected rush of condemnation against Hustler, whose classy May issue contains, according to the cover, coverage of the Fukushima meltdown and World War II "Japanese Sex Pix," which are perfect for your Memorial Day viewing pleasure, and whose website's front page includes at least a dozen women with dicks in various orifices. Much of that condemnation has come from liberal feminists, and it has led right wing writers to trot out the usual suspects in attacking all "liberal" misogyny. So we get to hear about Bill Maher again. And Keith Olbermann.

The Rude Pundit isn't going to get into it except to say that, yes, it's a sexist attack, of course, and, of course, commentators of all political stripes cross lines to make crude and denigrating insults towards women, and those lines are often blurry. One blogger on the right muddied the waters further by pointing out another incident, where the female former head of the AFL-CIO in South Carolina smashed a Gov. Nikki Haley pinata. Is that "misogyny," as she says?

Instead of wading through what has been waded through, let's read S.E. Cupp's opinion on the Violence Against Women Act, which she gave on MSNBC last week. Asked by host Alex Wagner about it, Cupp said, "If I came to you and I said, 'I have this new piece of legislation, and I'm going to call it the Stealing From Men Act,' you'd say, 'That's preposterous. Stealing from men is a crime in all 50 states.' So is violence against women. [It's] a crime in all 50 states...It's redundant. Violence against men and women is already a crime." Which pretty much means she didn't read past the title of the act.

She also wrote in the Daily News last month regarding the gender gap hitting Republicans, "[I]f only women would do their homework, they’d see that Republican policies of lower taxes and smaller government are better for women because they’re better for everyone. Smaller government gives women more choices, more mobility, more empowerment. I don’t know where women went wrong. Republican economic policies of self-reliance should be right up their alley. Instead, it appears as if they really just want to be taken care of. Is this the legacy of feminism?"

See, there's loads of reasons to condemn Cupp that have nothing at all to do with her sex. She's an idiot who advocates for appalling policies that are detrimental to feminism and to women in general. Gotta say: that's a fuck of a lot more offensive. And a dick in her mouth won't change a thing about it.