The first and most notable part is that you and no doubt others only see one part of a conversation---what is posted on LBO. The problem is that most of these posts are directed at the DNC and RNC speakers---that is the other half of the conversation---and the other half, I am almost certain, is something that you haven't watched or read.
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This is very generous but off target, I'm afraid.
Carrol's post was a fact-free outburst -- nothing more. It has about as much relation to people on this list and events in the wider world as the bowel of raspberries on my kitchen table.
Probably less so.
He does this from time to time -- accusing everyone of being terrible sexists (according to Carrol, Yoshie un-subbed because none of us monsters could long endure the presence of a brilliant woman...it made us do odd things like - oh, I don't know, disagree with her rosy declarations re: every move Tehran makes) or racists or political naifs who aren't paying attention to the Long Struggle's requirements.
Recently, Carrol shouted that any discussion of climate change mitigation strategies was foolish fantasizing. And on and on the list scrolls.
Really, there isn't much you can do with this except wait for it to pass, like a hurricane. Lengthy explanations and analyses seem misplaced in the face of what is essentially a keyboard spasm.
Chuck Grimes wrote:
What I think is going on is pretty simple. Jessica (author of the blog quote above) had the same reaction I had, but for slightly different reasons. I suspect that Jessica X reacted to the undercurrent of inner treachery against women's rights by a woman who holds public office and has power to do something about her opinions.
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Again, this is generous but wide of the mark.
Jessica explained her reasons. The following was quoted once by me, then again by shag and now I'm going to quote it a third time because it's the heart of Jessica's argument:
For many of us looking back at high school, we can now feel a smug superiority towards the homecoming queen. Sure, she was pretty and popular in high school, catering to the whims of boys and cheering on their hockey games, but what happened to her after high school? Often, she popped out some kids and ended up toiling in some not particularly impressive job. We can look back and say, we might have been ambitious nerds in high school, but it ultimately paid off. What's infuriating, and perhaps rage-inducing, about Palin, is that she has always embodied that perfectly pleasing female archetype, playing by the boys' game with her big guns and moose-murdering, and that she keeps being rewarded for it. Our schadenfreude for the homecoming queen's mediocrity has turned into white hot anger at her continued dominance.
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I'm not sure why you mated the above -- which is all about seeing Gov Palin as a simple borrower of boys' bad ideas and not the architect of her own; a sinister 'beauty queen' -- with your post, which dissected the Republicans' resentment thematics.
Shag -- who, it should be pointed out, has more experience with internecine feminist battles than any other regularly active list member -- was responding to the poorly formed, 'me too feminist' arguments wrapped up in Jessica's statement.
If I hadn't followed the rise and fall of Bitchlab, the subtext would've flown right over my head (like Gov Palin on her way to a moose hunt!) and, like you, I probably would've assumed that Jessica was thinking and talking about the same stuff I was, just in a different way.
But no, she wasn't.
.d.