Bloggers go to a lunch to meet and spend and hour or two with Bill Clinton. Later, they all pose for a group picture. A young woman (the female blogger Jessica of Feministing fame) happens to be standing in front of Mr. Clinton. She’s short, he’s tall; it’s the usual type of arrangement you see in dozens of group photographs (just look at any class picture for one of your kids, or a youth soccer team photo, or even wedding pictures). It’s a nice picture. Here, take a look:
So what do the conservative commentators at Ann Althouse’s blog (I’m assuming they are conservative), after she posted the photo, decide deserves attention? The young female “intern” in front of Bill:
Goesh said…
Who is the Intern directly in front of him with the black hair?
8:13 AM, September 13, 2006*****
Meade said…
Goesh said…
Who is the Intern directly in front of him with the black hair?Dunno, but by her expression, it looks as though she may be getting “a small glimpse at greatness.”
8:32 AM, September 13, 2006*****
bill said…
Since we don’t know who she is, this is quite the cheap shot: Who is the Intern directly in front of him with the black hair?
As such, it would be beneath me to respond, I don’t know, but she can deliver my pizza any day.
8:50 AM, September 13, 2006Pogo said…
Monica has a blog?
Who knew?Does she let Linda Tripp leave comments, or is she banned?
Oh, I should really let the poor man alone. But hasn’t he got any sense at all, after all that?
9:02 AM, September 13, 2006
Not to be outdone by the chauvinists who post at her blog, Ms. Althouse decided to escalate the insult by posting this:
I wanted to elevate a discussion from the comments section of a post from Wednesday, you know the one with the photo of the Daou-wrangled bloggers posing in front of Bill Clinton? The first commenter, Goesh, picks up on my prompt — “Let’s just array these bloggers… randomly” — and wisecracks: “Who is the Intern directly in front of him with the black hair?”
Eventually, Jessica from a blog called Feministing, shows up and says: “The, um, ‘intern’ is me. It’s so nice to see women being judged by more than their looks. Oh, wait…”
Snarky but somewhat conciliatory, I say: “Well, Jessica, you do appear to be ‘posing.’ Maybe it’s just an accident.”
Jessica Feministing returns and says:
It’s a picture; people pose. And I’m not sure I understand your logic anyway. If I “pose” for a picture (as opposed to sulking and hunching over?) then I deserve to be judged for my looks? I don’t see anyone talking shit about the other bloggers smiling pretty for the camera.
Provoked, I decide to actually give her a small dose of the kind of judgment for brains she seems to demanding:
Jessica: I’m not judging you by your looks. (Don’t flatter yourself.) I’m judging you by your apparent behavior. It’s not about the smiling, but the three-quarter pose and related posturing, the sort of thing people razz Katherine Harris about. I really don’t know why people who care about feminism don’t have any edge against Clinton for the harm he did to the cause of taking sexual harrassment seriously, and posing in front of him like that irks me, as a feminist. So don’t assume you’re the one representing feminist values here. Whatever you call your blog….
Making this colloquy into this new blog post, I actually click over to Jessica’s blog, and what the hell? The banner displays silhouettes of women with big breasts (the kind that Thelma and Louise get pissed off at when they’re seen on truck mudflaps). She’s got an ad in the sidebar for one of her own products, which is a tank top with the same breasty silhouette, stretched over the breasts of a model. And one of the top posts is a big closeup on breasts.
Sooooo… apparently, Jessica writes one of those blogs that are all about using breasts for extra attention. Then, when she goes to meet Clinton, she wears a tight knit top that draws attention to her breasts and stands right in front of him and positions herself to make her breasts as obvious as possible?
Well, I’m going to assume Jessica’s contributions to my comments are an attempt at a comic performance, as was her attendence at the luncheon dressed in the guise of Monica Lewinsky. Lord knows we need more comical feminists.
All this grief for standing for a group photograph? Ms. Althouse is a law professor, so maybe that’s where she gets her nastiness from (trust me, having gone through law school there’s nothing that brings out the ego in egotist more than being a law professor — unless its being a judge). Still, this is beneath contempt. The snarky Monica/intern references coming from Althouse’s chauvinistic male commenters you would expect, but for some allegedly centrist/law professor/ feminist to add gasoline to the fire in order to further roast poor Jessica merely for appearing in a group photograph with Bill Clinton is simply absurd.
But then, after reading Althouse’s blog a bit, I realize that absurdity is her metier. Here’s her review of the new “racially segregated” Survivor:
But I was intrigued by the daring decision to divide the contestants into race-based teams. How would that work? In some ways, race is neutralized, because teammates voting against each other have only those of their own race to turn against. On the other hand, the team members had the burden of knowing that millions of people would be watching them and thinking about their entire race.
It was interesting the way the Hispanic team seemed to pull together right away and simply feel advantaged. The black team felt team spirit and actually stopped to do a cheer about how they were all black, but they didn’t really pull together. Nathan interviewed that black people don’t like to be told what to do, and two of the women got very close quickly, leaving the third woman feeling like an outsider. The Asian team took account of how they really weren’t a uniform group. They were from different parts of Asia, and that mattered. The Vietnamese immigrant, Cao Boi, called attention to his outsider status: He really belongs with hippies. In the funniest scene, he cures another guy of a headache by pulling the “bad wind” out of his face and leaving a red mark. Meanwhile, on the white team, they catch two chickens and a woman called Flicka bumbles into letting them escape. And they’re all scantily clad and really cold, so they form a “cuddle puddle” to sleep (and get sexual).
The challenge was complicated and way more interesting than standing on a stump, and it was pretty exciting. I liked the strategizing leading up to the council, and I liked the exile island and the way the exilee was chosen. So far, then, I’m hooked.
I guess this is what passes for reasoned feminist discourse. Noting how each group is soooo different because they are, like, different races. And of course, her cutsie remark about the scantily clad white women and their “cuddle puddle.” Unlike poor Jessica, who, like me, probably didn’t bother to watch Survivor because I was appalled at the inherent racism of the premise. Thanks to Ann Althouse I now know what I am missing. A chance to ogle sexy white women cuddle puddling! Oh my!
And this woman has the nerve to denigrate Jessica’s website and her “posing” for a group picture with Bill Clinton? Bush and company are comparing Democrats to Nazi appeasers, corrupt republican lawmakers are going to jail, and Iran is in Cheney’s gun barrel sights, and she wants to talk about Survivor’s daring decision to play the race card, and Jessica’s alleged posing for a picture in front of Bill Clinton?
Spare me any more Althouse ruminations on anything. She is not to be taken seriously.
