“A Big Mashed-Up Bag of Meat with Lipstick on It”

Brazen misogyny is alive and thriving at MSNBC, and as usual, Keith Olbermann is serving it up with his signature sneering contempt for women.  While honoring conservative author Michelle Malkin with the “Worst Person in the World” award, the frothing commentator ranted on Tuesday that without her “total mindless, morally bankrupt, knee-jerk, fascistic hatred,” Malkin would “just be a big mashed-up bag of meat with lipstick on it.”

A big mashed-up bag of meat with lipstick on it.

Attacks like these are designed to dehumanize the target by casting her out of her very gender, rendering her less than woman, indistinguishable from a “bag of meat” were it not for the facade of womanhood she paints on with her lipstick each morning. Makeup is deemed the only thing that sets her apart from an inanimate sack of undifferentiated flesh.

Compare Olbermann’s malicious vitriol to the “Bush in a skirt” line used repeatedly to slur Sarah Palin.  “Bush” and “a bag of meat” are essentially interchangeable in the hateful minds of those attacking Palin and Malkin.  And a skirt, like lipstick, confers only the trappings of femininity to the wearer, not authentic womanhood.  The target is portrayed an “it” masquerading as female.

Olbermann’s vile attempt to reduce Malkin to a bag of faux feminine parts was only the latest episode in a career riddled with examples of rank misogyny.  Among the highlights:

Malkin responded to Olbermann’s latest diatribe with thick skin and a sense of humor:

In case you were wondering what kind of lipstick we big mashed up bags of meat wear, I prefer M.A.C. Lustreglass in Ornamental or Lipglass in Spite. Because nothing goes better with fascistic hatred!

Ridicule is a powerful weapon, but mockery alone won’t force Olbermann into the on-air retraction and apology Michelle Malkin deserves.  Here are the email addresses for MSNBC Viewer Services, Countdown with Keith Olbermann, and MSNBC president Phil Griffin.  You know what to do.

viewerservices@msnbc.com
countdown@msnbc.com
phil.griffin@msnbc.com

Update: Hot Air, Stacy McCain, AOL News, and Protein Wisdom link.  Thanks, guys.

October 14, 2009 · Filed Under Liberal Absurdity, Misogyny

36 Comments 

South Carolina: The Fox News of States

It’s no secret that President Obama and his administration have attempted to sideline Fox News, openly punishing the highly rated cable news channel for failing to promote the White House agenda.  Fox was conspicuously shut out of Obama’s five-network Sunday talk show blitz in September, and the White House has already determined that the president will not grant any interviews to Fox anchors during the remainder of 2009.

Alienating the millions of Americans who watch Fox is strategic buffoonery of the highest degree. But why focus on solid strategy when you can engage in some good ol’ fashioned spite?  And why settle for popular news networks when you can make your petty resentments known to an entire state, like say, South Carolina?

U.S. House Majority Whip Jim Clyburn said Friday that a conversation with White House staff left him with the sense that a hostile environment in South Carolina is keeping the first lady from visiting.

The high-ranking South Carolina Democrat said he has received more than 100 invitations for Michelle Obama. But this summer when he brought one of those requests to her staff on behalf of his alma mater, South Carolina State University, Clyburn said her security was an issue.

The conversation came after former Richland County GOP activist Rusty DePass suggested on Facebook in June that an escaped zoo gorilla was not harmful because it was probably one of Mrs. Obama’s ancestors. DePass’ comment was coupled with a remark in July from U.S. Sen. Jim DeMint, a Republican. DeMint said that beating the president’s health care plan would be a ‘Waterloo’ moment for Obama.

Congressman Joe Wilson’s ‘You lie!’ outburst during Obama’s joint address on health care reform last month didn’t help either, Clyburn said.

‘A lot of it has to do with the fact that the climate in South Carolina just is not good, and that’s a shame,’ Clyburn said at a roundtable discussion at his Columbia office.

‘I do believe it is keeping her away from this state,’ he said.

Emphases mine.

Yes, a moronic South Carolina GOP grunt wrote something shameful about the first lady and a couple of politicians made bold statements about the president and his policies.  How do those comments indicate a statewide climate hostile enough to jeopardize Mrs. Obama’s security?

Simple answer: they don’t.

The White House isn’t keeping Michelle Obama out of South Carolina to protect her from assassins in white hoods.  South Carolina is being kept off her itinerary to send a message: embarrassing the president will not be tolerated.  (Are you listening Joe Wilson?) Dissent will be contorted into proof that racist backwater bumpkins in the south are undermining Obama’s presidency and endangering the very life of the first lady with their dangerous coded rhetoric.

Who cares about smearing the people of South Carolina?  After all, it’s just a red state.

Update: Michelle Malkin links.  Thanks, Michelle!

Update 2: My very first Instalanche. Thanks, Glenn!

October 13, 2009 · Filed Under Barack Obama, South Carolina

62 Comments 

Hollywood Royalty and the Embrace of the Vampire Polanski

The reaction of Hollywood’s narcissistic bubble-dwellers to the arrest of Roman Polanski underscores the stark divide between moral relativists willing to romanticize the degeneracy of an artist and the rest of us. The capacity of these entertainment and media industry elites to justify, excuse, and minimize Polanski’s cowardly sexual violation of a vulnerable child is breathtakingly loathsome.

“It was something else but i don’t believe it was rape-rape,” insisted Whoopi Goldberg.

“Hollywood has the best moral compass, because it has compassion,” explained Harvey Weinstein, proud signatory of the Free Roman Polanski petition.

“We stand by him and await his release and his next masterpiece,” offered Debra Winger in a statement that criticized authorities for using “minor technicalities” to cause the suffering of the whole art world.

Polanski’s defenders plunged themselves headfirst into the sand, ignoring the plea transcript, refusing to consider his own flippant assessment of public reaction to his crime:

If I had killed somebody, it wouldn’t have had so much appeal to the press, you see? But… f—ing, you see, and the young girls. Judges want to f— young girls. Juries want to f— young girls. Everyone wants to f— young girls!

Among those who have signed the “Free Roman” petition, the sexual predator is the victim, and the innocence and security of a single child stolen in an act of forcible sodomy is a price worth paying for the creation of art. They are unwilling to see Polanski any other way because it would challenge their insular, elite beliefs about the world:

Considered a genius, unencumbered by morality and the complete opposite of what Americans have long considered the ideal, Polanski challenges society in real life the way Dracula challenges Victorianism in Stoker’s novel. Were they better read, they would perhaps see Polanski not as the Gary Oldman version of Dracula, a tortured loved-starved creature punished by a hostile and puritanical God, but as I see Polanski. He is like the Don Juan of Tirso de Molina’s The Trickster of Seville, sinister, spiteful and ultimately damned. But to see that in Polanski is to look past the European trappings and artistic prestige, and to see the man as equal to all others and thus worthy to be judged. This is a step these self-appointed elites cannot take, lest they admit they too can be judged by their true equals, their fellow Americans.

We have our own royalty in America, the celebrities we build up and tear down as part of our entertainment industry. But there is something seductive in the royalty of Old Europe, the idea that a person could be considered worth more than another and never really have to prove it. We all have such pretensions if we admit it, and the best of us cast off this burden to meet the world and all in it as equals, and rise and fall according to our abilities, our sweat, and our blood. Polanski represents for some the easier way, the illusion of class and worth, the comforting lie of elitism. For those who embrace that outlook there is no action too wicked to defend if it props up the lie and reinforces the artificial distinctions between us.

Especially if it happens to those of us they consider beneath them.

Read the complete Dracula analogy in the Red Alerts piece, Elitism, Europhilia, and Roman Polanski.

Big Hollywood has the names of every morally bankrupt Polanski supporter who signed the “Free Roman” petition, as well as a counter-petition for those in the entertainment industry who believe Polanski should be held accountable for his crime.

In addition, The New Agenda has organized a boycott of all films the pro-Polanski “signatories have directed, produced, acted in or otherwise participated.” A Jail Polanski Petition is available on The New Agenda home page.

Have Hollywood elites finally alienated those who line their pocketbooks?

October 1, 2009 · Filed Under Celebrities, Liberal Absurdity, Misogyny

9 Comments 

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