The Mysterious Case of the Missing Ann Coulter
Originally published on June 30, 2010 at David Horowitz’s NewsReal
The American Prospect didn’t get much attention for breaking a huge story earlier this month: the mysterious disappearance of Ann Coulter.
Few of us realized she was missing, but luckily crack detective Paul Waldman was on the case. The Media Matters alum was determined to find an answer to the question no one else was asking: “Whatever Happened to Ann Coulter?”
Remember Ann Coulter? Seems like just yesterday she was Queen of the Right, the whole political world hanging on her every bile-laced tirade. Yet she’s all but disappeared.
Waldman’s fantasy that Ann Coulter “all but disappeared” is a deliciously desperate display of magical thinking. He doesn’t have a shred of evidence, but hopes that if he makes the claim over and over while wearing his lucky cardigan, his wish will come true.
Waldman “argues” that Coulter’s “shtick just got old,” and that in the Grand and Civil Age of Obama her “act seems somehow out of place,” even among the hate loving hate lovers on the Right. Oh, and she just can’t serve up piping hot wingnuttery the way Glenn Beck can:
It’s not that there isn’t plenty of hate on the right, but Coulter’s hate was just pure venom, without much point to it. She had none of the crazy conspiracy theories that have become de rigueur. She shot out in all directions, while the people at the top of the heap now, like Glenn Beck, are convinced they are driven by a complex and coherent ideology, complete with a Founding Father fetishism that would sound insincere coming from Coulter.
So she’s been left behind, never to grace the cover of a national newsmagazine again. Tragic.
Note Waldman’s wishful thinking in using the past tense to describe Coulter and her tragic descent into irrelevancy. He might want to have his mojo checked out, because it’s not having the desired effect.
18 months after the debut of Coulter’s Guilty: Liberal “Victims” and Their Assault on America, the Kindle edition is still ranked #33 on Amazon’s list of top selling conservative books. The hardcover comes in at #43, and Godless: The Church of Liberalism is still in the top 100 more than four years after the initial printing.
In the last year I’ve seen Coulter on CNN, CBS, and ABC just while flipping channels. And of course, she does speaking engagements and makes frequent appearances on Hannity, O’Reilly, Geraldo, Red Eye, and other Fox programs.
For a woman who dropped off the face of the earth, Coulter also keeps her critics busy. A week rarely goes by without multiple Coulter-induced seizures at Media Matters. And in April, she was mocked as a poor role model for girls on the Fox show “Glee.”
But perhaps most telling of all, here’s a screen capture John Hawkins took of the five most popular Townhall columns:
Instead of imagining Ann Coulter into irrelevancy, Paul Waldman might want to hit her up for some career tips.
Mark Morford: Conservative Women Are “Pseudo-Women†and “Bitchesâ€
Originally published on June 28, 2010 at David Horowitz’s NewsReal
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Mark Morford, misogynist Obama worshipper
Mark Morford’s San Francisco Chronicle column is what a leftist’s diary might look like — if that leftist was a horny 14-year-old with a man-sized crush on Obama and a predilection for verbally abusing conservative women. Hmm. Scratch that. Morford’s column is exactly what a leftist’s diary would look like.
You might recognize Morford as the drooling Obama fetishist who proclaimed candidate Obama a “rare kind of attuned being” and a “Lightworker.” Or perhaps you remember his enlightened progressive description of “docile doormat” Laura Bush as “the ideal Republican wife: Prim, sexless, nearly useless, lets the men do the real thinkin.”
So really, who better to appoint himself this week’s Grand Arbiter of True Feminism?
Finding few reasons to gush about the Obama presidency, Morford’s current mission is to expose the “perverted kind of new womanhood” of Sarah Palin, Meg Whitman, and Nikki Haley. Ladies of the Left beware! warns Morford. The success of these “largely insufferable” conservative women comes packaged with a “s–bag of downsides, drawbacks, jackals and bitches.”
You kiss your mama with that mouth, Mark?
After a handful of slobbering sentences about progressive men with “perfectly sculpted genitalia” (no, I’m not kidding) and several more about their fat and sweaty Republican counterparts, Morford uses his column to explain that conservative women aren’t allowed to be feminists and don’t actually qualify as women anyway:
Witness, won’t you, the zeitgeist’s nightmare trifecta of largely insufferable women, the Sarah Palin/Carly Fiorina/Michele Bachmann hydra-headed hellbeast of pseudo-women, one part huge cash reserves, one part evil grammar-abusing ditzball psychopath, one part sassy misinformed moxie, overlaid with wonky ideas of motherhood, love of guns and ignorance of sex and reproductive rights.
These, along with Meg “I’m a Billionaire!” Whitman and Nikki “Sarah Palin hugged me!” Haley, et al, are the apparent “champions” of a perverted kind of new womanhood, some sort of mutant breed who claim it’s entirely possible, even desirable to be “pro-life and pro-feminist,” which is a bit like saying you’re “pro-oil spill and pro-environment.”
In other words: Sorry, no. No f–ing way. This is the rule: You do not ever get to say you’re any kind of feminist or champion of women and mothers everywhere, and in the same breath add that you also believe no woman should have control over her reproductive powers and, by the way, poor immigrant women should be sent back to Mexico and guns should be legal for all.
Another day, another tiresome attempt to dehumanize conservative women and belittle their accomplishments with absurd caricatures, vicious insults, and largely insufferable prose.
But at least Morford’s portrayal of successful conservative women as “some sort of mutant breed” of “pseudo-women” was condemned by the feminist Left, wasn’t it? No, as usual a man who calls himself progressive gets a free pass on misogyny as leftist women lap up puddles of his hateful venom.
A Jezebel writer calls his piece “a thoughtful column.” “Love this thoughtful and insightful rant,” writes Caitlin Kelly at True/Slant. British journalist Alison Clarke thinks Morford is “just plain wrong,” but only because he fails to acknowledge that enlightened feminists like her already know that conservative women are “a whole delightful s–bag of downsides.”
Men on the Left have had it affirmed for them time and again that misogyny is perfectly acceptable – even desirable – as long as women on the Right are the targets. Even public rape fantasies about conservative women are excused. As long as these men are good little lefty foot soldiers, they’re welcome to direct all manner of misogyny toward women who fail to toe the line on abortion, gun control, and illegal immigration.
So, Mark. As long as we’re making up rules, here’s one for you: You do not ever get to create feminist litmus tests, and in the same breath call Sarah Palin, Nikki Haley, and others pseudo-women and bitches.
I think it’s clear who the real anti-feminist is.
Update: Sister Toldjah also has a few choice words for Mark Morford.
Shamed into Posting
A hungover owl. Duh.
A very nice guy named Bryan Tupper just recommended my blog to his Twitter followers. (Thanks Bryan!) This probably means I should add some new content or something.
Yeah, I’ll get right on that.
In the mean time, you can see my latest articles at NewsReal. And here are a couple I co-authored with Lori Ziganto.
Or you can look at hungover owls. Your choice.
Object to Prostitot Culture? You’re Probably a Racist Prude
Originally published at David Horowitz’s NewsReal
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Decked out in flashy burlesque costumes, five dancers mouth sexually suggestive lyrics as they writhe and shimmy across the stage.  The audience hoots and hollers as they gyrate to Beyoncé’s “Single Ladies (Put a Ring on It).”
If you’ve seen the viral video then you already know: these YouTube sensations are just eight and nine years old.
The sight of a talented youth troupe thrusting their hips in shiny red hot pants prompted many commentators to condemn the parents and teachers involved. But not everyone was on board. In a Salon column last week, an infuriated Ada Calhoun ripped into critics for their “hysteria” and “moral panic” over the YouTube clip. And the icing on her lily white cake of predictability? If you criticize the video, you’re a racist.
But let’s start with Calhoun’s first beef with those of us who find the video disturbing. “Can we stop yelling at young women to put their clothes back on?” she asks.
These aren’t “young women.” They’re little girls who need to have their talent nurtured by responsible adults willing to set boundaries. Instead, they’re being exploited by people catering to some Mohammedan fantasy.
No serious commentator yelled at the kids “to put their clothes back on.” The criticisms were directed at parents, choreographers, and anyone else who pretends that young talent can’t be nourished without rummaging through Dita von Teese’s wardrobe.
Calhoun’s next argument is that you should shut your hysterical neo-Victorian trap if all you can do is whine about kids today boppin’ to their doggone rock and roll records. “In every era, there are moral panics about girls; they all project the same tone of hysteria and the same cultural amnesia,” she writes.
Hysteria? This isn’t some town fight between the Squares and the Drapes or a moral panic about the “sinful gyrations” of Elvis Presley. The outrage is that parents and teachers are coaching eight-year-olds to mimic sex acts for an audience of cheering adults.  In an era when thong panties come in tween sizes and condoms are handed out at school, there’s nothing prudish or panicky about encouraging kids to be kids.
But even that’s a problem for Calhoun who complains that “almost every article” included the line “Can’t we just let little girls be little girls?” Is it really beyond the pale to suggest that parents shouldn’t rush their kids through childhood? Isn’t that Good Parenting 101?
Not in Calhoun’s eyes. She wrote an entire book on her parenting philosophy called Instinctive Parenting: Trusting Ourselves to Raise Good Kids. One Amazon reviewer called it “an entire book of excuses for being a bad parent.”
Now let’s return to Calhoun’s delightful charges of racism, quoted at length on the next page because laughter is good for the soul:
Why are there no Op-Eds when black girls dress or dance this way? If the problem is really with girls wearing these outfits, or dancing in this manner, why is it that the hundreds of YouTube videos of black 8- and 9-year-old girls doing their best “Single Ladies” (I just watched a bunch, some from dance competitions and some to the very same song) aren’t cause for alarm? Why aren’t their parents called to the carpet on morning television? Are they not relevant to the discussion for some reason I don’t understand?
And I’m no cultural studies expert, but the indignation over how (white) kids today like to dance (too much gyrating!) sounds an awful lot like the outrage over the effect “black music” had on white America in the 1950s. There is a lot of fear in the discussion of these dance competition girls: fear of sexuality, sure, but also, I think, fear of how diverse pop culture has become.
This could easily be a parody of Greg Gutfeld’s “Gregalogue” commentaries on “Red Eye”: “If you disagree with me, you’re probably a racist homophobe who eats unicorns.” Incidentally, you know who else cries racism when you object to the exploitation of children? Pedophile activists. Is that who Ada Calhoun really wants to ally herself with?
After smearing everyone who objects to the early sexualization of children as racist, Calhoun demands to know why no one appreciates the girls’ for their talent. I wonder how she reconciles that with her earlier observation that most writing on this issue includes the “grudging admission that ‘the girls were spectacular dancers.'”
Calhoun finishes her piece by reminding us that we’re all hysterical prudish scolds.
Of course, when these girls are parents themselves, they will be just as horrified by something their daughters are doing — hyper-driving their space-cars in foil miniskirts, say.
It’s just how we are, how we’ve always been, and probably always will be with girls: judgmental, scolding and afraid.
And that, not five young girls’ choreography, is the real shame.
But it isn’t just the choreography, it’s the entire performance. It’s the skimpy costumes designed to give the illusion of curves where children have none. It’s the sight of children undulating in distinctly un-childlike ways while mouthing lyrics about what men need to do to get laid. What kind of lesson is it to girls that the skimpiest, thrustiest routine wins?
If Ada Calhoun can’t understand the problem, it’s time for her to turn in her feminist card.
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Follow me on Twitter and read more of my work at NewsReal.
Female Genital Mutilation, Ivy League Edition
Originally published at David Horowitz’s NewsReal
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Should surgeons promote an aesthetic standard for little girls’ genitals? Pediatric urologist Dix Poppas thinks so, and he’s more than happy to slice and dice away any deviations in the size and shape of your daughter’s clitoris.
This elective butchery of little girls isn’t based on the edict of some Muslim cleric in Yemen or Egypt. Instead, this is medical advice from a respected, board certified Cornell University researcher who performs these partial clitoridectomies on infants and children at New York-Presbyterian Hospital.
Poppas carries out these surgical assaults on girls born with cosmetically atypical genitalia that he deems masculine or ambiguous in appearance. Some of his patients undergo this cosmetic procedure at under six months of age after Poppas tells their parents that with surgical “correction,” a “normal physiologic, emotional, and sexual development can be achieved.”
But is there evidence that girls with large clitorises are at risk of developmental problems? Not at all, say Alice Dreger and Ellen K. Feder in a new Bioethics Forum commentary:
For over a decade, many people (including us) have criticized this surgical practice. Critics in medicine, bioethics, and patient advocacy have questioned the surgery’s necessity, safety, and efficacy. We still know of no evidence that a large clitoris increases psychological risk (so is the surgery even necessary?), and we do know of substantial anecdotal evidence that it does not increase risk. Importantly, there also seems to be evidence that clitoroplasties performed in infancy do increase risk – of harm to physical and sexual functioning, as well as psychosocial harm.
This isn’t the equivalent of surgically treating a disabling cleft palate; it’s the risky, medically unnecessary reduction of a sexual organ. It doesn’t improve function or hygiene; instead, it jeopardizes future sexual sensation for the frivolous goal of ensuring these girls fit in with the other kids when they play “I’ll show you mine.”
Columnist Dan Savage writes, “There’s lots to be outraged about here: there’s nothing wrong with these girls and their healthy, functional-if-larger-than-average clitorises; there’s no need to operate on these girls; and surgically altering a girl’s clitoris because it’s “too big” has been found to do lasting physical and psychological harm.” And Slate‘s Rachael Larimore observes, “One doesn’t have to be a doctor to realize that this is nothing less than the same genital mutilation that women regularly undergo in Africa and the Middle East. But it’s happening at one of our top institutions of higher learning.”
Indeed, sterile blades and lip service paid to the preservation of clitoral sensation are the only things distinguishing this genital mutilation from the ritual excisions that permanently scar millions of women around the world.
Dr. Poppas contends that his clitoral reduction surgery isn’t misogynist quackery because it utilizes a “nerve-sparing” technique designed to minimize sexual dysfunction. How does he know? He uses vibrators to stimulate the girls’ clitorises during followup exams.
At annual visits after the surgery, while a parent watches, Poppas touches the daughter’s surgically shortened clitoris with a cotton-tip applicator and/or with a “vibratory device,†and the girl is asked to report to Poppas how strongly she feels him touching her clitoris. Using the vibrator, he also touches her on her inner thigh, her labia minora, and the introitus of her vagina, asking her to report, on a scale of 0 (no sensation) to 5 (maximum), how strongly she feels the touch. Yang, Felsen, and Poppas also report a “capillary perfusion testing,†which means a physician or nurse pushes a finger nail on the girl’s clitoris to see if the blood goes away and comes back, a sign of healthy tissue. Poppas has indicated in this article and elsewhere that ideally he seeks to conduct annual exams with these girls. He intends to chart the development of their sexual sensation over time.
I guess that’s one way to explain why you have a lifetime supply of Trojan Vibrating Touch personal massagers stashed in your closet:Â “But officer, they’re for the children!”
Unsurprisingly, Dreger and Feder were unable to find another pediatric urologist who uses this “ground breaking” post-surgical kiddie diddling technique. What’s more, Poppas knows that inflicting this sort of trauma on children is far beyond the bounds of acceptable scientific practice. That’s why he didn’t bother to obtain IRB approval for his unorthodox use of “vibratory devices.” Dreger explains:
If he had sought IRB approval for the “sensory testing,” the ethics staff might have sat up and asked him what the heck he thought he was doing to these girls, and they would have tried to make sure the parents were informed about the unknowns and risks, and the girls could have refused to participate.
Perhaps Dix Poppas (whose name could inspire an entire Freudian treatise) thinks his work is so important that ethical boundaries don’t apply. Maybe he’s simply a child molester who takes sadistic pleasure in mutilating and traumatizing the most vulnerable among us. Either way, we can’t allow his battery of little girls to go on, not for one more day.
Contact:
Rosemary Kraemer, PhD
Director, Human Subjects Protections
Weill Cornell Medical College Institutional Review Board
E-mail: rtkraeme@med.cornell.edu
Telephone: (646) 962-8200
And please call on the American Board of Urology and the American Academy of Pediatrics to condemn Dix Poppas’ unethical research and clinical practices.
Thanks to Rachael Larimore and @sarahbellumd for alerting me to this story on Twitter.
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Follow me on Twitter and visit NewsReal to read more of my work.
Nannies: The Next Class Warfare Casualty
Originally published at David Horowitz’s NewsReal Blog
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Forget the nanny state. New York is well on its way to becoming the nanny-less state.
The Domestic Workers’ Bill of Rights passed by the New York State Senate earlier this month is being sold as a package of workplace protections for nannies, housekeepers, and other domestic employees. But is the legislation really a human rights victory for low-wage women or is it a job-killer likely to burden both domestic workers and the families who employ them? Read more
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