March 3, 2008
Obligatory Post Where We Say Charlotte Allen Sucks
You've no doubt already read this impossibly horrible column penned by conservative freelance journalist Charlotte Allen that ran in the Washington Post on Sunday, but just in case you haven't gotten the outrage out of your system, consider this comment thread the place to do just that.
We hardly know how to begin to wrap our brains around this series of events: Allen, the same woman who wrote the Weekly Standard story dismissing the Jena Six incidents as having been made up, apparently pitched a column to Outlook section editors at the Washington Post about how women are dumber than men. These same editors reviewed the idea, decided they liked it, asked to see a draft, read the actual column, still liked it, and then published it. All along the way, several editors and copy editors were no doubt involved in the editorial process that went into this piece of total garbage, and at no point did anyone stop to say, hey, maybe we shouldn't publish this ignorant pack of lies. Consider our minds officially boggled.
The outraged and, really, dumbfounded response since the column ran couldn't have been more predictable. Gee, you know, it's almost like the Washington Post thought they'd run something this stupid on purpose just so everyone would link to it, comment on it and write in angry emails about it. Our own Jason Linkins has a nice response up at Huffington Post, in which he describes the column as "a nauseous bag, unflinching in it's cliched ridiculousness, that reads like a bad prank."
But the real winners are some of 800 plus comments already posted to the column itself. Here's a few of our favorites:
Charlotte, Men are dumber than woman. They paid you for this crap article...Since all the commotion broke out, the Post has added a disclaimer of sorts to the top of the page that reads, "Agree? Disagree? Think this article should never have been published? Send a response to outlook@washpost.com and put "Smarter Than You Think" in the subject line. We'll publish a selection online and in the newspaper on Sunday."I wish I subscribed to the Washington Post just so I could cancel my subscription.
You're right, Charlotte: conservative women like you are too dumb to vote, so on election day, stay away from the polls. Instead, you and Anne Coulter can make sandwiches for the men in your life and send them out to waste their votes on John McCain while you stay home, light a candle for Bill Buckley and cuddle up with hot coco and your Ronald Reagan dolls.
As a thought experiment, imagine that this were written by a black author about black people. Would the Post ever have dared to run it?
Our own music editor, Amanda Mattos, was so creeped out by the column she quickly fired off a note to the Outlook editor, and the response she got back is pasted below.
Dear Amanda,So, it was all just a big joke? That's pretty hard to believe. As Jessica Valenti over at Feministing rightly points out:Thanks for your note. I am trying to answer all of notes I've received and
there are a lot. With the obvious knowledge that anything I write now will
probably do little to deal with the issue of Charlotte Allen's piece, let
me just say a few words about why we ran it.I ran it to provoke, but not to offend. I thought the parallel she drew
between fainting Obama followers and Beatlemania was an interesting frame
with which to analyze the Obama phenomenon. She went further, of course, to
draw broader conclusions about the state of her gender highlighting women's
interest in Gray's Anatomy and Eat, Pray, Love. But my reading of it was
more a tongue-in-cheek screed borne from exasperation with her sisters than
a mysoginist rant from a self-hating woman. Yes, she engaged in massive
hyperbole but she did it to try to make a point. That said the piece
obviously offended you and others and I regret that. But it was an opinion
piece and that is what they sometimes do.Anyway, we've asked for letters that we will not only include on tomorrow's
oped page but in the section as well and online this weekend.Best,
John Pomfret
Editor, Outlook
Washington Post
1150 15th St., NW
Washington, DC 20071
(202) 334-6046
(202) 870-0627 (cell)
Any quick search of Allen's past writing shows just how seriously she takes her women-hate. Instead of making excuses for running the most craptastic article ever, how about WaPo just takes some fucking responsibility? Weak.Weak, indeed.
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I'd dump my Post subscription if I knew there was another local newspaper out there that could replace it. Unfortunately, both the Washington Times and the Examiner would probably have run Allen's piece too, so I'm kinda stuck.
But on the piece itself, the rest of the blogosphere, conservatives included, have done a good job pointing out how truly terrible this is. And I find Pomfret's argument that the piece meant to "provoke" totally pathetic. There are plenty of writers out there with a ton of arguments that would serve to challenge and provoke us, but trying to pass off this garbage as the best they could find either means that the Post wasn't looking very hard or that it's gotten bad enough that no one wants to get published there anymore.
wow, i skipped over this article, but i feel obliged to go back and read it now so i can join in on the ten minutes hate also.
Don't link to the 2nd page of the column...
That made me want to vomit. It's insulting and just BAD. Usually the point of publishing something "provoking" is to stimulate debate. What kind of debate could come out of this?
But hey, at least this gives me an excuse to get rid of my Post subscription and switch to the NY Times. I'd been sticking with the Post out of some sort of feeling that I should be reading the local paper, but let's face it, the Post kind of sucks.
This is why I read the New York Times.
I thought it was meant to be way over-the-top in order to be provocative. I didn't think it worked b/c it was too silly, but I wasn't offended by it.
Then again, I'm also into panda shaving porn, so what do I know about being offended?
Judging by that photo, looks like someone's left the Ark of the Covenant open. Again.
How many times do I have to tell you people? Lower the lid, flush twice, jiggle the handle.
What I learned: women should be cold bitches a la The Iron Lady, the more liberal, less educated and/or cultured women of the world are inferior, and Charlotte Allen, who claims to posses some sort of advanced set language skills, is a 'tard.
How is swooning over a celebrity any dumber than screaming at a sporting event on TV? At least the swooning doesn't take up an entire Sunday afternoon.
I, for the record, neither scream at sports nor swoon.
I read it more as a generational than a gender thing. "Look at the youngins today, with their Grey's Anatomy and swooning over Obama. Grow up already!!!" That's the message I got. The first half of the article is mildly provocative, the second half goes all mealy-mouthed and loses the courage of its convictions, and is pretty stupid. But if her intention was to elicit a knee-jerk, Pavlovian response from the impeccably bien pensant (like the author of this post), then I'd have to say, mission accomplished.
So it's OK for all these other idiot women and men to constantly bombard us with "Women are smarter than men" columns, magazines and advertisements. Next time you silly girls make a "men are stupid, men are pigs, etc" comment remember how uninformed and ignorant this article was/is and how stupid you sound. Otherwise just up.
I would post a scathing comment here about Allen here, but I'm a stupid female and wouldn't be able to piece one together without..
Oh look there goes McDreamy.
i just read her "article." i threw up a little (okay, a lot) in my mouth.
what else can i say?
more importantly, props to monkey on the indiana joke. perfect and true. this picture will haunt my nightmares tonight. yech. where is the censorship???
Did she mention how much you people like to shop? What about the nagging?
Anyway, I'm not going to read the piece because it was written by a lady and it's not about cooking.
I ditched the Post after their weak coverage of the events leading up the Iraq invasion. I'm tempted to subscribe again but for the lousiness that is their editorial section and many of its traditionalist contributors.
Charlotte Allen might overtake Harriet Miers as SCARIEST LOOKING WOMAN EVER! Of course she's not swooning at Obama campaign rallies or enjoying the medical steaminess of Grey's Anatomy. She's entirely too busy trying to imitate those guys in Indiana Jones who had their faces melted off by the Ark of the Covenant.
Clearly, she won't be able to look down her nose at society for ever because the thing will soon fall off.
more evidence that we can't believe anything the mainstream media tells us
I love that after devoting multiple paragraphs to men's superior spatial skills she can't be bothered to spend more than two sentences on "excellent memory and superior verbal skills, two areas where, researchers agree, women consistently outpace men." I mean, Christ, any high school counselor (or really anyone with any familiarity with college board scores) could've told you that males tend to rate better than females in terms of math skills while the opposite is true of verbal skills. So what exactly is her goddamn point? And good point on sports watching, engineergirl: I might throw my shoe across the room after a romantic letdown (not at anyone, just to let off steam), but how is that any different than throwing something at the TV after a disappointing sports outcome? This woman is fucking ridiculous.
By the way, it seems to be impossible to get ahold of anyone at the Post today. I'm currently on hold waiting to cancel my subscription.
(To be fair, I've been meaning to cancel it for ages. This incident just reminded me why.)
We swoon. We crash. We suck at math. Oh, and some of us even smile when our teeth are coated with mung and our gums are in an advanced stage of periodontal disease. Whatta dumbass.
Wow two NY subway Vrs DC Metro comment strings in less than 6 days....impressive.
I get the feeling the editors has to remove the word "negro" and the phrase "womanly troubles" more than once from the article.
I think all of you have overlooked the fact that Obama is, in fact, the dreamiest of all the candidates.
After reading Allen's brand of "humor," I was inclined to substitute "The Washington Post" for every instance of "women." Much funnier, in my opinion:
"I can't help it, but reading about such episodes of screaming, gushing and swooning makes me wonder whether The Washington Post isn't the weaker sex after all. Or even the stupid sex, its brain permanently occluded by random emotions, psychosomatic flailings and distraction by the superficial. The Washington Post 'is only the child of a larger growth,' wrote the 18th-century Earl of Chesterfield. Could he have been right?"
"The Washington Post plans to write a horror novel titled 'Office of The Washington Post,' in which nothing ever gets done and everyone spends the day talking about Botox."
"And obviously The New York Times does dumb things, too … It has to do with the aggressive New York Times nature and an instinctive fear of danger from other aggressive New York newspapers. When The New York Times does dumb things, though, they tend to be catastrophically dumb, such as blowing the paycheck on booze or much, much worse (think 'postal'). The Washington Post's foolishness is usually harmless. But it can be so . . . embarrassing."
"Then The Washington Post could shriek and swoon and gossip and read chick lit to its heart's content and not mind the fact that way down deep, it is . . . kind of dim."
"How is swooning over a celebrity any dumber than screaming at a sporting event on TV?"
Perhaps it's not. But seeing people swoon over a political candidate makes me very uncomfortable. If there were a conservative candidate getting this sort of a reaction, there'd (perhaps rightly) be cries of facism coming from a lot of people who now swoon, and probably from those that don't swoon but take heart in those that do. Too much emotion in politics should make us all a bit queasy, regardless of whether we benefit from that emotion or not.
That could have made decent article. Self-hating misogyny does not.
I'm reading it and trying to figure out what's so offensive other than an old lady giving an opinion. I can't remember the last time any old lady or even my 83 year old grandmother gave an opinion that didn't have something to do with how horrible young people are (except her awesome grandson of course!)
Feh, Jerry Falwell and Anne Coulter have said far more disturbing things that got far less reaction.
smuttynose: Pure genius.
People read newspapers? Cute!
Shameless gender-baiting. I can completely ignore the author, she is no one and of no consequence. I don't really care if she is a bigot against her own gender.
But the Post's willingness to run this is horrendous and for the time unforgivable. What's even more unforgivable, is that instead of immediately issuing an apology for a poorly-constructed, discriminatory, piece of shit story, they encourage women to "fight back" and right them a letter.
It begs us to questions their motives, and I just wonder if someone sitting back at the Post isn't just salivating at the impending "cat fight" as I am sure they consider it.
It's shameless and disgusting.
I'm just happy that my ability to successfully navigate a car from DC to Baltimore is because of my sexual orientation!
Anyways, on a serious note: This whole discussion is a prime example of what's wrong with our country's inability to have a dialogue on significant matters (like women's role in society). Mrs. Allen's arguments is easily refutable; how many men have you seen swoon over Obama? I personally have seen alot more men than women have a crush on Obama; and personally I wish they all would faint (it would make clubbing them back to their senses easier!).
The Post had ever right to run the article, and it CAN encourage a discussion. No one should be so secure in their view of any issue that they can't hear an opposing viewpoint. You know what they call someone who won't hear that opposing view? A fundamentalist.
Besides, anyone who has actually met a real woman in this country (if not the world) knows, for a fact, that they are capable of doing anything a man can. Some of the smartest (or most athletics; or assertive; or articulate; take your pick and more) people I have ever run into have been women. But it's so much easier to close our ears than take what few grains of insight that might come from this perspective, no matter how misguided that viewpoint is.
Example of a grain to be taken away - math/science for women should be pushed and encouraged much more to better prepare women for a world where those skills will be needed. Have any of you heard some of the reports about women, in the US, being discouraged from math/science careers because they are women? Work with some physicists (male ones) sometime, and you'll see what I mean real quick (the disicpline is somewhere in the range of 70% male). Don't bury your heads because it's a view point you don't like.
I am sorry Bmosely.
It is fine and good to ask someone to listen to "all arguments," but to ask me to comb for kernels of value through a pile of shit is a bit much. Where do you dig for your gold? Do you expect anyone to listen to a racist to find one valid data point and make a conclusion different from what they are saying? (Allen didn't say we need to encourage women in the sciences. She said women stay home and enjoy it, you biologically are not cut out for it.)
Let me draw this analogy out. Now say, for instance, a higher percentage of the african american population is in jail than other racial groups relative to the overall population. Disproportionality in the justice system and, in fact, in the populations that receive many social services is a known issue. Is it then OK for someone to decide something about African Americans ability to be civil or to abide by the law, or even their inherent morality (because legality and morality are easily confused)? And is it OK for the Washington Post to run their article about it including attacking, say Barrack Obama's moral character somehow? Then are you saying I should listen to them trash talk that entire racial groups so that I can then say, hey wow, there is a problem that a lot of black people go to jail, and maybe we should do something to prevent it? OF COURSE NOT.
Anyone who pays attention knows that women are shut out of the sciences and they know that certain groups are disproportionately represented in the prison population. We don't need bigoted, discriminatory rants to point that out by referencing those as reasons to discount entire groups. These are known issue with complex causes and solutions that are being researched.
If it were a well-written, documented, and researched piece, instead of a useless and inflammatory condemnation of a few pop-culture choices many women make, an attack on an individual, and a smattering of spatial reasoning-based stats....If it were meant as an honest argument instead of an incendiary rant...
The real truth to be found in this article is in the reaction to it and the reason it could stand at the Post. Misogyny lives and breathes throughout our culture, and it is considered acceptable.
But to another point you made. To be a fundamentaltist for equality seems reasonable to me. Not all values are culturally contingent or in dispute. Some things we can believe in absolutely. I affirm that I *fundamentally* believe that misogyny, sexism, and gender-baiting are not fit to print in a respectable 21st century American newspaper.
so if this was racist instead of sexist you think the post would be enjoying this as much?
this pos article is just another laura sessions step type telling us to go bake cookies and embrace womenhood (and stupidity?) instead of working toward equality and whatever else. what crap wapo...
I just can't get over the fact that the editors published the article. While it's provocative in a base sense, there isn't any room for the discussion to go beyond "Well Allen obviously hates herself, apparently can't count shoes, and can't write either."
More than being pissed off at Allen's drivel, I'm shocked (shocked I tell you!) that the editors went through with it.
Gah.
to comb for kernels of value through a pile of shit
I would have settled for "undigested celery of value" but, as the frogs say, le mot juste.
I will pay your bail.
"If there were a conservative candidate getting this sort of a reaction, there'd (perhaps rightly) be cries of facism coming from a lot of people who now swoon"
I remember people swooning over Reagan. Which was bit creepy.
Just the other day I saw a calendar where each month had an 'action shot' of Reagan and pithy comments and a fairly revisionist history of his greatest accomplishments and folksy sayings. Funny how they forgot to mention that he ignored the AIDS crisis for most of his term....
Believe me, conservatives jerked off to this guy's image more than they'll ever admit.
It's even creepier when the swooning is after the person has died...
Come on now, folks. Let's cut the woman some slack on how she looks.
We can't all be 22 and uber hip, the dream demographic for DCist.
You'd think with DCist's 'power to the people' vibe you'd get a bit less snark when actual old people, sans expensive cosmetic surgery, are shown to exist.
The problem isn't that she's old-looking. The problem is that her spiritual fugliness is manifestering itself in a grimmer visage I haven't seen since Senator Palpatine took on Mace Windu. It's like I expect her to issue General Order 66 and have all "stupid women" executed by her conservatard clone army. Maybe then, she will finally bring order to the galaxy.
Hillman: If she's going to imply that the only things women are good for are looking cute and acting silly, then she should make na effort to look better (at least she already has the silliness part down). If she were a scientist doing something useful and clever, I doubt people would be making comments about her appearance.
Engineer:
You have a point.
But I still find it hypocritical that the uber-liberal DCist 'community' finds it ok to mock someone's looks when they disagree with them, but all hell would break loose if the author was espousing a more feminist view and anyone mocked her looks.
It's just a bit of a double standard. For instance, I remember the angry retorts when people used to openly mock Hillary's appearance, before we were shamed into silence. And Lord knows you can't say anything negative about Barack's appearance without first carefully reviewing your comments to make sure you aren't labeled racist.
I like mocking people as much as the next person, but it's just hypocritical to do it selectively.
in a pink template of course: http://ihatethewashingtonpost.blogspot.com/