Hey Maureen Dowd, Please Shut Up!

Posted by Melissa McEwan, Shakesville at 12:14 PM on March 5, 2008.

Part wev in an Ongoing Series by Tart and me, named elegantly and succinctly by Tart, about the World's Most Obnoxious Feminist Concern TrollTM.

Today, Maureen Dowd takes on the pressing issue of concern trolling the Democratic primary by waxing lastweekity about identity politics and the Duel of Historical Guilts. What's really at stake, don'tcha know, is not a little thing like deciding who would make the better president, but answering the question: "Is misogyny worse than racism, or is racism worse than misogyny?" Someone introduce MoDo to the theory of interlocking systems of oppression, please.

But first...once again, she has to begin the collection of half-baked idiocies she calls a column by drawing a nearly unrecognizable caricature of feminism:

Some women in their 30s, 40s and early-50s who favor Barack Obama have a phrase to describe what they don't like about Hillary Clinton: Shoulder-pad feminism.

They feel that women have moved past that men-are-pigs, woe-is-me, sisters-must-stick-together, pantsuits-are-powerful era that Hillary's campaign has lately revived with a vengeance.

In typical fashion, she draws an outline that vaguely resembles one strand of feminism, then scribbles in a bunch of nonsense and calls it a portrait, hoping the casual observer will not notice the differences--the things that just don't seem right when you stop to think about them, like if feminists think men are pigs, why are so many happily married to men...?

And once she is done reducing feminism to a cartoon masquerading as a portrait, she continues on, blaming Hillary's supposed lack of whimsy for the reason women vote for Obama.

As a woman I know put it: "Hillary doesn't make it look like fun to be a woman. And her 'I-have-been-victimized' campaign is depressing."

A woman she knows named Doreen Mowd, no doubt--who, like Maureen Dowd, would certainly find a newfound appreciation for Hillary if only she'd make it "look like fun to be a woman," and wouldn't at all then accuse her instead of making women look silly, frivolous, and unserious. Yes, if only Hillary would ignore the constant sexism thrown at her by people who say things about her like she is "openly dependent on her husband to drag her over the finish line," if only she could see the fun in that, then Maureen and Doreen would, like, totally start loving her.

Fer sure.

And then follows much desperate hand-wringing about how "the Democratic primary has become the ultimate nightmare of liberal identity politics. All the victimizations go tripping over each other and colliding, a competition of historical guilts." It's Hillary and Barack, don't you know, who can't stop playing identity politics--not the responsible, objective, and deeply concerned liberal media folks like MoDo, who only keep mentioning how Hillary's a WOMAN and Barack is BLACK because they're so responsible and objective and deeply concerned.

Clearly the only solution is to vote for a white man, so we can get past all this stuff about womanhood and skin color.

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Tagged as: clinton, dowd, obama, feminism, sexism, racism

Melissa McEwan writes and edits the blog Shakespeare's Sister.