The Tall Blonde Woman in the Short Skirt With the Big Mouth

By Don Hazen, AlterNet. Posted June 6, 2006.

Today is the devil's day, a celebration for the evildoers; that's right, it is 6-6-06. Drop the 0, you get 666. As the L.A. Times notes, this day "has become an ideal date to launch music, records, books …" Jeffrey Godsick from marketing at 20th Century Fox says about 666, "It's partly superstition, partly fear, partly reality … These numbers seem to have a significant impact."

And on this day, the devil herself -- the Tall Blonde Woman in the Short Skirt With the Big Mouth (TBWSSBM, or TBW for short) -- has a new book out. You know who I'm talking about. I will not mention her name, nor the name of the book, the publisher or any of her previous books. She is releasing her book today as "a little tribute to liberals." The time has come to ignore this woman.

Of course, TBW is ready to bask in the glow of the huge publicity many journalists, reviewers, talk show hosts, bloggers, opinion shapers, editors and just plain chatterers will give her, despite her being one of the most destructive, irresponsible, foul-mouthed, fact-challenged, racist provocateurs in public life.

I urge you, I challenge you, I beg you, to ignore this woman. Find the inner discipline. The world will be a better place for it.

In case you think I'm exaggerating, or overreacting about TBW's destructive mouth, here are a small handful of the many dozens of appalling things she has said to get your attention, to get your blood flowing, to suck you into her world. She manipulates you. Then you enable her.

• In a syndicated column: "I think the government should be spying on all Arabs, engaging in torture as a televised spectator sport and dropping daisycutters wantonly throughout the Middle East " (Daisycutter is a nickname for the 15,000-pound bomb, the largest conventional bomb in existence.)
• From the N.Y. Observer: "My only regret with Timothy McVeigh is he did not go to the New York Times Building."
• On Fox News' Your World, TBW declared that former President Bill Clinton "molested the help." She has also referred to Clinton as a "very good rapist."
• In a syndicated column she wrote: "And mind you, this was before we knew Gore was clinically insane. Back then we thought he was just a double-talking stuffed shirt who seemed kind of gay."
• In various interviews, TBW asks "whether America might be better off if women lost the right to vote."

So Mr. Media Makers, what do you think? Isn't it enough already? It is you, and all of us, who have turned TBW into a super "celebrity." Progressives, liberals, critics, many normally fine, intelligent men -- and almost all of them are men -- are to a great extent responsible for the enormous wealth, fame and disgusting success of TBW.

It is time for all of you who hate her so much, who want to get next to her so badly, who can't stop writing about her, interviewing her, attacking her, hanging out with her, flirting with her, sucking up to her, and yes, going blubbery brained apoplectic because she frustrates you so much, to face the hard truth.

You have an addiction.

You who suffer from TBW addiction are virtually a who's who, an all-star team of liberal and progressive male journalists, some of whom have devoted countless columns and whole sections of their books to TBW. I'm talking about you, Mr. Progressive Funny Guy (PFG) now on the progressive talk network, who writes books about liars that give all that publicity to the lies.

And you, Mr. Left Wing Media Critic (LWMC), who writes for that venerable left-wing rag with no pictures -- for you TBW is almost a cottage industry. You feel it a personal responsibility to let the world know about TBW: "It's degrading to have to write about [TBW] again. As a pundit, she is about on a par with Charles Manson, better suited to a lifelong stay in the Connecticut Home for the Criminally Insane …" "Her books are filled with lies, slander and phony footnotes that are themselves lies and slanders. Her very existence as a public figure is an insult to our collective intelligence."

So why are you writing about her? Do you think your audience doesn't know this already? Are you expecting right-wingers to find your column and change their ways?

Mr. LWMC is stuck with the "baffling phenomenon of the bestselling Barbie-doll terrorist-apologist," who continues to be celebrated by the very media she terms "retarded" and guilty of "mass murder."

Don Hazen is the executive editor of AlterNet.

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