Firedoglake eats shit, fucks the dead, and misses the point entirely
Published by punkass marc November 30th, 2006 in Shame on you for being a womanFiredoglake, home of unapologetic purveyors of blackface, friend to mysogynist self-righteousness, continues to mis-step.
Pachacutec @ FDL likes to soak in sexist asshattery. Zuzu made a clear and simple case for why it’s not okay to paint Congresswomen as knob-slobbering whores:
And, seriously, how can you sit there and be shocked, shocked, that people you don’t agree with are attacking Nancy Pelosi for her femaleness and not realize that you’re contributing to the problem by portraying a United States Congresswoman as a cumguzzling two-dollar whore? By whining that women are too sensitive because they complain when you call a media figure a cunt?
Similarly, TRex @ FDL thinks “cunt” is a cool insult. As linked here previously, Piny dismantled TRex’s claim that the use of “cunt” was a reclamation project:
Like I said: in order to even pretend to reclaim a word, you have to use it differently. You cannot use it as it has traditionally been used. If you do, you are not attacking but supporting the hateful ideas implicit in the original. I know it sounds straightforward, but a lot of people get confused.
In both cases, FDL’s offenses are obvious. The Feministe critiques are straightforward. There’s really no wiggle room on this one. So what’s the official FDL response?
Would you believe a celebration of FDL’s gutsiness by the blackface promoter herself, Jane Hamsher?
She pats her site on the back as cutting-edge artistic commentary:
We are, first and foremost, writers (and artists) here on this site, and I will not impose limitations on how people can express themselves here. We test the edges of communication, and in doing so often get perilously close to the edge and occasionally step over. It’s what makes us exciting, challenging and interesting, in the tradition of Lenny Bruce or Hunter S. Thompson.
Norbizness cuts this idea off at the knees:
Language in selected FDL posts : Lenny Bruce :: Gallagher watermelon smashing : nuclear physics.
Calling someone a cunt isn’t interesting or challenging. It’s only exciting because sometimes hate speech can give you a real rush. Unfortunately, Jane doesn’t see the hate speech. She thinks everyone’s mad because of the use of “strong language:”
But the fact is that the right owned the public discourse for decades by using hot language that shot straight through the limbic system and engaged people in a primal way while the left wrapped itself in dry wonkery. Our use of strong language is concerted and, I believe, effective.
[deep breath] shitfuckassdamnhellcockcuntjizzpissturdbitchdicksuckermotherfuckertwatschlongwankspoogedirtysanchezFART.
So. What.
None of those words are actually shocking in this day and age. I’m sure there are concerted, effective ways to use some or all of them. Here at punkassblog, we curse a blue streak and don’t apologize for it, either. It’s what was conveyed on FDL with the language that stinks; TRex and/or Pachacutec could’ve been far more polite and just as sexist. Most of us would’ve been just as mad. I’m a tad shocked that Jane can’t see this… until I remember she was mystified that blackface photos would be deemed insensitive, too.
In case Jane needs more help, let’s spell it out: If you use “cunt” as an insult, you’re plainly stating that equivocation with female genitalia is a bad thing. That notion is the problem, not the idea that someone would have the nerve to say “cunt” in the blogosphere. Puh-leeze.
Not to burst Jane’s bubble, but this isn’t 1982. Public use of dirty language isn’t edgy anymore. Of course, being an apologist for sexism is pretty commonplace, too.
I’m sure Lenny Bruce would be proud.
26 Responses to “Firedoglake eats shit, fucks the dead, and misses the point entirely”
- 1 Trackback on Dec 4th, 2006 at 4:54 pm
A-fucking-men. Hell, half the fucking reason that my retort to Jane in comments had some goddamn resonance is because I curse like a fucking sailor and they know it. If it were just the fucking language, it wouldn’t fucking bother me.
People are actually arguing Fundamental Attribution Error on this shit over at Feministe. WTF?!
TRex seems to have acted as some sort of catalyst to bring out other stuff in the other posters. Don’t know why. As a gay man (along with Pachutec) in an intolerant society, it surprises me he thinks he can say nasty misogynist things and no one will notice…
However, I really like Christy Hardin Smith’s posts and it hurts to see her fellow posters have issues. Christy is likable, has an interesting viewpoint on many subjects, and knows the legal stuff hands down. I just wish she was on another blog, like LGM, or Digby, or Glenn Greenwald…
I thought I was defending them with that analogy, because I LOVE GALLAGHER.
I think TRex is male, and that makes this whole thing look like that situation in Clerks 2 where Randal tries to reclaim the racist term “porchmonkey” despite the fact that he’s white, and everybody is horrified / makes fun of him.
I’m looking forward to posting on this as soon as Ezra-time begins.
Like I said: in order to even pretend to reclaim a word, you have to use it differently. You cannot use it as it has traditionally been used. If you do, you are not attacking but supporting the hateful ideas implicit in the original. I know it sounds straightforward, but a lot of people get confused.
‘Xactly, when I call my cunt a cunt, it’s reclamation because cunt as a word makes me think of something meaty and delicious, and not something nasty and disgusting that would own a sweatshop or invent cigarrettes or anything.
The funny thing is that I think that may apply to POC who call other POC “nigger” as an insult, because it changes the dynamic of the word from when it’s used just as a sort of general “hey!” sort of acknowledgement of friends thing.
But the fact is that the right owned the public discourse for decades by using hot language that shot straight through the limbic system and engaged people in a primal way while the left wrapped itself in dry wonkery. Our use of strong language is concerted and, I believe, effective.
NO you fucking halfwit! Resorting to bullshit retoric, using symbology that gains us absolutely nothing, lacks even the barest hint of humor or wit, and then goes onto alienate and offend our actual allies isn’t even something I should have to, again, point out is a not good thing, because it’s kinda too obvious really.
Show me the gain asshole, show me actual evidence of actual benefit arising from using the word cunt as an insult when your audience is entirely made up of pasty white middle class goombas.
You just want to grab and shake her.
I think TRex is male
Trex is under the bizarre misaprehension that his homosexuality actually allows him to say anything he wants without it being offensive - cuz in the great game of oppressive rock paper scissors, he deserves the privelage of being a huge assbag for no sane reason other than because he wants to be ann assbag and hates vaginas.
Has either of them started explaining their stuff, you know, with all sorts of talk about how obviously their critics just didn’t understand what they meant, and how their intentions were good, and they’re sorry but once you understand what they meant, you realise there’s nothing for them to really apologise for because they are Teh Win, and liberal and good and pure and sunlight actually does shine out of their ass etc…etc…
I hate to be preachy (well…sometimes I do), but is there a chance for consistency here? Or shall I just go back to poking the pet MRAs?
When I realize I fucked up, I apologize. In fact, I’ve built whole arguments on the idea that I am flawed and inherently prejudiced. I have no qualms about rolling over when I find truth in critique of me. If I don’t, then I don’t. If that were to prevent someone from being able to offer critique, then I suspect almost every single person would have to clam up.
And if anyone’s got any bright ideas about reopening any previous critiques on previous topics, go to those posts. Don’t do it here, please.
TRex “outed” himself (blog-wise) on FDL 9-12 months ago when he appeared in an MSM article under his real name (I think is was the WSJ, but I’m can’t remember for sure). I’m sure the FDL archives have this reference (I don’t have the time to look it up). But it doesn’t really matter…
I’m just disappointed because there are things about him I like, and I have enjoyed some of his posts. (He has also posted on Shakespeare’s Sister, as as his twin brother Patrick, but those were less memorable.)
I just figure someone who’s experienced unreasoning discrimination for being gay (although he’s also a white American) would be more understanding of the power of words to hurt.
Oh well…
Mike - Had to remove your second comment to avoid inflaming things again. Sorry, man.
Okay, no prob. But I did mean what I said…
And if anyone’s got any bright ideas about reopening any previous critiques on previous topics, go to those posts. Don’t do it here, please.
But the snark was just begging for me to use it! It was my overactive female glands, I couldn’t help myself…
I just figure someone who’s experienced unreasoning discrimination for being gay (although he’s also a white American) would be more understanding of the power of words to hurt.
Have you read “maus”? It’s a kick ass comic that documents the artist’s attempts to get his father to tell him what it was like in the nazi death camps.
Anyway, there’s this intersting bit where the son, his girlfriend and the father are coming back from grocery shopping and this black guy hitchs a lift with them. After the car lets the black guy out the father starts freaking, because he’s worried that the black guy would obviously have stolen something from the bags of shopping on the backseats because the father knows that all black people are thieving criminals, and the son is completely perplexed by this outrageous show of bigotry from his concentration camp surviving dad.
Just because someone is oppressed, doesn’t mean they’re not human enough to be prone to dumping on other oppressed people - that’s sort of how the system works, it makes advancement within oppressive society incumbent upon the oppressed shitting on other oppressed, hence every homosexual politician being staunchly homophobic republicans (or is it that every republican politician is a staunchly homophobic homosexual? It’s a bit like the chicken and the egg question really), and black repugs can’t find any isssue more serious to talk about aside from the immorality of the gay black man (and their anal sex loving lesbian friends with their bleeding assholes of sapphic lurvin) who are being immoral and holding back the entirety of the african american demographic from
voting repugfreedom!They’re capos basically, uncle toms without any qualms about taking the whip to the other slaves.
R. Mildred, I’ve always heard Maus was really good. I got to see Auschwitz I & Auschwitz II (Birkenau) while on vacation this summer and they really made an impression. Really creepy places. Reading Maus might help me get more out of the experience…
In TRex’s case, he’s a young man, raised in the South (Georgia?), well educated, and should be very aware of many forms of bigotry from his own experience. I have found that many younger people (I’m 46…) tend to be more color-blind and less conscious of racial issues, as well as less sexist, etc., especially when they have more education and experience.
I hope some of these criticisms get through to him and help him develop a better and more tolerant understanding of the world. I’d hate to see a young man (I believe he’s in his twenties) go astray…
The only good thing about this is that the progressive/liberal end of the blogosphere has finally begun to pile upon this sort of thing (whether it happens at FDL or not) before the wingnuts get a chance to gloat. This is the first FDL racist/sexist controversy in which they have not seen fit to use to further their own twisted agenda, perhaps because the election is over, but still it is a relief to see that people are willing to take on the FDL bullies (and they really are, in the most accurate sense of the word). I mean even Wolcott had to link to Pachacutec’s post, refereincing it as an outburst of projectile vomiting!
Maus is more than good. It is fucking great, absolutely brilliant in every way imaginable.
I’m really sick and tired of people trying to excuse their sexist/racist/homophobic/assholish bullshit as “cutting-edge commentary.” Yeah, calling a woman a cunt, that’s some cutting-edge, never-before-heard-of-shit. Whatthefuckever.
RM - I’m a tad confused by this:
I think I get what you’re saying here, but there’s something that I can’t put my finger on that’s rubbing me the wrong way.
But hey, I was also annoyed that Piny didn’t use the word “nigger” in her post. I think I understand why she didn’t, but it still annoyed me. Again, I can’t put my finger to it.
So color me confused and trying to figure all of this shit out.
I think I get what you’re saying here, but there’s something that I can’t put my finger on that’s rubbing me the wrong way.
That’d be the People of Paleness telling POC what to do aspect of it I’d think, also the association such talk has with all those stormfronters going on about how it’s so unfair that white people can’t say nigger while poc can, and Oh! the injustice of it all…
And that’s before I get into the fact I’ve never heard any POC in real life use nigger in that sense.
The reasons for keeping that little thing schtum until I found a good evidence that it’s something that needs addressing are many, and reasons for letting it slip few and far between.
And it’s OT, jsut for the hell of it all.
R. Mildred - Ahhh. I get it now. You’ll forgive my inability to read sarcasm sometimes, no?
You’re right. This is way OT. So I will cease to derail.
Mike Ess… TWrecks is 38 years old a bit past the appropriate age for juvenile “punk rock” outbursts doncha think? I used to love fdl now, not so much. To put it plainly, Mean People Suck. FDL is no longer on my blogroll.
HopeSpringsATurtle, I didn’t think he was that old…
In any case, you’re right, and it’s about time he take responsibility for his words…
I did a search on his real name (to see if I could quickly verify his age) and was reminded that he had some interesting things to say to Jurassic Pork that didn’t come off too nice…
You know, I linked over to FDL when I started just reading blogs, got it from somewhere. I was put off then by them yet couldn’t really pinpoint why, I just didn’t like their tone or their style, or something.
Since the last couple of months I’m thinking that the intutition I’ve worked on for years to sense when mysoginy is in the air went off and I turned away without giving it a second thought. Glad to know that I’m finally learning to stay out of the goddamned mine field. For me, as a woman, that is exactly how it feels when stumbling upon such offensive trash as that piece on the congresswoman.
I have met a million jerks like T-rek or whatever he calls himself, but Jane Hamsher? When I see a supposedly intelligent woman so drunk with stupidity I am truly stumped.
That’d be the People of Paleness telling POC what to do aspect of it I’d think, also the association such talk has with all those stormfronters going on about how it’s so unfair that white people can’t say nigger while poc can, and Oh! the injustice of it all…
And that’s before I get into the fact I’ve never heard any POC in real life use nigger in that sense.
Do you mean that you seemed to be doing that or that I seemed to be doing that?
But hey, I was also annoyed that Piny didn’t use the word “nigger” in her post. I think I understand why she didn’t, but it still annoyed me. Again, I can’t put my finger to it.
(I’m a boy. Which adds a whole ‘nother dimension to the whole c-word thing.)
There’s a whole discussion around how these words should work in discussions about language, and whether off-limits is not as individuated as reclamatory. I just figured I’d do what I normally do and stick with the specific issue I was tackling right then.
Okay, I know this is OT, but will you guys please READ Uncle Tom’s Cabin?
Uncle Tom is a saintly, jeebus-like figure. It is preposterous that calling someone an “Uncle Tom” is an insult. By no stretch of even an insane man’s imagination, would Uncle Tom whip another slave.
Get your Literary Referents right!! Or suffer the wrath of a 45 year old has-been!
For real. Go “Simon Legree Wannabee”.
Do you mean that you seemed to be doing that or that I seemed to be doing that?
Me of course.
Me of course.
It wouldn’t have been out of order either way; I failed to acknowledge the position of the speaker as an important variable, and therefore created a unilateral standard for interpretation. I did that only because it felt like a huge red herring in context, and I didn’t want to give anyone the chance to jump on it. It wouldn’t have been a good idea were I dealing with something broader than “reclamation.”