It must be difficult to be a famous woman. If you don’t have children, you’re an old maid with shriveled ovaries who has forsaken your godly purpose. If you have children and don’t talk about them, you’re a cold parent who puts her career ahead of her offspring. If you’re like Nancy Pelosi, i.e. you have children and talk about them openly, you’re holding your previously occupied uterus above the heads of jealous menfolk as a sign of your superiority.
Yes, with the ascendance of Speaker Pelosi, uterine envy is at an all-time high. Take a recent editorial by Family Security Matters‘ Ben Shapiro, a Harvard Law School student who’s clearly worked overtime to overcome the many inherent disadvantages associated with having a dick.
His piece opens by trashing Speaker Pelosi for bringing her grandkids to the stage during her opening remarks to the 110th Congress:
The media would hammer any Republican congresswoman who dragged her grandchildren with her to work; it would rightly be considered a political ploy with children as props.
You have to hand it to the Republicans, they practically invented cheap political ploys involving children. Just ask Tom Reynolds, who, you may recall, surrounded himself with children in an attempt to block questions regarding the Foley scandal.
It makes sense Pelosi would follow suit. Her grandkids helped her avoid…. well, they made it easier for her to…. I mean, without them there no one would’ve… uh, assuming a “ploy” requires an objective, I guess I’m not sure what you could accuse Pelosi of trying to achieve, other than maybe a schmaltzy Hallmark moment.
Clearly, though, Shapiro believes sinister motives were at work, and the media was all too happy to fawn over her. While we’ll soon see how his obsession with Nancy Pelosi’s body is concentrated primarily in the pelvis, Shapiro gives us a head’s up that he’s thinking an awful lot about her breasts, too:
Nancy Pelosi, however, could breastfeed on the speaker’s podium and receive the plaudits of the mainstream media.
Yikes. Either Shapiro’s repressed maternal fetish has him uttering the creepiest of creepy phrases in print, or he’s incapable of imagining a woman performing anything but childcare duties (and whatever he may or may not have observed in his forays into internet porn).
The creepiness continues:
No woman in the history of politics has used her womb like Nancy Pelosi.
Sadly, far too many men have used their jackassery like Ben Shapiro.
Generous interpretation of his comment: No woman has so blatantly relied on her status as a parent to achieve political gain as Nancy Pelosi.
Problem with that interpretation: Though Shapiro’s tinfoil-hat uterine conspiracy theories may prevent him from acknowledging it, this is actually the first time an American woman has held an office this high. In other words, we have no other women with whom to compare Speaker Pelosi, and no moments like her opening remarks from which to draw reference.
Naturally, politicians of both sexes trot their kids out to every campaign stop and every acceptance speech. It’s practically a national tradition. Where’s Ben’s outrage over that?
Pelosi embraced her motherhood at the summit of her career, speaking of how the marble ceiling for women has been lifted. For hungry young male law students like Ben, that must’ve been a frustrating reminder that the other 50% of the population is now competing with them for future jobs.
That, and they can have kids, which he seems to pine over relentlessly:
According to Pelosi, the power of childbearing gives her extra-special abilities when it comes to recognizing national security threats.
When discussing the topic of national security, it’s helpful for a politician to remind her/his audiences that s/he has tons of experience as well as a strong personal interest in protecting America. For example, one might mention how one has a family of her/his own to protect as well as a decade and a half in intelligence oversight.
Here’s how those kinds of statements appear through the placenta-colored glasses of uterine envy:
When asked on CBS’s “60 Minutes” what qualified her for leadership on national security, she answered: “I, as a mother and a grandmother, 14 years on the intelligence committee. Don’t tell me I have any underestimation of what the threat is to our country.” Obviously, cleaning up spit-up prepared Pelosi to clean up terrorism.
When you hate someone so much for being able to have kids, it can be hard to grasp that you might mention your children for reasons other than taunting those of us with balls. Fortunately, it makes many men with balls feel better when they remind women that the babies they produce are gross and must be cleaned on a regular basis.
I love motherhood as much as the next fellow, but it has absolutely nothing to do with running the House of Representatives.
If the spittle comment wasn’t demeaning enough, wait ’til we reach the end of the article; you’ll see oodles of “love” for motherhood from Ben. In the meantime, I have to lament his prospects for future employment in the legal profession. While Speaker Pelosi often invokes her status as a mother _and_ an elected official, she has never even remotely implied one relies on the other. But seeing those two ideas presented together obviously confuses the poor chap.
To make his case clearer, he randomly invokes Shakespeare:
Lady Macbeth had a child (Act I, Scene 7), but she wouldn’t be my first choice to run a country.
Smartypants note: by letting us know he knows the act and scene, we’re supposed to get the sense he’s all literary and stuff. Please commence with your oohs and ahhs — I can wait.
Meanwhile, Ben continues with his deeply delusional belief that Speaker Pelosi somehow won something on the Uteral Ticket:
It is no less offensive for Pelosi to run based on her uterus than it would be for a man to campaign based on his working prostate.
Actually, if I had to assess Bush’s campaign in 2004, I’d say he spent the vast majority of the time trumpeting his working prostate. After all, isn’t that why we falsely manufacture wars in the first place, to prove what a big man we are?
When Nancy Pelosi uses her womanhood and motherhood as a gimmick, it insults both women and men. It insults women by stating that their special qualification for inclusion in politics springs from their genitalia. It insults men by stating that estrogen makes for superior political know-how. It insults children by making them pawns to be used for Nancy Pelosi’s political machinations. And it insults voters: only babbling idiots would buy such claptrap.
Not to nitpick, but, technically, only babbling idiots would ever assume:
1) Pelosi is actually using her “genitalia” to make any sort of a point.
2) Many, many men haven’t trotted their children out as set pieces whenever it suited them.
3) If male politicans thought that having their kids up at the podium with them would make them seem approachable, instead of being afraid it would emasculate them, they’d hesitate even slightly to do it.
And now, let us bask in Ben’s closing thoughts, his loving tribute to motherhood:
Politics is politics. It is not changing diapers, burping the baby or driving to soccer practice.
Neither is writing disingenous schlock on the internet. I don’t know about you, but I’d never trust a looney-tune like Ben with children or car keys.
In lieu of it being “DELURKING” week (or so I’ve heard, over in blog land) You are supposed to comment on blogs you read all the time but never say anything. I have never commented, so, I wanted to take the time and let you know even though I don’t, I READ you all the time, and LOVE THIS BLOG! so, um, thanks.
It is no less offensive for Pelosi to run based on her uterus than it would be for a man to campaign based on his working prostate.
WHAT THE FUCK?! Of course, it is Shapiro, so we shouldn’t be shocked, but one must ask, Benny, did you pay attention these past few years? Are you aware of Pelosi’s platform? Or were you too busy jerking it to hundreds of thousands of Iraqi deaths?
Politics is politics. It is not changing diapers, burping the baby or driving to soccer practice.
Hint to all women: You aren’t good enough. Stay at home and let the big boys murder indiscriminately and seriously fuck the world. It’s what we’re best at.
GAH! These people need to be taped to a chair and forced to hear their own inane drivel constantly a la A Clockwork Orange.
The sad thing is, Shapiro WILL probably get laid by a woman, sometime. This essay of his SHOULD ensure that no woman will EVER fuck him, EVER.
I mean, WHO would want to have sex with someone who hates them SO MUCH?
These guys are all hilarious. All they’ve got is “girls, bleach!”
But Ben’s is certainly the creepiest. Who applies that much lactating/childbearing imagery to a grandmother past childbearing age? She’d probably have to get an assistant to menstruate all over important legislation (thanks, Onion!) and find an orphan and a wetnurse if she really wants to get some breasfeeding action onto CSpan.
What really freaks them out is the idea that all of the “World’s Best Gramma” grandkid photomugs and finger-painted “I love you Grandma” office decor in the world isn’t going to stop her from kicking ass and taking names. I mean, come on, what’s the point of popping out five kids leading to God alone knows how many grandchildren if it doesn’t stop you from making political history? Aren’t grandmothers supposed to be cuddly and non-threatening?
Someone didn’t do their job keeping this bitch in line (Mr. Pelosi, I’m looking at you) and now all the chickenhawks are worried that Mom is here to spoil thier fun. Which she is, because someone has to step in before the kids at the White House set the whole planet on fire.
It insults women by stating that their special qualification for inclusion in politics springs from their genitalia.
As opposed to the thousands of men over the centuries who have said that their special qualification for being in politics was their penis. If you had a pair of ovaries that you weren’t going to be allowed to participate in Athenian democracy, Roman republicanism, the political hierarchy of the Catholic Church, etc., etc., etc.
Does Ben need a little brushing up on the history of who has had the vote in America?
Hey, did you know that Nancy Pelosi is a WOMAN? By the way, did I mention that she’s a WOMAN? We’ve all lost our manhood now that our leader is a woman. Even the women.
It insults women by stating that their special qualification for inclusion in politics springs from their genitalia.
Yeah, right. Thank goodness we taxpayers don’t pay for something like a huge phallic symbol in Washington, D.C.
As other blogs have stated it’s “Delurking Week,” I just wanted to say “Hi.” I never really comment, but I read this blog often and think it’s fantastic. So keep up the good work.
And? Shapiro is an ass. As someone else pointed out above, who gets to be in charge in politics has always been about genitalia. If it wasn’t, well, we certainly would have had a female Speaker of the House waaaaaaaaaaaaaay before 2007; not to mention that women would have been in positions of power from the beginning.
RE: The Lady MacBeth remark – No, I probably wouldn’t want her running my country either, but at least she saw blood on her hands and was haunted by/driven insane by eventual remorse for her misdeeds. You can’t say the same thing about BushCo.
Then again, I _really_ don’t want them running my country, either.
Wait…you mean motherhood ISN’T the most important job in the world?!
From his tone about actual childrearing you would think that maybe, just maybe conservatives don’t really think mothers are terribly valuable for anything other than unpaid janitorial labor.
Boy, it’s been a while since I saw a Shapiro column. Has he always been such an ass? It seems like he used to be more endearingly stupid then outright misogynistic.
“It insults women by stating that their special qualification for inclusion in politics springs from their genitalia.”
It always confuses me when a privileged white guy cuts down a prominent female/black/gay/whatever leader by saying “this person misrepresents and harms the people he/she is trying to represent, and that’s why I am opposed to him/her.” How exactly is an opionated advocate for a less powerful group a bad thing for anybody but people like Ben Shapiro? He’s trying to have it both ways, to say sexist things and put them in the guise of “I’m on your side, ladies” so he won’t get called on it. Any woman with a brain knows it isn’t the women he’s looking out for, it’s completely shameless.
I love motherhood as much as the next fellow, but it has absolutely nothing to do with running the House of Representatives.
Um, I don’t know. I think raising five kids makes you more qualified to deal with the brats that pass for congresspeople these days. Although I doubt there are many five year olds with the sense of entitlement displayed by some of our distinguished statespeople.
But, Congresswoman Pelosi, what do you expect us to do if lobbyists can’t buy us steak everyday……But, but we can’t actually work five days a week. It’s just so haaaard.
Wow.
If this is one of the best and brightest Harvard Law has to offer, then lobotomies must be considered the cheaper alternative to an Ivey League education.
Open question for Mr. Ben – did your mom not breast feed you, or did she just beat you with that bottle of Wild Turkey she always carried around?
Dammit. I wish someone had told me that before I racked up those student loans.
I’m nominating “placenta-colored glasses of uterine envy” for a Koufax.
I don’t know that I’d have chosen (Mr.) MacBeth to lead my country either; so I guess that rules out men as leaders, too.
Now that the MacBeth Theorem has ruled out women and men to serve as national leaders, what are we left with? Hmmm … How about … meerkats?
[...] has used her womb like Nancy Pelosi. … [Pelosi] could breastfeed on the speaker’s podium and receive the plaudits of the mainstream media.” (HT: Shakespeare’s Sister) 12:20 pm | Comment (0) [...]
Poor Ben — one can only imagine his horror at actually seeing a vagina once — in grainy black and white photo purloined from Daddy’s sock drawer. All hairy and scary and at once compelling and repulsive, this experience no doubt awakened the dual emotions of loathe/love that dwells in his tortured psyche even now.
We hold little hope that someday he may actually experience the warm embrace of the source of life and this may temper his fear and lead him to the understanding that there AREN’T sharp little teeth in there, waiting to CHEW and EAT his naughty, naughty little pecker, like mommy told him there were.
Shapiro said:
“Pelosi is ardently pro-abortion, pro-homosexuality, soft on crime, soft on drugs, soft on illegal immigration, anti-gun rights, anti-religion and anti-welfare reform. She wants to dramatically escalate taxes and doesn’t believe that we’re currently engaged in a war on Islamism.”
This guy goes to Harvard Law? I guess there’s no test for a perverted world-view on the LSAT. Or, perhaps I’m underestimating him, he did just string a litany of wedge issues (many of them outright lies) used to embolden the hard right.
Shapiro’s either a subscriber to hate-filled ideology or simply playing other subscribers like a harp. Perhaps both.
When the GOP started telling everybody to ‘be very afraid of Nancy Pelosi as Speaker!” (the robocalls I got before the election paired her up with Hillary as President) I wondered just who the hell on the right could be scared, actually scared, of Nancy Pelosi.
Well.
Now I know.
Pelosi? Hell she’s not even the hottest babe in Washington. It’s all about Condi “I like Guys, I really do” Rice, baby…
http://www.minor-ripper.blogspot.com
“Politics is politics. It is not changing diapers, burping the baby or driving to soccer practice.”
And the fact that he thinks that all that mothers do is disgusting. I don’t know about the rest of them, but this mother is responsible for paying the bills(balancing the budget), stopping arguments(diplomacy), as well as doctor visits, teacher conferences(being engaged in the governmental process). But since Republicans can’t do those things, it’s not surprising they don’t think other people do either.
Well, since it’s de-lurking week:
No woman in the history of politics has used her womb like Nancy Pelosi.
I didn’t realize that other women politicians were using Nancy Pelosi’s womb. Does she rent it out? Is she intending to use her womb instead of a gavel when presiding over the House? Is it where she’ll incubate legistlation?
I think Ben should do a little more in-depth research here.
Great blog, BTW.
You know, I’m surprised, but it seems like a lot of people here haven’t already heard of Ben Shapiro.
Shapiro used to be one of the favored punching bags over at World o’ Crap and TBOGG, he rose to national prominence not just by being an idiot, but by being an idiot who was extremely self-righteous about being a virgin.
He also wrote a book about how all the other kids are a bunch of sexed up maniacs with the boozing and the pill popping and the pornography and the lesbianism and the threesomes and the hoyay.
After all that time in the Junior Anti-sex League, I suppose he’s developed some kind of weird complex.
Go on then, as it’s delurking week…
What I think is most offensive is Shapiro’s equating motherhood with the uterus, as if motherhood was just about popping out a few sprogs, not about raising, caring for, educating, cleaning up after, etc. etc. a number of fellow human beings.
[...] This is a fisking! [...]
So the Chief Justice was making a political prostate-ment by bringing his kids to his swearing-in ceremony? And what’s with this “working prostate” shit? Doesn’t anybody care about all the unemployed prostates out there?
What a mysogonist, anti-family values rant. What women isn’t proud of family and grandchildren. Maybe your mother?
Sugar and spice and everything nice, too…
I couldn’t resist. Shakespeare’s Sister has a satirical post on the female reproductive tract as a source of gay rays, and evolgen chimes in, noting the similarity of her diagram to the nematode vulva (it’s true—if mammalian vulvas are……
[...] I couldn’t resist. Shakespeare’s Sister has a satirical post on the female reproductive tract as a source of gay rays, and evolgen chimes in, noting the similarity of her diagram to the nematode vulva (it’s true—if mammalian vulvas are radiating gayness, nematodes are even more common; Ben Shapiro is probably crawling with hermaphroditic nematodes, all oozing sexual ambiguity all over him). So I had to repost my summary of the evolution of the mammalian vagina, and I want you to look at the diagram of Hox gene expression in the female reproductive tract. It’s like a rainbow! Admittedly, there are no disco balls, pink triangles, or floating Melissa Etheridge CDs, but this is research that has only just begun—as we get more details, we’ll have to sprinkle more symbols in there, and I think Shake’s ideas are excellent suggestions. [...]
Shapiro has balls?
A Brief Callback…
This post on PunkAssBlog (by way of Pharyngula) touches on a phenomenon I noted way back in my first ever blog post. A week ago.
Is the spite directed at Speaker Pelosi really just an expression of femiphobia? Or just mainly? It certainly doesn’t…
[...] Via Punkass marc: It must be difficult to be a famous woman. If you don’t have children, you’re an old maid with shriveled ovaries who has forsaken your godly purpose. If you have children and don’t talk about them, you’re a cold parent who puts her career ahead of her offspring. If you’re like Nancy Pelosi, i.e. you have children and talk about them openly, you’re holding your previously occupied uterus above the heads of jealous menfolk as a sign of your superiority. [...]
Y’know, I thought about going to see that screed in the original, but I doubt it would be as funny.
Am I too late to the party to comment that when it comes to manipulating kids for political advantage, the GOP has the corner?
In fact, they have the whole block. As in blocking stem-cell research, the single presidential veto event.
Happy delurking and all that.
You sexist prick.
What is it about independent, intelligent, capable women that scares you right wing losers?
“His piece opens by trashing Speaker Pelosi for bringing her grandkids to the stage during her opening remarks to the 110th Congress:”
He didn’t trash Pelosi at all. He pointed out that if a conservative woman had done the same thing, the libtard hacks would have been out en masse to try to throw their crap at her from between the bars of their cages.
(BTW, don’t tell them they’re in cages. They’re so screwed up they think the rest of the world is in a cage and they’re the ones who are free. If you try to tell them otherwise, they can’t handle it and keel over. Poor things.)
Zombie thread! Brains!