Must Read: The RW Deliberate, Coordinated Attempt to Feminize Liberal Leaders

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Sat Mar-10-07 01:05 PM
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Must Read: The RW Deliberate, Coordinated Attempt to Feminize Liberal Leaders

"Media Matters"; by Jamison Foser

The Coulter-Matthews-Dowd continuum

The Coulter-Matthews-Dowd continuum

All of which brings us to the first of two reasons why it is actually important that we don't ignore Ann Coulter.

If Coulter's seething hatred was hers alone, she might best be ignored. But that ugly and unthinking hatred isn't unique to Coulter.

Instead, Coulter's anger and venom are illustrative of the modern conservative movement. Her vitriol is embraced and rewarded by right-wing audiences far and wide. Her intellectual and rhetorical peers -- Michael Savage, Rush Limbaugh, and Glenn Beck, among others -- are, like Coulter, anything but "marginalized." They unleash vicious tirades against gays, women, minorities, and liberals -- and are paid handsomely for it. And they are paid not only in cash, but in respect: Vice President Dick Cheney, for example, sometimes seems to be auditioning to be Limbaugh's co-host, while President Bush opens the Oval Office to the likes of Neal Boortz and Sean Hannity.

Ann Coulter's bigotry and hostility, her public fantasies about violence against Democrats, progressives, and journalists -- and those of countless others like her -- demand more attention, not less. They illustrate the irrational anger that has long driven and sustained the conservative movement. (Those who insist on believing, against all available evidence, that the left is driven more by anger than the right would do well to remember that, during the 2000 Florida recount fiasco, it was the Republicans who rioted, not the Democrats.) But those who applaud Coulter can't win or hold power on their own -- there just aren't enough angry, hate-filled voters in the country. They need the support of more rational and reasonable people, many of whom would be appalled -- and no longer supportive -- if the media showed them the true nature of the extremists they support.

But the most interesting -- and important -- thing about Coulter's hate speech isn't that it is representative the of attitudes of her ideological fellow travelers.

It is the similarity between what Ann Coulter was trying to do by calling John Edwards a "faggot" and what countless "respectable" members of the "MSM" do every day.

Coulter's comments, of course, weren't about convincing people that John Edwards is gay. They were about trying to strip him of his masculinity, to feminize him -- and in doing so take advantage of the cultural stereotypes that equate strength with men and weakness with women to portray Edwards as "wussy" (her word).

The use of epithets like "faggot" to feminize and weaken seems largely self-evident, but for those who desire or require further discussion of this topic, bloggers such as Digby, Bob Somerby, and Andrew Sullivan have all made excellent points this week; excerpts of their work appear below. Glenn Greenwald, meanwhile, explained a corollary principle: "As critical as it is to them to feminize Democratic and liberal males (and to masculinize the women), even more important is to create false images of masculine power and strength around their authority figures."

Again: this is nothing new for Coulter. She has long made efforts to feminize those with whom she disagrees a cornerstone of her overheated rhetoric:

* On Al Gore: "seemed kind of gay."
* On Al Gore: "total fag."
* On Bill Clinton: "latent homosexual."
* On John Kerry: "Kerry claims he will stand up to powerful interests, but he can't even stand up to his wife. ... Kerry clearly has no experience dealing with problems of typical Americans since he is a cad and a gigolo living in the lap of other men's money. ... This low-born poseur with his threadbare pseudo-Brahmin family bought a political career with one rich woman's money, dumped her, and made off with another heiress to enable him to run for president. If Democrats want to talk about middle-class tax cuts, couldn't they nominate someone who hasn't been a poodle to rich women for the past 33 years?" <1/30/04>
* On John Edwards: "True, Edwards made more money than his father did. I assume strippers make more money than their alcoholic fathers who abandoned them did, too. ... Kerry picks a pretty-boy milquetoast as his running mate, narrowly edging out a puppy for the spot." <7/11/04>
* On John Edwards: "After Dick Cheney had beaten Edwards about the head for a while during the debate, Edwards waved his girlish hands and said: 'There are 60 countries who have members of al-Qaida in them. How many of those countries are we going to invade?'"
* "Fortunately for me, liberals not only argue like liberals, they also throw like girls. Liberals enjoy claiming they are intellectuals, thrilled to engage in a battle of wits." <4/17/05>
* On The New York Times: "Revenge of the queers."

But, as usual, Coulter's outbursts are most interesting for what they demonstrate about others. And Coulter's attempts to feminize progressives may be more vulgar than most, but that only makes them more obvious, not more harmful. Instead, it is likely that the frequent but (slightly) more subtle feminization of progressives by "mainstream" journalists has far greater impact than Coulter's uncontrolled braying.

Take, for example, the steady stream of journalist/pundit comments seizing on specious claims about Al Gore turning to a woman for instruction on how to be an "Alpha Male."

Or the full-court press by Fox News to convince the world that John Kerry -- unlike "most men" -- enjoys an occasional manicure.

Or the description of John Edwards as the "Breck Girl" -- a sneering, feminizing insult that first appeared attributed to an anonymous "Bush associate" in a 2003 New York Times article, but was quickly embraced by journalists and pundits who adopted it as their own.

much much more at:

http://mediamatters.org/items/200703100003