Jane Hamsher is a pussy: Moderate Toughness in Leftblogistan

Late to the party I know, but Via Donna at Silence of our friends, I'm a bit perplexed by this constant attacking of Trex, I mean he's basically a wingnut, he crossed the line between sane and a fuckwit a long time ago, possibly earlier, his deep seated and kinda flagrant hatred of both women and cunts in particular is becoming kinda hard not to psycho-analyse, but I'll try tobe strong and get to what I really want to do: Go after Hamsher.

Jane Hamsher is a better target to focus our dislike of the consistently bigoted nature of FDL because A) she's a woman and therefore it'd be kinda funny if Trex suddenly switched on her for being sexist, and B) Trex is a fool, a buffoon. To pretend that his anti-woman, conservative and, say it with me, fucking-emotionally-retarded-pisspoor-idiotic-excuse-for-witless-wankerist language is even the beginning of his rank patheticness is to give him far too much fucking credit, he's a fucking centrist, and like all centrists the inherent and fundamental lack of intelligence begins to show over time. the only interesting thing to examine is the way soo many femme gay guys end up pulling this crap as though "hey! I'm femme, femme but manly! Cunt, slut whore! Deny that I'm manly, after all, I hate women!"

No being gay doesn't give you an endless credit line from teh bank of bigotry, no being a misogynistic fuck is not neccesary for you to prove you're "manly", whatever that is these days.

What makes me laugh about Jane Hamsher is that she seems to hold a sincere belief that there's something "strong" or radical about being an idiotic sister-fucking wombstain who can't think up ways of insulting mass murdering sociopathic assholes without resorting to racism, sexism, homophobia (oh sorry, I guess they don't be doing it that style at FDL, my bad) and other forms of bigoted intellectual laziness. One hting that has to be remembered in this is that The Issue regarding "language" is a misdirection, an intentional way to avoid dealing with the underlying thoughts and concepts being expressed through both the rank misuse of "cunt", and through the rationales and justifications for the objected language also. the key problem is, after the whole issue of misogyny is taken into account, that fundamentally there's the quality gap, because this sort of crap shows a rank unwillingness to actually spend any time adding depth or intelligence to their retoric, because everytime one of these blowups occur I want to just grab the offenders and shake them while explaining to them in a loud voice that, for those who don't know how to mock someone without resorting to assahollic wankery, we do this by mocking their Positions, you week old fuckstain of a human being you.

Now one of the underlying issues that the centrists who put forth such arguements generally are making some appeal to is the supposed gain that comes from such talk, with complaints about the use of such language being put forth as somehow inherently contrary to the purposes and goals of those complaining, the pie fight ad curfuffle is still pretty much the proto-typical example of the whole milieu of the "bigotry is Politically Beneficial/Correct" arguement because if it improved or advanced in some way then we'd be dealing with idiots who put some actual thought into what they do rather than copying and pasting stuff from cnn.com and adding "heh, indeed" or making long rambling posts set in egypt so that htey can flash their WATB privelage for all the world too see.

A lot of the rationals for this crap is an appeal to notions that not only is bigotry good, but that there is something inherently bad about giving a fuck about such bigotry - and with terms like "white liberal guilt" this is then racialised so that while an uppity POC complaining is bad (trex crossed a line in putting that arguement into type so blatantly - and hamsher and digby et al still tried to pretend that he didn't do anything wrong, the pus oozing little circle-jerking cowards), a white person making the same objections is of course the truest form of bigoted paternalism (even if the centrist is basically telling the minority they're wailing on to shut up because privilaged centrists know best).

Say hello to "that cunt" (a title she adopted no doubt due to her propensity to drip when she gets inflamed and excited) Amanda Marcotte's lovely little contribution to centrist retoric during the burkagate thing:

Third, "burqua-gate" is basically being conducted by two white women who've appointed themselves the spokesmen on behalf of Women Of Color

It's an interesting sentence, Amanda could have kept all her strawmen and bullshit hooked up barr this one and I'd have been happy because it's absolutely fucking fascinating.

Okay, let's start with the doublespeak accusation of paternalism.

Now there is a constant problem with white people talking and doing stuff that relates to non-whites, where white people presume to make themselves the great saviors of non-whites, and in the process proceed to try to "save" non-white peoples irregardless of how little actual help the non-white people being "saved" want or need. See the rationales and justification for the Afghnistan and Iraq wars for instance.

However, paternalism does, generally speaking, not take the form of agreeing with and then repeating POC's own arguements against the use of imagery that invokes the whole non-white women as damsel in distress who needs to be saved from those vicious brown thugs symbology concept for the purpose of mocking other white women, nor does it involve using a position of being more visible and read than POC due to both white privelage and raw luck to present that arguement to a wider audience (with full credit being given) that includes the person who is being criticised so that they'll actually bother to respond to the criticism this time.

And most notably you generally don't get thanked for paternalism, you more often generally need to erase and ignore all the criticism you're getting as result of your paternalism, because it's a hard and thankless job to be a paternalist, one that doesn't need to be done, but one you do anyway because you're just such a huge peice of smeared TP.

But of course the point is to make the act of being both white and willing to call other white people on their shit seem to be bad, using language that is ostensibly anti-racist AKA doublespeak.

The idea that being white and giving a fuck about other white peoples' (or whatever other privelaged group you belong to, het, male, whatever) asshollery towards non-white people is some how inherently wrong is the epitemy of the "Political Correctness", Kos and Hamsher shy away from Amanda's more sophisticated appeals to political correctness, because they're idiots, but none the less appeal to it.

The interesting thing is that the tact taken between hamsher and kos is almost identical, there is this appeal to the importance of being a bigoted asshole For Teh money Struggle, and so the reframing of criticism of this stupidity is of course put forth in terms of how unimportant or meaningless such criticism is, though again, taking the time to write about how unimportant complaining about this sort of bullshit shows that complaining about such complaints is itself quite important. God I hate it when it gets meta.

The quality issue also highlights the weird thing about all these things, the inital acts involved in the Bigotry Wars are of course generally off the cuff things, there hasn't been a lot of thought involved in such things, and that makes the subsequent disengeunous justifications and rationales so mindbogglingly fuckwitious in contrast, yes the fact that so many people on the left will reflexively resort to this crap is in and of itself interesting because of how deeply it appears that many strands of reactionary thought and propaganda has sunk into so many people unchecked, but that is as of nothing to the presumption of their own (self assessed of course) goodness and purity that is then presented in defense.

But the most notable mark of the privelaged is always their presumption that they are not in fact privelaged - it is a status that is only really visible from the outside, much like a wart on their ass would be. This is pretty much the underpinning of paternalism, like with Prof Jensen and other male feminists, they call themselves feminists and in so doing adopt this huge buddha that they are magically no longer privelaged. NO! If you're white, male, rich, ablebodied, cisgender, straight, you are privelaged, not being one thing does not make you better, privelage is like mass, you can no more get rid of your privelage by denouncing it than you could denounce your mass and fly to the moon, it is a fundamental aspect of who you are in relation to the society you live in.

Which happens to be horribly horribly bigoted by default.

And the freedom to be bigoted is of course the ultimate privelage of them all, it is the method by which all other privelages are supported, for without that central freedom of hate-speech and the extra-specially hidden right, granted as a side effect of someone else's oppression, to freedom from criticism, which is what the idiots who engage in this sort of stuff are really appealing to when they start waving banners of "freedom of speech" about.

"Suppress your speech so that mine may be free!" is the ultimate conservative's arguement, which has undertones of how much more deserving of freedom hate speech (coming as it always does from privelaged assholes) is compared to anti-hate speech, hence the talk of importance, and of the sudden talk of "toughness" from people who five minutes earlier had been rimming the DLC's etraneous assholes and telling anyone who criticises the democrats from outside the inner circle of A-List blog wankers to shut up and stop being mean to those poor ickle dems, who'll just fucking wilt if they're criticised at all.

If you want to not seem like a privelaged asshole, you have to not Act like one ffs, this is elementary stuff, we are not psychic, therefore we define ourselves in the eyes of others through our actions, to act like an asshole is all that is needed to BE an asshole, your history don't matter, your intentions don't matter, your "true" "intentions", what you "meant" i.e. the retconned, after the fact, rationalisation that you spew forth at your largely white/het/male/bigoted audience to assure them that they didn't have to worry about feeling uncomfortable hanging around you because HEY! You're not racist/bigoted/homophobic/sexist/a huge steaming turd blocking the U-bend of political thought, and you can tell as much because they can explain.

Because it's all just a misunderstanding on their critics part of course.

What also comes up is this fucking shock at people being offended by this stuff. To be demographically diverse for second, and because it's a fucking good example, NYOIL at Blac(k)ademic was shocked at the way calling really superficial PoC "fags" was some how deemed offense by a bunch of lesbians. It's just shocking how sensitive people who are being insulted are to being insulted these days isn't it?
It's utterly ridiculous, any time one of these things happens you barely even have to wait before the chorus of people being fucking surprised at how offensive people are finding their offensiveness, It's unbelievable really, that so many people are seriously asking us to sit here and say "Oh well, you just insulted us as people, but we forgive you because you were insulting us as people because you're too lazy to think up anything better in the process of making a cheap retorical point", agian the urge to grab them and shake them until they see sense rises up from the foul and turbulent depths of my nervous system nad threatens to turn me green and exceedingly shrill with rage.

But to get back to paternalism.

While Hamsher and Kos put forth views that are the simplistic kindergarten grade version of Amanda's more advanced paternalism, (because while you might say that she has a blind spot on cetain issues that require experiences of cultures outside her immediate life, she at least wasn't fucking cliche with it, so credit where credit is due) it's still paternalistic in nature, appeals to how much more knowledgable the bigot-monkey is of the importance of language within teh movement are all about "mother knows best"isms, implying that obviously those they've just kicked in the crotch don't really know what's best for them to quite the same degree as their magestic and malevolent benevolent pasty Knights in Shining Armor, Gentlemen Protectors and assorted liberal Missionaries looking out for the souls of the oppressed by trying to induct them into the pedophilia club that is the catholic church's priesthood.

Fundamentally it's all about show though, the point isn't to really try to save or protect anyone, nor to even actually advance the causes that matter to the oppressed that is being stomped on, the point is too look like you are in front of an audience of people who are not, in any sense of the word, members of the people who have just been stomped on, and thus do not either care/understand the fucked upness of the terms and language nad arguements being used, but do care about "feeling" like they're reading racist bullshit, because to be both insanely privelaged and also feel guilty about being privelaged is the most horrible thing that many centrists and liberals could ever imagine happening to them - hence talk about "white guilt", the problem is not that the guilt might be blinding someone to their own bigotry, the problem is that if one white person feels the guilt, then maybe other white people (i.e. me or you) might also have some grounds on which to feel justifiably guilty, and omg then we'd have to change our behavior and give up The Bigoted Language of Freedom™ (or something).

However, do not mistake this for some weird glitch in the nature of centrist behavior, this whole "moderate toughness" thing is rather central to the ideal of centrist theory, concerned as it is not with makeing the world better but rather with negotiating with the oppressive system so that is isn't quite so mean to them - it's vici by nature in other words, collaborationist by default - and as every conservative knows, once you start negotiating with something you give it a power over you, becuase negotiation is all about compromising, this is why conservatives demand that everyone negotiate with them while declaring themselves free from this same obligation because they, in a brief and inexplicalbe moment of sanity, do not actually want to compromise with other people, but do want them to compromise with them so that they can have their cake and masturbate within it also.

But what this means is that the centrist is first and foremost concerned with being accepted by conservatives, and hence bathes in their language and thoughts in an attempt to appeal expressly and solely to the conservatives, who by dint of being conservative hates the liberally already and doesn't care how many women they slut shame because conservatives actually seem to give a shit about policies and political positions (that's how you can tell the fundies from the cons, cons give a shit about stealing money from the mouths of poverty stricken babies and blowing up wogs, fundies merely like the idea of trying to ban all porn/booze/whores/homosexuals but secretly likes all those things so doesn't care if they're still legal after an attempt) and so hate liberals for their Politics, and their frankly spineless attempt to suck conservative assholes - because no one likes to talk to a person with shit on their breath.

The centrist doesn't care about progressives, about poc, women, homosexuals or anyone else because that's not their audience, they seriously think that bad blackfaced pictures of joe lieberman will cause conservatives to suddenly smite their collective foreheads and go "Oh fuck, yes, how did I miss that lieberman was a huge mass murdering wannabe-nazi asshole! It's all so clear now that I've seen a photoshopped picture of him in black face! And Wolf blitzer too! I've been so foolish, will those nice centrists ever forgive me my backward ways?"
And so the centrists write appropriately, writing for conservatives on liberal issues and then try to "appeal| to conservatives by pissing off liberals and progressives who actually give a shit about beating the conservatives, all to sooth the conservative ego by assuring them that being racist/misogynistic/homophobic stuff is cool and perfectly okay, hell! It's a constitutional right which Must be exercised in direct proportion to how many people tell you stop doing it and point out the many many many ways it is wrong to be spitting out fags and cunts all over the place like they're bad things.

They are, in short, delusional weirdos, indulging their insanity to the detriment of everyone who has to work with them because the conservative media has given them a status within conservative media. They then use that status to try to bully and suppress the free speech of anyone who disagrees with or criticises them for reason of truly liberal and progressive politics.

Though when they talk about "this is why the repugs are in charge..." I do tend to laugh, these bunch of shiftless, cowardly, self centered, money grubbing pharisees who would have been first in line to cue for nazi flags and swastika armbands back in nazi germany, and will hopefully will be second or third up against the wall when the revolution comes (so that they can savor the fear of seeing the slimy bastards who pay their checks being shot before their eyes and know that it'll be their turn next), enamored of their consumerist trinkets and exclusive wine bars and eternally proud of their sociopathic episodes, where it's all just about reaching the finishing line first at any cost (because such thinking always ends in good things happening, remember that bit in sound of music, near the end where julie andrews viciously tortures those inscrutable jewish children for the location of the nuke that the international jewish bankers had hidden beneath berlin? Wasn't that just lovely?) are telling other people how it's somebody else's fault that the repugs are in charge?! And they say conservatives don't get humor... you that wasn't intentional self-affacing satire? Oh.

If liberalism was a car, and I a mechanic, the point at which one of these guys (Hamsher can borrow my temporary penis for a mo), who lets face it, are the owners of our great car of liberalism, asked us why the damn thing didn't seem to actually work, would be the same point at which I flashed a mirror in their face, kissed my teeth and said "Now there's your problem see? You're a complete toolbag who keeps intentionally driving the damn thing into trees for shits and giggles."

And then I'd charge them $1000, because I could, mwahahaha!