Rogue Rage: Bees of the Queen and Bumble Varieties

Rogue Rage Week is drawing to a close. I think I can speak for us all when I say thanks be to merciful God for that.

We’ve seen Palin’s effect on the lumpenproletariat —an unwarrantedly intense loyalty that quickly turns to into over-the-top feelings of betrayed rage when the Frozen Cheesecake Goddess fails to live up to expectations.

And now for two views from the upper crust: In the clip below, domestic diva Martha Stewart weighs in first, stating in a succinct (if possibly boozy—Cristal with Fresh Berry Purée?) fashion why she views Palin as both a bore and a dangerous person.

Then Lady Lynn Forester de Rothschild, who was an endless source of amusement during the primaries, unclenches her patrician lockjaw long enough to pass her verdict (LLFdR also appears somewhat impaired, only in her case, I suspect Xanax or Klonopin rather than Martha’s Cristal—watch how she alarms the poor Fox lady by putting a death-grip on her arm on at the .50 mark):

Of course, there’s no good reason to give a shit what either one of them thinks—apart from the entertainment value it presents.  But The New Agenda’s shrilling Mary Kay Lady finds succor in her close personal friend Lady Lynn’s reemergence and that of her other close personal friend, Carly Fiorina. She uses their joint appearance on Fox as an occasion to wax nostalgic:

It’s instructive and actually exhilarating to look back at it all [the 2008 primaries] now. Yes it was devastating and horrifying to watch in disbelief as the sexism and misogyny flowed forth unchallenged by the party that was supposed to support women, and by the very women’s groups we had entrusted with protecting us from this nonsense.

This last part is an oft-repeated New Agenda lie: NOW and other women’s organizations did support Clinton and publicly denounced the sexist treatment of both Clinton and Palin, as did many Democrats and assorted lefty blogs. Including Obama-supporting blogs.

I guess Siskind and Ruccia believe if they repeat that lie often enough, it will be accepted as truth. And judging from the Bush administration’s success with that tactic, it’s not such a crazy idea.

Anyway, Ruccia continues with another frequently repeated delusion—that her obscure group of dead-enders has somehow single-handedly orchestrated a sea-change:

But it was awesome to see us come out of the woodwork, find our voices, and change the national conversation. The New Agenda has been at the lead of this dialogue. When we came together on August 11, 2008 we knew we had to be a game changer.  The fight for women’s rights and equality required a new chapter to be written.  We first needed to start calling out the media for its ugly sexism.  We also needed to find a way to bring all of us together and stop the tactics that have been used to divide us.  We started to talk about most of the women, voting for most of the women, most of the time as a way to regain our powerful voices. 

You know how sometimes when you learn the definition of a word you were previously unaware of or find out about a product you didn’t know about before, you suddenly seem to hear about it and see it everywhere, even though it was there all along?  Most of us who haven’t crawled up our own assholes and died realize that this is an illusion—the only thing that’s really changed is our perception.

The more rational of us know that our awareness hasn’t resulted in a heightened awareness throughout the universe. Just as the sudden discovery of sexism by a Mary Kay lady and former trader in distressed assets in 2008 hasn’t “changed the national conversation.” But try telling them that.

And as for “bringing us all together,” The New Agenda’s method entails putting reproductive rights aside as an issue. At least, that’s the method when it’s convenient to advance their overarching narrative, which appears to be this: “Obama + Women Who Support Obama = Evil” and its corollary equation: “Women Who Oppose Obama = Good.”

When choice can be used as a rationale for denouncing Obama or anyone who opposed Clinton in the primaries, they frame it as The Most Important Issue on Earth. But when promoting anti-choice loons like Bachmann or Palin, The New Agenda is all “choice-schmoice.”

The Mary Kay Lady closes with this bromide from the ur-Mary Kay Lady herself:

My mentor, Mary Kay, made the bumble bee a very special symbol for us.  She always said that women were like the bumblebee—–aerodynamically the bee shouldn’t be able to fly because its wings are much too small for its body mass.  But the bee goes right ahead and flies anyway.  And so it is with women.  We are constantly being told what we can’t do, and we go ahead and do it anyway.

Of course, no one has really believed bumble bees fly around in flagrant violation of the law of gravity for ages—it’s based on a thoroughly outmoded understanding of aerodynamics. But it’s fitting that Ruccia and her group would adopt this bit of myth-making, preserved as they are like bees in amber, as if every day were August 11, 2008.

Posted by Betty Cracker on 11/23/09 at 10:07 AM • Permalink

Sorry, commenting is closed for this post.