Amanda’s Denoument-Update
Lance on Feb 13 2007 at 5:30 am | Filed under: Culture, Domestic Politics, Lance's Page
Well, Amanda has left the Edwards campaign. As one would expect she is a clueless whiner about it:
…right wing shills don’t respect that a mere woman like me could be hired for my skills…
I guess somebody somewhere might have made a remark along those lines, but I didn’t hear it. Of course this goes to the heart of her real problem, which is not that she is anti-catholic, or anti-christian. That is just an outgrowth of a world view which views everything through the lens of patriarchal authority. Nothing she disagrees with can be viewed without patriarchy at its core, and a hateful, vengeful, violent patriarchy at that. It twists and distorts her ability to comprehend any motivation she does not share.
If you are opposed to abortion, you are a misogynist. Feel the Duke case was a tragic miscarriage of justice, with three young men being prosecuted for a crime they didn’t commit, you are a racist (being the second key part of her world view) and an apologist for rape.
as if he—a perfect stranger—should have a right to curtail my freedom of speech.
She is speaking of Bill Donahue, but if all it was was Bill Donahue she would have had no problem, the problem was everybody else. Nobody is curtailing her freedom of speech, talk about a childish view of this. She is free to speak all she wants. People were letting Edwards know it would affect their view of him. I suspect if she cares for his campaign at all, she should watch how she talks about others, and grow up a bit. People will remember he wanted to keep her (or so he claimed.)
Why? Because I’m a woman? Because I’m pro-choice? Because I’m not religious? All of the above, it seems.
More immature whining. Nobody objected to her on those grounds either. Even those who might have felt that way had much juicier targets than that.
Anyway, I suggest McQ and Dale for starters, and Michelle Malkin for a roundup of reactions.
I have something else I want to comment on about the last piece she wrote which got her in hot water. It is a review of the movie Children of Men, which Robby and I saw a week or so ago. The review is filtered through much of her typical “patriarchy is what everything is about” form of feminism. I want to point out a few subtle things which while hardly worth a fuss, tell us a lot about the kind of world view which many on the left seem to endorse:
The title loudly proclaims the movie to be about the Children of Men (very patriarchal sounding), but the one child in the movie is born to a woman who is dismissive of the idea that the identity of the father is even relevant. And it makes sense, actually, that if there hadn’t been a baby born on earth for an entire generation, the paramount importance of paternity would fade away and the obvious fact that maternity is more time-consuming and immediate would become undeniable.
This idea of men as as unimportant, even an oppressive force, in children’s lives disturbs me. The idea that the burden of women bearing children is somehow hidden by patriarchy is laughable. The hostility behind these remarks is palpable, and runs throughout the review, even though she avoids incendiary language.
Of course, then she makes the latest remarks which Catholics, and Christians in general, objected to:
The Christian version of the virgin birth is generally interpreted as super-patriarchal, where god is viewed as so powerful he can impregnate without befouling himself by touching a woman, and women are nothing but vessels. But this movie offers an alternative interpretation of the virgin birth—one where “virginity†is irrelevant and one where a woman’s stake in motherhood is fully respected for the sacrifice and hard work that it is.
Pogue designated me as the heathen on this site, so I will claim to be the unbiased one on this, but the idea that Christians view the virgin birth as a way for god to avoid befouling himself is rather unique. Once again, some theologian may have made some such claim, but the idea that it is generally interpreted that way is in the end a smear, and a vicious one at that, potty mouth or no potty mouth.
That still is not what really bothers me, it is this:
The movie is about what would happen to a world without hope, and the disturbing conclusion is that it wouldn’t be much different than the world we have now.
That is it in a nut shell. The depressing, collapsing, vicious, hopeless world of this movie isn’t much different than our own in this immature young woman’s mind. Maybe that is what the filmmaker was trying to get across, but whether he was or not, the ability to feel that the world portrayed in the film is not much different than the world she lives in is such a cramped, twisted view of reality that one knows there is no hope for Amanda. She lives in a hell of her own making, and many of the left seem to see our world in just those terms. Hence the apocalyptic rhetoric about us, not some outside force, but our own country, our own people. We are rape apologists, Bush is a fascist dictator, our soldiers are mercenaries to be judged by the metric of Abu Ghraib or Haditha. The patriarchal war machine is on the march.
Update: Heh, I like this from Steverino who left it as a comment at QandO:
“Bill Donohue and his calvacade of right wing shills don’t respect that a mere woman like me could be hired for my skills”
That’s just rich. It’s like a guy who shoots up a bar and then complains he’s being prosecuted because he’s a gun owner.
Technorati Tags: Amanda Marcotte, Pandagon, John Edwards, blogging, Children of Men, Bill Donahue
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Weird. I read the review via your link before moving on to your comments on it, and the part you bolded was the sentence that bugged me the most, too. One of the things this film does best is the moody atmosphere of subtle dread that (to me) strongly conveys how awful and different a world with no children would be. The scene in the abandoned elementary school was particularly powerful in that regard, carrying the suggestion of hundreds of thousands of school buildings rotting away all over the world.
However, I admit reflecting early in the film that a world without kids would have one major benefit–that we wouldn’t get all kinds of crappy laws shoved down our throats with the justification “FOR THE CHILDREN.” Yes, thinking that does make me a bad person.
One of the other things that impressed me about the film was that it was political but it didn’t seem to have a particular axe to grind. However, I suspect that many viewers were only too happy to bring their own axes. And that’s OK; we all do that to some degree. Marcotte’s axe-grinding is just a lot louder and more obvious than most.
And that’s not limited to the left! Check the note about the film at Libertas, and particularly the comments, for some old-fashioned right-wing axe grinding. Comment #16 is particularly awesome.
Edwards is shedding the softie,breck girl image though…here’s video proof:
http://minor-ripper.blogspot.com/2007/02/john-edwards-gets-tough-with-matt-lauer_08.html
[...] And a few more: Beltway Blogroll, The Politico, A Second Hand Conjecture, Jay Reding.com, The Navel of the Internet, Don Surber, BLACKFIVE, Sister Toldjah, Eunomia and Blue Crab Boulevard [...]
Minor Ripper,
Very funny.
[...] Lance notes the latest excretable, pathetic example of a lefty blogger confusing “your views are hateful and counterproductive” with “censorship.” At least Edwards fired the lady. [...]
Ok, my extremely belated take on this matter:
Amanda Marcotte is an anti-religion bigot. Plain and simple. Although she has chosen to use Catholicism as her particular punching bag, her disgusting rants can be equally applied to general Christian beliefs (Catholic, EO, Mormon and Protestant) as well as … Muslim beliefs! Remember, we also acknowledge the virgin birth, the miracles of Jesus (PBUH), and the holiness of his mother.
I suspect that as Catholicism is so organized and highly visible in society that it makes a much easier target than say Presbyterianism or Methodism. At the same time, her defenses of her positions are ludicrous and intellectually disingenous. She claims that she is a satirist and doesn’t truly mean to insult Catholics (and also insert Christians and Muslims here, too). I find that hard to believe, especially as that is the very defense that Michael Moore used to cover his Bowling For Columbine and Fahrenheit 9/11 flicks.
Satire requires that a writer walk a very fine line and extremely few people in history have demonstrated the balance necessary. Most satirists become mere ranting hacks like Marcotte and Moore and are deeply incensed when anyone questions their “art.” They want the best of both worlds, however, as they expect to be appreciated as satirists (and avoid the condemnation that would be in store for them if people took their words literally) and they also expect to be taken seriously enough to affect policy debate. Sorry, you can’t have it both ways. Honestly, satire as a form of political expression is best left alone as its pitfalls are many. A much more effective method of political expression would be actual dialogue, of the give and take sort.
Marcotte could simply have said, “Hey, I hate Catholicism,” and then listed her specific grievances. Heck, it worked for Martin Luther. Instead, she choose to use the foulest language possible, along with shallow caricatures of personalities and beliefs so that she could make herself feel better. Now that people are calling her on it, she has to take the greatest possible offense, because we have invaded her personal “comfort zone.” Her bigotry is the foundation of her beliefs and personality and the fact that those things are being challenged represents a direct psychological threat to her. Is it any wonder that she has taken to victimology and hurling blows left and right against all imagined oppressors?
Were she a mature, psychologically balanced person, she would acknowledge that her beliefs are biased and that her work is an accurate reflection of those beliefs, not simply poor satire. She should then have the courage to confront her challengers in an open, honest dialogue with her objections to their beliefs. That is how rational conversation occurs. Somehow, though, I just don’t see this happening.