An American Artemis For Hillbuzz

Half-Artemissed

O Great Grisly Mama of the Frozen North, Our American Artemis, your followers cry out to you for nourishment, yet none will you give them save the words "my plan," on which they suck even down to the last crumb, for from within to draw the nugatory virtue.

 We venerate thee, Fecund One, who appeareth now here, now there, wherever the light shineth on someone else, for though the voices of our tribe now raise up against thee, we will never falter in our devotion, no matter how embarrassing. 

Just ask Hillary.

Brought to you as always by Mrs. Polly of Snarkopolitan, the Undead Blog, with apologies to her conservative pals~~hey look, guys, you knew I couldn't keep pulling my punches forever!

Hillbuzz: Absolutely Fatuous

Why are Pats and Palin depicted in front of the White House? Because they've an equal chance of getting into it, darling.

Pointlessly prolific Harvey Bilk of Shillbuzz loves reruns, and "Class V Crass" is a perennial fave at Harvey's Emporium of Warmed-Over Wingnuttery. It's unsurprising, since his audience demands quantity, not quality, that he should turn to some well-worn classics again and again.

The Lord of the Flies at Shillbuzz uses the series to contrast First Spouse Michelle Obama (no "Lady" for Michelle; rather than call her that, he'll just eschew the term completely!) with First Spouses he prefers, including poor First Drinker Mamie Eisenhower, and, hilariously, LOU HOOVER, much admired for her patience in having to live with the clueless Herbert, who lent his name to so many small cardboard towns during the Great Depression.

Now Shillbuzz has a poll on which First Spouse to slam Michelle with next, as well as the newest installment, which depicts Alaska's Half-First Dude (or is it First Half-Dude? One never is sure about courtesy titles for quitters' spouses) with, of course, Baby Trig, whom he is carefully trying to keep out of the media spotlight, as a caring parent would, you know.

Todd, incidentally, may also bear the honor of being America's first Ominous Shadow Half-Governor, in which case Sarah might just be her own Half First Spouse, or First Half---oh hell, you get the picture. Now that's Mavericky. Anyway, wouldn't having a First Spouse under investigation be exciting! And it doesn't matter which Palin, because both of them have been investigated and found guilty!

While lacking the resources of Shillbuzz's Mystery Photoshopper--and in particular the Photoshop, we* have endeavored to provide just a little of that sort of edgy fun for Snarkopolitan's fives of readers. And doesn't Harvey's beloved Sarah deserve to be compared with the best? So here she is, rocking the same 'do in her retro-ironic way years before Sarah ever picked up the Aqua-Net. Both gals are utilizing their second-favorite props, sporting designer apparel of dubious provenance, and blowing smoke. The difference is that in Pats' case, you know the worst it could be is weed.

Sure, the Class V Crass series seems shallow, pissy, the sort of thing someone does who is seriously underemployed and possessing of a damaged psyche which can only feel good by projecting its self-hatred outward onto an undeserving hate-object. But how can we understand the worldview of one of the globe's formost purveyors of curdled inanity without venturing into his world and trying to see it as he sees it, through his shining little beady rodent eyes?

*brought to you by Snarkopolitan, the undead blog, and written in the baffling third person à la Shillbuzz, even though we are in fact only one person and only able to bring you intermittent installments on Shillbuzz's exhaustive supply of foolishness, since, unlike a certain "special events planner," we have a job!

Lady Lynn Forester de Rothschild, Thank Heaven The New Agenda Will Speak For You!

A kiss on the hand may be quite continental, but hardhats are a noblewoman-by-marriage's best friend
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Oh hell's bells, just consider this a visual supplement to Betty Cracker's wonderful post.

Just like poor old neglected Snarkopolitan, Betty Cracker's blog looked like Coney Island in January, before it was also jolted into life by a dimwitted neoMcCarthyite schlub who thought she'd be a convenient target, and easily intimidated. And once again, he was predictably wrong.

Now, the dimwitted neoMcCarthyite's chum, Elizabeth Cady Siskind, Voice of All Women Mostly,
is holding a "tribute" to noted Fox populist Lady Lynn Deforester, who deplores elitism unless it's a decrepit acquired-by-marriage title accompanied by an ancient pile in the very best part of London. This would be only half as laughable as it is if it weren't that Lady Lynne holds onto her tatty honorific even as Charlton Heston held onto his last gun, all the while condemning the President, who grew up fatherless and only recently finished paying off his college loans, as an elitist.

But as Betty points out, the New Agenda's pose as "Voice For All Women," is certainly belied by the behavior of its one-and-only visible representative, a woman who is not averse to a few dirty tricks,

Here's a Siskind quote Betty pulled out, which I have decorated to lighten the burden of realizing that women as puerile, snide, and just plain childish as Amy Siskind could have a rolodex full of lazy producers who accept them on short notice as viable mouthpieces for women's rights, and living rooms large enough to hold a half-dozen "prominent" dilettentes whose pretentions are enough to impress fools into parting with their money.

Behold Amy at work, answering an unfortunate who made the mistake of asking an honest question:




brought to you by Snarkopolitan, the undead blog, cataloging just some of the dishonesty and dirt, because we are only one person, and we work, but not on Wall Street!

Amy Siskind of the New Agenda: Safety for Women (unless they disagree with ME!)

Welcome to day eight, I believe it is, of Snarkopolitan's unexpected revival in the face of an insane little man's decision to urge his barking mad readers to play bloodhound and "out" me, doing their best to publish my real name and actual address on the web. This although I have never done anything to him, most especially never "outed" him, or anybody.

That being the case, I have decided, at great personal risk, to publish his picture, that his physiognomy be available for study to other innocent people.

Proprietor of Shillbuzz with Exhibit A
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It seems he is having a continual party over there at his place in the form of a witchhunt/blegathon (that's a blog begging for money, for those of you who are not aware of all internet--Hi Mom!--traditions).


What is the shortest day in the year? The day between Harvey Bilk's last fundraiser and his next one.
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I got my own graphic and gory tabloid front-page treatment full of fervid, ludicrous speculation that would have made Jonathan Swift pinch himself: was I funded directly by the DNC? Who ran me? How was I connected to an assortment of other hapless innocents? How were they connected to everything? Shillbuzz even ran a chart of the web of lack of connectedness that seemed to have been drawn by the Underpants Gnomes from South Park; at the heart, where the connectivity should go, it is just "?????????" It looks like it was drawn by somebody who had no idea that when you connect the dots, you're supposed to end up with a picture. Because it was:


A taste of crazy cocktail courtesy Shillbuzz's Moonbat Mixologist
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Since, in their eagerness to hunt me, these ninnies have posted names of people in my apartment complex (and married me to one of them, because there are only 6000 people in my complex, and they knew the names of two!),I am not comfortable linking to great rattling nutjob Harvey Bilk's Emporium of McCarthyism and Dubious Fashion Criticism, Shillbuzz. If you desire to see this lunacy for yourself, you can just put poor old neglected Snarkopolitan into a search engine. What comes up is entirely astonishing considering:

1. that this blog was moribund, stagnant, que pasa nada mas, in the weeds, bereft of life, inert, and, what really distinguished it from Shillbuzz, I wasn't posting on it. At all. Since MARCH of last year.



2. if this blog got fourteen hits back in the day, then it was a good day. My server would probably have gone down at twenty hits; it's Blogger's basic, and you may have noticed that even commenting is a heroic act merely because Blogger can't handle your request the first time, usually. You have to ask everything twice, while it stands there like a sulky teenager, blinking at you and wishing it were somewhere else.



3. it was really just for myself, trying out this and that; a comic strip, a painting, some commentary of an obvious, amateurish sort, because I was just a private person. Not that the content was private, but it wasn't meant to be scrutinized through a prism of no-holds-barred political machination and dirty tricks; I could have been writing about tomatoes or grandchildren, but I didn't have tomatoes or grandchildren.
   

In other words, this is not a DNC/ACORN/SOCIALIST tentacle reaching into the blogosphere, and I had no interest (and still don't) in the private life of one of the planet's most tiresome manufacturers of acid reflux-flavored "snark," Harvey Bilk, Lord of the Flies at Shillbuzz. In fact, the private life of which he complained he had been robbed when he was exposed by somebody unconnected with me, was about as private as a ticker-tape parade, in that he was on TV and in the paper in his capacity as a political operative, yammering away about defeating Obama, a position hardly likely to win many friends in Chicago.

The Shillbuzzers took to their assignment of routing out all the information they could regarding me like an ex-husband takes to the tree outside his ex-wife's window with his Loompanics manual. Some of them obviously were aching to exercise talents that had gone wanting since their spouses got that order of protection. They went through my blog, pausing to use my father's last illness to try to pinpoint my age, and sniffed at the drawings in my Flickr account. "Cartoonist," one said. "Couthless," said another.

Nevertheless, the Get Polly page ran out of steam, and was pushed, thankfully, off Shillbuzz's front page, almost by design it would seem; stories that had run before, like the very popular Class V Crass article (another gloriously idiotic pool of Buzzbile aimed, as usual, at Michelle Obama, where she is labeled an angry affirmative action Sasquatch and poor drunken fifties housewife Mamie Eisenhower is held up as the model of deportment).

In fact, there was a certain verticality to the flurry of posts thrown up by Shillbuzz; all that was missing was a picture of the Burj Khalifa in Dubai. So with one last half-hearted swipe at advertising giant Saatchi and Saatchi, the entire screaming mimi about the conspiracy against Harvey Bilk was over faster than you can say "Cyber-stalking is a Fourth-Class Felony."

So the hysteria had died down, my good name had not lately been coupled with the affectionate designation "b***h," and I began going whole hours together without checking the Get Polly page to see whether they had done rifling through my father's last illness (scroll down)in their compassionate Shillbuzz way.

And then along came Amy. Siskind, that is, the erstwhile feminist Spokeswoman for the Voice of All Women whether they know it or like it or not, the New Fourth-Wave Woman's Group, the New Agenda. Their mission statement includes "Safety" for women, which is also part of their somewhat tortured acronym, S.O.U.L. Not that there is anything objectionable about a women's group focusing on Safety, Opportunity, Unity and Leadership, but a visit to the blog posts shoehorned into those four categories will often yield disappointing results: under "Unity," today, for instance, the subheading was, "It's very complicated." "You bet it is!" I said, and clicked, only to find that the article was a review in a rather querulous tone about a Meryl Streep movie called, "It's complicated." It had not the slightest thing to do with Unity.

Unity, is, in fact, the New Agenda's main platform. They are a "non-partisan" woman's group, with the express intention of getting women elected, no matter what their beliefs: just elect'em, and let constituents sort it out later, or what I call, "tissues before issues."

Toward a more perfect union: Shillbuzzers and TNA

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I have had plenty of tangles with Amy Siskind, the founder of the New Agenda, over her unwavering support of Sarah Palin, someone I consider no better than McCarthy in a beehive, although fortunately she turns out not to have his work ethic. That Siskind is a pawprintless PUMA with something of a national platform, doesn't help matters.

We have clashed on threads at Huffingtonpost, where she or someone very favorable to her is able to wipe some but not all negative comments, and we've clashed at the Daily Beast and More magazine, (sorry, can't link to specific comments, but the whole disaster is fun) where she has no power to delete, and where her coterie of regulars can't save her from general puzzlement if not downright scorn. About the only place outside of her own blog that's safe for Amy is the blog No Quarter, home of smear-peddler Larry Johnson, inventor, merchandiser, and non-producer of the infamous Whitey tape. There she cross-posts her articles to much more acclaim than they receive at any of her big media outlets.

Siskind is, or is trying to become, head of a nationally known womens' organisation. She is in print and on television, visible, nameable. She is a public figure. When she decided to seek this leadership role, she couldn't very well do it anonymously. A large amount of negative commentary has been aimed at her, sometimes by me. This is what comes with taking a public position: criticism.

I am not a public figure, and I blog anonymously. I do this because I'm not seeking public office, because I used to write about where I live, and I disguised the people I wrote about too. And because though the internet is full of good people in my experience mostly, even those whose politics I don't like, there are a few unhinged loons out there who don't know when to leave it onscreen. One such is the nasty piece of work who set his swarm of underoccupied $hillbuzzers on me and others of my friends and acquaintances,purely on the strength of that cluster of ???????'s on that truly wacked map of the tangles in Harvey's addled brain.

Although we have political differences, the one issue on which it ought to be possible to get women to come together is safety, which, as I have emphasized, is the first initial in the New Agenda (or NAG, as I like to call them) acronym of empowerment. Women's safety. Notice, I'm kind of hitting the word SAFETY fairly often here, you notice that?

Good. Because, just as the Get Polly post was sinking into the blessed second page of oblivion at Harvey's One Stop All You Can Hate Shack, a friend of mine went back to one of the first Shillbuzz spectaculars, and on that thread, he found this comment from New Agenda Founder Amy Siskind, which I have, as per custom, dressed up to relieve the ghastly expanse of stupidity and meanness:


That, in case it's hard to read, is the great womens' safety advocate offering to send data mined from her site and those for which she writes to a cyberstalker. She applies the term "gang of thugs" to women who don't support her point of view, and tell her about it in no uncertain terms, online. Using words. That appear before her on a flat screen. For this, she will send our IP addresses, I assume, to Harvey.

For to disagree with Amy Siskind fully merits being called a "b***h" by strangers, having people combing through the phone book looking for your real-life 3D address, and throwing nonsense terms like "defamatory" around, when Siskind has merely been confronted with the faultiness of her own reasoning.

My IP address couldn't possibly be more specific than what has been rooted up by the $hillbuzzers already, and IP addresses are easily changed. So Amy Siskind's attempt to be Quisling For A Day is for nought. But the underhandedness, the sense of entitlement (speaking against me is punishable by law!), the vengefulness, and the sheer foolishness (along with a goodly part of the right-O-sphere, she did not do even the slightest verifying before committing herself online to an unethical act) should be instructive for anyone who thinks Siskind could be a credible leader in the womens' movement.

The Compleat Orliad, In No Particular Order

Orly is our Joan of Arc--Maertin Pinsky

Normally, if you can even say normally in any sentence proximate to Orly Taitz's loyal follower Maertin Pinsky, you'd say he is a few cartridges short of a magazine. This, for example, is your average Maertin Pinsky:

The Military govenor will be a patriot and will in time return–after order is restored, government to civilian control where safeguards wil be built in NEVER to allow Boeskys, Millens, Rutkowskis. Madoffs etc, to rise and emerge as virtual dictators in their specialties. The punishment is execution for screwing over innocent hard working people expecting the best in treatment and trust.
Enough is enough–
ORDER BEFORE JUSTICE
A CALL TO ARMS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!......

The cockroached are in the walls of governmnet at all levels of corruption and the RAID spray will reach them.

Yes, Maertin's cure for preventing virtual dictators is to install actual dictators. Just as soon as you-know-who is proven not to be the duly elected executive, but

that usurper bastard now in office–hopefully not for long.

Maertin's plans are heroic; in fact, they transcend the mortal realm:

.

Arrested as well are leaders of Goldman Sachs, Paulison Jr. Raines, Johnson, and suimmarilly executed: Sol Alinsky and BillAYERS.

But Maertin clapped the title of Saint Joan on Dentist/Lawyer (the latter legal in the overgenerous state of California only) Orly Taitz quite sensibly, as long as you remember that Orlymatter is always negatively charged.

Instead of trying to crown the rightful leader of the people, she's trying to unseat him. Instead of abjuring female accoutrements, she is so permeated with them that her veins must run with peroxide and her brain be coated in carnauba wax. Instead of penury, she has Paypal (or had; she also has Paranoia, so now she demands that her followers mail her money directly). And she's a mother of three, so we needn't inquire further on the Maiden front.

Still, she shares a few traits with the Maid of Orleans: grandiosity, implacability, and a bowl-shaped hairdo, though with Joan it was more of a cereal bowl and Orly's is more of a punch bowl.

She also serves for inspiration amongst the foot soldiers:

But, wait! What is that thunderous sound?
So very loud, it shakes the ground.

Could it be millions upon millions of Patriots’ feet?
That is marching, ever marching to Liberty’s drumbeat.
Now, the good men will no longer ignore.
The oath of allegiance that they did swore.
Our Constitution is the key to restore
To the erosion of Freedom WE say. “No more!”
---Kim American

Orly also has a Pretender to her throne, or Pyre: one Philip J. Berg, the 911 Truther, who some time ago got himself a law degree in person, and spent the last twenty years making his professors blush for having passed him.

Whereas these two once worked harmoniously together in the cause of trying to reverse the will of the people, it's not usual that two lyric sopranos occupy the same production, and the same goes for birth-certificate conspiracy theorist shysters. So Orly, having run afoul of Berg by spamming his assistant's social security number to her entire database of credulous nitwit supporters, found herself the subject of a lawsuit :

NOW COMES, Lisa Liberi, Philip J. Berg, Esquire, the Law Offices of Philip J. Berg, Evelyn Adams aka MommaA, Lisa M. Ostella and Go Excel Global, Plaintiffs by and through the undersigned counsel and brings this Complaint seeking injunctive relief and damages against the Defendants, Orly Taitz aka Dr. Orly Taitz aka Law Offices of Orly Taitz......

Orly is the one lawyer who could find Philip Berg 's suit beyond her skills to rebut. While not exactly equivalent to being captured by the English, that might take the ginger out of her for a while. But her powers of denial, evasion, and taste for posing as a martyr keep her humming along at her usual frenetic madwoman's pace.

On her site, she's asking for a Pennsylvania attorney, not to help her with Berg's suit, exactly, but:

I am looking for a name of a Pennsylvania attorney, licensed in Federal court in Philadelphia, who specializes in issues of parties defrauding non-profit organizations, SS and IRS fraud, defamation, cyber crimes, theft via the Internet.

An attorney of subtlety and artfulness, Orly must be faking left before jabbing right. Either that, or she's not just telegraphing her next punch, she's putting it up on the Jumbotron.

Not only do ammo-happy insurrectionists get to unite under Orly's fraying banner, but her site is useful as an aggregator for all kinds of off-road ludicrousness, where commenters fulminate against traffic circles, mouth-breathe about Fema camps, and sell snake-oil to each other, such as colloidal silver.



This last, colloidal silver, contains not only the usual dose of stupid, but is actually dangerous, and if ingested in any quantity can cause disfigurement, by turning the user a permanent, pronounced, deathly-looking gray. There is no known safe quantity; everyone's metabolism is different, so the only way to tell if you have a problem is when you have a problem, and then you have a giant problem.

It's tempting to let Orly's legions labor on in their belief that swine flu can be warded off with a few ampules of shiny quackery; once they turned themselves gray, they'd be easy to pick out of a crowd, if only to avoid. But since they might dose innocents like their children with it, we find it necessary to emphasize, for everybody:

Don't eat silver. Don't drink silver. Don't nibble on tea-trays, don't suck on repoussé serving spoons, don't do it.


Unless you want to match your suit of armour.

If you want to ingest something unproven, inefficacious, unpleasant, and expensive, take Super Blue-green Algae instead. At the very worst, you might turn a lovely shade of turquoise. Then you could pose as a mermaid, and wear seaweed in your hair.


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Book Two


This week was a very busy week for Dr. Orly Taitz, Esq.
Yesterday, March 25, 2009, she pounded the pavement in DC.



First stop was to William Chatfield’s office, Director of the Selective Service



Dr. Taitz provided Mr. Chatfield with a full copy of the dossier sent to the Attorney General, Eric Holder.



She highlighted sections of the dossier to show Mr. Chatfield that Barack Obama has hundreds of Social Security Numbers and properties associated with his name. One Social Security Number in particular was issued in Connecticut, and lists him as being 118 years old. (Attachment B).
(Attachment D) shows that Magic Plumbing had worked on the sprinkler system at the World Trade Center just days before 9/11. One of the men that performed this work lived in Brooklyn. He left Brooklyn on 9/11 and went to Tennessee. A woman that had a court date involving identity theft with the motor vehicle department in Tennessee met a mysterious death.



Mr. Chatfield had no comment or thought in reference to this material being shown to him.


While at the Senate building, a phone report was made to Captain Crowford, legal counsel to Admiral Mullen, Chairman of the Joint Chief of Staff.



From there she went to Senator Kyl’s office, Minority Whip and Senate Judiciary Committee



After that, it was off to the Pentagon.



"Respectfully submitted.and is being hand delivered on my way to the airport, flying back to California"

As always, brought to you by a grant from the Anna Russell Foundation: "I'm Not Making This Up You Know!"

Cross-posted at Rumproast, America's Meatiest Blog.

Mrs. Polly On the Air: KPFT's the Inner Side

Scooter, Host of the Innerside on KPFT, the Houston Pacifica station, said, "I've been thinking of having a Ladies' Night for the women of Rumproast. What do y'all think?" The women of Rumproast (America's Meatiest Blog) looked at each other, gulped, and said, "Yer on, Scooter!"

"This ain't no BS Blogtalk radio either, this is a 100,000 watt antenna, we go out all over Texas and the Gulf Coast," Scooter reminded us. "It'll be fun, we'll crunch some bones."

Rumproast first met Scooter through the mewls and hisses of diehard Hillary Clintoniacs known as PUMAs. One of them had bid on an hour of airtime at KPFT. The PUMAs used their hour to alternately scream at and dump startled KPFT callers who disagreed with them. Since they had "proudly voted a straight Republican ticket", and KPFT is a Pacifica station, that meant everybody.

To Scooter, host of his own weekly satirical program scheduled immediately after, this was a gorgeous, gift-wrapped box of crazy, delivered right to his doorstep.

He immediately put together a montage of PUMA screeches which he called "Five Minutes of Hate from the Daughters of the Democratic Confederacy." That, plus a surreal pitched battle between forces of PUMA and Rumproast on the KPFT program director's blog, led to Scooter's and the Meaty Blog's alliance.

Scooter invited two Rumproast personages to guest on his show: proprietor Kevin K, and RR's foremost practitioner of both gravity and waggery, billed intriguingly as "in the dark robes, the mysterious Dr. Strange." The show went well, and no KPFT callers were harmed during the broadcast.


Rumproast has, besides Kevin, three active posters, all women, including me, Mrs. Polly. It has an audience of mixed genders and sexual orientations. The PUMAs, incredulous that anyone with female body parts would not follow in their wandering pawprints, tastefully branded the women of Rumproast as "little female house slaves."

So I found it immensely satisfying to be invited on the radio instead of, as Scooter called her," Icepick Voice," PUMA's "Five Minutes of Hate" headliner (who artlessly expected to be asked back for more of her squeaky wisdom).

What was not so satisfying was the powerful case of nerves I developed. "It's a conversation, not an interview," Scooter said, but I worked myself up to a fever pitch nevertheless. It was the sort of neurotic mania that I could cure when I was ten by lying on the cool patch of rug under the piano. Now lying under the piano wouldn't have the same effect unless I added a bottle of Scotch. So I scoured the papers, made notes, and ate chocolate instead.

I also studied Kevin's and Strange's program. Jesus. They talked knowledeably about cabinet nominations. They had a world-view. They quipped. (Strange, on Obama's speechwriter, who had been photographed groping a cut-out of Hillary: "Kevin, you shouldn't publicize that--there are people who have cardboard family members.")

The show was how long? I listened again, and was slightly cheered on the second hearing. That was a bunch of time spent on Jennifer Aniston posing in nothing but a necktie! And Tina Fey. Yes, yes, brains, beauty, total package, what man wouldn't admire her, yes. I smiled, reserved to myself the right to think of George Clooney, and felt like a much calmer little female house slave. I stopped cramming for the test, and relaxed a bit. Aren't men wonderful, though.

On Thursday, 11:30 P.M. East coast time, our phone rang, I picked it up, and said, "Hello Scooter!" Instantly, my thoughts flipped over like beetles on their backs, their little legs wiggling helplessly. Scooter tried leading the witness, asking me about subjects I'd said I could discourse on. I shamelessly let my fellow guest, Denise Williams, take the first few questions.

About ten minutes into the show, my brain stopped flat-lining and began to function in a halting kind of way. I'm not entirely sure what I said, but I seem to remember "Arabic naughty lingerie parties." And telling a story about snarfing communion wafers as if they were potato chips.


If KPFT thought it had gotten angry calls from the PUMA invasion, I'm pretty sure they paled in comparison to the inadvertant combo crusade and fatwa that have probably been declared on that station. A crufatwasade.

Always happy to bring people together.

Here it is, the half-hour Innerside production of what we're calling Prime Rib Radio.

Next Thursday will be the second half of the Prime Rib Radio series, 10:30 PM Houston Time, 11:30 PM Eastern Time, with Scooter, marindenver and Betty Cracker, the other little female house slaves of Rumproast.

Scooter's Website is AcksisofEvil.org, where he has all his shows archived, and pictures of his family, his atheist friends, and his ferrets.

After the show was over, I hung up, and entered a state of absolute liquifaction. I sank into bed like syrup into a waffle, and allowed Mr. Polly to overindulge me terribly. In other words, life returned to normal.Mrs. Polly recuperates

Memorabilious

Looking for a new culturally enriching experience, or just want to take your sweetie someplace a little different for date night? You really haven't been anywhere until you've experienced Heidi Li's latest project, The Museum of Misogynistic Memorabilia.

The MoMM is not yet in a bricks-and-mortar condition, but Heidi Li (JD, PhD) is working on it. She has her mission statement:

"The point of displaying misogynistic memorabilia, ranging from the horrifying to the offensive to the sophomoric is to showcase the ways in which women or their rights and interests have been hatefully characterized both historically and in our own time."

And, from Heidi Li's rather grandly named Founder's Blog: "Memorializing and witnessing the propaganda and tools used to oppress has played a vital role in raising awareness of how oppression occurs."

Well and good. Dr. Heidi Li is not covering the entire, depressing, vast history of misogyny itself, but merely hateful characterizations of women through "propaganda and tools". She still has a rich field of exploration. From attic vases depicting vengeful cuckolded goddess Hera, to catchpenny prints of women as witches and hags, to controversial portrayals of women in hip-hop, Dr. Heidi Li is certainly not lacking for material from which to draw. So let's take a look at the offerings.

The MoMM's online stores consist of, so far, ten exhibits, divided into two parts:

"General Collection" and "Bloopers". "Bloopers" has the notation: "People say the darndest things!"

The "General Collection" currently consists of seven items: four picture files and three articles. The articles' focus is as follows:

1. the misogynistic labeling of 2008 presidential candidate Hillary Rodham Clinton;

2. the misogyny racial bigotry connection during the 2008 Democratic Primary season, and
"NOBODY LOVES A FAT WOMAN: Portraits of Female Obesity in Early American Cinema."

3. Portraits of Female Obesity in Early American Cinema."

This last immediately caught my interest for reasons we need not go into, need we?

It turned out to be a Georgetown student paper for a 2006 Media Historiography class, spring semester (Dr. Heidi Li is a law professor at Georgetown). Wretched co-opted self-hating fifth-columnist that I am, I was immediately enchanted by the title of a 1905 film, "Airy Fairy Lillian Tries On Her New Corsets". I tried to see if any of it was available on YouTube (Sorry to say, no). But the author of the paper, Joseph Kerr, in his description of the action, unkindly notes:

"Airy Fairy Lillian, wearing a sheer slip and underwear, attempts to put on her corset, an item of clothing, which ironically is supposed to help a woman look slim, but with a body the size of this, a corset is like putting a band-aid on an ax wound."

That is certainly a description any feminist will find it hard to forget, so thanks Dr. Heidi Li!
Let's just move on to the pictorial exhibits, none of which are original content:

4. Obama's chief speechwriter gropes a representation of Hillary Rodham Clinton.

5. Hillary Clinton nutcrackers. ( Dr. Heidi Li doesn't mention Corkscrew Bill, who is just what you imagine. He's available from stupid.com, BTW. Along with the Obama Yes We Can Opener)

6. Selected items for sale related to the theme "Bro's Before Ho's" (two items, one a T-shirt with a picture of Obama and You-know-who, for sale on Amazon. Amazon. Yes.)

7. Lucy Burns serving time for fighting for women's suffrage

It seems that 75% of the misogyny in the world is directed at Hillary Clinton, and happened during 2008. It looks very much as if an exhibit in each category has been hurriedly thrown in as a token offering to all the rest of womanity. The Lucy Burns picture, while historically important, doesn't fit the stated parameters of the MoMM. It isn't an example of misogynistic characterization, it's flat-out woman's history. And, as a Juris Doctor might say, it opens the door to a more complete, vibrant, depiction of the triumph of women as more than simply victims.

Dr. Heidi Li does not go through that door. Instead, she gives us a gallery of "misogyny bloopers":

8. Howard Kurtz, Katie Couric, and Cognitive Dissonance.

9. Ms. Magazine January 2009 Inauguration Special Issue Cover -"Despite then President-elect's lack of any track record in establishing measures to protect or promote women and their rights, Ms. Magazine decides to pose him in "Super Man"-like fashion and declare him a "feminist.

"
10. Carville on Favreau - (the Ragin Cajun thinks that since Hillary accepted Favreau's apology, the incident should be over.)

Once again, there's a ringer thrown in to disguise Dr. Heidi Li's reduction of all womanhood to a single pantsuited politician. And her definition of "Bloopers" is somewhat eccentric: generally, the perpetrator of a blooper is trying to say something else, recognizes the mistake, and looks forward to picking up residuals from being included in the next episode of Bloopers, Blunders, and Misogynistic Logical Fallacies.

Dr. HL may think that whomever disagrees with her is perpetrating a blooper, but she is not the ultimate arbitor of blooperhood. If it were as subjective as that, I might classify her entire site as a blooper, and she seems very much to have meant it to be the way it is---aside from spelling it "Misyogyny Museum" on her title page.

So the exhibits of the MoMM are: Hillary, Hillary, Fat Women, Hillary, Hillary, Hillary, Lucy Burns, Katie Couric, Hillary, Hillary.

Dr. Heidi Li has an ambitious agenda. She has solicited for both funds and material for the MoMM, so that it may grow into a properly curated traveling exhibition. The exhibits so far can all be obtained with the click of a mouse button in under ten minutes and in the months since the MoMM's inception, few have been added. But the need to press on with the fundraising is fierce, so fierce that Dr. Heidi Li is willing to press even when the circumstances might call her taste into question.

When Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg was operated on for pancreatic cancer, Dr. Heidi Li sprang into action:

Heidi Li, on February 5th, 2009 at 9:44 pm Said:
I know Ruth Bader Ginsburg slightly, and her husband, Marty Ginsburg, who is my colleague on the Georgetown faculty rather better. They are wonderful people, and of course my heart and thoughts are with them. A humble suggestion: If you care to send 51 Percent any amount (including .51 cents, with a message of support for Justice Ginsburg, not only will that be noted on the website, but I will make sure that all results and messages reach Justice Ginsburg).

I used to have a piece that would have been perfect for the MoMM. My father was obliged to go to Las Vegas on business, and I asked him to bring me back the tackiest thing he could find. He returned with something that more than fit the bill: a ceramic ashtray depicting a naked woman in a bathtub, on the side of which was lettered: "I HAD A TUB OF FUN IN LAS VEGAS". I loved that ashtray, and was heartbroken when it was lost in a move. Actually, I don't think the MoMM would be interested--not Hillary-centered enough. And I was just not politically conscious enough to be offended when my father gave it to me.
*************

Note: There is a National Women's History Museum in Washington, D.C. They have their eye on a building to house their collections, and are seeking funding. They have a wonderful website, and the difference in attitude between the NWHM and the MoMM are exemplified by this statement:

If we - and future generations - are to learn all the lessons of the past upon which to build the future, we must be aware of the true experiences and contributions of women. Clearly, men cannot get there alone. Together, all things are possible.
----Karen Stasen, Founder, National Women's History Museum

A FIELD GUIDE TO FRAIDY CATSwe can handle anything except criticism. or scrutiny. or questions. or dissent. or disappointment. or logic. or rationality. or independence. or information. or research. or reality. or the time/space continuum. or
When I tell friends that I've been PUMAwatching, they say, "Cats? Shoes? What are you talking about?" and I have to remind them about PUMA, or Party Unity My Ass, that noble organization founded on resentment of Hillary Clinton's supposed maltreatment by the Dems and encouraged delightedly by McCain operatives pinching themselves that so many of Hillary's followers could be so easily manipulated.

Since PUMA managed to convince itself and the McCain campaign that it ROARED with eighteen million voices, it led McCain to pick the Alaskan Albatross that ultimately sank him, so I am grateful to PUMA on that score. In fact, PUMA roars with just about enough voices to keep the comment sections of a few dozen blogs populated, assuming each commenter posts multiple times and visits more than one blog a night.

The election proved that PUMApower in fact ROARED with enough hot air to blow up the forty or so orange PUMAballoons at any of PUMA's underpopulated rallies, but not much more than that. Hillary Clinton's debt was not retired with the help of PUMAdollars, or even affected, and Hillary went on to blow PUMA's minds by getting over her disappointment and moving on with her life, worst of all by working with HIM.

Born out of frustration, inability to accept opposition, and sheer will to destruction, having failed to obtain the nomination or to throw the election, now PUMA exists to promote hatred of HIM. That one. A veneer of faux feminism encrusts PUMA, many of whose members seem to be reinventing the feminist wheel, circa 1972: "I thought the ERA had passed!" said one.

But PUMA blithely exchanged Hillary's feminist values for those of John McCain, who opposed equal pay for equal work, voted to impeach Hillary's husband, happily told rape jokes, verbally abused his wife ("at least I don't slather on the makeup like a trollop, you c**t") and disparaged young Chelsea's looks. They went as well for anti-intellectual mannequin and Republican frozen cheesecake Sarah Palin as if the indifferent scholar and neo-con pinup were a reasonable substitute for detail-oriented Ivy-League magna-cum-laude policy wonk Hillary, thereby endorsing the idea that genitalia trumps everything, from ideology to policy.

Irony is lost on PUMA.

PUMAs are currently congratulating themselves for the dubious distinction of being chosen as Time's eighth-hottest buzzword of the year, right in between "tweet" and "rick-rolled"*. The eighth-hottest buzzword of last year, BACN, has of course gone on to dominate conversation at watercoolers nationwide ever since, so the fly-about-to-be-encased-in-resin elegaic quality of the eighth-hottest buzzword designation shouldn't worry PUMA at all.

Why even pay attention to this group if the country no longer does? Why bother if it is so laughably ineffective? Why bother with PUMA instead of leaving them to their own devices in their insular PUMASPHERE?

Because PUMA seems to have the beginnings of a classic hate-group, and needs to be watched.

The FBI classifies hate-group formation as happening in 7 stages:

Stage 1: The Haters Gather

"Irrational haters seldom hate alone. They feel compelled, almost driven, to
entreat others to hate as they do. Peer validation bolsters a sense of
self-worth and, at the same time, prevents introspection, which reveals personal
insecurities. Further, individuals otherwise ineffective become empowered when
they join groups, which also provide anonymity and diminished accountability.

Evident on PUMA threads is the constant one-upwomanship of trying to come up with newer better stronger insults for Obama and anyone who supports him.. PUMA pets and indulges the most extreme of its Obama-haters, Jenniforhillary, admiring her for her "spirit". Only once has any PUMA ever challenged her, and that was on whether her attack on Al Franken was merited, not on the legitimacy of wishing slow painful castration on him per se. And, as per usual, nobody else protested.

Stage 2: The Hate Group Defines Itself

Hate groups form identities through symbols, rituals, and mythologies, which
enhance the members' status and at the same time, degrade the object of their
hate."

PUMA adopted the hapless big cat as their superkewl icon, and from there followed a flood of neat images of pawprints, demonstrations and spamming parties known as "prowls", and the PUMA war-cry, PUMA HAKA! (a HAKA is a Maori war chant) And RRRoarrrrsss. There is much of the junior college sorority in this, and would not be alarming if PUMA left it there. Even if there are slightly psychotic overtones in their belief that Hillary was wearing an orange pantsuit at her convention speech as a secret message of PUMAdarity with them.

PUMA mythologies are so extensive and evolve so much that it's impossible to follow them, much less refute them systematically, starting immediately with PUMA's creation myth: that Hillary was cheated out of the nomination because she was a woman.

PUMAs embrace anyone who offers anti-Obama mythology; the most notorious may be noted anti-Semite Andy Martin, originator of the Obama-is-a-Muslim myth. Martin attended the PUMA convention in Washington and is seen in PUMA's pictures shooting the breeze with assorted Pumas. Andy Martin, Lyndon LaRouche follower Webster Tarpley, and Andy Berg, all have the PUMA welcome mat put out for their theories about Obama's nationality (he's a Kenyan/British/American/unAmerican Usurper. "Did you know that if Obama reads a national security document it's treason?" asked a PUMA on PUMAPAC.

Stage 3: The Hate Group Disparages the Target

"Hate is the glue that binds haters to one another and to a common cause. By
verbally debasing the object of their hate, haters enhance their self-image, as
well as their group status."

PUMA shows its stress lines when the subject veers off Obama. Even Hillary-worship doesn't hold up reliably any more since Hillary consented to campaign for Obama, much less work for him as Secretary of State. The gulfs between atheist/lesbian/pro-choice PUMAs, Catholic pro-life PUMAs, Conservative PUMAs and lifelong Democratic PUMAs become noticeable, and though PUMAs have never reproved each other for the bleak and gorey scenarios they like to envision being visited on their enemies (Obama, Obots, and nonPUMA men), they do have hissing contests over whether a PUMA has disrespected other PUMAs' beliefs. This frequently results in a theatrical, and sometimes permanent, exit.

Puma blog postings frequently begin with a "feminist" subject. Sometimes they will start out highlighting a figure from women's history, which seems a valuable enough effort. But the veneer of feminism inevitably melts away where all roads lead to the One, or rather, disparagement of the One. The "feminist" post is often simply an incitement to outrage over yet another example of the very real misogyny and ill-treatment of women the world over. The trouble here is the focus of the outrage: it isn't focussed on the perpetrators, it's spread to whomever the PUMAs wish to be angry at (More on this further down, with the John Favreau debacle). And more than anything else, PUMAs wish to be angry at Obama.

A visit to PUMA sites will net many new terms of abuse for Barack Obama that you may never have heard applied to any presidential candidate before, even though terms of abuse for presidential candidates are a cherished American art form. At main Puma site Pumapac.org , you'd encounter the following:

NOBAMA
Obie
Obambi
teh precious’
Obamatrons
The Cheetos
Obots
Barry
backtrack
Barky Barry Von Cash
the O-Borg
No
count Fraud Ojambo
Ofart
ohonewhothinksheisking
Baruk the Crook, the
fraud President elect,
Baruk the Cruk
Barock the Crock
NewOrleansPuma 11.30.08 at 3:14 pm
Baseek the Sheik
Pres
Omigodicantbelieveitsnotbutter’
Oslime-o
Ojingo
emptysuited
hypocritical lying thievin’ flim flam gutter rat
Nobie
Oblobit
baracobambi
oblah blah
Obummee

This is a short list. Notice that some of the names are frankly racist and xenophobic: "Ojingo", "Ojambo", "Baseek the Shiek". That's a dirty little PUMA non-secret: assorted flavors of racism, from the vague racist overtones of comments such as:

Nijma 01.03.09 at 2:41 am

mountainsong, yeah, chicago; if the bots get rambunctious, there’ll be plenty of
prowling to do, but if they behave, things can stay quiet.
If Teh One
enacts our agenda and stops dissing women, our reason for living will be
gone and we can go to the dance club all week long. On the other hand,
if it’s all bit*hes and ho*s and Ludicris, and no jobs for
women, we’ll have a
lot of free time to blog, and no money for cover charges

to frank, overt racism such as this picture of Obama as a lawn jockey in front of the White House, excused by the caption,"Why is this not okay?" The supposed reason for photoshopping Obama around as a shoeshine boy is that Jon Favreau, a young speechwriter of his was photographed with his hand cupping the non-existent breast of a cardboard Hillary. Incensed, PUMA immediately struck back by demanding Favreau be summarily fired, gustily predicting he was on the road to real sexual criminality, and posting demeaning pictures of innocent women photoshopped onto Hillary's cardboard body, so that the speechwriter was then molesting Donna Brazile and Michelle Obama. That's the kind of thinking that got PUMA where it is today.

Where PUMA is today is a splenetic organization that tolerates, indulges, even encourages hatefulness as long as it's directed toward Obama and Obama supporters, whom PUMA pictures as glassy-eyed kids and wild-eyed socialists referred to as "Obots". They do not admit the possibility that adult people not very much different from them could rationally decide not to hate Obama as they do, so they turn Obama's followers into non-human "bots".

Stage 4: The Hate Group Taunts the Target

"Hate, by its nature, changes incrementally. Time cools the fire of hate, thus
forcing the hater to look inward. To avoid introspection, haters use
ever-increasing degrees of rhetoric and violence to maintain high levels of
agitation. Taunts and offensive gestures serve this purpose."

This stage must necessarily have changed since this paper was published in 2003 because of the increased prevalence of the Internet. Whereas hate groups who used to long for contact with "the other" to express their hatred had to go out looking for them, now it is possible to find all the enemies they could ever want online.

PUMAs see themselves as wounded, martyred, woman warriors, but they are not likely to follow this model beyond step 4 into physicality, although some observers at the notorious Rules and Bylaws Committee meeting had their doubts.

They do constantly increase the rhetoric and outrage: Murphy of PUMAPAC posts ever more terrible news items about attacks on female victims, which keeps her blog followers in a permanent state of foam-flecked spitting fury. She frequently uses these posts to drive the PUMAs into donating to PUMAPAC, although PUMAPAC's accounting practices are a little hazy.

Here is one of PUMAPAC's most active members, Jenniforhillary, on her hope for the country under Obama:

jenniforhillary 11.08.08 at 8:49 am
I am in a economy proof business, my
parents have money, and I will NOT SUFFER. We have one year of food PLUS, we
have our gardens, we have our weapons, our bullets, our network. We are
prepared.
That being said, I CANNOT WAIT for the suffering to begin. I
hope there is starvation, I hope there is rioting, and i hope that there
is massive death…

Heartwarming. Jennifer is indeed in a recession-proof business: her mother's estate-clearance company. Massive death certainly wouldn't hurt Mom's balance sheet. Of course, after Jennifer dropped that one in the PUMA punch-bowl, did that spoil it for the rest of the PUMAs? Anyone care to challenge Jennifer on her cheery PUMIHILISM? No? Of course not. One PUMA responded,

GBPuma 11.08.08 at 10:03 am
jenniforhillary 11.08.08 at 8:49 am
I agree 150%…….they have no concept of
the suffering they have created and they
deserve everything they are about to
get

Jenniforhillary (or Jennifer X, as she sometimes calls herself now that Hillary has lost the way to the Light) is not a fringe member, but actually hosted one of the most unintentionally hilarious radio hours ever to go out to bewildered listeners of public radio station KPFT. On the phone for the entire hour with Jennifer X was PUMAPAC founder Darragh Murphy, who listened calmly and approvingly as Jennifer shouted over and dumped callers who tried to challenge any of her PUMAganda. The two PUMAs thought the show had gone swimmingly and Jennifer was much praised on PUMAPAC for her facility in Obot-wrassling. They were surprised to learn that KPFT did not feel quite as enthusiastic about a regular PUMA hour as they did.

The inability to tolerate dissent demonstrated by the PUMAGANDA flaming dirigible of a radio show is completely in keeping with the PUMAs' policies on their blogs: absolute censorship of opposing views. On both the Confluence and PUMAPAC, only pro-PUMA comments are allowed. "Riverdaughter", the founder of the Confluence, offered the explanation that it isn't censorship when she does it because only governments can censor, although that isn't what the American Heritage Dictionary says (any person "vested with authority" can be a censor as, say, the administrator of a blog).


This is what makes the Confluence's Weblog nomination as Best Liberal Blog something of a farce; as a big L blog, exhorting followers to vote for the Republican ticket is just plain not Liberal, and as a small l blog, what is more illiberal than the closemindedness of censoring comments? Riverdaughter's The Confluence is more egregious in this than even PUMAPAC; one of their bloggers, the not awfully gracious myiq2xu, loves to "edit" comments he doesn't like and republish them:

Mountainaires, on January 1st, 2009 at 2:28
pm Said:
To Riverdaughter and myiq2xu who responded to my comment
previously.
myiq2xu: if you are the "moderator" who went in and edited the
quotes from Richard Falk, then you deserve to be insulted for doing it. Before
you start changing quotes, you ought to know what you’re talking about, which
you clearly did not. There were no food or medical supplies being transported
into Gaza at the point of my comment, and your insertions were inaccurate. You
could have posted your own comment responding to mine, and posted your
inaccuracies under your own name. Instead, you hid like a coward behind a power
title of "moderator" and altered my comments. Shame on you.
Next time please
post your own comment in reply to mine if you don’t like my opinion. Stop going
in and altering a comment which has my name on it."

One of the rare PUMen, myiq2 has an agenda of his own: Here he is talking about PUMAs on the blog Balloon Juice:

myiq2xu March 14th, 2008 at 10:10 pm
...
What is Hillary’s core
constituency? Women.
Older, yet “liberated” women.
At 47 years old, I am a
“boy toy.”
Since they are post-menopausal, that means they don’t swell, they
don’t tell, and they’re grateful as
hell.--------------------------------------
--------------------------------------
myiq2xu March 14th, 2008 at 10:24 pm
...
Go to a rally where you are
one of the few guys (and the only single guy under 50) and there are about 100
unattached women. Okay, lots of them are widows, but it’s still good for a
person’s self-esteem.
Honestly, I’ve never had women fight over me
before.--------------------------------------
--------------------------------------
myiq2xu March 15th, 2008 at 12:01
...
I was trying to help you get a
“coming out” present.
No STFU before you mess things up. I think the redhead
puts out.
--------------------------------------
--------------------------------------
myiq2xu March 15th, 2008 at 1:11 am
Rodney Carrington Live at the
Majestic is on the Comedy Channel.
“I went home with a fat girl once a bunch
of times.”http://www.balloon-juice.com/?p=9901

(Hat tip: Yes To Democracy)

PUMA laughs off Myiq2's jokey misogyny, but sexism is fine as long as it emanates from PUMA. http://pumapac.org/2008/12/10/does-estrogen-poisoning-make-us-more-ethical-and-less-violent/ So are violent fantasies, as long as they are about violence against men (you may want to skip the next few paragraphs; they're quite ugly):

"murphy 12.11.08 at 12:54 am "One in nine men will be arrested for a violent
crime. Half of those violent crimes will be assault with a weapon, rape, or
robbery. Numbers dont lie. The answer is Decimation."

And, from the immortal Jennifer X:

"AL FRANKEN should have his pencil penis removed sans pain medicine and left to
bleed to death (does that say enough)…."

Yes, that does just about say enough, Jennifer.


Stage 5: The Hate Group Attacks the Target Without Weapons

" This stage is critical because it differentiates vocally abusive haters from
physically abusive ones. In this stage, hate groups become more aggressive,
prowling their turf seeking vulnerable targets..."

It is at this stage that the FBI separates the sheep from the goats: hate groups who do not progress to violence are assessed as "immature" hate groups. This model was drawn up primarily to assess skinhead groups, and I should make clear that I certainly do not regard PUMA as akin to skinhead groups, focussed as PUMA is on hating one distant and well-protected man, and satisfied as PUMAs are with blogging their hatred.

But PUMA still has disturbing similarities to groups going through the stages described by the FBI, including the psychological underpinnings.


Stages Six and Seven, respectively, are attacking the Target with weapons, and destroying the Target.

Although PUMAs don't back away from expressing violent fantasies about those whom they view as their oppressors, they assume it is understood that these are just fantasies. What is alarming is the tolerance for some PUMAs, like JenniforHillary, who seem to be spinning out of control without any kind of check. Rather than talking her down, PUMAPAC consistently feeds her hysteria, paranoia and despair and sits back applauding the show. While PUMAs are hardly likely to resort to skinhead-style battles on the street, there are individuals in the PUMAsphere who are clearly psychologically disturbed, such as Jenniforhillary. While PUMA is applauding itself for its womanly lack of physical brutality, they might do well to remember there have been female Presidential would-be assassins in recent memory, such as Squeaky Fromme.


Murphy and Riverdaughter are playing a dangerous game; playing on the fears and wounded psyches of women scattered across the country, trolling in fringe right-wing websites for bad news to keep the glue of Obama-hate bonding their followers to them. They may themselves be convinced that it is feminism and empowerment that they're spreading, but what they are actually doing is imitating the negative stereotype of feminists as overprivileged, humorless, castrating loons.

*Tired of Rick Astley. My Rick doesn't roll that way.