Friday, June 13, 2008

Pack it in Ms. Magazine, you're pathetic

No, Betinna tonight. I'm enraged and not in the mood to write a chapter. C.I. and Kat were listening to my draft over the phone. I came to my third joke with no reaction. They are always the best audience.

They are generous with their praise and laughter. (And will suggest that some step is left out when it is or any number of things that keep me focused.)

I asked, "Hey, are you two there?"

They immediately apologized and explained they were furious and not the best audience right now. I asked what was up?

This is what is up, "Sexist Campaign Coverage Continues"

Sexist coverage of the election did not end when Senate Hillary Clinton (D-NY) suspended her campaign. Earlier this week, Fox News ran a blatantly sexist and racist graphic referring to Michelle Obama as Senator Obama's "Baby Mama."

The crap continues but that's more than enough of it. It's from Ms. Magazine's Feminist Wire Daily and they've got a lot of nerve using "Continues" in their heading when their ASSES STAYED SILENT AS HILLARY WAS ATTACKED EVERY DAMN DAY.

Michelle Kort, you're a bad writer and I'll leave at that (while hoping C.I. outs your ass).

You LIED and told people, when confronted on YOUR SILENCE over the sexist attacks on Hillary, that Ms. couldn't comment. They weren't allowed to because of their tax status.


LIE and you are a LIAR.

Ms. didn't comment because you didn't want to help the first female candidate for president who had a real shot and the reason is because you love you some Barack.

Let me make it real clear to Whiteys out there, it is offensive to this Black woman that Barack is repeatedly called "Black." He is bi-racial. There is nothing wrong with being bi-racial but it is not Black.

I am the mother of three children, they all grasp that Barack is not Black. Not because I told them but because they are Black and they have eyes. They know what Black looks like.

Barack has his grandfather and mother's chin, their ears, their eyes. (His father's eyes would have been a curse.) He has his grandfather's ears. Maternal grandfather.

In your White eyes he may be Black but my children could spot reality.

Your little lies that this is what a Black man (note the 'man') can achieve is bull.

It's what a bi-racial man can achieve. My children can not pass for White or mixed or half. They know what they look like and we don't need you well meaning Whites, so quick to erase your guilt (over what, I don't know, maybe it's a collective, historical guilt), telling us that he's Black.

We didn't need Hillary Hater Donna Brazile being allowed to pose in the magazine as someone who's fair. But Ms. doesn't need a closet case writing for it to begin with.

I don't know what Donna's problem. In Atlanta, our guess is that her mother told her, "Fine you're gay but I don't need to know about it!"

I don't care what her excuse is. She's a lesbian stuck in the closet. That's not a strong message to women and she doesn't need to doodle for Ms. magazine.

So now Ms. wants to pay attention to sexism . . . when it effects Michelle Obama.

A presidential candidate they can't defend, a possible First Lady they can. How 'traditional.'

Ms. is making itself a piece of crap. It has let down feminism, it has let down women.

And considering Michelle's sexist comments about Hillary, it's laughable that you now want to defend Michelle. While staying silent month after month on Hillary.

It's too little, too late, Ms.

LIE FACE Melissa Harris-Lacewell told Bill Moyers in 2007 that Barack is Black because anyone who could have been a slave all those years ago in the US should be considered Black. Of course liar Melissa is part of the Barack campaign, a detail she loves to conceal in her interviews and people like Charlie Rose and Amy Goodman help her conceal.

Black history apparently didn't take with Melissa who never grasped that "octoroon" uses the same insulting thinking she does.

The word is bi-racial. He had a White mother, he had a Black father. That's a fifty-fifty split and Melissa wants us all to know he's Black?

One of the most disgraceful episodes for my community in the late 90s was some 'leaders' rejecting bi and multi-racial as categories.

(Michelle Obama is Black, in case anyone doesn't know or is wondering.)

It appeared to all come down to recognition and funding. It was disgraceful.

Bi and multi-racial people already exist in this country and their numbers will only grow. Insisting that they are one race and denying the other(s) is racism.

I was a teenager in the nineties and one of the exciting things about that was seeing a shift to diversity. I didn't even realize that was what I was witnessing. I just thought, "Wow." I was too young to know about the battles until the backlash started at the end of the 90s.

Barack Obama put homophobes on stage in South Carolina to scare up their votes. He did it by appealing to a very real homophobia that is sadly strong in some parts of the Black community. Feminists avoided called him out for it by and large. Feminists said it was okay to use homophobia with their silence.

The LGBT community and the bi and multi-racial communities were among the first tossed under the bus to push Barack.

Michelle's use of sexism was only echoed by her brother's remarks to The New Yorker.

Now I'm supposed to feel sorry for her?

Grow up.

No, it's not nice when sexism is used against anyone.

But Michelle used it.

And her husband sure did. "99 problems but a bitch isn't one of them." Does anyone not get how offensive that 'celebration' song Barack's campaign used in Iowa was?

Maybe they figure it's a "Black thang" and so it's okay.

Let me make it clear for feminists of all colors, you're not helping Black women by refusing to call out Barack's use of sexism. What wa she said about Hillary that sometimes when she's periodically feeling down, she feels the need to lash out? That the claws come out?

If his wife, who didn't just stay silent but used sexism herself, gets payback now, I won't shed any tears.

Barack's campaign has been built on homophobia, false charges of racism and sexism.

Unlike Barack or Father Micheal Pfleger, I actually am Black. I know racism when I see it.

Racism is not Bill Clinton calling Barack's Iraq claim a "fairy tale." Barack's story is a fairy tale. He gave a speech against the Iraq War before it started, voted for funding it in the Senate, told The New York Times in 2004 he didn't know how he would have voted on the resolution. Repeated that to The New Yorker in 2007. Vanished his 2002 speech from his campaign website when he ran for the US Senate.

Racism is not Bill Clinton saying Barack would be a roll of a dice. We say "craps."

Racism is not someone pointing out that Barack did drugs anymore than it was racism when Bill Clinton's pot use was raised in the 1992 campaign.

Barack did drugs. I'm not crackpot Dave Lindorff, a White man who supports Barack because Barack "risked jail as a Black man to do drugs."

Life was hard for Barack in the inner city of Hawaii where he attended his posh prep school in the late seventies. That's why he did pot.

Is that the lie we're all supposed to believe?

Barack wrote about using pot and coke in his two books. He cracked jokes about his pot use with Jay Leno (he inhaled, he insisted to big laughs). But no one else can point out that Barack did drugs without it being racism?

What a load of crap.

As my father always points out, it's these false charges that hurt the Black community. There is very real racism in the US and when a bunch of crap is called racism and it's not, it backfires not on the White community, but on the Black community.

I'm getting really tired of Barack posing as Black for his own political gain -- and the media declaring every thing about his life off limits because he's "Black" -- while he offers the Black community nothing.

He is the White get out of jail free card. Vote for him and racism is over.

Only for those of us who are Black, it's not.

But that's the lie his campaign is built around. A vote for the bi-racial man means you never have to do anything about the very real racist inequalities in society.

And, lucky bonus, Barack loves to call out Black people. Whether he's attacking Black fathers and how 'irresponsible' they are or promoting a 'post-racial' view, he's dismissing Black existance.

Now maybe if I were bi-racial posing as Black, I'd be all in the post-racial Kool-Aid.

But not only am I responsible for me, I'm responsible for my three children.

They're going to grow up in a racist society and if a miracle allows Barack to win the general election, they're still going to be living in a racist society while Whites congratulate themselves on how racism is over and all wounds are healed.

It's a lie but that's all Barack's ever had to offer.

Lies, empty slogans.

I'm supporting Ralph Nader.

I wish I could say I was supporting Cynthia McKinney but her campaign has posted the crackpot woman hating Ishmael. And she's defined victory not as the White House but as five-percent of the vote. And, most important, she stayed silent throughout the sexist attacks on Hillary.

I didn't. I knew damn well that as a Black woman, my pointing out the sexism could carry more weight for a few people because wasn't the lie that sexism was no big deal?

We heard it over and over. We heard it from racists Robert Parry and Robert Scheer. Two elderly White men that need to leave the public stage. But they hate Hillary (in 2007, Scheer said he'd vote for Nader if Hillary was the nominee -- while screaching at Nader not to run). So they were happy to scream racism and belittle the very real sexism.

Jesse Jackson is Black.

Jesse Jackson experienced real racism in his runs. I don't mean from the nutty right wing. That's a given. And all today's 'critics' have to offer as examples of racism against Barack. I mean from the MSM. They didn't do that this go round. They loved Barack -- the candidate of Wall Street.

Instead they used sexism to destroy Hillary. They was the MSM like Keith Olbermann, Chris Matthews, David Schuster, Tim Russert, and many more.

They was also Matthew Rothschild, Katrina vanden Heuvel, Betsy Reed, Laura Flanders (another self-loathing lesbian), Danny Schechter (who attacks all women who don't 'know their place' -- hence, his non-stop war on Katie Couric for how many years now?), David Corn, John Nichols, Sharon Smith, Jeremy Scahill (I loved it when Scahill was whining -- Hillary was proposing outlawing contractors in Iraq and that wasn't good enough, Barack was proposing nothing but it was 'difficult' for Barack), Amy Goodman, Allan Nairn ('yes, Barack takes money from big business, but out of fear' argued Nairn), and so many more.

Make a list of all the people using racism against Barack in 2008, all the media outlets and, after you cross off the right wingers, it's going to be a short list. You didn't have Randi Rhodes screaming vile names at him into a microphone, that was Hillary she attacked.

And through it all, Ms. magazine wanted to stay silent.

Now they want to fret over Michelle.

It's bulls**t.

When it mattered, they didn't say a word.

I happen to know (because Ava passed on both articles) that two rank, vile and disgusting articles were written about Cindy McCain this week. But Ms. isn't calling that out, are they?

But we're all supposed to feel sorry for Michelle Obama?

Forget it. She made her bed, she needs to lie in it. If there are bed bugs, oh well.

It's real funny how pathetic Ms. magazine has become. It has nothing to say to women period and this crap that they're going to rush to defend Michelle is nothing but crap.

Where were they when the "nut crackers" of Hillary were being sold? Being sold at MSNBC stores in airports?

No where.

Baby's Mama?

They're idiots.

They're White idiots.

Hello Feminist Wire Daily, let me introduce you to Prince. "Future Baby's Mama." It's a song by Prince. It's about a woman he's attracted to and, if you missed it, Prince is in a heavily Christian phase for about ten years now. It's a song about a woman he wants to date, wants to marry, wants to have a child with.

You're so White, you don't even know that.

You're so White, you're insisting it's slang for an unmarried woman who has a baby.

You're so pathetic and so disgusting.

Apparently you all saw Tina Fey's pathetic movie and that was the first time you ever heard the phrase.

From Julie Turner's "Where Do 'Baby-Daddies' Come From?" (Slate):

Celebrity gossips are not known for their contributions to English letters. In tabloids, the copy is breathless, the headlines are stunningly literal, and the "hand-written" photo captions seem to toggle between "Awww!" and "Ew!" But as they zero in on celebrity mating and breeding rituals, the magpies keep breaking new linguistic ground. First they imported the British term bump, a noun used to refer to the protruding abdomen of a pregnant starlet. Then they awarded celebrity couples mash-up nicknames like "Bennifer," "Brangelina," and "TomKat." Now they've seized upon baby-daddy and baby-mama, two useful terms that have long appeared in hip-hop and R&B lyrics, and are slowly stripping them of their emotional fangs.
The Oxford English Dictionary defines baby-daddy as "the father of a woman's child, who is not her husband or (in most cases) her current or exclusive partner." The baby-mama entry follows the same template with the genders reversed. But some gossip writers have been adopting the first part of the definition and ignoring the second. Salon recently called Tom Cruise "
Katie Holmes' baby-daddy," even though the couple is engaged. And Gawker refers to Keven Federline as "Britney Spears' baby-daddy," even though the couple has been married for more than a year.

Get it, pathetic? The use grew sometime ago. And if you can't grasp it, that article was published in May of 2006. But here's the culturally blind Ms. magazine jumping on the Barack bandwagon. The campaign hollers and the stooges come running.

I'm sick of it. And Ms. needs to pack it in. It's not serving the cause, it hasn't. It stayed silent while Hillary was accused of "pimping out" her daughter. It stayed silent when Keith Olbermann said she should be taken into a room by a man and only "he" emerges. It stayed silent month after month with Michelle Kort insisting they would lose their tax exempt status if they didn't.

Michelle Obama gets called a Baby Mama and suddenly it's time for Ms. to man the cannons!


Screw you, Ms. magazine.

You've done nothing for women all year and now you want to prop up a potential First Lady? And expect anyone to take you seriously when you don't even know what you're talking about?

This is so typical of the press and so typical of the Barack campaign. Barack's bi-racial so maybe he truly is ignorant of Black culture. But Michelle damn well knows better. Ms. should have as well. But Ms. should have been at the forefront calling out the very real sexism Hillary faced day after day. And Ms. didn't. Because they're pathetic. Because the 'feminist' magazine is in the tank for Barack and because Michelle Kort is a sorry excuse for a human being.

One more thing. They never called out the sexism launched at Katie Couric for two years now. They really are that DAMN PATHETIC. And Katie's commentary this week? 'Feminist' Wire Daily couldn't tell their 'readers' (all two?) that the only female anchor called out the sexism used against Hillary. Way to go, way to take one for the 'ladies,' you pathetic piece of crap.

Also see: "Ms.went from playing dumb to outright insulting" and grasp that Ava and C.I. could call out sexists while Ms. stayed silent. While Ms. played useless. While Ms. betrayed women. We all worked on "Norman Solomon remembers 'the ladies'" but Ava and C.I., at our request, punched it up and made it the strong and hilarious commentary it is. Ms. never called out any of the 'left' males showing up to lecture women that they shouldn't vote for Hillary out of gender identity. As a Black woman, I'm fully aware that Solomon, Mark Karlin, Robert Scheer, et al, never urged Blacks not to vote for Barack out of racial identiy. But they could lecture the 'ladies' (of all races). Where the hell was Ms.? Condoning this crap with their silence. You can also refer to the two other pieces we wrote Sunday: "Piggies on parade" and "What Did You Do In The War, Mommy?" and while I do not want to put pressure on Ava and C.I., I would strongly encourage you to check out their TV commentary this Sunday. I know it's going to be something.

"Iraq snapshot" (The Common Ills):

Starting with war resistance. As

Chiroux made his decision public



Two years ago this month,
to get around the Constitution but were


same crime." And


To keep the pressure on,

Information on war resistance within the military can be found at



In the United States,











Staying with the US political race,
Team Nader issues the following:

Watch the video here, read the transcript below.
Do you think Ralph Nader should run? If so,
I said "Do you realize what you are saying?"
And he sort of paused.
And he paused.
Watch the video

iraq veterans against the war
matthis chiroux
tara mckelveyehren watada
gregg k. kakesako
jim fox
liam lahey
ben pershingthe washington post
mcclatchy newspapers
the new york timeskatharine q. seelyejulie bosman