“Half-fine bitches”: WHY is this acceptable???
December 30, 2008
by Amy Siskind
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Why is this acceptable?
Stanley Crouch wrote a blog piece that is posted in The Daily Beast today.
The concept in his piece titled They Saw It Coming is that two women, Bethany McLean and Meredith Whitney, warned about the financial meltdown.
He does reference back to a story that I wrote on the same topic titled Women Scorned two weeks ago that spoke to Brooksley Born and Sheila Bair, amongst others.
The subtext of Stanley’s article is this:
Two “half-fine bitches” predicted the financial crisis that has now engulfed us. If only we’d listened.
Got to admit, he lost me there. Why is it acceptable to diminish two brilliant women by referring to them as “half-fine bitches”? Why is this permissable in our society at all???
Please leave a comment here and let Stanley know that this is NOT acceptable language!
“he took his shots casually as he moved around the table and described some women who had put a crimp in his game as “half-fine bitches.”
I was bewildered completely when I read this wondering how in the world that could even be considered appropriate.
Then I clicked on the article though and IT SEEMS he is being sarcastic, making fun of a guy who used that language.
IT SEEMS he is condemning it, but they shouldn’t highlight that part of the article. I think the writer is actually condemning this language and makes a Feminist argument.
“I assumed that he meant that whatever way in which they had slighted him would have been more tolerable if they had been inarguable beauties from the top of their heads to the soles of their feet.”
Still of course they had to pick up on that one line.
Here is an article that actually lauds smart women who weren’t listened to. Then Crouch wants to be listened to (women aren’t interesting, but these are, ya know), so resorts to the language used because he has to get attention to this article, which is about women people don’t want to listen to anyway.
By using the language he has, in the way that he has, he thinks he’s being groovy and hip, but it’s a big old turnoff and actually denigrates women. He talks admiringly about women who put men in a vice, wants them to have the attention they deserve, then is in the vice himself–which is that no one is going to pay attention to these women, but they should.
So use unacceptable (aka hip, cool) terms, anything, to get people’s attention to Crouch being smart enough to understand that women can be smart. And being so smart ass, why would he have credibility when “half-bitches” are not worthy of anything anyway? He’s got caught in his own prejudices, despite his brain honking at him about the merits of the women he writes about.
I couldn’t tell if he was being sarcastic or not. I’m not familiar with The Daily Beast or this writer so I have no larger frame of reference. If he was being sarcastic, it surely wasn’t clear and either way, it’s regretable to say the least that that would be the featured, bolded, opening line.
Amy, other than leaving a post on the blog, do you know how to contact the author directly? Also, perhaps you could write a rebuttal piece since it sounds like you already have the material for it from a prior piece.
I agree with Anna, it would be interesting to get a dialogue going with this author. It is possible he was attempting a sardonic twist that really backfired. Nonetheless, you would hope an editor would catch it, even if the author didn’t see that the twist was not working and, in fact, degrading his article.
Here is my dialogue with the author.
Thanks for propagating a derogatory term like “half-fine bitches” for a whole new generation to enjoy. Your political bent is abundantly clear when you deride “evil greedy Wall Street corrupt CEO’s blah blah blah” and neglect to mention the congressional morons that pushed Fannie and Freddie into being charitable organizations while filling their own campaign coffers from the same cesspool. If anybody missed your leanings through the beginning of your article, the bias is made abundantly clear when you lump Sarah Palin in with Madonna and Paris Hilton. Really?
I also hope women won’t miss how you simultaneously insult them by telling your overly cute little “half-fine bitches” story and then condescendingly pat them on the head and congratulate them that you were able to find at least a handful that actually have a brain. You Sir are a heavy-handed putz.
Thia – Wow! Words escape me (and that’s rare!). Just: Wow!
Thia – you go girlfriend!!!
Here’s mine.
Er, thanks … I think. I think you’re praising some smart and courageous women
But … “McLean and Whitney are not the kinds of women who get the attention or are sought out the way that Sarah Palin or Madonna or Paris Hilton is” … why in the world are you grouping Sarah Palin with Madonna and Hilton?
Sarah Palin is a self-made businesswoman and a brilliant governor who has done a great job handling complicated financial dealings with the oil companies and a treaty with Canada to build a pipeline. She belongs right up there with the women you are praising — or perhaps above them, as Sarah not only saw the financial corruption problems around her but succeeded in solving them.
So what is this about Madonna and Hilton? Are you hinting that they also are successful businesswomen (which they are) and should be respected as such? It sounds like you are grouping Palin with the image of ‘pretty airhead’ that is (probably unjustly) applied to Madonna and Hilton. Which might be worth another column in itself.
Palin negotiated a pipeline with a pipeline consortium and the Government of Alberta (I might be redundant there), and I would propose that is much more business savvy than merely with the Canadian government. All those oil billions saw the merit in her proposal. They jumped at it. No government could have made them do that if they didn’t see profit in it. Most of it will be underground too, so it will be conservative of the northern British Columbia/Yukon/Alberta Woodland Caribou, a very small remaining herd of this once multitudinous animal, who are endangered because their habitat is endangered. That was part of the agreement.
fsteele – You and Thia are on a roll! Great posts!
Thanks for the info, Sis. Is it true that the pipeline will be the biggest or most complicated engineering project ever undertaken in North America, or something like that?
Does anyone know a good Palin site with really deep detail about her accomplishments?
I think the Yukon/Alaska highway might still overshadow it. That was a dual country project too.
The pipeline sounds more interesting though.
New problems, so new technology needed.
Definitely more technology, but some of that was perfected for the highway, like how to handle permafrost and muskeg.
It’s certainly going to cost a lot more. It’s not all wonderful. I think no matter how much they talk a good show, there will be a lot of irretrievable damage. I guess we can only try to find the best way, use the least amount, you know? so we don’t just guzzle the earth up for out wanton ways. Things are different in the north. It doesn’t come back. It’s not the loss of the rain forest that will kill the earth: it’s the loss of the Arctic.
It’s two different issues. Whether such a pipeline is a wise action environmentally or not, still it’s an enormous, impressive undertaking for Palin to know the details of, and it took a lot of good negotiating to get diverse groups from different countries to agree on the details. So that is evidence of Palin’s intelligence and ability.
And not everyone accepts it. I’d say, probably less than in the States. I’m torn. I do like to see Sarah achieving, know it can’t be turned back, but hope it can be as careful as possible. I think we will have to ‘monitor’ it, and make sure they know what we want from this; that is, not to devastate a wilderness ecosystem to fuel our homes and cars. And now we know, all of us, what we do in the North that wrecks the north, has repercusions in the south. Everyone’s back yard.
http://www.canada.com/calgaryh.....79db9df648
Woops. Someone made a rude post about Sarah. I responded with “For some details about Palin’s accomplishments with the oil companies etc, see a USA Today article, “Palin governs from the center.” It went up — but now has disappeared!
Well, my comment came up this time. Duh.
fsteele
Regarding your question about a site to find info about Governor Palin, I can’t speak for the level of reliabililty of this site, but someone posted this link on a thread here the other day:
http://www.teamsarah.org/
The site appears to be devised around the notion of discussing and supporting issues that are aligning with Sarah Palin’s, so I think it’s about more than just her. And, like I said, I have no clue as to how credible it is.
The thing is women need to force a media culture where there is a free market. Currently the men who run corporate media have found ways to force themselves into peoples homes where they are not wanted and they have become gatekeepers of who can bring their media product to market. For instance you can’t get any cable channels unless you take their pre-selected package. These media men do not realize we find them ugly and stupid they do not realize they do not reflect our culture. We need to actively encourage women to only download the content they want to watch and dump all media bundles. This will save women’s household budgets and it contribute to a free media market and as women take the time to search out obscure media on the internet we will see a real women’s media develop.
good point constance. women first need to stick together, but 2nd need to make sure their considerable economic incentives make the points for them. The media is a monopoly and not behaving in a free market fashion, it’s true. But we also see women being the biggest proponents of things that are bad for them (ie the large number of women being enablers of bad-mouthing or abuse in real life or media, or even small things like being the majority audience for shows denegrating to women like desperate housewives or what have you), so first we need to be smart, and then we need to make it stick economically too.
Harkening back to Thia’s lovely piece about Laura Bush, I’m just giving everyone a heads up that there is a piece about First Lady Bush at American Thinker today (sadly, it’s not Thia’s piece). Unfortunately, the author has created the very dichotomy that TNA is working hard to chip away at regarding old notions of liberals and conservatives, and in so doing, the author has diminished Clinton en route to praising Bush. This is a great opportunity for all of us to descend upon that site and do a bit of educating. In short: Why must one woman fall in order for another to rise? Here’s the link for anyone interested in posting. (No need to register at that site. Posts are moderated, but most go through rather quickly. I don’t think they allow anyone to embed a link in their post.)
http://www.americanthinker.com.....nolia.html
I’ve noticed since the election season that misogyny is now acceptable.
Here are my comments to Crouch:
Yes, we saw it coming. A NUMBER OF BRILLIANT WOMEN PREDICTED AND WARNED OF THE FINANCIAL CRISIS:
Bethany McLean
Meredith Whitney
Brooksley Born
Sheila Bair
But no one listened. The corruption and mess created by the men (who wouldn’t listen and who devalued the women’s warnings) threaten not only the US, but the world economies. Much human suffering has occurred, and will continue. Unfortunately, the sociopathic reptiles who caused this mess probably don’t care.
So, thank you Stanley, for honoring the women who saw what was happening and tried to warn us all.
THERE’S ONE MORE THING: please, please don’t refer to these women, or any women, as “half-fine” or any-fine “bitches”. Those words are insulting and devalue the very women who tried to make a huge difference. So please cut out the sexist, misogynist terms (where was your editor?).
But do continue to give credit where credit is due.
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