Cheeky? Catfight? "Broad"sheet? Pink? Give me a break.

On top of Homo Confidential last week, I can't even imagine what kind of "cute" headline I'm going to find about Jews or Blacks next week in Salon.

Can you imagine when we thought Ayelet Waldman was terrible? Ayelet deserves her own Pulitzer if the alternative is this recycled nonsense masquerading as empowerment.

The cartoon is a nice change from the recent reliance on stock photos, though. I will grant you that.

I think the blog itself is the product of a wonderful urge to share the humor, the insight of a group of people who really enjoy each other and that is admirable, and even on my initial read, enjoyable. But please, please, please change the lead-in. "Girls Gone Wild" isn't clever, and it references one of the most exploitive, obnoxious contributions to pop culture. Also, I agree with other posters who think the !pink! color scheme is cliche and out of line with Broadsheet's stated goals. Carry on!

...but no thanks.

Granted, I'm a male, so I'm not the target audience for this blog anyway. But as a self-identified feminist who is not afraid of the word, I have to ask for whom this blog is intended.

Beyond the mediocre name and the fuscia color scheme seems to lie only gossip and triviata. (Yes, I know it's early days yet, but first impressions matter.) When you look at smart blogs helmed by women, like Wonkette and Stay Free!, and modern feminist magazines like Bitch, it is readily apparent how mature and sophisticated women-led and women-oriented material can be. This effort just seems so terribly retrograde by comparison.

Frankly, I expect much better from Salon. I have been a long time subscriber, and will likely continue to be one. But efforts like this make me wonder how connected Salon remains with its audience.

What were you thinking? And pink, yet. Sheesh.

I have to agree with the other posters that do not like this new offering. I dislike all the same items, the color, the "catfight", the trivial gossip etc...we don't need a seperate space advertising itself as a feminist oasis, when in fact your feeding us the same condescending bullshit we get all the time. I don't like the color pink, I read Salon for information on politics and social debate not celebrity gossip, and I don't want to hear about women always catfighting...it's a nasty stereotype that should be put to rest. So please just get rid of the whole thing and try a simplier plan, like interspersing feminist articles and opinions in the midst of your regular articles...that way MEN and women will read them...that's the equality this feminist is after.

Or I should say I heart it. The Broadsheet that is. What a great idea.

So this blog is supposed to be about "half of the world's population", right? Right. Why don't you just call this blog "for white, bourgeois, elite liberal American feminists?"

Give me a freaking break.

We'll never see anything on this blog (nor in the the rest of Salon) about the overwhelming majority of the world's women (unless of course it's yet another one of those condescending items about some horrible persecution about the downtrodden women in the third world who are of course uniformly silent and passive). Coverage of the world's women in Salon has always been totally superficial, patronizing and close to nonexistent.

The young American liberals of Salon and the typical Salon reader (like most Americans both right and left) exist in an incredibly insular, elitist little world full of trivia and pettiness, thoroughly self-absorbed and ignorant about the complexities of the outside world. They reduce feminism to a totally depoliticized, simple-minded, consumerist "choice". In the slums of Brazil, the very active feminist movement describes running water and basic sewage as a feminist cause. But this is a viewpoint totally alien to the small minds who run Salon. Tell me, will we ever see items on vocal, active Muslim feminists, hmm?? What about gay Muslim groups like Al Fatiha? What about something on the race/class divide between feminists of color and white elite feminists of the NOW type?

Today one of the great, courageous heroes of our time, Rosa Parks, died -- will we see something of substance on her, other than some glib repetitive little item indistinguishable from CNN's obit? What about the amazing, courageous activist work of Native American women, or the many African-American women in poor neighborhoods working for improvements in their lives and of their children? The vision of the women writing for this blog (and the rest of the Salon) is almost so totally white, middle class, American-centered (and a very small, elite part of the American landscape) with an occasional ear open to a story or two in Europe or Canada. Your incredible insularity confirms the outside world's view of American liberals as being just as culturally arrogant and ignorant as your rightwing counterparts. you are thoroughly irrelevant to most American women (poor or working class, women of color).

I love salon.com -- really I do -- but this is just lame.

First of all... "cheeky"?? Please. I'm embarrassed that you even used the word.

Second, a "women's blog" is unnecessary. It's silly. It's divisive. It's even kind of offensive.

What..? are we supposed to only discuss stuff like hair styles and makeup here? Do we go over to the MEN'S blogs when we want to discuss serious issues like politics? The whole idea of "women's issues" is sort of ridiculous. There are human issues -- some of which affect women more than men. We don't need a special place to discuss these issues, though. Quite the contrary.

I'm sorry folks, but this is a dumb idea.

Between this dreck, the sex doll story, and the brain-dead science coverage, I have to wonder why I should bother to renew my subscription when it comes up again.

Salon, what's happened to you?

Will someone please explain to me how putting important issues like "Harriet Miers' Supreme Court nomination [and] the FDA's stalling over Plan B" in a separate blog (accented by touches of pink, no less, so that people who don't read chick lit, like men, and me, are less likely to read it) "puts women in the center"?

It doesn't. It puts these issues on the sidelines. And these are issues of national importance, not just "women's issues."

I truly can't believe Salon has jumped on the pink-and-green girl-power bandwagon. Now, excuse me while I go unsubscribe.