My problem with Caitlin Flanagan is that she's in the business of making women feel bad. And we do that well enough on our own.

Where are the mentors who were supposed to help us young women get a start in the world, so that we could show we were just as smart and capable as men? Too often, I see women trying to knock each other down by criticizing their choices, rather than trying to make sure that each of us has the freedom to make choices in the first place.

from her piece about the Democratic Party:

"It's a party that supports gay families, as I do, and has vast sympathy for many other kinds of alternative lifestyles."

Her essay shows that you can have a hetero marriage, go to church on Sunday, and still support gay rights. Gay rights are not a threat to Flanagan's family! Kudos to her for pointing that out.

I've always associated her with self-flagellation.

OK, this is just getting silly. (In fact, I keep expecting Graham Chapman, in his "bobby" uniform, to pop out every time she's on camera and say, "We have to stop this bit immediately, this bit is getting much too silly!")

Caitlin Flanagan isn't a "housewife." She doesn't even seem to like housewives very much, at least not the modern kind; isn't one of her "bits" a harangue about how these demanding hausfrau shrews (who, unlike Mrs. Thang, actually do spend their days sewing buttons and doing laundry and scrubbing floors and disposing of baby poop) insist on being taken "to the Olive Garden and a Meg Ryan movie" once a week, week after interminable week? No, her sympathy is with those poor, poor husbands today, and what they allegedly have to suffer through to get themselves laid! And she's surprised that people don't think of her as a progressive Democrat?

Caitlin Flanagan has one pair of brass balls.

Yes, LeCastor it's flagellation and it's a nightmare but now she's coming after you with her whip, so you'd better be prepared to fight back.

Caitlin, please stop hating yourself, and stop dragging feminists (and now Democrats!) into your hate vortex.

CF's quote:

[The Democrats made a huge tactical error a few decades ago. In the middle of doing the great work of the '60s--civil rights, women's liberation, gay inclusion--we decided to stigmatize the white male. The union dues--paying, churchgoing, beer-drinking family man got nothing but ridicule and venom from us. So he dumped us. And he took the wife and kids with him.]

How do you even begin to divine the crap out of this statement?

Venom from the Democrats? (the 'us' implies women too--that's the twin message.)Is she kidding? Karl Rove has done his diabolical fair share of luring her precious family man into the fraudulent conservative fold by LYING! (see the John McCain and Max Cleland smear campaigns) Yes, this was a failing of the Democrats because they are weak now, but they did not stigmatize the family man. The Dems are the HEROES to these men and they will come around. Many are seeing through the cracked Rove Colored Glasses already. 'Kansas' will come back.

In fact, she better thank the Democrats heartily for helping to keep a tiny shred of unionism alive.

And isn't the white male still doing well, relative to the whole rest of the planet?

The other funny thing is that you can turn on any sitcom and there will be a heavy man (average looks) with a size 4 cutie as his wife. If Hollywood is run by liberals, they sure are nice to the family man. He scored. You never see it reversed. Heavy woman, hot man. (slight digression, sorry.)

Here's another fun quote:

[It's a book that pays tribute to the '50s housewife instead of ridiculing her.]

Must we go back to the '50s housewife? Is that ancient word even used anymore? Despite all the 'mommy wars' and such, I'd rather be a woman in 2006 than the 1950s. Women had fewer choices then, even though many had to work to feed their families for crappy wages anyway. To use the '50s Housewife as some kind of quaint symbol and standard negates 50 years of progress.

But that's right--it's this PROGRESS THAT SHE FEELS SO GUILTY ABOUT! Progress is going to harm her children; her family core. It's the progress that makes her hate herself.

P.S. I do have to give CF praise for blasting on the Bush admin.

Joan Walsh, thanks for keeping CF in the headlines. But next time could you give me a day's notice that you're posting more of her swill so that I can make myself a stiff drink ahead of time? I don’t even drink...

She's a priviledged elitist with a schtick. The schtick is bashing feminists. If the press doesn't give her publicity, she won't make money.

It's ironic that the mainstream press is effectively trying to do that to Colbert right now. This woman's victimhood (clearly she hasn't been around any union white guys lately, or single mothers, or people of color who are American born)is to sell books to the right. Calling herself a Democrat is a marketing technique. As in "see they know how bankrupt they are?" She's basically a neoconservative without the smarts or education, because she screws up her facts in her interviews a lot. Her poverty and crime discussions are so factually inaccurate as to be hilarious.

Why is it so important to keep her a Democrat? She won't write her checks to Doctors Without Borders if she's a Republican?

She's not going to leave. She's getting cash off the affiliation. What I don't get is how she thinks she's a victim.

Every time you feel the urge to bash this meaningless CF unworthy of any attention, just go listen to "the Seeger Sessions" again. That matters, she doesn't.

Taking Ms. Walsh's comparison with chickenhawks a little further: Flanagan is a Ravenhen.

Ignore her and she'll eventually go away.

WHEN can we stop talking about Caitlin Flanagan?

She's an idiot.

Other than to pan her, attack her, ridicule her and expose her self-contradictory, super-convoluted, self-dramatizing loghorea, of course.

I suppose that anyone who can hoax their way to an article in Time needs to be counter-attacked. OK, so she's a self-serving, manipulative, ambitious, attention-seeking, willing-to-say-anything-to-get-you-to-look little twit who would never have been published if it weren't for the closet sexists in the "left" who want to set women against one another.

Can we all just agree that we are just about as convinced by this media blitz against us and against feminism by this harpy as we were by the media blitz selling us the Iraq War -- brought to us by the same people and just as stupid.

As far as driving her out of the Dem Party, that would be an excellent idea. She doesn't belong in it and if she doesn't feel comfortable, we must be on the right track.

So, now we've done our duty and attacked her.

Can we ignore her now? Please?

Jan VanDenBerg