- Top Features:
- War Room
- Glenn Greenwald
- Broadsheet
- Joan Walsh
- Camille Paglia
- Since You Asked
- Follow Salon:
Read other letters about this article
I love Molly Ivans, but I love your point too. Thanks for making it.
I've always wondered the same about Hillary too. Women, particularly powerful women who aren't "nice" all the time, are still targets in our society.
Last week, a guy actually announced at a local public meeting that he'd burn a Rosie O'Donnell doll he was holding in effigy. Now Rosie is no Hillary, but rage against both seems to stem from the same urge.
I haven’t read all of the letters that pass through Salon, but I wonder about certain patterns. Oprah, Camille Paglia, Joan Walsh and Anne Lamott have one thing in common. I will sound very P.C. saying this (as Bill O’Reilly would be the first to note) but do we just find it easier to bash women?
This is not a male problem: the women in the local audience cheered at the idea of burning Rosie. Last week I was consumed with anger at Paglia. Now, I’d argue she’s a woman who also tends to critique women – and she certainly was not pleasant to Hillary in her article. But that maybe part of why she’s popular. She gives us permission to do what we want to do.
We’re all being manipulated, is my guess. We think that just because some ideas get out in the real world – that women are equal, that racism is wrong, that the corporations have too much power, etc. – that this means such ideas actually have a real impact on the world. We think that everything has changed. Indeed, we say women have too much power, African Americans discriminate against whites, FOX really must be fair and balanced.
Nothing has changed. The rhetoric has just gotten more effective.
Joan Walsh: I’m a little worried for you. You have dared to put your face out there as editor of Salon and as a woman. (And you get manicures! How could you!)
As an editor we must critique you; you’re going to make mistakes and get us angry. You’ve made many decisions that have infuriated me. But I can’t help but wonder if the rhetoric in these letters won’t be just a little more pungent now that we can see the woman behind the curtain.
