After a Wednesday, May 23rd blow up with co-host Elisabeth Hasselbeck, Rosie O'Donnell decided to take an early leave from ABC's morning talk show "The View," which she was supposed to leave in June..
I confess I was not a big Rosie fan until the last few months when she really started speaking out against Bush administration crimes. Before that I found her just too loud and obnoxious!
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Of course, the truth is that even in this day and age, just about any woman who asserts her opinion in the face of male criticism (and that might be just one man) generally is considered loud and obnoxious. Two years ago there was quite a debate about why there were so many fewer female oped and opinion writers than male ones.
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The bottom line - the women got so much more hostility, mostly from men, than male did pundits, that they quickly withdrew from the fray. (They also felt they had to get everything perfect to avoid attacks on minor errors that often would be ignored if men made them.)
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Three particulary enlighting articles on this topic are: Female Pundits Could Use Help With Hate Mail (Women's Enews); Invisible Women (The Nation), Writing Women Into a Corner (The Washington Post).
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Given the attacks most opinionated women face, you have to be arrogant, self-centered and thick-skinned to be a woman pundit. I have found that to be true even on libertarian and "progressive" email discussion lists! On most of the lists I am on, I am just about the only female poster! I get insulted all the time for daring to confidantly opine on whatever topic. But enjoy giving back what I get. Which, of course, means that I am "hard to get along with." All the women who just don't post, or disappear after the first attack, of course, are very "easy to get along with"! Or else they just aren't as masochistic as I am!
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Of course, the problem is that constantly being attacked and having to defend yourself can put you in a permanent bad mood! But then some of us think that's better than taking the abuse and being depressed!
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The only women allowed to be obnoxious are right wing female radio talk show hosts who defend male privilege, and some "black bloc" anarchist women when they fiercely defend the right of their men to smash things and fight with the cops. Occasionally they latter will even claim that right for themselves!
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Well, we'll see if ABC replaces Rosie with Roseanne, per my previous blog entry. Roseanne is just a tad more reserved in her approach than Rosie. ABC would be smart to do it because there are millions of women (and men) who enjoy a funny woman who asserts her points -- she's such a novelty!
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If you want to check out a great blog from an opinionated peace activist woman blogger, see Jane Stillwell's blog jpstillwater.blogspot.com. (Yes, some peacenik males complain that she gets "too much" attention for her punditry!) A grandmother who turns a great phrase, she recently got her way paid by a publication to blog from Iraq and Afghanistan..
While as a libertarian I may not always agree with her opinions and prescriptions, especially economic, I love her moxie. Some entries during the last year include: Palestine, Iraq & sibling rivalry: The psychology of civil war & some probate advice; The world's youngest profession: The sociology of a child prostitute village in India; "Lost" and "September 11": A tale of two rigged plane crashes?; OMG! I just interviewed Sean Penn!; Not fact-based enough: Why GWB won't be hired as an embedded reporter in Iraq; Getting ready for Burning Man: It's like getting ready for Armegeddon!; Millennium Challenge coincidence: The war on Iraq began with war games too.
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One of my projects is to start finding and contacting female bloggers with moxie as part of my new radical decentralist secessionist feminist organizing initiative. Will report how things develop.
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