How dumb is that?
I just hate to give this Charlotte Allen nonsense (See J. Goodrich's post, below) even one more syllable of attention. Andrew Golis has it right: being inflammatory--about women especially--is a very successful marketing tactic. Over at CJR, Megan Garber explains this marketing approach in more detail, adding that "I, for one, am already looking forward to the paper’s upcoming eyeball-grabbers, “Asians Can’t Drive,” “Jews Are Cheap,” and “Old People Smell.” They’ll all be tongue-in-cheek, of course." (Let me add my favorite: Short people got no reason to live. Wait, that's been done.)
But here's what is particularly galling to me about this tactic: I wrote about it last year--for the Washington Post Outlook section, in a piece called "The Mommy War Machine." There, drawing on Caryl Rivers' and others' research, I outlined the cynical technique: Get women anxious or outraged, and it sells.
Now my editors there have used this themselves. I don't flatter myself that I wrote an instruction manual. But I do... swoon, faint, and despair. And I wonder: why is this especially effective with women? I don't believe you could write a "Jews are cheap" piece without facing serious consequences. With women, however, all they will get is a round of vituperative blog entries.
In the same way, the mainstream media get away with using sex-coded hate language about Hillary Clinton that would never pass muster if it were translated into racially-coded hate language and applied to Barack Obama. (And I'm not writing this as a dedicated Hillary supporter; see my earlier entry about voting for one and then wishing I had voted for the other).
Can someone tell me why women are an acceptable target, a target that isn't organized enough to fight back? Is it that we're so ... dumb?
It's a form of inertia, a habit of speech and thought. It likely has to die off, literally, with our generation, for the successors to look back and read this stuff like we read Mark Twain.
In spite of this column, and the sniping at Hillary by TV guys, the fact that a really large amount of money has been given to her campaign says a lot about where women have come to. (Same can be said for Barack, of course.)
March 4, 2008 2:32 PM | Reply | Permalink
We're an acceptable target because we're still second class citizens. The fact that Andrew Golis dismisses the article as a cheap trick to enhance traffic should alert you to that. They just don't get it.
March 4, 2008 2:36 PM | Reply | Permalink
Bev, come on. Trying to tar me as anti-feminist or insufficiently outraged because I made a broader meta point instead of making the obvious point that every one else is making (like Greg who I linked to) is unfair.
The reason the Post piece is absurd (the word I used) is because it's the most rank unabashed misogyny just laid out in the supposed respectable pages of one of America's "Great Newspapers." I thought that went without saying, but apparently not.
March 4, 2008 3:14 PM | Reply | Permalink
I didn't say you were a sexist, I said you didn't get it. If the piece had been this demeaning to Jews or Blacks, you'd be outraged. A piece by David Duke would have generated even more traffic, so no, I don't think that's the reason they published it.
March 4, 2008 3:25 PM | Reply | Permalink
"being inflammatory--about women especially--is a very successful marketing tactic. "
As EJ Graff should know. It's how she makes a living.
It's incredibly hypocritical Graff and many of the self described "proscriptive feminists" she associates have the gall to criticize the gender warriors on the other side who also make a living inflaming gender hostility, exaggerated gender stereotypes, and a sense of victimization and paranoia among their own.
March 4, 2008 6:14 PM | Reply | Permalink