They get paid to act that way. Pissin' and moanin' is their gig.

Flag. This post is crap. Sexism is not a relevant argument, no matter which party it's directed at.

"Bitchy"
"Harpies"
"Bitter"
Blah, blah, blah.
Do we love Coulter, Bachmann et al? Of course not; most of us abhor them.
But please, is it too much trouble to call them out on their errors of fact, or their manipulative spin -- in other words, their actions --without resort to stereotyped characterizations having to do with voice tone????
This makes three such characterizations on TPM is as many weeks:
1) Barbara Boxer allegedly sounded "strident" by asking to be called Senator;
2) Nancy Pelosi was allegedly "testy" with an NPR reporter
3) And now the opposition -- the female opposition - is alleged to sound "bitter" and "bitchy."
DO Y'ALL NOT GET IT?
You are judging women, not by their actions, or their levels of ethics or professional expertise, but instead, by the culturally inculcated archetype that a woman's voice, her tone, is the first and most salient quality that defines her.
Stop it. OK?

Ann Coulter and Laura Ingram are no different than Rush Limbaugh and Glenn Beck and Sean Hannity. Call them wrong, call them ignorant, call them derranged. They are all three.

But "bitch" and "harpy" are loaded words. Words that demean the women they are applied to for their crime of being women.

It is not acceptable to demean Hispanic or African American Republicans with loaded words. Why is it acceptable to direct them toward women?

I am going to go out on a limb as a woman and say that it appears to me that while I understand the cautions against a pattern of subtle stereotyping etc.

There is also apparently this back and forth of moments when our perspectives allow us to use the generalization of 'republicans' this and 'democrats' that etc. and times when our perspectives abhor that we are generalizing and we know that we don't actually intend such a broad context.

And then similarly, I might be extra careful in the terms I use to even describe a black person because I am white and don't want to offend but between many black people 'nigger' is sometimes a completely acceptable word to use but coming from me depending on familiarity it may be considered completely offensive.

I did not take offense at the adjective 'bitchy' why because my daughter just used it two days ago when she was on the phone and she said she was getting off the phone with her because she was being bitchy. I asked her later if there was a problem with her friend and she said 'oh, she was really hot and crabby and she realized it, everything is fine.'

So from some perspective, maybe familiarity, it's okay to say 'why are you so bitchy' and another it's' offensive, demeaning, etc.

I am beginning to think this is a bit like detecting snark, which I am not great at btw, and it may really depend on the perspective one has in expressing something that gets taken differently by different people and their perspectives. I was surprised to scroll down and see that others had taken offense at the word 'bitchy' and other at another moment it might have been me.

Sharpton, Chomsky, Franken, Farrakhan, Waxman...

You could do it on th left too. I don't think that there's a major role for gender to play here.