The Guardian: Media Misogyny and Harriet Harmon

[Captain Hilts]

Harmon is sitting in for Gordon Brown while he's on holiday and conservatives are going nuts.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2009/aug/08/harriet-harman-rod-liddle-spectator

Why do so many men think it is OK to direct explicit sexist abuse at Harriet Harman? It is the equivalent of calling Peter Mandelson a screaming faggot or denouncing Trevor Phillips with the "n" word. But it happens, day to day. "So," wondered Rod Liddle in the Spectator this week, with all the gravitas of Plato picking his nose, "Harriet Harman, then. Would you? I mean after a few beers obviously, not while you were sober."

Liddle then rams into the Labour deputy leader, like a drunk shouting at a bus stop. It goes like this. Harriet hates men, and she is using the tool of gender inequality to ruin men's lives, like Dr No, styled by Next. Did she poison Alexander Litvinenko? Is she Dennis Nilsen in a wig? Does she have a silo under her house in Peckham, aimed at Chelsea Football Club?

...

I wouldn't usually bother spitting the words "Rod Liddle". It is like being angry at cows – tempting, but pointless. I stopped taking Liddle seriously when he was cautioned for assaulting his then pregnant girlfriend in 2005.

...

She wanted all companies to publish their pay gaps, but she was blocked in cabinet. She also wants employers to take gender – and race – into account if they have a skewed workforce, but only if the competing candidates are equally qualified.

...
But for all this, but above all for being a woman, Harman is transformed into Cruella de Equality, a flapping vampiric harpy haunting the halls of power, and, sometimes, Peckham. Swoop, apply lipstick, swoop again.

Punish her for her ambition and her idealism, and perhaps other flapping vampiric harpies will be put off from not knowing their place, which is, ideally, under Rod Liddle.

[snagglepuss]

1. "Cruella de Equality, a flapping vampiric harpy haunting the halls of power"

This is a great read. thanks for posting.

[Captain Hilts]

2. The Spectator used to be a respected conservative publication. Can you believe that column?

[snagglepuss]

4. Rod Little the Spectator columnist is trash but what a take down by Tany Gold at the

Guardian, it is hilarious. "I wouldn't usually bother spitting the words "Rod Liddle". It is like being angry at cows – tempting, but pointless".





edit spelling

[abumbyanyothername]

3. Well written.

If only we could have columns like that in the LA Times.

[juno jones]

5. I love the English turn of phrase.

The quote about the cows is priceless!

[LeftishBrit]

6. Rod Liddle is disgusting

I had thought he was just an extreme right-winger on the basis of articles I've read; but on checking his history, he seems to be an attention-seeking opportunist who has written from various points in the political spectrum over the years. In any case when he is right-wing, he is very nastily right-wing. He's the sort of person who thinks it's clever to defy rules of 'political correctness' just for the sake of doing so. (On checking further info about him, I find that the above sentence is even truer than I thought it was - in 2007, he actually said in so many words, "I find racist jokes funnier now than I did 30 years ago because it's so socially unacceptable .") A few years ago, he wrote a couple of EXTREMELY nasty articles about, and against, disability rights; and has also been vile about immigrants, and all the usual targets. As regards his sexist attitudes, he apparently practices what he preaches, and was arrested for domestic violence a few years ago.

[redqueen]

7. Well just look at how threads about women's issues are treated here.

So many men think it's okay because so many other men agree with them. God knows they don't listen to women who disagree... they just hurl sexist insults at them, too.

Thank God for the men who do state their disagreement. It's only due to them that anything will change.