“If it insulted people, that was not the intent,” Outlook editor John Pomfret told me this morning, calling the piece “tongue-in-cheek.”See, it was a joke! Ha-ha, super-funny! And it wouldn't have been as funny if it hadn't included a litany of easily-disproven stereotypes about women and a closing argument that women are "kind of dim," now, would it?
Pomfret said that Allen pitched the idea to him as a riff on women fainting at Obama rallies, and similarities with the Beatles.
“She wanted to make fun of this issue,” Pomfret said. “A lot of people have taken it very seriously.”
Besides, it's not like Charlotte Allen has a history of attacking women for being...
Who's there? Why, it's Feministing editor Jessica Valenti! What's that, Jessica? You have something to share?
Any quick search of Allen's past writing shows just how seriously she takes her women-hate.Whatever do you mean? Oh, you mean like when she wrote that she can't get enough of Camille Paglia, or when she called Maureen Dowd a "scary spinster from the past,", or where she just can't understand how you can suggest sex discrimination in the New York Fire Department, or where she jumped in on Ann Althouse's side during the Breastgate kerfuffle, or where she says that women who fear ending up destitute should just get married already, or where she states flatly that there are innate cognitive differences between men and women, or where she says women hate sensitive men, or where she attacks the idea of a vaccine for HPV, or where she attacks feminists for wanting their partners to do equal housework, or when she claims women don't work as hard as men, or my personal favorite, when she blamed feminists for making stewardesses ugly? In that one, she said:
Frankly, even as a woman, I miss the old sexist days, when stewardesses were stewardesses: pretty young things in cute mini-suits and little heels who oozed attention onto everyone–because who knew? They might end up marrying one of the passengers … Why does feminism have to mean the triumph of the ugly and the surly?Why indeed?
Anyhow, based on all this, either the International Women's Forum is Charlotte Allen's idea of the longest, least funny joke in the history of humor, or Charlotte Allen hates women. And I'm betting on the latter.
Now, maybe the Post still thought of this article as tongue-in-cheek; I suppose it's possible. Given that they found this piece to be hilarious enough to publish, I've got a few ideas for some more pieces they can put up:
• Get Fred Phelps to write a hilarious, tongue-in-cheek post about how homosexuals are AIDS-ridden lepers.
• Get David Duke to write a funny, satirical piece about how African Americans are all a bunch of criminals.
• Get Tom Tancredo to write a gut-busting, jokey op-ed about how Mexicans are a bunch of lazy leeches.
• Get Louis Farrakahn to pen a laugh-a-minute, totally-kidding tome about how Jews are money-grubbing.
Yes, those all may seem like they'd be horribly offensive and not funny at all, but you're just proving to be a humorless feminist. I mean, having well-known bigots write plainly bigoted articles is evidently the new knock-knock joke. Forgive me if I don't chuckle.