Could be. Wouldn't be the first time. I'm equally sure it wouldn't be the last time. So I read on.
Joan, the e-mailer advises, was telling a joke. I "mistook her humor."
I know Joan was trying to be funny. I've never found her funny. I don't think she has a career in funny, I don't think she even does it well enough for a hobby.
But I did know she thought she was being funny.
If you're late to the party, Hilary Rosen went on CNN to trash Mitt Romney and ended up going after Ann Romney and, in the process, making a very insulting judgment -- sexist to the extreme -- about women. Ann Romney couldn't be an economic adviser, Rosen insisted, because she's never worked . . . a day in her life.
Rosen was arguing that stay-at-home Moms don't know anything. It's the attack on women that's taken place in the public square for centuries.
Joan rushed to defend her friend. This is the same Joan Walsh, remember, who defended Nir Rosen when he was on his kick about how Lara Logan being assaulted was funny and she 'had it coming'. Joan, like the cheap trash she is, then paid Nir Rosen to write a piece for Salon. It was an awful piece of writing but Joan needed her 'hits' and 'clicks' and 'visits' and she promoted it like it was the second coming, the online edition, of St. Augstine's The Confessions. So let's lose the idea real damn quick that Joan's a friend of women.
Joan's a vicious self-promoter. Noted for her anti-Latina remarks. (I believe she's learned to control her tongue on that since Ava called her out in 2008.)
She's repeatedly wrong and factually blind.
The e-mailer wants me to know that Joan was trying to be funny in her bad post.
That wasn't my criticism of Joan Walsh. From the snapshot:
Zerlina can take comfort in that Joan Walsh, as always, carries the torch for stupidity at Salon. Having distorted and outright lied with her coverage of the late Trayvon Martin (see Bob Somerby's archives), you'd think Walsh would learn when to close her mouth and take a seat, but that would be crediting her with far more intelligence than she has.
As usual, Joan's got a 'quote' but it's not really a quote. A quote is what someone said. Joan's edited it, as usual, so that it is different than what was said. Joan Walsh should have been kicked out of Salon a long, long time ago. You can watch Ann Romney here (link is video). I don't watch Fox News, I can't find a transcript so I'm providing one but I don't know the name of the woman she's speaking to.
Ann Romney: My career choice was to be a mother. And I think all of us need to know that we need to respect choices that women make. Other women make other choices -- to have a career and raise a family which I think Hilary Rosen has actually done herself. I respect that. That's wonderful. But you know, there are other people that have a choice. We have to respect women in all those choices that they make. And, by the way, let me give a shout out to all the Dads that are at home raising kids. This is obviously an awesome responsibility to raise children. It's, to me, the most important thing, we can do. I will tell you that Mitt said to me more times than you can imagine, "Ann, your job is more important than mine." He was making money and doing the things, raising funds and helping other companies and he would come home and say, "Ann, your job is more important than mine."
I'm holding up the roundtable for the gina & krista roundrobin (meaning everyone in the community will be late posting due to me). So I can't do a full transcript. But there was nothing insulting in Ann Romney's remarks. "Look I know what it's like to struggle. Maybe I haven't struggled as much financially as some people have. I can tell you and promise you that I have struggled in my life." Joan edits that quote down to "I know what it's like to struggle." And having lied like the piece of trash she is, Joan Walsh then wants an apology.
Joan, you deserve a public stoning. And you haven't walked in Ann's shoes and hopefully you never will, you will never have to raise children while dealing with your own illness or fear of being unable to do all you need to as a parent due to your illness. Joan Walsh is a disgusting person. She's allowed partisanship to turn her into the worst stereotype of a woman and all to attack another woman. We saw that in 2008. It needs to stop and it needs to stop now. And Joan Walsh needs to be called out loudly for her 'creative' 'reporting.'
My criticism was her 'creativity' with a quote. Joan altered Ann Romney's words and for four or five paragraphs (I read that while doing the snapshot, I'm not going to insult my mind by re-reading Walsh), she wants to trash Ann Romney for the quote.
She should have then included what Ann Romney actually said. She didn't do that.
Joan Walsh has a history of misleading.
With that history, it is to easy to conclude that this is the intent of the piece.
1) Slam Ann Romney for having money and make her seem to be out of touch by refusing to quote what she actually said.
2) Make a big-to-do out of how insulting the invented quote is to poor people with the hope of enraging your readers.
3) Declare that you're going to stop there because you're a bigger person, you're not, after all, a Republican.
4) Yammer on and on about other things while refusing to ever let people know that you attempted to hijack Ann Romney's public image by crafting a false persona that your promoted as real.
If that seems to unfair to Joan Walsh, I say too bad. We all should have learned as children that when you lie and lie repeatedly, pretty soon no one trusts you, no one gives you the benefit of the doubt. That was the point of "The Little Boy Who Cried Wolf."
Joan Walsh should be very happy that she has a supporter who will write a 57K e-mail in her defense. And I will admire the passion involved in the e-mail. However, I stand by what I said. She purposely misled on Ann Romney's remarks. She has a long pattern of doing that.
Bob Somerby's too often wondered why she never once corrected Chris Matthews on Hardball or commissioned a piece at Salon calling Matthews out for his distortions. She never did either because she's exactly the same. Chris Matthews game is Joan Walsh's game.
And I'm not in the mood for another presidential election year where women are repeatedly tossed into political lava to appease the partisan gods. There should no be female sacrifices this election year.
It's over, I'm done writing songs about love
There's a war going on
So I'm holding my gun with a strap and a glove
And I'm writing a song about war
And it goes
Na na na na na na na
I hate the war
Na na na na na na na
I hate the war
Na na na na na na na
I hate the war
Oh oh oh oh
-- "I Hate The War" (written by Greg Goldberg, on The Ballet's Mattachine!)
January 26th, ICCC's number of US troops killed in Iraq since the start of the illegal war was 4488. Tonight it's [PDF format warning] 4488.
The e-mail address for this site is common_ills@yahoo.com.
iraq
i hate the war
the ballet
