CONSERVATIVE (AND LIBERTARIAN) OUTREACH TO WOMEN IS GOING GREAT, CONT.

Last week I mentioned the  spate of  conservative complaints about Emma Watson's very measured feminist speech at the U.N., which apparently spoiled their bedtime Hermione fantasies. Since then, in Time magazine -- a major outlet of what was once called the Liberal Media, for reasons lost to history -- Cathy Young of Reason has delivered the libertarian response. Guess how that goes?

Sorry, Emma Watson, but HeForShe Is Rotten for Men

Until feminism recognizes discrimination against men, the movement for gender equality will be incomplete.

Lots of weeping about "anti-male biases in the court system," and how if a woman beats up a man (as they frequently do) no one sympathizes, whereas if a guy beats up a chick everyone gets bent out of shape, etc. This pretty much comports with what libertarians usually say about women's rights. I wouldn't be surprised if folks started catching on at last that social issues don't mean as much to libertarians as the transfer of wealth from paupers to the deserving rich.

While his colleagues were raging at Watson, Kevin D. Williamson of National Review kicked it old school with a rant about Lena Dunham. the Brooklyn actress who started driving culture warriors crazy during the 2012 campaign, and whom, despite their protestations of disgust with her tattooed ass, they just cain't quit.

Dunham wrote a pamphlet for Planned Parenthood (or, in Williamson’s view, “a gang of abortion profiteers”) called “5 Reasons Why I Vote (and You Should, Too),” spurring his column-length sputter. Mostly it was about  how voting is stupid (“the most shallow gesture of citizenship there is”) because people with whom he disagrees get to do it (and are only doing so “as an act of self-gratification,” not to get candidates elected) and seem at present to outnumber him and his lunatic fringe. But Williamson managed to stuff unchivalrous comments about Dunham in there, too, and plenty of abortion ravings, including an assertion that women have abortions out of a “desire to fit nicely into a prom dress."  "FWIW, I've been dumping of democracy/voting fetishization for almost two decades," cheered Jonah Goldberg in response.

Later Williamson went on Twitter to tell people that women who had abortions should be hanged as murderers. The boy will go far.

Our favorite stray ladyragebit, though, is a line from Bryan Preston at PJ Media. Angered to learn that Alicia Keys was appearing naked for some social justice thing, Preston seethed, “She and the [New York] Times see this as ‘empowering.’ Is it empowering that an insanely successful woman and mother believes that getting naked before the entire world is the best way to draw attention to her cause? Or is it just plain old attention-whoring from her, and sucking up to leftwing celebrities from the New York Times?” Fucking bitches, with their whoring and sucking! 

“Yet here she is,” sneered Preston, “being all empowered. Naked, to push for gun control.” And now, his piece de resistance:

Try confronting an Islamist madman like this.

Message discipline is message discipline -- squads of headchoppers roam America's streets! Even in the midst of ladyrage, there's always time to pick on Muslims.  

FRIDAY ROUND-THE-HORN.

•   Though it's been days since Emma Watson's perfectly sensible feminist speech at the U.N., willful misunderstandings keep rolling in from our conservative brothers and sisters. There are, as you would expect, the usual blarhars from local oafs: Watson "hopped on the misogyny-patriarchy-rape-train," says Phil Elmore at WorldNetDaily; Breitbart's Milo Yiannopoulos yammers on about Watson's "figure-hugging overcoat" and "ten-thousand dollar outfits, with jackets cut perfectly to accentuate every curve of her body," apparently to make clear that the bitch is asking for it. But some conservatives put a little spin on their spin, so to speak,  portraying Watson's speech itself as anti-feminist. When Watson said, "Fighting for women's rights has too often become synonymous with man-hating. Feminism, by definition, is the belief that men and women should have equal rights and opportunities," Rush Limbaugh pounced: "Right there she's telling you, feminism, as she learned it, means man-hating, means men are the enemy, means men are predators, rapists, brutes, purse snatchers, muggers and all that." "EMMA WATSON CONCEDES WOMEN 'ARE CHOOSING NOT TO IDENTIFY AS FEMINISTS,'" headlined Breitbart's Tony Lee. Etc. The weirdest bit so far, though, comes from Heather Wilhelm at The Federalist:

...[Watson said,] “I think it is right that I should be able to make decisions about my own body.” (Here, of course, was a bout of wild applause.) “I think it is right that women be involved on my behalf in the policies and decisions that will affect my life.” (Good thing all women think the same!)

In other words, the leftists who hijacked feminism have twisted it to be about female autonomy and basic human rights, whereas it used to be all about the music. They musta got that from Alinsky!

•   As near as I can figure this out: Katy Waldman wrote a column objecting to an A.J. Delgado column about how women make up rape accusations. Later Cathy Young also published a column about how women make up rape accusations. Brendon Bordelon finds the liberal hypocrisy: All three columns appeared at Slate! Thus:

Slate Attacks NR for ‘Crying Rape’ Column, Then Uses Exact Same Headline Months Later

Slate could avoid this sort of thing by not publishing Delgado or Young, both of whom are incredibly awful wingnuts, but then by the rules of conservative victimhood that'd be censoring/oppressing them. You can't win (except in elections).

•   Grim laughs from the American Enterprise Institute (catch the byline):

Whereas Yoo refused to obey the Geneva Conventions, and has no regrets at all. Every time I see that man's name, I get the same feeling that comes over me when the narrator at the end of A Man For All Seasons tells us Richard Rich died in his bed.

•   To me, it's not even so much that Ilya Shapiro compared Eric Holder to George Wallace -- "please proceed, wingnut" is usually my reaction to something like that -- but more that he (or his editor, assuming despite appearances that he has one) removed the reference without acknowledging it. Come on, buddy, you've deprived us of a perfectly hilarious explanation.

LIBERTARIANS: IS THERE ANYTHING THEY CAN'T MAKE WORSE?

As should shock no one, on the Hobby Lobby decision libertarians come down unanimously for the rights of corporations over those of women who need medicine. Megan McArdle:

Otherwise, according to the reasoning of that [anti-decision] tweet, I am being denied something every time my employer refuses to buy it for me: cars, homes, Hummel collectible figurines. And don’t I have a First Amendment right to express my love of round-faced Bavarian children doing adorable things?

Two things: first, McArdle trying to be funny is a natural emetic; and second, as awful as she is I'm still surprised to see her promoting the ridiculous idea that health insurance benefits amount to "free stuff" (as the conservatives who don't bother to call themselves libertarians have unfailing come to call it) whenever it specifically benefits women's health. (Sample witticism: "My company won't pay for my toothpaste. I'm going to be forced to have cavities now.").  Then, McArdle goes on about how unreasonable other people are being. I guess I'll have to downgrade my opinion of her, if such a thing is possible.

McArdle also suggests that Obama wanted to lose the Hobby Lobby case so his free-stuff-fueled slut-minions will vote Democrat in November. So does McArdle's husband Peter Suderman at libertarian flagship Reason, only presumably he's got a sense of shame because he's more evasive about it:

To be clear: I am not at all suggesting that the administration was hoping or intending to lose in court. But...

[sigh.]

...this does help explain, at least somewhat, why the administration was so eager to pursue the case... It’s the political/legal equivalent of online clickbait; it grabs the attention of large numbers of people, sparks their interests and passions, and gets them engaged (or at least enraged). That doesn’t mean the administration set out to lose, or doesn’t care about having lost. But it does potentially change the calculus about whether and how hard to press an issue like this by offering some real benefits just for fighting the fight, even in the event of a defeat.

If the smell didn't tip you off, the incoherence of the last sentence is a glaring tell that you've just been handed a load of bullshit. What real benefits are offered, and by whom to whom? Also, what were they supposed to do, press less hard? As for the ruling itself, Suderman's all smiles:

The big question isn't whether the contraception mandate violates the religious freedoms of some faceless corporate entity entirely separate from the individuals who own that company -- it's whether the requirement would violate the free exercise of religious for the particular people who founded and now run the company... 

As Alito writes in his opinion, "A corporation is simply a form of organization used by human beings to achieve desired ends....When rights, whether constitutional or statutory, are extended to corporations, the purpose is to protect the rights of these people." 

In seeking to defend the requirement, the federal government had argued that Hobby Lobby, as a for-profit corporation, was not eligible to challenge the rule under the RFRA because corporations are "separate and apart from" their individual owners and operators. They were distinct, and not "people," and therefore ineligible for the protections of a law designed to shelter "a person's exercise of religion." Alito says, more or less, that this is nonsense: "Corporations, 'separate and apart from' the human beings who own, run, and are employed by them, cannot do anything at all."

The next time someone talks to you about corporate personhood, remember that entire fiction gets dropped as soon as it's convenient to portray the corporate citizen as a mere painting on a scrim, which when rear-lit reveals Ma and Pa Jesus, smiling, waving their snakes, and crooning "we's jes' simple folk, tryin' to get right with the Lord"; when it's time for mega-million-dollar political donations, the scrim gets front-lit again and Ma and Pa sneak offstage to count their loot.

Also at Reason, Shikha Dalmia addresses Jonathan Cohn's suggestion that a single payer system would stop all this my-employee's-medicine-is-against-my-religion crap. Dalmia begins:

One: By calling Obamacare a “new entitlement” and a “public program” he has basically accepted that the program constitutes a de facto government takeover of one-sixth of the economy, a conclusion that liberals have generally resisted. Leftists, notes Cato Institute’s Michael Cannon, have been trying to convince Americans that Obamacare is not a step in the direction of socialized medicine as opponents claim because it uses private insurance and relies on market forces to deliver coverage. Cohn’s candor is both refreshing and clarifying, so thanks, Jonathan, for that.

The dream of Obamasocialism, and that any normal people give a shit about it, will never die in Galt's Gulch.

Eventually Dalmia gets to the point: single payer is just how "libs" go around "playing their brother’s keeper... and demanding generous subsidies," probably while wearing their I'M A STUPID LIB shirts and going "durr hurr," whereas libertarians want to "unleash market forces to lower soaring costs without resorting to price controls or rationing" -- which judging from Dalmia's sourcing means a tax credits and vouchers scheme similar to Paul Ryan's Medicare plan, which nobody wants because, like libs, they don't understand freedom.

Meanwhile big libertarian Rand Paul (he only wants to kill foreigners with drones, remember?) praised the decison; Cathy Young said "there are many women who believe the birth control mandate infringes on religious liberty -- among them Hobby Lobby co-founder Barbara Green," that Planned Parenthood should stop lobbying because it's "divisive," and bunch of other stupid shit; and -- well, why go on? You knew the minute I said "libertarian" how this was going to go.

UPDATE. Among conservatives who don't mind admitting it, today has also been a festival of pedantic shirt-retucking. Ramesh Ponnuru on Ruth Bader Ginsberg:

[Ginsberg says] “It bears note in this regard that the cost of an IUD is nearly equivalent to a month’s full-time pay for workers earning the minimum wage.” Who truly believes that this cost plays any role at all in Ginsburg’s analysis? It’s expensive, so she cites it to show that employers have to pay for it; if it were cheap, she’d cite it to show that employers aren’t burdened by it.

I suppose she'll tell us next that gold is expensive because gold just happens to be expensive! Jesus, it's like Ponnuru is taking lessons from Jonah Goldberg.

Also I'm grateful to commenter Glock H. Palin, Esq. for pointing out that Rand Paul actually doesn't mind killing a citizen with drones, after all. Maybe he's still a libertarian because he likes Drew Carey or something.

CULTURE CLOWNS: A PROGRESS REPORT. Roger L. Simon -- perhaps dreaming of the day when Victor Davis Hanson and his troops will march boldly into the Ministry of Culture, kick Michael Eisner off his throne, and install Simon as Commissar -- is trying to pump up a new book about how the Hollywood Ten had it coming. Movie attendance is down, gloats Simon; the beast is weak, der Tag is at hand! His readers agree that the "Hwood Communist Party" is headed for the ash-heap of history except for Team Incredibles of the Christ, Batman Begins (with reservations: "Since it's contemporary Hollywood, though, there's nary a kaffiyah, an 'Allah Akbar' nor a fifth-column media figure to be had"), and, oddly, the Coen Brothers -- though this last seems a case of some softhearted comrade trying to sneak personal favorites out of the camps, despite the Coens' lack of Party bona-fides. Is exceptionalism, Comrade!

In idle moments I like to imagine Simon attending a barbecue with his readership. "Waaaaiitt a minute... yew done wrote a movie fer Woody Allen and Bette Midler???" (Grill-tipping, fire-spreading, rebel yells as the Boys light out for Warren Bell's place.)

The McCarthy book itself gets a fuller treatment at "libertarian" (excuse me, I can't say that word without laughing anymore) magazine Reason, where Cathy Young explains that while McCarthyism was a bad thing -- though, perhaps to protect herself from Durbinization, she adds that "it's absurd to treat the blacklist as somehow equivalent to the Soviet purges" -- blacklisting was kinda sorta not so bad because the Communists that got blacklisted (along with a lot of other guys, too, but let's not nitpick) were worse: though they committed no crimes but thought crimes, they said good things about bad people, and their tragic legacy is "today's celebrity radicals" who "blast American policies while ignoring the evil of a Saddam Hussein."

I have addressed this imbecilic point of view back in the old Alicubi days, when Jonah Goldberg and, sadly, Kevin Drum fell (well, Kevin fell, Goldberg just grabbed his knees and cannonballed) into the same fallacy:

Goldberg says that McCarthy was a "lout" but essentially justified because Communist agents were afoot in America. He brushes off the prosecutions, official or otherwise, that disemployed many citizens who had committed no crimes. "When they denounce McCarythism," he writes, "they are working on the clear assumption that McCarthyism victimized only innocent people. That is a lie. And it also a lie that the USA Patriot Act is being used solely to punish innocent people."

This is a breathtaking switcheroo: a complaint against the prosecution of innocents is answered by the fact that some people are not innocent...

...it is interesting that no one much questions another large, unspoken idea here --that being a Communist made one fair game even if no espionage or other crime had taken place. McCarthy's whole schtick was enabled by the notion that there could be such a thing as a thought crime -- that if you thought Marx was right, you could be taken down, whether you collaborated in espionage or merely believed in the widespread redistribution of wealth. Even [Drum], in his generally thoughtful consideration of Goldberg, says, "It is not McCarthyism to accuse a communist of being a communist." It's actually something much worse, because our freedoms aren't worth much if we do not have the right to be wrong.

Hey, that wasn't bad. Maybe I should take a month off and just recycle my greatest hits. But that's hardly a testimony to my own skills; American Constitutional values age very well -- though their enemies, as we have seen, work very hard to sell us on an alternative philosophy.

UPDATE. Comments are, as usual, very interesting (Simon may have the numbers, but alicublog has the guns!), but FMGuru drops some especially sharp science: "[The decline in opening grosses] has everything to do with plasma screens and dumbasses talking on cell phones, and nothing to do with The People rising up against the corrupt Quisling coastal elites... H'wood is one of the most brutally capitalist places in America..." The correct response to this home truth would be "D'uh!" if so many flattery-driven numbskulls were not impervious to common sense. Well, we few remaining thinking people (yes, but I need a majority!) can enjoy it, at least.