Full disclosure: I am mentioned 10 times -- more than even Jane Fonda or Betty Friedan -- by the anti-feminist Kate O'Beirne in her book, Women Who Make the World Worse: and How Their Radical Feminist Assault Is Ruining Our Schools, Families, Military, and Sports. From my perspective, this means I must be doing something right. With those credentials as well as being an aficionada of Keith Olberman's nightly "Worst Person in the World" shtick, I recently decided to start my own list of the Stupidest Women in America (SWIAA ™).
My first SWIAA™ award went hands down to Harriet Miers, the former White House Counsel who was George W. Bush's obviously under-qualified and clearly doomed token female nominee for U. S. Supreme Court before he got to pick the white male Justice he really wanted. She continued to stand by her man while Congress slapped her around and W. let her swing in the wind with her frozen I'm-a-good-little-girl smile on her face. Even after the House Judiciary Committee ruled her in contempt of Congress for failing to respond to their subpoena for information on the now-confirmed political influence in the firing of a slew of U.S. attorneys general who wouldn't tow the administration's line, Miers, the Tower-in-Chief, continued seeking the big boys' approval. She meekly does as asked when George W. Bush or his minions do the asking. She's the unmarried woman who so needs to be part of the hierarchical rightwing male bastion of power that she subordinates herself to males to whom she is not married but is clearly tethered in unholy alliance. These, not incidentally, are men for whom abrogating women's Constitutional rights to equality in everything from salaries to sports to reproductive self-determination is just their breakfast cereal before they go on to launch wars for profit and political control.
But let me not stoop to stereotype. Ann Coulter, my second SWIAA™ is anything but meek. And she certainly doesn't look prim and proper. "I am emboldened by my looks to say things Republican men wouldn't," she once told TV Guide.
Rather than take on the good little girl persona, Coulter brandishes her come-hither attractiveness like an S and M whip, and oh how the boys love it.
Indeed, she even entrances her "good friend" Bill Maher, who invited her to appear on his previous talk show, Politically Incorrect, regularly, where she had the opportunity to make such outrageous statements as "I think [women] should be armed but should not [be allowed to] vote." Still, her hyper-sexualized fashion style with its short-tight skirts, stilettos, and blonde mane dripping over one eye notwithstanding, she is equally tethered to the same right-wing male power and fiercely intent on doing its bidding for her own benefit. The anti-woman woman gets lots of bennies in that world -- a syndicated column, lots of on-camera time, and the full force of the right-wing book promotion machine for starters, to help her feather her nest egg.
In a New York Observer blog post featuring excerpts of an interview, she proposed the following solution to her own woman problem:
"If we took away women's right to vote, we'd never have to worry about another Democrat [sic] president. It's kind of a pipe dream, it's a personal fantasy of mine, but I don't think it's going to happen. And it is a good way of making the point that women are voting so stupidly, at least single women...the Democratic Party ought to be hanging its head in shame, that it has so much difficulty getting men to vote for it. I mean, you do see it's the party of women..?"
Oh, I see. If you regard women as full citizens, that makes you a sissy. I guess I missed that in my civics class.
It should go without saying then that she would regard Jews, who also trend toward the Democrats, as in need of "perfecting," which she recently told Donny Deutsch -- another liberal, and a Jewish one to boot, who gives her way too much airtime. Here's the video:
The transcript is here, courtesy of Media Matters -- you couldn't make this stuff up:
DEUTSCH: We should all be Christian?
COULTER: Yes. Would you like to come to church with me, Donny?
...DEUTSCH: That isn't what I said, but you said I should not -- we should just throw Judaism away and we should all be Christians, then, or --
COULTER: Yeah.
DEUTSCH: Really?
COULTER: Well, it's a lot easier. It's kind of a fast track.
DEUTSCH: Really?
COULTER: Yeah. You have to obey.
DEUTSCH: You can't possibly believe that.
COULTER: Yes.
...DEUTSCH: Why don't I put you with the head of Iran? I mean, come on. You can't believe that.
COULTER: The head of Iran is not a Christian.
DEUTSCH: No, but in fact, "Let's wipe Israel" --
COULTER: I don't know if you've been paying attention.
DEUTSCH: "Let's wipe Israel off the earth." I mean, what, no Jews?
COULTER: No, we think -- we just want Jews to be perfected, as they say.
DEUTSCH: Wow, you didn't really say that, did you?
COULTER: Yes. That is what Christianity is. We believe the Old Testament, but ours is more like Federal Express. You have to obey laws. We know we're all sinners --
DEUTSCH: In my old days, I would have argued -- when you say something absurd like that, there's no --
COULTER: What's absurd?
DEUTSCH: Jews are going to be perfected. I'm going to go off and try to perfect myself --
COULTER: Well, that's what the New Testament says.
DEUTSCH: Ann Coulter, author of If Democrats Had Any Brains, They'd Be Republicans, and if Ann Coulter had any brains, she would not say Jews need to be perfected. I'm offended by that personally. And we'll have more Big Idea when we come back.
High intelligence doesn't necessarily prevent stupidity, let alone cupidity.
Maybe someday I'll expand the SWIAA ™ award to men (SMIAA ™), but as long as there are women like Miers and Coulter, I'm going to stick with those of my own gender who have no sense of their own best interest. Or perhaps they have concluded their best interest lies in identifying with their oppressors.
Send nominations to me in the comment section below.