I've seen some silly, hysterical bullshit in my time, but I've never seen anything like Erica Jong's latest volley in my direction.
Her original argument was that, because I am a male writer apparently fixated on Hillary Clinton's female characteristics while ignoring those of men, I must be a misogynist venting at Hillary because I secretly want to fuck my mother.
But when I then presented to her a list of similarly unkind -- in fact far worse -- descriptions of men that have appeared in my articles, suddenly the argument changes. Now I'm not a sexist, but... drum roll please... a Nazi!
Hilariously, I'm not just any Nazi, but specifically the very Nazi who banned the ingenious, idea-rich works of Sigmund Freud -- who just happens to be the poor dead sap whose theories Jong herself was wantonly bastardizing in her original post about me.
To sum up: Erica Jong writes a half-baked essay (on the basis of so perfunctory a read of one single line of one single article that she couldn't remember my name; she confused me with my father), violates my mother in print, and calls me a motherfucker. Then, when I write back to defend myself (and, by extension, my mother), she first cloaks herself in the suffering of both the Jewish people and African-Americans, then congratulates herself on having achieved the intellectual level of one of the great geniuses of the 20th century, and then finally compares me, in the space of a couple of sentences, to both the Nazis and the Ku Klux Klan -- two great historical enemies of exalted thinkers like herself, thinkers who even as we speak would be tirelessly working to prevent the breakup of the Antarctic ice cap and genreally save humanity from itself wherever possible, were it not for the childish insults of such anti-intellectual monsters as me gumming up the works.
Did I miss anything? Because I think she hit pretty much every single liberal cliche in existence. I wouldn't previously have thought it possible to connect a wisecrack about Hillary Clinton's arms to global warming, but I suppose anything is possible, if you really put your mind to it...
I'm sorry, I'd go on, but I'm still laughing about the Antarctica thing. On second thought, Erica, you're right, we'd better drop this. I should step aside and let you intellectuals do your job. It does feel a little warm outside!