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November 18, 2006
Wicked Witch of the West
Shakes here…
Golly, I enjoy shedding pretense. It's always so nice to let the ol' hair down, do away with the cumbersome pretenses of a civilized society, and expose the raw, unapologetic sexist lurking in all of us. Wouldn't you agree, Mort Kondracke?
Fox News host Mort Kondracke, the "left-leaning" counterpart to Weekly Standard editor Fred Barnes on Fox News' The Beltway Boys, said last night that incoming House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) should be nicknamed the "Wicked Witch of the West."
…KONDRACKE: So the history on House leadership is, we had "The Hammer," Tom DeLay, and now we have the "Wicked Witch of the West," you know, Nancy Pelosi, who is twisting arms and making — you know, having her aides making threats, and stuff like that.
Mmm…refreshing. Hearing the first ever female Speaker of the House called a witch within 24 hours of being elected to the role goes down smooth. The Photoshops of a green-faced Pelosi with her winged monkeys Hoyer and Murtha will be a splendid chaser.
Yesterday, Echidne proposed a new drinking game in which "every time a speaking head on television calls Nancy Pelosi just Nancy," you down your mug. We may need to revise the rules in light of the new moniker which has been so graciously bestowed upon Just Nancy by the generous Mr. Kondracke. Like, down your mug for "Nancy," and flagellate yourself with a copy of Feminist Fantasies for "Wicked Witch of the West." Or maybe just a double shot.
What I love about "Wicked Witch of the West," aside from its instant familiarity to nearly everyone over the age of seven, is how it manages to reference everything conservatives hate about Pelosi. She's wicked, just like those terrorist evil-doers the liberals love to coddle. She's a witch, a tricksy and manipulative woman ("woman" being the operative sentiment there). And she's from the West, specifically California, and even more specifically San Fagcisco. It's difficult to conceive of there being another ready-made handle that so perfectly encapsulates the fun-house mirror image of Pelosi fashioned by her ideological opponents—the radical Breasted One, shooting the radical gay agenda out her feminazi cooter all across the land!
I'll get you my pretty...and your little dog too!
Let's hope so.
November 18, 2006 | Permalink
Comments
Shrill.
Posted by: Sandals | Nov 18, 2006 6:33:02 AM
Oh, hey, that brings it up: has anyone called Pelosi 'shrill' yet?
Posted by: Sandals | Nov 18, 2006 6:33:36 AM
I've heard shrill and other "nice" descriptions.
Ezra, as far as Faux news goes, they seem to be getting shrill themselves as they see thier brand of hate and polarization waning.
Faux news is so yesterday and they know it. People are really sick of it.
Posted by: vwcat | Nov 18, 2006 8:43:23 AM
Yesterday, Echidne proposed a new drinking game in which "every time a speaking head on television calls Nancy Pelosi just Nancy," you down your mug.
If you played that with Sen. Clinton as "Just Hillary", you'd put people in the hospital.
Posted by: Thlayli | Nov 18, 2006 8:59:44 AM
What Shakes and other liberal bloggers fail to understand is the terrible fact that Pelosi ... has ... ovaries
P.S. I don't know about shrill, but Chris Matthews said how nice it was that her statements after the election weren't all shrieking like her stump speeches.
Posted by: Warren Terra | Nov 18, 2006 9:27:58 AM
It's odd that male politicians are rarely if ever referred to as being "shrill." Nor is male politicians' clothing commented upon.
Americans have a way to go in womens' equality. When Denny Hastert's clothing is described as being "dishevelled," or Shrub's demeanor after his Republicans' defeat is described as being "dour," I guess women might have arrived.
Posted by: raj | Nov 18, 2006 10:29:56 AM
What's also interesting is that the musical "Wicked," which is a very sympathetic look at that fictional character, is currently having great success playing all around the country. So hey, this could backfire majorly.
Posted by: Elayne Riggs | Nov 18, 2006 11:39:00 AM
They are really going with the uppidy, wicked witch, bitch etc motiff in 2006 about a woman leader? There is something truly screwed up in our lizard brain mind set. I was just talking to someone the other day about this. She believes that America will one day have a woman President (b.c I had pointed out that Obama will never become President b/c of race, and that hell it can't even elected a woman president). We can't even have a head of the house who is a woman with all this gender stuff coming to a boil. You know something is messed up when countries like in Europe, places like Israel, and even the Muslim world can elected women as heads of their respective countries, and yet, we can not.
Posted by: akaison | Nov 18, 2006 11:46:11 AM
What I think gets missed, overshadowed as it is by the blatant sexism, is that this is also an outstanding example of the "Democrats are at least as bad as Republicans" game that the media loves to play. Delay was called "The Hammer" because of his authoritarian take-no-prisoners leadership style. There's no evidence at this point that Pelosi is going to be acting anything like that, but the media is suggesting anyway that she and Delay are still somehow equivalent.
Posted by: Rebecca Allen, PhD, ARNP | Nov 18, 2006 12:12:19 PM
Also, I think "The Hammer" was a name that Delay got from his allies, admiringly, although I could be wrong.
Posted by: DonBoy | Nov 18, 2006 3:02:03 PM
actually the media is testing a few narratives, all of them bad, and frankly wrong, for the Dems. including: Dems divided. http://www.nytimes.com/2006/11/19/washington/19ethics.html?hp&ex=1163912400&en=b73d2efcbde39648&ei=5094&partner=homepage
What they see as divided- I see as people asking questions for the first time in 6 years.
Posted by: akaison | Nov 18, 2006 4:16:24 PM
There's a perverse kind of fun in seeing how many ways the Republican memes can be wrong simultaneously. The best are the ones that are, by definition, self-contradictory, such as how Kerry was a "flip-flopper" AND "consistently the most leftist of 100 Senators;" and in a triple-threat of mutual exclusion, Dem's are "in unquestioning lockstep fealty to the left" (to the point that anyone not toeing the line, such as LIEberman, is "purged" -- itself a red-baiting reference) and "messageless" AND "hopelessly and fecklessly divided amongst themselves."
Orwell taught that the basest form of intellectual surrender to totalitarianism was exactly this ability to hold two opposed thoughts simultaneously without discomfort.
By definition, the average IQ in the population is supposed to be 100. I would bet that if we took a sufficiently large and accurate survey now, we'd find that the average was down a few points. (Even two or three points of drop would be not just statistically significant, but culturally catastrophic.) If I'm right about this, the question then becomes, is this just the unintended consequence of political and economic choices to devalue education, rationality, and intellectualism? Or is it a deliberate policy of enslavement by the power structure?
Tune in next week for the next exciting episode...
Posted by: smartalek | Dec 4, 2006 2:11:53 AM
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