Sunday, July 02, 2006

Is the NYTimes on an anti-feminist crusade?


Smirkette Cox (left) would like to replace Smurfette Dowd as the lone female in the New York Times Op Ed hive colony.

It seems like you can't read the NYTimes anymore without discovering yet another article attacking feminists. Whether it's the shameless Smurfette Maureen Dowd pushing anti-feminist stereotypes, to David Brooks giving women typically idiotic advice like have children young and start your career at 40, to the relentless promotion of evolutionary psychology aimed at keeping women in their proper place through "science" from John Tierney and Daphne Merkin, the Times appears to be a serious feminist hater.

From Pandagon comes news of yet another attack on feminism, in the guise of a book review by the smirking Ana Marie Cox, formerly known as Wonkette. She should be called Smirkette now. It's utterly appalling that they would give a review of Katha Pollitt's latest book, Virginity or Death! to a second-rate gossip columnist like Cox.

I'm convinced that Cox is trying to position herself as a replacement for Dowd in the "woman columnist" slot in the Times' Op-Ed section by becoming a clone of Dowd - shallow, obsessed with being popular with the kewl kidz, and a feminist basher while freely enjoying the fruits of the hard work of feminists. Of course Cox has always been shallow and obsessed with popularity, so it's a cinch for her to fill Dowd's pointy-toed, 4-inch heel tippy tap shoes.

It's significant that Cox would bash Katha Pollitt - Pollitt should be the replacement for Dowd in the "woman columnist" slot. She's a better thinker AND writer than either Cox or Dowd, and if the Times insists on limiting female op-ed voices to a single representative, it should pick someone who isn't an embarassment to womankind.