Though I frequently find the cacophony of the blogosphere/femisphere just too much stimuli, too loud, too much blather, too much yapping without having anything thoughtful to say, I also think one can get a better sense of the range of public opinion by surfing the femisphere/blogosphere than by reading Dowd or Collins or Brooks or Herbert or Rich or Friedman or Blow or any other regular commentator in the New York Times.

The tide has already turned. I don’t consider myself an expert in these issues, but the explosion of voices online via blogs, vlogs, podcasts, Facebook, Twitter or other online watering hole has drowned out the sole pundits like Dowd. This is a good thing. The same old heads talking to each other is a waste of my time. I’m hungry for the voices that never get heard.

Just to give you an idea of how topsy-turvy the world is now, and how not all of us get the new bottom-up energy bubbling everywhere you look, I give you Exhibit #1, an email inviting me to attend an expensive workshop training women to write better op-ed pieces. The analysis included is that unless women get their voices into the major newspapers, we have only ourselves to blame for our invisibility. I could critique this from many perspectives, but all I’m saying right now is that my jaw dropped and I blurted out “Huh?”

A blogger I’ve come to appreciate is Blackamazon, who translates herself onto the page with an intensity I GET BIGTIME. Sometimes her spelling, her grammar and her syntax confuse me–I don’t know if she intentionally mangled my expectations or if she’s just typing so fast it came out that way and, like an artist painting furiously, she leaves in her mistakes. Mistakes are raw energy. I love mistakes in my work and in other people’s work. Blackamazon would have to murder her true self in order to get published in the NY Times, and that would be a tragedy. She has important things to say, especially important things she’s saying to white women feminists. I’m listening to her and to other women of color who get that I’m really listening. Dowd? Collins? Feh. Those voices are SO over…and they should be.

Catie, I completely agree that gender-neutral writing has it’s place and that women shouldn’t just write about women’s issues, but I do feel it’s important to have a few people at the most important editorial platform in the country to be counted on to represent women at least once in a while if not 50% of the time (in an ideal world). In Dowd, we have a woman who NEVER writes about women’s issues. And let’s pause a second and think about what women’s issues are. They would include healthcare, employment practices, the economy, etc. Rather yet another piece on how Wall Street fat cats should not be getting any fatter because they don’t deserve it, how about contrasting the ridiculous size of their bonuses with how much an average American family has to make do with? That, in my opinion, is a woman’s perspective.

You just know that Murine Dowd was thinking of gettin hers and aint nobody gonna be happy UNTIL SHE GET SOME! You KNOW her man gonna be good in bed cause girlfriend give men so much props! IF you ladies want to keep your man and keep him right with Jesus you got to think of him as a high wind and you just like a pair of drawers on the cloths lines! He blow and you flow! Men dont respect nothin more that a women who give him her just self respects.

A lots of the women here all up in Murine’s face just cause she pretty, but she aint THAT pretty let me tell you!!! She got to work for it to! She aint got no back door man! She know she got to pertect her man and they love, and she just tryin to teach you girls to do the same and yall be hatin her for the TRUTH! MEN want a women what loves them and keep they mouths SHUT!

Luv always,
Keejay

Unfortunately, too many people don’t ignore her.

Beyond all the excellent points made in others’ comments, Maureen also hates any progressive politician who stands a chance of advancing women. She decimated Al Gore, pounding him mercilessly, while giving W. a total pass. Until he was elected, with the help of the New York times (and I hold Nick Kristof accountable for that too–remember his puff pieces of Bush–when Nick was a reporter not a columnist–that made him look like a warm and fuzzy good old boy from where the real American values reside?). Only then did she start lampooning Bush on occasion. When my husband confronted her about that once after meeting her at an event, she basically replied that she was there to entertain and bore no responsibility for the consequences of her words.

And I don’t think there is any columnist, male or female, who has used the term “catfight” more frequently to describe how women interact with one another. That alone would make a good study for your next post. I look forward to it.