Hee hee! Seems that former prez Bill Clinton was so overjoyed at his fawning support from the left-wing blogosphere for his protest against the ABC special “The Path to 9/11” (which portrayed Clinton, um, accurately, as not hardly doing a thing about Al-Qaeda during his eight years in office) that he invited a bunch of his blogger-fans over for a fried-chicken lunch in his Harlem headquarters. That inspired the bloggers in turn to inundate their bandwidth with deep thoughts such as these:
“He’s got beautiful blue eyes (this isn’t something I normally notice, but in his case I did, and he does, and I suspect he uses it to good effect).”
The lunch also generated this photograph of the bloggers with Bill, promptly posted by Ann Althouse. Note–as scazillions of Ann’s male readers immediately did–the dark-haired Monica Lewinsky lookalike in the gray top that looks a shade small (and a little informal for lunch with a former president, dontcha think?) positioned right in front of a grinning Bill Clinton in a three-quarter-profile thrust-pose that shows off to advantage what I’d call her “Size double-D’s” and my mother would call her “bosom.” Ann wondered why the bloggers in the photo weren’t posed “randomly.” Hah! That photo was soon all over the blogosphere, to much, much commentary of a ribald sort.
Soon enough, the gal in the gray top was identified as Jessica Lindstrom of the blog Feministing. Now if you click to Feministing, you see a lot of….breasts. The Feministing logo, for example, is that mudflap silhouette that feminists claim to despise of the naked gal with exceedingly large….breasts (there’s one change: the gal in the Feministing logo is giving a middle-finger salute that you don’t see on mudflaps). Scroll down past the ad for the pro-choice shindig and you’ll see an ad for a Jessica-designed tank shirt featuring the same silhouette stretched across the model’s….breasts. Feministing is all about breasts, and so, at the Clinton lunch, was Jessica. (Feministing, by the way, loathes the IWF because we dared to agree with Larry Summers that women are different from men–a point with which Jessica would undoubtedly agree, although on different grounds.)
At any rate, Jessica was Very Miffed that Ann had dared to call attention to that photograph (as were a number of her fellow lefty-bloggers and Clinton fans):
“Who knew that simply having breasts in the presence of a former president could turn into such a disgusting spectacle of sexism, vapidity and downright meanness?….
“It was a nasty personal attack-one that’s ridiculously indicative of the way that young women are treated, especially by conservative a——[words are never minced at Feministing]….
“And this whole boobgate bull—-isn’t just about Althouse and her mean-spirited attack. It’s about how young women are routinely reminded that they’re only good for one thing-consumption.”
Now, my own response would be: “Isn’t that what Bill used to say?”
But here’s what Ann wrote (after clicking over to Feministing and noticing all the breast-o-mania plus this post featuring a breast closeup):
“Sooooo… apparently, Jessica writes one of those blogs that are all about using breasts for extra attention. Then, when she goes to meet Clinton, she wears a tight knit top that draws attention to her breasts and stands right in front of him and positions herself to make her breasts as obvious as possible?….
“I’m not judging you by your looks. (Don’t flatter yourself.) I’m judging you by your apparent behavior. It’s not about the smiling, but the three-quarter pose and related posturing, the sort of thing people razz Katherine Harris about. I really don’t know why people who care about feminism don’t have any edge against Clinton for the harm he did to the cause of taking sexual harrassment seriously, and posing in front of him like that irks me, as a feminist. So don’t assume you’re the one representing feminist values here.”
Then Dr. Helen made this insightful point:
“Well, the irony to me is that the same left-leaning ‘feminist’ types fawn over, and show support for Bill Clinton–one of the biggest gropers and sexual harrassers around–all the while shrieking that if a man tries to touch them in a bar, all bets are off and physical violence will follow.”
As did Instapundit’s Glenn Reynolds:
“One might almost think that feminism has become nothing more than a subset of the Democratic Party’s activist base. Actually, that has become so obvious that even Maureen Dowd managed to figure it out when she famously commented: ‘Feminism died in 1998 when Hillary allowed henchlings and Democrats to demonize Monica as an unbalanced stalker, and when Gloria Steinem defended Mr. Clinton against Kathleen Willey and Paula Jones.’….
“It’s all about supporting the right people politically, even if it turns you into a groper’s support group. Which was, of course, the point of Althouse’s post.”
And The Anchoress weighed in yesterday:
“That’s right up there with the whole Clarence Thomas/Anita Hill debacle, whereby ‘strong, feminist women’ were suddenly delicate shrinking violets unable to endure a ribald joke. Sexual harrassment – a serious issue – got defined downward for political expedience and suddenly the same women who had declared themselves ‘sexually emancipated’ were cowering at a man’s appreciative glance at their legs, or a risque joke…that is, until Bill Clinton got into office and then, suddenly, we were told ‘boys will be boys’ and ‘some guys have to be allowed one free grope…'”
My final thought is: Do we really want as our first female president a woman whose husband hosts parties attended by inappropriately attired young women who run websites featuring naked gals with large racks making obscene gestures? If we’re on the left, the answer is: Yes, we do.