We've calibrated our comments on Saturday's women's march, going out of our way (and rightly so) to affirm the marchers' right to protest. Elizabeth Poe, owner of a knitting shop in Franklin, Tenn., is also exercising her right to protest: Ms. Poe refused to sell yarn for knitting for those fetching pussy hats that were a hallmark of the march.
Elizabeth Poe, the owner of the Franklin, Tennessee shop, published a post on her store’s Facebook page earlier this week that asked customers shopping for yarn in support of the Women’s March to take their business elsewhere.
“The vulgarity, vile and evilness of this movement is absolutely despicable,” Poe wrote in a post that was shared over 5,000 times and attracted more than 7,000 comments.
She added, “As the owner of this business and a Christian, I have a duty to my customers and my community to promote values of mutual respect, love, compassion, understanding, and integrity.”
I supported the marchers' right to protest and–ya know what?–I support Ms. Poe's right to be delightfully outspoken just as ardently. President Trump made some reprehensible comments about women, but we can't help feeling that they do not justify the vulgarity of women of all ages in pussy hats! So, brava to Ms. Poe.
Meanwhile, some update interpretations of the women's march:
* Pro-Hillary journalist RebeccaTraister (Big Girls Don't Cry chronicled Clinton's first thwarted attempt to gain the presidency in 2008), writing in New York Magazine, finds that the march heralds the feminization of politics–"The Future of the Left Is Female" is the title of her piece. I actually thought she got off one good line:
Plenty of factors made this effort so successful, but perhaps the biggest was the shock and horror that jolted portions of a long-complacent population awake after the election of Donald Trump. As it turns out, sometimes, It Takes a Villain.
* Ed Rogers took note in the Washington Post of the celebrities who sang and danced for Hillary and then "continue[d] to embarrass themselves" at the march, including " no less than washed-up singer Madonna mused about blowing up the White House." Ouch.
* Selena Zito of CNN thought that the focus on the pussy hats and vagina signs obscured what she regards as the important issues raised by the march, prominently including abortion rights but a mix of other big government programs. Honestly, it was hard not to notice the hats!
* On the other hand, the women's march reminded Alicia Colon of why she had never joined the feminist movement. She explained in Jewish World Review:
At last Saturday's Women's March in DC any sign of humor was out shadowed by the stridency, anger and hatred spewed by speakers like Madonna and Ashley Judd who ironically stooped to the coarseness and crudeness they despise in our new president. I really can't imagine Susan B. Anthony and the other suffragettes uttering four letter words and reading obscene poems alleging incest at their rallies for equal rights.
* Commentary editor John Podhoretz takes note of the national elite's collective nervous breakdown, which shows no sign of abating, but cautions that it would be a mistake to dismiss the women's march:
If every word out of Donald Trump’s mouth is greeted with shrieks of horror and rage and anger and despair and hysteria by his opponents, they are going to find it impossible to serve as any kind of effective opposition to him. If media spends their hours celebrating each other for the most creative or the most direct way in which to call Trump a liar, they are going to take their (our) taste for self-referential solipsism to a new level at which their capacity to communicate with their own readers and viewers will be fatally compromised. And just at the moment when they could find new audiences and new credibility in serving as an authoritative source of information in a sea of White House spin and outright disinformation.
This is where the follow-through on Saturday’s “women’s marches” will tell the tale. It would be a terrible mistake for conservatives, Republicans, and Trump supporters to pooh-pooh this mass event, which happened simultaneously in several cities and towns, with a gross turnout dwarfing any mass protest in American history. Dismissing three million people taking to the streets nationwide would be an act of willful blindness, and ascribing the march’s success to Soros money would be foolish.
We'll keep you posted as other yarns from the march come to light, but, joking aside, we will also take this movement very seriously and propose alternative policies to help women take advantages of the great opportunities open to us in a free and vibrant society.