Bloggers debate the legacy of pioneering feminist Andrea Dworkin; they also react to the allegations that Spain sold weapons of mass destruction to Venezuela and dissect President Bush’s iPod playlist.
Andrea Dworkin, 1946-2005: Feminist Andrea Dworkin, vehement critic of pornography and author of many polemic works including Intercourse, died over the weekend. “I loved that she dared attack the very notion of intercourse. It was the pie aimed right in the crotch of Mr. Big Stuff. It was an impossible theory, but it wasn’t absurd. There is something about literally being fucked that colors your world, pretty or ugly, and it was about time someone said so,” writes sexologist Susie Bright, who has claimed that Dworkin called for her assassination. “I’m sorry Andrea Dworkin started a sexual revolution that she ended up repudiating. … She was the animator of the ultimate porno horror loop, where the Final Girl never gets a chance to slay the monster, she only dies, dies, dies, with the cries of the angry mourners to remember her.” Creep and Blink, a blog about “sex laws and science,” insists, “[D]workin’s life was a living testament to the blurry line between leftist and rightist totalitarianism and paranoia, as well as the contempt on both extremes for a genuinely free information market. While her criticisms may have had kernels of truth in the porn market of the 70s and 80s, Dworkin, on the whole, underestimated, infantilized and desexualized women with her overbroad generalizations and her quest to limit their sexual choices in the name of gender liberation.”
“I could say that every cruelty and every uncharitable swipe taken at her—by the pimps and the pornographers, by self-satisfied liberal men and by critics from within the movement—was a testament to how much she mattered and how important it was that someone was there to tell the truth without flinching, that that someone was her. All of these things would be true. But they don’t even begin to touch it. Nothing that I could say would,” mournsRadgeek People’s Daily’s self-described radical feminist Charles Johnson. “It’s common, and tempting, to wish peace on the dead, and Andrea Dworkin deserves to be at peace, but I can’t imagine her being satisfied with death, or with anything short of an almost unimaginable justice,” musesHopelessly Midwestern. At The Corner, The National Review’s Rick Brookhiser recalls Dworkin’s admiration for George Washington and compliments her “unrelenting, hard, clean and compelling” writing.
View the Andrea Dworkin Lie Detector on Dworkin’s Web site.
VMD?: Donald Rumsfeld criticized Spain recently for selling war planes and patrol boats to Venezuela. Barcepundit’s Franco Aleman thinks it’s worse than that: Based on this translation of a Europa Press report, he notes that Spain sold Venezuela “chemical warfare agents and radioactive materials” as well. “All of this happened during the year 2004, when control of Spain shifted from American ally Aznar to socialist Zapatero, int he wake of the 3/11 Madrid train bombing,” observesThe American Thinker. (In a later post, Aleman pointed out that “the sales were not only during the Zapatero administration, but during Aznar’s too.”) Venezuelan news blog VCrisis claims that Spain broke European Union regulations and that the European Union has been asked to investigate.
“Spain is also selling C-212 cargo planes and is discussing the sales of military helicopters and patrol boats to Colombia. Perhaps this is to aid the fight against drug smuggling, but the big worry in that part of the world is the potentially explosive situation between those two countries,” points out “Eurosceptic” blog EU Referendum.
Visit Venezuela News and Views for an interview with freelance journalist Francisco Toro, who was in Venzuela during the failed coup of April 2002.
iPod One: On Monday, the New York Times revealed that President Bush listens to country music and rock on an iPod while exercising. “If Bush only has 250 songs in his iPod, he should get an iPod Shuffle,” recommends law professor Ann Althouse. “The [NYT] article quotes the observation that ‘it’s interesting’ that the President likes the music of artists who don’t like him, but actually it’s not interesting. It would be interesting if he paid any attention to what old rock stars thought about politics.”
Surprised by the short length of the presidential playlist, Semioclast, a blog that claims to be “Smashing Signification,” huffs, “What a friggin’ waste of technology. I’m surprised his born-again, creationism-believing, science-hating ass, non-intelligence-having ass doesn’t get scared at the voices in his head. Or maybe he thinks it’s just God talking to him again.” On Questions and Answers, software engineer Wayne Moran notes that Bush likes “My Sharona” by the Knack, and asks, “GWB, what are you doing listening to raunchy lyrics? Oh, I bet you don’t listen to the lyrics? This sounds like a conversation I will have with my kids ….”
Wonkette speculated about the contents of Bush’s playlist back in January; last year, Mac junkie Larry Angell at Happy Go Larry finally got to the bottom of the mysterious bulge in Bush’s jacket back during the debates.
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