Getting it From All Sides

I recently wrote a piece about Bristol Palin and single parenthood for Ms. Blog last week that Bitch Magazine boiled down to: “The Ms. blog thinks we should be voting for Bristol Palin because she’s a single teen mom. We think that’s ridiculous. You?”  I contributed more than I could afford to Bitch Magazine a few years ago when it was potentially going under, and I would do it again in a heartbeat.  But the simplistic baiting in the question posed above is disappointing, and the sneering tone several Bitch readers took towards the Ms. Blog and “second wave feminists” was disheartening.  Can’t we get beyond the ritual matricide that comes with “waving” and then defaming the feminists who came before us? 

Then yesterday I was on Fox News with host Stuart Varney.  The conversation moved from the Republican pledge to austerity measures to deficits to debts to Obama’s stimulus to taxes to morality to socialism.  I rather enjoyed the twists and turns of the conversation, especially Varney’s direct question of whether I am a socialist.  The segment was analyzed by Talking Points Memo and Fox Newshounds, and some conservative radio shows provided a different sort of analysis.  John Gibson described me as a “leftwing moonbat” on his program.  The term “moonbat” was first used by Robert Heinlein in a short story in 1947, so you know it’s a good thing, and probably very cute and cuddly like other bats (see below).  All of this extra attention brought lots of emails from folks who disagree with me, mostly about my comment that the hardest working people I know are poor people working 2 or 3 jobs just to make ends meet. 

So the moral of this short tale is that you know you’re doing something right or very, very wrong if you’re getting it from all sides on the same day!