Hoofnagle.org

So Slashdot had an interesting link to the Weekly Standard about how the Internet is closed in China and how it's largely American corporate greed that has made it possible for China to have its cake (the Internet) and eat it too (censor it). Having read this, I was left with a curiousity as to which way the Weekly Standard leans politically. What biases does this publication carry around?

So I read a few other articles, and am here to tell you that the Weekly Standard is conservative, but not stupidly so. (There are stupid liberal organizations, too, trust me I know.) They think Bill Moyers should shut up and get behind the president, and I disagree, but I don't think their points are without merit. They think the answer to Enron is not re-regulation of the energy market but better constraints on accounting practices (I strongly agree). I kept looking for the hot buttons to see how this intelligently conservative organization would cope with the things that make people rabid, where were those hot buttons? Never were the words religion or gender or abortion mentioned. And then I found one. Just a little one. It made me laugh, so I share it with you.

Aparently someone came up with the idea of showing the Vagina Monologues on Valentines Day in order to raise awareness of violence against women. Ye gads, the world, it comes to an end. According to the Standard, which up until now, has managed to walk a nice logical fact-based line, those of us who thought the Vagina Monologues were meaningful and not inapropriate for Valentines Day were misinformed. You really can't have a box of chocolates from a guy you like, think it's romantic and concurrently remind other oafs that beating women is wrong and that's why you don't date them. Oh my. I am so sorry.

So we found the weak spot in the Standard. No surprise, everyone has got one, but that led me (in my feminist grumpiness) to examine the so-called female centric website that was fighting this war for the preservation of romance, the nonprofit SheThinks. She Thinks we shouldn't sue men for sexual harassment. She Thinks that puts the government in our personal lives. She Thinks we should demand chivalry with some damned fuzzy idea that sexual harassment is natural male behaviour and that Chivarly was instituted by women and the Church (ignoramuses!!) to curb their impulses.Aparently She Thinks, but she doesn't do any damned historical research into the true roots of chivalry in the Middle Ages or statistics as to when and how women invoke harassment suits (usually for public, work based behavior where there aint much chance of chivalry being demandable.

She thinks, but not much.

Posted by karen at February 20, 2002 12:00 AM