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~ several "live links" to more/corroborating info in original ~ Sooz
Conservatives Have….Issues, Part One MillionBy Amanda Marcotte
Thursday, February 14, 2013 10:17 EST
Molly Ball of the Atlantic decided to delve into why it is that Republicans have caved into conservative pressure groups who oppose the Violence Against Women Act. The reasons that conservatives gave her were, she had to admit, shallow and idiotic and, if she delved in deeper (the claim that VAWA is making domestic violence worse is simply not true), straight up dishonest, but she didn’t make the obvious leap and realize that perhaps conservatives oppose VAWA because they are misogynist, and that all the excuses they give are attempts to deflect people from seeing the obvious.
But in case you are still struggling to accept that straight-up misogyny might be driving the fight against VAWA, consider this: Talking Points Memo discovered the conservative super-PAC and advocacy group has been behind the push against VAWA. You don’t have to dig very deep to discover that their reasons are blunt force misogyny:
Quote:
In a blog post, FreedomWorks criticized the cost of the legislation — $660 million — and pointed out that domestic violence is “already illegal in all 50 states.” It added: “Supporters of the VAWA portray women as helpless victims – this is the kind of attitude that is setting women back.”
In other words, the solution to domestic violence is to simply refuse to label a woman whose partner is beating her a “victim”. Got it. I’m curious if FreedomWorks is willing to expand this attitude towards other crimes. Mugged? Well, it’s disempowering and bad for you to call you a “victim”—god forbid!—so let’s just say you’re generous to people who wield guns and call it a day. FreedomWorks also claims that simply having laws on the books banning domestic violence is enough—as long as we formally say we’re against it, we don’t need to do anything silly like make sure the laws are enforced by directing resources to them. They also make the facetious claim that feminists are demanding that men be thrown in jail for merely yelling at women. It’s an amazing show of minimizing domestic violence, pretending that it’s just couples fighting, and seeking any way possible to make sure that abusive men aren’t held accountable.
But the weird, misogynist culture at FreedomWorks doesn’t end with transparent arguments in favor of simply ignoring domestic violence instead of dealing with it. Mother Jones reports:
An internal investigation of FreedomWorks—the prominent conservative advocacy group and super-PAC—has focused on president Matt Kibbe’s management of the organization, his use of its resources, and a controversial book deal he signed, according to former FreedomWorks officials who have met with the private lawyers conducting the probe. One potential topic for the inquiry is a promotional video produced last year under the supervision of Adam Brandon, executive vice president of the group and a Kibbe loyalist. The video included a scene in which a female intern wearing a panda suit simulates performing oral sex on Hillary Clinton.….
Quote:
Some FreedomWorks staffers worried last year about a promotional video created ahead of FreePAC, a FreedomWorks conference held on July 26, 2012, where thousands of conservative grassroots activists nearly filled the American Airlines Center in Dallas to hear from tea party favorites, including Glenn Beck and Sen. Mike Lee (R-Utah). The short film hailing FreedomWorks was intended to play on the large video screens inside the arena.
In one segment of the film, according to a former official who saw it, Brandon is seen waking from a nap at his desk. In what appears to be a dream or a nightmare, he wanders down a hallway and spots a giant panda on its knees with its head in the lap of a seated Hillary Clinton and apparently fellating the then-secretary of state. Two female interns at FreedomWorks were recruited to play the panda and Clinton. One intern wore a Hillary Clinton mask. The other wore a giant panda suit that FreedomWorks had used at protests to denounce progressives as panderers. (See here, here, and here.) Placing the panda in the video, a former FreedomWorks staffer says, was “an inside joke.”
In other words, the management made a transphobic video about Hillary Clinton having sex with an animal, and—gosh, big surprise!—thought that the best people they could think of to act out this fucked-up sexual fantasy were two college girls at the bottom of the pecking order in their offices. It is true that Dick Armey is trying to clean things up a little at FreedomWorks, but it’s not because of some deep-set opposition to misogyny. Nope, it’s because it exposes them to lawsuits:
Quote:
“I heard complaints of insensitive, boorish behavior and of obnoxious references to the condition of pregnancy,” Armey says. “Such comments put you in jeopardy of lawsuits.”
There were also concerns that such naked misogyny might be too obvious. Rule #1 of being a conservative bigot is to always pretend your bigotry is about something else. The people Molly Ball interviewed have figured that out—feign concern for victims of violence while trying to undermine support for victims fo violence—but apparently the management of FreedomWorks hasn’t gotten the message.
http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2013/02/14/conservatives-have-issues-part-one-million/
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