A middle-aged baby boomer cliche

Ann Althouse, tireless defender of a woman's right to be a Right Wing shill while pretending to be a rock and rolling Libertarian and and a feminist to boot, wrote a post accusing Jessica from Feministing of shamelessly possessing youth, beauty, and a good figure.

Or as Gavin at Sadly, No put it, Althouse indicts Jessica for the crime of having tits in the company of Bill Clinton.

Althouse purses her lips while making the case that because Jessica doesn't look like the Right Wing caricature of a feminist she isn't a real feminist.  Althouse wants us to think her post is about how no self-respecting feminist would ever tolerate the company of Bill Clinton let alone voluntarily seek it out---while she takes the opportunity to encourage her lascivious male readers to re-imagine that great moment in their libidinal history when Monica flashed her thong at Bill---but as there are five other liberal women, all of whom I'm pretty sure would call themselves feminists, in the picture that gives Professor Althouse the vapours and Jessica is the only one Althouse turns into a marionette in her little too obviously Freudian I secretly dream of Bill pornographic puppet show, it's clear that it's Jessica's looks not her politics that got Althouse hyperventilating.

Jessica responds, not just to Althouse, but to some people on the left side of the bandwidth who apparently made assumptions about her based on that photo.

I've taken some easy jabs at Althouse in the past for her ridiculous habit of presenting herself as if she was still her 20 year old self, a young rebel marching to the beat of Charlie Watts' drum, and not the most establishmentarian of establishment types, a middle-aged conservative law professor demanding her tax cuts.  Back from gambling in Havana, where he took a little risk, Scott Lemieux takes on the more serious of her pretenses, that she is any kind of a real feminist.

He follows up here.

But I think her attack on Jessica is of a piece with her rock and roller phoniness.  Both are signs of a Baby Boomer consumed by vanity and terrified of getting old.

Just an observation.  One sure sign you're sinking into a graceless middle age is that you start getting offended at people younger than you for having the temerity to be...younger than you.

Another one.  Scolding other people for their supposed sins and weaknesses is not evidence that you are good and virtuous; it's a clue that you are in fact a rampaging hypocrite.*

I'm talking about the Right's obsession with Bill Clinton's various character flaws.

Last one, a specific instance of the previous:  Because you express outrage at someone else's sexual peccadillos, that doesn't mean you are outraged.  It more likely means that you have found a way to hide your own voyeurism from yourself while indulging your prurient delight in looking through keyholes.

In other words, if Monica's thong and beret appear again and again in your conversation, it's either because you wish you'd been Bill and she'd flashed you, or you wish you'd been Monica and done the flashing.
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Monday morning quarterbacking myself:  See Sexual politics, sexual jealousy, fiction vs. analysis, and the novel I should be writing.  

* Lindsay Beyerstein puts a corollary very neatly.  Noting that Althouse accuses Jessica of hypocrisy,  Lindsay writes, "Here's a tip for looking less crazy. If you want to accuse someone of hypocrisy, you've got to start with what they believe, and find something they've done that's inconsistent with their beliefs. Your beliefs don't count for gauging someone else's hypocrisy. If someone does something that doesn't square with your paranoid fantasy plus their ideology, that's not hypocrisy on their part. Sorry."

Comments

[Campaspe]

Very well put. What a perfect fright Althouse is. Check out this from the comments:

paul a'barge said..."Wow, talk about the breast thing over at Feministing's Breasts , there's another one. This babe is totally into showing us her titties!"

[Althouse responds] That's just hilarious. Thanks, Paul.

Sooooo ... serious feminists simper over some anonymous boor's coarse attempt at humor. Good to have that cleared up.

[Mike Schilling]

In other words, if Monica's thong and beret appear again and again in your conversation, it's either because you wish you'd been Bill and she'd flashed you, or you wish you'd been Monica and done the flashing.

Or because you hate Clinton (as many if not most right-wing pundit do; their insistence that cricizing Bush's failures is "hatred" is pure projection) and Monica is pretty much the only bullet in your gun.

[harry near indy]

lance, your last paragraph hit the center of the target. congratulations.

it seems there is a lot of christer hangover on the right side. that is, we don't have evil in us and we don't do evil, because it you have at least 1 percent evil, it's just as bad as if you're 100 percent evil.

i'm a jungian, so i realized that my evil is as much a part of me as my goodness. at least that keeps me saner than too, too many people.