As Berdache As Ya Wanna Be

Just because someone agrees with you on issues doesn't mean they are a nice person, or that they like you one bit, or even that they don't have a fierce prejudice against you that they won't even admit to themselves. When someone "on your side" spews out crap that reveals they harbor such bigotry, you need to let them know that is unacceptable. If they persist, you need to insist. A house divided, and all that....

The latest such brouhaha was started by John Aravosis at AMERICAblog. He posted this:

Senator Pat Robert (R-KS) is nothing more than a big girl. ...

How else to see it when someone like Roberts will send US soldiers to their deaths to defend our freedoms abraod, but then will gladly trade away those freedoms at home in order to avoid getting hurt.

Is there any other definition of "big girl" than that?

Pat Roberts is a coward.

The insulting macho sexism is all too obvious for anyone awake. When it was pointed out to him, he denied it. Then the defense (yes, others chimed in as well to say this anti-female viciousness was fine) went even further, claiming that "big girl" (especially if written with extra "r"s -- at last glance the title of the post now says "big grrrrl") was okay, because it was a standard insult in the gay community. Not among civil people, it isn't. No one gets a free pass to belittle another group, even if that terminology is only used as a pejorative among their own, even if they have been oppressed. "Groupism" of any kind denies individuality -- which of course is its whole point.

I'm delighted to say that someone has had the Voltairesque sense to mock this unrepenting idiot. A new parody site has gone up, called ARAVOSISblog. It started like this:

Now, you may asking, Johnny, isn't there more important stuff you could be doing with your time than going through a bunch of posts and looking for rude comments (and comments which happen to be next to rude comments) and banning people? As a world-class blogger and activist, don't you have better things to be doing?

Here's a straight answer for you, friend: No! What could be more important than this? The country is having an important dialogue right now. As one of the very highest trafficked liberal bloggers, I play an important part in shaping and controlling that dialogue. If I let the discussion on my site veer off into nonsense about, say, I don't know... degrading a group of people that throughout history has had to fight for equality under the law and equality in the eyes of their fellow human beings... or.... my willingness or unwillingness to admit when I'm wrong--well! You get the point. We can't have that.

(No, I had nothing to do with this -- I'm never anywhere close to being that subtle.) The site does link to lots of people who have been rightly dumping on Little John the Denier, but I prefer the parody. Since he is too busy banning commenters at his own site to admit error, I guess they will have plenty of material to work with for a long time to come.