Sexism? What sexism?

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The picture above is NOT A PARODY, it is the actual cover of Mother Jones magazine, a periodical named for a feminist icon:

Mary Harris “Mother” Jones (August 1, 1837 – November 30, 1930), born in Cork, Ireland, was a prominent American labor and community organizer, who helped co-ordinate major strikes and co-founded the Industrial Workers of the World. Her activities were done under the moniker of Mother Jones, after which Mother Jones magazine is named.

But it’s all good, because two women (Monika Bauerlein and Clara Jeffery) came up with the idea and another woman was the illustrator:

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It’s not that there aren’t enough clues on the cover of the new issue of Mother Jones—the headline, for one—but since you (well, a couple of you) asked: Yes, that is a full-throated homage to the B movie classic Attack of the 50-Foot Woman. If you’re like us, your knowledge of American cinema doesn’t encompass the full plot of this 1958 gem, but suffice to say that it involves a wealthy heiress, Nancy Archer, who after an encounter with an alien is found on the roof of her pool house and soon grows into a giantess. She goes searching for her no-good husband and his mistress, Honey Parker (!), and mayhem ensues. We liked the image because of the subtle historical echoes and… oh, who are we kidding: We liked it because the poster is awesome. (The echoes, though, are there: 1958 was an election year, in a recession, that dealt the president’s party a big string of defeats and launched the Senate careers of, among others, Gene McCarthy, Robert Byrd, and Edmund Muskie.)

MoJo’s creative director Tim Luddy encouraged illustrator Zina Saunders to follow the poster out the window in tone and feel, tweaking only the landscape to look more suburban. Saunders, who by the looks of her gallery has been mildly obsessed with Sarah Palin (to terrific effect) took the assignment very seriously, at one point sending a picture of Palin in her beauty-contestant days to confirm that she’d gotten the proportions right.

So what if they portrayed the most popular female Republican in the country as a monster in a miniskirt? When women do it it’s okay.  Besides, they got the proportions right.  That’s what really matters.

Wednesday: Joe the Plumber- To the Barricades!

RD the Chemist here.  This is not the first time in history that the average Joe has been told to give up and accept his fate.  It’s not the first time that the people have resisted either:

It was Tito the Construction Worker who put his finger on the problem:

Someone asked why Munoz had come to the rally. “I support McCain, but I’ve come to face you guys because I’m disgusted with you guys,” he said. “Why the hell are you going after Joe the Plumber? Joe the Plumber has an idea. He has a future. He wants to be something else. Why is that wrong? Everything is possible in America. I made it. Joe the Plumber could make it even better than me. . . . I was born in Colombia, but I was made in the U.S.A.”

The scene turned into a mini-fracas when David Corn, of Mother Jones, defended press coverage. Munoz was having none of it. Why, he asked, would the press whack Joe the Plumber when it didn’t want to report on Obama’s relationship with William Ayers, the former Weather Underground bomber? “How come that’s not in the news all the time?” Munoz said. “How come Joe the Plumber is every second? I’m talking about NBC, MSNBC, CBS, ABC, and CNN.”A black woman with a strong Caribbean accent jumped in the fray. “Tell me,” she said to Corn, “why is it you can go and find out about Joe the Plumber’s tax lien and when he divorced his wife and you can’t tell me when Barack Obama met with William Ayers? Why? Why could you not tell us that? Joe the Plumber is me!”

“I am Joe the Plumber!” Munoz chimed in. “You’re attacking me.”

Let us review all of the lovely things the media has brought us in the past 15 years, shall we?

• Whitewater
• Paula Jones
• Travelgate
• Don’t Ask Don’t Tell
• Rose Law Firm Billing Records
• Ken Starr
• Newt Gingrich’s Contract on America
• Monica Lewinsky
• Impeachment of Bill Clinton
• 12 years of Movement Conservatives in Congress
• George Bush (2000)
• Code Orange after 9/11
• George Bush (2004)
• Iraq War II and over 4000 dead
• The intentional neglect of Valerie Plame’s outting by a sitting VP
• *NO* impeachment of George Bush
• The trashing of Hillary Clinton
• Coverup of the manipulation of the Democratic primaries and delegates
• Unchecked misogyny in the service of their chosen candidate

If the Republicans destroyed the country, they had a LOT of help from the media, especially the Broderites of the Village who presume to tell us what we think and believe.  Over and over again, they have been wrong, misleading, pretentious and cruel.  They are the prime instigators who force their predetermined outcome on us.  Instead of merely reporting the news, they are determined to make it.

And Tito the Construction Worker, Joe the Plumber and RD the Chemist are calling them out. This year, instead of having the candidate we respected and trusted, the media has forced us to make a choice between two unacceptable men.  Neither one of them are going to be working for our best interests.  Obama has no interests but his own and McCain is constrained by his own party’s ideology.  Now we must make a choice based on character.  Which candidate is more honorable.  Barack Obama is coming up short in this department with all of his past associations, ruthless campaign tactics and corruption.  Yet the media would attack private inividuals if we dare to question Obama?  Who put them up to this?

It is time we took control of our lives back from the people whose goal is to manipulate our perceptions.  We must trust one another and resist the power of the media narrative.  When we put them back in their place, we’ll be back in charge of our own lives for the first time in 15 years.

To the barricades!