Some panty sniffer at the Daily Caller keeps count (via) of the number of times Rachel Maddow says “vagina” or “vaginal” on her show, and his report on the site is accompanied by a loop of Rachel saying those words. His critique? She uses that word in a similar way that Keith Olbermann uses “sir”. Devastating.
The Daily Caller doing something lame is definitely in the dog bites man category, but this story is worth noting simply because the nothing they have in this case is especially vacuous. Maddow used some very effective rhetoric and imagery to emphasize how invasive and degrading the transvaginal ultrasound bill was, and the big talking right-to-lifers bravely ran away. The fight isn’t over but it’s pretty obvious that the Caller never expected the centerpiece of their anti-abortion agenda to get beaten so quickly and so decisively in Virginia, and to be irreversibly tainted when it gets discussed in other states, and Maddow is a big part of the reason that happened.
Anya
oh, no! The lesbian said “vagina” on teevee! Hide the kids.
Betty Cracker
Sister Inviolatta is puzzled by all this vagina talk. The focus should be on the beating heart of the BAYYY-BEEEE!
Guster
Some days I feel pretty sorry for myself and my crappy career. So thanks for this. It totally brightened my morning. At least I’m not that guy.
Mino
You know, folks have gone to jail for long periods for forcibly inserting a foreign object into a woman’s vagina. How, exactly, are these bills any different. Rachel just stated the obvious.
Glenda
Imagine using the word ‘vaginal’ when describing ‘trans-vaginal ultrasound’? Isn’t it amazing?
It’s amazing when they are caught off-guard because people don’t speak the same way that they do. They have their coded phrases so down pat that they forget that it isn’t a coded phrase for everyone else.
Indeed, how dare we think that having something stuck up our vagina without consent be considered rape? They are only doing it for our own good!
Bastards.
c u n d gulag
Well, it appears not only can’t you say the words I used on TV, you can’t even leave a comment using them on a website!
My comment went right into the filter.
My point was that instead of saying “vagina,” Rachel could do a segment on her show using nicknames for that “v”-word.
I guess I shouldn’t have provided examples… :-)
MattF
OT, but notable: NYT’s Mr. Brooks writes a column where he calls Republican extremists ‘wingers’ (three times, so it’s not an accident), calls the current campaign ‘meshugana’, and does not claim at any point that both sides do it. The overall tone is relatively mild, but the final message is not– there’s no place for him in the current Republican party.
WyldPirate
People don’t get it. The GOP in these states are getting the bills they want. The rile the Dems up and a big stink is made and the most egregious portion of the bill is droppe. The Dems pat themselves on the back and claim victory, but the panty-sniffers in the religious right get their slut-shaming bill passed.
Ed over at Gin and Tacos says it best:
rikyrah
Maddow’s fearlessness in doing this story so brutally is what bitchslapped Gov. Transvaginal in Virginia.
As a woman, the steam would come out of my ears everytime I watched the segments.
GO RACHEL !!!
Lolis
@WyldPirate:
Um, no. Texas already passed the transvaginal ultrasound bill. They got everything they wanted here.
Mino
@WyldPirate: Virginia women aren’t being fooled. They’ve started a PAC of former elected pols to get everyone who voted for this bill defeated. Everyone.
Mino
@Lolis: Yep. It’s being implemented right now.
Guster
Republicans:
1) Oppose straight sex for fun.
2) Have a special term for a straight guy who gets lucky: ‘new father.’
3) Are even afraid of the word ‘vagina.’ One shudders to think what they do when faced with the reality.
What kind of straight man votes for these anti-sex prudes? They claim they’re the Red Blooded Straight Man’s Party, the tough-talkin, gun-slingin’, straight-shootin’ party, and they’re terrified of pussy.
Oh, Bill Clinton. Won’t you say a few words?
Betty Cracker
@WyldPirate: Maybe, and there’s no denying the technique has worked for them. But here’s another way to look at it: the GOP is busily alienating more than half the population. They’re framing themselves as pro-inserting something in your hoo-hah. I do not think this will redound to their credit long-term.
Zandar
Go Team Uterati!
Patricia Kayden
Maddow is a goddess! Absolutely love her. Good that she’s causing the dumb dumbs so much pain.
gene108
@Glenda:
Come on, only sluts want abortions and they should’ve thought of the consequences to their actions, before sticking that penis in their vaginas.
@WyldPirate:
I think the modern crop of GOPers are true believers. They do these things because they believe it is right and true and the way things should be.
I don’t think they throw stuff up just to see what sticks. They really want to do trans-vaginal ultrasounds to shame a slut out of an abortion.
norbizness
Is there some way to be more directly apprised of future Daily Caller activities?
WyldPirate
@Betty Cracker:
True, they’re alienating some, but they are banking on the short memories of voters and their ability to tell any outrageous lie and not be called on it by the “liberal media”.
After the Bush years, it only took two years for the motherfuckers to storm back and take the House. The took over a lot of states as well and have wreaked amazing amounts of havoc in two years. What the GOP has been doing has been a coordinated effort from labor push back, voter suppression, abortion bills and more. They have been very successful at it as ell.
Linda Featheringill
@Lolis:
Texas, IIRC from my long and checkered past, should be called the “show me” state. You can’t convince people that anyone with power might be bad. They have to see it for themselves.
[Family: I still love you as much as I ever did.]
Now, perhaps there is an opportunity to get those sweet, passive little ladies in Texas interested in politics. If they want their lives to be tolerable, they’ll have to raise a little hell.
Marcellus Shale, Public Dick
even a broken vagina watch is right two times a … ?
dedc79
the comment thread for the article you linked to is also pretty depressing. Not all that surprising, I suppose
Schlemizel
@Glenda:
Please! Couldn’t she have said “trans-vajay-jay” or “trans-hoo-hoo”? We are, after all, adults and shouldn’t stoop to such filthy words.
Life imitates the Simpsons again:
Parole Board Officer: Uh, we object to the term “urine-soaked hellhole”, when you could have said “pee-pee soaked heckhole.”
Betty Cracker
@WyldPirate: You may be right, but I think they’ve overreached — big time. It’s one thing to demonize Muslims and welfare recipients and abortion providers. It’s another thing to fuck with cops, teachers, firefighters and women.
Southern Beale
SCARY VAGINA!!!
Right wingers are very uncomfortable around the word Vagina. I propose we use it often.
WyldPirate
@Betty Cracker:
These middle class types have been getting hammered since Reagan’s time in office. And they always forget and keep electing crazy fuckers. They are banking on hate for the Blackislamofascistnoncitizen Obama to give them cover for their outrageous shit.
Meanwhile, the “center” gets moved more to the right.
Nylund
When I was in high school I had a friend who always asked me to buy condoms for him. I’d always tell him, “If you’re not mature enough to buy them, you’re definitely not mature enough to use them.”
Same thing here. If you can’t even say the word vagina, you shouldn’t pass any laws that shoves things up vaginas.
Steve
Do any women work for the Daily Caller? There must be some, right? Everything I see from that site reminds me of a boys’ locker room, though.
Steve
@Nylund: Good line! I hope you shamed that guy into some unprotected sex.
Villago Delenda Est
@Guster:
This.
But then again, GOP men tend to be deep in the closet types in the first place.
Suffern ACE
Well one of the reason women haven’t been informed about these bills is that the vagina got buried. I think Doghouse Riley is correct on this. You have one side that glady will show kids aborted fetuses and the other side can’t talk about “lady parts” because it’s concerned that it will be seen as obscene in front of children.
jayboat
This world needs more women like Rachel.
Marcellus Shale, Public Dick
i think someone needs to ratfuck the vagina police and suggest that in order to make the sluts more agreeable to the transvaginal untrasound, red bull and vodka will be provided.
SteveM
“Penis, penis, penis, penis song, penis, penis, penis, penis, penis all day long…”
Epicurus
Life imitates art? From “The Big Lebowski”:
Does the female form make you uncomfortable, Mr. Lebowski?
DUDE
Is that what that’s a picture of?
MAUDE
In a sense, yes. Elfranco, my robe. My art has been commended as being strongly vaginal. Which bothers some men. The word itself makes some men uncomfortable. Vagina.
DUDE
Oh yeah?
MAUDE
Yes, they don’t like hearing it and find it difficult to say. Whereas without batting an eye a man will refer to his “dick” or his “Johnson”.
Villago Delenda Est
Halp! I’ve got a comment stuck in moderation limbo! Apparently, when blockquoting another post, a slang term for vagina was used that caused WordPress to go all Republican on me! Alternatively, it’s just WordPress being WordPress, so I now make the obligatory expletive: FYWP!
Poopyman
Have the “Vagina is for Lovers” bumperstickers come out yet?
Villago Delenda Est
Oh, I’m informed by DougJ that the admin side of the site is down, so it will be a while before my comment is rescued from the void.
Billy Beane
What a surprise. In addition to having poor taste in music and the need to connect all sorts of unlikely dots just to prove some point that will ultimately be WRONG, mistermix thinks Maddow has some sort of influence.
Are you another one of those all gay all the timers who, just because you see Maddow as playing for the same team there is nothing she can do wrong and has way more influence in your mind than she actual does?
Keep dreaming. I have nothing against Maddow (for now) but stopped watching when she sided with the firebaggers and started her own irrational whine fest against Obama. She has so much influence that I can’t even remember what it was about. All I know is that I stopped watching because of it and have never watched since. I don’t even watch clips. I also started to feel that it was a sign that she though she had more influence than she did and started to intentionally pander to the firebaggers. In other words she lost her integrity at that moment which was what I liked about her up until then.
Mnemosyne
@WyldPirate:
Actually, I think both you and Ed are wrong: these really are the bills the Republicans want to pass. The mistake people make is thinking that it’s all rhetoric and Republicans don’t really want to slut-shame women who want abortions.
That’s why people keep voting for Republicans — they refuse to believe that Republicans are who they say they are, and then they’re shocked and appalled when Republicans go and do what they said they were going to do.
It’s not all rhetoric. They really, really believe all of this and they really want to pass all of it without changes. It’s only when there’s a public outcry that they’ll withdraw even a tiny portion of it, and then they do their Pee-Wee “I meant to do that” and people like you and Ed think that was their game the whole time.
You’re giving them way too much credit. They are who they say they are, and they really do want to pass these vile bills.
The Snarxist Formerly Known As Kryptik
Funny that. They don’t want to call a spade a spade, a vagina ‘a vagina’, or call rape ‘rape’. Funny how that works.
@Betty Cracker:
Unfortunately, I have the same concerns as Wyld about the short-term memory of the electorate. I’m sure this kind of overreach will absolutely gut the GOP in the electorate nationally….short-term. But you still have the problem of 1) many of these bills STILL passing despite the pushback and protest, 2) the aforementioned short-term memory of our electorate, and 3) the GOP knowing good goddamn well how to obstruct shit so any attempts to roll their vile shit back will be met with constant stonewalls until the electorate forgets long enough to be distracted by some new political shiny.
@Mnemosyne:
And…there’s also this that Mnemosyne brings up:
There’s still a not-insignificant portion of the electorate that will support the GOP despite all this crazy shit because they’re convinced it’s some kind of protest thing and that the GOP leaders really can’t believe all the crazy anti-woman, anti-minority, anti-everything crazyshit they keep promoting. They get reminders every day, but miraculously seem to forget every election day.
Villago Delenda Est
@Mnemosyne:
This.
It’s about slut shaming. Always has been, always will be.
Origuy
Isn’t the co-sponsor of the Pennsylvania bill a Democrat? Are there Democrats in other states voting for these bills? Someone should be primarying them.
Lex
What’s funny or noteworthy isn’t that Rachel Maddow uses the word (which I would do except for a previous commenter’s warning about the spam filter), it’s that the sponsor of the bill in the Virginia legislature apparently thinks his junk will fall off if he uses it.
Riilism
Mistermix is a lesbian?
Oh! Thank goodness! The Maddow is safe “for now”. She is, after all, our most important gay….
Larkspur
What continues to baffle me is that they all seem to have only one image of someone considering an abortion: she’s young, and she’s either a debauched co-ed or a confused but ultimately innocent young girl. They are either shaming the girl-slut or rescuing the victimized Magdalen. They just will not even consider the 38 year-old mom of teenagers – and her husband – who decides that she doesn’t want another baby. A real-life example like that does not resonate with them. And yet you know that every single one of them (this particular “them” refers to the commenters at DC)knows someone who has ended a problematic or unplanned or unwanted pregnancy. They just think that their exceptions are exceptional.
BTW, you all already know about not going over to Daily Caller comments threads, yes? I mean, damn.
Howlin Wolfe
@norbizness: Norb, tell the Caller you are intrigued and want to subscribe to their newsletter.
Howlin Wolfe
@Steve: A locker room that clumsy, unathletic, chunky boys use.
b-psycho
It’s cable. She could’ve shown rather than told if she felt like it.
“…and here we have an animation of the trans-va6inal probe being inserted. Careful, doc, it’s kinda tight!”
Barbara
Forcing one’s opponents to use anatomically correct terms is actually a pretty good tactic. They tend to be very squeamish about it and it annoys and flusters them to no end. I read that one of the opponents to the VA bill shied away from using the word “transvaginal” over concerns about school children being in attendance. This is how you lose: by allowing the other side to hide in euphemisms and denials about what they are actually trying to do. They are trying to invade and regulate vaginas and that’s exactly how it needs to be said.
Heliopause
Vagina is one of those words that, quite apart from its meaning, is a Carlinesque word. Vagina, vagina, vagina. It just sounds funny. It’s the type of word Dr. Seuss would have invented if it didn’t already exist.
Jay in Oregon
@Nylund:
Fixed that for you.