The Other McCain

"One should either write ruthlessly what one believes to be the truth, or else shut up." — Arthur Koestler

As a ‘Christofascist Godbag,’ I Need Some Civility Lessons From Melissa McEwan

Posted on | May 10, 2013 | 73 Comments

Let me begin this response to Melissa McEwan by citing Ann Coulter, not because she is a woman — certainly not one of those “liberal women constantly talking about their vaginas suddenly pretending to be offended by the word ‘slut'” — but because Coulter dared to tell the truth about Max Cleland’s Vietnam war injuries.

Flashback to 2002 (and I should include a “trigger alert” for liberals traumatized by that year’s mid-term elections) when Cleland was running for re-election to the Senate in Georgia. His Republican opponent Saxby Chambliss hit Cleland hard for having insisted on union rights for Homeland Security employees, Democrats claimed this was an attack on Cleland’s patriotism and, because of Cleland’s status as a disabled Vietnam War veteran, when Chambliss won the election, “Democrats began citing Cleland’s lost Senate seat as proof that Republicans hate war heroes,” to quote Coulter.

Among those who worked to craft that false narrative was notorious liar Eric Boehler, who said “Cleland lost both his legs and his right hand to a Viet Cong grenade” — which is a damned lie: Cleland was not wounded by hostile enemy action. His was not a combat injury, but inflicted by an American grenade that somebody dropped at at a division assembly area where Cleland decided to “have a beer with some friends.” Cleland himself never claimed to have been a hero, but liberals dishonestly did so, as part of a calculated strategy of playing the “chicken hawk” card against George W. Bush in the 2004 campaign.

Ann Coulter called this what it was — a lie — and when the usual suspects (Molly Ivins, Al Hunt, Joe Klein) reacted by trying to claim Coulter was impugning Cleland, Coulter let it rip in a memorably brutal February 2004 column that included this:

Liberals are not angry because I “lied”; they’re angry because I told the truth.
I wouldn’t press the point except that Democrats have deliberately “sexed up” the circumstances of Cleland’s accident in the service of slandering the people of Georgia, the National Guard and George Bush. Cleland has questioned Bush’s fitness for office because he served in the National Guard but did not go to Vietnam. . . .
Liberals simply can’t grasp the problem Lexis-Nexis poses to their incessant lying. They ought to stick to their specialty — hysterical overreaction. The truth is not their forte.

What the Cleland episode illustrated was how liberals shamelessly exploit victimhood for political gain, and never expect to be called out on it, because  then the liberals will accuse conservatives of being insensitive to victims. In her 2006 book, Godless: The Church of Liberalism, Coulter explains how the “absolute moral authority” of Cleland, Cindy Sheehan and the so-called “Jersey Girls” (anti-war Democrat widows of men killed in the 9/11 attacks) was tantamount to a doctrine of infallibility: They’re victims, so you can’t argue with them.

Well . . . rape.

Can we just begin this part of the discussion by making clear that nobody is in favor of rape? Certainly, Republicans are not pro-rape, but maybe Juanita Broaddrick would have something to say about the Democrat policy on rape. (“Better put some ice on that.”) It should not be necessary to issue disclaimers like this — I’m also anti-burglary, anti-car-theft and anti-aggravated-assault — except that liberals have spent so much time trying to turn rape into a partisan issue. Exploiting rape to elect Democrats is acceptable (ask Todd Akin), but is grievously wrong when Republicans do it. In 1988, Democrat concern for Willie Horton’s victims Cliff and Angela Barnes manifested itself mainly as Mike Dukakis blathering on about his ACLU membership and liberals accusing Republicans of racism.

So when it was reported that Cleveland “house of horrors” rapist Ariel Castro is a registered Democrat, this was the kind of fact liberals were certain to ignore. The media was happy to have the Cleveland story (and the Jodi Arias verdict) as an excuse not to cover the Benghazi hearings, but now that we know the perpetrator was a Democrat, we’re likely to see a bit less coverage. And given how the media have spent the past four years endlessly trying to pin the Tea Party label on a mass murderer — from Tucson to Aurora to Boston — there must have been a huge letdown for liberals when they learned Ariel Castro is not a Rush Limbaugh listener. And, because this is National Offend a Feminist Week . . .

After checking to see whether Ms. Marcotte had indeed addressed that story (she hadn’t), I then decided to check on feminist writer Melissa McEwan. Marcotte and McEwan worked together briefly in 2007 on the John Edwards presidential campaign, a thought that always makes me smile when I think of this headline:

 Vote for Edwards, Godbag Christofascists!

As wretched as Marcotte is, it was McEwan whose penchant for obscene diatribes against Christianity did the most to get them fired from the Edwards campaign. The ironic denouement — Edwards being exposed as an adulterer, cheating on his cancer-stricken wife and siring a love child with a ditzy would-be documentary film-maker — ought to have been enough to give both Marcotte and Edwards second thoughts about how they had been blinded by their progressive ideology. But if feminists ever thought twice, they wouldn’t be feminists, would they?

Anyway, I checked, and McEwan had actually written about the Cleveland case, so I taunted her:

This was . . . ah . . . not an informed decision. McEwan responded:

No, Robert Stacy McCain, the reason this case is hard for me is not because Ariel Castro is a registered Democrat. The reason this case is hard for me is because I was raped by a man who not only raped me in my own home, but also used to take me to his home, at the end of a gun, and lock me in his basement, and hurt me there, too. It’s hard for me because, when his father found me, shivering and afraid, he told his son, “Tell her to make a pizza while she’s down there,” before he walked back upstairs and shut the door behind him. It’s hard for me because I was forced to make fucking dinner for the abuser who called me his girlfriend and his cruelly indifferent father.

So now my thoughtless error permits the narrative ju-jitsu, and my insensitivity to victims becomes the subject of the story.

Well, I’m willing to drop this and move on. Healey’s First Law of Holes, and all that. But neither am I going to be lectured about decorum by deranged hate-filled moonbats. So I’ve considered what arguments I might make if these fanatics decide to belabor the point.

Did I mention she’s crazy? No, but she did.

And it’s still National Offend a Feminist Week, you know.

 

Comments

73 Responses to “As a ‘Christofascist Godbag,’ I Need Some Civility Lessons From Melissa McEwan”

  1. Porridge
    May 11th, 2013 @ 10:19 am

    So McEwan should apologize for something Marcotte said? She has never called anyone a Christofascist Godbag. McCain knows this, so he doesn’t explicitly accuse her of saying this anywhere in the post, but he certainly suggests it pretty strongly. What a weasel.

  2. Jaynie59
    May 11th, 2013 @ 12:28 pm

    First of all I wouldn’t assume McEwan is telling the truth. If she really is telling the truth then she’s a pretty sorry excuse for a feminist because this is exactly the type of story she should be opining on because of her own experience. If it actually happened.

    People have a hard time understanding how victims of kidnappings don’t try to escape. McEwan, if she has any writing talent at all, should be the best voice to at least try to explain it.

    The most horrifying example I can think of is from fiction. When Blue Duck kidnapped Lorena he told her that if she even attempted to run he would cut out her tongue and I don’t remember what other things he said he’d do to her. But after that scene there was no question that she wouldn’t even try to escape.

  3. ThomasD
    May 11th, 2013 @ 2:00 pm

    Exactly, something horrible MAY have happened to her, but Stacy is in no way responsible for that. Nor should he bear any particular burden for whatever she suffered.

    That she expects (much less asks) him to behave as if so is all we need to know the reality of her sort of feminism.

  4. ThomasD
    May 11th, 2013 @ 2:04 pm

    What you may be missing is that attempts to claim special privilege based upon particular experience are not expression of free speech, they are efforts to shut down the free speech of others.

    And we’ll call you on that bullshit.

  5. Kristycat
    May 11th, 2013 @ 3:57 pm

    It’s actually been mentioned several times in her own blog, including a post she linked to in that response. Way to not do your homework.

  6. Scribe of Slog (McGehee)
    May 11th, 2013 @ 4:58 pm

    Why not? Collective blame is the proggs’ stock in trade. Sauce for the goose.

  7. trangbang68
    May 11th, 2013 @ 7:29 pm

    McEwan is lying. That story is preposterous on so many levels. If the alleged assailant really he had a gun and the story is even a little bit true, homie should have shot himself for wanting to get next to that disgusting tub of deviant goo.

  8. trangbang68
    May 11th, 2013 @ 7:32 pm

    She’s not responsible either. It’s not her fault that Fatty Arbuckle had sex with Olive Oyl and she was conceived or hatched or found under a rock or whatever

  9. just another idiot.
    May 11th, 2013 @ 7:34 pm

    Let me begin this response to Melissa McEwan by citing Ann Coulter, not because she is a woman

    That is very much debatable. To me, anyone who uses the word retard outside of the proper context of the disability itself; is a sub-human lifeform scumball in my opinion — which is shared by my aunt and her sister caregiver — who just happens to be my Mother.

    That is all.

  10. trangbang68
    May 11th, 2013 @ 7:34 pm

    You’re assuming that Maddog McEwan actually is a rape victim not a disgusting bull dagger with an agenda.

  11. just another idiot
    May 11th, 2013 @ 7:40 pm

    I think I just made a big decision. I don’t think that I really want to read here anymore. This blog is become the worst. Smitty, I hope that someday, you’ll write elsewhere. This is too much,

    Goodbye all.

  12. humanterms
    May 11th, 2013 @ 10:09 pm

    Just trying to clarify: Melissa McEwan was raped in her home, taken at gunpoint to another location (the home of the rapist and his father), where she was held against her will, raped repeatedly, and then expected to make dinner (which she apparently did, without attempting to escape? Did she at the very least make an unappetizing meal?). I’ve looked for the trial information, or at least the police report, and cannot find anything. Did she not report this crime? Is it possible that Melissa was involved in an unhealthy relationship that only became “rape” after her boyfriend had used and abused her and booted her to the curb? Feminists tend to be attracted to assholes who abuse women. They also tend to think they were victims, rather than recognizing their poor lifestyle choices.

  13. robertstacymccain
    May 12th, 2013 @ 8:46 am

    “It’s actually been mentioned several times in her own blog …”
    . . . which we might actually read, if we were doing a psychiatric case study on the role of mental illness as a motivating factor in political discourse.

  14. robertstacymccain
    May 12th, 2013 @ 8:56 am

    1. I do not dispute the veracity of McEwan’s account, but do wonder why she does not name the perpetrator or give details as to where and when this occurred. Was this person criminally prosecuted? Was the perspetrator sentenced to prison, or is this monster still at large?

    2. The feminist slogan — “The personal is political” — expresses a narrow selfishness, a sort of Politics of Narcissism, where the only goals of political action are ax-grinding and score-settling.

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  16. Kristycat
    May 12th, 2013 @ 9:39 am

    Cute. Except that you apparently read her blog enough to pull quotes out of context and make unfounded assumptions about them. If you’re so uninterested in the things she has to say, maybe you should, y’know, not do that.

    Just sayin’. When you make assumptions about her thought process while blatantly ignoring the posts describing the experiences that shape that thought process, you’re going to make yourself look like an ass. And you’re going to get called out for it. (Then again, you’re knowingly and intentionally mocking a rape survivor for being a rape survivor, and for having PTSD related to, again – being a rape survivor. So I suppose “don’t be an asshole” is not a big priority in your life, huh?)

  17. jsn2
    May 12th, 2013 @ 5:47 pm

    Before I wrote my comment I did a quick google/bing check of her claim, but found nothing. Standards of moral behavior demand we believe and not question a claim of rape. Unfortunatley, our moral standards are sometimes leveraged for sympathy or political gain. It would be nice to know her story is true. The benefit of a doubt is not the same as certainty.

  18. robertstacymccain
    May 12th, 2013 @ 7:07 pm

    Agreed. But we do not know what circumstances may account for McEwan’s inability to write, “My attacker was John Doe, who was arrested on such-and-such a date, etc.” We might imagine that no one could escape prosecution for such a crime — so that McEwan would be able to cite the time/date/names involved — but we don’t know what we don’t know, and I would not suspect someone of lying about something so serious.

    On the other hand, McEwan’s statement that she suffers from a mental illness as a result of that traumatic experience creates a whole different set of problems. Does McEwan’s mental illness involve … delusions? I mean, how much trust can we put in the word of someone who once held the belief that John Edwards should be the next President of the United States?

  19. robertstacymccain
    May 12th, 2013 @ 8:03 pm

    Making fun of mental illness, rape, and women.

    Who told you I was doing that? I mean, besides (a) Melissa McEwan or (b) the voices in your head?

    Feminism is nothing other than a species of radical-egalitarian lunacy. And for five years, National Offend a Feminist Week has been devoted to exposing the absurdity of that ideology. But just because I ridicule what a feminist says about rape doesn’t mean I’m “making fun of rape,” and just because Melissa McEwan is crazy doesn’t mean I’m making fun of mental illness.

    It was feminists who declared that “the personal is political” and, personally, I think you seek professional help with your inability to comprehend English prose.

  20. Pablo
    May 13th, 2013 @ 5:45 am

    You should just change your name to “TRIGGER ALERT!!!” That way you’ll be pre-absolved of responsibility for the recollection of horrors inflicted upon anyone by the likes of a registered Democrat.

  21. jsn2
    May 13th, 2013 @ 6:33 am

    Dittos.

    I’m a cynical bastard. I find it very hard to believe, with certainty, anything a liberal has to say. I will give a pass until proven wrong, but they never miss a chance to score political points – the personal being political as you noted.

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  23. keyboard jockey
    May 16th, 2013 @ 3:34 pm

    Try Googling any trashy romance novel (rape fantasy) Apparently that’s her reference to what happened in Cincinnati. Yeah I know what that makes her. Romance Novels the scourge of the American male.