How the Protein Wisdom Gang Blasts Out the Bigotry

Once again, I have to thank the Protein Wisdom gang for showing me the ways of right-wing bigotry. In this case, I owe a debt of gratitude to "B Moe" who's been replying to some of my posts at RSI over the last week.

B Moe picked up on a positive reference I made to Hillary's looks and re-posted it over at PW Pub with an expression of amazement that I would refer to Hillary's looks in a positive way. B Moe and other commenters in the Protein Wisdom community were amazed that I wasn't going along with the Hillary-hating stereotype that Hillary is an "ugly bitch."

When I persevered and replied that Hillary was an attractive woman who was certainly a hell of a lot better looking at 60 than Fred Thompson was at 65, I got this reply from B Moe.

You know, that is some affirmative action I could definitely get behind. Let's get the government to supply all old women with the same plastic surgeons, hair dyers and stylists, and make-up and botox artists Hillary has got. I am tired of fucking ugly, wrinkled, grey-haired old women.

/irony

In a lot of ways, this is a typical bit of misogyny. B Moe is implying Hillary who appears before the cameras might be an attractive woman (without actually conceding the point) but only because she's hiding or making over the really ugly woman under the plastic surgery, hair workers, and face artists who work on her. Of course, B Moe has no evidence of either plastic surgery or botox or that she's doing anything more with her hair than most professional women (and a lot of professional guys). But given that right-wing hatred of Hillary is based on faith rather than evidence, that's hardly surprising.

What makes B Moe's comment on all women of age 60 or so are ugly, decaying, and repulsive. He also puts in a little ambiguity with the word "fucking." In one way, it looks like B Moe is tired of older women who are "fucking ugly" and is using the term "fucking" as a way to heighten and the sexual repulsiveness he attributes to older women. But he could also be interpreted as saying that he is "tired of fucking ugly wrinkled grey-haired old women" in the sense that he's tired of having sex with these kinds of women.

Either way, he's being typically misogynistic in portraying older women as repulsive. Of course, beneath the surface of that repulsion is the suspicion that any woman would be repulsive if they weren't "beautiful" according to his personal criteria. For B Moe, it takes a special kind of woman for her to not be repulsive and therefore hated.

Another interesting aspect of B Moe's comment is that he writes "irony" underneath. I take this to mean that B Moe is claiming that he is being "ironical" here and that the bigotry in his words does not reflect any real bigotry of character. As with a lot of right-wing racists, homophobes, and misogynists, B Moe is trying to give himself a "plausible deniability" that allows him to say bigoted thing while dodging accusations that he means it.

But using the term "irony" in this way seems to have special valence for the bigots at Protein Wisdom. They seem to think that referring to their statements as ironical gives them a license to blast out their bigotry in harder, cruder terms than might otherwise be the case. Their pretensions to pseudo-intellectualistic irony seem to incite them to higher levels of public bigotry.

Maybe that's something Protein Wisdom could contribute to right-wing discourse. People like Ann Coulter and Rush Limbaugh are always looking for new ways to formulate their own bigotries. Maybe they should look at Protein Wisdom.