To me, Zooey Deschanel will always be DG from SyFy’s “Tin Man” series. I love her perky cuteness enough to have lasted through three whole episodes of her yawner Fox sitcom “New Girl.” And I wish I had her hair. So I was thrilled when she began a group blog last year called HelloGiggles.
If you go to the HelloGiggles “About” page, it reads: “Founded by actress/musician Zooey Deschanel, producer Sophia Rossi and writer/Internet Sensation Molly McAleer, hellogiggles.com is the ultimate entertainment destination for smart, independent and creative females. Everything hosted on the site will be lady-friendly, so visitors need not worry about finding the standard Boys Club content that makes many entertainment sites unappealing to so many of us.”
When I originally started following HelloGiggles, “lady friendly” meant posts about nail polish, your favorite childhood candy and the latest best-seller. As they added contributors, the topics got more broad and naturally grew to include current events. And it became clear that “lady-friendly” meant nothing less than “left-wing feminist.”
Monday morning, a student from UC Berkeley (a journalism grad student, no less) penned a column titled “From Slut-Shaming to Weight-Shaming: Let’s Just Stop, Okay?” featuring Rush Limbaugh’s comments last week directed toward Sandra Fluke. Without actually using the words “war on women,” post author Michelle Konstantinovsky contributed to the narrative that Fluke is a random, helpless victim of “woman-focused hate speak” and Limbaugh is yet another in a long line of men who get their jollies from attacking women.
Never once in the column is it mentioned that Limbaugh has since apologized, both in writing and on air. Fluke is referred to only as a Georgetown University student – no discussion about her actually being a “reproductive rights” activist who chose Georgetown to force the Catholic institution to provide contraceptives, engaging her her own form of “shaming” by presenting Georgetown and Catholics in general as being anti-women.
Some might say that’s because Fluke wasn’t the main subject of the article, just an example to use as a segue. That being the case, there have been plenty of other examples of “hate speak” directed toward females Konstantinovsky could also have included. Daily Caller has an excellent round-up of a variety of “hate speak” directed at female conservatives. (Hint: it wasn’t because they were female.) Of course, nothing of the kind was mentioned. The only specific examples listed were of either left-leaning women or women of unknown political affiliation, like Adele.
Why does this matter? It’s just another typical Hollywood celeb and her left-state compadres doing what they normally do, isn’t it? Carry water for Obama, skew the facts to attack conservatives and protect the Chosen One and his history of misdeeds, like Obamacare trampling all over the First Amendment and the free exercise of religion.
Deschanel and HelloGiggles have a target audience – young women. And that’s who, by and large, are commenting on and reposting the article. You can skim it, don’t expect to see anything new or original, but more importantly, look at the comment section. Go to Deschanel’s Facebook page where she posted a link to the article and read the comments. When I first found it, the comments were 10-1 supporting Fluke. There was no mention of Adele, Kirstie Alley or any of the other people Konstantinovsky briefly mentioned in the post. And certainly no mention of Fluke’s attack on the Catholic Church and the First Amendment.
I commented early on, pointing out Fluke’s motivations and the sham behind her crusade. In short order my post was hidden (due to low ratings from fellow readers) and replies made lamenting that women are being “forced to choose between their education and their health” and “public health and safety is more important than the ability to practice religion.” There were a few who agreed with me, but they were also hidden and virtually shouted down for being against women.
Thousands, if not hundreds of thousands, of young voting-age women are reading this article and others like it specifically directed at them. They are being spoon fed the cover story: that Fluke is the victim, not the aggressor. They are patting each other on the back for boldly defending Fluke on the internet, equating having to pony up your own money for contraception with being forced into prostitution. (No, really, go read the comments.)
Obama’s gatekeepers are hard at work making Fluke today’s Lady Godiva. Now they’ve got America’s blue-eyed darling’s “snark-free positivity” zone shilling for them.