The article below is short and to the point so I am posting it all:
"If you spend your days shuttling from one stop to the next in the op-ed blogosphere, you know all about the furor over a guest essay published in the Washington Post's Sunday Outlook section entitled "We scream, we swoon. How dumb can we get?" by conservative writer Charlotte Allen. Ms. Allen, whose raison d'etre often seems to be to poke a deflating stick at liberal feminism, opens with a reference to female fans reportedly fainting at Obama rallies; she goes on to write savagely about what she calls "women's foolishness:"
What is it about us women? Why do we always fall for the hysterical, the superficial and the gooily sentimental?
As examples, she cites feminine preferences for such cultural totems as Oprah Winfrey, "chick lit," and TV shows like Grey's Anatomy. Ms. Allen made a lot of sweeping generalizations, many of which I do not agree with, some of which I do. Generally, I took the piece as satire and, despite being a member of the disrespected class, did not take personal offense.
But, boy, did the effluent ever strike the whirling blades. Angry readers-posters-bloggers have responded with displeasure ranging from the merely huffy to the deeply, seriously enraged.
No surprise there: I took it as a given that the piece, like so much of our social and political discourse, was written in the full anticipation of the response it would provoke, and assume Ms. Allen was braced for the typhoon. More disturbing, however, is the outpouring of rage directed at the Post for publishing the piece at all. One reader posted:
If the WaPo publishes no apology as to the sexist content of this journalistic failure, I will visit the WaPo no longer ...
Others called the essay "impossibly horrible," "hate speech," "self loathing drivel" - and demanded an explanation of why the Post chose to publish it. Some are even demanding that the opinion section's editor be fired.
Never mind that stated and historical purpose of the opinion section is to provide a variety of views, many of which individual readers won't like. Has the chief fallout of the blogosphere been to bathe us so relentlessly in the soothing opinions of like-minded people that we have no more tolerance for opposition than willful babies? Is that the price of disagreement now? Somebody has to get fired?
Source
I thought it was a great article, myself.
