Whore is as Whore Does; NOW is over

A week ago, Ed Morrissey looked at NOW’s endorsement of California gubernatorial candidate Jerry Brown–whose campaign assistant had just been caught referring to his (female) rival as “a whore”–and asked “Seriously, what does it take for a Democrat to lose the endorsement of the National Organization from Women?”

The answer, of course, is “turn pro-life.”

Anything short of that, and it really doesn’t matter what misogynist, insulting or dehumanizing thing a Democrat does, NOW will support them.

A whore is as a whore does. Last week–after the Brown campaign’s mealy-mouthed hominahomina over the whoregaffe, NOW President Terry O’Neill disingenuously suggested that her organization would endorse Brown but that “from here on” anyone who calls a woman a whore “should be fired.”

Got that? “From here on.” Watching NOW and the Democrats go through their election-year morality plays is like watching two clumsy teenagers in the backseat, negotiating how many bases the guy can get away with. Okay, you can go this far, but no more, and I’m serious. No means no. Stop that. Oh, okay, you can go that far, as long as I can get something for it. You can go as far as you like, actually, as long as you’ll pay for the abortion…

This week, O’Neill’s “from here on” tease is being challenged by Patty Bellasalma, president of California’s chapter of NOW, who has decided that, yes, Brown’s challenger Meg Whitman is, in fact, a whore. A political whore, you see. And it’s okay to call someone a political whore, because that’s not the same thing as, you know, putting women down for being free with their bodies, or their convictions and principles.

Bellasalma said that while calling Whitman a “whore” was a poor choice of words, the description was accurate. “The very troubling issue that is embedded in that call is what prompted the description of Meg as a ‘whore’ is basically that she sold out Californians for an endorsement and a $450,000 independent expenditure campaign,” she said.

Well, if a whore is a woman who sells out for expediency, then NOW should know. Bellasalma’s organization has “sold out” women for political expediency for decades, broadening their tolerance for Democrat-borne misogyny at least since the Clarence Thomas/Anita Hill debacle (“brilliant” Yalie woman with “impressive credentials” vs imbecilic, misogynist Yalie man who only got where he is through affirmative action went the narrative), when formerly “strong” women–who were in all ways “the equals of men”–suddenly became NOW-embraced wilting violets who needed smelling salts to counter a salty joke.

NOW exhibited its malleable (or, “bendy” as some might say) morals again when they–and all of the “official women” under their banner–were willing to give away their “convictions” to get Bill Clinton into the Oval Office, his shoes still trailing the ice-water from Juanita Brodderick’s fat lip.

Suddenly, the men who were not permitted to snicker at a double-entendre were being told by the likes of Gloria Steinem (you can’t be a more “official woman” than she) that some men–particularly if they were powerful men with D’s after their name–were permitted “one free feel” by gals who knew it was all harmless fun, after all, and suggested that everyone lighten up a little. Wasn’t it just too uproarious to hear James Carville defame a working-class woman–who had done no wrong beyond having caught Clinton’s eye–as personifying “what you find when you drag a $100 bill through the trailer park!”

Yes, it seems these elites have been overt in their disdain for their blue-collar lessers for quite some time, but I digress. Or, do I? NOW has exposed itself–once again–as only representing the concerns of women when the women concerned have fallen in line with the “official” protocols that make them “authentic” women, like Steinem or Hillary Clinton–who will “look the other way” and let bad boys be bad if the girls can get something out of it, or mindlessly carry water like Patty Murray and Barbara Boxer–and not “fake” women like Condoleeza Rice, or Meg Whitman, or Carly Fiorina or Sarah Palin, for that matter, Patricia Heaton, who dares to call herself a Feminist-for-Life.

All of those women, they’re fake women.

But if they’re fake women, at least I guess they can’t be real whores.

UPDATE:
Bill Whittle on the growing awareness of the disdainful elite:

As I noted earlier today: the cultural elites love their narratives; they just don’t want to live within them.

UPDATE II:
Arianna-and-Oprah-Turfing
Obamacare driving insurance costs to the stratosphere
Elite double standards are less tolerated than they used to be