Susan Estrich – angry at the world

Got an interesting email from Charlotte Allen at the Independent Women’s Forum wherein she directed my attention to a new Susan Estrich meltdown, and her response to it.

You can read the Estrich email (and Cathy Seipp’s thoughts, as well) here.

I don’t know what is more staggering to me – the strange width and breadth of Estrich’s rage, which seems so oddly time-warped – or the news Allen delivers that, “Estrich, the voluble and famously feminist University of Southern California law professor [is} on every Democrat’s short list for Supreme Court justice–if only “President Gore” or “President Kerry” were around to appoint her.”

Egad. Can you just picture it? Estrich doing Carol Channing and unleashing her special brand of feminist reasoning as a member of the SCOTUS? This is the woman who, in a previous meltdown, seemed to be channeling Jimmy Malone talking about The Chicago Way in The Untouchables as she wrote to Democrats-at-large:

“You have to fight fire with fire, mud with mud, dirt with dirt. The trouble with Democrats, traditionally, is that we’re not mean enough…

You can read the rest of this mind-blogging hatescreed here if you’ve the stomach for it.

So, Ms. Estrich is angry that she and other enraged and goofy feminists are not getting enough columnar real-estate at the LA Times, and in her email she also rants about the absence of women doing the talking-head, Sabbath-gasbag thing:

“The fact is that the LA Times isn’t alone. A story in today’s paper recounted the travails at PBS where, if you’ve noticed, they have added THREE MALE CONSERVATIVES AS COMMENTATORS, GIVEN TUCKER CARLSON A SHOW — AND ADDED NO WOMEN AT ALL TO DO COMMENTARY, HOST A SHOW; their review panel to review standards doesnt even have a woman…”

Stop! Stop! STOP! She’s giving me an earache, and I’m only READING her!

Susan, do you want to know why you and your Sisters-in-Sanctimony-and-Sizzling-Ire are not being invited on the air more frequently? Because you only know how to sing one note, and you sing it in the key of SHRILL. I am speaking strictly as a viewer here: I have completely stopped watching the “talking heads” because people like you, and Ellen Ratner and Eleanor Clift cannot speak to an issue without your eyes and neck veins bulging out and your voices rising and rising like tuneless trumpets and trombones being played by elephants.

Shudder.

And if you’re going missing from the printed page, perhaps its simply because you haven’t had anything new to say since 1988. Maureen Dowd has lately lost the ability to say anything new, too. She ping-pongs back and forth between “I hate Bush…” and “Why don’t men love me…” but at least she is still entertaining (in a morbidly fascinating way) as she does it.

There are a few female talking heads who can manage to moderate their tones and keep their eyes from falling out of their skulls. Mara Liasson over on Fox is very watchable. Cokie Roberts was always composed. Even Hillary Clinton is learning how to rein in the rage and make her point without shrieking. Study them. Learn some self control.

Seems to me the best way for you to advance women into positions of prominence, if that’s what they want (once again, I’m writing about this odd need everyone has for prominence and power – it seems to be my theme for the week) is to get the women to take hold of themselves, and their teeming emotions, and you know…present oneself in a professional manner, voicing a reasonable position in tones that don’t make anyone wince.

There really is no mystery to this. Barbara Olsen was a master of the method. Jeralyn Merritt and Peggy Noonan do it well. Laura Ingraham manages, albeit with a bit of an edge. If you and your pals want to be taken seriously stop acting like every issue in life is a call to storm the battlements and…egad…tone it down! Way…down….

It’s a simple fact of life that when you are screaming, you cannot…be…heard.

UPDATE: Michael Kinsley got wind of Estrich’s email, put his hands on his hips and raised his eyebrows, and then fired this off:

The only discussion I have had with Susan since starting this job was a very pleasant dinner a few weeks ago. There were some accurate things in her e-mail, some inaccuracies, and some fantasies. I’m not getting into details.

She is right that we should have more women writing for our op-ed page, and she is right that I am bad about answering e-mail, although she is wrong to think that this bad habit is gender-specific. What seems to have popped her cork, however, is an article by a woman that we did run. I’m sorry that she has “never heard of” Charlotte Allen, but I think it may be possible to be a woman even if Susan Estrich has never heard of you. Even a member of the Independent Women’s Forum can nevertheless be a woman, perhaps.

Perhaps. :-) Apparently in some feminist circles only the “right sort” of woman is a real woman these days…I suspect they are not my circles, but – as Sojourner Truth said, “Ain’t I a woman?”

WELCOME Hugh Hewitt readers! Please pull up a chair and look around! :-) Today we’re also talking about baseball, the over-videotaping of American kids, the Terri Schiavo case and much more! Thanks to Greg for the picture of Estrich.