women are stupid?

Really, Charlotte Allen, what were you thinking? hilzoy put it nicely:

Note to Charlotte Allen: if you find yourself having to argue that you are an idiot in order to make your case, you might consider the possibility that an idiot like yourself is unlikely to get much right about women, or for that matter about anything.

Two things really bug me about the fact that this piece of shit got published:

1. You know the Post booked her because they wanted controversy for controversy's sake. When an article can be summed up as, "Women are dumb. No really, they are, myself included!" it pretty much has no redeeming qualities. There will be a huge number of letters to the editor over this piece, and then the Post will congratulate itself on addressing such a hot-button issue. Look at the huge volume of reader response! It's sleazy.
   
   I get that papers make all sorts of questionable decisions to increase circulation. (The creation, a few years ago, of an entire section of the newspaper where no news is allowed to appear jumps to mind.) Generally, I don't care that much. (Hey, I like doing the Kakuro puzzle on Sunday mornings.) But, I think the line should probably be drawn at completely illegitimate, factually unsupported, offensive opinions expressed solely to marginalize an entire section of society. Because the thing is, as illegitimate and ridiculous as what she said was, she said it in the Washington Post. And that lends a veneer of credibility to it.
   


2. Which relates to the other reason I'm so pissed off about this. People will believe the most ridiculous, outlandish, obviously false things if you repeat them enough. Politicians do it all the time (Bush is a master at it); If you say the same lie enough times, it starts to sound familiar, and if something sounds familiar, then surely there's at least a *little bit* of truth to it. This is why, for example, some ridiculous percentage of the US population thinks Saddam Hussein was connected to 9/11. It's why a lot of South Carolina voters in 2000 thought that John McCain had an illegitimate black daughter, and a lot of voters in 2008 think that maybe Barack Obama might be Muslim. Even though almost everyone who comments on this article will denounce it as nonsense, it still adds to the background noise, and it makes it incrementally more acceptable the next time someone decides to recycle 19th century notions of how women are the stupider sex.
   
   And what's worse is, there's nothing anyone can do to stop her ideas from seeping into the culture. If you address her idiotic arguments point by point, you legitimize them. You concede that what she had to say is worthy of debate. But if you refuse to address her arguments because they're beneath your contempt, then they just stand there, unchallenged.
   

Way to go, Washington Post!