Monday, March 03, 2008

Dear Idiot Newspaper

Some of you may have read about the insanely stupid piece by Charlotte Allen published in the Washington Post. If you haven't, here is a snippet

Depressing as it is, several of the supposed misogynist myths about female inferiority have been proven true. Women really are worse drivers than men, for example. A study published in 1998 by the Johns Hopkins schools of medicine and public health revealed that women clocked 5.7 auto accidents per million miles driven, in contrast to men's 5.1, even though men drive about 74 percent more miles a year than women. The only good news was that women tended to take fewer driving risks than men, so their crashes were only a third as likely to be fatal. Those statistics were reinforced by a study released by the University of London in January showing that women and gay men perform more poorly than heterosexual men at tasks involving navigation and spatial awareness, both crucial to good driving.
Ah yes, women are bad drivers, so all women must be stupid. Except women are more careful drivers and their accidents tend to be less fatal. But wev, we know there are idiots out there and we know that some of those idiots are women. What blows me away is that some editor at the Post thought this was worthy of publication. So I wrote the Post's Ombudsman a little letter

Dear Sir (or Madam, but I am sure you must be a sir because judging by the pieces your newspaper chooses to publish, women are to dumb to serve as ombudsman):

Over the last few years whenever your newspaper has come up in conversation, it has become common practice to dismiss it because judging by the number of misogynist articles you choose to publish, you have already dismissed half the population. The recent piece by Charlotte Allen, while astonishing in the breadth of it's stupidity, just takes away any thin veneer of reason that might have served to mislead unsuspecting readers.

Perhaps you thought to publish the piece so as to drive up readership on sheer controversy alone. While that might have succeeded in the very short term, you have shot yourself in the foot by alienating half your potential readership. Anyone that stupid does not deserve my attention or the attention of anyone with a reading comprehension level. This article might have been interesting (but still completely asinine) 100 years ago, but for a serious newspaper to publish it today makes it the literary equivalent of a fart joke. Are you 10? Do you wear footy pajamas? Do you think "ewe, girls are gross and have cooties" whenever you have to deal with them?

Cheer up though, you have managed one major thing with this article. This essay makes the tits and giggles girls of Fox news look positively brilliant when compared to Ms. Allen. I'm sure they will appreciate it.

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