Surprise, surprise. It is.
Tbogg, as have so many other bloggers who loathe the self-obsessed Wisconsin law lecturer, has the video up of the video head to head between Ann Althouse and progressive writer Garance Franke-Ruta, in which Ann Althouse comes over as the vindictive, vain and bullying Queen Bee type she is by going off on an ad-feminam rant halfway through, much to the consternation of Franke-Ruta.
See it for yourself:
I mean jeez, Franke-Ruta only mentioned Jessica Valenti’s breasts because pressed by Althouse for a reason why the progressive blogs loathed her so much. A full-on mauling seemed a little excessive. As Franke-Ruta comments on her own blog:
But I do want to provide some additional background to my use of the phrase “Jessica Valenti breast controversy,” which was neither intended to provoke nor chosen out of a a soup of total ignorance. In preparation for our BHTV encounter and to get a sense of Ann Althouse, since we’d never met and I mainly knew her through her New York Times columns, which I enjoyed, and the occasional persual of the cultural criticism on her blog, I watched her previous BHTV episdode with Glenn Reynolds and Helen Smith. It included a segment where Althouse and Smith went into some detail discussing various blogospheric breast controversies, including how one AutoAdmit commenter calling himself “Hitler Hitler Hitler” had said of Althouse that she had a “decent rack.” In that earlier episode, Althouse and Smith talked openly about blogospheric breast commentary, much of which I agree is incredibly juvenile and stupid, with amusement and good humor and suggestions that laughing off criticism is the best response. Althouse said (forward to 4:30): “They constantly talk about me and connect me to the subject of breasts. They constantly portray me as someone who, um, is opposed to the fact that women have breasts…Which is, I guess, sort of funny.” She didn’t seem particularly thin-skinned about the issue.
On looking at that bit of video again Althouse’s unjustified attack on seems just a little too fortuitous to me, a little too preplanned. Althouse didn’t come unprepared – you can see that, it looks as though she’d even done her hair and makeup for the occasion – and that was an ambush, in my opinion.
What’s sad is that athough she was in the right, nevertheless I don’t think Franke-Ruta came over particularly well at all, as talented or as capable as she may be off-screen. (Though I do find it hard to believe she’s over 30. Is it me or are police officers and polciy wonks getting younger these days?).
Head to head video debate is obviously not her metier, though I’m told she regularly appears on televiison as representing the progressive point of view. I don’t wish to be cruel, but is she really the best talking head we can put up against Althouse, who should be easily defeated in open debate given the paucity of her political positions and the mendacity of her arguments?
Franke-Ruta was easily perplexed and derailed by that fabricated and theatrical (but then real as she started to enjoy it) bit of business by Althouse; she immediately gave ground by apologising (what the hell for?), and then kept on doing it. She was totally nonplussed.
Even allowing for the element of surprise, if Franke-Ruta’d only had a little gumption Althouse would’ve been totally deflated, because right and logic were patently on her side, not Althouse’s. But as it was, even if Athouse did lose it for a while and come across as more than a little crazy, she still did what she meant to do and kept to her own agenda the whole time – ie the evil that is progressive bloggers.
Althouse and her mouthbreathing fans’re now chalking that one up as a win over the progressive blogosphere. Technically they’re right, Althouse’s temper tantrum notwithstanding. And that stinks.
