Dickmanship, Part 2: Women in politics.

This blog has been heavy on the Weiner coverage. 3 of yesterday's 14 posts had substantial Weiner content. But I passed on the Olivia Nuzzi story in yesterday's Daily News: "Anthony Weiner intern reveals why she, fellows joined New York mayoral campaign." It just looked like another woman trying to horn in on the Weiner action. Who is she? Who does she think she is? Yeah, campaigns have interns. She asserts that Weiner interns are hot to get to Huma and through Huma to Hillary, but that's not surprising or disturbing. Ambitious people seek to network and climb. Why is this even in the newspaper?

To my eye, it looked like Nuzzi's selling point was her ability to look somewhat pretty posing with tilted head; long, flowy, bleached-blonde hair; lips pursed just short of duck face; and a tight, sleeveless navy blue dress. Navy blue, for comparison purposes to a  picture of Huma looking less pretty in a more frumpy navy blue dress. Navy blue, because Monica Lewinsky, the ultimate intern, historically wore, stained, and retained a navy blue dress. In case the subliminal hint isn't enough, the article has the name "Monica" inserted in an anecdote in which Weiner attempts to demonstrate his ability to remember the names of his 20 interns and incorrectly calls one Monica, then tries Monica a second time with the author. Not told whether any of the interns were really named Monica, we are left free to imagine that the lecherous Weiner intended to convey the message that he was looking for Lewinskyesque services from his interns.

I'd kicked the sext-crazed man around enough, and Nuzzi was such an unsubtle attention whore, so the best thing to blog is nothing. But that was yesterday. Why am I writing about Nuzzi today? Because there's another woman stepping out onto the stage of The Anthony Weiner Clown Show, and her I find amusing, and she's not an attention whore. She didn't realize she was on stage. She thought/claims she was giving an off-the-record interview. It's Weiner’s communications director Barbara Morgan:

“I’m dealing with like stupid fucking interns who make it on to the cover of the Daily News even though they signed NDAs and/or they proceeded to trash me... And by the way, I tried to fire her, but she begged to come back and I gave her a second chance.... Fucking slutbag. Nice fucking glamour shot on the cover of the Daily News. Man, see if you ever get a job in this town again,” said Morgan.

“It’s all bullshit,” she said. “I mean, it’s such bullshit. She could fucking — fucking twat.”...

“She sucked. She like wasn’t good at setting up events. She was clearly there because she wanted to be seen. Like it was, like, terrible and I had to like - she would like, she would just not show up for work... And then like she had the fucking balls to like trash me in the paper. And be like, ‘His communications director was last the press secretary of the Department of Education in New Jersey.'... You know what? Fuck you, you little cunt. I’m not joking, I am going to sue her.”

Key word: balls. Paging Tina Brown, who — in "End the Damn Dickmanship!" — longed for a testosterone test to screen excessively masculine individuals out of the political arena. Brown acted like she thought her dreamed-of test would only exclude dickish men like Weiner, but I suspected — in my first Weiner post of yesterday — that Brown herself would score high on the test. And now we've got more ladies waving their hands around. Give me the test!

There have long been soppy dreams that women in politics would mean kindness and cooperation. "My idea has always been that if we could bring the mothers of the various nations together, then there would be no more war." I wish I could find video of Vanessa Redgrave delivering that line in "Howards End." Her silliness is vividly apparent, in a story set at the beginning of the 20th century. It's absurd to hear the same idea recirculated, as ambitious women tear into men — like Nuzzi into Weiner — and into other women — like Morgan into Nuzzi. To quote Morgan: It’s all bullshit. I mean, it’s such bullshit.

I guess I'm supposed to denounce Morgan for calling Nuzzi a "slutbag," a "twat," and a "cunt." Those female-specific insults. But didn't Tina Brown call Weiner a "dick"? And, if so, shouldn't we give equality to women and get our share of gender-based insults? But Tina Brown didn't call Anthony Weiner a "dick." She referred to his "dickmanship." He's not a dick but a Person of Dickmanship. The equivalent would be to refer to a woman's twattishness. But that kind of distancing in the insults is for the official print version. How does Tina Brown speak off the record? Seriously, why do you think Barbara Morgan thought she could talk like that? Such a string of epithets can't come out of nowhere. There must be a culture.

And yet, if that were the culture, wouldn't there be thousands of ambitious interns like Nuzzi, whose climbing hit a ceiling, dishing out a million "Fuck you, you little cunt" quotes?