February 2, 2006 by s.z.

Conservative Story Time

Today's conservative story teller will be perky, blonde Molly Stark (who's not just a Vermont Revolutionary War heroine any more -- she's now a book and movie reviewer for Townhall when she's not working for Ed Meese III at the Heritage Foundation).

Kids, listen quietly while Molly tells you about the scary, mean, over-the-hill feminists who formed a lynch mob of catty junior high girls to terrorize Kate O'Beirne's virtuous, pure-spirited book.  (It will remind you a lot of the story of the wicked step-sisters trashed Cinderella on Amazon, just because they were jealous of her.)

Much has been written, said, and screamed lately about Kate O’Beirne’s new book, Women Who Make the World Worse: and How Their Radical Feminist Assault Is Ruining Our Schools, Families, Military, and Sports. 
The most vocal participants—the screamers—rather than debating honestly and openly the merits of O’Beirne’s meticulously researched and thoroughly evidenced assertions, have instead chosen to ambush her cowardly from the sidelines—shouting O’Beirne down like a group of catty junior high school girls.

It all started with the torpedoing of O’Beirne’s customer review section on Amazon.com not too long ago.  Nothing like a few cunning and creative tags such as “bird-cage-liner”, “neo-con swill”, and—for our Russian readers— “ca ca” (polite translation: crap), to scare away the buyers, right?  Ambush the book, and maybe no one will read it. And the diseased and dying feminist ideology limps on for another day or two.

You really have to feel for Kate's book, which was just minding its meticulously researched and thoroughly evidenced business of blaming the women that Kate doesn't like for everything bad in the world (and using out-of-context quotations to smear them, and drawing caricatures of them so no boys will invite them to the senior prom), when it was ambushed by a torpedo.  Why, oh why, won't the women who make the world worse just debate honestly and openly the merits of O’Beirne’s work, instead of engaging in catty, junior-high behavior?

Eventually, members of the feminist lynch mob will have to take their fingers out of their ears—just in time to learn that history post-sixties has more than amply borne out O’Beirne’s main points.

[...] 

Why all the fuss about O’Beirne’s new book?  What exactly, do these old-school feminist warriors not want you to hear?

The truth.

Men and women are different.  Always have been.  Always will be.

So, everyone who posted a less than 5-star Amazon review of Kate's book was an old-school feminist warrior who didn't want you to know that men and women are different?  This really is quite a story, isn't it?

Now, on to the part of the story where Molly meets a liberal while taking public transportation, and said liberal not only has learned that his whole ideology is a lie, but he also makes all the points that Molly wants made.  Sure, this is an old, familiar story, but it's a favorite among conservative story tellers. 

I realized not too long ago just what a prize O’Beirne’s book is—and why feminists don’t want you reading it—when I had the pleasure of sitting next to a “here, here!” man on a six-hour flight from DC to LA. 

As I was struggling to cram my belongings under the seat in front of me, I set down a copy of an article Kate O’Beirne had written for NRO.  No sooner had the above referenced middle-aged gentleman spotted O’Beirne’s article on my seat, than he loudly proclaimed, “She’s all over TV right now.  She’s dead on, you know.  There’s a war against boys.  I have a son in school, and it’s just crazy the way they treat them these days.”

“Uh oh,” was my first thought.  I quickly looked up to see who from the feminist sisterhood would land the first blow.

But lucky for Molly and the middle-aged gentleman, there were no aging hippie female feminists around to hit them by giving them a bad Amazon review.

But spotting no aging female hippies in the immediate vicinity, I quickly replied (trying to contain my excitement) as I pulled out my copy of Women Who Make the World Worse, “Interesting you should mention that.  Have you flipped through O’Beirne’s new book yet?  She’s actually included a whole chapter on that very issue—‘In the Classroom… Boys Will Be Girls.’  Here, take a look at it.”

Wow, Molly's seat mate turned out to be not only a man whose son was being warred on at school, but he had also heard of Kate O'Beirne.  And he also was snoopy enough to note his fellow passenger's reading material, and prescient enough to offer a remark about it that lead to exactly the commentary that Molly had planned for her review of Kate's book.  And he was "very liberal' (read: someone who should buy into feminist claims)" -- yet even so, Molly's conversation and Kate's book so convinved him of the fallacies of feminism that he presumably joined Concerned Women for America as soon as the plane touched down.  It was a Townhall Book Review miracle!

Anyway, Molly's new middle-aged friend reads the chapter of Kate's book that deals with how boys are being squished by feminists in the schools, and finds that every concern he had about squished boys is addressed therein.

As my conservation with this “liberal” gentleman continued, I was pleasantly surprised to find that every irksome feminist fallacy he brought up was duly noted, discussed, and then damningly debunked right within the pages of Women Who Make the World Worse. 

Yes, I bet that was indeed a pleasant surprise for Molly. I know that I am always pleasantly surprised when my fictional characters do exactly what I want them to.

And then, for the capper, we learn that Kate is actually Mother Nature.

And I realized something else too. 

The information in Women Who Make the World Worse will resonate with folks across the ideological and political spectrum because after all, it isn’t really Kate O’Beirne talking, is it?

It’s a voice even dogged feminists can’t argue with.

Mother Nature’s.

And then Mother Nature takes the icicle out of the middle-aged man's eye, frees his son from the witches who have been holding him prisoner and treating him "like unindicted coconspirators in history’s gender crimes," and brings back spring.  And they all lived happily ever after.

Now, wasn't that a great story, kids?

Be sure to join us next time, when story teller Molly will be back to tell her own Cinderella story of being invited to the Prince's Ball the press junket for the movie Nanny McPhee.  And like many a fairy tale heroine, Molly notices the little guy whom everyone else shuns.

Now, movie directors often get overlooked.

But the kindly Molly pays attention to the lowly movie director, and she shows her true merit by being the only person there who read the press kit.

I found myself becoming rather annoyed a few minutes into my Kirk Jones time, because most of what was being asked was covered in the press kit that had graciously been tucked under our hotel doors the night before.

I might have been the only one who read it.

At one point, I wanted to say politely (after throwing a few elbows), “Now wait just a minute! The answer to that question was in the press kit you left up in your hotel room under your Perrier. Can I please ask a question that hasn’t already been answered?”    

And she does ask such a question.  And then the movie director reveals that he is actually not just a lowly director, but a princely actor!  And he is so impressed with Molly's homespun virtue and her diligence in reading press kits that he asks her to marry him.  They live happily ever after.

Well, actually that doesn't happen -- but Molly does give his movie a good review a couple of weeks later.  And in it she shares another totally true, not-made-up story that relates to the film.

So watching the antics of the precocious Brown children on-screen, I couldn’t help but recollect times past when kids in my own family were more than a handful for my single (heroic) dad. Like when my dad told my oldest sister to go “clean the turkey” one happy Thanksgiving morning. But when he arrived down in the kitchen a short while later, he found her busy “cleaning” the turkey all right—with a scrub brush, Ajax cleanser, and Palmolive. And yes, we still ate the turkey.

But first,the talking turkey granted the family three wishes.  Really!

1:24:06 PM