Now that I have successfully defended my dissertation on a strong confident goddess who commands the respect of men, it’s time once again to consider those conservative blogresses who embody the qualities of the owl-eyed Olympian.  As you know, we here at GayPatriot define a diva as a strong, confident woman who commands the respect of men.

And it’s time again to consider which blogress merits the much coveted honor of Grande Conservative Blogress Diva. To be nominated, a blogress need not be conservative, but merely command the respect of conservative men.  

If competition is again fierce this year, the Grande Diva will be joined in her court by Regents (as in years past).

Submit your nominations either via the comments section below or in an e-mail to me. Over the weekend, Bruce and I will consider the nominees and prepare a ballot.

Let the cat fight competition begin!

What is it about certain members of the chattering classes on our nation’s coasts that whenever conservatives do well at the ballot box, their success must be attributed to something other than their ideas?

Ann Althouse, an Obama voter who teaches law at the University of Wisconsin, comments on something on something a fellow UW professor said.  In Bill Lueders’s Isthmus article subtitled ”The Triumph of Stupidity“, he asks “political science professor Charles Franklin how people could vote the way they did, and when Franklin answers ‘They’re pretty damn stupid,’ he says, ‘Thank you, professor… That’s the answer I was looking for’“:

Frankly, it’s an answer embraced by many people I know. One of my Isthmus colleagues sent me a study showing that Dane County, which bucked the trends on Election Day, is by far the most educated county in the state. “When conservatives cut support for education,” she mused, “they do so to keep people dumb and their own interests in power.”

This prompts this blogress diva to reply:

Welcome to my world: Dane County, Wisconsin, home of people who tell themselves they are the smart people and those who disagree with them must certainly be dumb. They don’t go through the exercise of putting themselves in the place of someone who thinks differently from the way they do . . . . If you short circuit that process and go right to the assumption that people who don’t agree with you are stupid, how do you maintain the belief that you are, in fact, intelligent, informed, and well-meaning?

Read the whole thing.  It is a puzzling thing how so many people who style themselves to be so superior and smart simply assume their ideological adversaries are stupid.

A reader alerted me this morning to a post by original Grande Conservative Blogress Diva Sondra K on an ignorant remark by an unhappy Congressman from the home state of Daniel Webster.  Seems the mean-spirited man from Massachusetts is so used to a fawning press that he just assumes the media will take his remarks at face value.

Miss K reports:

Rep. Barney Frank on government regulations: “The general fear that the banking members, that we’re going to over regulate on behalf of consumers is a fantasy unrelated to any human experience. The federal government has never done that.”

Ol’ Barney got it backwards.

The real fantasy is not in the minds of conservatives (and other critics & skeptics of big government) who provide detailed evidence of government regulatory schemes run amok with individual anecdotes and society-wide statistics, but in the minds of liberals like Barney who believe that their big-government schemes will work because they will work because they were conceived by really intelligent and very well-meaning individuals.

I mean, Barney’s been pushing a federal overhaul of health care for years now with no evidence that it will reduce costs or improve the quality of care.  This self-important Democrat can relate no examples from human experience of government-run health care which does all the things its advocates promised.  Indeed, the examples show quite the opposite.  But that hasn’t stopped Barney and his cronies from pushing their schemes.

Just look at the studies that have come out after Obamacare has passed.  It won’t contain costs.  Just this month, for example, we learned that White House says 51 percent of company health plans won’t meet Obamacare guidelines.

Just more evidence to support more theory that when Barney Frank talks, there’s some serious projection going on.

Among the many topics touched upon last night in the most marvelous Boston dinner (great food and amazing conversation), we discussed Sarah Palin.  We all admired the former Alaska Governor (though to varying degrees), but also agreed that she’s not positioning herself well for the White House.

That said, another woman we GayPatriots all admire, the magnificent and munificent (with her wisdom) Tammy Bruce has interviewed that accomplished woman.  And if two such talented women appear together in the same podcast, it surely merits your attention.

Ever since I have begun intense work on my dissertation, I have not had the time to check all the blogs I normally do, so I try to first scan those sites, e.g., Memeorandum, Instapundit, the Washington Examiner’s Beltway Confidential, Yahoo! and AOL’s main page, which are a ready source of information and opinion. To that mix, I usually add Michelle Malkin, not merely for her Buzzworthy Sidebar, but also because I know I can rely on that blogress to check her facts.

When a number of conservative bloggers (including some at this site) were quick to jump on an alleged hate crime committed against a Pennsylvania woman volunteering for the McCain campaign in 2008, Michelle threw cold water on our rush to judgment, contending that the “story smells awfully weird“. She was right to be skeptical as the story proved, just as that blogress had suspected, to be a hoax.

When some blogs reported that when “Louisiana GOP Gov. Bobby Jindal’s campaign fundraising chief, Allee Bautsch, and her boyfriend in the French Quarter of New Orleans” were assaulted in New Orleans because they were wearing Palin pins, Malkin offered a “cautionary note“.  She was right to express caution, as we learned soon after the story surfaced that “Bautsch and her boyfriend were NOT wearing Palin pins.”

While the two people were assaulted, the “the detail about the Palin buttons,” was as Allahpundit points out, “simply wrong“.

I don’t always agree with Michelle Malkin and can find her rhetoric a bit overheated at times, but her blog remains an excellent source of information and her commitment to fact-checking a textbook example in how to blog.  And in this busy time for me, combined with the other sources listed above, she helps us learn what’s going on in the world while offering a unique conservative perspective, with clever visuals and witty asides.

If you want to know why Jennifer Rubin is one of my favorite blogresses, just read this piece she posted yesterday on Obama, The Endless Campaign.

UPDATE:  Okay, I probably should say why the piece struck me as being so insightful.  Remember how the Democrat campaigned as being a new kind of post-partisan president?  And then just look at how he’s governed, constantly attacking Republicans, regularly blaming his predecessor for the mess he inherited as if someone forced the job on him–and he hadn’t spent two years campaigning for it.

And we gotta admit, he ran a pretty good campaign and generally came across well on the campaign trail.  So, maybe that’s why he keeps at it, keeps campaigning, that is.  As Rubin writes (and this the essence of her spot-on post):

Obama and his grouchy adviser David Axelrod complain bitterly of the nonstop campaign, the partisanship of Washington, and the nonstop news cycle. But they most obviously are perpetuators of all three, and rely on campaign tactics (attack, attack, attack) in lieu of other skills — reasoned persuasion, real compromise, and legislative craftsmanship. They do it endlessly, campaign that is, because this is what they know and this is what they were good at. That it’s ill-suited to the task at hand and ultimately has diminished the president’s standing seem not to matter. Again and again Obama returns to the stump. What else is he to do? He’s proved unable to convince Blue Dogs of the merits of his bill.

Barack Obama seems obsessed with his opponents because he’s better at running against something than he is at running anything.

Last week, I so liked a piece that Conservative Blogress Diva Regent Neo-neocon posted on Pajamas I printed it out.  Just read it again.  She really got at a phenomenon afflicting the chattering classes, often described as Palin Derangement Syndrome, but sometimes known by its more common name, “Palin-hatred”.

Last week, many of the former Alaska Governor’s detractors, rushed to judge her, smearing her speech, attacking a bracelet she wore and attempting the ancient art of palmistry on her exposed palm.  Neo-neocon found this rush to judgment par for the course when it comes to this charismatic conservative woman:

This rush to judgment is not the exception but rather the rule when criticizing Sarah. Palin-hatred is as old — and as persistent — as her presence on the national scene (that’s “hatred,” as distinguished from mere disagreement on issues). There have been countless explanations for it. If anything, the phenomenon is over-determined, representing a toxic brew of class warfare, misogyny, envy (much of this coming from women), and elitism.

One of the many things that so infuriates Palin-haters is that she has not adopted the proper veneer of bland sameness that most people in public life affect, a smoothness that often serves to even out idiosyncrasies of accent and regionalism. Ms. Palin refuses to do this. She sports not only a bracelet that marks her as the proud mother of a son who has been in the military, but an accent that marks her as from the far north and simultaneously as “country.”

Many people read the latter as “uneducated,” and therefore “stupid.” The assumption is that Palin doesn’t change these things — she continues to drop her “g’s” at the end of “ing” words, for example — because she cannot do so, rather than because she chooses not to do so. But that assumption may be as incorrect as so many of the other assumptions about Palin.

Those many false assumptions. Guess it’s that her detractors have a hard time understanding her appeal because, well, she’s just not the type of woman who’s supposed to succeed.  She’s conservative, she loves her husband (who happens to be hot), she has a passel of children, she doesn’t read Derrida (and thankfully, probably doesn’t know who he is).

Just read the whole thing, this diva (Neo-neocon) is onto something.

Wish that I had more time to blog right now, been trying to follow the news in Iran (Michael Ledeen is always a good source) while taking care of a lot of odds and ends at home in anticipation of my out-of-town guests and a busy 48 hours playing uncle. to an “adoptive” niece.

Will try to get a few short posts up when I take a break from those odds and ends and my dissertation research/writing, but do want to draw your attention to Little Miss Attila’s thoughtful post on blogging guidelines (via Instapundit). Do like what she says about hate comments:

I allow misogyny in my comments section, because it is generally directed at me, and I feel it shows the true colors of the woman-hating commenters. Any anti-male, anti-Asian, anti-gay, anti-tranny, anti-black, anti-American Indian, and anti-Jewish comments, though (or ones that look like they might be indicative of biases in that direction) generally get a warning, and a reminder that repeated offenses are subject to redaction, and banning.

I tend to err on the side of inclusion of such remarks for the very reason Miss Attila identifies:  ”it shows the true colors” of those making such nasty statements.  And isn’t sunlight the best disinfectant?

Still, maybe there are occasions when we should ban.  Read the whole thing.  She has a lot to say–and not just about comments.  Her post is well worth your time.

Althouse nails it:

I don’t think Americans really like to see aggressive economic experiments that displace the private sector. . . . It’s a crazy concoction that no one understands.

Via:  Instapundit.

PAMELA GELLER AT ATLAS SHRUGS!

Congrats to Pam and her supporters (it was a landslide).  And thanks as well to the other diva contestants.  They are all awesome and I voted for a few of them!

I hereby close this year’s contest and wish everyone a Happy New Year!

-Bruce (GayPatriot)

UPDATE (from Dan): And once again neoneocon will join Pamela in her court as Conservative Blogress Diva Regent, also known as the Endora for that staunch Republican, Agnes Moorehead. Now that Pamela with her victory has won the coveted crown, known as the Ethel in honor of that great Republican Ethel Merman, with all rights honors and privileges pertaining thereto, neoneo will assist her in her duties, filling in whenever the Grande Diva is incapacitated or otherwise unable to fulfill the awesome responsibilities of this job.

You can vote for one diva each day, with balloting closing at noon on December 31, 2009.

And recall we here at GayPatriot define a diva as “a strong, confident woman who commands the respect of men.” A conservative blogress diva need not be conservative. All she must do command the respect (or have otherwise earned the admiration) of gay conservatives.

And please note that while there are many conservative blogress divas, including a good number not on this ballot, only one woman can become the Grande Conservative Blogress Diva.

After much discussion, Bruce and I finally settled on a list of nine distinguished divas blogresses to compete for the coveted “Ethel,” the prize which goes to the Grande Conservative Blogress Diva for 2010.  There were many qualified candidates and we debated increasing the number of nominees, but, in the end, settled on these nine distinguished web pundits:

• Cynthia Yockey
• Neoneocon
• Anchoress
• Michelle Malkin
• Ann Althouse
• Jennifer Rubin (Commentary Contentions)
• Fausta
• Pamela (Atlas Shrugs)
• Tammy Bruce

To be sure, by keep the contest at a manageable number, we could not include each and every blogress worthy of consideration.

I expect to get a poll up until sometime tonight, at which time the balloting will officially begin.

“. . .moral sanctimoniousness and a determination to do the opposite of whatever George W. Bush was doing.”

Jennifer Rubin

While only one blogress can be the Grande Conservative Blogress Diva (also known as the Ethel in honor of the Republican woman most beloved by gay men), this year, as last, we will also be choosing a Conservative Blogress Diva Regent (also known as the Endora in honor that “staunch conservative” Agnes Moorehead).

With nominations now complete, Bruce and I are reviewing the submissions and their seconds to determine which lucky blogresses get to compete for the coveted crown.

One of the great things about this competition is that it helps us learn about all the talented conservative, libertarian as well as centrist and iconoclastic liberal women who are blogging.  And even each of the various conservatives on the list offers a unique point of view, from mainstream Reagan conservatives who warmly embrace their gay and lesbian peers to social conservatives who begrudgingly tolerate us.

Some women who didn’t make the list, but whose names came to mind in the course of the competition, include National Review’s Lisa Schiffren, Dr. Melissa Clouthier*, Cathy Young, Rachel Abrams at the Weekly Standard, and Lorie Byrd.  There are a lot of smart woman out there, expressing their opinions (nearly) every day and not subscribing to left-wing feminist claptrap.  As our reader Lori G wrote, “So many conservative lovelies“.  Indeed.

As we review the submissions, obviously we will not be able to acknowledge all this incredible talent (with a nomination).   If we did that, the list would be incredible unwieldy.  But, by speaking her mind and challenging the conventional wisdom of how a smart woman should think, each of these “lovelies” is truly a diva.  But, only one can become the Grande Conservative Blogress Diva.

—–

*Her latest, Passing Obamacare Will Hurt Democrats, Not Passing Obamacare Will Hurt Democrats, is particularly insightful, the title alone spot on.

As our readers know, we here at GayPatriot define a diva as “a strong, confident woman who commands the respect of men.”   A conservative blogress diva need not be conservative  per se; all she must do command the respect (or have otherwise earned the admiration) of gay conservatives.  In the past, as I noted back in 2006, some of our nominees have been

libertarian. And others, while more centrist, distinguish themselves by their iconoclasm and the manner in which they take on the silliness of certain leftists — and conservative pretenders, i.e., those who, in the words of one of our [past and possibly future] nominees, “drive . . . liberals nuts.”

This year, our readers have already submitted the names of blogress divas new to the contest, including, we believe, only the second lesbian ever nominated, Cynthia Yockey, aka a Conservative Lesbian.   Will she perhaps replace that other dyke diva Tammy Bruce by capturing this year’s Endora and reigning a Conservative Blogress Diva Regent or will she join Sondra K and Pamela Geller as only the third woman to become the Grande Conservative Blogress Diva?

Other names drawn to my attention this year include Cassandra of Villainous Company, Nic Deb, Megan McArdle, Phyllis Chesler and Karin Quade (of anti-anti-Americanism.com).

Also in contention are reigning divas Pamela Geller, Tammy Bruce and neoneocon as well as Amy Alkon, The Anchoress, Ann Althouse, Little Miss Attila, Dymphna of Gates of Vienna, immediate past Grande Conservative Blogress Diva Sondra K of Knowledge is Power, Mary Katharine Ham of The Weekly Standard, Rachel Lucas, Michelle Malkin, Camille Paglia, Virginia Postrel of The Dynamist, Jennifer Rubin of Commentary’s Contentions, Sister Toldjah, Debbie Schlussel, and Fausta Wertz.

Please submit your nominations (or seconds) in the comments section below or via e-mail.   Bruce and I will review the submissions (and the seconds) and choose this year’s roster, posting a poll as soon as this coming Friday with balloting continuing for at least a week.

So, if you want your favorite diva to appear on the ballot, make sure to second her nomination below.

Well, the end of the year is soon upon us and Grande Conservative Blogress Diva Pamela Geller must either prepare to surrender her crown — or fight to keep it.  As you know, we here at GayPatriot consider a conservative blogress diva any blogress who commands the support of gay conservative men.

And this past year, I have discovered many blogresses meriting the honor of being a blogress diva that I will wait and see the names our readers submit before submitting my list (as we have in years past).

I will, however, kick off the context by placing in nomination the name of an Obama supporter who has long commanded my respect:  Camille Paglia.  As we receive submissions and seconds, Bruce and I will determine which divas compete for the crown.  We expect to honor not only a Grande Conservative Blogress Diva, her prize hereinafter to be known as the “Ethel” in honor of that Republican most beloved by gay men–Ethel Merman.

She will be helped by at least one Conservative Blogress Regent, a title now held by Tammy Bruce and neoneocon and known as the Endora (or Agnes) in honor of the Lavender Lady herself, that “staunch” conservative, Agnes Moorhead.  This year, we may also be establishing the Lucy Award in honor of another star of the small screen and famous friend of Ron, that lifelong Republican Lucille Ball.

We will accept nominations until midnight Wednesday, December 16.  Shortly thereafter, we will alert the nominees and announce the beginning of the cat fight balloting.

Given her strong and frequent defenses of Sarah Palin, Camille Paglia certainly merits consideration for the coveted title of Grande Conservative Blogress Diva (soon to be renamed as the Ethel).  She is tart-tongued and witty, speaking her mind.  She never minces her words.  While claiming to be of the left, does not allow herself to be pigeon-holed.  In truth, she subscribes to no political ideology, acidly taking potshots at even her ostensible allies.

She’ll not only take them on if she doesn’t agree with them, but also if she doesn’t like the way they’re playing the game.  She doesn’t let partisan labels or political worldview prevent her from calling things as she sees them.  She may love Barack Obama, but she’ll lambaste her beloved Democrat when she believes he’s governing badly–or surrounding him with tone-deaf advisers.  And she doesn’t soft-pedal such criticism, even of an ally.  Even it if means being labeled “C**tzilla.”

I have long been a fan of this gifted scholar and social critic, having met her in 1994 at a reading/book-signing organized by the D.C.. bookstore Chapters. Her book Sexual Personae has been an invaluable resource for my dissertation on the goddess Athena.  My readers–and almost never the liberal ones–regularly alert me to her columns.  In short, this Obama supporter has gained the respect of gay conservatives, thus, in my mind, at least, qualifying her for the coveted contest.

Recall that we have defined a diva as a strong, confident woman who commands the respect of men.  And of the Grande Conservative Blogress diva, I have written:

She need not be conservative herself . . . , but must by the the power of her prose, the eloquence of her expression and the intelligence of her ideas have earned the enmity of the angry left and so endeared herself to gay men like us who admire strong women who speak their minds, even at the expense of encomia from those in the entertainment industry and the MSM.

Being called C**tzilla suggests earning enmity from the angry left.

So, my friends, I put this question to you, in December, when we again began the process of selecting the most (cat) fought-over title in the blogosphere, should we consider Camille Paglia for Grande Conservative Blogress Diva?

For a slightly more nuanced view of Paglia, please make sure to read Endora-winning blogress (AKA Conservative Blogress Diva Regent) neeneocon’s take on the Obama-supporting diva.

*And Bush-critic.

Although having no remorse for supporting Barack Obama, Camille Paglia still manages to confess her “dismay bordering on horror at the amateurism of the White House apparatus for domestic policy“:

There is plenty of blame to go around. Obama’s aggressive endorsement of a healthcare plan that does not even exist yet, except in five competing, fluctuating drafts, makes Washington seem like Cloud Cuckoo Land. The president is promoting the most colossal, brazen bait-and-switch operation since the Bush administration snookered the country into invading Iraq with apocalyptic visions of mushroom clouds over American cities.

. . . .

I just don’t get it. Why the insane rush to pass a bill, any bill, in three weeks? And why such an abject failure by the Obama administration to present the issues to the public in a rational, detailed, informational way? The U.S. is gigantic; many of our states are bigger than whole European nations. The bureaucracy required to institute and manage a nationalized health system here would be Byzantine beyond belief and would vampirically absorb whatever savings Obama thinks could be made. And the transition period would be a nightmare of red tape and mammoth screw-ups, which we can ill afford with a faltering economy.

. . . .

Blaming obstructionist Republicans is nonsensical because Democrats control all three branches of government. It isn’t conservative rumors or lies that are stopping healthcare legislation; it’s the justifiable alarm of an electorate that has been cut out of the loop and is watching its representatives construct a tangled labyrinth for others but not for themselves.

Emphasis added.

In her post where she also skewers House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, Paglia offers little love for the GOP.  As with anything by Paglia just read the whole thing.

She gets at the essence of the opposition.  With the Administration handling this in a ham-handed, haphazard manner, people fear they are being left out of an overhaul of a sector of society with which they are, by and large, satisfied.  Not just that, this reform is coming from a man, who as presidential candidate promised a new era of transparency, but is relying on back room deals and lobbyist support to craft the health care reform bill.

Paglia is right (and wise) to note that no final bill exists.  If Obama wishes to be true to the platform on which he ran, he will request that Congress recess once the final bill has been drafted and posted on the internet.  He would ask each Representative and Senator to hold townhall meetings advertised at least two weeks in advance to all their constituents.  In short, they wouldn’t vote on final passage until they’ve discussed the bill with the people they were elected to serve.

Yes, this will take a bit of time, but it is a major industry overhaul with far-reaching consequences.

His drag career went bust.

Maybe that’s why the unhappy Congressman is so mean-spirited.  He just doesn’t look good in a dress.

(H/t Attila the Honey (potential blogress diva?) via the People’s Cube.)

FROM THE COMMENTS:  Jana writes, “Too bad he beclowns himself in a far more humiliating manner every day.”

[Revised to correct numerous typos and improve the flow.]

I have long been fascinated by the contempt certain left-wing bloggers hold for Ann Althouse.  As I noted in a previous post, she’s “kind of like the South Park of blogging. . ., directing her snark at pretty much anything she finds amusing” regardless of politician affiliation.  She’s basically an equal opportunity riffer.

You wouldn’t think she’d earn the ire of any particular partisans.

Indeed, given the enthusiasm of left-of-center bloggers had for Barack Obama in last fall’s campaign, you’d think they’d love Althouse.  Having backed Bush in 2004, she came out for Obama last year, voting for him in the Wisconsin primary, one of the most decisive contests of the Democratic campaign.  Her support for their man helped give him added credibility, an example of his appeal to moderate Bush voters.

Not just that, she’s had kind things to say for a number of conservatives, even offered occasional praise for Sarah Palin.  They could use her to show how broad-minded people, having seen the strengths on both sides, prefer Obama.

But, maybe they just couldn’t stand her because sometimes she refrained from riffing Republicans and denounced Democrats instead. Her occasional praise of Republicans really got under their skins.  Her support for Obama was not absolute.   She did not see him as a messiah, but merely the better of the two candidates (in each of two contests, for the Democratic nomination and later the White House.)  And she’s aware of the President’s imperfections, criticizing him from time to time.

I think that’s part of the reason those bloggers can’t stand her; she’s only a lukewarm supporter of Obama and not a rabid critic of his opponents.

I believe, however, the real reason the mere mention of her name whips those bloggers into paroxysms of anger and invective is that right-of-center bloggers love her even though we often disagree with her.

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