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Shakesville’s Melissa McEwan is pissed. Really pissed. Rowsed from her starry-eyed stupor of early ’09, she now has this to say:
And this mealy-mouthed bullshit—”I laid out a very simple principle, which is this is a health care bill, not an abortion bill”—is contemptibly craven. I’m absolutely fucking livid that a man who had the audacity to claim to be a champion of women’s right to choose would abandon women in this way. Not that I’m surprised. Of course I’m not surprised. I always knew this was bullshit. A lack of surprise makes me no less furious about the depth of his callous disregard for women.
And of course, I don’t disagree with her, though I find her claim that she “always knew this was bullshit” specious at best, considering that at least for awhile there Shakesville’s tone shifted from one that was unapologeticly feminist-centred to one that manipulated people into voting for Obama.
But I did find it funny (in a cosmic kind of way) that the timing of this particular little revelation so neatly coincides with the anniversary of the infamous Great Expectations thread of November 08, where regular Shakers were attacked and driven away from the community for harshing on Melissa’s hopium buzz. The timing simply too apropos, I was compelled to comment, eliciting a completely predictable response (squawks of inappropriate commenting, bitter behaviour, rewriting history, etc). Equally predictable was Melissa’s deletion of my follow-up comment – luckily, I grabbed a screencap of it just in case the two-dozen people who’ve clicked through from there are curious:
However, I feel I need to issue a retraction: I admit it, I was wrong. In the ensuing months of ridiculously manipulative “shakedowns” of the Shakesville community, Paul the Spud (a social worker) did not encourage a woman on disability to forward her money onto Melissa (a relatively well-off middle class woman with a house of her own and a husband who makes enough to support her writing on the blog full time).
No, he encouraged a single mother living off child support to do it:
All I had on my child support card was $5.00, but that should change soon, so just keep the reminders coming and I promise to raise the amount next time. I would hate to lose this forum and I know far too well what it’s like to live on far too little.
Chryslin, I don’t want to speak for Melissa, but I do know that “no amount is too small.” Like she said earlier, if everyone that read the blog donated a buck, that would take care of everything. I know any amount donated is appreciated. 🙂 And I thank you for donating.
Which, on a feminist blog, was one of the more memorable moments of blogging history I’ve ever seen. As a daughter of a single mother who subsisted on child support, I would like to advocate on record that Shakers in this situation please keep their money for themselves; they work far, far harder than Melissa does.
(Meanwhile, the person on disability I was thinking of simply pledged their funds to resounding silence here. No one exactly “encouraged “them, but no one really discouraged them either. )
Adoxography 