Big Tent Democrat at TalkLeft:
[Ruth] Marcus states that “I may sound alarmingly crotchety here, but something is upside down in the modern world, which has transformed [Kansas teenager Emma] Sullivan into an unlikely Internet celebrity and heroine of the liberal blogosphere[.]” You don’t sound crotchety Marcus, you sound insane. Sullivan was too mean in her tweet about a politician? And you claim to cover these people?
Something is upside down in this world when a so called journalist can get this up in arms over a tweet that is disrespectful to a pol while being just fine with the past decade in Washington, DC.
Ruth Marcus, a supremely silly woman, is nevertheless only reflecting the reality of the world for people under age 30 or so. Teenagers and young people aren’t permitted to talk back to nasty pols, even passively through Twitter. Only nasty pols are allowed to talk smack about American youth, lecturing them about taking baths, getting jobs, and remaining quiescent while their lockers are randomly searched for drugs (or whatever might offer a pretext for turning them over to local police.) Never mind that nasty pols are particularly nasty about the sex lives of teenaged girls. For the record, I don’t think Sullivan is a “hero.” She sounds like a typical teenager, bragging about a confrontation that never happened. Although foolish, her tweets are her own business.
But even nasty pol Sam Brownback knows that his staff was overzealous, and he apologized to Sullivan for the overreach. (He’s nasty, but he’s not an idiot.)
Historiann 
I saw this yesterday and almost broke something.
http://articles.cnn.com/2011-11-28/opinion/opinion_obeidallah-brownback-tweet-apology_1_governor-brownback-sam-brownback-tweet?_s=PM:OPINION
Intro paragraph:
There is a new scandal breaking involving an elected official, a young woman and Twitter. And, nope, it’s not what you think.
Translation:
BREAKING NEWS – Teenaged girl mistakes herself for a member of the opinion class rather than the sex class!
Thanks, CNN, for encouraging the next generation’s interest in current events.
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That’s exactly it, isn’t it? And then they wonder why the participation rates of young voters are so low.
Maybe this particular episode of douchebaggery will inspire a few thousand teenaged girls in Kansas (and perhaps elsewhere) to go get themselves registered to vote.
(Personally, I thought tweeting the word “sucked” was pretty tame. When I was sixteen or thereabouts, I would have used the expression, “fucking sucked.”)
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Running out and registering would be just great. Still marveling over how utterly thoroughly her first eligibility to vote was shat upon by the Governor (who fucking sucks), her school, the media, and on and on and on.
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Historiann, your opinion mirrors mine, and that of another friend of mine who is a political commentator from the Great State of Kansas:
1. Ms. Sullivan expressed her political opinion, which she had a right — one might even say a civic obligation — to do. One could only wish that other 18 year-olds cared as much about what their elected officials were doing.
2. She undermined her position by fabricating a bit of her tweet and using inflammatory language. This is unfortunate.
So: so far, #1 minus #2 = a wash. BUT…
3. Brownback’s office tried to quash any sort of dissent by bullying an 18 year-old girl whose claims would have otherwise likely vanished… thus proving her point.
Conclusion: Brownback (or his office; whatever) has shown himself to be a fool with a capital “T”. This is something that Kansans have known for a while; now the whole country knows it.
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These guys would never be able to handle it if there was something like “Rate-My-Pols,” although I suppose they would say that’s what elections are about. Fabricating *part* of a tweet and still having room within the character limit to get in a vulgarity says something about expressive dexterity and rhetorical stick-handling, if nothing else. Brownbag should have tweeted back with a job offer. Talent is talent in this market.
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This is why I’m not up in arms about the death of the media. Because the free media that I respected, that put ethics and public interest above their own status-building, pretty well disappeared in the 90s.
Currying favour with Governor Brownback, Ms. Marcus? I hope that works out well for you because it’s not winning you many admirers among your fellow citizens.
Did you also notice that Marcus managed to bring up mothers in this? Obviously, our tweeting teen had a BAD MOTHER because if Ruth Marcus had been her mother, she’d have raised her right and have punished the SHIT out of her.
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Janice: I’m completely with you on the mother-shaming and blaming, with a bonus of further infantilizing the girl as a political subject. Ugh.
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Why is everyone so picky about the kid? As a kid she is entitled to lapses. H said everything that is to say about Madam Marcus. She is in a large majority in our news media. It almost seems that one has to thinking defective to rise to some prominence in the media.
Many blogger on the left, although widely quoted, are not much better. (on the other hand part)
The only winner in the skirmish is Brownback who displayed good judgement.
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Yes, I thought that Ruth Marcus exacerbated, or perhaps mirrored, Brownback’s office’s response. I mean, a teenager wrote something rude and silly and not entirely true? STOP THE PRESSES!
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Historiann, especially as a leader in observing gender in history, could you please refrain from using any permutation of the term “douche” in a derogatory manner? I was thrilled to see you post this story and the one on the occupiers, but it’s jarring to see women obediently participate in the “hip” usage of anything relating to vaginas (including the clinical word “vagina”) as slurs.
May I suggest instead of douchebaggery, try “ball sackery” or any reference to scrotums?
Thank you.
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Several feminist blogs have had extensive discussions on the word douche. Since douching itself is a part of the slandering of the vulva and the vagina as “unclean,” douche was generally found to be a perfect term to describe someone harmful, unnecessary, and misinformed.
I think that the suggestion of using ball sackery as a substitute term would indicate the douche was actually a part of a woman’s anatomy. No, a douche is just a bad, bad idea.
/derail
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Douchebag conversation here.
I guess I’ve come around to the usage of the term that OlderThanDirt describes.
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