I’ve fulminated about Humvees here before. Back in 2003, I believe it was.

As symbol of the worst Republican/right-wing hubris, corruption, and in-your-face Fuck You to the global climate crisis, it was hard to stomach the sight of these cars on the road all over Los Angeles.

Each one may as well have had a little “W” sticker on the rear window. Many did.

Okay, whatever my insecurities about Blogher ‘08, I’m ready to rage against one small-dicked guy named Robert Stacy McCain who basically snarked and made fun of blogs by women and by extension the entire women’s blogosphere. A somewhat shallow NYT article is what gave him his opening. (Response from the NYT to criticism here.)

Robert Stacy McCain Diagnosis: Small Penis disease. Prognosis: equally shrunken brain, with ever-enlarging asshole. Treatment: smackdown by the very bloggers he disdains.

Not only did he dismiss Queen of Spain’s critique of the NYT article on Blogher (which got it moved from Fashion & Style to the Technology section), he made fun of and belittled what a lot of women write about: fashion, relationships, pets, and children. He pissed all over “mommyblogging” and said it was trivial, and HE DID SO IN THE MOST SUPERFICIAL, CONTENT-FREE WAY POSSIBLE. Pot. Kettle. Black.

Shit-stir much, “The Other McCain”? Need a little traffic boost of your own, by hijacking a sexy topic that you know will get you a lot of hate mail? (Sadly, it also seems to have gotten a lot of virtual high-fives from fellow cro-magnon men.) I’d say that case of Small Penis Syndrome is kinda terminal. As is the permanent Big Asshole condition he’s got going there.

It turns out he’s not only misogynist, Robert Stacy McCain thinks the lynching of Emmett Till (an adolescent black child who was chased down and hanged by a white mob for reportedly whistling at a white woman) was “not a public crime, but a private crime.” No, stupid, it was a crime no matter how you look at it and his murderers were criminals no matter how you look at them. Clearly has some issues with race as well, this “Other McCain.” (I can’t decide who makes who look worse, the senator or his namesake?)

So, misogynist and racist, all rolled into one. What a package.

ETA: the big orange planet of progressive netroots peeps, DailyKos, had a diary that also weighed in on the NYT article here. I was heartened to see the roll call of powerful, smart, forceful women who are respected in the political blogosphere in the diary’s comments and the diary itself.

And of course Digby, one of the aforementioned Powerful Blogger Ladies of political blogging, weighed in on the NYT article here.

For these last two and Atrios, H/T to Deb over whom I obsess at i-obsess.

Wasabi is the velour one, with colors like a Sigfried and Roy white tiger.

And man is she oversexed. I think maybe they didn’t quite get everything they were supposed to remove during the spay, because this girl is a freak. And you know what I’m talking about.

So, I show up at Blogher after two days spent with my dear friends from way back in Oakland days, and it’s instantly disorienting. First of all, the prelude to the experience: I’m skipping around the stomping grounds of my misspent youth, the UC Berkeley campus, about which I have so many mixed and mostly unpleasant feelings. My friends, of course, are pure delight and solace. Both the many new ones I made at Blogher (mostly sister MOMos and some others too), and my friends from way back.

Then, the Blogher ‘08 conference itself, in the Westin St. Francis, which had weird feng shui and an architecture I never seemed to figure out despite fancy electronic signage and multi-level mapping of all the meeting rooms. One thousand powerful lady bloggers, of which I am one. The group Opening Keynote was phenomenal, the varied readings and voices unfuckingbelievably good. I only wish the Closing Keynote had been more of the same.

It was daunting, the tangle of relationships and personalities who all seem to know one another and I’m all, who’s that who I should know but don’t? Clearly I don’t read enough blogs! Or I’d know who all the celebs of the women’s blogosphere are.

He’s anywhere from 60-90 years old! (And he’s a Galapagos tortoise. Possibly the last one of his kind.)

Conservationists have tried a variety of methods to get the tortoise to mate, including artificial insemination, manual stimulation and having George watch younger males mate. George, who is believed to be between 60 and 90 years old, should still be in his sexual prime.

Here’s a picture of the randy old codger.

Photo credit: AFP/Getty Images

Blogher brain dump later, when I feel less tortoise-like (even George is getting it on more than me–what gives, man?).

In case you hadn’t noticed, race and gender were at the forefront of everyone’s awareness as the primary season wore on this past spring.

There’s been a lot said about identity politics from the left and the right. Let me make clear I’m not interested in the erasure of personal/political identities in the name of a conservative abstraction like “colorblindness.”

I come at this squarely within the great leftist tradition of identities—woman, black, Asian, Latino, Native or First Nation, queer, gay/lesbian, transgendered, working class, poor, schooled/unschooled—that made it possible for us to strive for justice by better describing how power works upon us. And the value of identity politics, at first, was to say, “Power has a particular way of working upon a person like me.”

The strength and the weakness of this approach is to say, “I am X, therefore my interests are X.” Clarity of purpose lends strength to an endeavor. But if inflexible, clarity can become narrow rigidity in understanding how complex people react in a given situation.

Dear Reader-Peeps (all 10 of you?),

Tomorrow I get on a plane and go to beautiful San Francisco to attend Blogher ‘08. My first ever.

I used to be askeered of people. I was a shy kid, and I still have “issues” about being known and revealing myself and being public. Maybe, growing up in a small upstate NY town, I interpreted being stared at in the grocery store (there were only about 7 Asian American families in our town of 25,000 people) as bad, negative, and scary. Maybe I’m simply an introvert if an introvert is someone who finds most people a huge expenditure of energy, instead of the extrovert who feeds off it and becomes more energized.

Now, as I like to say, I’m a charter member of Oversharers Anonymous. Evidence: I have this-here freaking BLOG, and the nerve to think people would be interested in my semi-informed opinion on public policy and the state of our union at MOMocrats, for pete’s sake. It’s typical WriterGirl Neurosis: like Emily Dickinson I’m here sewing up my verbiage into octos and quartos for distribution at some imagined future time, but perfectly happy to burrow into my hermitage and really only deal with tiny groups of people in classic introvert style. What is a writer but someone with fame-whore tendencies, something to say, who can’t be bothered to leave the house, and yet is incapable of silence?

Now, I’m askeered of Twitter. I’m shy but enjoy being bold with my words.