Subject: attitude towards women
 

Dear Mr. Bartcop,

I consider myself a moderate Progressive.  I voted for Al Gore.  I'm scared
to death over the election of George W Bush and the ominous signs of an emerging fascism.

I recently discovered your site.  I like your passion and your humor and I
have considered sending you a modest donation to help keep your site going
and/or dropping your sitename here and there to help you build traffic, but
here's what's holding me back:  The pictures of scantily-clad women and the
"baby-killing" comments about abortion.

Now with respect to the abortion issue, it's fairly clear that your comments
are intended to highlight the hypocrisy of the Right Wing's anti-abortion
stance, but the language you use is incendiary and doesn't show much respect
for the Pro-Choice position which is literally about valuing FEMALE LIFE and
self-determination.

Karen,
One of us has read the other's comments wrong.
When I use the term "baby-killer" I'm using it as a club against the liars and cheats.
They're so willing to scream "baby-killer" at us, but I'm just pointing out that Barbara Bush
is a "baby-killer," according to their terminology, and Smirk is a "baby-killer," say, compared
to Rush and the "never - not even rape and incest" crowd.

When reminded that Babs Bush is a "baby-killer," they always back up. They have to.
I just want them to back up all the time, not just when I remind them.
I'm on your side, I'm just not as polite as you.

My language is intentionally incendiary.
I want some idiot "pro-lifer" to jump up and call me on it and demand
that I explain myself, which I'm always ready to do.
I can't lose an argument on this subject, so I'm glad we're on the same side.

I don't see how my aggresive language is an attack on the pro-choicers.
That's why I always TRY to put that ugly phrase in quotes.
I agree with you - it's ugly as hell - that's why I'm forcing them to retract it.
 

With respect to the scantily clad women, please understand that many women
would like to participate in a political discussion and sharing of ideas
without having to confront the omnipresent images of female flesh peddling
which we deal with in the mainstream media every day and all the time.

Now don't misunderstand me.  I'm not seeking to censor you in any way.
It's fairly clear this is a site which caters especially to male liberal
sensibilites which is A.O.K.  You do your thing and more power to you.
I just hope you realize that when you say you're going to make an all-out push
to get mass numbers of liberals to frequent your site, that you are likely
to be much more successful with male liberals than female liberals.
That's A.O.K. too.
Women can and should start political sites of their own.

Wishing you all the best, but I ain't sending you any money (at least not for now).

Karen

Karen, I'm going to try to win you over on this subject.
It's my opinion minorities don't have a better friend on the web than  bartcop.com

About a month ago, we got very deep into this.
I was publishing "Page Two" girls, which were never nude, but always sexy.
Some women confronted me about it and asked me to give it a second thought.

I did, and here's what I came up with:
On Wheel of Fortune, when Vanna came out (at least used to, I don't watch it)
Sajak would ask her to turn around to the audience could oogle her ass.

To me, that's extremely piggish.
Once it was pointed out to me that my Page Two girls were similar, I stopped.

(And you should've seen the mail I got then:
 "Don't let the prudes dictate what you do. This is YOUR page, and we like it,
  so tell the Victorians to grow up and enter the 20th Century, if not the 21st.
  If you submit to their blackmail, we'll stop reading because you'll be fake."
  It's very true that I can't please everyone.)

The line seemed to be the difference between a "command performance," such as
"Show them your ass, Vanna," which is piggery, and a man merely noticing Vanna's
figure as she walked by.

That's not piggery - that's the magic that makes the world go 'round.

It seems to me that's the difference between what I was doing - having a regularly scheduled
"command performance" was tantamount piggery - so I stopped.
Hopefully you agree with that, so we'll move from that topic to the topic of
non-scheduled pictures of a pretty woman when she's in the news.

When I was a kid, in the 60's, it always pissed me off to watch a John Wayne movie and
have all that love and romance crap messing up a good old war movie.

Why did the producers have women and love scenes in a war film?
The reason?

Because two hours of war, murder and mayhem needs to be interrupted by something
so why not make that interruption something beautiful instead of ugly?

That's a little like what I do here.
I'm BartCop, the Nazi Slayer, and a full issue of attacks on right-wing hypocrisy
can only have so much entertainment value, so I sprinkle in a little cranberry sauce
to go with the meat and potatoes to round out an issue of  bartcop.com

Remember, I didn't invent the beautiful distraction.
That was around before either of us was born.

And as far as the "scantilly clad," classification, if you're talking about the
recent pictures of Britney and Shania, those were taken from network television.
Sure, they were sexy, but it's not like you had to hide it from the kids.

I join television and motion pictures and magazines when I feature a cute gal.
I'll bet the last 3 magazines you bought had a scanti-clad on the cover.
I'll bet the last 3 movies you saw did, too.
Same for the last 3 shows you watched on TV.

I don't see myself as the bad guy.

You're not seeing me demand any woman show her ass to the crowd.
But when an attarctive woman makes the news (and yes, I milk that)
I use that occasion to make the political wars a little less ugly.

Obviously, everyone can't be pleased, but I can't produce anything other
than what seems right to me at the time.

I'd appreciate your response, you can remain anonymous.