But all of us have had our… er… experiences with papers like the Post. They’re ok with us if we’re writing for free. Even if one of our pieces was an instant classic that people still talk about, we somehow don’t get invited back (with pay.)
It’s a well known fact that the National Post and Canadian media in general steals from bloggers all the time. Mark Steyn is a gentleman, so he always credits bloggers by name in his Maclean’s columns, and gives us a link from his site, and tells everybody how wonderful we are. But he is the exception. And he’s not a newspaper editor.
The National Post? They’ve quoted me before without daring to spell out my name — I’m just “that blogger” — lest their poor readers be led to my racist, sexist, anti-semitic yet weirdly pro-Israel blog.
(My gay Muslim business partner is still trying to wrap his mind around my radioactive reputation. And yes, we know: we sound just like My Beautiful Launderette. You have NO idea…)
Like I’ve said before, the only Canadian conservative bloggers with balls are the women — but we’re the political equivalent of sexual “mopeds”: “Fun to ride, but you don’t want your friends to see you…”. You know: that fat ugly girl who’s great in bed but too embarrassing to be seen with in public.
Our last names aren’t Paikin or Fulford or Richler, either, and we didn’t go to Upper Canada College. So for all those reasons, we’re screwed.
Plus the National Post and everybody else is too chicken shit to hire us instead of the hacks they do employ. We have opinions, alright. They’re just the wrong opinions. For now, that is.
Ideas we bloggers have kitchen tested for safety eventually make it onto the opinion market a few months, or years, later. (You’ll have noticed more people daring to run my “halt Muslim immigration to Canada” notion up the mainstream flagpole, for instance.)
Those are all the real reasons “there are no opinionated women.”
None of which are mentioned in either of these columns. No, they both say women are naturally too timid to voice their opinions in public.
Well, most of them are. But some of us aren’t.
You just won’t hire us.
That makes you the timid ones. Not us.
Behold the mainstream media: getting it exactly wrong yet again.
Oddly enough!
UPDATE from Conservative in the Closet:
It is absolutely true that scavenging by the mainstream media by bloggers happens ALL THE TIME. But I have personally had ideas rejected by several mainstream publications only to see them in print-slightly modified-the next day or a few days later.
The rest of her post also reminds me to add:
“Every woman needs a wife.” A lot of male writers have wives who take care of life’s crap so they can work.
PLUS: great point in the comments at the Post…
I remember two interesting and articulate op-ed writers who fulfilled your criteria who were let go by the National Post: bring back Donna Laframboise and Patricia Pearson.
UPDATE — Seraphic responds (and I agree with her remarks re: Hilary White btw):
I always lose a follower or two when I link to my fellow Canadian Kathy Shaidle. Kathy’s blog is not for the faint of heart or the thin of skin. Kathy sometimes says she cannot get why people mistake her blog persona for her actual, real personality, and hitherto I’ve been too chicken to point out that this might be because she blogs under her REAL NAME.
(I will be a bitch here and put in that I haven’t exactly said that about my “persona.” To clarify: I mean everything I write. I am never “just kidding.” (No one is ever “just kidding.”) But there ARE differences between the highly concentrated “me” on this blog and the “me” you might unfortunately encounter in person. For example, in the flesh, I swear more, because nobody’s workplace computer is filtering me inside a Japanese restaurant. But you would also see me squealing over kitten pictures or hear me crying/screaming about some domestic situation. I don’t really walk around yelling about “the goddam Mexicans” all day, any more than John Cleese answers his front door wearing a Viking hat. However, what I am impatient with is some people’s real or feigned ignorance about the nature of persona and performance. It is too hard for me to explain to you and you might not get it anyway. Either you get it or you don’t.)
Anyway, I second Kathy. There are lots of opinionated women, and there are lots of women who would love to write Op Eds for the National Post. But they aren’t give space in the National Post, so here we are on the internet instead. And it’s not like we don’t need the money.
Come to think of it, I once wrote a piece for the Post for free…
