A Very Serious, Thoughtful Misogynistic Smear That Has Never Been Made in Such Detail or with Such Care

So as we found out yesterday, Jonah Goldberg's new magnum opus, Liberal Fascism, is finally out, only four years overdue and $53 million over budget. And I've got to say, based on the early reviews, it looks to be absolutely hilarious. I'm not sure what the funniest part is, really. Is it the table of contents, which seems to be Jonah's fevered attempt to write "fascist" as many times as possible? Is it his attempt to argue that the KKK was not fascist because they hated immigrants, and therefore liberals are fascists for calling the KKK fascists (an argument which one can only hope Dave Neiwert doesn't come across without warning, lest his head explode from the sheer stupidity of the statement)? Is it the fact that Jonah stole the graphic on his cover from Prussian Blue? Or the part where he argues that Hitler was a liberal because he was a vegetarian?

Actually, I don't think any of those really rise to the level of utter hilarity that is on the very dust jacket of the book, where Jonah tells us who the real enemy is:

The quintessential liberal fascist isn’t an SS storm trooper; it is a female grade-school teacher with an education degree from Brown or Swarthmore.

Oh, baby, does that sentence have it all! It's got anti-elitism and teacher-bashing, but best of all, it's got pure, unadulterated misogyny.

I mean, really, why add "female" to that sentence? As Neil Sinhababu notes, it sticks out like a sore thumb. It breaks up the parallel construction of the couplet, and that makes "female" the word that jumps out of the text.

But of course, that's appropriate. Oh, thinking a schoolteacher is a fascist is seven levels of insane. But it does hammer home what conservatives been trying to hammer home for fifty years: the idea that women, and specifically women who don't know their place, are the problem. Ironic that a man who got his job thanks primarily to his mother's success would advance that argument, but then, Jonah was making a very serious and thoughtful argument that has never been made in such detail or with such care.

Oh, and that reminds me: Swarthmore doesn't have an education major.