I saw the original clip at Yglesias’s blog but wasn’t going to say anything about it till Ezra Klein added a point near and dear to me…

Via Matt Yglesias comes a great clip of Rachel Maddow mocking Bill Bennett’s suggestion that feminists hate Sarah Palin because she’s hot, competent, and happy. If you want evidence that liberalism has come a long way in the last few years, you’ll get it here. Maddow isn’t outraged by Bennett’s comments, or compelled to demand an apology. Rather, she seems delighted by their evident absurdity:

[Key exchange from the tape:

BENNETT: I don’t know which drives them more crazy. Let me give you three things that I think drives them crazy, and you don’t have to comment. That’s she’s very attractive. That she’s very competent or that she’s very happy. You know, as a human being.

DAVIS: Yeah, all of the above.

—fl]

That’s a sign of a healthy political movement: You’re comfortable enough in your position that your enemies cease being scary and start looking hilarious.

He said it here.

Yes! Funny how once you turn over the rock and actually look the monsters you imagined under it are really moist, pallid, and soft… unpleasant sure but not nearly as scary in reality as the stories we tell each other while huddled around campfires.

And as long as I’ve brought it up Yglesias said in his post

The idea that feminists, like politically conscious people of all genders and ideological inclinations, might have substantive views on the issues that contradict Palin’s doesn’t seem to have occurred to them. But in general, women are more liberal than men. And John McCain is more conservative than most politicians and Palin’s record is considerably more conservative than McCains. There’s no great mystery here. And yet Davis and Bennett can’t help but compound their problems by suggesting that women are somehow incapable of reaching conclusions about politicians for any kind of real reasons — instead feminists just hate attractive women.

He said that here.

I’m going to fudge here a bit by saying this isn’t so much three men talking about Rachel Maddow talking about two other men trying to frame feminism. Over at least the last eight years… or the 1994 Gingrich “revolution…” or really since the 1980 Reagan campaign… they’ve gotten a largely free ride framing everything! So consider this acknowledgment that a lot of progressives, liberals, Democrats, pre-Maddow/Olberman cable producers… not to mention waaaaay too many ‘wingers like William Bennett and Rick Davis… have been taking the Right way too seriously. And acknowledgement, as well, that there have been plenty of others, like Maddow (ahem) suggesting we just turn on the lights.