Shrinking The Kewl Kidz

by digby

I have long written about the Washington press corps as a bunch of “Mean Girls,” “Kewl Kidz” and the like, often drawing criticism from women who think that I am being sexist by using the terms I use. (I even got a thorough rhetorical thrashing from one of the blogosphere’s most famous feminist scolds for using the term “Heathers”) Mostly I assume we all “get this” on an instinctive level because it’s something we’ve either observed or experienced in our childhoods and so it is a very quick way to understand the phenomenon. I have thought about writing a long post to explain the social psychology that underlies it and never got around to it.

It’s lucky for all of us then, that Sara Robinson at Orcinus has now written a thorough post on this powerful form of bullying. (And those of you have read “Cat’s Eye” by the greatest feminist novelist of our time, Margaret Atwood, already know all about it…)

Here’s the nub:

The Parenting Perspectives website provides a concise description of this devastating style of coercion and abuse:

Acts of relational aggression are common among girls in American schools. These acts can include rumor spreading, secret-divulging, alliance-building, backstabbing, ignoring, excluding from social groups and activities, verbally insulting, and using hostile body language (i.e., eye-rolling and smirking). Other behaviors include making fun of someone’s clothes or appearance and bumping into someone on purpose. Many of these behaviors are quite common in girls’ friendships, but when they occur repeatedly to one particular victim, they constitute bullying.

Increasingly common is another form of harassment termed “cyber bullying”—using e-mail and websites to harm someone. Cyber bullies use personal websites and instant messaging to spread rumors about classmates over the Internet. Cyber bullies might also use classmates or “friend’s” PIN numbers and pass codes to send embarrassing e-mails. Sometimes it is easier to engage in cyberbullying than more direct acts because the bully never faces the victim. This form of harassment is also very fast–an instant message posted at night may spread through an entire school before the first class period….

Relational aggression tends to be most intense and apparent among girls in fifth through eighth grade. This type of behavior often continues, although perhaps to a somewhat lesser degree, in high school.…

The usual motivation behind acts of relational aggression is to socially isolate the victim while also increasing the social status of the bully. Perpetrators might be driven by jealousy, need for attention, anger, and fear of (or need for) competition. One reason girls choose this type of bullying rather than more direct acts of harassment is that the bully typically avoids being caught or held accountable. Girls who appear the most innocent may indeed be the most hostile in their actions. These bullies are often popular, charismatic girls who are already receiving positive attention from adults. Because of their positive reputations, these girls may be the least likely suspects. Thus it can be very difficult to identify the perpetrators of acts of relational aggression, and victims can suffer for long periods of time without support.

Rosalind Wiseman, whose Queen Bees & Wannabees is one of the bibles on relational aggression (the other is Rachel Simmons’ Odd Girl Out), says that Queen Bees are generally the girls who have bought most heavily into “media bombardment” to look pretty and cool. She provides the following list of traits for the garden-variety relational bully:

–Her friends do what she wants them to do.

— She can argue anyone down, including friends, peers, teachers and parents.

— Her comments about other girls are about the lame things they did.

— She doesn’t want to invite everyone to her birthday party, and if she does, she ignores some.

— She’s charming to adults.

— She makes other girls feel “anointed” by declaring them special friends.

— She is affectionate to one person to show rejection of another, like throwing her arms dramatically around one girl to emphasize the exclusion of another.

— She does not take responsibility when she hurts another’s feelings.

— She seeks revenge when she feels wronged.

Sound familiar?

The head Queen Bee in American journalism is Maureen Dowd. She has almost singlehanded created Kewl Kidz style journalism. She is, however, a bi-partisan Mean Girl, which is part of what makes her the Queen. Check out her entry today:

Ted Olson, the former solicitor general and eloquent Republican lawyer who argued the Bush v. Gore case before the Supreme Court, was warming up the rabidly conservative Federalist Society crowd for John McCain with a few sexist cracks about Botox.

The new Congress could amuse itself, he said, by “searching for any sign of movement in Speaker Pelosi’s forehead.” The Senate, he added, would be entertained by “the expressionless, Pelosi-like forehead of Senator Clinton.”

It reminded you of just how idiotic Republicans can act sometimes. The only thing worse than hearing the first female speaker of the House filleted in such a lame way was seeing the first female speaker of the House flail around in her first big week in such a lame way. It reminded you of just how idiotic Democrats can act sometimes.

Nancy Pelosi’s first move, after the Democratic triumph, was to throw like a girl. Women get criticized in the office for acting on relationships and past slights rather than strategy, so Madame Speaker wasted no time making her first move based on relationships and past slights rather than strategy.

Instead of counting votes behind closed doors or even just choosing the best person for majority leader, Ms. Pelosi offered an argument along the lines of: John Murtha’s my friend. He’s been nice to me. I don’t like Steny. He did something a long time ago that was really, really bad that I’m never, ever going to tell you. And I’m the boss of you. So vote for John.

Modo is such a grand bitch queen that she can fillet everybody. Her lessers don’t have her power and so they only sharpen their puerile wit on those whom they have dubbed the “losers” — the Democrats.

It would have been smart for bloggers to have disarmed Dowd when we had the chance, by refusing to allow her any accolades when she went after the Bush administration. But Democrats were so beaten down and marginalized during the early years of the Bush juggernaut that we were only too happy to applaud Modo’s QueenBee bitchiness when it was directed at them. (At times, it was all we had in the mainstream media.) I’m not sure it would have done any good, anyway. This is now a full-blown pathology among the chattering class that is going to require a much more systematic approach than simply not falling for Maureen Dowd’s schtick.

And anyway, the Queen bee is a pundit, not a reporter. She is given latitude to have attitude that regular journalists are not supposed to have, but which so many of them (and their equally “Mean” editors) show toward Democrats all the time. At this point, it’s the newspaper and TV reporters on whom we need to focus.

Sara did something interesting with this. She asked what the experts all say needs to be done to stop this kind of bullying in schools and then applied that advice to handling the Washington press corps. (Read her whole post.)

I, for one, will begin asking readers to politely write to reporters who manifest this silliness whenever I blog about it. They may not know they do it or they may not know that we recognize it. (“One reason girls choose this type of bullying rather than more direct acts of harassment is that the bully typically avoids being caught or held accountable. Girls who appear the most innocent may indeed be the most hostile in their actions”)

We will do it openly and we will do it politely and we will not use Mean Girl tactics or “cyber-bullying.” But we will let them know that they have been caught in the act.

As Gilliard says:

This is not 1996. We live in different times and the stakes are vastly higher. They start with that Beltway Kool Kids Klub bullshit, they’re gonna get run to ground.

Clinton didn’t have the infastructure on the left to protect him or even object to the bullshit being run about him.

But in an era of You Tube and blogs, this kind of thing is going to be nailed and nailed hard. Noron can make her stupid comments, but her bosses have an e-mail address.

*If there is anyone out there who doesn’t really get what this whole thing is about, there is no more thorough compendium of kewl kidz nastiness than Bob Sommerby’s exhaustive expose of the Gore Campaign coverage on The Daily Howler.

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