News flash, mothers are bad

What the hell, people!

Some asshat news show on the Channel Of Eeeevil calls some journalist a bad mother for … being a journalist and going to Iraq to cover the war:

I would say the same thing if this were a man journalist going out there, a male anchor, because when you look at the choice she’s making, she’s saying my ratings are more important than my children. That’s the bottom line.

Yeah right! Sure you would!

This is on top of the ongoing Giant Blog Controversy about whether or not Elizabeth Edwards is a bad mom for being a politician — which by the way, she is, even if she’s not the one in office. Here’s one post and its followup. And this super good response from Chris at Notes from the Trenches! Chris says it so well:

Elizabeth and John Edwards have built their lives in the public eye. Have built a life around public service. Why wouldn’t they want to share this with their children? Why wouldn’t she want her children to see that even when she was terminal, that this was what was important to her? Why wouldn’t she want to impart this legacy onto her children? To not share this with her children would be to deny who she is.

I note that Rebecca changed her mind about some of her own first response. That’s very cool… and shows how strong and good she is as a blogger and op-ed writer, and also how strong we (mommybloggers, or bloggers in general) are as a community of writers.

But of course mainstream media will still frame it to make the central question about how nothing women with children do can be judged without referencing their parenting and its apparent success or non-success.

I just thought I’d point that out in case you hadn’t noticed it.

For all the times I have heard someone gasp at the thought that omg I have a life and am out, doing something, when I have a kid – I’m sure there is also a time when a woman without children is being told that her career means that she must be unfulfilled without children and she is missing out. Both of those things are ways that motherhood (or someone’s choice not to have kids) is made into something that feeds into discrimination against women.