Consider for a moment all the weepy hand-wringing we have witnessed from Hollywood for the past eight months. How women have been degraded, subjugated, and used as sexual pawns. It is a grievous and dangerous environment that needs to be changed, and we all have a responsibility to repair this. Also — a late night comedienne is free to say anything she wants about conservative females, because they don’t count.

Let’s just admit the facts, as they have been laid out in blatant fashion this week: we live in a contentious and bilious era. The combination of political saturation, anonymity-fueled social media, and the hyper-competitiveness of the diluted news industry means that every story is amplified, every opinion is blared, and every hot take is deemed a force of power.

All of this has led to a coarsening of not just our culture but all of our interpersonal interactions. What is paradoxical in this is that with an almost infinitely wide landscape of ideas we are seeing a stark bisection of our collective mindset; we all must be aligned in one of only two encampments, for some reason. Any innocuous comment is measured and instantly decreed to place you in one camp, or the other, by rote. It is as if every element of society has to first be dropped into a paper shredder that has one blade.

This reactionary cataloging of positions, ideas and people will inevitably lead to rampant contradictions. With that, enter our media complex. It was with surprising speed that the press went from lecturing this country how the degraded comments by Roseanne Barr were unacceptably crude (and represented conservatives who became crude by extension) to then being faced with the needlessly vile comment from Samantha Bee regarding a picture Ivanka Trump took embracing her child.

The national journalists went through a process of a few outlets hailing Bee, to mostly silence, to then reporting on the controversy but not so much the content. What was absent however was the scolding of what is proper and decent. Also missing was the attachment of Bee’s hatred to a wide swath of Americans. Then throughout the day a variety of luminaries weighed in on the controversy. It was remarkable.

Actress Sally Field offered up a response to the issue:

I like Samantha Bee a lot, but she is flat wrong to call Ivanka a cunt.

Cunts are powerful, beautiful, nurturing and honest.

— Sally Field (@sally_field) May 31, 2018

Additionally, actress Mini Driver had this to contribute to the discussion:

That was the wrong word for Samantha Bee to have used . But mostly because ( to paraphrase the French ) Ivanka has neither the warmth nor the depth.

— Minnie Driver (@driverminnie) May 31, 2018

Glib words of support for Samantha Bee’s vitriolic vaginal invective. This is rather amazing, considering the environment that Hollywood currently finds itself mired in. For at least eight months now the entertainment industry has grappled with the fallout of the Harvey Weinstein story. We have watched a parade of performers take to the microphones, red carpets, award ceremonies, and most any other outlet to announce the need to support women.

Let us not forget the rest of Bee’s degradation. Beyond her uterine euphemism the hostess also suggested that Ivanka dress provocatively and seduce her father into changing policy. Remember now — for more than half of a year Hollywood has been wailing about and railing against the practice of women being professional sex objects. Then overnight they come out in support of a media figure suggesting a prominent woman treat herself as a sex object. It defies explanation.

Today celebrities — actresses — are coming forward to essentially declare that some women just have it coming. After more than half a year pleading with us to fix the problems that women are facing we now learn that our cultural elite believe certain women deserve to be degraded. Staggering to consider, after Hollywood and the media have been posturing the need to eliminate this very poison.

It was in 2015, when Hillary Clinton was launching her Presidential run, that a list of banned words was issued that should not be used when writing about the female candidate. Innocuous terms like “ambitious”, and “inevitable” were said to be forbidden for carrying sexist overtones. In just three years we now see the media defending vulgar epithets as acceptable in describing a prominent female in politics.

But this is our current climate. The need to apply one of only two labels to any story means these contradictions will be ever present. A day after the press was telling us to stop being crude they excuse Samantha Bee. While the entertainment industry demands women be treated better they applaud treating a woman in this fashion. The party that claims to support women, and claims conservative wage a war-on-women, now praises degrading a woman and mother in this fashion.

The interesting thing about virtue-signaling — it is so frequently done in the absence of actual virtues. Just look at how willing, and how quickly, Hollywood springs up to support words that contradict their most earnest messaging going on since last October. As long as their target is someone they deem evil then their entire agenda is easily dismissed. Do  they get to smear the people on the other side? Then the contradiction is completely justified.