Female Journo Gets Called C-Word

The Daily Caller's Mary Katharine Ham got a taste of nastiness that can be the Internet last night. After appearing on FNC's "O'Reilly Factor," a watcher called her a c--t. Later he "retracted" it but not his thoughts -- he still detested her appearance on the network. "Big hate-mail night tonight! You never know what will set people off." Ham wrote on Twitter. Hate-filled indeed. The man spewing such hate in her direction was Fonz or @mrfonzerelli, whose account has him based in LA. We know he's not the real Fonzi, as in Henry Winkler. Ham dressed him down: "C-word is kinda the definition of hate. I have critical things to say, & I say them in a perfectly reasonable way. You, OTOH." He told her she could "take a long walk off a short pier." And then explained himself saying, "No hate. Just night after night when you're on O'Reilly, you ALWAYS have something negative to say. You sound coached & prepped." UPDATE: Ham explained to FishbowlDC: "He didn't actually specify what ticked him off. He called me a right-wing puppet who sounds rehearsed. Then he apologized, which, you know, accepted but it's pretty hard for one to earn the right to a policy discussion after the c-word." Ham believes, in part, that Fonzi's use of the c-word was ideological. More thoughts from Ham after the jump... Are you a female journo who gets vicious online correspondence that insults your gender? We want to hear from you. Email us at FishbowlDC@mediabistro.com. Ham: "People often get sheepish when they realize there's a real person they're insulting. Many are unrepentant, too. The catalog of words for women is more varied and colorful than for men and critics feel surprisingly free to use the worst words, frequently with no provocation. I'm always surprised that I can inspire such hatred, but with many of the left, there is a feeling that women/minorities/gays on the right are not authentic women/minorities/gays and therefore not worthy of the respect their ideals would otherwise dictate. A sense that the conservative is somehow betraying her people compounds the anger and leads to awfully easy deployment of, say, the c-word. That's not to say liberal women don't get plenty of their own brand of misogyny or to discount it. The above is just the type I get a lot from men who presumably would otherwise be APPALLED by the mere mention of the c-word."

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Female Journo Gets Called C-Word

Betsy Rothstein

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Betsy Rothstein