Well, we know which one Salon Mary Elizabeth Williams would save first if her house was burning down. If you think that the article reads more like seething, unspoken envy of a beautiful starlet that seems to have it all, you’re not alone. The entire piece has a Sweet Valley High mean girl aesthetic, in which a beta-wanna-be-alpha female projects her insecurities onto the popular girl by way of criticism over the most inane things.

The tagline: “In her acceptance speech, the “Black Swan” star suggests that pregnancy trumps a career. She’s wrong.”

Did you hear that, Natlie Portman? What’s-her-face at Salon thinks you’re wrong. No! Williams couldn’t let Portman have her moment in the sun without seizing upon her big, round, potential-laden belly.

thanking her fellow nominees, her parents, the directors who’ve guided her career, and then at last “my beautiful love,” dancer and choreographer Benjamin Millepied, for giving her “the most important role of my life.” That’d be when he impregnated her, I’d wager.

At the time, the comment jarred me, as it does every time anyone refers to motherhood as the most important thing a woman can possibly do. But the reason why didn’t hit until I saw the ever razor sharp Lizzie Skurnick comment on Twitter today that, “Like, my garbageman could give you your greatest role in life, too, lady.”

Yes, because turning bathroom stall wall-level writing into an article for Salon is exponentially more important than creating and fostering life and raising it for the next eighteen years. (Natalie Portman is a/n [insert pejorative here]!)

But is motherhood really a greater role than being secretary of state or a justice on the Supreme Court? Is reproduction automatically the greatest thing Natalie Portman will do with her life?

Williams’ presuppositions are based on humanism which downgrades the divine and places greater emphasis on man’s desires. Williams misses that her examples of secretary of state or the Supreme Court were created by man, and that man had to be born in order for those positions to be created. She argues that the things created by humans, who required birth for their establishment, are greater than the that which created their originator.

This is indicative of what’s wrong with progressivism. The logic is insipid.

If Williams can point to me an example of a job created by an individual who existed without birth, I’ll be glad to discuss her argument on those terms.

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As my Executive Assistant often points out to me, when a story lands on your desk that appears too good to be true, it usually is. Case in point, E! Online’s article of March 3rd, “Sarah Palin and Grabby Entourage ‘Like Locusts’ at Oscar Gift Suite” by Ted Casablanca and Whitney English.  The background of the article is that Palin attended a pre-Oscars charity event put on by The Silver Spoon and the Red Cross to support disaster relief efforts in Haiti. E! chose not to properly vet the story and instead unleashed a mocking screed against Sarah Palin loaded with defamatory assertions that require immediate corrections.  The Silver Spoon responded to the misinformation spread by this article and others like it with detailed retraction requests.  Below are statements from E! Online’s article juxtaposed with text from the release from The Silver Spoon:

E! Online:

We’re told Palin was quite the prima donna and that she insisted the suite be opened two hours early so she could come when no looky-loos would be around.

Silver Spoon:

The governor arrived with a small group about 15 minutes prior to our store’s official opening; and upon arrival, she and her entire group gave generous donations to the cause. We offered to open early to accommodate her schedule; she did not ask us to open early. (more…)