Self hatred has long fascinated me, because it's one of those psychological conditions which has been transformed from a medical disorder into a political indictment.

Gay conservatives, gay libertarians, and any other gays who disagree with the left have been called "self hating homosexuals" for so long and so repeatedly that it's almost a thing to be expected. Like the "Uncle Tom" smear. I have of course tried to do my part to question the logic of it, because I think a lot of people hate themselves to one degree or another, and I don't really see what light it sheds on, say, what a person might think about government policies. In an older post, I speculated that accusing people of "self-hatred" might simply come down to identity politics:

There is a general consensus that any homosexual in the Republican Party is the equivalent of a gay Uncle Tom, and guilty of self hatred, because since all Republicans hate homosexuals, any Republican who is a homosexual must hate himself.

Of course, black Republicans are also considered Uncle Toms, so this may come down to identity politics more than anything else. Certainly, it's more than single issue politics, because no one would call a Democrat against abortion or gun control an "Uncle Tom," nor would they refer to a pro-choice or anti-gun Republican that way. "RINO" or "DINO" perhaps, but not a "self-loathing" hypocrite. The reason is because if you're in favor of the right to keep and bear arms, that is not considered your identity in the same way it is if you favor sexual freedom. Don't ask me why; I consider gun control and penis control equally offensive, and if self-loathing is defined as belonging to a party which opposes something you believe in, then I'd be guilty of self loathing in either party. The problem with me is that I can't see my entire self through the lens of any single issue.

And isn't it bad (as well as politically incorrect) to ridicule people by attributing mental defects to them? If so, then why is it OK to say that someone suffers from "self-hatred" as a political criticism, but never to accuse them of being "retarded"? What makes the Retard Lobby so much more powerful than the Lobby of Self Haters?

I think someone needs to stand up for self haters now, because the term really is getting out of hand. As if it wasn't enough to accuse gay and black dissenters of hating themselves, the use of the term is being expanded to encompass liberals who don't toe the Official Line of Liberaldom According To Joan Walsh.

Salon's Joan Walsh is not content to merely disagree with fellow liberals David Broder and Joe Klein for the crime of suggesting that Sarah Palin might actually have genuine populist appeal. For this, she labels them "self hating liberals":

Broder praised Palin's "pitch-perfect recital of the populist message." Klein hailed "the brilliance of Sarah Palin," and suggested that "real Americans" can relate to "a woman who goes to war against the 19-year-old boy who knocked up her daughter and then posed for Playgirl," and who calls national policy "current events ... the high school term of art for the hour each week when students are forced to study the state of the world." Klein compared Palin to the folksy hound dog Bill Clinton and suggested they had the same kind of populist appeal. (I know it's just a coincidence Clinton wound up hospitalized for chest pains later that day.) The worst line of the piece? "One might even argue that you betcha is American for 'Yes, we can.'"

Et tu, Joe? You're going to suggest Barack Obama doesn't speak American? Really?

I had a lovely conversation with Klein a few weeks ago, about Clinton and Obama and American liberalism. He's not stupid, he just writes stupid things sometimes. I have to say, though, I'm tired of self-hating liberal elites lecturing other liberals about how out of touch we are with real America. Lots of real American voters may well like Sarah Palin, admire her moxie or her mothering, and still know she'd be a terrible president.

I would wonder aloud whether Ms. Walsh (who called Christopher Hitchens "condescending" for calling her "Ms. Walsh") hates herself and is engaging in what shrinks call projection, except I'm not a shrink. She clearly detests Sarah Palin, though. Not only does she call her "the snarling pitbull in shimmery lipstick" (a remark which hurt poor Coco's feelings) but she says repeatedly that Palin is mean and dumb. Mean and dumb! And mean and dumb!

I know journalists aren't supposed to use words like mean and dumb, but I can't help it. Palin is one of the meanest people on the public stage today. She wallows in it. She loves it! Also? Possibly one of the dumbest. But mean works, and so does dumb. And so do lies, and there were many mean, dumb lies in her speech.

Might there be some resentment involved in this? I think it's pretty obvious that Sarah Palin can draw a bigger crowd than Joan Walsh, and I would be willing to bet that her books sell more copies.

Um, yeah. I just checked with Amazon, and Joan Walsh's 2001 book Splash Hit has an Amazon.com Sales Rank of #2,517,644, while Sarah Palin's Going Rogue is ranked 70. I'm sure Walsh's book once ranked higher than it does now, but I'd be willing to bet that it never even approached Going Rogue in overall sales. I'm no psychiatrist (and I certainly don't mean to diagnose Ms. Walsh, whom I don't know) but I think that a thing like that can damage a writer's self-esteem. And low self-esteem is precisely what psychologists and psychiatrists call self-hatred:

The term "self-hatred" is used infrequently by psychologists and psychiatrists, who would usually describe people who hate themselves as "persons with low self-esteem." Self-hatred and shame are important factors in some or many mental disorders, especially disorders that involve a perceived defect of oneself (e.g. body dysmorphic disorder). Self-hatred is also a prime feature of many personality disorders.

Would it be mean and dumb of me to ask what a shrink would say?