Caitlin Flanagan on Barbara Walters: Flirty, Old

You can add Barbara Walters to the long list of people who hate Caitlin Flanagan. Or so I'm guessing after reading Flanagan's praiseful skewering of the ABC grande dame and her memoir, Audition, in the June issue of The Atlantic.

Flanagan actually has mostly nice things to say about the book, which she calls "a triumph," but on the topic of Walters she's less kind, particularly in her physical description: "[M]inus the lighting and make-up, she has always looked like the love child of Madeleine Albright and Spiro Agnew."

She also hints -- or, actually, flat-out states -- that it's time for Walters to pack it in, based on her ever-more-frequent senior moments on The View:

Lucidity is waning; recall plays tricks. Too often, a tiny, nut-brown hand waves vaguely in the air, or -- fingers balled up into a little fist -- raps sharply on the big, shared desk as she tries her damnedest to call forth the name of some famous actor or politician, or the salient details of a recent scandal. Her well-known list of most desired "gets" has become a death roll. The time has come.

And while she salutes Walters' many accomplishments, Flanagan suggests that they're less the work of a dogged newshound than of a shameless flirt:

[H]er interviews, while an undeniable achievement, were not a feminist victory, but rather the very opposite: an essentially feminine victory, one in which a man's game was played not by changing the rules of engagement, but by using the oldest of feminine wiles and manipulations.

Oof.

A word about Flanagan: I was pleasantly surprised when, earlier this month, she won the National Magazine Award for reviews and criticism for her Atlantic columns. She's such a polarizing writer, I assumed she'd split the judging committee clean in half.

Personally, I've never understood why she gets people's (especially feminists') dander up so; as lacerating as she can be on the page, she is also careful to draw her arguments parsimoniously, never extending a premise further than she can support it. But something about her tone causes people who disagree with her to lose their sense of proportion. Witness Premiere's Glenn Kenny, who suggests "the deplorable" should always appear before Flanagan's name, and this writer, who calls Flanagan a "twisted, hate-filled, overprivileged, antifeminist superhack." (Who's hate-filled, again?)

Read her winning columns and decide for yourself who's right.

The Sanguine Sex

Babes in the Woods

No Girlfriend of Mine

Earlier: Caitlin Flanagan on Katie Couric.