“You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means.”
Inigo Montoya, The Princess Bride


Dear Mainstream Media,

Well, Salon, I'll give you points for not Photoshopping a cat's-eye mask onto her. Thank God for small favors.


Salon.com’s article on how Sarah Palin is just like a dominatrix! Wow, what a fresh take on a female politician, huh? Sigh.

All right, Mr. Gary Kamiya, you come right here and kneel down in front of me, and we're going to talk about using words you don’t really understand. Sarah Palin is not a dominatrix. Do you understand that? I'm going to put my foot right there - yes, there, don't you pull away from me - and now I want you to repeat after me: You're right, Mistress, Sarah Palin is not a dominatrix.

Do you know how I know that? Because if she was, we'd have a safeword to get out of this scene.

I know, I know – the kink thing is a metaphor. But it’s a bad metaphor. It’s an overused, hackneyed, trite, hasn’t-been-edgy-since-about-1987 metaphor. It's a metaphor that would be suitable for, say, an in-flight magazine. On the late and unlamented Hooters Air.

Plus, a metaphor should be like perfume. It should be subtle. It should suggest. It should imply. But you have loaded this piece up with more kinky keywords than a cheap porn affiliate page, spreading them around like a wet, sticky glue to try and hold your premise together. The trouble is I’m not sure what your premise is. Your close states, “But in the end, I suspect most Americans will be driven by their pocketbooks, not their pocket rockets.” I agree that people vote with their big head, and not the one I have my spike-heeled foot on right this minute. So why then this masturbatory re-casting of the political scene?

I’m not one to slam an opinion columnist for trying - and failing - to write something fun and different. I myself have written columns that I now cringe to look at. We all flop now and then. But Mr. Kamiya – and I say this with all due respect, as one writer to another - you clearly don’t know a flogger from a Fuckzall when it comes to dominatrixes, kinky sex, or the BDSM community. Thus, you should stick to literary flights of fancy that, while perhaps not as titillating for you to type, are more within your realm of expertise. Leave the kinky parsing to the experts.

Signed,

An Actual Dominatrix