Thursday, June 26, 2008

More fun with Cheryl

Left: Presidential candidate Cheryl Lindsey Seelhoff (aka Heart) on SEX-TV, with two of her eleven children.

~*~

Heart, aka Cheryl Lindsey Seelhoff, now has five websites (!) to talk about how wonderful she is. (two more linked below)

After she announced she was "running for president"--I did a demolition piece on her, which I think said it all. Until now, I had little to add to that. People told me I should lay off her, that the worst thing you can do to a pathological attention-seeker with Narcissistic Personality Disorder is to keep feeding the "LOOK AT ME!" jones. So, I stopped mentioning her. She gets kind of boring after awhile anyway, as most narcissists do.

And now, I find a Technorati link to my blog from her newest website, titled FIGHT THE LIES. Apparently she has already removed the link, which is good, because I DO NOT WANT HITS from her wacky Ellen Jamesian faction. Nonetheless, I will respond to the page she obviously claims was inspired by me.

First of all, is there no END to the self-aggrandizing "I'm suffering for women!" chatter from this person? In my piece linked above, I chronicled Cheryl's so-called (ha!) shift from extreme Christian fundamentalism to extreme Second-Wave feminist fundamentalism. I am still struck by the similarities--the love of suffering, the tireless claims of martyrdom, the endless passing of the collection plate (more about which in due course), the hagiography and colorful twisting of the (extremely suspicious) biography, the various poses with her 11 children as props (bringing to mind the saintly and ever-maternal expression of the Blessed Mother in Roberto Ferruzzi's MADONNA OF THE STREETS) and the continual rattling on about her hard work and self-sacrifice, all she does for Jesus... oops, I mean WOMYN.

Meanwhile, the viciousness towards women who are not like her, continues unabated. In fact, FIGHT THE LIES (the title sounds exactly like the name of a Jack Chick comic or religious tract, doesn't it?), seems directed to those of us who have already been duly banned from her site and have therefore found it necessary to defend ourselves against her false accusations in our censored absence. FIGHT THE LIES is basically a Calvinist-feminist attack on heretics... it is the equivalent of her own church's excommunication of HER: Oh goody, now I get to do the same thing to other people! (NOTE: Heart probably doesn't have anything nice to say about that old sexist, Friedrich Nietzsche, but when he said "In destroying monsters, we must take care not to become monsters ourselves"--he was talking about fascistic, fundamentalist zealots like Cheryl Lindsey Seelhoff and their total lack of self-awareness.)

Like the Quiverfull faction that created her (and that's the link to her second new blog, BTW) Heart writes like she is always under attack by the Dark Side. It's a war between Good and Evil, and Heart is always on the side of the angels. AND HOW DARE YOU SUGGEST OTHERWISE, you cynic! Heart freely and proudly admits that she perpetually passes the collection plate, because she dedicates her LIFE (like a missionary) to covering issues for womyn. Interestingly, she recently asked for money to get a fallen tree moved out of her driveway, for instance, saying it was the only way off of "her land"--neglecting to consider that many of us don't own any land at all. I am not sure how this tree-removal benefits all women, although I realize, it benefits Heart, which to her is one and the same. She assures us she is not a millionaire, although she DOES admit she won a very large settlement from the Calvary Chapel fundies, who are therefore bank-rolling her whole enterprise. (Now, there's an interesting thought.) But how much, she assures us, is none of your business! (The net accounts say it was over a million; I assume the lawyers took their share.)

Heart doesn't seem to understand: She is an offensive, intolerant, judgmental, nasty, vicious, exclusive fundamentalist, only this time it's for her version of (rather zany, sometimes amusing) radical feminism. She was Wild-for-Jesus, now she is Wild-for-Womyn, and she hasn't missed a beat in the transition. Her very patriarchal, top-down approach is stylistically exactly the same. The finger-pointing, the judging, the slut-shaming, the sneering at the womyn who do not measure up, is the same as it ever was. If Heart can't be Quiverfull Queen, she will move on over to Valley of the Amazons (waves at AntiPrincess!--a favorite book of ours!) where she can brag without commercial interruption, and refuse to use the preferred pronouns of transgendered people in PEACE AND QUIET.

Cheryl has traded in one uncompromising, dogmatic philosophy for another one, and that's all she has done. She has not appreciably changed since being a devoted Quiverfull wife, traveling the country and speaking at podiums for Dr Dobson.

What Cheryl/Heart really needs to do is go back to reporting on women around the world, as she does on Womensspace, and cut out the self-aggrandizement and the self-centered gibbering about her greatness. These days, there seems to be less and less actual news about women on Heart's website (which is something she did do very well, when she could keep her fundie sensibility out of it) and more, more, more about her self, self, self. This dorky-assed "presidential campaign"--for instance. Just another way to preen and pose, whilst endlessly burbling about how much she does for THE WOMYNS!!!!!!!

But I gotta say--do her Ellen Jamesians know that she is on SEX-TV? If not, let me give them the heads-up. I have rarely seen anyone do the Madonna of the Streets thing as well, particularly on a SEX blog!

Strange bedfellows! But Heart, who easily reconciled Andrea Dworkin and Dr Dobson back in the day (she claims), knows all about that.