Whether you think this is a brilliant example of turning lemons into lemonade or a shameless exercise in greed and self-pity will probably depend on your existing opinion of Armstrong. And does anyone not have an opinion on Armstrong at this point? I've been a fairly regular reader of her blog for a few years now, and I'm constantly amazed at how someone who primarily writes amusing stories about her family and dogs, who rarely makes a political statement — and when she does, always couches it in like 20 paragraphs on how she respects differing viewpoints and loves her conservative, religious family members — has become such a lightning rod. What the hell did Heather Armstrong do to you people?

I can only assume it has to do with the Number 26 factor — Armstrong's rank on Forbes's recent list of 2009's "most influential women in media." As she puts it:

You've got Oprah Winfrey at the top of the list, and then it goes on to Diane Sawyer and Barbara Walters, and others like Ann Curry and Katie Couric and Martha Stewart and Lesley Stahl, and everything is fine until you get to number twenty-six, Heather B. Armstrong, and it's like the list suddenly falls off the edge of the earth... I mean, ridiculous. That's exactly what it is. Absurd. But that did not stop me from reminding Marlo about it every time I changed her diaper. I was all, DO YOU KNOW WHO I AM, KID? YOU'VE GOT NUMBER TWENTY-SIX WIPING YOUR BUTT.

To me, that passage is quintessential Armstrong: Funny, self-deprecating, humbled by her good fortune yet justifiably proud of all she's accomplished, down-to-earth, always up for a good poop joke. And to others, that passage is quintessential Armstrong: Arrogant, boastful, just clever enough to feign humility so simple fools will be duped into identifying with her, completely out of touch with the common folk, worryingly obsessed with scatalogical references.

This insistence that she's nauseatingly egotistical, that every display of gratitude or humility is obviously a calculated act, has been around since long before she made the Forbes list, but between that and the recent Maytag episode (in which she harnessed the power of a million Twitter followers to get herself some goddamned customer service — only to be accused of bullying the poor, defenseless Whirlpool Corporation), Dooce-hate seems to be at an all-time high, much of it devoted to taking her down a peg or 12:

Quit the hype and propaganda, you're not even close to being a top blogger. A stupid one yeah?! Now go cash your WIC, welfare, and meet your HUD qualifications so you can keep writing delusional pieces of self absorbed garbage that only YOU thinks is good.

I just wanted to let you know.. that I think your full of crap. I've tried, and I can't really target it to just one specific area for you to improve upon; your are (as far as I can tell from the posts I read on your website) full of crap in every single capacity of life.

It's actually REPULSIVE to me that you're able to make a living doing this. I guess you've rounded up the biggest retarded losers on earth and somehow hooked them into following you.

You have elephantitis of the ego. It's for sure now. Vain, vain, vain. Get a grip.

Believe it or not, SOME people in this world are famous for LEGITIMATE reasons, such as owning a modicum of talent... just because you've been on Oprah DOESN'T MAKE YOU MORE IMPORTANT.

The fact that Armstrong's become a phenomenally influential blogger via some combination of smart moves, timing, lucky breaks, hard work, self-promotion, self-revelation, and terrific writing just doesn't sit well with some people. Some of it is plain old jealousy, to be sure — I'm jealous as hell, and I like her. But what I'm not is threatened by successful women, even ones kicking a thousand kinds of ass in my chosen field. And I can't help thinking that's what's really at the heart of the vitriol directed at Armstrong — and every other lady blogger with any kind of an audience.

I've got a fraction of Armstrong's readers, and I've heard versions of nearly every single complaint on Monetizing the Hate, minus the ones specific to her parenting, Utah, etc., more times than I could possibly keep track of. (My personal favorites so far are the people who believe I should be ashamed of myself for promoting my own book, on my own blog. So unseemly! If I had any real confidence in my writing, I'd trust that the book would find an audience without my having to brag about it. IT IS NOT FAIR TO ABUSE YOUR PLATFORM LIKE THAT.) Every female blogger I know whose traffic exceeds the number of her friends and family members has gotten this shit, and I know a lot of female bloggers. The second some people actually start listening to you, a ton of others become deeply invested in reminding you that it DOESN'T MAKE YOU MORE IMPORTANT.

So I think it's fantastic that Armstrong is putting the hate out there for all to see — and if she can profit from it, more power to her (though the sheer amount of ads, while amusing in context, does make the site very nearly unreadable). Monetizing the Hate is not just a clever way to neutralize the intended effects of hate mail, but an excellent case study in anti-lady-blogger vitriol. Whatever the details of these missives, the aggregate makes it clear that the real problem is not that Heather Armstrong is a bad mommy, a careless dog owner, an arrogant bitch, a bad writer, or a bully — it's that she's a woman with an audience. A woman with influence. And that kind of hatred and fear of female power affects women who are not Number 26, women who don't have blogs or book deals, women who have never been on Oprah. It affects all of us.

Image by Heather B. Armstrong, from her blog.

Monetizing the Hate [Dooce]
Your Momma Said You Ugly [Dooce]
Twenty-Six [Dooce]

After her first child was born, Heather suffered from a debilitating bout of postpartum depression, and said that her blog was a lifeline, because she was able to share stories with other women who felt similarly, and was reassured that what she was going through was normal. Today, Heather and her husband work full-time on her blog, and rake in $40,000 a month in advertising.

Even though the panelists are depressing in their honesty, the commenters offer a ray of hope in a post-baby sex world. A commenter named greysons_mom says:

After an episiotomy and additional tearing, I could barely walk, let alone think of sex. But within two weeks, I was climbing the walls, trying to seduce my husband. He literally had to pull me off of him. I never made it to 6 weeks. I got him to cave at around 4 1/2.

Another commenter named Alex says:

I have found that the baby has increased our creativity - location and timing has become extra interesting. I credit my increased sexual desire to being confident in my body, although it has returned to pre pregnancy size, I still have war wounds - stretch marks (which I am learning to accept). I also credit my desire to a supportive and loving partner. I do think that this is different for every woman.

But then some of the comments were even more depressing than the video:

Here's some brutal honesty: after my first baby, I felt no desire for sex. Like many of you, I thought 'WHOA! Something's wrong with me.'

He's now two, and sadly, the mojo has not yet returned. I thought this was supposed to be my sexual prime! I am beginning to think I'm an outlier on the sexual bell curve. While it's reassuring to know that some other women are also experiencing a lag in a return to their pre-baby sex drives, I fear mine may be gone for good. I know that can't possibly be true, but it's been TWO YEARS, and we've only had sex maybe ten times! I seem to have lost even the ability to fantasize.

However, at the end of the day, it seems that this mom has the correct idea when she says, "It's different for every one, and every baby, just do what feels comfortable for your body."

Sex After Baby [Momversation]
Sex After Baby: "Objects Shift During Flight" [Babble]

Earlier: What Should Jezebels Really Expect After They're Expecting: Sex Edition

"It starts when you feel that first unmistakable twinge that something is totally wrong. It continues through the rough days of sorrow and deep cramps, and then it meanders through every single day of the rest of your whole stupid life. I will probably mourn about this miscarriage in some outwardly unremarkable way until I either have a healthy baby or die," Moss bravely admits.

Mom blogger Dooce linked to another mom blog called Flotsam, where a woman named Alexa talks about the baby she had who died at 22 weeks. "If McCain had his so-called 'culture of life,' and if my condition had progressed just a bit earlier, I would at least have lost my uterus, and I might very well be dead. All this in the interest of a baby who could not possibly have lived, because while an extremely few 23-weekers do survive, a by-then-severely-infected 23-weeker would certainly not. 'Culture of life,' indeed," Alexa rages.

"I can tell you that I want people to know. I don’t want it to be a secret or a shadow or something that is endured only alone," Moss writes, "I want people to know that I have been through something, that I am tired but optimistic, that I’ve been knocked down but don’t help me up because I can get up myself." And these stories are precisely the brutal and vivid things we need to hear so that people like John McCain will never dismiss the idea of women's heath with soulless air quotes ever again.

[Image via Ulla Pugaard, NYT]

A Planet of Pain, Where No Words Are Quite Right [NY Times]
Why Any Woman Who Intends To Vote McCain Should Reconsider [Dooce]
More Wounded Than Eloquent, I'm Afraid [Flotsam]

Earlier: Memo To Senator McCain: My Health Is Not An Extreme Position

Earlier: Heather "Dooce" Armstrong Makes Kathie Lee Uncomfortable
Dooce: Proof That Not All Our Pregnancies Need To End In Abortion?

Earlier: Dooce: Proof That Not All Our Pregnancies Need To End In Abortion?

• We were so into the Fundamentalist Church of Latter Day Saints and their Yearning For Zion Ranch, where girls in their early teens get married off to gross molesty old men with multiple other wives, none of whom are allowed to wear red because that's Jesus' color.
  
• Are those teens better, or worse off than the brave 8-year-old Yemeni girl name Nojoud Muhammed Nasser who was married off by her crazy homeless father, but has now successfully filed for divorce.
  
• A study in contrasts: the marriage of Nojoud Muhammed Nasser versus the insane Southern belles of MTV's True Life who call themselves "old maids" at age 24.

• OMG I almost forgot about that Australian father and daughter who fuck and have babies. Oh ew.
• Can't some people just have a nice, normal wedding that doesn't involve incest, polygamy, statutory rape, fake boobs or Botox?
• Mommablogger Dooce appears to be a fairly reasonable person whose wedding probably didn't involve any of those things.
• Karl Lagerfeld hates Dooce's kid, though. Actually he hates all children. And also fat people!
• You know who probably had kind of shitty moms? Those horrid teenage cheerleader bitches who beat the living hell out of their friend and may now face life in prison.
• So make a bonfire out of Cosmo's "Sexy" issue, and rip off that bandanna you've been wearing. Let it all hang out this weekend!

She's had to learn to draw boundaries on what she writes, to avoid hurting loved ones. An "aching and bleeding diatribe" she posted a few years ago against her parents' faith, Mormonism, alienated them so badly that "it was like a bomb had gone off in my family," she says. "My dad didn't speak to me for several months, and my mom was devastated." She took down the posts, thinking, "OK, this is a little bit more powerful than I'd thought it would be," she says.

Maybe because he's been taking Prozac, or maybe it's because of all that HOT HOT SEX, but when I told Jon what I wanted the wall to look like, he said something like, why aim for perfection when approximation is so much easier? Which is the most romantic thing that has ever come out of his mouth, so I pushed him down on the floor and ripped off all his clothes.

The Blogger Mom, In Your Face [WSJ]