Consider this progress. Playboy thought all conservative women were fair game for quasi-rape fantasies. Erbe thinks it’s only the ones who are “venomous.” Baby steps.

Yesterday, I was contacted by the executive director of SmartGirlPolitics.org, a conservative women’s website, to stand up for conservative women treated despicably by the media. Here I am, doing just that…

I also want to note that at least one woman on the list is so venom-spewing, she unfortunately invites venom to be shot back at her: Michelle Malkin. Her posts and her “routine” are so venomous and predictable, in fact, I stopped paying attention to her years ago.

Others on the list, however, are not venom-spewing at all. One woman mentioned on the atlasshrugs2000 blog is a regular guest on my PBS show. Amanda Carpenter, on the show at least, eschews personal judgment of people with whom she disagrees politically. So her inclusion on the Playboy list is much more offensive to me than is the inclusion of Ms. Malkin, although their political views may not differ greatly.

A commenter on her post sums it up this way:

As a nonpartisan, pro-abortion, liberal Democrat, I was perfectly happy with the leftwing misogynist haters at Playboy talking about how they would rape Michelle Malkin…

Oh, now. She didn’t say she was happy, just … indifferent. I don’t get why MM was the only one singled out, though. Wasn’t Laura Ingraham, who’s as fearless as anyone in confronting the left, also on the Playboy list? Surely her years of “venomous” radio work qualify her for a sexual-assault fantasy or two in print. Presumably Erbe’s simply more familiar with MM due to her online presence and happy to toe the lefty line that she’s the devil incarnate, notwithstanding her own admission that she doesn’t follow Michelle’s work. I do follow it, of course, as do you, so let’s all be sure to call the boss out the next time she does something as venomous as shrugging off a rape hit list because she doesn’t care for the tone of one of the women on it.