In defense of Dude

I feel I must jump to the defense of my good friend Dude who has been unfairly slandered by soon to be ex councillor Baldock.

Dude has been accused of being a misogynist, as a liberated female dog (I object to the official term) this is not something I would stand for in any friend of mine.

So I spent some time looking back through Dude's posts to see if there was any truth to this accusation.

But first, Cllr Baldock's ridiculous accusation:

April 6, 2010 9:58 AM

Louise Baldock said:

I am not accusing Colin's campaign team of being misogynist, unless he is now acknowledging ownership of the Dude the Dog website. I was stating that the author of Dude the Dog blog is a misogynist. Who have the targets been? Me, Jane and Luciana mainly. Count how many comments are concerned with how we look, how we dress, unflattering photos of us. It is not about our views on housing regeneration or job creation etc, it is about our age, appearance, the state of play of our relationships etc. Dude the dog is a woman-hating blog.
This was my point.
Some of the responses above are red herrings. This is not about whether I am a feminist, or whether it was right for someone to write about the partner of a LibDem councillor getting a job in the LibDem group office without the job being advertised. I am talking about the hatred that Dude the Dog shows to women. That was why I used the word Dude/s in my post above. To distinguish the author(s) from the more decent majority of LibDems (men and women) who would never countenance such bile surely.

I can't find a single derogatory personal comment by Dude about Louise, Jane Kennedy or Luciana, and where unflattering photos have been used, they are actually photos that these three have put on their own websites. If they are that derogatory, why did you use them?

Has Dude taken the micky out of them? Well yes, it's a satirical blog. But if anything the only humans who have been the victims of derogatory comments about how they look have been men, particularly Joe Anderson and Sion Simon.

Have these three been particular targets? Well they have made themselves so.

Louise, if you write a vile blog abusing your opponents and calling them bast*rds, you are painting a large target on yourself.

Jane Kennedy's record as an MP was certainly nothing to be proud of, and Dude did a brilliant job exposing her expenses.

And Luciana Bating has become a popular sport in Liverpool amongst Journalists, politicians and the general public. She has been the greatest gift to any satirical dog.

All three are legitimate targets, and I can find no example of Dude overstepping the mark with them.

I know Dude is a big (small) dog and can look after himself. But he is a canine gentleman who is alway respectful towards females and I know that he finds such accusations hurtful.

I know many in the local Labour ranks are major fans of Dude, including at least one soon to be MP who has confessed to several Lib Dems how much he enjoys this blog.

After such a long fight to establish women in politics and demanding a right to be treated equally, it is demeaning to claim sexism ever time you are given a rough time.

Louise, you have lost the respect I had for you as a woman in politics.