I told you in September how much I disliked the piece Salon ran by Rebecca Traister in which she explained that there was an "uncomfortable truth" in the fact that young single men are "unworthy" of young single women -- oh, yeah. That's what she said, all right.

Imagine my non-delight, then, to find Traister the apparent big cheese of Salon's new blog, titled "Broadsheet" (get it? "Broad"? Ha ha ha!), which is intended to be the dumping ground for "women's news," which of course needs a special home, as it has no place alongside the regular news.

When Broadsheet was introduced, it was referred to as "cheeky." Because women are so cheeky, you know? So cute! Here's how they explained the mission:

Our aim is to cast a spotlight on news that puts women in the center, because while we've come a long way, a quick scan of bylines and stories in most major newspapers will show you that women are still not always being seen -- or read. Broadsheet will be taking the ladies seriously, whether that means tracking news about how our rights are holding up, how well we're representing ourselves politically, or how the advertising world has decided to address us, what kinds of health advances are ahead of us -- all the news of our (usually) two-steps-forward, one-step-back march to equality. Broadsheet is about contradictions -- the fact that opinion and editorial pages are dominated by men, alongside the fact that the most powerful editorial section of all, that of the New York Times, is run by a woman, Gail Collins. That's the Broadsheet paradox: We've got problems, we've got some power, we'll talk about both.

We'll also have celebrity dish and possibly fashion news. And jokes. Women are funny.

Wait. Celebrity dish? Why is there celebrity dish? What the hell does that have to do with the rest of this? Does Salon not have adequate space for celebrity dish, or is it just that while we're over here discussing Plan B and pay equity, everybody knows we're all jonesing for the scoop on Jennifer Aniston?

And... why does Salon, which is a major publication itself, need to set aside a special little block of space in order to address the editorial marginalizing of women and what are perceived as "women's issues" in major publications? Why doesn't it just change its own editorial policy to correct that balance? They're not outside the major media; they're inside it.

And finally: The word "ladies," particularly in the phrase "We'll be taking the ladies seriously," is absolutely and utterly revolting. "Ladies" is a word that should never be used by anyone, except ironically, in the "He was like, 'Line up, ladies!'" sort of way. There is no way to say "We'll be taking the ladies seriously" without making it obvious that you will do no such thing. "The ladies." Jesus. "Successful with the ladies!" "Great with the ladies!" "Didn't go over well with the ladies!" It makes me feel like a puppy. Shut up, Broadsheet.

"Broadsheet is about contradictions," indeed.

So what do you find when you actually get there? Let's start with the theme color. What's the theme color? Pink. Of course it's pink. That's how you know you're among the girls. Welcome to the Pink News, ladies. Drink a cosmopolitan and kick up those expensive shoes -- it's time to Get Pink.

None of this would matter, of course, if the content of Broadsheet were worth reading, which it isn't. Consider today's entry by Lori Liebovitch, who waits until the end of the entry to speak The Word, but then she drops it because she is so painfully hip.

Or the one by Andrew Leonard on the topic of a teenager wearing a vulgar t-shirt on an airplane. How is this Pink News? What makes this news that's particularly important to women? The fact that the teenager was a girl? The fact that Leonard goes into a discussion of how he hopes to raise his children? Is it Pink to worry about dirty words? Is vulgarity an inherently Pink topic? Is propriety Pink?

Also in today's edition, Traister herself takes on a particularly idiotic Amazon.com critic of Maureen Dowd, putting the fish of "WOMEN HAVE AN EXPIRATION DATE" in the barrel of "MEN DON'T" and taking shot after shot after shot. Why glorify some Amazon-commenting moron by featuring him in Salon when otherwise, he's going to sit among the gazillion book reviewers in relative obscurity? What does that accomplish, other than to cartoon-ize the criticism of Dowd, who is richly deserving of criticism on a wide variety of fronts?

And really, I cannot stop returning to the idea that I don't see how Traister can expect to be taken seriously on the topic of respect for women when she has written that women are better than men. She sat there and she nodded in agreement as some crunchy bohemian moron prattled on about how women should somehow embrace Victorian ideals and meaningless sex at the same time by going on a "sexual strike" against the men they love while sleeping indiscriminately with the men they don't give a goddamn about. She simply has zero credibility about any of this.

How, I wonder, would Broadsheet respond to the same essay Traister wrote if the genders were reversed? Fish, barrel. It couldn't be more obvious. How is the Dowd critic saying women have an expiration date all that different from Traister herself declaring all young men in New York to be afflicted with a disease rendering them unworthy of dating?

The page no longer shows the part where contributor Lynn Harris took a shot at the New Yorker's percentage of articles contributed by women, topping it off with the most unwelcome of postscripts: "Here's one way they could help fix that: stop freaking rejecting my submissions." Why is that postscript necessary? Why is it necessary to kill your own point by making it look like this isn't a Pink issue, it's a Me-Me-Me issue? Perhaps there's a point to be made about the New Yorker, and perhaps there isn't -- without knowing what the percentages of submissions are, it's very hard to say. But what isn't going to fly is throwing your gripe about the fact that the New Yorker hasn't accepted your submissions into what's supposed to be a substantive point about the use of work by women writers. The New Yorker, it's safe to say, has rejected a lot of people's submissions. It comes off as an awfully cheap shot to suggest that your individual experience of rejection says something about the treatment of your entire gender.

Salon has a remarkably conflicted attitude about women. While Traister rails about the New York Times and its focus on the problems of wealthy women, there is no competition for Salon itself when it comes to the endless publication of navel-gazing confessionals about how hard it is to be a wealthy white parent. Guilt about sharing your child with the nanny, guilt about wanting to get your child out from underfoot so you can write your novel, guilt about putting your kids in daycare, fretting about your high-achieving child's homework... Salon could do a lot to interrupt the marginalization of more pressing women's issues if it would just put a muzzle on Ayelet Waldman gassing on about how bad she feels for indoctrinating her children with anti-Bush sentiments, how much she hates it when other people talk about parenting and make her feel icky, and whether she's a bad feminist for not wanting to change light bulbs, and use the space to discuss something of substance. Just read the list of Waldman's contributions, and you'll begin to realize that Salon has plenty of space to publish women's writing -- it just chooses to publish self-centered prattling about how hard individual wealthy women have it instead of journalism.

The answer to the marginalization of women is not Broadsheet. It's a change of attitude at a higher level. I actually like much of what Salon publishes about women when it's not essays from Traister or Waldman. They cover birth control and pay equity and the like pretty thoroughly, and they have some women writing for them who I really like, including Heather Havrilesky, with whom I don't always agree, but who always writes with wit and energy -- and who, I notice, hasn't been seen in Broadsheet as far as I know.

You want to be taken seriously as a publication that cares about women? Quit it with the pink and start thinking coherently about the entire publication. Stop running stories about overweight girls where the accompanying picture is of a girl dreaming of a goddamn donut. Stop associating women with an innate desire to read "celebrity dish." Stop running claptrap like that Traister article about Kunkel, stop running multiple articles analyzing "our" fascination with Jennifer Aniston, and make sure that when you cover "news," it's everyone's news. Not Pink News, not Blue News, just news.

I like Salon. I love King Kaufman, I like Havrilesky, I think Cary Tennis is weirdly fascinating, and I totally appreciate its generally progressive point of view.

But I hate Broadsheet.