Marcia Pappas fights like a girl.

I first encountered her name tonight on the HickTown Press blog. Marcia Pappas, head of the New York state chapter of the National Organization for Women, attacked Sen. Ted Kennedy Monday for the crime of endorsing Barack Obama.

“Women have just experienced the ultimate betrayal,” reads a NOW press release.

Kennedy’s endorsement “is so telling about the status of and respect for women’s rights, women’s voices, women’s equality, women’s authority and our ability – indeed, our obligation – to promote and earn and deserve and elect, unabashedly, a President that is the first woman after centuries of men who ‘know what’s best for us.”

Even the liberal Huffington Post describes this as a “rant.”

But that’s not the mind-blower.

NOW’s Teddy Kennedy press release has drawn attention to a January 11 manifesto from Marcia Pappas titled: “Psychological Gang Bang of Hillary is Proof We Need a Woman President.”

Gang bang? As the Field Negro says, “that was some tacky shit.”

Beyond tacky, I’d say. Approaching psychotic. I count eight exclamation points in the thing. And multiple spelling errors.

In her very first paragraph, by way of clearing her throat, Pappas refers to the playground taunting of little girls, and to sexual harassment in the workplace, and to “that movie where Jodie Foster portrayed the true story of [a] woman who was ganged raped in a bar while others looked on and encouraged [it]. ...”

“In short,” quoth Pappas, “gang raping of women is commonplace in our culture both physically and metaphorically.”

And who, pray tell, is guilty of the metaphorical mob rape of Hillary Clinton? Barack Obama, of course! And John Edwards. Heck, John Kerry too! Read the damn thing for yourself.

Ms. Pappas threw this Molotov cocktail after Sen. Clinton’s surprise victory in the New Hampshire primary, which cranked up the competition to another level.

Now, I’m not saying that Marcia Pappas is an agent of the Clinton campaign. But Pappas did spend 10 days in Iowa volunteering for Clinton. (She’s on the far left in the picture above.)

And Pappas certainly understands the power of words. She said so herself, in a 2005 radio interview with upstate New York talk-show host Scott Leffler. Click here to hear a 1-minute snippet on my Vox audio stash. (I promise, it will amuse you!)

Marcia Pappas also understands the seriousness of actual rape (not the metaphorical kind), because NOW successfully lobbied the New York state legislature to remove the statute of limitations in rape cases.

And via that, Ms. Pappas professes to understand the game of hardball politics – especially how to “manipulate” and “embarrass the hell out of” male politicians. Click here for a 2-minute audio bite from a symposium last April at Albany Law School. Pappas speaks on the subject of “Violence Against Women.”

“It’s really easy to embarrass politicians [in] election years,” she boasts. “Keep that in mind. Timing is, like, key.”

Add it all up and it’s plain to see: the NOW “gang rape” press release was a calculated political smear, with Pappas dealing the gender card from the bottom of the deck. She should be held to account for her outrageous, inflammatory rhetoric.

And Hillary Clinton should repudiate Marcia Pappas. Like, now.