SubscribeSteinem: Palin Is Wrong Kind Of Woman
From the Los Angeles Times:
Palin: wrong woman, wrong message
Sarah Palin shares nothing but a chromosome with Hillary Clinton. She is Phyllis Schlafly, only younger.
By Gloria Steinem
September 4, 2008Here’s the good news: Women have become so politically powerful that even the anti-feminist right wing — the folks with a headlock on the Republican Party — are trying to appease the gender gap with a first-ever female vice president. We owe this to women — and to many men too — who have picketed, gone on hunger strikes or confronted violence at the polls so women can vote. We owe it to Shirley Chisholm, who first took the “white-male-only” sign off the White House, and to Hillary Rodham Clinton, who hung in there through ridicule and misogyny to win 18 million votes.
But here is even better news: It won’t work. This isn’t the first time a boss has picked an unqualified woman just because she agrees with him and opposes everything most other women want and need. Feminism has never been about getting a job for one woman. It’s about making life more fair for women everywhere. It’s not about a piece of the existing pie; there are too many of us for that. It’s about baking a new pie.
Selecting Sarah Palin, who was touted all summer by Rush Limbaugh, is no way to attract most women, including die-hard Clinton supporters. Palin shares nothing but a chromosome with Clinton. Her down-home, divisive and deceptive speech did nothing to cosmeticize a Republican convention that has more than twice as many male delegates as female, a presidential candidate who is owned and operated by the right wing and a platform that opposes pretty much everything Clinton’s candidacy stood for — and that Barack Obama’s still does. To vote in protest for McCain/Palin would be like saying, “Somebody stole my shoes, so I’ll amputate my legs.”
This is not to beat up on Palin. I defend her right to be wrong, even on issues that matter most to me. I regret that people say she can’t do the job because she has children in need of care, especially if they wouldn’t say the same about a father. I get no pleasure from imagining her in the spotlight on national and foreign policy issues about which she has zero background, with one month to learn to compete with Sen. Joe Biden’s 37 years’ experience.
Palin has been honest about what she doesn’t know. When asked last month about the vice presidency, she said, “I still can’t answer that question until someone answers for me: What is it exactly that the VP does every day?” When asked about Iraq, she said, “I haven’t really focused much on the war in Iraq.”
She was elected governor largely because the incumbent was unpopular, and she’s won over Alaskans mostly by using unprecedented oil wealth to give a $1,200 rebate to every resident. Now she is being praised by McCain’s campaign as a tax cutter, despite the fact that Alaska has no state income or sales tax. Perhaps McCain has opposed affirmative action for so long that he doesn’t know it’s about inviting more people to meet standards, not lowering them. Or perhaps McCain is following the Bush administration habit, as in the Justice Department, of putting a job candidate’s views on “God, guns and gays” ahead of competence. The difference is that McCain is filling a job one 72-year-old heartbeat away from the presidency.
So let’s be clear: The culprit is John McCain. He may have chosen Palin out of change-envy, or a belief that women can’t tell the difference between form and content, but the main motive was to please right-wing ideologues; the same ones who nixed anyone who is now or ever has been a supporter of reproductive freedom. If that were not the case, McCain could have chosen a woman who knows what a vice president does and who has thought about Iraq; someone like Texas Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison or Sen. Olympia Snowe of Maine. McCain could have taken a baby step away from right-wing patriarchs who determine his actions, right down to opposing the Violence Against Women Act.
Palin’s value to those patriarchs is clear: She opposes just about every issue that women support by a majority or plurality. She believes that creationism should be taught in public schools but disbelieves global warming; she opposes gun control but supports government control of women’s wombs; she opposes stem cell research but approves “abstinence-only” programs, which increase unwanted births, sexually transmitted diseases and abortions; she tried to use taxpayers’ millions for a state program to shoot wolves from the air but didn’t spend enough money to fix a state school system with the lowest high-school graduation rate in the nation; she runs with a candidate who opposes the Fair Pay Act but supports $500 million in subsidies for a natural gas pipeline across Alaska; she supports drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Reserve, though even McCain has opted for the lesser evil of offshore drilling. She is Phyllis Schlafly, only younger.
I don’t doubt her sincerity. As a lifetime member of the National Rifle Assn., she doesn’t just support killing animals from helicopters, she does it herself. She doesn’t just talk about increasing the use of fossil fuels but puts a coal-burning power plant in her own small town. She doesn’t just echo McCain’s pledge to criminalize abortion by overturning Roe vs. Wade, she says that if one of her daughters were impregnated by rape or incest, she should bear the child. She not only opposes reproductive freedom as a human right but implies that it dictates abortion, without saying that it also protects the right to have a child.
So far, the major new McCain supporter that Palin has attracted is James Dobson of Focus on the Family. Of course, for Dobson, “women are merely waiting for their husbands to assume leadership,” so he may be voting for Palin’s husband.
Being a hope-a-holic, however, I can see two long-term bipartisan gains from this contest.
Republicans may learn they can’t appeal to right-wing patriarchs and most women at the same time. A loss in November could cause the centrist majority of Republicans to take back their party, which was the first to support the Equal Rights Amendment and should be the last to want to invite government into the wombs of women.
And American women, who suffer more because of having two full-time jobs than from any other single injustice, finally have support on a national stage from male leaders who know that women can’t be equal outside the home until men are equal in it. Barack Obama and Joe Biden are campaigning on their belief that men should be, can be and want to be at home for their children.
This could be huge.
What a bitter clinger.
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14 Responses to “Steinem: Palin Is Wrong Kind Of Woman”
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September 4th, 2008 at 7:56 pm
“And American women, who suffer more because of having two full-time jobs than from any other single injustice,”
I don’t know any American women, or woman, who work two full time jobs and don’t get paid for both jobs.
Where’s the injustice?
Huh?
September 4th, 2008 at 8:01 pm
“Barack Obama and Joe Biden are campaigning on their belief that men should be, can be and want to be at home for their children.”
Obama and Biden work away from home. Steinem is senile.
September 4th, 2008 at 8:04 pm
I’m not at all surprised that Our Sarah is the ‘wrong kind of woman’ for Gloria Steinem. After all, she didn’t start her career as a Playboy Bunny, she didn’t have to marry a rich man to achieve her feminist life-goals, or marry another rich man to keep her business in the black. I’m willing to bet that Sarah has never even given her boss one free grope. Actually, the only profoundly amazing thing about this article is that Steinem believes she’s still relevant.
September 4th, 2008 at 8:21 pm
-’It’s about making life more fair for women everywhere. ‘- Until the feminazis stand up and comment about how women are treated in the Muslim culture - their rhetoric is just that - talking out their mouths with no substance - i.e. rhetoric.
The old - women paid less than men - is just a pathetic lie meant to rouse the younger women into action. If it were true, the business model which is everything for the bottom line and the bottom line must be black would require women to be hired and promoted above and beyond men - to insure the black bottom line.
-’opposes everything most other women want and need’- If that had been/is true the ERA would passed hands down - it didn’t at all and now even Roe v Wade is in trouble - as it has gone waaaaaaaaay beyond privacy between a woman and her doctor into abortion uber alles - as long as the Dems allow the feminazis to run them - it is a loser nowdays.
-’She not only opposes reproductive freedom as a human right but implies that it dictates abortion, without saying that it also protects the right to have a child’ - Since when - EVER - has the Pro-choice crowd been for the right to have a child? Between their population bomb enviro wackos who advocate 2 children or less to abortion uber alles and death to abortion survivors - protection my a**.
-’Barack Obama and Joe Biden are campaigning on their belief that men should be, can be and want to be at home for their children’- Gag me - until they are home, really home with the kids - don’t pee on my leg and tell me it’s raining. I call b***s*** The only thing Obama/Biden support is Roe v Wade and that is all the feminazis care about. Much like their continued support for the serial sex offender and his enabling wife - just because he kept abortion legal. Wow, what a legacy.
And really I pity the DNC - the feminazis, the Code Pinkos, the anti-war mongers, the enviro wackos - it must be really really hard to placate so many foaming at the mouth moonbats. No wonder being liberal is a mental disorder.
September 4th, 2008 at 10:26 pm
>>Barack Obama and Joe Biden are campaigning on their belief that men should be, can be and want to be at home for their children. <<
Wait a sec! Isn’t Palin’s husband going to be staying home with the kids? WTF? Effing twit.
September 4th, 2008 at 10:49 pm
Boy, the left really are panicked by this selection! ROFLMAO Hey Barak, would you like a Mulligan in the VP choice?!?
September 5th, 2008 at 1:52 am
We all knew that this tripe was on it’s way and likely being written before Gov. Palin was even through giving her speech. The left is flailing about in such horror after being blindsided with the prospect of having to face a competent, accomplished, attractive & powerful woman, that they are trying anything to prevent paralysis from setting in. They are scared to death by the bright light coming towards them in the train tunnel. Gov. Palin is everything that the Left has paid lip service to all of these years and now they must find some way to discredit her. Talk about a quandary!
Reagan was the first President I was old enough to vote for. I still remember how excited I was about voting for someone who actually made me proud to be an American. I’ve always been proud that I’m American, don’t misunderstand, but it was actually a physical feeling when Reagan spoke. Gov. Palin is the first candidate since then that has even remotely come close to anything like that. I am psyched!
September 5th, 2008 at 8:14 am
I’ve always heard that nature abhors a vacuum, but somehow Steinem has managed to defy Newton’s laws. Take this quote for instance;
” She not only opposes reproductive freedom as a human right but implies that it dictates abortion, without saying that it also protects the right to have a child.”
Sarah Palin DID exercise her freedom of choice! She chose life. Steinem should be grateful HER mother did the same, in spite of plentiful evidence that Gloria is obviously brain-dead, or else her cranium is devoid of gray matter.
On second thought, in Steinem’s case, nature took immediate remedial action, thus resulting in a condition my dad used to refer to as “shit-for-brains”.
September 5th, 2008 at 8:29 am
Sad, sad, lonely old feminist.
Gloria, nobody is listening.
Go have tea with Sally Quinn and put on some Helen Reddy.
Barry, how’s leaving Hillary off the ticket working for you now?
September 5th, 2008 at 8:36 am
Guess this means I’m the “wrong kind” of woman, too.
Abortion is not about a woman’s uterus - it’s about ripping apart (limb from limb) a separate, unique human being for the crime of being imperfect or inconvenient. These miserable witches are just sore because Palin didn’t abort Trig.
Of course, they ignore the very real, very painful, and very tragic deaths of women who go to supposedly “safe” clinics to have legal abortions - only to die at the hands of quacks who rarely, if ever, get their licenses revoked or face prosecution for their acts. Check out http://www.realchoice.blogspot.com. Read some of the stories - like the women who die from sepsis, or women who have their intestines pulled through their uterine wall by heartless doctors who then scramble to cover up their “mistakes.” Or women left infertile from the procedure, who suffer many miscarriages after an abortion and some who are never able to have children after making a totally unnecessary “choice.”
They don’t give a crap about these women. The only “tragedy” is when a woman can’t subject herself to it. Never mind that groups like Feminists for Life work to give women the support and resources they say they need to avoid having an abortion. Women like Steinem hate FFL because women like Steinem actually HATE choice - they only want women to have abortions, not have and raise or have and put up for adoption, their children. I swear, if I didn’t know any better, I’d say they kept a tally of how many children die via abortion and brag about it like a badge of honor.
Gun rights could actually save women’s lives from the thugs and perps and abusers who would kill them - but, wait, a woman has a right to kill her child, but not a right to defend herself with force if necessary, right? They have to rely on the government to protect them and their bodies - right?
Good gracious. I’m so freakin’ sick of “feminism” I could vomit. They don’t give a sh*t about me, my values, my life - no. I’m “brainwashed” by my husband, and “duped” by the Catholic Church. If only I went around pretending I had a penis, killing my children and sleeping around like a hussy - then I’d be a *real* woman.
Gag me.
Feminism has jumped the shark. Now it needs to be eaten by it.
September 6th, 2008 at 1:20 am
EQ 01,
Very nicely stated. You have shown what the real intentions of the “feminist” movement are and that is something that the Left prays never becomes widespread knowledge. I have to admit though, after some of the things so glaringly glossed over or outright ignored by NOW and other “feminist” orgs. (Serial abuser Clinton, treatment of women in the muslim world and the recent treatment of Gov. Palin to name a few) I don’t know if people will ever wake up and see the truth regarding these groups. Sad but true IMO.
September 6th, 2008 at 10:24 am
The real reason for all these attacks against Sarah Barracuda is pure jealousy. Femimists and other pathetic liberals oppose her for the same reason they oppose Condi Rice, Laura Ingraham, and Ann Coulter. They are everything that real women should be - and they are ours!
September 6th, 2008 at 10:41 am
Dang, Just Dang. The Democrats need to be afraid, VERY AFRAID. Be sure and watch the short video.
http://hotair.com/archives/200.....ot-really/
September 7th, 2008 at 2:36 pm
Hmmmm…….. woman’s rights?!? What if the fetus is female. What about THAT woman’s rights?!?! What a bunch of Bovine Feces.