Gloria Steinem nails it...

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, 2008

Here'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.

http://www.latimes.com/ne...5118.story

Gloria gets it, as do millions of other women.

JellyBean said:

IrresistibleB1tch said:

JellyBean said:

Gloria gets it, as do millions of other women.

i'm glad she's speaking out.

It's not that The Joker's gay. What he is, is Batsexual. He'd be whacking it to Batsy whether our hero had girl parts or boy parts underneath that rubber.

The dichotomy between women vs. conservatives is very interesting, that McCain is trying to appeal to both in one brushstroke.

I pretty much agree with her article. That there's good news and bad news.

I don't agree with the commentators that Palin is an insult to the women's cause. There is a lot of good news in this turn of events, and she has as much right as anyone to "be wrong", that is, hold her views.

Yes, the culprit is McCain - bowing to the religious right while trying to re-maverick himself. Very clever.

But McCain is NOT a feminist, nor is Palin, and their platforms will kill a lot of progress made by and for women.

Millions of women in America are NOT feminists. Gloria Steinem is not speaking for Female America, but Liberal America.

reproductive freedoms- rotflmao.

LittlePaisleyCorvette said:

IrresistibleB1tch said:

LittlePaisleyCorvette said:

IrresistibleB1tch said:

LittlePaisleyCorvette said:

heartbeatocean said:

LittlePaisleyCorvette said:

IrresistibleB1tch said:

heartbeatocean said:

no, no, no, and no!

and McCain saw to that.

heartbeatocean said:

Break it down, Gloria!
Thank you for posting this, I was waiting to hear her thoughts on the Palin nomination.


.
[Edited 9/6/08 14:30pm]

IrresistibleB1tch said:

It's not that The Joker's gay. What he is, is Batsexual. He'd be whacking it to Batsy whether our hero had girl parts or boy parts underneath that rubber.

meow85 said:

IrresistibleB1tch said:

welcome to Republican Bizarro World!

Conservatives want government off your backs, but in your bedrooms. They'll turn a blind eye to the dealings of big business and pledge to remove taxes that are often there out of necessity, and rail against gun control or publicly funded education or health care. But they want to tell you who you can have sex with and when and why, who you can marry, that you have to bear children but you can't adopt if you're single or a homo, and do everything they can to keep the next generation in the dark about healthy sexual behaviour.

They're off our backs, but they've got one hell of a keen interest in our crotches.

meow85 said:

IrresistibleB1tch said:

welcome to Republican Bizarro World!

Conservatives want government off your backs, but in your bedrooms. They'll turn a blind eye to the dealings of big business and pledge to remove taxes that are often there out of necessity, and rail against gun control or publicly funded education or health care. But they want to tell you who you can have sex with and when and why, who you can marry, that you have to bear children but you can't adopt if you're single or a homo, and do everything they can to keep the next generation in the dark about healthy sexual behaviour.

They're off our backs, but they've got one hell of a keen interest in our crotches.

IrresistibleB1tch said:

meow85 said:

Conservatives want government off your backs, but in your bedrooms. They'll turn a blind eye to the dealings of big business and pledge to remove taxes that are often there out of necessity, and rail against gun control or publicly funded education or health care. But they want to tell you who you can have sex with and when and why, who you can marry, that you have to bear children but you can't adopt if you're single or a homo, and do everything they can to keep the next generation in the dark about healthy sexual behaviour.

They're off our backs, but they've got one hell of a keen interest in our crotches.

may i quote that in my sig?!

It's not that The Joker's gay. What he is, is Batsexual. He'd be whacking it to Batsy whether our hero had girl parts or boy parts underneath that rubber.

heartbeatocean said:

meow85 said:

Conservatives want government off your backs, but in your bedrooms. They'll turn a blind eye to the dealings of big business and pledge to remove taxes that are often there out of necessity, and rail against gun control or publicly funded education or health care. But they want to tell you who you can have sex with and when and why, who you can marry, that you have to bear children but you can't adopt if you're single or a homo, and do everything they can to keep the next generation in the dark about healthy sexual behaviour.

They're off our backs, but they've got one hell of a keen interest in our crotches.

Exactly. I guess that's why they attract the uneducated and the unintelligent, people who watch a lot of TV and vote with their fears and emotions. If you really look at things, there's no consistency. No wonder they have to resort to telling bold-faced lies over and over again.

And what the hell ever happened to Republicans favoring state rights? They are trying to make federal laws all over the place to restrict people's freedoms and overrule state laws.

In Minnesota recently, the state passed a law to fix an immigration issue and the Feds came in and disallowed it. God forbid, local politicians try to solve their own problems!

And what ever happened to Republicans being the fiscally conservative ones?

Basically the Republican party has morphed from having a political perspective and strategy, to mainly pursuing a moral, religious agenda.

It's not that The Joker's gay. What he is, is Batsexual. He'd be whacking it to Batsy whether our hero had girl parts or boy parts underneath that rubber.

LittlePaisleyCorvette said:

IrresistibleB1tch said:

HiinEnkelte said:

LittlePaisleyCorvette said:

reproductive freedoms- rotflmao.

"A Woman’s Right To Murder Her Unborn Baby for Her Own Personal Convenience Shall Not Be Infringed!"

It's not that The Joker's gay. What he is, is Batsexual. He'd be whacking it to Batsy whether our hero had girl parts or boy parts underneath that rubber.

LittlePaisleyCorvette said:

XxAxX said:

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.

she is a one-woman time machine back to the 1930s

right on gloria!

XxAxX said:

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.

she is a one-woman time machine back to the 1930s