Gloria Steinem on Sarah Palin
- Gloria
I saw this in the LA Times - Palin: wrong woman, wrong message by feminist Gloria Steinem - and wanted to post it. Here's the bit I especially liked .....
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[...] 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 .....
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 .....
Republicans may learn they can't appeal to right-wing patriarchs and most women at the same time .....
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posted by crystal | 12:06 AM
7 Comments:
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Okay, she does shoot wolves from helicopters. She's the bad kind of hunter.
Yeah, no kidding, I got an email from an animal rights place I belong to about the aerial wolf hunting thing. I think if Kermit could hunt mice that way, though, she might go for it.
In Hawaii I was told that they hunt wild boar with pit bulls. I thought that was sort of a strange way to hunt.
After Obama and Biden gave her and her family a pass, which was the right thing to do, I was a bit taken aback by how nasty she was in her speech, especially given her lack of experience.
According to Palin, hockey moms are pit bulls with lipstick.
Well... the words are hers. Who am I to argue? Its sounds pretty accurate to me.
Hi Jeff,
I wonder about apeech writing - did Matt Scully write the part about pit bulls or was that hers? I wonder how he, a vegetarian and animals rights activist, felt about writing the speech of someone like her.
I still fervently hope not many women will vote on the sole basis of gender. Some are bound to, but they may well be outvoted by men who do the same thing.
Yes, I think you're right.
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