Before automatically heaping your disdain onto me, I encourage you to read her piece. It certainly struck a chord with me not because of any support I have for Palin (and I have plenty) but for its clear-headed explanation why independent women (perhaps some progressive women, too) seem to be breaking towards the Republicans.
And while only anecdotal, I get the same signals from my liberal-leaning female friends, women who would be very unlikely to vote R over D, but who have shown a particular interest in R with Palin on the ticket.
Whether this appeal has legs, or can survive the moonbat blogosphere onslaught, we shall see.
N.B. If you’re a member of the “prissy, victim-mongering, philistine feminist establishment,” don’t read the article. Your head will explode.
When she runs for president, I’ll care. Contrary to many Republicans’ evident wishes, Palin is simply the number two on the ticket, whose main functions if elected will be looking sorrowful and foreign funerals, and cutting ribbons.
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p>I’d rather talk about the guy who wants to fund his 100-year war with money taken disproportionately from the middle class. He’s the one who wants to be president in a few months.
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p>I’m done being distracted.
as The Interview is broadcast tomorrow night. in the mean time, i’m happy to hear npr doing a story on mccain/palin being full of bs when it comes to earmarks.
if you put lipstick on earmarks, they’re pretty cool.
the day Sarah Palin is a “feminist” is the day the word ceases to have any relevance or meaning.
Isn’t any person who believes that women can pursue the same careers as men at least in some sense a feminist? Sarah Palin sought (successfully it turns out) the highest office in her state. Obviously she believes a woman can pursue such a position, so doesn’t that make her a feminist.
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p>What I’ve never understood is the conservative female commentators out there with highly professional careers of their own decrying feminism. I feel like saying, “Listen lady, if it weren’t for feminism you wouldn’t be in the position you’re in right now.”
She is an outlier within her belief system, where being a mother and wife is paramount. That doesn’t mean you cant be strong, but you’re supposed to put family first. Like-minded people have made an exception for her because, well, they want to win and they want to see themselves reflected in the executive.
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p>I’m curious to know how she reconciles her political ambitions and work with her matronly duties. My impression is that she has pretty easily been able to do both in Alaska, but won’t come close to being able to if she gets to VP. So she may not see herself as an exception now, even though her community does (you should hear the logical pretzels I hear from the local fundies trying to make it ok for her to do this, but no other women!). But that self-assessment will have to change later on, if she gets elected.
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p>Btw, she may be a feminist of sorts in her own person, as you describe, but she is no feminist in the general sense because she wants women’s lives to eb controlled by others and she does not support feminist basics like equal pay for equal work.
i just made up those terms like “feminist exceptionalist”. they fit my thinking. but don’t go consulting any tome because even if they’re in there, they could easily have other meanings.
Laurel, when you’re, you’re right
Please show me where Sarah Palin has claimed “she wants women’s lives to be controlled by others…” This is progressive babble and hype-liberal doctrine.
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p>I challenge your entire premise that she’s an outlier. You need to travel further west than Natick, Laurel (Northampton doesn’t count.) You define feminism through your own narrow political lens, but there is a huge sea of middle-of-the-road independent women across the country who do not necessarily buy in to your brand of feminism — and that of Hillary, Boxer, Pelosi, and Sally Quinn.
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p>Every election cycle, this voter block is up for grabs, and Sarah Palin has captured their imagination.
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p>She’s them, or at least more them than your approved list of feminists. The Obama campaign needs to combat this to stay competitive. This assumes the Palin Effect will continue through Election Day, and with inadvertent help from the in-the-tank-for-Obama media, it has a chance (redefining Lenin’s concept of “useful idiots.”)
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p>You need to admit that your political views are a couple of standard deviations to the left of America’s bell curve.
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p>BTW, men like Palin, too, and for many more reasons than the media thinks (but that too.)
just like the republican party of today bears little resemblance to the republican party of gerald ford. even the definition of the papacy has changed over the centuries. such disjunct comparisons as you present are silly.
if she were here today, right now, you wouldn’t let her into the feminist club. Ridiculous.
Can you provide a link to her writing on the issue?
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p>But in any case, it is silly to presume that if she were alive today, she would or wouldn’t have the same stances. The social situation was much different 100 years ago. And perhaps most importantly, medically safe abortions weren’t available back then. How do you know that she didn’t oppose abortion on purely pragmatic grounds?
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p>You also have the nerve to presume a lot about me and how I would or wouldn’t regard a contemporary version of Anthony. Thanks for trying to do the thinking for me. It shows that you to not understand feminism at all.
she refers to it as “child murder”, and goes on to say
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p>The thrice guilty, being of course, men who drove women to have abortions.
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p>So no, she didn’t oppose it on pragmatic grounds.
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p>And shame shame on me for thinking that the WOMBBB CONTRRROLLLL screamer of this crowd would think anyone pro-life to not adhere to her feminist litmus test.
are the men who impregnate the women. but don’t listen to me, i’m just a “screamer”. i notice you’re starting to resort to all caps. careful, next you’ll be ranting like a bona fide mcrd.
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p>you still can’t presume to know how she would think if she were in today’s world. i’m not sure why you won’t admit that.
Damn your father! And his father! Damn it all that we should none be guilty, and that you and I didn’t exist!
So no, not “damn my father”.
there is ample evidence she wants women to be controlled by others. it’s called being against choice.
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p>your ad hom attack on me is hilarious. i live 5 miles from the pacific ocean. i’m more west of natick than you can imagine in your blinkered world of assumptions, it would seem. lol!
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p>I think it’s clear that Ms. Palin opposes abortion, except when the mother’s life is at peril. There’s no sense debating that position, as the outcome is merely a lengthy unreconciled thread. Does that make her not a feminist? I think there’s a split audience on that point.
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p>Does she support equal pay for equal work? I’d be surprised to read otherwise. The question is, to what degree does she support government intervention into enforcement.
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p>But, not a feminist? It’s almost like declaring that Obama’s not for racial equality.
where a person in a weak social class gets exceptional membership in a stronger social class. they typically do this by championing the positions of the class they’ve climbed into. in palin’s case on feminist issues this means toeing the party line on keeping women unequal and not having choice. in the case of log cabin republicans, it means supporting politicians who vow to push anti-gay legislation, etc.
Is being ‘pro-choice’ the litmus test. Absent that pro-choice conviction, a woman cannot be a feminist? I’m asking. It’s not rhetorical.
i suppose it depends on who you ask. you may have noticed that different people have different definitions for feminist. for me, choice is an important part of the feminist definition. however, this doesn’t mean that i think some anti-choice people (not just women are feminist, gary) aren’t semi-feminist. clearly many are. any person working for the betterment and independence of women has feminist intent. and, i reserve the right of any woman to dub herself feminist. but i also reserve my right to disagree with her.
What’s yours?
First, thanks for pointing to the column, interesting perspective.
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p>Second, I’m trying to understand the SP phenomenon from the conservative point of view. It seems like the framing is sort of the uber-woman, right? She is incredible mom of 5, plus that doesn’t stop her from being a gov.
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p>Creates different vibe from, say, Hillary, mom of 1 whose kid went to private schools. American Republicans, I’d imagine, don’t want a non-maternal Thatcher type, right?
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p>(Without the mega-mom thing to inoculate her….she’d be way too “career-oriented” for many conservatives, in my opinion.)
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p>So my question is…what if Palin’s uber-mom credentials start to unwind? What if oldest son not the patriotic volunteer, but joining army to flee giant drug habit, etc. What do you predict will happen to her standing among conservatives and among independents? If anything.
Any family troubles that crop up will just make her look more ennobled through suffering, and will allow her followers to feel big about themselves by forgiving her for being a fallible human being. It is only we outsiders (non-heterosexual and/or non-right-wing fundies) who are evil and must change before we can be forgiven. For us, love is conditional. Did you know that her church is hosting a Love One Out conference this week? Case in point. To learn how you, too can Pray Away The Gay, just click here.
Palin is ordinary and familiar to them – they’re used to a take charge person at the PTA, the CCD, or whatever organization they’re in, and she reminds them of that person. That’s why the “elitist” label resonates with them – anyone who comes off as smarter than they are seems foreign and scary.
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p>It reminds me of what Jon Stewart had to say about the “elitist” label (paraphrasing):
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I can’t speak for other conservatives, but Palin appeals to me because of her can-do approach to, well, everything — family, career, civics.
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p>Hunter, sportswoman, mother, wife, mayor, governor … maybe not in that order. Marge Gunderson running a state, having kids, and putting food on the table. We like the package.
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p>She is the antithesis of Paglia’s “prissy, victim-mongering, philistine feminist establishment.” That’s why Paglia likes her too (although she won’t vote for her.)
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p>As a politician, that can-do attitude means putting together a massive pipeline deal that involved 4 oil companies, both state political parties, 2 Canadian provinces, and the national Canadian government. That single political-economic achievement is more than Barak Obama has done in his entire life. And she returned money to the tax payers. Can she move to MA?
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p>At the same time, she “cleaned house,” forcing the political resignation of the state Republican attorney general, and sweeping out of office Murkowski (the dad) and making life difficult for Don Young, Lisa Murkowski (the daughter), and Ted Stevens, all the sort of politician I cannot stand, whatever their party affiliation — corrupt, entrenched, privileged, spendthrifts (with my tax money.)
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p>I, like most conservatives, do not agree with her on everything. The middle-right represents 50% of the country, so it’s certain that most conservatives do not hold all identical values as Palin.
There is a facile identity-politics argument to be made to feminists in her favor.
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p>The weakness of this piece, however, is that Paglia skims over the evidence that has come to light that Palin is a vicious small-town hack who set about enforcing a small-minded religious orthodoxy as soon as she got elected, used the power of the state to persecute personal enemies, and dove into the public trough for personal enrichment as soon as she got the chance: the Per Diem Princess.
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p>She also misled the country as soon as she hit the national stage — about eBay and her nonexistent pipeline, for example — and is now hiding rather than being open and answering questions.
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p>Paglia says she lives in the suburbs of Philadelphia to keep it real — really uninformed, she might have added.
I enjoyed some constructive back and forth from left and right on this post, other than the people who can’t help but be angry and snarky about anything they don’t agree with.
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p>So many are just “beside themsleves” that anyone could support Sarah Palin that they will resort to everything from “name calling” down to “nit picking”. Do you really consider her a “Per Diem Princess” for taking $17,000 in a year while our Cadillac Governor “dove into the public trough for personal enrichment as soon as she got the chance” by geting a new Caddy and spent $27,387 on new digs in his first month??? Are you serious?
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p>Her success is killing you, laurel and others and there is nothing you can do about it but pass the lipstick.
As the officials pass each other in the airport, Patrick’s office released the final tab for a five-day biotech conference in June attended by the governor and his team: $80,000.
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p>Patrick, his economic czar Dan O’Connell and nearly a dozen staffers bedded down in $300-a-night waterfront rooms on a San Diego marina. Senate President Murray also made the San Diego excursion.
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p>There’s joy in Mudville….
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