Sarah "Hunting Wolves From Helicopters for Sport Is Fun!" Palin?

Is it Quayle season? Dan Quayle, that is. Anybody know a reason to think that Sarah Palin would make a good president?

Comments

[anne]

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/08/26/opinion/26faludi.html?ref=opinion

August 26, 2008

Second-Place Citizens
By SUSAN FALUDI

San Francisco

MUCH has been made of the timing of Hillary Clinton's speech before the Democratic National Convention tonight, coming as it does on the 88th anniversary of women's suffrage. Convention organizers are taking advantage of this coincidence of the calendar — the 19th Amendment was certified on Aug. 26, 1920 — to pay homage to the women's vote in particular and women's progress in general. By such tributes, they are slathering some sweet icing on a bitter cake. But many of Mrs. Clinton's supporters are unlikely to be partaking. They regard their candidate's cameo as a consolation prize. And they are not consoled.

"I see this nation differently than I did 10 months ago," reads a typical posting on a Web site devoted to Clintonista discontent. "That this travesty was committed by the Democratic Party has forever changed my approach to politics." In scores of Internet forums and the conclaves of protest groups, those sentiments are echoed, as Clinton supporters speak over and over of feeling heartbroken and disillusioned, of being cheated and betrayed.

In one poll, 40 percent of Mrs. Clinton's constituency expressed dissatisfaction; in another, more than a quarter favored the clear insanity of voicing their feminist protest by voting for John McCain. "This is not the usual reaction to an election loss," said Diane Mantouvalos, the founder of JustSayNoDeal.com, a clearinghouse for the pro-Clinton organizations. "I know that is the way it is being spun, but it's not prototypical. Anyone who doesn't take time to analyze it will do so at their own peril."

The despondency of Mrs. Clinton's supporters — or their "vitriolic" and "rabid" wrath, as the punditry prefers to put it — has been the subject of perplexed and often irritable news media speculation. Why don't these dead-enders get over it already and exit stage right?

Shouldn't they be celebrating, not protesting? After all, Hillary Clinton's campaign made unprecedented strides. She garnered 18 million-plus votes, and proved by her solid showing that a woman could indeed be a viable candidate for the nation's highest office. She didn't get the gold, but in this case isn't a silver a significant triumph?

Many Clinton supporters say no, and to understand their gloom, one has to take into account the legacy of American women's political struggle, in which long yearned for transformational change always gives way before a chorus of "not now" and "wait your turn," and in which every victory turns out to be partial or pyrrhic. Indeed, the greatest example of this is the victory being celebrated tonight: the passage of women's suffrage. The 1920 benchmark commemorated as women's hour of glory was experienced in its era as something more complex, and darker.

Suffrage was, like Hillary Clinton's candidacy, not merely a cause in itself, but a symbolic rallying point, a color guard for a regiment of other ideas. But while the color guard was ushered into the palace of American law, its retinue was turned away.

In the years after the ratification of suffrage, the anticipated women's voting bloc failed to emerge, progressive legislation championed by the women's movement was largely thwarted, female politicians made only minor inroads into elected office, and women's advocacy groups found themselves at loggerheads. "It was clear," said the 1920s sociologist and reformer Sophonisba Breckinridge, "that the winter of discontent in politics had come for women."

That discontent was apparent in a multitude of letters, speeches and articles. "The American woman's movement, and her interest in great moral and social questions, is splintered into a hundred fragments under as many warring leaders," despaired Frances Kellor, a women's advocate.

"The feminist movement is dying of partial victory and inanition," lamented Lillian Symes, a feminist journalist.

"Where for years there had been purpose consecrated to an immortal principle," observed the suffrage leader Carrie Chapman Catt, her compatriots felt now only "a vacancy."

Even Florence Kelley, the tenacious progressive reformer, concluded, "Keeping the light on is probably the best contribution that we can make where there is now Stygian darkness."

The grail of female franchise yielded little meaningful progress in the years to follow. Two-thirds of the few women who served in Congress in the 1920s were filling the shoes of their dead husbands, and most of them failed to win re-election. The one woman to ascend to the United States Senate had a notably brief career: in 1922, Rebecca Felton, 87, was appointed to warm the seat for a newly elected male senator until he could be sworn in. Her term lasted a day.

Within the political establishment, women could exact little change, and the parties gave scant support to female politicians. In 1920, Emily Newell Blair, the Democratic vice chairwoman, noted that the roster of women serving on national party committees looked like a "Who's Who" of American women; by 1929, they'd been shown the door and replaced with the compliant. The suffragist Anne Martin bitterly remarked that women in politics were "exactly where men political leaders wanted them: bound, gagged, divided and delivered to the Republican and Democratic Parties."

Male politicians offered a few sops to feminists: a "maternity and infancy" bill to educate expectant mothers, a law permitting women who married foreigners to remain American citizens, and financing for the first federal prison for women. But by the mid '20s, Congress had quit feigning interest, and women's concerns received a cold shoulder. In 1929, the maternity education bill was killed.

Meanwhile, male cultural guardians were giving vent to what Symes termed "the new masculinism" — diatribes against the "effeminization" that had supposedly been unleashed on the American arts. The news media proclaimed feminism a dead letter and showcased young women who preferred gin parties to political caucuses.

During the presidential race of 1924, newspapers ran headlines like "Woman Suffrage Declared a Failure." "Ex-feminists" proclaimed their boredom with "feminist pother" and their enthusiasm for cosmetics, shopping and matrimony. The daughters of the suffrage generation were so beyond the "zealotry" of their elders, Harper's declared in its 1927 article "Feminist — New Style," that they could only pity those ranting women who were "still throwing hand grenades" and making an issue of "little things."

Those "little things" included employment equity, as a steady increase in the proportion of women in the labor force ground to a halt and stagnated throughout the '20s. Women barely improved their representation in male professions; the number of female doctors actually declined....

[monopole]

Short of the Meganekko factor I don't see any.

[anne]

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/08/26/opinion/26faludi.html?ref=opinion

August 26, 2008

Second-Place Citizens
By SUSAN FALUDI

"The feminist crash of the '20s came as a painful shock, so painful that it took history several decades to face up to it," the literary critic Elaine Showalter wrote in 1978. Facing it now is like peering into a painful mirror. For all the talk of Hillary Clinton's "breakthrough" candidacy and other recent successes for women, progress on important fronts has stalled.

Today, the United States ranks 22nd among the 30 developed nations in its proportion of female federal lawmakers. The proportion of female state legislators has been stuck in the low 20 percent range for 15 years; women's share of state elective executive offices has fallen consistently since 2000, and is now under 25 percent. The American political pipeline is 86 percent male.

Women's real annual earnings have fallen for the last four years. Progress in narrowing the wage gap between men and women has slowed considerably since 1990, yet last year the Supreme Court established onerous restrictions on women's ability to sue for pay discrimination. The salaries of women in managerial positions are on average lower today than in 1983.

Women's numbers are stalled or falling in fields ranging from executive management to journalism, from computer science to the directing of major motion pictures. The 20 top occupations of women last year were the same as half a century ago: secretary, nurse, grade school teacher, sales clerk, maid, hairdresser, cook and so on. And just as Congress cut funds in 1929 for maternity education, it recently slashed child support enforcement by 20 percent, a decision expected to leave billions of dollars owed to mothers and their children uncollected.

Again, male politicians and pundits indulge in outbursts of "new masculinist" misogyny (witness Mrs. Clinton's campaign coverage). Again, the news media showcase young women's "feminist — new style" pseudo-liberation — the flapper is now a girl-gone-wild. Again, many daughters of a feminist generation seem pleased to proclaim themselves so "beyond gender" that they don't need a female president.

As it turns out, they won't have one....

[But, they could have a female vice president.]

[anne]

Me, I love the idea of a woman running for Vice President. I think Sarah Palin would be a splendid Vice President, what with all these years of never ever having one though women are a majority of the population. Qualified? As much so as a Presidential candidate I am thinking of.

[anne]

Thank you, John McCain. Imagine me, writing that. Thank you, indeed.

[Leila Abu-Saba]

Yes, creationist, anti-choice Sarah Palin would make a wonderful advocate for women in public office. The helicopter hunting is just gravy.

Anybody who votes for her cannot seriously call herself a feminist or a liberal or a person who cares about the entire project of Western civilization. Promoting the teaching of creationism in public schools ought to be a deal-breaker for anyone with a liberal arts degree.

[c]

Voting (or maybe selecting a running mate) on the sole basis of gender, regardless of policy, philosophy, or qualifications does not signal progress.

[Leila Abu-Saba]

See Afarensis blog, thanks to Kos at Daily Kos:

http://scienceblogs.com/afarensis/2006/10/27/intelligent_design_and_the_ala/

The creationist kerfuffle in Alaska. America has its own Taliban but they wear nice suits and haircuts.

[Rebecca]

She shares a hairdresser ith Amy Winehouse and that makes her hip to young voters?

[anne]

"Hunting Wolves From Helicopters for Sport Is Fun!"

Is this a real quote, by the way? I cannot find such a quote.

[anne]

"She shares a hairdresser with Amy Winehouse...."

Please reference this.

"America has its own Taliban but they wear nice suits and haircuts."

Please explain the analogy.

[Leila Abu-Saba]

If the argument from a feminist is serious, that McCain deserves a vote because of the oppression of women, and therefore Palin on the ticket means a vote against the oppression of women,

Then I must consider voting for Ralph Nader. Because, as Nader's sister told us at an Arab-American gathering four years ago, Ralph Nader is the only Arab-American ever to run for president. He is the only candidate telling the truth about US policy towards Israel and the Palestinians.

(I will not recite here a list of the wrongs I believe my American government has committed against Palestinians, Lebanese, Iraqis and other Arabs (and Iranians too, see the CIA coup in the 50s). Suffice it to say that I agree with the catalog of grievances as put forth by professor Nader and her brother)

Therefore on Anne's logic I must, as an Arab-American desiring justice for Arabs, vote for Ralph Nader in 2008.

Hey, I know some Arab-Americans who are doing just that. They can't stomach Barack's kowtowing to the Israel-right-or-wrong types.

Sorry. I am not swayed by such arguments. I will not vote for Ralph Nader in November. I will not vote for Sarah Palin and John McCain in November. I will continue to fight for women's rights and justice in Palestine and the wider Middle East. My candidate for President doesn't say and may not do everything I would wish on the subject of the Arabs. (He's fine on women, thank you) In a system such as ours, few people get everything they want in a candidate.

[Leila Abu-Saba]

America's Taliban are those Republicans promoting creationism in the public schools, for instance, driven by their "bible-based" ideology. Palin promotes creationism. Palin is the equivalent of a Taliban leader in America, driven by her fundamentalist religious ideology to support policies which are reactionary and backward.

I had not seen Palin's picture so I assumed she was nicely coiffed. In fact, her hair looks a lot like my hair, when I had hair (chemo patient). And another picture of her shows her wearing beaded dangly earrings similar to what I would wear. My assumptions about her coiffure are stereotypes of Republican women and I apologize.

I assume however that she still wears nice suits to office, as opposed to long robes such as worn by the Taliban in Afghanistan. If I were in public office I would also wear nice suits. I am saying that our American fundamentalist politicians behave like the Taliban but dress differently.

But go ahead, be my guest, vote for Palin and argue that this is a feminist position. I will laugh at you. Ain't my feminism, sorry. But it is indeed a free country.

[Leila Abu-Saba]

Dismissing any good that Barack Obama has done or will do is not a feminist stance, it's the personal stance of a few extremists who want to push their own resentments upon the rest of us.

However I won't let this extremist position on Hillary push me away from the feminism that shaped me from childhood. I'm still a feminist and refuse to allow others' definitions and agendas to control my identification with the movement.

The exchange in this thread reminds me of tiffs inside the Arab-American community, where folks to the left of me start insisting that if I vote for X (Barack, or Kerry, or Gore) or don't pay homage to Y (Hamas, Hizbullah, the PFLP-General Command) then I am actually a traitor to the Arabs, a dupe of Zionist propaganda, and not a Real Arab anyway.

I remain a proud Arab-American feminist. I simply accept the nature of the two-party system in this country - I could refuse to vote or vote Cynthia McKinney or Nader instead, but I won't. So between Obama and McCain, I choose Obama.

[Rebecca]

Anne - regarding a reference... she doesn't really... it was just the beehive... that's all.