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Loading ...Neff: Sarah Palin is not the woman we need
From near and far, friends and associates congratulated me on a wish come true. “Congrats, a female candidate is on a major party ticket for the White House.”
Well, yes, that was my wish.But did the genie not understand?
Or was her magic lamp empty?
I hope I have two more wishes, because I feel rather like the dolt who wished for a “million,” but forgot to say “dollars.”
Perhaps readers can help me better formulate my wish for the next election. The wish remains to see a female candidate on a major party ticket for the White House. But what I initially left unsaid — because I stupidly thought it unnecessary to utter — is that I’d like the female candidate to actually serve as advocate for women and minorities, to promote equality, to support feminist causes.
I guess the genie heard female candidate and conjured up Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin.
Palin’s interesting in that she presents as a butch-femme character — a self-avowed, pistol-packing mama who wears lipstick to her kid’s hockey games, a former beauty contestant with a lifetime membership in the National Rifle Association.
But consider her positions and platforms and you find the GOP nominee more like an armed Anita Bryant and not so much like the trailblazers she has thanked in her speeches. Those trailblazers promoted the guarantee of civil liberties and the expansion of civil rights.
Palin will fight for our constitutional right to bear arms, but against our constitutional right to make choices for our bodies. She has endorsed a constitutional ban on same-sex marriage in Alaska and advocated the repeal of partnership benefits to publicly employed gays and lesbians.
Soon after McCain announced his choice for a running mate, a friend wondered, “Why didn’t they just nominate Phyllis Schlafly?”
“I don’t think she ever killed caribou,” I thought.
Another friend said, “It’s clear McCain wanted to woo the disenchanted supporters of Hillary Clinton.”
“How’s that?” I asked. “Seems clear to me McCain wanted to woo the religious right. I don’t care if she burns her bra, but I do care that she thought about banning books.”
Perhaps McCain’s selection of Palin proves his campaign and his party recognizes the value of the woman voter, but the selection does not demonstrate that the campaign or the party will do much to improve her future — or that of gay citizens.
In the day’s following Palin’s VP nomination, I found myself thinking back to the 1970s and the anti-feminist sentiments I heard in my neighborhood, among my parents’ friends, at my school, in my newspapers.
In those days, it seemed there was certain type of ambitious woman that the silent but bigoted majority tolerated and a certain type of woman whose ambitions stoked ever-fiercer sexism. Remember: Mary Richards was OK, Maude Findlay was not.
Ask yourself: What does it mean that Sarah Palin, for all her cheerfully explained inexperience and lack of record, is the nominee for vice president, and Hillary Clinton, for all her forcefully broadcast experience and long, long, long record, is the nominee for nothing.
Ah, a wish was cast and wasted in 2008.
So I’m saving my second wish for the next go-around and wishing for voters to elect a feminist female candidate on a major party ticket for the White House because she’s the most qualified for the job.
And my third and final wish?
I could wish that national Democratic Party leaders, most especially Howard Dean, realize all that they squandered this election year as they ignored the sexism so apparent during the primary season.
But that situation will be corrected with the realization of my second wish, as should my many hopes for GLBT equality. Lesbian rights is a feminist issue and feminism is a lesbian concern.
So, I think I’ll wish for that million dollars, which would go a long way to sending my partner and I on the cross-continent adventure of our dreams. Two women. Three cats. One tricked-out VW microbus.
Trace – you truly are an incredibly ignorant individual – the fact that you wallow in it, just makes it that much more sad.
Just in case it’s not clear to everyone here, Sarah Palin is not the first female to run as a vice-presidential candidate on a major party ticket. That would be Geraldine Ferraro, who was selected as the running mate to Walter Mondale in 1984.
Trace,
Once more you show how uneducated and blind a Republican sheep can be. Our economy is in the crapper because of the self-serving, evil and opportunistic Bush administration. They, their Lobbyists, and their Wall Street puppets all insist on more deregulation of the financial business to rake cold over the citizens of this once great country. They are trying to get $700 billion in corporate welfare before they loose office, and probably for a very, very long time.
The Democrats at least want to limit the compensation for the greedy Republican executives who created this mess. They want to get a stake in the businesses they assist so we might be able to sell it back later and make back some of these exorbitant corporate welfare payments.
The Bush war-mongers have spent this country into bankruptcy in less than 8 years. Now they want to hurry a solution that may be worse than what has already happened, and get it done before an election they will probably loose big-time. And the middle class, that might have some dollars in an IRA or 401K savings plan, are now at risk of loosing their hard earned money. If it is gone, it will be gone for good this time. The newly-poor people will look to the government for a meager SS retirement. Their dreams are about to be shot into the cold of a financial outer space, never to return.
And to top it off, you want to place two incompetent a$$holes in the White House and Senate. McCain and Paulson both said less than a week ago that the US economy was sound, and now they are prophesying financial doom. They are obviously clueless about business. They do not know if their ill-conceived plan will work, any more than they know their butts from a hole in the ground. I may not be a bright business analyst, but I saw it coming months (if not years) ago.
And still you tout that they are the messianic leadership we need. I can say without any smidgeon of a doubt, the McCain/Palin ticket is bad for us — they have shown they are bad for business and only the rich might profit from their election, and that seems doubtful right about now.
I lived thorough the saving and loan debacle of the 1980’s and early 1990’s. At least then there were assets to sell. I can say for sure, this is the direst financial situation of my life. It scares the hell out of me, and it should do the same to you and the rest of the citizens of this one-great nation. I think the Republicans may have brought us to our knees permanently, and not for a blow job, but a really bad hurtful F’ing!
And last, they will do everything in their power to limit gay rights and perhaps move us backwards a few decades if not centuries. If they are elected, you will be very sorry, and I will be glad to say “I told you so!”
On the other hand, I hope we do not see the US go bankrupt like happened to the USSR in 1989.
That Mrs. Palin might someday actually be the Presidnt of the United States of America is by far the most frightening thing I could imagine. The Constitution would devolve into the toilet paper W is using if for currently. Forget about “land o’ the free”, for one thing. Pursuit of hapiness? Fahgeddaboudit. “Liberty”? A joke under her reign. Scary AND depressing.
Well Trace, I don’t know what a “femelist” is, but I think I can safely say most women who are self-proclaimed feminists don’t hate Sarah Palin because she represents a threat to the patriarchical status quo in the government. They hate her because she would make a terrible President and supports policies which are actually against and counterproductive to the cause of women’s rights.
I swear, does no one examine a candidates policy history anymore? What happened to being informed voters?
Trace, once more you show how uneducated and blind a Republican sheep can be. Our economy is in the crapper because of the self-serving, evil and opportunistic Bush administration. They, their Lobbyists, and their Wall Street puppets all insist on more deregulation of the financial business to rake cold over the citizens of this once great country. They are trying to get $700 billion in corporate welfare before they loose office, and probably for a very, very long time.
The Democrats at least want to limit the compensation for the greedy Republican executives who created this mess. They want to get a stake in the businesses they assist so we might be able to sell it back later and make back some of these exorbitant corporate welfare payments.
The Bush war-mongers have spent this country into bankruptcy in less than 8 years. Now they want to hurry a solution that may be worse than what has already happened, and get it done before an election they will probably loose big-time. And the middle class, that might have some dollars in an IRA or 401K savings plan, are now at risk of loosing their hard earned money. If it is gone, it will be gone for good this time. The newly-poor people will look to the government for a meager SS retirement. Their dreams are about to be shot into the cold of a financial outer space, never to return.
And to top it off, you want to place two incompetent a$$holes in the White House and Senate. McCain and Paulson both said less than a week ago that the US economy was sound, and now they are prophesying financial doom. They are obviously clueless about business. They do not know if their ill-conceived plan will work, any more than they know their butts from a hole in the ground. I may not be a bright business analyst, but I saw it coming months (if not years) ago.
And still you tout that they are the messianic leadership we need. I can say without any smidgeon of a doubt, the McCain/Palin ticket is bad for us — they have shown they are bad for business and only the rich might profit from their election, and that seems doubtful right about now.
I lived thorough the saving and loan debacle of the 1980’s and early 1990’s. At least then there were assets to sell. I can say for sure, this is the direst financial situation of my life. It scares the hell out of me, and it should do the same to you and the rest of the citizens of this one-great nation. I think the Republicans may have brought us to our knees permanently, and not for a blow job, but a really bad hurtful F’ing!
And last, they will do everything in their power to limit gay rights and perhaps move us backwards a few decades if not centuries. If they are elected, you will be very sorry, and I will be glad to say “I told you so!”
It’s interesting to see so many “femelist’s” attack Sarah Palin. She is a threat to many in that she has made it and made it by herself. I say congratulations Sarah Palin. You have a bright future and may one day be President.
I am trying to get my Larry Craig type self-loathing gay guy to post his comments here. He did post on a blog called Puerto Rico News Topix:
http://www.topix.com/world/puerto-rico/2008/09/president-palin-brasscheck-tv-com-9-21-08#lastPost
He insists that there is no proof that Sarah Palin is anti-gay. He insists that I am fantasizing that she is anti-gay.
He does not want to look at her anti-gay voting record or her in tongues religious witch craft to get the Lord to make gay men straight again. He refuses to believe that Palin said gays are gay because they did not pray enough. If straight people prayed for gays and ecourage gays to pray more, they will become straight again and not be in sin, etc., etc, etc., etc. PRAISE THE LORD!!! According to Praying Tongue Palin.
How can we prove to him that Palin is anti-gay?
Well said Lisa, and if I could one post election wish…that President Obama nominate Hillary Clinton or another highly qualified feminist female for the job as the next US Supreme Court Justice.
Janet writes: “Welcome to post-feminism” which translates to “Welcome to the era stupid women who are proud enough to stand up and say it! Stupid women – Unite!” – Because ANY woman, with even the most meager level of intelligence, who votes for McCain/Palin – is simply that – damn stupid.
McCain is letting his Caribou Mamma spout the anti-gay garbage for him, and Obama is making the political choice that he is damned if he does, damned if he doesn’t speak often about gay issues (and he’s already tossed us queers under the bus by saying he thinks marriage is only for opposite sex couples)(funny that I have been happily married to my husband nearly 3 years here in Massachusetts and I have yet to see any heterosexual marriages spontaneously explode when I get too close) so he doesn’t bring it up and tries to deflect the question if it does come up. Barak Obama will have a hard enough time as a black man running (even a ‘half’ black man) I am sure he feels he doesn’t need the extra heat of saying he thinks gays and lesbians are equal to all those happily married heterosexual couples who make up the majority of marriages in this country. And who may or may not feel so groovy towards same sex couples joining their club. It’s a tender time – we’ll see if A) California does not outlaw gay marriage and B) America elects it’s first non-Caucasian President. It will be a glorious 2009 and a Happy Day for many if we have a President Obama to look forwards to and continued gay and lesbian marriages in California (soon coming to a state near you) in 2 short months.
What feminist would, in her right mind, support Sarah Palin? That woman is not a feminist, no matter what she says. Sure, it’s great that a woman is a candidate for a major political party, and that’s a great pioneering step that will hopefully pave the way for other women, but Sarah Palin is the worst possible potential president out of all of them.
The feminist in me is happy that a woman might get into the White House. The rational person in me is not happy that the woman who might be getting in has terrible policies and little experience. The liberal in me is foaming at the mouth over the fact that the woman who might be getting in is the most ultra-conservative right-wing nutjob ever. Sarah Palin is like a female Mike Huckabee.
(Also, ignore the name, I actually am a woman, so I think I can safely say that Sarah Palin does not speak for women’s issues/rights. She certainly doesn’t speak for mine.)
Ah, you didn’t want a woman in the Whitehouse, just a liberal woman. Welcome to post-feminism.
I am without any reservations against Sarah Palin for Vice President or any other national office elected or appointed.
She is far worse than George W. or John McCain who are two peas in the same pod of self-serving, stupid politicians. There is not one single attribute of Sarah Palin, George W. or John McCain that appeals to me.
I have a dumb gay friend who is enthusiastically for Palin. He has to be one of those gay guys who is into self-loathing. He insists that I am against Sarah Palin because I am “a gay person who hates women.” This could not be further from the truth! I love dishing with my great many lady friends!
I voted proudly for Hillary Clinton in the Puerto Rico held Presidential Primaries. How I wish Hillary was picked instead of Joe Biden who is a good man.
If Obama picked Hillary, he would be certain of winning the election.
There could be no great vote winning ticket than “Obama-Clinton.”
If I hate women, as my self-loathing friend claims, why am I crazy about Hillary Clinton, Madonna, our U.S. Attorney for Puerto Rico Rosa Rodriguez-Velez, and many other women in all areas of endeavors?
Sarah Palin has a reputation for being anti-gay. She loves to kill animals for the sport of it. She is a gun toting anti-gay, anti-liberal, way-right-wing bigot. She even likes to kill fish. There is something fishy about her. She is always trying to shoot a bullet into or brutally hook God’s Creation. She wants to lay hands in her prays of strange sounds on all gays to make them straight again.
I am without any reservations against Sarah Palin for Vice President or any other national office elected or appointed. She is far worse than George W. or John McCain who are two peas in the same pod of self-serving, stupid politicians. There is not one single attribute of Sarah Palin that appeals to me.
I have a dumb gay friend who is enthusiastically for Palin. He has to be one of those gay guys who is into self-loathing. He insists that I am against Sarah Palin because I am “a gay person who hates women.” This could not be further from the truth!
I voted for Hillary Clinton in the Puerto Rico held Presidential Primaries. How I wish Hillary was picked instead of Joe Biden. If Obama picked Hillary, he would be certain of winning the election.
There could be no great vote winning ticket than “Obama-Clinton.”
If I hate women why am I crazy about Hillary Clinton, Madonna, our U.S. Attorney for Puerto Rico Rosa Rodriguez-Velez, and many other women in all areas of endeavor?
Sarah Palin has a reputation for being anti-gay. She loves to kill animals for the sport of it. She is a gun toting anti-gay, anti-liberal, way-right-wing bigot.