In a recent LA Times column, Gloria Steinem, who in her youth made feminism a household word via sexy hairdos and short skirts, savaged Sarah Palin for being against abortion and for teaching creationism in the schools.
To the 74 year old Ms. Steinem, this is caving in to the “patriarchy”.
Ms. Steinem is not at all troubled by the hard reality that the next President of the United States could have been a woman if it were not for the fact that the real patriarchy of the Democratic Party undermined her campaign in every possible way.
Rather, in a paroxysm of delight over imagined domestic bliss in the Obama and Biden households, she wrote the following incomprehensible paragraph in support of their candidacy:
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.
“Until men are equal in it”? What is that supposed to mean? “(W)ho suffer more because of having two full-time jobs” – what is that supposed to mean? That collecting two paychecks is a greater injustice than having the sh*t beat out of you, both literally and figuratively? Is she KIDDING?!
Gloria Steinem misses the point. The Democrats had an opportunity to put a woman in the White House and didn’t. The Republicans had an opportunity to put a woman in the White House and did
So, how does that make the Democratic Party the supporters of feminist principles and the Republican Party a stronghold of the “patriarchy”?
It doesn’t.
The leadership of the Democratic Party did just about everything they could to prevent Hillary Clinton’s nomination, from their failure to investigate charges of improprieties in the primaries to their refusal to seat the Florida and Michigan delegations until their capitulation to The One.
In contrast, this past week, we saw the leaders of the Republican party, including the female Governor of Hawaii, defending Sarah Palin from daily if not hourly media attacks, including accusations of marital infidelity and speculation about the parentage of her youngest child.
Being pro- or anti-choice is not the most important issue for me. Ron Paul, to whose campaign I contributed, is also anti-choice.
What matters to me is that the Democratic Party had an opportunity to support a strong, competent, qualified woman as their Presidential nominee, and they simply could not bring themselves to do it.
Every woman who’s ever run for a leadership position against a male opponent has seen this pattern. It is so embedded in our culture that even a feminist icon like Gloria Steinem fails to recognize it.
Steinem and other Democratic apologists like Gail Collins, Eleanor Clift, Maureen Dowd and Judith Warner should be ashamed of themselves for caving in to the patriarchy’s expectation that they will punish the “uppity” Governor Palin by dipping her figurative pigtails in ink and throwing mud on her figurative Mary Jane shoes.
It’s bullshit walking, and they know it, but publishing being a rich old man’s game and these being hard times, I guess a girl’s gotta kiss a lot of patriarchal a*s to eat.
Badmit
Since setting up a badminton net last weekend, I’ve been looking forward to hearing James’ little voice on the other end of the phone asking if we can play “badmit”.
I think our skills have improved over the last several days; we managed to complete a 6-shot valley last evening. We are certainly getting our exercise, which is a benefit to both of us.
As they say, if the benefits of exercise were in a pill, it would be the most prescribed medication in the world.
Hatred by the MSM
Despite being raised in a Democratic household, I’ve been enjoying the Republican convention this week, much to the chagrin of most of my family.
This is in the context of being revolted by the amount of money spent by the Obama/Biden campaign and horrified by the bile spewed by their venomous automaton-like supporters in public blogs all over the internet.
Afford It?
Now, what do you have to do – or what do you have to be – to afford THIS?
Chrome Comic
Google’s explanation of their new browser “Chrome” is in the form of a very well written comic book, about 40 pages long: http://www.google.com/googlebooks/chrome/
It’s a good overview of the problems that both users and developers have with browser technology.
I am really looking forward to the release.
Wacka Wacka
An episode of the Biography Channel series “I Survived” includes the story of a woman who was raped, shot 3 times and left for dead by one Jamaal Adrian Turner, who was captured when he returned to the scene of the crime to show his friends what he had done to his victim.
She escaped, Turner is in jail, and earlier this year, he posted a personal ad on a dating web site.
A nutcase who calls herself “Janice223” wrote some bizarre entries about all of this on the Biography Channel’s message board.
Her ideas are so twisted that one hopes they are either a joke in exceptionally bad taste, or maybe a political dirty trick.
If this is a reflection an actual point of view, then we have a great deal to fear.
Any Bets?
So, Sarah Palin and her husband announced that their 17 year old daughter, Bristol, is pregnant.
When do we suppose Governor Palin will gracefully withdraw from the race? I would bet that it happens some time tomorrow, giving John McCain a day before his acceptance speech to name another running mate.
Wonder if he’ll take a chance on Lieberman?
Sarah, Good and Bad
I respect John McCain for getting back to his maverick roots by selecting Governor Sarah Palin as his running mate.
There are things about her that I don’t like, her anti-choice stance being the main one. Note by the way that Ron Paul is also anti-abortion, as is the loathesome Bob Barr, the Libertarian Party’s candidate for President.
No Good Deed Goes Unpunished
Peter’s grandmother, aged 96, whom we call “Bis” for “Bis Nonna”, has an incurable cancer of the blood, and she took a turn for the worse this past week. She was in the hospital for a couple of days, then discharged to a nursing home.
Code of Honor
A friend whose opinion I respect and I were talking the other day about the dysfunctionality we’ve noticed in Cape Cod employer/employee relations.
Her theory – and I think it’s a good one – is that because of the high rate of alcoholism, workers here are accustomed to living in abusive situations, so they don’t stand up to it in the office.
This contrasts with her feeling, and mine, that a self-respecting person doesn’t have to tolerate bad treatment. It puts a whole new spin on the supposed virtue of “being able to take it” as neurotic and masochistic, rather than the much-admired “having a thick skin”.