[Peace-discuss] Gloria Steinam in LA Times --Palin: Wrong Woman, Wrong Message

[Jenifer Cartwright]

Of possible interest to some on the list. Read article below, or go to




 http://www.latimes.com/news/printedition/opinion/la-oe-steinem4-2008sep04,0,1290251.story
 --Jenifer

--- On Fri, 9/5/08, Helene Feiner  wrote:


> ________________________________
> Palin: Wrong Woman, Wrong Message
>
> Sarah Palin shares nothing but a chromosome with Hillary Clinton. She 
> is Phyllis Schlafly, only younger.
>
> Los Angeles Times
>
> By Gloria Steinem
>
> September 4, 2008
>
> Here's the good news: Women have become so politically powerful that 
> even the anti-feminist right wing -- the folks with a headlock on the 
> Republican Party -- are trying to appease the gender gap with a 
> first-ever female vice president. We owe this to women -- and to many 
> men too -- who have picketed, gone on hunger strikes or confronted 
> violence at the polls so women can vote. We owe it to Shirley 
> Chisholm, who first took the "white-male-only" sign off the
White 
> House, and to Hillary Rodham Clinton, who hung in there through 
> ridicule and misogyny to win 18 million votes.
> But here is even better news: It won't work. This isn't the first
time 
> a boss has picked an unqualified woman just because she agrees with 
> him and opposes everything most other women want and need. Feminism 
> has never been about getting a job for one woman. It's about making 
> life more fair for women everywhere. It's not about a piece of the 
> existing pie; there are too many of us for that. It's about baking a 
> new pie.
>
> Selecting Sarah Palin, who was touted all summer by Rush Limbaugh, is 
> no way to attract most women, including die-hard Clinton supporters. 
> Palin shares nothing but a chromosome with Clinton. Her down-home, 
> divisive and deceptive speech did nothing to cosmeticize a Republican 
> convention that has more than twice as many male delegates as female, 
> a presidential candidate who is owned and operated by the right wing 
> and a platform that opposes pretty much everything Clinton's candidacy

> stood for -- and that Barack Obama's still does. To vote in protest 
> for McCain/Palin would be like saying, "Somebody stole my shoes, so 
> I'll amputate my legs."
>
> This is not to beat up on Palin. I defend her right to be wrong, even 
> on issues that matter most to me. I regret that people say she can't 
> do the job because she has children in need of care, especially if 
> they wouldn't say the same about a father. I get no pleasure from 
> imagining her in the spotlight on national and foreign policy issues 
> about which she has zero background, with one month to learn to 
> compete with Sen. Joe Biden's 37 years' experience.
>
> Palin has been honest about what she doesn't know. When asked last 
> month about the vice presidency, she said, "I still can't answer
that 
> question until someone answers for me: What is it exactly that the VP 
> does every day?" When asked about Iraq, she said, "I haven't
really 
> focused much on the war in Iraq."
>
> She was elected governor largely because the incumbent was unpopular, 
> and she's won over Alaskans mostly by using unprecedented oil wealth 
> to give a $1,200 rebate to every resident. Now she is being praised by 
> McCain's campaign as a tax cutter, despite the fact that Alaska has no

> state income or sales tax. Perhaps McCain has opposed affirmative 
> action for so long that he doesn't know it's about inviting more 
> people to meet standards, not lowering them. Or perhaps McCain is 
> following the Bush administration habit, as in the Justice Department, 
> of putting a job candidate's views on "God, guns and gays"
ahead of 
> competence. The difference is that McCain is filling a job one 
> 72-year-old heartbeat away from the presidency.
>
> 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; the same ones who nixed anyone who is now or 
> ever has been a supporter of reproductive freedom. If that were not 
> the case, McCain could have chosen a woman who knows what a vice 
> president does and who has thought about Iraq; someone like Texas Sen. 
> Kay Bailey Hutchison or Sen. Olympia Snowe of Maine. McCain could have 
> taken a baby step away from right-wing patriarchs who determine his 
> actions, right down to opposing the Violence Against Women Act.
>
> 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.
>
> So far, the major new McCain supporter that Palin has attracted is 
> James Dobson of Focus on the Family. Of course, for Dobson, "women
are 
> merely waiting for their husbands to assume leadership," so he may be

> voting for Palin's husband.
>
> Being a hope-a-holic, however, I can see two long-term bipartisan 
> gains from this contest.
>
> Republicans may learn they can't appeal to right-wing patriarchs and 
> most women at the same time. A loss in November could cause the 
> centrist majority of Republicans to take back their party, which was 
> the first to support the Equal Rights Amendment and should be the last 
> to want to invite government into the wombs of women.
>
> 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. Barack Obama and Joe Biden 
> are campaigning on their belief that men should be, can be and want to 
> be at home for their children.
>
> This could be huge.
>
> Gloria Steinem is an author, feminist organizer and co-founder of the 
> Women's Media Center. She supported Hillary Clinton and is now 
> supporting Barack Obama.





      
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