Gloria Steinem On Sarah Palin

[sixdogsmom]

 
   
 
 
   

Opinion
Palin: wrong woman, wrong message
Sarah Palin shares nothing but a chromosome with Hillary Clinton. She is Phyllis Schlafly, only younger.
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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[Teresa]

What a bunch of drivel...

So let me get this straight.......!
In order to further the cause of "women", you have to think a certain way? HER way?
Is that really furthering the cause of females across the board? What about women who think like Palin, and not SteinHAM? They don't count?
Also, like most liberals, Steinem confuses personal policy and governmental policy. The question is, do you want government  to make policies based on someones personal beliefs or based on whats good for the nation as a whole?  You see.... people on the left, feel the government is there to advocate and legislate their position.... which is why they see someone like Palin who differs from them a threat.. and they think... OMG... we can't let this women in the White House.

Yet, why does she have an 80% approval rate in her own state?
Are they just a bunch of bible thumping morons ( who of course cling to their religion and guns) ...
The leftists would say yes...

Steinem and her liberal feminists are a one trick pony. Instead of praising a woman (who they may disagree with on some policies) who didn't use her husband or aristocratic family to make it to the top.... they put her down because she has differing ideas.
Wouldn't it be wiser and healthier for females to have a diversity (favorite word for liberals when it comes to quotas they agree with) of opinion, rather then a monolithic one like the world inhabited by Steinem?

Steinem thinks her opinions represent most women. Why does this assumption pervert everything we read or hear about women? It is simply not true. It has been proven in numerous polls but since it is not what the media wants to present, it is covered up by the mantra of lies.
Funny how these liberals always want change until its their 40-year Washington insider against one of our outsiders. They're all about change, only when it's convenient and involves a guy by the name of Marx.

[Teresa]

And another thing..
( I'm still upset and I have to add this or I won;t go to sleep)

Why would this woman compare completely non-related issues in the same sentence as if they were directly linked.

Sarah believes that creationism should be taught in public schools but disbelieves global warming . . ."

In an interview Thursday, Palin said she meant only to say that discussion of alternative views should be allowed to arise in Alaska classrooms:

"I don't think there should be a prohibition against debate if it comes up in class. It doesn't have to be part of the curriculum."

She added that, if elected, she would not push the state Board of Education to add such creation-based alternatives to the state's required curriculum.

Members of the state school board, which sets minimum requirements, are appointed by the governor and confirmed by the Legislature.

"I won't have religion as a litmus test, or anybody's personal opinion on evolution or creationism," Palin said.

Palin has occasionally discussed her lifelong Christian faith during the governor's race but said teaching creationism is nothing she has campaigned about or even given much thought to.
AND, to compare this to global warming . . . why would you make this comparison?

" . . . she opposes gun control but supports government control of women's wombs;"

DON"T EVEN get me started on that stupid comparison.

And the part about sharing a chromosome??  I'm very glad Sarah Palin and Hillary Clinton only share a chromosome.

Sarah Palin is an HONEST leader who will have the best interest of everyone in mind when she makes decisions..... not just a slice here and a slice there like Hillary Clinton. Sarah Palin doesn't have time to be a "feminist"......... she's to busy doing her best to do what's right.

My opinion of Steinem is that she is afraid of Palin.  Palin has done what Steinem only dreamed she could have ever accomplished. 
Governor Palin's nomination has exposed the inauthenticity of the left. Apparently... for the leftist feminists, only liberal women are qualified to be trail-blazers.
She would totally support Palin if she were a liberal Democrat.  This woman is a full blown hypocrite.

Steinem complains that Sarah Palin, "opposes everything most other women want and need".
I'm only a small town 55 year old woman ...but I can pretty much vouch for the fact the Ms. Steinem has not a clue as to what I want or need... and in fact I agree very little.. in fact zip.. zero.. nana.. with this old school feminist. ( and that is a nice term for her)

She is an old bitter has-been who has become just another talking head for Obama and the far left. She does a good job of spouting the leftist propaganda but doesn't have the journalistic integrity to really talk about Sarah Palin's true views and record.
Palin wasn't chosen for her "value to patriarchs". She was chosen for her record of achievement and for her close match to the values and goals of McCain. She was chosen for her knowledge of energy and her willingness to promote a new area for drilling in Alaska that is smaller than the acreage of the Los Angele's Airport for goodness sake!

Oh yeah...and "selecting Sarah Palin, who was touted all summer by Rush Limbaugh..."

Correction:
It was Bill Kristol who mainly promoted Sarah Palin during the summer.

I think the women of the United States knows a real woman when we see one.
She has earned her nickname...."The Arctic Fox...." Sarah Barracuda....

[Warph]

Gloria Steinem and the far left socialist-liberals hijacked the women's movement and drove it into the liberal ditch.  My years in Washington taught me to know the liberal terrain well - from deep inside.  Gloria Steinem lives in the past and with a motive for stirring up controversy to continue to make a role for herself based upon a perceived societal need which no longer exists.  She is a societal relic.  When she and her ilk die off, society will be able to place her where she belongs, in her rightful place in history in the second part of the Twentieth Century.  Women as a society have moved well downfield of her message, years ago.  Steinem has become irrelevant.  Socialists like Steinem can only call names; she can't debate issues because the american women  don't agree with her anymore.

As for Steinem's politics..... their crap.... she being a hard core Hillary supporter for years, it only took her two days to make her switch to Obama.  To hear her talk now, he's better than sex.  Obama reeks of radical-liberal-liberationist-socialist philosphy and Steinem is eating it up.  He's the obvious walking/talking/must be a duck.  For crying out loud - why else did he stay with Trinity Church all those twenty plus years?  It's simple, the man was in his element.  So If women are to believe his explanation that he just didn't see what was going on, then he is way too dumb and blind to be the leader of the free world.  So wake up , people..... the moderate positions he has espoused now for the duration of the campaign: that is all typical political BS strategy - campaign from the center, get elected, then screw the country with his real radical-liberal-liberationist-socialist-commie agenda.

[Diane Amberg]

Regardless, I enjoyed reading Gloria Steinem's article. I like to see both sides of an issue. I don't enjoy "name calling " on any side. Gloria and Sarah are on different sides and are in totally different stages of their lives. Sarah is still having children. Gloria is much older. Should she just go sit in her rocking chair and keep her mouth shut? Should I?  Since when is "activism" a dirty word with either party? People should be able to be passionate about an issue with out having a nasty label attached to them, and I mean on either side. There is room in this country for many ideas, many churches, many hospitals, many banks, all based on different principles. Regardless of how this election falls, I still don't think it will be as good, or as bad, as a lot of people say. There is so much influence by congress, lobbyists and others that "Pure Thought" is impossible.

[dnalexander]

My years in Washington taught me to know the liberal terrain well - from deep inside.

Warph what did you do in Washington? I bet you have some good stories to tell. I would like to hear more about your time "deep inside" Washington. Just learned something new about you, but it doesn't surprise me that you spent time in Washington.

David

[Teresa]

*smile*
There is a lot of things about Warph and a few others in the if forum that would surprise everyone if they knew.
We have people of awesome intelligence in here on many levels. 
Just because those people do not come out into the public and tell everything about themselves is okay.
Even if I didn't know them... you couldn't fail to recognize the knowledge and intelligence that they have. 

[mtcookson]

" . . . she opposes gun control but supports government control of women's wombs;"

DON"T EVEN get me started on that stupid comparison.

Its doesn't take much on that one... a constitutionally protected right versus murder, I would think that one would be pretty easy.

In my opinion, if they absolutely have to have their abortion "rights" then I would like to have a right to kill murderers, rapists, child molesters, and any thieves who attempt to harm any of my family, friends, or I without anyone giving me crap for it (or at least kill the murderers and heavily maim the other "lesser" offenders). If mothers are allowed to deem their babies unworthy or unneeded for the population then I would like to have the same right for those people who truly are unworthy to be of the population... but since I know the libbies would never allow that I would never allow libbies the right to murder an innocent baby either (even if I did have the right to dispatch those worthless people mentioned above I still wouldn't let people kill innocent babies as that is wrong on so many levels).

Trivia... did you know that even if the father of the unborn child says he would take complete custody and care of the child the mother can still have it aborted? So, so, so wrong.

Anyway... there are so many methods of birth control these days that work rather well like abstinence, condoms, pills, whatever that if you're still too irresponsible that you can't use one of those methods then you best be prepared to have a baby. Heck... if you're still using "protection" you best be ready to have a child regardless as the only thing that is 100% guaranteed to work is to not do it at all (i.e. abstinence)... except in the virgin Mary's case .

[dnalexander]

*smile*
There is a lot of things about Warph and a few others in the if forum that would surprise everyone if they knew.
We have people of awesome intelligence in here on many levels. 
Just because those people do not come out into the public and tell everything about themselves is okay.
Even if I didn't know them... you couldn't fail to recognize the knowledge and intelligence that they have. 

Some of my humorous and true thoughts on this topic, Warph's post, and Teresa's post.

I thought Gloria Steinem died. I have not heard of her for years.

On Warph I will keep it as short as possible.

My favorite poster to read.
Love the mystery but would love to hear more about your inside Washington.
Your profile says you are in Suprise, Az. President McCain is that you?
Warph backwards is Hillary's Politcally Righteous Assault Weapon. Hillary is that you?
I respect your privacy.
Why where those guys in black asking about you?
Where will you hide when Obama becomes President.
I hate clowns (Newbies you will have to read a lot of past posts to follow all this)

Teresa you are so right we do have a bunch of intelligent, interesting, surprising people on the forum

David

[Warph]

Now I  know what you're thinking, David.  You're thinking, Ol' Warph had some kind a highfalutin, fol-de-rol position in Washington like a Subterranean Waste Materials Management Consultant in the bowels of the old Democratic Party Headquarter building over on South Capital St. ... right??   Well... you'd be wrong, pal... although what I did tended to stink at times and we'll let it go at that.  I'm retired now and live in AZ where all the old duffers go, try to play a little golf and do some volunteer work.