Gloria Steinem on Sarah Palin

Date:   9/11/2008 7:32:53 PM ( 16 y ago)

I am Gloria, hear me roar...Steinem on Palin
Posted by: "Patrice A. Carington" pcaring4you@hotmail.com pcaring4you2
Wed Sep 10, 2008 12:15 pm (PDT)

Interesting.

One of the most respected Women's-rights Activists

SPEAKS.

Patrice

_____

Subject: Fw: I am Gloria, hear me roar...Steinem on Palin

I am Gloria, hear me roar...Steinem on Palin:

From the Los Angeles Times

Opinion

Palin: wrong woman, wrong message

Sarah Palin shares nothing but a chromosome with Hillary Clinton. She is

Phyllis Schlafly, only younger.

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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