Sarah Palin

There's been a lot said about Sarah Palin and I don't want to get into rehashing it, but I do want to share a few of my thoughts on this woman. As a jumping off point I'd like to point you towards this article that appeared in The Daily Beast. A democrat and former editor of Ms. Magazine says she knows Palin to be a smart and thoughtful feminist. If she's right I think we have a much scarier situation on our hands. Clearly the main thesis of those on the left has been quite the opposite. Recent ridiculing of fruit fly research has been shown as an example of her disturbing lack of scientific literacy and we are encouraged to conclude from this that her literacy on other important aspects of government and society is equally lacking. If Ms. Lafferty is correct and Palin thinks these things through then I fear we must conclude that this statement was made with deliberate calculation. This would suggest that she is not merely ideologically (or religiously) so skeptical of science that she sees it as an expendable part of the federal budget, but that she might be actively exploiting the ignorance of the American public to promote her agenda of destroying our scientific infrastructure. True this may have been an innocent mistake or the mistake of a speech writer, but there are just too many examples of lying ("I was vindicated!") or vast hyperbole ("Obama palls around with terrorists!") in her rhetoric that a mistake seems much less likely. If she is thoughtful, if she is intellectually curious, if she "asks questions, and probes linkages and logic" as Ms. Lafferty insists then she deserves much more condemnation and outrage then she has hitherto been subject to. I think that thus far she has been able to hide behind the persona of an innocent when she works her crowds into frenzies of racist fear and anger over this dangerous terrorist she claims to be running against. If John McCain did this sort of thing (instead of his meek statements that Obama is a family man) the outrage would be ferocious. But Palin has been getting away with it. If she really was a ditz you'd hope McCain knows that and until he croaks it'd be safe to trust that her capacity for damage-by-ignorance would be curtailed. If she's a brainiac we risk another more radical Cheney.

As far as her feminism goes I find it gross that any democratic woman or Hillary supporter would abandon their party for McCain. Why? Because issues matter. Issues matter so much more than symbols. Geraldine Ferraro was on NBC after the Biden-Palin debate saying that she was rooting for Biden because she's a democrat, but rooting for Palin because she is a feminist. She was happy to see her hold her own because it set an example for her grandchildren that women can do this. I see such perversion in her thinking. Palin should be able to fail on her own, without it telling us that women aren't capable. This idea that any woman in the public eye makes or breaks the image of all women is in of itself a sexist and offensive idea. We are a diverse gender and this seems totally lost on everyone, feminists especially. Palin doesn't represent me. She and I share nothing politically. Unlike Hillary who worked her way to the ballot, Palin was selected. John McCain decided who would represent women in this election on the national stage. Who gave him that right? Doesn't it belittle us to have our 'representative' chosen by a man? Hillary fought for political change, she fought for the middle class, she fought the progressive fight and that fight is the substance that makes Hillary worth admiration. Sure she deserves an extra dose of adulation for getting so far as a woman, but to distill her down to the single dimension of her gender is to insult and patronize her. To phrase Palin merely because of her gender is to insult and patronize her and every other woman whose broken any glass ceiling anywhere.

Occasionally Palin claims to be in support of various women's issues: support for parents of special needs children, or equal pay, or title IX etc. But you don't have to look very far to see the truth that this is mere pandering. Indeed you can look no farther than the above mentioned fruit fly comment. Those very same fruit flies have lead to the discovery of key proteins involved in autism. Remember McCain's enthusiasm for that cause in the last debate? How are you going to help if you cut funding? This is hypocrisy pure and simple.