To the left, Palin is not a real woman
Posted by Richard on September 12, 2008
Jonah Goldberg (emphasis added):
Feminist author Cintra Wilson writes in Salon (a house organ of the angry left) that the notion of Palin as vice president is “akin to ideological brain rape.” Presumably just before the nurse upped the dosage on her medication, Wilson continued, “Sarah Palin and her virtual burqa have me and my friends retching into our handbags. She’s such a power-mad, backwater beauty-pageant casualty, it’s easy to write her off and make fun of her. But in reality I feel as horrified as a ghetto Jew watching the rise of National Socialism.”
And that’s one of the nicer things she had to say. Really.
…
On Tuesday, Salon ran one article calling Palin a dominatrix (“a whip-wielding mistress”) and another labeling her a sexually repressed fundamentalist no different from the Muslim fanatics and terrorists of Hamas. Make up your minds, folks. Is she a seductress or a sex-a-phobe?
But this any-weapon-near-to-hand approach is an obvious sign of how scared the Palin-o-phobes are.
Gloria Steinem, the grand mufti of feminism, issued a fatwa anathematizing Palin. A National Organization for Women spokeswoman proclaimed Palin more of a man than a woman. Wendy Doniger, a feminist academic at the University of Chicago, writes of Palin in Newsweek: “Her greatest hypocrisy is in her pretense that she is a woman.”
It’s funny. The left has been whining about having their patriotism questioned for so long it feels like they started griping in the Mesozoic era. Feminists have argued for decades that womanhood is an existential and metaphysical state of enlightenment. But they have no problem questioning whether women they hate are really women at all.
This strikes me as completely unsurprising and quite in character. This is exactly how the left has repeatedly treated blacks who dared to depart from leftist orthodoxy: belittle them, condemn them as "oreos" (that is to say, not authentically black), do anything and everything to destroy them as punishment for their apostasy. Look at how they treated Clarence Thomas and Ward Connerly. Look at how they caricatured Michael Steele:
The people who loudly proclaim their concern for women and minorities always savagely attack any woman or minority who doesn't fall into line and do what they're told.
As I noted a short while ago (evoking incredulity from some readers), the left is far less tolerant and more judgmental than the right. They're convinced that anyone who disagrees with them is not just wrong, but evil. And because of their situational ethics and belief that the end justifies the means, they've convinced themselves that anything they do to defeat their enemies is morally justified.
Palin can expect more of the same. But I'm guessing it will backfire badly.
Hathor said
Women on the left are more than Gloria Steinem or Cintra Wilson, which only for effect does one say they speak for feminist or any woman. What I don’t like about Palin may not be entirely issue related, and I wouldn’t deny that she is a woman, but I feel that I have been just as extraordinary as she and that as an example of some superwoman, she’s not.
The sense that I have gotten, from some of your post iand some others on the right, is that she is the embodiment of Dagny Taggart.
rgcombs said
You must have missed my post quoting Bill Whittle:
”Sarah Palin is the anti-Obama: not a victim, not a poser, not riding a wave but rather swimming upstream — and most of all, not having run for president her entire life. ”’She is the first politician I have ever seen — and I include Ronnie in this, God bless him — who strikes everyone who sees her as an actual, real, ordinary person.”’ …”
”… I think the magic of Sarah Palin speaks to a belief that so many of us share: the sense that ”’we personally know five people in our immediate circle who would make a better president than the menagerie of candidates the major parties routinely offer.”’ …”
And my reaction:
”Can I get an “Amen”?”
Neither I nor Whittle — nor, I believe, many other Palin fans — see her as a “superwoman.” Quite the opposite. We see her as real, genuine, and down-to-earth.
We prefer such a person to a charismatic, messianic leader — a man on a white horse. We tend to approve of [http://rgcombs.blog-city.com/bill_buckley_wordsmith.htm the late Bill Buckley’s famous quote]:
”I should sooner live in a society governed by the first two thousand names in the Boston telephone directory than in a society governed by the two thousand faculty members of Harvard University.”
Hathor said
During my generation many black folk aspired to be the best, including the best education one could get. We were also constantly told to bring ourselves by our boot straps and use education as a means. Now it seems those same people call black folk elitist when they get an education, know how to use the right fork and speak well. He is no more elitist than any other black person that has went to a top ten university, including my sister and cousin, who grew up with middle class values and aspirations, not money. When you imply that Obama is not the common folk, you are right; because to black folk from my generation “common” meant those who had no values or aspirations.
Condoleezza Rice would be the role model for my child, not Sarah Palin.
Hathor said
I was thinking about that last comment I made and thought this best described part of what I trying to say. Thinking also that it may be cultural, but then again, Obama was raised by his white mother and grandparents, so I would imagine whites from that generation had aspirations to be more than just common.