We need to take a collective breath and sober up from the drunken frenzy of trashing female politicians. We're stoning Gov. Palin for all we heralded in Barack. And we stoned Sen. Clinton for all that Barack has become.
In the last several weeks I've received desperate emails from people who don't normally email about politics, purporting to warn me and/or their entire email list about the evils of Governor Sara Palin. There is an urgency, a fear in their messages - this woman must be stopped. They feel free, emboldened, to completely trash her personally and professionally. This popular Governor is somehow to them a joke; she's not qualified to be vice-president, let alone president. I mean, really, who does she think she is? A woman in my office who would describe herself as a feminist was cackling so loudly the other day treating this accomplished woman as if she were a piteous lowlife and how dare she think she could be vice-president. They're amost offended by her existence, yet these are people who think Barack Obama is fully justified in thinking he could be president.
In January 2007 I wrote an opinion piece for the London Guardian and Huffington Post entitled "Who Does Barack Obama Think He Is?" which began as follows:
Who does he think he is? We must ask this question, because it's the kind of question that would be asked if a 45-year-old female political neophyte declared, as Barack Obama did today, that she was taking the initial steps toward a presidential bid. In fact, the public wouldn't get the chance to ask it of a 45-year-old woman with barely two years of national political experience, because, unlike Obama, the media would never take her seriously...
Even before Barack declared, the media treated him as an equal contender to a woman with impressive national stature and experience. Everyone claimed it wasn't just because they so desperately wanted a man, however naive, to beat Sen. Clinton. They claimed it was precisely his youth, his inexperience, his unfamiliarity with Washington that made him a great candidate. And his good looks added to his presidential sheen - in their eyes. He had barely served two years as a US Senator, and before that only worked as a legislator and community organizer. Obama's campaign and his Obama-azi's flooded the internet insisting national experience didn't matter and noting that most of our recent presidents have been governors with no national experience.
So why are we publicly stoning Gov. Palin for the things we heralded in Barack? She's too young, she doesn't have national experience. And her looks somehow work against her. Eugene Robinson, one of several liberal black columnists who are so happy to have a black man running yet they're free to parrot his sexism, writes this about a sitting governor:
"It's not her fault that she's a former Miss Wasilla .... [with] no discernible qualifications for being vice president."
How come Barack's looks impress people but Eugene feels free to denigrate a sitting governor because she's attractive? And has Eugene forgotten that being governor was a "discernible" qualification for four out of our last five presidents? Not good enough for a woman, huh, Eugene? Sexism breeds the same kind of bigotry as racism.
And Leonard Pitts, another liberal black columnist who can't dish out the sexist slurs fast enough, first patronizes those silly women who claim the media was sexist towards Sen. Clinton, then describes Gov. Palin as "a woman who until six years ago was mayor of Wasilla, Alaska, population: 5,469." What happened to her status as governor? He completely omitted it and treated her only as a mayor. Then he deigns to claim McCain is "objectifying" Gov. Palin because she is so obviously, hideously, laughably unqualified. Give me a break. By Leonard's logic, then, much of the country and the media has been objectifying the youthful, inexperienced and pretty Barack - and he seems to like it.
David Ignatious of the Washington Post actually acknowledges that Barack and Gov. Palin are similarly young and accomplished but with low levels of experience, but claims that Barack's running for president provides him additional qualifications for being president. (Recall that Obama claimed that Sen. Clinton's experience as First Lady for eight years and living in the White House and travelling internationally with a president didn't count because she was just a wife, but his running for president for a few years makes him qualified.)
Recapping, David, the Washington Post columnist whose an expert in global politics, claims that Barack is more qualified than a popular sitting governor because Barack has been running for president longer. And they laugh at Palin for suggesting that being governor of a state that borders Russia is relevant? Recall that newspapers endorsed Barack over Sen. Clinton because as a seven year-old he lived in Indonesia and that somehow counted as foreign policy experience.
When will people say enough? When will women say enough?
We need to take a collective breath and sober up from the drunken frenzy of trashing female politicians. Or one day all of you finger waggers will wake up like the pious Count in the movie Chocolat with chocolate smeared over all over your faces as you finally, humblely accept that your rage was really directed at your deep fears. Look in your mirror now and ask what you're afraid of? What is it about women stepping outside their traditional roles that scares you so much?
People say it's not because she's a woman, but because her stand on some issues may be outside the mainstream. Really? Yet John, at the top of the ticket, shares most of the views they claim to despair in Gov. Palin, but not one of them sent email warnings about the dangers of John. And Barack's got plenty of bizarre skeletons in his closet. Worshipping at the heels of a black supremacist isn't usually viewed as mainstream. And for those liberals who claim she endangers our constitutional rights, your candidate Barack reversed himself last summer and voted for FISA - President Bush's nefarious trampling of our constitutional rights in the trumped up war on terror.
We're stoning Gov. Palin for all we heralded in Barack. And we stoned Sen. Clinton for all that Barack has become.
We reviled Sen. Clinton for moving to the center in a calculated way - we didn't want politicians like that, Barack's fans said. Yet Barack's FISA reversal was just a small part of his very calculated move to win votes in the center. Sen. Clinton knew you have to appeal to the center to win and had already positioned herself there - we ridiculed her for being coldly calculating. Now Barack's done the same thing and he's admired as a brilliant strategist. He's followed Sen. Clinton on repudiating public financing and on cozying up to Washington insider's - he's completely adopted her playbook and yet we don't stone him.
So many people who wrote such bigoted disrespectful comments about Sen. Clinton insisted it wasn't because she's a woman, it was because of her. Now those same people insist women shouldn't vote for Gov. Palin because she's no Sen. Clinton. If Palin is indeed so different than Clinton, then why are we treating her the same?
This unbridled freedom to trash women politicians was unleashed cleverly in the primary as the sinister strategy of Barack Obama and David Axelrod, the democrats' answer to Karl Rove. The British New Statesmen published an excellent piece in May detailing how Obama's campaign used 1950's-style McCarthyism politics to foment what turned into "gloating, unshackled sexism of the ugliest kind":
Hillary Clinton (along with her husband) is being universally depicted as a loathsome racist and negative campaigner, not so much because of anything she has said or done, but because the overwhelmingly pro-Obama media - consciously or unconsciously - are following the agenda of Senator Barack Obama and his chief strategist, David Axelrod, to tear to pieces the first serious female US presidential candidate in history.
They did it to Sen. Clinton and now they're doing it to Gov. Palin. She has high popularity ratings now in Alaska - where will she stand after Barack and the media get done with her?
As with Sen. Clinton, none of the attacks on Palin are at all nuanced. No one acknowledges her many accomplishments. Her impressive rise to become such a popular governor by her mid-forties. Who among her finger-waggers could stand before the Republican National Convention and deliver such a dynamic speech with the nation watching?
DIsagree with her on the issues all you want, but afford her the same respect we give to male politicians similarly situated. Take a breath and step away from the witch hunt, put down the stones and notice she's an impressive human being who's accomplished much in her life.
The playwright Wendy Wasserstein brilliantly depicted this dark side of our culture in her work An American Daughter. In that play, the nomination of a doctor with impressive credentials and all the right Ivy League degrees for Surgeon General unleashes a public lynching wherein every tiny thought of hers is scrutinized and every action of hers ridiculed and by the end this impressive doctor is reduced to tatters. Wasserstein's words in the play are something to the effect of, "Nothing brings more delight to the American public than challenging the competence of a professional women."
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