Sarah Palin just resigned as governor of Alaska.

I would say something but I’m too busy sitting here with my mouth open.

Holy shit. I guess we will have another woman running for President.

UPDATE: here’s a link from Reuters with her remarks at the press conference.

UPDATE #2: Video and transcript:

Transcript after the jump.

Read the rest of this entry »

Posted by Violet under Sarah Palin on July 3, 2009, 4:28 pm EST

28 Comments »

My brief run as a 24/7 Michael Jackson Is Dead blogger kind of petered out there since I didn’t really give a shit — or at least not enough of a shit — but anyway, before this opening sentence crawls any further up my ass, this is actually kind of interesting:

It’s eerie, watching him rehearse like that, just two days before he died. Yes: the Eerie has finally arrived. I’m actually feeling it! Christ, next thing I’ll be placing teddy bears and handwritten notes outside the gates of Neverland.

What’s interesting to me, as a former circus performer myself, is watching this almost-dead man and trying to figure out his status. He’s kind of marking his way through the number, which is understandable for a rehearsal. (Alicia Markova used to walk through her rehearsals in high heels and fur coat.) But he’s in time and on cue and knows what he’s doing: not the picture of a doddering pill-addled incompetent.

In other news: Debbie Rowe will seek custody, Michael is going to be buried at the Staples Center, and Jermaine wishes he’d died instead. Teddy bears for everyone!

Posted by Violet under Various and Sundry on July 2, 2009, 5:27 pm EST

15 Comments »

Vanity Fair continues its fine tradition of journalism.

The infamous Vanity Fair piece on Sarah Palin — you’ve heard of it by now, right? — is a fascinating study in the lack of self-awareness. The source for the article, McCain campaign chief Steve Schmidt, is an egomaniacal Republican strategist who thinks people with lady parts have no business running for office, especially if those lady parts have recently produced babies. The article is little more than a brain dump of his warped hatreds and resentments, compounded by a sense of burning injustice that he — a man! a man with no lady parts at all! — actually had to work for a lady-parts person. That the lady-parts person had ideas of her own and expected the campaign staff to do their jobs (rather than, say, trashing her to their buddies in the press) just made the situation even more intolerable.

Alll of this is lovingly and uncritically transcribed by Vanity Fair editor Todd Purdum, who describes Palin as an “indisputably fertile female” whose life resembles “an unholy amalgam of Desperate Housewives and Northern Exposure.” What these two men — Schmidt and Purdum — think they’re doing is very different from what they’re actually doing. They think they’re showing us that people with lady parts are idiot bimbos who need to shut the fuck up. What they’re really doing, of course, is demonstrating the full extent to which they are sexist freakazoids from hell who are the main reason Palin and other political women have such a goddamn Sisyphusian task.

So, lesson number one: Women running for political office need to stay the hell away from male campaign strategists. If it has a dick, don’t hire it. Just stay away. I realize that sounds unfair, but the problem is there’s just no telling how much of a bruised male ego any one of these clowns is carrying around in his pants. He might say his job is to get you elected, and he may even believe it, but deep inside his tiny brain there may lurk a resentful sexist pig who feels compelled to undermine lady-parts people. Patriarchy is strong.

Lesson number two: The media is not your friend. Ever. They all hate you. Doesn’t matter if you’re a Republican or a Democrat, liberal or conservative, pro-choice or anti-abortion, brilliant or mediocre, young or old, pretty or plain. If you have lady parts, they hate you.

Lesson number three: This has nothing to do with politics. So-called progressives don’t hate Sarah Palin because she’s a Republican; they hate her because she’s female. Check out all the liberal blogs that are joyfully citing the Vanity Fair piece and commiserating with their new best friend, Steve Schmidt. Notice that Steve Schmidt is a Republican and a Rovian insider who helped re-elect George Bush in 2004. He oversaw PR for the Alito and Roberts confirmations, acted as Dick Cheney’s spokesman for awhile, and ran Governator Schwarzenegger’s campaign in 2006. His politics are the same as Palin’s. But he has a dick, and Todd Purdum of Vanity Fair has a dick, and the progressive bloggers have dicks, and thus they can all join hands across the political aisle to wank each other off in their mutual hatred for a lady-parts person.

Lesson number four: Feminists of the youth persuasion who still haven’t figured out lessons one through three need to school up. Joining in with the Palin-bashing and the rest of the woman-bashing in the culture doesn’t get you a pass; it doesn’t make you an honorary man. You’re still a lady-parts person, and the dudes will as soon destroy you as Sarah Palin.

Edited to add: You know what this reminds me of? This thing with progressive types suddenly discovering that Republican hacks are models of truthfulness? This.

Posted by Violet under Sarah Palin on July 1, 2009, 11:14 pm EST

57 Comments »

From the comments at Us Magazine:

11:16 PM Anna Says:

Oh God!, Why Michael, why? I’m so speechless, i dont have words to explain how im feeling. When i think of Michael i cry, when i hear a song i cry, i just cry. He is the KING OF POP, KING OF MUSIC. He made it alive, from the dancing to the singing. I LOVE YOU MICHAEL,. Just reading that headline “Michael Jackson DEAD” OMG NO!!! It’s like a nightmare that i cant come out of. I LUV U MICHAEL JACKSON

Damn. Were people really that emotionally invested in Michael Jackson’s life? Really?

I’m reminded of when John F. Kennedy, Jr. (John-John) and his wife died in that plane crash. In short order there appeared at my local supermarket a glossy sort of magazine-cum-book, with big photos of the dead couple and bathetic remembrances of them.

I asked my boyfriend-at-the-time, “why do people buy things like that?”

“To feel sad,” he said.

There isn’t enough already to feel sad about? I thought.

I’m also reminded of the missionaries who accompanied the Spanish conquistadors to the New World. They tried to tell the indigenous people about The One who had suffered and died and then risen from the grave. “Do you know this man?” the Indians would ask, puzzled.

No, the missionaries should have said, but we like to imagine we do.

Posted by Violet under Various and Sundry on June 27, 2009, 8:11 pm EST

58 Comments »

Perceptive commenter Modem XX writes:

I’m just wondering what went on in D.C. today while everyone was distracted by the deaths of Farrah and Michael.

Oh, nothing much. Just a love note from the White House that they’re putting together a new Executive Order giving President God the right to indefinitely detain anybody he feels like indefinitely detaining:

Obama Considers Order on Detention

I understand the order also comes with a giant set of gold epaulettes.

Which reminds me: didn’t Michael Jackson wear epaulettes? Why yes, he did. Perhaps if we highlight that angle we can get the media to cover the fricking story.

You know, I was as shocked as anybody by Jackson’s death. He died young, and that’s sad. His whole goddamn life was sad. Huge talent, even huger fucked-upedness. Sad.

What I didn’t realize, however, and which I am just now starting to grasp, is that Michael Jackson was not just a gifted popstar, not just a tragically crazy recluse. He was, in fact, the most important person who has ever lived.

The truth started to dawn on me late Thursday, when Beyonce was quoted as saying that Michael Jackson was the most important figure in the entire history of music. This surprised me. But even Beyonce, bless her, had not yet grasped the full import of Jackson’s life.

Unlike the Beatles, Michael Jackson really was bigger than Jesus. His life was epochal. World history will be dated from his death. As we speak, MSNBC is in talks to change its name to the Michael Jackson National Broadcasting Corporation. The Washington Post will become The Michael Jackson Post. The state of Indiana is expected to change its name to Jacksoniana, though a minority faction is pushing for just “Michael.” Vast stretches of the Amazon rain forest are being dedicated to the eternal memory of Michael Jackson. A galaxy will be named after him.

And from now on, everything to be reported on or discussed in public must be tied in some way to Michael Jackson. Google News (soon to be re-christened Michael Jackson Google News) is already in gear. The protesters in Iran: have they ever heard any Michael Jackson songs? The governor of South Carolina, King David: which does he prefer, early Jackson 5-era Michael or the later, Thriller Michael? Or god help us, The Wiz? Swine flu: are Michael Jackson fans at greater risk of contracting the virus as they gather for memorial services?

Personally I’m excited to witness the dawn of a new era in world history. Takes my mind off things.

Posted by Violet under Various and Sundry on June 27, 2009, 12:41 am EST

23 Comments »

Today was Take Molly To The Vet Day.

Before we left for the vet: Farrah Fawcett died!

After we got home from the vet: Michael Jackson died!

It’s celebrity death day. Fawcett’s passing was sad but not unexpected, since she was ill with cancer. But the Jackson thing is a huge shock. And no, I don’t have anything insightful or clever or important to say about it; I’m just startled. Dude was only four years older than I am.

I know I said yesterday my next post would be on the future of NOW, but I need to get through my emails first and see what’s going on with the Secret Feminist Cabal that rules the world. You didn’t know this blog was the nerve center for the global shadow government, did you?

Posted by Violet under Various and Sundry on June 25, 2009, 7:03 pm EST

28 Comments »

I want to talk about the future of NOW, and that’s going to be my next post. But first, it’s time to dispel some of the nonsense about the election:

#1: The real issue at the NOW election was that the organization is broke and going nowhere fast. Membership has nose-dived and so has revenue (which is primarily based on membership dues):

During the two year period from 2005 to 2007, total revenue declined $1,189,644 or almost 40%. For the past three years, NOW’s expenditures have exceeded income, and NOW Inc. has been forced to borrow money from The NOW Foundation to stay solvent…

During the last election cycle (2005-2009), NOW’s membership declined approximately 10% per year and current membership figures are probably around 60,000…

The current Membership VP (Latifa Lyles) and her five-member team are directly responsible for a catastrophic 40% decline in membership and corresponding decline in revenues that imperils the continued operation of NOW.

In addition, something like 28% of NOW’s membership revenue goes just to pay the salaries of the four people at the top (the president and three VPs).

#2: Latifa Lyles has been the Membership VP during this period of catastrophic decline. She was running for president on a record of under-achievement, to put it mildly. Terry O’Neill, on the other hand, maintained overall membership levels during her tenure as Membership VP a few years ago, enhancing outreach efforts and bringing in new members each year.

#3: Latifa Lyles was not the candidate of change; she was the hand-picked successor of Kim Gandy and Ellie Smeal (who is the power behind the throne, as it were). Latifa’s election would have meant a continuation of Ellie Smeal’s control and a continuation of the inside-the-beltway strategy NOW has pursued in recent years.

#4: Terry O’Neill ran on a platform of change: shaking up the organization, re-invigorating the grassroots, re-establishing vendor relations, restoring financial integrity, and re-building membership.

#5: Terry was supported by prominent NOW members, such as Patricia Ireland (past president of NOW and a board member), Olga Vives (the current Vice President of NOW under Kim Gandy), Carol Moseley Braun (former U.S. senator, former Ambassador to New Zealand, 2004 presidential candidate), and Susan Faludi (Backlash, Stiffed, The Terror Dream). She was also supported by many chapter presidents and state presidents: Endorsements and Testimonials.

#6: Terry’s team is every bit as young and diversified as the Lyles slate, with two women under 30 and a woman of color.

#7: Talk about not wanting to relinquish power: the NOW establishment (Kim Gandy and Ellie Smeal) was very intent on blocking any opposition to Latifa Lyles. Some of their tactics at the conference included:

• Refusing to seat delegations on made-up technicalities
• Refusing to credential members in good standing who supported O’Neill
• Confiscating materials from the opposition
• Refusing to recognize questioners
• Cutting the mike while members of the opposition were speaking
• Accusing the opposition of being “enemies” and “infiltrators”

#8: The NOW establishment (Kim Gandy and Ellie Smeal) flew in a bunch of non-voting attendees, attired in campaign colors, to run around shouting and cheerleading in an apparent attempt to give the impression of overwhelming advantage. Of the 575 attendees at the conference, only 406 were eligible to vote.

#9: NOW has not been “infiltrated by pro-lifers.” This is an absurd rumor. First of all, I don’t think there are any pro-lifers (or rather anti-choicers) in NOW. It’s a thoroughly pro-choice organization. Secondly, it’s not possible to infiltrate a NOW election. To vote at the conference, you have to be a delegate from your chapter. And to be a delegate, you have to have been a NOW member for at least three months, and you have to be selected as a delegate by your chapter president. There are a limited number of delegate slots for each chapter.

Furthermore, credentialing at the conference is strict: you have to show picture IDs, present your membership papers, get signed-off by a chapter president, and so forth. Kind of like the Department of Motor Vehicles, but more so.

The people identified at the conference as “Palin supporters” are not pro-lifers. In fact, they’re not even Palin supporters, as I’ll get to next.

#10: It was Kim Gandy who started the rumor that the financial data about NOW (see #1 above) was misinformation being spread by “Palin supporters.” This false accusation, repeated and amplified by Latifa Lyles, led to much of the fireworks at the conference. Patricia Ireland and Terry O’Neill publicly endorsed the financial data as accurate (which it is), thus forcing Gandy to back down. Other supporters and members of Terry’s campaign team, such as Carol Moseley Braun, reacted strongly to Gandy’s smear.

#11: The so-called “Palin supporters” are not followers of Sarah Palin, not Republicans, not pro-lifers, not any of that. They’re just O’Neill supporters who were vocal about questioning Gandy and Lyles. Many of them supported Hillary Clinton last year, so if there’s a common thread other than wanting new NOW leadership, it’s that.

I don’t know what most of them even think about Sarah Palin. It’s not a topic. (One of the women at the conference did go from supporting Hillary to endorsing Palin last year, and she did so for explicitly feminist reasons. She’s a lifelong Democrat, feminist, and pro-choice activist.)

At any rate, there is no Palinist cabal in NOW, nor was there any Palinist group at the conference. Nor any pro-lifers. This is all just nonsense.

#12: It’s perhaps worth stepping back and asking why Sarah Palin is such a reviled figure that the phrase “Palin supporter” is the mark of Cain. NOW itself, under the leadership of Kim Gandy, is part of the reason. NOW cooperated with the Obama campaign last year in spreading lies about Palin designed to make her seem crazily right-wing. Most of the things Palin is reviled for — the rape kit smear, the abstinence-only smear, the anti-contraception smear — are simply not true. Ironically, NOW justifies its vilification of Palin with lies that the organization itself helped spread.

Posted by Violet under NOW election on June 24, 2009, 8:35 pm EST

78 Comments »

The fallout from the NOW election is proving very amusing. Over at Viva La Feminista, Roni writes breathlessly:

There have been comments flying in the blogosphere and Twitter that the Palin people were a rumor. I took pics of at least one of them.

She took a picture! Of “at least one of them”! I’m giggling here like Charlotte Corday in Marat/Sade, and I haven’t even started in on tonight’s Mexican Mudslide.

This is a slightly cropped version of Roni’s photo, snapped no doubt from a moving Land Rover as Jim Fowler readied the tranquilizer dart:

The woman at the mike is Dr. Lynette Long, lifelong feminist activist, NOW member, and a delegate to the conference. Roni labels this photo, 'Palin supporter disrupting #NOW09 plenary.'

Now look: I like Roni, and the few dealings I’ve had with her have been entirely friendly. I don’t mean to get on her case at all. Nothing personal. But this whole episode is like a moving diorama of How Younger Feminists Have Lost Touch With Their Roots.

The label Roni put on the photo reads: “Palin supporter disrupting #NOW09 plenary.” The woman in the picture is actually Dr. Lynette Long, a good friend of mine who is a lifelong feminist activist, prominent Democrat, long-term NOW member, and a delegate to this year’s national conference. I’ll let Lynette summarize her feminist credentials in her own words:

“I have worked an entire lifetime to further feminist causes. My first professional job was teaching remedial high school math to girls. I started a web-based business called Color Math Pink to promote math achievement for girls and I was selected by the American Girl company to write Mathsmarts, a math strategy book for girls. If I am anything, I am a feminist.

“I have researched sex-role stereotyping and gender issues and published dozens of articles in trade and professional journals including Working Mother, Essence, and Ms. If I am anything, I am a feminist.

“I have fought for the rights of women every single day of my life. I point out the dearth of photos of women in the New York Times to the lucky person who sits next to me on an airplane, the lack of pictures of women on money to the wait staff at a diner, and I have been in a decade-long fight with the United States Post Office to put more pictures of women on postage stamps. If I am anything, I am a feminist.

“I coined the term ‘latchkey children’ and defended the rights of women to work on the national level. I have assisted numerous projects to improve the quality of childcare so that mothers could work and not worry about the safety of their children. If I am anything, I am a feminist.

“I am passionately pro-choice but I also think that it is not always a psychologically free choice. I have written a play which deals with the psychological complexities of abortion entitled, One in Two, which has been performed in New York, New Jersey, and Washington DC. If I am anything, I am a feminist.

“I have spent decades coaching women on how to achieve more power in their personal relationships and in the workplace. If I am anything, I am a feminist.”

Lynette isn’t normally in the habit of reciting her resume, but the context for that little bit of credential-waving was the campaign last fall, when she decided to support Sarah Palin’s bid for VP. That’s right: Lynette really did support Palin. Cue head-explosions.

Why would such an adamant, devoted, thoroughly pro-choice feminist support Sarah Palin?

Well, two reasons: one negative, one positive. The negative reason is that Lynette, like me and like a lot of other people, was immensely disturbed by the way Obama and his allies in the DNC treated Hillary Clinton last year. Lynette also spent the late spring and summer of 2008 investigating the reports of caucus fraud by the Obama campaign. What she found turned her against Obama completely. (I worked with her on the caucus stuff, and it had a similar effect on me. I went from planning to vote for Obama while holding my nose, to vowing I would cut off my hand before voting for that crook.)

But Lynette also had a positive reason for supporting Palin: because she understands the importance of role-modeling. Lynette is a psychologist and an educator who specializes in empowering girls. In her essay The X Factor, she wrote:

Yes, policy is important but who decides and delivers that policy is even more important. As Marshall McLuhan profoundly noted, “The medium is the message.” Children incorporate many of their perceptions about gender by age five. Little girls won’t understand if Sarah Palin is pro-life or pro-choice, believes in gun control or is a member of the NRA, but they will know the Vice-President of the United States of America is a girl and that alone will alter their perceptions of themselves.

What she’s talking about here is representation. The power of role-modeling. The importance of seeing women and people of color in positions of power and prestige.

Now, the funny thing is, Third Wave feminists — and I’m talking now about the Third Wavers who are virulently anti-Palin and consider the words “Palin supporter” tantamount to the mark of the beast — understand the importance of representation very well when it comes to voting for, say, Barack Obama. (We all got the message loud and clear last year that no matter what Obama did or didn’t do, simply the fact of the man, in all his biracial glory, was enough.) They understand it very well when it comes to advocating for, say, Latifa Lyles as president of NOW; as one woman said, “I want to see the face of a young woman of color” representing feminism.

The only time Third Wave feminists don’t understand representation, it seems, is when the proposed representative is someone they personally don’t like. Then it becomes a ridiculous argument that only stupid old dried-up battle-axes make and jeez, could we hurry up with the ice floes already?

The fact is, there were good feminist reasons last year for voting for Obama or Palin or McKinney-Clemente. Many of my friends voted for Obama, and I completely understand why. I supported the Green ticket, myself — an exercise in futility, I know, but it fit my conscience. And quite a few genuine, hardcore, lifelong feminists voted for McCain-Palin, either because they were eyeing the glass ceiling or protesting the Democrats or both. As I wrote at the time:

Politics isn’t an exercise in purity.

Many women right now are feeling that the best thing they can do to advance women’s status in this country is to elect a woman to the highest office possible, even though — paradoxically — that woman doesn’t share one of the key planks of American feminism. (Though she does share most of the others, an extremely important fact that should not be overlooked. It makes a difference that she explicitly espouses a belief in gender equality.) These women feel that the symbolic value of shattering the glass ceiling is worth it.

For my part, I’m aware that there are many different ways to advance women’s status. Policies are one. Representation is another. They both matter. Neither is sufficient alone.

You may not agree with that calculus, but you should at least understand that different feminists may come to different conclusions when assessing the best way to advance feminist goals. Especially in a year when the two most prominent women in American politics were reduced, respectively, to a nutcracker and an inflatable doll.

Why is that so hard to understand?

Forgive me for saying that I think part of the issue with some Third Wavers is just youth. The older women get, the deeper and broader their understanding of how this whole patriarchy thingamajig works. Older women have lived through countless betrayals by male fellow-travelers who proved to be less interested in equality than we thought. They’ve discovered that conservative women can sometimes be invaluable allies in the fight for women’s rights. (Sandra Day O’Connor is a Republican, and a pretty conservative one, but she held the line when it mattered.) And they’ve realized the crucial importance of having role models and path-breakers to ease the trail.

It shouldn’t be a surprise to anyone that a woman with Lynette Long’s life experience might make a different calculus about the 2008 election than a 25-year-old female Barack Obama fan. Feminism is a broad path.

Which brings me to another thing: Third Wavers also talk a lot about inclusiveness, about having a movement that includes many different ways of doing feminism. Really? Really?

Okay. So start. Start by not demonizing feminists like Lynette Long.

Posted by Violet under Barack Obama, Feminist Theory, NOW election, Sarah Palin on June 23, 2009, 6:53 pm EST

129 Comments »

The coverage of the NOW election is becoming garbled. Over at Salon, Judy Berman writes:

Meanwhile, Viva la Feminista blogger Veronica Arreola, who supported Lyles, says O’Neill (who is pro-choice) owes her election to pro-life feminists. She writes:

“The Sarah Palin supporters swung this election….

Whoa, nellie. “Sarah Palin supporters” (if that’s even what they are) does not equal “pro-life feminists.” This looks like an honest mistake on Judy’s part, and I posted a letter at Salon to clear it up:

Judy, please issue a correction

Major misunderstanding here. You quoted Veronica Arreola as saying that “Sarah Palin supporters swung this election.” You interpreted that to mean “pro-life feminists” swung the election. But that is a false equivalence.

The feminists Arreola identifies as “Palin supporters” are not pro-life feminists, not at all. They’re pro-choice feminists and long-time activists in the feminist movement.

Arreola calls them “Palin supporters” because many of these women disagreed with NOW’s decision to demonize Palin last year in concert with the Obama campaign. Some of them may have supported her candidacy, while others simply objected to the way she was being treated.

–Violet Socks

I would like to quash this meme now.

UPDATE: I’m posting a correction to my correction. I assumed that Arreola referred to these women as “Palin supporters” because at some point in the conference they expressed displeasure with NOW’s failure to defend Palin. I’ve since learned that this is not the case. None of these women even brought up Palin at the conference. They were just supporting Terry O’Neill and asking questions about NOW’s finances and Lyles’s record. It was Kim Gandy who branded them “Palin supporters” in an attempt to discredit them.

Posted by Violet under NOW election on June 22, 2009, 4:04 pm EST

70 Comments »

Carol Moseley Braun introduces newly-elected NOW officers: President-Elect Terry O’Neill, Executive Vice President Bonnie Grabenhofer, Action Vice President Erin Matson, and Membership Vice President Allendra Letsome. (Picture snagged from radiosrq)

I feel like a Soviet spy here, smuggling in a photograph snapped with a bow-tie camera. See all those grainy people up there whose faces you can’t make out? That’s Leonid Brezhnev Carol Moseley Braun introducing the new officers of NOW: Terry O’Neill (prez), Bonnie Grabenhofer, Erin Matson, and Allendra Letsome.

Moseley Braun was a big supporter of Terry O’Neill at the conference, as was the great Patricia Ireland. You know, Patricia Ireland, the president of NOW for 10 years before the Kimandellie show started? You know, Carol Moseley Braun, former presidential candidate and the only African-American woman ever elected to the U.S. Senate? You might just want to keep that in the back of your mind over the next few days. Or years, depending on how quickly the wounds heal.

I’m not at liberty to discuss anything that happened at the conference, since I wasn’t there myself. I’m the stay-at-home, sew-the-flag Betsy Ross type. Everybody was flying home today, but maybe once the dust settles some folks will tell their tales. Or not.

But I can tell you this: that Terry and her team are an absolute lifesaver for NOW. They will bring integrity back into the picture. Financial integrity, political integrity, feminist integrity.

Posted by Violet under NOW election on June 21, 2009, 11:19 pm EST

16 Comments »

WOO HOO!!!!!!!

Terry O’Neill is the new president of NOW!!!!

We WON!

WOO HOO!!!!!!!

The scene over Indianapolis tonight as the city erupted in joyous celebration at the election of Terry O'Neill as the new president of NOW. Okay, not really on the fireworks. But Terry really did win!

Posted by Violet under NOW election on June 20, 2009, 11:51 pm EST

39 Comments »