I’m going to post here what I said over at Apostate’s:
I see Sarah Palin as an ordinary modern Republican woman with feminist leanings — about as feminist as Republicans get.
I do not think she’s evil, anymore than I think most ordinary Republicans are evil. I believe she — and they — are mistaken about many things. I do believe to some extent they are tools, because they’re misled.
To go beyond that, and paint all Republicans as fascists with black hearts of evil, is a mistake. I know it’s a mistake, because I — like most Americans — have Republicans in my family. Lots of them. I know these people. I know women like Sarah Palin. In fact, every time I see or hear Palin I think of a cousin of mine, who’s that same kind of conservative Republican go-getter woman.
We gain nothing for the cause of liberalism when we fail to see the humanity of everyone, including our political opponents.
Meanwhile, Erica Jong has a piece up in Huff Post in which she refers to Sarah Palin as “white trash” and as a “redneck.”
If you really can’t figure out what’s wrong there, then you need to go back to remedial feminist class.
Some of Apostate’s commenters are saying things like “feminism doesn’t mean we support women just because they’re women.”
Actually, here’s what feminism means: it means we stick up for women against sexism no matter what, even when the women aren’t on our side politically.
All these soi-disant feminists who think that because they disagree with Palin politically, it’s okay to revile her and call her trash and attack her with misogyny and sexism — nope. Wrong. Sorry. That’s not how feminism works.
Posted by Violet under Election 2008, Comments that should have been posts on September 5, 2008, 3:56 pm EST
1 Comment »
Gawd. Sarah is a star.
I disagree with this woman on almost every policy position, but I like her anyway. Actually I think I have a tiny little spirit-crush on her. She’s Annie Get Your Gun, she’s Mr. Smith Goes To Washington, she’s about a half dozen American populist fantasies all rolled into one. Hockey moms and pitbulls. Yeah. Bring it on, cheeto dicks. Fuck with me now, flipper.
By the way, did any of you catch that inspiring introduction by noted feminist Rudy Giuliani? I forgot to tell you — I think I died a second death during that speech. When I heard him say, “When did they ever ask a man that?”, my brain tried to process what was happening but couldn’t. I think it kind of exploded there inside my skull.
Posted by Violet under Election 2008 on September 3, 2008, 11:27 pm EST
45 Comments »
You know the argument: the Hillary-haters don’t really hate women; they just hate Hillary. All the sexism and misogyny thrown at Hillary is for her alone, not for all women.
Yeah, right.
The Crucifixion of Sarah Palin is one of the most revolting things I’ve ever seen. After the Trashing of Hillary I thought the misogyny couldn’t get any worse, but goddamn. God. Damn.
Anglachel is absolutely on fire with her post on the sexism and classism that is driving the attacks on Sarah Palin:
Aside from Hillary, name me another presidential ticket contender who has been the obsessive focus of such widespread and aggressive verbal violence. These attacks are far in excess of anything necessary to discredit a political rival….
But there do not appear to be any bounds to the indignation, even rage, that this, this, tart from Alaska presumes to be the VP. As with the assaults on Hillary, the squalls of the MSM and the blogosphere are like the infant who can’t make Mommy do what he wants so he is going to wish her dead. The posts and comments on Gov. Palin and her oldest daughter are invasive, trying to tunnel inside of their offending bodies and shred them from within. It is the same rage that Olbermann spewed when he asked for someone to take Hillary into a dark room and murder her. It is not as far from the recent murders of women in Pakistan - shot and buried alive - as we would like to believe. These women sought to control their bodies and their lives and were murdered for it. Bristol Palin is living her incredibly ordinary teenage life and these modern day Dimmesdales have appointed themselves judge, jury and executioner in her case. How dare a 17 year old “girl” fuck without our consent! (Or our participation…)
~
The media message is coming through loud and clear - white trash women are sluts for us to fuck with as we please. They should not aspire to higher than the shanty that houses their (incestuous) family and should know this is not their place to trash. They need to remain breeders and feeders. I mean, how can we associate with these women? They don’t even have Ivy League degrees to make up for their slutitude! If they won’t stay in their place then we will take them out like the trash they are.
Women perceived to be of a lower socio-economic classes, regardless of their color, regardless of their actual status, are treated like trash - cheap, dirty, used, disposable objects undeserving of civil rights and privacy, let alone common decency.
It doesn’t matter that the Republicans were banking on this when they picked Palin. What matters is that the Obama camp — the so-called liberals, the so-called progressives — took the bait and delivered. Oh jesus, did they deliver.
Posted by Violet under Election 2008 on September 3, 2008, 1:39 pm EST
24 Comments »
Here:
What [McCain] has done is actually quite sophisticated. It is very short sighted to say that he can’t use the “lacks experience” argument against Obama anymore now that he has chosen Palin. Wrong. He now can say he put Palin in a position that is appropriate to her political talents and promise, but which takes account of her actual experience. For the Left to argue that she is unqualifed for VP when her political career is extremely similar to Obama’s is political suicide. If the Obamacans honestly cannot understand that Obama and Palin have comparable political biographies, then they are too stupid to be let out in public without a keeper.
Emphasis mine.
Actually, I think Palin is more qualified than Obama. She’s held executive office. She ran a town, she ran a commission, now she runs a state. She’s actually accomplished things.
What has Obama done, aside from write books about himself? “Community organizer”? He ran a voter registration drive, for chrissake. The law school thing was a sinecure while he wrote his autobiographies (plural, I note with a wry amusement that has yet to fade). He had a part-time job as a state senator, which mostly seemed to involve voting “present.” And for the bulk of his scant three years as a U.S. senator he’s been too busy running for president to even attend to Senate business.
Posted by Violet under Election 2008 on September 1, 2008, 10:56 pm EST
23 Comments »
What in the hell does Sarah Palin’s daughter have to do with being Vice-President?
Newsflash: Teenagers have sex. Teenagers get pregnant. Teenagers who don’t believe in abortion don’t get abortions.
What the hell is the big deal? From where I sit, Palin and her family seem to be handling the situation admirably. There’s no evidence that the daughter is being forced to do anything, but there’s plenty of evidence that her parents are being loving and very supportive.
The nutcases in the Obama camp have gone from spreading gutter rumors about the Palin family uteri to warning darkly that having a pregnant daughter makes Palin “unfit” to be commander-in-chief.
What?
Listen to this crap:
The facts surrounding the Palin family’s pregnancies may not become known, but they do suggest the Alaska governor will at the very least have many distractions while she is campaigning this fall, to say nothing of her fitness to become commander-in-chief.
Somebody needs to help me with the connection here, because I’m not getting it. What, precisely, is the disqualifier for becoming commander-in-chief*?
Is it having children? No, because most presidents have had children.
Is it having teenage children? No, because many presidents have had teenage children.
Is it having a newborn baby? No, because several presidents have had newborn babies.
Is it having a daughter who is pregnant? No, because several presidents have had daughters who were pregnant.
Is it having an unmarried daughter who is pregnant? That must be it, because I think this is a first, at least officially. But still: what the hell does it have to do with being commander-in-chief? If your unmarried daughter has sex and gets pregnant, you’re not qualified to command?
Forgive me for concluding that the real problem here is that Sarah Palin is female, and thus, in the reasoning of both Obama supporters and Pakistani tribesmen, she belongs in the red tent/birthing house/women’s quarters with her daughter. They can do breathing exercises together and discuss amniotic fluid. That’s what women are meant for, by God, not commanding troops!
*By the way, I loathe the military fetishization that the commander-in-chief moniker represents, and wish to hell we could go back to referring to the President as just “the President” and remember that we are a republic led by citizens, not a goddamn military junta.
Posted by Violet under Election 2008 on September 1, 2008, 7:46 pm EST
24 Comments »
Barack Obama lost the election yesterday.
He sowed the seeds of his destruction himself many months ago, when he decided to exploit sexism and misogyny in his quest to defeat Hillary. Now John McCain will reap the harvest.
Back in June, BDBlue at Corrente wrote:
I have long believed the most dangerous thing about this primary was the misogyny, especially aimed at older women, running rampant unchecked by Obama or the Democratic Party. You can’t simply put that back up in its cage now that the nomination is over. That kind of hatred spewed into the culture is bound to affect the culture and change it in ways that are not positive.
Obama may very well want to stop this now, but I’m not sure this monster is still within his control. But then that’s what always happens when you accept help from a monster, it eventually turns on you. What? Obama and the Democrats thought Frankenstein was really about a scientist who built a monster from dead people?
With the addition of Sarah Palin to the Republican ticket, Obama almost certainly wishes he could re-bottle the misogyny he uncorked. But it’s too late. Woman-hating is now such a routine aspect of the Obama movement that the true believers can’t help themselves anymore. It simply pours out of them:
“She looks like a porn star.”
“Sarah Palin’s judgment is despicalble. She knowingly whelped a Mongoloid child earlier this year, probably to pander to the Right to Life Nutbags. Irresponsible decisions like hers dilutes the viability of the American Gene Pool. No wonder why we are falling farther and farther behind in an increasingly competitive global economic environment.
Her OB should have cut her tubes after her first child!!!”
“What is this, the Vagina Epilogue?”
“Will McCain have Palin do a Lewinsky on him every day to get his juices flowing?”
“I’d like to retract some of the thoughts of her qualifications that are stirring in my head. Sarah Palin is, likely, qualified to wash my dishes, even moreso to fetch a Big Wheel from my driveway. I was thinking she wasn’t, but those are just exaggerated thoughts.
What a bimbo!”
Obama supporters, all.
Yesterday I wrote that the possums will lose this election for Obama by alienating every woman in America who hasn’t already run screaming from the sexism in the Democratic party. Well, not every woman, but enough. Enough women will either stay home or vote for Sarah Palin (not McCain) to make that nut.
They’ll do so not out of spite and not because they’re irrational. They’ll do so because they will have decided that the critical thing, right here, right now, is not to be bound by some historical allegiance to the party that used to be the home of women’s rights, but to strike a hard blow against the sexism and misogny of today.
Can’t say I blame them.
Posted by Violet under Election 2008, PUMA on August 30, 2008, 11:55 pm EST
38 Comments »
This is a ground-shifting, earth-quaking year in American politics, though not in the way any of us expected. I don’t know what will come of the various initiatives popping up here and there, but I know that nothing will ever be the same again.
Just got this in the mail from Murphy of PumaPAC; I reprint it here in its entirety:
August 29, 2008
TO: Puma PAC Members
FROM: Murphy
Subject: Announcement
Hello Puma PAC,
Goodbye Howard Dean. Goodbye Barack Obama. Goodbye Nancy Pelosi. Goodbye Donna Brazile. You have not only lost the White House for the Democratic Party. Today you have brought the Democratic Party to the brink of irrelevancy altogether. John McCain has played you all like a piano.
Today we say GOODBYE to the OLD Democratic Party. The OLD Democratic Party has led us to DISASTER. John McCain and Sarah Palin will win in November by a landslide.
TODAY, August 29th 2008, Puma PAC has started a new political party:
THE NEW DEMOCRATIC PARTY
We have a website launching tonight. at www.thenewdemocraticparty.org and www.ndp.org We will be modeled on Alice Paul’s National Woman’s Party. We will NOT be running candidates. We WILL be endorsing candidates.
We will be the Party for All Disaffected Democrats who are FINISHED WITH THE OLD DEMOCRATIC PARTY. We are NOT Republicans, though millions of us will vote McCain/Palin in November.
Our Platform is the Platform of the TRUE Democratic Party
WE MUST PREVENT A REPUBLICAN TAKEOVER OF THE ELECTORATE. WE NEED A POLITICAL PARTY FOR ALL THE MILLIONS WHO WANT TO BOLT THE DEMS AFTER TODAY’S FIASCO.
Please JOIN US. We NEED the Platform and Principles of GOOD DEMOCRATIC VALUES now MORE THAN EVER. We MUST STAY UNITED AS A DEMOCRATIC VOTING BLOC OR WE COULD LOSE EVERYTHING.
To Join the New Democratic Party, please send an email with your name and state today to newdemparty@pumapac.org
Listen in tonight to the Lion’s Share on No We Won’t Radio with Sheri Tagg.
Riverdaughter and I will join her to talk about today’s events and where we go from here.
www.blogtalkradio.com/no-we-wont
Thank you and Good Luck,
Murphy
Posted by Violet under Election 2008 on August 29, 2008, 3:00 pm EST
18 Comments »
I’ve been telling my mother for a month that McCain would pick a woman.
“Governor Palin of Alaska. I’ll just bet you.” Every time I would say that my mother would just roll her eyes.
I knew it. I knew he would pick Palin.
Goddamn, that old buzzard McCain is not so dumb after all.
EDITED TO ADD: The Palin pick is fricking genius, and since I’m a blogger and this is my blog I should probably take a minute here to blog about it.
Why is it a genius move? Because of two things:
- It will make it easier for center-right Hillary supporters to vote Republican in the fall, and
- (this is the genius part) It will complete the alienation of the rest of the Hillary supporters from the Obama camp. How? That’s easy — the Obamabots will do it themselves. Go read the Washington Post blog or anywhere online where the Palin pick is being discussed, and you’ll see the trademark Obama misogyny already out in full force. She’s been on the ticket for two seconds and already the Obamabots are saying she “looks like a porn star,” they’re making rude remarks about her childbearing, they’re ridiculing her intelligence.
Keep it up, possums. Keep it up. Just when some Hillary supporters were trying to forget what misogynist freaks you all are, now you’re going to remind us all over again.
Brilliant fucking move by McCain.
UPDATE: Greetings, Instapundit readers. You probably won’t be here long, as this is a genuinely feminist, leftist blog. But while you’re here I shall do my uttermost to be polite, and I ask the same of you. You are welcome to comment on your reaction to the Sarah Palin pick. As ever on this blog, sexist/misogynist and racist comments are of course verboten. Also, please refrain from attempting to “enlighten” me or my readers about abortion. Thank you.
Posted by Violet under Election 2008 on August 29, 2008, 10:56 am EST
158 Comments »
Because, you know, it’s not Obama.
And if you don’t have time to slog through the 500-page Caucus Analysis website, here’s another link to that 98-page book version. It’s horrifying stuff. As you listen to Opossum’s speech tonight, just think of all those busloads of people from Illinois arriving to pose as Iowa voters in the caucus…and all those thugs in Texas physically barring Hillary supporters from voting…and all those union fixers in Nevada dropping Hillary ballots in the toilets…
Posted by Violet under Election 2008 on August 28, 2008, 9:40 pm EST
2 Comments »
I’m not watching the convention. I can’t stand it. It’s embarrassing. It makes the Politburo under Brezhnev look like a beacon of democracy. It makes China’s National Party Congress look like an anarchists’ convention.
They’re laughing at us in Europe; you realize that. Here’s the Grundian:
Obama wins make-believe Democratic party vote designed to be won by Obama
…Aaaand we’re back, just in time to note that, pursuant to Section C8 of the Democratic Party Rules and Procedures, Barack Obama just won the convention’s very carefully choreographed roll-call vote, during which the representatives of many state delegations boasted that their state was better than all the others, until finally Hillary Clinton stepped forward to end the voting and award the nomination to Obama by acclamation, and Nancy Pelosi, who was overseeing the ceremonies, asked those who agreed to say “yay,” and those who disagreed to say “nay,” but cleverly left no time at all for anyone to actually say “nay” before declaring that the motion had been passed, making Obama the official Democratic party nominee, and then everyone burst into tears and they played Love Train on the PA system and everyone was very happy, the end.
Incredible. It wasn’t enough to have the usual fake roll-call vote; they had to interrupt it for a fake nomination-by-acclamation. And this after last night’s travesty of forcing the actual winner of the Democratic primaries — Hillary Clinton — to rally the party behind the crook who stole the nomination.
Possums on the scene in Denver are said to be wondering aloud why the convention doesn’t seem to be having an energizing effect on the country. Who in the hell do they think they’re kidding? Every sentient being in America knows that the Democratic Party is divided in half and that Hillary won the popular vote in the primaries. Tricking out the Pepsi Center to look like a Vegas lounge and having Nancy Pelosi lead the delegates in “kumbaya” is not fooling anyone. The only message the DNC is sending the country is, “We are complete and utter phonies.”
I hear they’re building a fake Greek temple in the middle of that stadium for Opossum’s speech tomorrow. Keepin’ it real.
Posted by Violet under Election 2008 on August 27, 2008, 11:26 pm EST
8 Comments »
Hint: we’re not who Bonnie Erbe thinks we are:
I’ve been so busy being a PUMA that I’ve had little time to read about PUMAs. Or I should say, read about myself, since in America it’s the media that tells us who and what we are. It’s like Patsy said on the radio the other night: here she is, a Black woman and proud of it, come to find out that because she doesn’t support Obama, she’s a racist. “Guess I better get measured for my hood,” she said.
So the media narrative about PUMAs is of interest, since in good Goebbels fashion it’s bound to be far more important than the actual truth. And the media narrative about PUMAs appears to be unchanged from the media narrative about Hillary supporters during the primaries: we’re all old white racist conservative crypto-Republicans who think Obama is too liberal.
Too liberal? Obama?
As I’ve written many times, my problem with Obama is that he’s not liberal enough. If anybody’s a crypto-Republican, it’s him. The Obama movement combines all the worst elements of Republicanism into one juggernaut package: Rovian cheating, Reaganesque marketing, Bushian pseudo-religious fervor, wingnut propaganda, mindless worship of authority, hatred of women, contempt for the disadvantaged, and of course GOP political positions on everything from FISA to the environment.
The PUMAs I know feel the same. We’re feminists. We’re liberals. We’re a hell of a lot more liberal — truly liberal — than the callow young white men who form Obama’s cheering squad. Those guys are indistinguishable from the Jonah Goldbergs of the world, though they’re too self-infatuated to realize it.
But the PUMA movement — the coalition of Democrats who reject Obama — is broader than just my crowd. It’s true that there are some PUMAs who complain that Obama is “far left,” or who worry aloud that he’s a front for “far left” extremists of some kind. But what do they mean by that?
They don’t mean that he’s too progressive. Obviously he’s not. Every PUMA knows that Obama ran a dirty campaign, that he intends to continue and even expand Bush’s policies for faith-based programs and government spying, that he’s soft on women’s rights, that he endorses the Cheney energy plan. And every PUMA is unhappy about that. Every PUMA wants a Democratic nominee who actually represents Democratic values.
What disturbs those who talk about the “far left” is something completely different: it’s Obama’s connections to people like William Ayers and, tangentially, to Louis Farrakhan — people who are typically labeled “the radical left” or “the far left.”
The problem here is one of nomenclature. The current class of tags we’re working with is insufficient to adequately describe reality.
Consider: the Nation of Islam, an extremely patriarchal organization that preaches female inferiority, is allegedly on the “left.” But so are feminists. So are gay rights activists. So are political atheists. Cramming everyone who resists the White Christian Male hegemony into one category makes no sense. And treating “liberal” or “progressive” as if they’re the weak end of a continuum that culminates in “far left” results in sheer absurdity. By that reckoning, I suppose, if you’re a moderate leftist you might belong to NOW, but if you’re really leftist you’re a prime candidate for the Nation of Islam. If you’re a good liberal you might belong to the Sierra Club, but if you’re really hard-core you probably give money to Hezbollah. Huh?
What we need to do is get behind the labels and understand what people are really saying. Those PUMAs who think Obama is “too far left” aren’t talking about domestic policies. They’re not talking about abortion or gay rights or any of the other issues that typically distinguish Democrats and Republicans. What they’re talking about, I think, is Obama’s connections (whatever those may be) to wild-eyed pistol wavers.
For the record, I don’t share those concerns. I don’t think Obama is a fellow traveler with any terrorist organizations, nor is he a front for extremists (unless you categorize neo-Republican financiers and propagandists as extremists). And the PUMAs who do worry about that stuff are only one subset of the coalition.
What all PUMAs agree on is that the Obama movement represents the abandonment of basic Democratic values. All PUMAs are “progressives” or “liberals” in the sense that they demand a Democratic Party that continues to stand up to the Republican assault on women’s rights, social programs, and the Constitution. They want a Democratic nominee who’s actually a Democrat.
And that’s not Obama.
Maybe this would be a good time to re-post some of what I’ve written over the past months:
It’s not about Obama vs. McCain
Archimedes’ Lever
Why I will not vote for Obama even if he’s the nominee — and why you shouldn’t either
The Democrats really, really don’t deserve our votes
PUMAs and Sexism
Pumas vs. Possums: this is what a grassroots movement looks like
Posted by Violet under Election 2008, PUMA on August 23, 2008, 1:06 am EST
19 Comments »
That’s what popped into my head when I heard tonight’s rumor that Richardson will be Obama’s VP pick.
Clearly I’m evil.
Posted by Violet under Election 2008 on August 22, 2008, 10:05 pm EST
3 Comments »
If Obama is such a great candidate, why did he have to cheat to win?
P.S. If you don’t have time to read the whole website (which is humongous), here’s a handy a 98-page report that summarizes the key findings and includes a few eyewitness stories from each state. Suitable for printing out and taking with you to Denver…
Posted by Violet under Election 2008 on August 22, 2008, 6:52 pm EST
5 Comments »
Some time during this past week I saw a blurb somewhere that people on Capitol Hill are starting to wonder if Obama is mentally ill. Wish I could remember where I saw that, but it struck a chord. At first I thought Obama was just deliberately cultivating a “presidential” image to sell himself to the public, but the more I read about him the more I’m really starting to wonder if the man doesn’t have narcissistic personality disorder.
I thought of that again today when I saw this post by SusanUnPC, with the picture of the special embroidered “President” chair on “O-Force One.” Jeebus.
Posted by Violet under Election 2008 on August 4, 2008, 10:59 pm EST
18 Comments »
