VP candidate Sarah Palin has whipped at least one pro-choice feminist into an enthusiastic frenzy: “as a pro-choice feminist, I wasn’t the only one thrilled to hear Republican John McCain announce Gov. Sarah Palin as his running mate,” writes Tammy Bruce, former president of the Los Angeles chapter of the National Organization for Women and current Fox News political contributor, in Sunday’s San Francisco Chronicle (9/7/08).
Thrilled. Really?
Bruce is excited over “the chance to vote for a someone [sic] who is her own woman, and who represents a party that, while we don’t agree on all the issues, at least respects women enough to take them seriously.”
According to a list compiled at the National Journal’s blog, this is what it looks like when men, and other women, take women seriously:
Rush Limbaugh: “We’re the ones with the babe on our ticket” — (CNN, 8/29).
Newsweek’s Karen Breslau: “As a journalist, and a female one at that, I am embarrassed to admit that the first thing that struck me about her was that she’s so, well, striking” (Newsweek.com. 8/30).
FNC’s Juan Williams: “I hope I’m not offending anybody in saying that she’s a very attractive woman” (“Fox News Sunday,” 8/31).
TX GOP delegate Patti Johnson: “She’s beautiful to look at. The men are going to love her. She hunts. She fishes” (Houston Chronicle, 8/29).
CNN’s Joe Johns: “I found her to be very funny, very charming” (“AC 360,” CNN, 8/29).
David Gergen: “Joe Johns is right; she seems very, very attractive” (“AC 360,” CNN, 8/29).
Bruce also promises that neither McCain nor Palin want to “kick the gays” and assures us that McCain-Palin Republicans don’t want to make abortion illegal, which is not what McCain says in this video posted on the Jed Report.
Palin is not a new feminist icon. She is not a role model for women’s equality. She is a distraction.
Let’s move on.
blfmstprof
9 Comments
September 8, 2008 at 6:59 am
As far as I can tell Tammy Bruce has made a ‘career’, if you want to call it that, of taking virulently conservative positions and then saying ‘But I’m a gay feminist! Isn’t that fascinating? Don’t you want to know more about me?’
Here’s a quote from the back cover of her book ‘The Death of Right and Wrong: Exposing the Left’s Assault on Our Culture and Values’:
I guess since we’ve gone through the looking glass into the never-never land where suddenly crazy hate-mongering conservatives are falling over themselves to claim feminist credentials, it makes sense that Bruce, the original But-I’m-a-feminist-crazy-hate-mongering conservative would have to rear her vile and empty head.
September 8, 2008 at 9:12 pm
She has just been lambasting me for calling her a non-feminist.
I am a “hater” in her words – odd that. I don’t think she actually reads what people say.
September 10, 2008 at 9:05 am
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September 10, 2008 at 3:42 pm
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September 11, 2008 at 3:48 pm
[...] for president on her show, sometimes. But, much like those conservatives who don’t want to “kick the gays,” Oprah’s legion of white, conservative viewers don’t like it when her difference [...]
September 11, 2008 at 4:12 pm
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September 13, 2008 at 12:17 am
[...] Fey Way Hotter Than Sarah Palin Jump to Comments Much has been made of Sarah Palin’s looks, with pundits comparing her to a number of TV and movie stars, and the sexy librarian figure from [...]
October 23, 2008 at 2:53 pm
[...] public and the media confused beauty with money upon Palin’s debut, heaping praise on Palin’s good looks, a mistake made so [...]
November 27, 2008 at 6:45 pm
[...] Still, as much as I liked the interview, I have to say that I was not at all amused by Obama’s casual display of a kinder, gentler sexism near the end. He talks about not wanting a ‘girly dog’ that ‘yaps’ and ’sits in your lap.’ Now, I don’t tend to like those types of dogs either but Obama has got to know that dismissing something as girly is just, well, a bit sexist. I can tell that he thinks it’s cute and I’m sure others will swoon over his display of manliness but the whole thing just served to remind me why I still want to see a woman in the White House. And no, Sarah Palin doesn’t count. [...]