Lone Feminist for Palin

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.

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