I'm still trying to decide if John McCain’s choice of Sarah Palin as his Vice-Presidential running mate is impossibly stupid or brilliant. It seems a neat trick and the media fell for it. And now everyone else has. The American media (and many Americans) are focusing the discussion about women and politics in terms of wombs, babies and breasts that give milk. The message from the GOP is "It's OK for women to do all those OTHER things, as long as they continue to do what God intended for them to do." Get married. Have babies. Or...have babies; get married, whatever the order might be. Republicans have moved the political discussion back 40 years. And that's the point. Sarah Palin’s nomination represents a backlash--and you know what? They are also feeding on the misogyny displayed against Hillary. They had the fuel ready and waiting. All they had to do was light the flame.
Interestingly (and ironically) enough, the measure of America’s sexism will not be determined by Americans’ opposition to Sarah Palin, but by their embrace of her. Ultimately, sexism is not about sex, it is about gender roles. If America embraces Sarah Palin it would be an example of reversed feminism and covert sexism, exemplified not by whether or not they vote for a woman but by what KIND of woman they will vote for. And that determination just may be related to wombs, babies and breasts that give milk.
It has not escaped me that they have also managed to deflect the discussion away from the ISSUES; the war, economy, oil, Iraq. Everyone is talking about the freaking pregnancies and no one is asking questions about issues. Ultimately, John McCain's risk will prove to be an utter failure or a stroke of genius. And in the mix, we just might find out how sexist America really is.
6 comments:
I think the selection of Palin is brilliant, if you define brilliant as "what else was I going to do to appeal to the Christian Conservative base to try to save my flagging campaign, while also offering a nominal 'change' candidate as an alternative to Obama by putting a token female on the ticket."
But it is such a cynical and calculated move that my mind is still reeling. I want to believe that John McCain is secretly making a joke on the hard-right conservatives. They are so driven by idealogy that they care not one whit that they would enthusiastically embrace a presidential / vice presidential candidate has excactly zero foreign policy and ability to govern responsibly.
And the repeated lies about her record? Do they think we are stupid? Well, I guess that we are, based on they way some of us have embraced her as a serious candidate.
So here's a question for you, offered in good faith: what role did the "PUMAs" and other Clinton supporters, who hammered Obama on claims of sexism and who openly flirted with a vote for McCain because they were dissatisfied with Clinton's failure to win the Democratic primary, have in the selection of Palin? Do you think McCain and his Rovian campaign advisors would have pandered so baldly, by offering such a token female running mate, if there had not been such a demand for a female president?
To openly flirt with someone is not the same as going to bed with him. I wonder if your deliberate posing of that question is a reference to my "flirting" with the idea myself as suggested in a previous blog entry. Ultimately, it was never a serious consideration. I was just pissed. I'm actually planning to write another blog post that in part, says a little something about why I am now firmly behind Obama/Biden. That kind of transference of emotional investment takes time and evidently, a Sarah Palin nomination. I have yet to see ONE statistic that actually supports the SPECULATION that former Clinton voters are backing McCain/Palin. To cite polls that surveyed "women" is not the same obviously. In fact, I heard only ONE reference to actual evidence on one of those early morning shows in which they reported that the Palin pick has had no impact on Clinton supporters. And yet, that too led to some chagrin. I would have hoped that the Palin pick would have sent Clinton's supporters running to jump on the Obama bandwagon.
In hindsight, it might prove to be a brilliant move. When I wrote this entry, the country and its media had not gone nuts yet. A political commentator this morning reminded us that after Mondale picked Ferraro, there was a "bump" in the polls in their favor. I only hope that the results we're seeing now, represent just one such bump.
It is obvious to so many of us that all women are not the same simply because they are women. In fact, that is one of the goals of the feminist movement as I see it; to do away with gender essentialism. It is beyond the scope of my imagination to understand how anyone could see Sarah Palin as a "replacement substitute" for Hillary Clnton simply because the two of them have breasts. And like you, I fear that some Americans just may be that stupid to think so.
Doire -
I honestly wasn't thinking of you specifically when I used the word "flirting." No offense was intended.
I agree with you about the speculation of the so-called Clinton supporters who are now supposedly backing McCain. I know that there is a lot of attention paid to them in the media -- for example, to watch the Democratic convention, you would have thought that the 10 (I'm guesstimating -- I have no idea how many there really were) PUMAs they kept showing on TV were really 10,000. But we've already talked about the failures of the news media (TV in particular).
Like you, I find it incredibly hard to believe that any true Clinton supporter (true in the sense that she or he believes she was the best choice for president and also supports her positions) would seriously support McCain.
If there are “people who voted for Clinton” (I’ll follow your lead and not call them Clinton supporters) in the primaries and who are now planning to vote for McCain/Palin – well, what to make of them? Maybe they were dissatisfied Republicans who crossed over to vote in the later Democratic primaries after the Republican race was over. Maybe they were interested in voting for Clinton because she was a women, and they are now returning to the Republican fold because a woman is on the ticket (the target voter for the Republicans’ token candidate ploy?). Maybe there is something more sinister, more base, at work here?
Steve
A couple of honest questions, cause I'd like to hear your thoughts:
1. Were you disappointed that Obama did not select Clinton as his running mate?
2. I've heard some describe Palin as a new kind of feminist, and they say that liberal or Democratic feminists who criticize her just dislike her politics and are exhibiting a double standard.
Steve-
1) I was very disappointed that Obama did not choose Hillary as his running mate, though I have always respected Joe Biden. We haven't seen the end of Hillary. I wonder if Obama has a plan for her in a cabinet office, or a Supreme Court Justice perhaps.
2) A "new kind of feminist." I'm working on an essay entitled "What DOES a feminist look like anyway?" It's more difficult than I thought. Who gets to define feminism? Who gets to claim it? But there must be SOME identifiers we can point to. A person cannot declare, "I am a Christian, but I don't believe Jesus rose from the dead," and be taken seriously or make the statement with any validity. One would be hard pressed to claim that they are simply putting forward a "new kind of Christian." Ah! But I just wrote part of my essay!
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