Jonah Goldberg on Sarah Palin and the Feminist-Industrial Complex:
Gloria Steinem, the grand mufti of feminism, issued a fatwa anathematizing Palin. A National Organization for Women spokeswoman proclaimed Palin more of a man than a woman. Wendy Doniger, a feminist academic at the University of Chicago, writes of Palin in Newsweek: “Her greatest hypocrisy is in her pretence that she is a woman.” […] Feminists have argued for decades that womanhood is an existential and metaphysical state of enlightenment. But they have no problem questioning whether women they hate are really women at all.
Fabian Tassano on the politics of the World Health Organization:
By arguing that health is ‘political’, they are admitting that they themselves have a political agenda. And this is difficult to dispute when you look at the some of their statements, which can best be understood as expressions of a political position: “Where systematic differences in health are judged to be avoidable by reasonable action they are, quite simply, unfair.” “Reasonable action” here, it should be noted, includes more taxation, more state intervention and a bigger public sector. Beyond using the phrase “quite simply”, however, it is not explained why such differences are unfair.
Matthew Sinclair on Sharia in Britain:
These are not the fuzzy sort of judgements that apologists for the Archbishop promised would be the only ones Sharia courts could make. These are women being denied a fair share in inheritances or not having their complaints of domestic abuse followed up (after they have been pressured into accepting that they are not victims of a crime deserving of punishment).
Peter Risdon on political empathy:
I wondered whether conservatives and right-liberals understand left-liberals better than they are understood in return because many of them used to be left-liberals.
Please feel free to poke about in the archives or peruse the greatest hits.
Cintra Wilson in Salon: http://www.salon.com/mwt/feature/2008/09/10/palin_feminism/
“What her Down syndrome baby and pregnant teenage daughter unequivocally prove, however, is that her most beloved child is the antiabortion platform that ensures her own political ambitions with the conservative right. The throat she’s so hot to cut is that of all American women.”
“Sarah Palin and her virtual burqa have me and my friends retching into our handbags. She’s such a power-mad, backwater beauty-pageant casualty, it’s easy to write her off and make fun of her. But in reality I feel as horrified as a ghetto Jew watching the rise of National Socialism.”
“I feel as horrified as a ghetto Jew watching the rise of National Socialism.”
Do I detect just a *whisper* of hyperbole there? What’s funny is how much material of that kind there is – and much of it is even more breathless, condescending and lurid. Palin really has rattled some chains among the Righteous Sisterhood. The fallout should be interesting. The reactions from doctrinaire feminists will, I think, be much more revealing than Palin herself.
What is a ‘virtual burqha’? Given Mrs Palin’s accomplishments and freedoms it would seem to be the precise opposite of a burqha.
Still, we need to give these lunatics as much publicity as possible. Make everyone aware of this hateful rubbish. Ordinary people will read it, realise that electing Obama means electing Salon and others, and will flock to McCain in droves.
Rob
The “virtual burqua” is, I believe, a reference to Palins’ Christian and conservative views. In other words, her true consciousness is hidden beneath a (male imposed) covering of false consciousness christian thought.
How could ANY woman not understand that it is impossible to be a feminist (or indeed even a woman)and not hold the same views as those on the left.
The more common forms of this slur are to call black conservatives “Uncle Tom” or anyone else “self-hating”.
Such tolerance only ever comes from socialists.
“I wondered whether conservatives and right-liberals understand left-liberals better than they are understood in return because many of them used to be left-liberals.”
I was young and foolish once. But I grew up.
Anna,
“I was young and foolish once. But I grew up.”
That’s certainly one aspect of it. Broadly speaking, people do tend to move away from the left with age. And, as shown here more than once, there is an adolescent, contrarian quality to a lot of leftist commentary – a desire to be reactive and conspicuously different but in a predictable and conformist way. Reading such material, the impression given is that the worst imaginable thing is being seen as “bourgeois” or “rightwing”. (Or, to put it another way, “I don’t want to turn into my parents.”)
A great deal of effort is put into denouncing those apostates formerly of the left who subsequently, and presumably with the advantage of experience, change their views. And it’s interesting that the most vehement expressions of leftist thinking often appear in places where these ideas are largely unchallenged. For instance, in parts of academia, where students are… well, students, and ageing tenured radicals are for the most part unmolested by reality or adult dissent.
https://thompsonblog.co.uk/2008/01/feel-my-rebelli.html
https://thompsonblog.co.uk/2007/10/tenured-radical.html
https://thompsonblog.co.uk/2008/02/what-to-think-n.html
“More of a man than a woman”
More of a man than Obama, but more of a woman than Steinem.
“conspicuously different but in a predictable and conformist way.”
I want that on a T-shirt.
I think Lenin said that revolutionaries should die before they reach thirty.
Sometimes I wonder if the guerilla basketweavers and resturaunt radicals that pass for today’s left aren’t just a bunch of sad oldies trying to prove that they haven’t lost it.
Palin’s socially transgendered campaign* breaks the boundaries of 19th century feminism, shattering tired assumptions about class and gender.
tehag
* a woman who is more of man than either of the Democrat party nominees.
Antisemite Palin…
Yet on the positive side, Palin is now witchcraft-proof — so you wingnuts will be safe from that sort of thing.
Booger — link to evidence here —
http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=jl4HIc-yfgM
Will,
I was rather expecting to see muttered incantations and the rending of chicken flesh. Alas, no. Bishop Thomas Muthee – a visiting pastor from Kenya – is a little bonkers, I grant you, but is what he does here more bonkers than, say, praying towards a magic rock in the Middle East, or cultivating facial hair to please a hypothetical deity? I’m not sure of the precise point at which one should be concerned in the way that’s being implied. Is it meant to be more troubling than, say, Wright or Ayers, whose bonkersdom has taken overtly threatening forms, irrespective of whether one has any religious affiliation?
Again, I’m not defending Palin or her metaphysical views, whatever they may be, and I find the service shown above to be faintly ridiculous. But the audience reaction seems, if anything, somewhat muted, at times almost embarrassed. (Muthee repeatedly asks, “Hello? Is anyone hearing me?” and the reply is conspicuously hushed. Palin herself seems slightly ill at ease. Evidently, the pastor isn’t playing to his usual crowd.) And I’m unsure why the sight of Palin accepting a blessing from an unhinged visiting pastor at a church she no longer attends is more troubling than some other routine forms of worship, or other political figures accepting blessings in much the same way. Is Palin supposed to be taken as endorsing witchcraft or Muthee’s every word and his broader worldview, whatever that may be? Should she have rejected his blessing? Is that how these things work?
Isn’t the witchcraft thing – y’know – multicultural? A bit of sensitivity, please!
Anna,
“Isn’t the witchcraft thing – y’know – multicultural?”
It is, sadly, still the idiom among some Kenyans:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/africa/7425386.stm
“A bit of sensitivity, please!”
Well, quite. And I’m still not sure what the clip linked above is supposed to prove. The reaction of the congregation seems muted and at times uncomfortable, as does Palin herself. Is she supposed to reject his blessing and denounce him? I don’t know the proper form for such gatherings…
QQQ
I wondered whether conservatives and right-liberals understand left-liberals better than they are understood in return because many of them used to be left-liberals.Peter Risdon, via Thompson. So true. True of most of us here at Maggie’s.