Tuesday, November 11, 2008

A note on Ms. Palin...

Antonia Zerbisias has a completely different take on it than I do, but hats off to Antonia for linking to this from The Nation's Katha Pollitt
Palin's presence on the Republican ticket forced family-values conservatives to give public support to working mothers, equal marriages, pregnant teens and their much-maligned parents. Talk-show frothers, Christian zealots and professional antifeminists--Rush Limbaugh and Phyllis Schlafly--insisted that a mother of five, including a "special-needs" newborn, could perfectly well manage governing a state (a really big state, as we were frequently reminded), while simultaneously running for veep and, who knows, field-dressing a moose. No one said she belonged at home. No one said she was neglecting her husband or failing to be appropriately submissive to him. No one blamed her for 17-year-old Bristol's out-of-wedlock pregnancy or hard-partying high-school-dropout boyfriend. No one even wondered out loud why Bristol wasn't getting married before the baby arrived. All these things have officially morphed from sins to "challenges," just part of normal family life. No matter how strategic this newfound broadmindedness is, it will not be easy to row away from it. Thanks to Sarah, ladies, we can do just about anything we want as long as we don't have an abortion.

[W]hile Palin did not win the Hillary vote, the love she got from Republican women, including very conservative, traditional women, shows that what I like to call the feminism of everyday life is taking hold across the spectrum. That old frilly-doormat model of femininity is gone.
As far as I see it, the above being generally true and generally good stuff, Palin and her candidacy did way more for "the feminism of everyday life" than, say, Bill Clinton (the last great Democratic "emancipator") ever did.

It might be gracious to just give her some of the credit for it...without being snide. After all, she did all that by just being who she was.

Oh, yeah...what wasn't true in the above quote? This part:
No one said she belonged at home. No one said she was neglecting her husband or failing to be appropriately submissive to him. No one blamed her for 17-year-old Bristol's out-of-wedlock pregnancy or hard-partying high-school-dropout boyfriend. No one even wondered out loud why Bristol wasn't getting married before the baby arrived.
Absolutely true that "Talk-show frothers, Christian zealots and professional antifeminists" didn't say that stuff; virtually nobody from the Right did.

But lotsa sniggering passive-aggressive statist-leftist jokesters did.

2 comments:

Mike said...

But lotsa sniggering passive-aggressive statist-leftist jokesters did.

To be fair to the statist-leftist jokers, most of the ones I read, including the women at Birth Pangs and JJ at Unrepentant Old Hippie were more concerned about her virulent fundamentalist Christian beliefs and her lack of intelligence and knowledge about basics, like geography.

CNN's Campbell Brown was actually disgusted at how the McCain campaign cloistered her after the Charlie Gibson interview, demanding that she be treated as an equal and be allowed to speak.

As for blaming "her for 17-year-old Bristol's out-of-wedlock pregnancy or hard-partying high-school-dropout boyfriend", well that isn't what many on the "left" did. Rather they skewered her - and rightly so in my opinion - for a certain amount of hypocrisy. She was a socially conservative fundamentalist Christian who place herself forward as the Madonna of "family values" and an ardent supporter of "abstinence only" sex education, who would decry the social degeneration that leads to teen pregnancies. Except when it happens to her, because then its different.

If it had been Chelsea Clinton who had gotten pregnant out of wedlock at 17, the Republicans including many Palin supporters, would have gone banana with disparaging remarks about the Clinton's parenting skills, the shallow morals of Democrats.

A case of "its only bad when you do it".

In fact most "lefties" I know that even discussed this were generally in favour of the choice Bristol made (indeed was able to make...), were grateful that she had a supportive family and generally left her out of it. Most could care less about teen pregnancy, and saw this as a problem with the "abstinence4 only" education that Palin espouses, rather than her parenting skills.

Ron said...

Mike: "Rather they skewered her - and rightly so in my opinion - for a certain amount of hypocrisy."

Palin herself didn't show any hypocrisy as far as I've seen. Sensible "family values" conservatives (and there are a few) know full well when recommending behaviour, that lots of folks--even decent folks--won't live up to the ideals. That's the whole "hate the sin, love the sinner" thing.

As for this "If it had been Chelsea Clinton who had gotten pregnant out of wedlock at 17, the Republicans including many Palin supporters, would have gone banana with disparaging remarks about the Clinton's parenting skills, the shallow morals of Democrats."

I agree. I think Palin wouldn't have (even before her own personal situation) but I know lots of mean-spirited, judgmental conservatives would have tried to make political points exactly that way.