Category Archives: Democrats

Update II: Sliming Sarah (& On Feminism Vs. Individualism)

Barack Obama, Democrats, Elections 2008, Gender, Individualism Vs. Collectivism, John McCain, Journalism, Sarah Palin, War

CNN’s Campbell Brown has been a woman possessed even since Palin appeared on the political scene. As I write, she is “investigating” how Sarah Palin’s Pentecostal faith and the practices of her church may impact her political outlook. (The segment was evidently aired earlier today. It didn’t cause Blitzer such apoplexy.)

By logical extension, does Brown—who is not working with much, if you know what I mean—wish to imply that hanging around a Black Liberation Church for 20 years—a church that states its members “are an African people, and remain ‘true to our native land,’ the mother continent, the cradle of civilization”—might poison a presidential candidate’s worldview?

At the time, she and her ilk denied that being a proud, long-time member of a separatist, white-hating “Black-Value-System” community had any bearing on Barack’s worldview.

Update I (September 10): INDIVIDUALISM VS. FEMINISM. our long-time, valued reader, young Alex (see his comments below), seems quite confused lately, inundating the blog with dogmatic comments asserting Sarah Palin’s feminist bona fides.

Sarah Palin is an individualist, not a feminist. Fulfilling one’s potential doesn’t make one a feminist. Sarah Palin is not a woman’s issues liberationist; but an individualist; a doer. She sees a problem in her community and she sets about solving it. She’s an individual doing her best, as she sees it, to improve herself and the community she lives in. That seems to be her calling. She is not doing this qua woman, but as an individual. Since when is fulfilling one’s potential always a manifestation of a feminist mindset when a woman is concerned?

I suspect that the conservative prattle about sexism, which Alex has correctly derided, has confused our friend. Alex is right about the stupidity of conservatives adopting feminism rather than articulating Palin’s achievements in the language of individualism.

Does the fact that I wish to fulfill my potential as a writer make me a feminist? No; I’m an individualist through and through.

As to the gender roles in the Palin household: In the early years of their marriage, the very manly first Dude supported his wife and their children. Sarah Palin then got involved with the school—an involvement that led to a career. As her career evolved, the family organization changed. Is this feminism at work? Hardly! These are individuals interacting and completing one another at different stages of their lives.

I’d like one day to retire my brilliant husband and see him cook for me and play guitar all day. Does that make me a feminist? Au Contraire; that’s the give and take between mature, loving individuals.

Update II (Sep. 11): The Silly Sex continues to sound off over Sarah Palin. This time a Salon.com feminist evinces what in our household is known as the “V” Factor. “V” stands not for victory, but for the inability of a woman to transcend her genitals. Quite common among distaff America. Here are the histrionics of a uterus named Rebecca Traister:

“Palin’s femininity is one that is recognizable to most women: She’s the kind of broad who speaks on behalf of other broads but appears not to like them very much. The kind of woman who, as Jessica Grose at Jezebel has eloquently noted, achieves her power by doing everything modern women believed they did not have to do: presenting herself as maternal and sexual, sucking up to men, evincing an absolute lack of native ambition, instead emphasizing her luck as the recipient of strong male support and approval. It works because these stances do not upset antiquated gender norms. So when the moment comes, when tolerance for and interest in female power have been forcibly expanded by Clinton, a woman more willing to throw elbows and defy gender expectations but who falls short of the goal, Palin is there, tapped as a supposedly perfect substitute by powerful men who appreciate her charms. …”

“The pro-woman rhetoric surrounding Sarah Palin’s nomination is a grotesque bastardization of everything feminism has stood for, and in my mind, more than any of the intergenerational pro- or anti-Hillary crap that people wrung their hands over during the primaries, Palin’s candidacy and the faux-feminism in which it has been wrapped are the first development that I fear will actually imperil feminism. Because if adopted as a narrative by this nation and its women, it could not only subvert but erase the meaning of what real progress for women means, what real gender bias consists of, what real discrimination looks like.”

Update III: Sensational Sarah

Barack Obama, Conservatism, Democrats, Elections 2008, John McCain, Republicans, Sarah Palin, War

An excerpt from my new WND column, “Sensational Sarah“:

“With the Liberty Bell on the big screen behind her, Sarah Palin was the Belle of the Ball at the Republican National Convention. The governor of the State of Alaska was more than picture perfect, she was pitch perfect. She’s a pit-bull with lipstick, alright—lipstick, and sharp stilettos. A potent mix of style and substance. …

Palin has what Washington harpies, Democrat and Republican, lack: authenticity, character and a personality. She’s a mensch. There are plenty of plastic people doing the Republican Party’s biding—vicious, vacuous, vain men and women who’ll embrace her and try and change her. Consider the consummate Court Courtesan, Peggy Noonan. This Washington insider, lapdog to the powerful, was caught on an open mike trashing Palin, decrying her appointment as ‘political Bullshit’ and ‘Gimmicky.’ Palin is not a member of Noonan’s claque—not yet. ‘The permanent political establishment’ Palin decried is a bipartisan plague. Let us hope she remains on the outs with “the Washington elite,” Democratic and Republican alike. …”

You can read the complete column, “Sensational Sarah,“ on WND. Comments are welcome.

Update I (September 6): An interesting analysis from Gerard Baker of the Times is “Sarah Palin: it’s go west, towards the future of conservatism.”
I must say Sarah Palin is sounding a little repetitive today as she regurgitates her Convention speech on the campaign trail. Perhaps most Americans can’t remember it by now.

Update II: “‘I think the best thing about Todd Palin, he’s a man’s man,’ family friend Kristan Cole told ABC News. ‘He knows how to fix the boiler or the toilet or the sink or whatever,’ Davis agreed. ‘It’s very common in Alaska. We don’t have the luxury of calling the Roto-Rooter guy. We just do it ourselves.'” That reminds me of someone I know. As I said in my column, “Sensational Sarah,” “Real women who’ve raised children with good men know exactly what Sarah Palin means when she speaks about her man.”

Update III (September 8): Did I read somewhere in the comments to this post that Sarah Palin was masculine or “manly”? That’s insane. Take it from a feminine female (who happens to wear spectacles too); Palin is feminine alright. Her attire is feminine; the hair classic and soft—unlike Hillary’s hardened helmet—the mannerism the direct opposite of … Ann Coulter’s. Ditto the voice—although it’s not soft, it certainly is much less shrill than your average female foghorn on Fox News. Palin is very feminine. Men who are not hip to her womanly wiles are probably not very masculine themselves.

Updated: Michelle Obama Takes Center Stage

Affirmative Action, Barack Obama, Democrats, Elections 2008

Michelle Obama will headline the 2008 Democratic National Convention. In a remarkable bit of dissembling or stupidity, Chris Wallace of Fox News—who is nowhere near the journalist Wallace Senior was—found no particular significance in the event. This is the first time a candidate’s wife will front a convention.

I think this is a matter of considerable portent. It speaks to the position this woman will assume in the White House. It’s a legitimate supposition. But Fox News is now fawning over Obama—probably in fear of being snubbed by the royal couple and their fans who want to see them in action all the time. Wallace, for Fox, simply spun Michelle’s surprising prominence as the campaign’s attempt to entrust her with rehabilitating Barack’s life story and giving it the American patina it lacks. Michelle Obama is so obviously the wrong person to do so.

The Obamas will be welcoming on stage “Barack Obama’s sister Maya Soetero-Ng and Craig Robinson, Michelle Obama’s older brother; [and] Jerry Kellman, mentor and long-time friend of Barack Obama.” A real tribal affair.

How I wish Jeremiah Wright would write a tell-all about The Child.

Update (August 26, 2008): One word for Mrs. Obama’s speech: pure schmaltz: “maudlin sentimentality.” But the Obama Nation was slobbering and spluttering. The “parrot press” too. You can read her remarks in the New York Times.

I have a question about Michelle’s claim that her “story” is the story of an average, working-class American (her family was middle-class):

“And thanks to their faith and their hard work, we both were able to go to college, so I know firsthand from their lives and mine that the American dream endures.”

Mrs. Obama, in all likelihood, was accepted to Ivy League schools based on the robust program of affirmative action that poisons those places. This means that with test scores lower than those of other candidates, likely whites and Asians, she would have gotten a placement; and her betters would have been rejected.

Is this what is meant to share the experience of the majority that dare not speak its name?

The theme the woman kept reciting—changing “the world as it is” to “the world as it should be“: now that was telling. She has the blueprints to the central plan—she and her central planner husband have decided on the shape your world should take under their tutelage.

Update II: Deflating the Democrats?

Bush, Democrats, Iraq

“Washington has acceded to Baghdad’s wish and tentatively agreed to pull all of its combat troops out of Iraq by the end of 2011,” Time reported.

The New York Times seconded: “The United States has agreed to remove combat troops from Iraqi cities by next June and from the rest of the country by the end of 2011 if conditions in Iraq remain relatively stable, according to Iraqi and American officials involved in negotiating a security accord governing American forces there.”

This is one important story that has disappeared from the headlines ever since Barack and Biden made their announcement. (Unimportant by comparison, mainstream media have also forced the John Edwards scoop to fade.)

With this agreement, the Bush administration might just have taken the wind out of the war as an issue for Barack Obama. As it is, Obama had grown weaker on that front, his position increasingly converging with McCain’s. But if Bush finalizes the withdrawal, he will have taken the issue and the decision away from Obama. Strategically, it’s a smart move.

Update (August 24): And what does an agree-upon withdrawal from Iraq, sealed by Bush and Nuri Kamal al-Maliki, say about McCain’s position on the war! This makes the GOP’s Manchurian Candidate look especially lame.

Update II (August 26): The plot thickens. Maliki vouches the US has agreed to withdraw from Iraq; the Bushies say, “Not so fast.”

McClatchy Newspapers report:

“There is an agreement actually reached, reached between the two parties on a fixed date, which is the end of 2011, to end any foreign presence on Iraqi soil,” Maliki said.
But the White House disputed Maliki’s statement and made clear the two countries are still at odds over the terms of a U.S. withdrawal.
“Any decisions on troops will be based on conditions on the ground in Iraq,” White House spokesman Tony Fratto said in Crawford, Tex., where President Bush is vacationing. “That has always been our position. It continues to be our position.”

Which is it? And who’s the boss in Iraq?