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.”

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.”