I’ve seen a number of critiques of the Beck-Palin phenomenon lately that attribute The Rise of the Silver Slurpers to a simple longing for leadership in these tumultuous times. There was this NYT op-ed over the weekend by Anna Holmes and Rebecca Traister, lefty feminists pining for “A Palin of Our Own.”
Since the 2008 election, progressive leaders have done little to address the obvious national appetite for female leadership. And despite (or because of) their continuing obsession with Ms. Palin, they have done nothing to stop an anti-choice, pro-abstinence, socialist-bashing Tea Party enthusiast from becoming the 21st century symbol of American women in politics.
The left’s failure to nurture and celebrate female politicians has had a significant effect on its policies. In recent years, Democratic majorities and progressive legislation seem to have been built on steady trade-offs of reproductive rights, culminating this year when the first female speaker of the House, Nancy Pelosi, was forced to push through health care reform with a compromise on abortion financing.
An older generation of female Democrats, including Mrs. Clinton and Ms. Pelosi, are about as eager to mount a Palin-style girl-powered campaign as they are to wear a miniskirt on the House floor. For them, proudly or aggressively touting one’s feminist credentials (if you’re actually a feminist, that is) is taboo. It’s considered too, well, female.
I call bullshit on this. First of all, let’s look at the examples they cited: Clinton, Pelosi and Palin. Hillary Clinton is arguably the most powerful woman on the planet, busily running the foreign policy apparatus of the world’s only super power. Nancy Pelosi is the only female Speaker of the House—ever—and a highly effective legislator in that role by any objective measure. And Sarah Palin is…an occasional Fox News contributor, a former second-fiddle on a losing presidential ticket and a half-term governor who quit every important job she ever held.
Sorry, ladies, but I’ll match our record up with the GOP’s on women’s leadership any day of the week. Sure, Palin has a creepily devoted fan base and scads of Facebook friends. So does Lady Gaga. And Lady Gaga has more progressive policy chops.
Petulant Left blogger Jane Hamsher, quoted today in The Hill:
Markos Moulitsas of Daily Kos, who is also a columnist for The Hill, said he didn’t think Obama would get a 2012 primary challenge “in a million years.”
In an e-mail, Moulitsas also said Obama shouldn’t be challenged.
Still, some influential figures on the left, which erupted in fury this week at criticism White House press secretary Robert Gibbs made in an interview with The Hill,
suggest a multitude of voices in New Hampshire and Iowa could be helpful to the party.
“I have always encouraged a diversity of voices in the primary process, within all parties and at all levels of government,” said Jane Hamsher, founder of Firedoglake.com, a leading liberal blog.
Yes, Jane, because the only way to advance Progressive issues is to elect more Republicans. It’s so obvious to me now.
I’ve never had much regard for Hamsher. Her disastrous dalliance with the Lamont campaign was an early indicator that her first and only love is the sound of her own voice. Then there was the Grover Norquist Incident. And now this.
The sexism the 2008 election will forever change the political landscape. Millions of women voters, be they registered Democrats or newly-minted Independents, no longer feel that they have a home in the Democratic Party. If the Democratic Party does not yet realize this, the Republican Party does!
Ummm, yeah, they sure do:
JASON MATTERA, Human Events editor: “You know what gave Billl Clinton the most satisfaction when walking his daughter down the aisle? It wasn’t sending off Chelsea in holy matrimony. It was scoping out the talent in the room. As he’s walking down the aisle can’t you picture him contemplating, “I’ll take that honey at 1:05 AM. I’ll take that one thirty seconds later.” Then there’s the walk of shame back to his bed with Hillary. And getting in bed with Hillary is probably one of the biggest walks of shames [sic] there is.”
...so you’re going to have to entertain yourselves by checking out one of the dumbest rivalries in the history of the internets: The New Agenda’s Amy Siskind (and her commenters) vs. Human Event’s Jason Mattera. It’s kinda like what a war between Andrew Dice Clay and Monty Python’s Hell’s Grannies would be like if everyone was huffing ether and repeatedly running headfirst into brick walls. Or something. I mean, you try to explain how some of the brainiacs from TNA seem to think Jason Mattera is a disillusioned Democrat or what in the hell this means:
Remember The New Agenda (NAG)—the incognito PUMA organization that has had some success in passing itself off as a generic women’s group? Allegedly non-partisan, the group exists primarily to fluff lady wingnuts like Palin and Bachmann and kvetch endlessly about the results of the 2008 Democratic primary.
Anyhoo, heretofore, The New Agenda has attempted to generate buzz with the low-watt current of decidedly D-list “celebrities” like the absurd Lady Lynn Forester de Rothschild. But they may have finally hit the jackpot this week.
[Tim] Adams, who says he’s a Hillary Clinton supporter who ended up voting for John McCain when Clinton lost the Democratic nomination to Obama…
Ummm, yeah, Adams is totally reliable. As we learned during the primaries and the general election, PUMAs never lie about anything. Jesus. Effing. Christ.
When we last left our embittered incognito PUMA and “voice for all women” poseur Amy Siskind of The New Agenda, she was casting about for a term to replace “feminism,” having judged that word passé since most women who apply it to themselves recognize Siskind’s hero Palin for the fraudulent nincompoop she is.
Siskind has now settled on “pro-women” as the replacement word. And in her latest HuffPo column, she praises the leadership of The New Feminism Pro-Women-ism:
But the most exciting aspect of the new pro-women movement is women support women. Sarah Palin is setting the pace by not only recruiting and endorsing, but also to standing by women political leaders. And conservative women in the media like Michelle Malkin, Ann Coulter and Laura Ingraham are continually defending their women leaders.
Yeah, well, call me when ONE of them defends a non-wingnut woman, and then we can talk about how much their support is based on gender solidarity. Palin routinely endorses GOP men over GOP women—just ask Kay Bailey Hutchison and Lisa Murkowski. And the frothing wingnuts Siskind describes as “conservative women in the media” viciouslyattack any woman who isn’t a fellow frothing wingnut—often in sexist terms (or, in Palin’s case, stand by giggling while men do it).
Siskind concludes:
As I consider “feminism” and “pro-women,” here’s my visceral reaction: Feminism feels like a trip back to junior high school full of mean girls—ganging up and cliques that exclude. I barely made it out alive the first time and I’m not eager to go back. Pro-women feels mature and positive. It makes me (a pro-choice, pro-gay rights, registered Democrat) feel not only welcome, but also supported, empowered and excited.
And there you have it—it’s all about how it makes Siskind feel. It’s nice that she feels all empowerfulled by Palin’s shtick. But the thing is, our own personal feelings aren’t the primary concern here. Real issues are: the freedom to make our own choices and a desire to see full equality not only for women but also for our gay brothers and sisters.
There’s a reason pro-choice women and gay-rights supporters are overwhelmingly Democrats: The Democrats aren’t perfect, but they’re the only party that even pretends to give a damn about reproductive freedom and gay rights. If Siskind gave a shit about anything besides her own extra-delicate personal fee-wings, she’d get that. But she doesn’t. So she doesn’t.
When John McCain named Sarah Palin his vice presidential nominee, [Kevin] DuJan was overjoyed, and Palin quickly became his new political idol. He is now eagerly awaiting the arrival of February 6, 2011, the date he has decided that Sarah Palin will announce her 2012 presidential campaign in Tampico, Illinois, to mark the 100th anniversary of hometown hero Ronald Reagan’s birthday.
DuJan has even picked out the color he wants Palin to use for her presidential campaign logo (green, in order to dilute criticisms from the left that she is anti-environment).
DuJan has also designed different gowns for Sarah Palin for each of the forty-seven inaugural balls he is planning for her, which he displays in his small, cluttered Chicago apartment using a series of Barbie dolls and dioramas constructed using cardboard, scraps of fabric, a Bedazzler, and his spray-painted dandruff. He is also so convinced that she’s going to thank him for the “green” idea by making him her Chief of Staff that he is currently running a fundraiser on his blog to purchase a townhouse in D.C. that he will share with the five imaginary friends who co-write his blog with him.
In 2014 he plans to marry Track Palin on the lawn of the White House in an ornate ceremony that will be watched by the largest worldwide television audience ever. The end?
Yeah, yeah, I know: Sarah Palin again. But this isn’t really about her. Well, it is, kind of, but only in the sense that it’s about how Palin touched off a debate about something infinitely more significant than herself: feminism and politics.
Palin’s recent Grizzly Mama speech for the pro-life Susan B. Anthony List, in which Palin attempted to claim the word “feminist” for SarahPAC, set off a predictable brouhaha among her supporters and detractors that’s still raging weeks later.
One of the silliest tussles was over whether Susan B. Anthony and other prominent suffragists favored or opposed abortion. Palin and other wingnut women claim they opposed it. Prominent feminist scholars said not so fast.
Personally, I don’t give a damn what the suffragists’ views on abortion were. The fact that they were right on the question of the vote doesn’t mean they were right about everything else.
For example, Susan B. Anthony was very active in the temperance movement and championed that cause as essential to women’s rights. As grateful as I am for Anthony’s work in securing the right to vote, I’d punch her in the tits if she tried to snatch the martini from my hand.
...but, c’mon, it’s pretty funny that Bill Clinton was the one asking Joe Sestak to drop out. The only thing that would have been better was if they waited until the 31st (hint, hint) to release the info.
If the spirit of a martyred Iron Age hippie carpenter lives on to observe humanity, he is surely nauseated (in a purely spiritual sense) by the antics of modern televangelists who fleece little old ladies in his name to sate their lust for personal jets, hookers and gold-plated toilets. “That is not what I meant,” Jesus might sigh. “Not at all.”
Secretary of State Hillary Clinton is likely too busy juggling the smoke-belching chainsaws of US foreign policy to notice the present-day antics of the folks who took her for their own personal Ms-siah back in aught-eight. But if she did, she might shake her head and say, “That is not what I meant. Not at all.”
Exhibit A: Amy Siskind and The New Agenda, former Clinton supporters who reduced everything their candidate ever stood for to the contents of her panties and now fancy themselves highly consequential queen makers for politicians of all parties.
While you sit in your comfortable homes and offices mindlessly reading blogs and twitter feeds, the true Patriots of this country are hard at work in Harlem, NY to convict NoPresident NoBama and sentence him to death on 18 or 19 counts of treason and other related charges.
Who are the mighty Patriots that might rid our glorious nation of that long-legged mack daddy Usurpuring mo-fo occupying OUR White House? It would be none other than the Dr. Rev. James David Manning of Atlah World Ministries and his nimble crowd of built-in judges, jury and witnesses. Today’s opening ceremonies were to include a stroll and demonstration around Columbia University which is on trial as well for sedition and treason or somesuch.
While the crowd that was due to march around Columbia University (also indicted for “selling” Obama his degree) has not quite numbered the 30,000 expected (and they never actually marched around Columbia) and seems to be missing birfer lawyer Phil Berg and the American Grand Jury, that has not stopped this massive Patriotic effort from going forward.
