Unintended consequences of Palin’s….existence
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The vice-presidential nominee is out there representing conservative ideals and principles in American government.
But the degree of revulsion liberals, and particularly feminists, are revealing in their reactions to her show that to them, she represents a threat to their goals for American government and culture. On Fox News’ Special Report yesterday, Charles Krauthammer said she is a “silent rebuke” to these women.Â
Look at the viciousness of the attacks.
In Palin’s case, I think what adds to it is her decision at her age with four other children to have a down syndrome child. This, too, as Joseph Epstein wrote, in feminist circles if abortion is not about this, what’s it about?
And they look at her as sort of a back room — a backwater hick, who, for religious reasons, went ahead and had a child that they would never have.
Underneath it, I think, deep underneath it, I think it’s a self-loathing on the part of these feminists, knowing that what she did is virtuous and a generous act that they would have never have undertaken. And her having undertaken it is an affront to them, a silent rebuke.
Here’s that Joseph Epstein piece.
The liberal women I know–and most of the women I seem to know are liberal–loathe Sarah Palin. They don’t merely dislike her, the way one tends to dislike politicians whose views are not one’s own, they actively detest her. When her name comes up–and it is they who tend to bring it up–their complexions take on a slightly purplish tinge, their eyes cross in rage. “Moron” is their most frequently used noun, though “idiot” comes up a fair number of times; “that woman” is yet another choice. A wide variety of adjectives, differing only slightly in their violence, usually precede these epithets.
They have become unglued. As Epstein says, if the candidate with these same values were Mike Huckabee, the reaction would be very different. But this is a conservative woman.
One might think that liberal women would have some admiration for Governor Palin’s appearing to have solved the working mother problem that bedevils most contemporary American women. She is very feminine yet doesn’t regard herself as a victim, and seems to be entirely at ease with men. Here is a woman raising five children who is able not only to have an active hand in the life of her community but actually win the highest political office in her state. As the governor of Alaska, moreover, she took on the corrupt elements in her own party, which requires courage of a kind liberated women especially, one would think, might admire.
But they “relentlessly condemn” her.
Strongly liberal women get most agitated over the issue–though of course to them it is no issue but a long since resolved matter–of abortion. Abortion, to be sure, is the great third-rail subject in American politics. But when a male politician is against abortion, these women can write that off as the ignorance of a standard politician, if not himself a Christian fundamentalist, then another Republican cynically going after the fundamentalist vote. A woman not in favor of abortion is something quite different.
And it is all the more strikingly different when the same woman not only holds this opinion on abortion but acts on it and knowingly bears a child with Down syndrome, a child that most liberal women would have thought reason required aborting. What else, after all, is abortion for?
It’s all about abortion, in the end. And the abortion culture that grows around it. Protecting that engenders rage in the most adamant proponents of abortion.
The daughter of a dear friend of mine used to say of her mother, “I sense her rage.” Of course when the daughter said this, my friend’s rage would only increase. Suggesting that liberal women feel rage over Sarah Palin is, similarly, likely only to enrage them all the more. But rage in their reaction to Governor Palin is emphatically what I do sense on the part of liberal women–that and delight in any attempt to humiliate her…I wonder if the women who loathe Sarah Palin with such intensity oughtn’t perhaps to reexamine the source of their strongly illiberal feelings.
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What a reprehensible post – and loathsome article that it is linked to.
As a strongly liberal woman, with strongly liberal AND strongly conservative friends, I can tell you that not once, never, ever has Sarah Palin been discussed in these terms. More importantly, I have not seen it discussed in that manner by candidates, surrogates or the blogs I have read. I generally have not heard criticisms of how a mother can do the job of Vice President, although I have seen a few tentative questions regarding this -usually quickly dismissed or shot down. There have been concerns that she appeared to be cavalier in her concern for her pregnant daughter – about not appearing to think through what the glare of publicity would mean to her and the family, and concerns about Trig, but NEVER any hint that she should not have gotten pregnant or that she should not have carried him to term. How dare anyone smear (and I do not use that term lightly) liberal women in this way and dare to presume what we are thinking.
We (and increasingly my conservative friends) are uniformly dismayed (and increasinly disgusted) at Sarah Palin’s lack of intellectual preparation for the job of Vice President. She seems to exhibit zero grasp of the job description, of the issues facing the country and has an all too willing propensity to make suggestive and inflamatory statements about Senator Obama (he palls around with domestic terrorists – FAR from the truth). The thought of her in charge sends shivers down our spines – not because of her family choices which are rightly her business, but because she just is not intellectually ready to be Vice President. Just ask Colin Powell or any of the Republican stalwarts who have endorsed Barack Obama in the last few days – all citing the Palin choice as a significant reason for their decision.
I am not a political person, but I have heard women (who support Obama) speak in the manner described about Ms. Palin. Even before we knew anything about her, women (who I thought should have been thrilled with a woman who had shattered the glass ceiling) were condemning her- politely of course, in public. I couldn’t understand it. I was shocked.
But as time went on, the criticism became less “ladylike,” nastier – as if, how could such a nobody have gotten so far? (when I didn’t????) It would not have mattered what she said or did- how well prepared she was. That really didn’t seem to be the point. She was on the hit list. Oh yeah, I hear this kind of talk from women about her – when they stop by for chocolate in my office at 2:30, over drinks after work, in passionate e-mail debates among friends of different political persuasions. We don’t have to presume what anyone is thinking. Those of us who have ears, hear.
“Intellectual preparation????” Give us a break.
I think this post is right on! I believe the hatred (and I do not use this term lightly) that Ms. Palin has attracted from the media in general and the feminists in particular is because her life is an insult to their warped conception of what a womanhood. She is a strong, articulate, and accomplished woman so on the surface you would think liberal woman would be demanding that she be taken seriously. Oh, but wait, she is pro-life, not just in some vague wishy-washy way, but has actually proved it by her action of bringing Trig to term without killing him. That cannot be borne by the liberal women (and men) who worship the false goddess of abortion.
The attack on her intellect is a joke. She has gone from a governor from Alaska to a national candidate in just a couple months. Would any man be held to a similar standard? I doubt it. As far as her co-vice president nominee Joe Biden, he has made so many blunders on the campaign trail (see link below), that if Ms. Palin had made half of these, she would have quickly been reduce to a female Dan Quayle. The fact that she has resisted that label is to her credit.
http://elections.foxnews.com/2008/10/02/raw-data-list-biden-gaffes/
Thanks Shelia for keeping us informed.
But it may all be much simpler. I heard last night that 50,000,000 babies have been aborted since Roe v. Wade. Accounting for some women having multiple abortions, that means that there may be at least 45,000,000 women (good women – both democrat and republican) who are hoping and praying secretly in their hearts that what they did was not truly a sin– that it was okay, and if the government and all of these other good Catholics ratify abortion, maybe it just wasn’t so bad. As they get older, perhaps some lie awake at night hoping that the first thing they see when they die will not be the questioning eyes of the child they aborted.
They know that God forgives, but do they really believe??? Do they really understand the depth of His mercy? Mistakes are made, but the bigger mistake, as we are told is not the ones we make ourselves, but the ones we lead others to make. This election is making many women really face this issue for the first time, perhaps, in decades. It’s hitting them in the face- something they had hoped to put behind them, to forget. It is a forced examination of conscience- nowhere to turn. Impossible to ignore. Maybe it rattles some and they say things they normally wouldn’t say. It would be understandable. Our job, as I see it, is to continue to help everyone understand His great love AND at the same time, make sure future generations don’t make the same mistakes. And for those who for decades have lead others to kill millions of unborn children? It seems to me that they would have an even greater stake in hoping against all hope that what they are doing is not truly a sin.
As Mother Mary Francis of the Poor Clares said, “We grow or we wither by the hidden choices of the heart.” But the heart is not a reliable indicator of God’s will. That’s why we have the church and the community of faith.
I agree with Linda and John W.
As someone who was a secular feminist and has evolved into a “new feminist” as envisioned by Pope John Paul II, it saddens me to see women’s reactions to Sarah Palin and our silence when she is scrutinized just for being a woman — and not a Hilary Clinton-type-of-woman.
As with abortion, we women are often our own worst enemies. It mystifies me that secular feminists maintain that they are pro-women but they dismiss or ignore that abortion destroys not only the child in the mother’s womb, but the mother and many people close to her. I’ve known women over the years who have aborted children and saw how those decisions — and the lack of understanding about the loss and grief they experience — caused them to suffer emotionally, spiritually, and, sometimes physically.
Why would we want to put any of our fellow women through that if we were truly pro-woman?
Women have a lot of power for change in this world. Why do we keep hurting each other?