During his presidential campaign Mike Huckabee expressed a set of opinions not strikingly different from Sarah Palin's, yet my guess is that if he were John McCain's running mate these same women would not despise him with the same vehemence they do Sarah Palin. Some of this is due to snobbery, some possibly to envy.
Governor Palin is, after all, a good-looking woman with what appears to be a happy family life who has achieved a great deal in a relatively brief time. But above all Sarah Palin's opinions, because they are held by her, a woman, suggest betrayal.
This stuff astounds me... so irresponsible, so wrong. This amazing observation is made by conservative columnist Joseph Epstein in The Weekly Standard, a repository of right wing thought and punditry. He goes on to state that the reason we feminists support abortion rights is so we ca kill kids with Downs Syndrome!?! This kind of stuff is out there, people read it, subscribe to it and repeat it faithfully:
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?
the Weekly Standard
It is amazing to me that this kind of ignorant rhetoric is upheld highly at all levels of society, by even the most educated persons. For a great analysis, I found Bill Maher's show on Friday night, in which they were discussing the McCain campaigns' new strategy of labeling Obama as a Socialist. Martin Short, comedian, talked about how he grew up in Canada... "What's with all the fear?" he asks. (he starts around 7:20)
So what IS the deal with all the fear? There is definitely two Americas... one that lives in anger and in constant, overwhelming fear of everything around them, everything that is somehow different, challenging, intellectual or intelligent, so that it prevents them from seeing what is actually REAL about the world. I know, it's an age-old tactic that no one seems to question or either be ashamed of promulgating. Om Real Time, Senator Bernie Sanders, a Socialist-Democrat, Ben Affleck and Martin Short discuss this and other issues in the most reasoned and intelligent hour of discussion that I have heard in a very long time. Check it out!
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