Gloria Steinem had a op-ed piece in the Los Angeles Times that looks at why women should NOT be duped into voting for the McSenile/Palin ticket. If I were an intelligent woman, I suspect that I'd feel insulted and outraged that the Republican Party/John McSenile believe that I'm so stupid that I will be influenced by Palin's gender rather than what her positions are on important issues. The basic message of the Christianist element of the GOP is that women are expected to be at home, barefoot, pregnant and subservient to men - unless they are out bashing gays and working to impose Christianist religious beliefs on all citizens (think Beverly LaHaye, Phyllis Schlafly, and in Virginia, The Family Foundation's Victoria Cobb, who do not practice what they preach to other women). As the father of two highly intelligent and talented daughters I am all for women having equality with men. I am NOT for the Christo-fascist idea of women's rights. Here are highlights from Steinem's column:*
Here's the good news: Women have become so politically powerful that even the anti-feminist right wing -- the folks with a headlock on the Republican Party -- are trying to appease the gender gap with a first-ever female vice president.
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But here is even better news: It won't work. This isn't the first time a boss has picked an unqualified woman just because she agrees with him and opposes everything most other women want and need. Feminism has never been about getting a job for one woman. It's about making life more fair for women everywhere.
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Selecting Sarah Palin, who was touted all summer by Rush Limbaugh, is no way to attract most women, including die-hard Clinton supporters. Palin shares nothing but a chromosome with Clinton. Her down-home, divisive and deceptive speech did nothing to cosmeticize a Republican convention that has more than twice as many male delegates as female, a presidential candidate who is owned and operated by the right wing and a platform that opposes pretty much everything Clinton's candidacy stood for -- and that Barack Obama's still does. To vote in protest for McCain/Palin would be like saying, "Somebody stole my shoes, so I'll amputate my legs."
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This is not to beat up on Palin. I defend her right to be wrong, even on issues that matter most to me. . . . McCain is following the Bush administration habit, as in the Justice Department, of putting a job candidate's views on "God, guns and gays" ahead of competence. The difference is that McCain is filling a job one 72-year-old heartbeat away from the presidency.
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So let's be clear: The culprit is John McCain. He may have chosen Palin out of change-envy, or a belief that women can't tell the difference between form and content, but the main motive was to please right-wing ideologues; . . . Palin's value to those patriarchs is clear: She opposes just about every issue that women support by a majority or plurality. She believes that creationism should be taught in public schools but disbelieves global warming; she opposes gun control but supports government control of women's wombs; she opposes stem cell research but approves "abstinence-only" programs.
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So far, the major new McCain supporter that Palin has attracted is James Dobson of Focus on the Family. Of course, for Dobson, "women are merely waiting for their husbands to assume leadership," so he may be voting for Palin's husband. . . . A loss in November could cause the centrist majority of Republicans to take back their party, which was the first to support the Equal Rights Amendment and should be the last to want to invite government into the wombs of women.
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