Round 1 ended with Palin ahead on points after Media was subjected to a standing eight count. Round 2 is now underway, with Media trying some new strategies. These include the Not Quite Puff Piece (courtesy the NYT) and the Policy by the Back Door piece (courtesy the Democratic Party itself). The former looks potentially fruitful, but the latter is a non-starter – both Obama and Biden continued to support the Bridge to Nowhere – after Palin opposed it. Whatever happens, the old strategy of Throwing a Great Deal of Mud is not going to work. They tried that in Round 1, with painful consequences.
I could keep going with the boxing analogy, but I won’t, because I’m interested in examining what Kim Mark over at LP has called – rightly I think – a new episode in the ‘Culture Wars’. While I’m at it, I’ll also recommend an earlier piece of Kim’s that focusses more directly on matters psephelogical, and consider a few statistical peculiarities here.
It’s important for Australians to appreciate how different playing with numbers is in the USA, where low voter turnout is often an issue. In Australia, polls are usually much more accurate – particularly preceding a federal election – because the person polled has to drag his sorry arse to the polling booth or cop a sixty-buck fine. Not so in the USA. That said, it’s also possible in many US states to register to vote on polling day itself, so the idea of strategically walling out a group of voters – as Howard allegedly did by closing registration early before the last Federal election – is not feasible either. Registration matters are left to the states, as are voting mechanisms (think Florida. Think ‘hanging chads’).
For accurate prediction, I prefer Intrade (one of the betting markets), which picked the 2004 result and is very difficult to game. Intrade also appears to correct for the ‘Shy Tory‘ phenomenon – whereby right-leaning voters lie to pollsters about their voting intentions. Shy Tories first came to light in the UK, and also emerged in Australia during Pauline Hanson’s time in the sun – one reason why pollsters were so stunned when a million Australians voted for her in 1998. They’ve now also become a feature of American politics. With all that background, it’s worth pointing out that Intrade still has Obama in the lead (albeit by a slim margin), and – FWIW – I think all the polls putting McCain well in front of Obama aren’t using a big enough MOE. In other words, it’s basically a dead heat. If McCain has any advantage at all, it’s hidden among the USA’s Shy Tories. That said, to come back to even-stevens after Obama enjoyed such a comfortable lead (both in the polls and at Intrade) earlier on in the campaign is remarkable, and appears to be attributable to the ‘Palin effect’.
Now, having got the psephing out of the way, I’ll turn to the mechanics of that Palin effect. Apart from being chosen, delivering one barnstorming speech and showing ‘townhall’ talent (she’s apparently good on the stump – to be expected in a State Governor/former mayor), Palin has done nothing. This ‘nothing’ includes refusing to grant blanket media access. No doubt she’s being coached to blazes – one media speculation that seems entirely legitimate – but the McCain camp is drip-feeding access to her for another reason: to control the media, to make them more amenable.
It’s fair to say that the media response to Sarah Palin’s candidature was, ahem, a pretty low point and – as I pointed out in the first post I wrote on this issue – Obama has been forced to underwrite that particular bad cheque. Apart from one or two comments, he personally has been very restrained. Clive Crook made this observation:
The irony in 2008 is that the Democratic candidate, despite Republican claims to the contrary, is not an elitist. Barack Obama is an intellectual, but he remembers his history. He can and does connect with ordinary people. His courteous reaction to the Palin nomination was telling. Mrs Palin (and others) found it irresistible to skewer him in St Paul for “saying one thing about [working Americans] in Scranton, and another in San Francisco”. Mr Obama made a bad mistake when he talked about clinging to God and guns, but I am inclined to make allowances: he was speaking to his own political tribe in the native idiom.
The problem in my view is less Mr Obama and more the attitudes of the claque of official and unofficial supporters that surrounds him. The prevailing liberal mindset is what makes the criticisms of Mr Obama’s distance from working Americans stick.
In other words, despite the irritation of seeing the ‘Culture Wars’ once again play out across the American electorate, the repellent attitudes that gave the culture wars legs in the first place still exist. Palin’s nomination brought all of them to the surface, so much so that even people on the left were appalled. Two feminist blogs – Australia’s Hoyden about Town and the USA’s Shakesville, although both clearly still supporting Obama’s candidacy – put immediate distance between themselves and the sexism and spite emanating from elsewhere (Shakesville has a superb series of rolling posts documenting sexism directed at both Palin and Clinton). Unfortunately, their good example has been drowned out by legions of bad examples. A post at Shakesville also made the extremely shrewd point that the GOP would be better at defending Palin from sexism than the Democratic Party was at defending Hillary Clinton from sexism. This has – with exceptions – turned out to be true, and McCain is now in a position to play the media like nobody’s business because of it.
Palin is a desirable media commodity, and McCain can now control access to her based on media ‘niceness’. He can push the more spiteful members of the liberal media to one side, prod the ‘haters’ into submission (as has already happened with the New York Times, which uncritically repeated some of the nastiest smears and has now produced a pro-women-with-kids-in-politics puff piece). This doesn’t necessarily mean she’ll get asked easier questions, but it does mean she’ll be put at ease with Dorothy Dixers early in the interview and treated with respect later on (no hectoring or bullying tones). I know from my own media experience that it’s relatively easy to field the most demanding questions when the interviewer is friendly up front and allows one to ‘settle in’ to the interview.
McCain (and the GOP) also has another strategic advantage. Some of the sexism directed at Hillary Clinton had very specific African-American cultural overtones. This doesn’t just include Jeremiah Wright’s appalling anti-Hillary tirades in his church, but the Bros before Hoes t-shirts widely worn by Obama supporters, or rapper Ludacris’ anti-Hillary song. Democrats – confined by identity politics and Obama’s ethnicity – found it difficult to call this behaviour for what it is. Palin and the GOP, by contrast, will have no trouble in batting it to one side – for the simple reason that they didn’t respect any of it in the first place. That’s one of the reasons why Palin was able to skewer Obama’s ‘community organiser’ background so skillfully in her speech. It’s not that she hasn’t been a community organiser herself – she has, as is abundantly clear from her resume. It’s just that she can disrespect Obama’s community organising – strongly linked to both his church and ethnic background – because there’s no cost for her. Very few African-Americans vote for the GOP, and those that do would be unlikely to credit anything to do with Rev Wright’s church anyway.
That ‘Shy Tories’ even exist suggests that the American media badly needs to get its act together. People don’t lie to pollsters over something like their voting intentions unless they believe there are consequences attached to admitting their intentions. In economic terms, voting is close to being a pointless exercise, rather like entering the lottery; people vote because they care about democracy. Clive Crook again:
It is an attitude that a good part of the US media share. The country has conservative media (Fox News, talk radio) as well as liberal media (most of the rest). Curiously, whereas the conservative media know they are conservative, much of the liberal media believe themselves to be neutral.
Their constant support for Democratic views has nothing to do with bias, in their minds, but reflects the fact that Democrats just happen to be right about everything. The result is the same: for much of the media, the fact that Republicans keep winning can only be due to the backwardness of much of the country.
Clearly, then, some media types don’t want a change of Government so much as a change of People. That’s not going to happen anytime soon, so Taking the People Seriously – as culture-wars-ish as it seems – is once again on the agenda.
Via JC, Camille Paglia’s (always entertaining) take on things.
38 Comments
Perhaps there is a culture war going on between different groups, but watching some of the speeches, I found that the biggest emphasis was on nationalism, which seems rather vacuous to me.
Is it really “Culture War” or just the irresistable opportunity to expose the incoherence and hypcocrisy of modern Leftism, which I am afraid to remind you is no better nailed than “Luvviedom”.
Can we rename “Shy Tories” to “Ashamed Tories” as that would appear to be the reason they lie? They are bit like porn consumers, they realise what they do is abhorrent to the majority but it’s not illegal and they love it, they just can’t bring themselves to admit it publicly.
Ah, Patrick, a nice one. Those on the right are stupid, evil, selfish and have filthy minds.
On the left they are intelligent, kind, and correct in everything.
That about it?
Ah, Patrick, a nice one. Those on the right are stupid, evil, selfish and have filthy minds.
On the left they are intelligent, kind, and correct in everything.
That about it?
No, those on the Right think their Invisible Hand is better than any Imaginary Friend and those on the Left can’t keep their hands out of the pants.
Comedy gold, all.
That said, I do think Obama is about to pay bigtime for Rap/Hip-Hop’s casual sexism. I knew there were problems with it when Eminem was forced to explain stuff that black artists had been getting away with for years. Palin doesn’t have to care – there are few if any votes to be lost – so she can throw Obama’s culture at him as the mother of all political wedges.
A pig with lipstick – ooo he treads close to the edge, knowing full well people will link this with Palin, while maintaining his deniability of intentionally doing so. The righties are in a bit of rage at this. Something he did with Hillary too, I’m told. I wonder if there lies some rancour on Obama’s part against women?
SL – finally, the US election has become interesting, and not before time either. Until now the only interest was watching the Ron Paul Truthers clash with Code Pink.
Via Joe Cambria,
Camille Paglia’s written about Palin’s rise. Paglia begins by acknowledging that Obama’s train’s run aground:
And describes Sarah Palin as…
Ken – Those on the right are stupid, evil, selfish and have filthy minds.
On the left they are intelligent, kind, and correct in everything. That about it?
No this is it:
Those on the right are stupid, evil, selfish and have filthy minds.
On the left they are intelligent, kind, and correct in everything.
Those on the leftare stupid, evil, selfish and have filthy minds. On the right they are intelligent, kind, and correct in everything.
No you are lying.
No you are lying.
When you were 5 you stole a biscuit.
When you were 6 you did wee-wees in your pants.
Did not!
Did too!
Etcetera.
The grand and noble practise of democratic politics. Maybe the Assyrians had it right all along.
What, pray tell, did the Assyrians believe? All I know about ‘em is that they wrote Akkadian (I think). Were they the ones who wrote Gilgamesh and Enkidu?
I think that was the Sumerians… mind you, my knowledge of ancient Sumer comes from reading Neal Stephenson novels
Do you mean the Babylonians? The law code of Hammurabi is one of the earliest recorded statues in the world. Not much support for the ‘no win no fee’ system – if you brought a complaint and couldn’t prove it YOU got the punishment.
Thanks for the plug above, Sl.
I think Camille really nails this one by showing up the nastiness of US coastal feminism and what it stands for. Putting politics to one side a feminist should be more than a little pleased with the Palin ascension so far although time will tell how she goes. The idea that a woman could fit into the role of a VP candidate so easily in the GOP that very bastion of conservatism does show the great strides that have been made.
She basically represents a great deal of the values of what Americans call fly over country- that’s the land you travel across when flying from LA to NYC and is about as close as most of those types ever come to that part of the world. It’s not my cup of tea but I sort of do respect them. Many of them have never traveled out of the US, are terribly patriotic and have small town values. They are also amazingly generous to their neighbors, quite religious and have conservative leanings. That’s where Palin hails from and the way she’s been treated is horrendous. Unfortunately I have to agree with Greenfly on this issue.
This election is going to be closer than what people think and it won’t be before the last week or so before it begins to break out. I would have said that this was Obam’s election to lose but now I’m not so sure.
I like Paglia writing by the way, but I think you’re much better.
Their constant support for Democratic views has nothing to do with bias, in their minds, but reflects the fact that Democrats just happen to be right about everything. The result is the same: for much of the media, the fact that Republicans keep winning can only be due to the backwardness of much of the country.
Funny you mention this. I recall years ago reading a piece by Peggy Noonan recalling the time before she become a speechwriter working for Dan Rather. She recalled how Rather was so reflexively “ liberal” that he simply thought he own values were centrist and mainstream and couldn’t ever conceive how others didn’t think like him. Conservative thinking was not just alien to him, it was like it couldn’t exist.
That’s why the MSM outside FOX is unable to understand. It’s also why Murdoch was able to tap into a lucrative segment in an overcrowded market. And people still don’t understand Fox.
Intrade now has McCain ahead.
jc, I would suggest that Americans in fly-over country are kind to their neighbours only as long as said neighbours can’t be classified as queer, left-leaning or god-hating. My experience is that they aren’t kind to people whom they suspect of any deviance from their standards.
They believed pretty much in the same pantheon of gods as the Sumerians and others at the time. Skeptic is right, the Sumerians came up with The Epic of Gilgamesh.
They were brutal. However on the plus side they would’ve flayed these ridiculous n’ah n’ah n’ah people infecting US politics by now and nailed ‘em to the city walls.
It’s a little peculiar that there’s been no feminist blasting of Obama for his lipstick on pig comments over at LP.
M-H
America is not NYC, Chicago, LA and SF.
My experience is that they aren’t kind to people whom they suspect of any deviance from their standards.
Examining the extremism of mutual emnity that this election generates in the context of the swamp of pulpy tripe that passes for political polemic in the United States makes me think of one whose like we don’t deserve to see again:
Adrien, indeed. It seems most difficult for people to love those who are different from them.
Such difficulties go both ways: a “fly-over” American probably will find it hard to love a queer, left-leaning atheist, but by the same token, a liberal leftist American probably will find it hard to love a “fly-over” American.
The coast and the centre of the US are almost like different countries really.
Personally, I’m fascinated by different people of all walks of life, which makes parties at my place interesting. I’m always a little worried that religious/political warfare might break out, but it never has: everyone has been very cordial.
It depends on the will LE. Currency Lad and I have never agreed about religious or political matters. But we’d get along just fine if we stuck to music.
Graeme Bird on the other hand would chew his own arm off before admitting we have similar DVD collections.
A lot of its group psychology. How many nasty ethnic/religious struggles have erupted in places that were peaceful and multicultural beforehand. Ten years ago few people in Baghdad worried if you were shi’ite or suuni. Saraejvo was once very cosmopolitan. Some people just love to hate. And a lot of us are too cowardly and/or stupid to tell ‘em to pull their heads in.
A lot of it boils down to tolerance v acceptance. The former is really the best one can hope for, but the latter is what an awful lot of people want. The gay leftie and the bogan in his flannies who – God forbid – live next door to each other can probably reach some sort of rapprochement as long as they don’t get in each others’ faces.
The bogan would be wise to find somewhere other than his backyard to tan his roo skins, while the gay boy would be wise to find somewhere other than his backyard in which to practice Mardi Gras routines.
I’m being facetious, but only slightly. The worst intolerance I’ve ever experienced came from left-leaning, arty types – the classic was being propositioned by both halves of an ‘open relationship’ during the course of one evening. For arty types, growing up in Palin country would probably feel like the end of the world, but then, the moral intolerance of the anti-hunt brigade has to be seen to be believed… All the more reason to leave people to do their own thing on their own property.
I’m being facetious, but only slightly. The worst intolerance I’ve ever experienced came from left-leaning, arty types …
Not so long ago I would have challenged that but of late, through personal experience(not on blogs), I must state that the lefty arty types may make all the nice statements but underneath that is a snobbishness and pretentiousness that I can’t tolerate. I make no apologies for that.
You can catch it in the off hand remarks they make, when their defences let slip their true feelings towards those who appear to not be as smart as them or can’t quote this or that or work in “lowly” jobs. They whine about the greedy Right while driving around in their luxury cars, they latch onto the latest crazes like “The Secret” or my favourite hate, that Deepak Bloody Chopra nonsense. I became so incensed by the latter that I renamed him: Deep Pork Chops. Pseudo scientific claptrap yet for some reason many of them seem to despise science. As a mockery of their pretentiousness, years ago I created this little diatribe:
Trust nothing, least of all how clever you think you are.
Reading is evidence of ignorance. Writing proves it.
If something makes so much sense to you that you cannot understand why others have not thought of it before one of three possibilities exist:
someone has, you just haven’t read enough.
someone has, and they know why its a stupid idea.
no-one has, see a psychiatrist.
If, and we all do occasionally, you need to sound like you know what you’re talking about when pondering the great mysteries, quantum-mechanically indeterminately chaotically insert the words, quantum, Einstein, Heisenberg et al, indeterminacy, chaos, and consciousness, into your dialogue.
———–
I love pointing out to them how clever you are(they make a big deal out of intelligence), how successful you have become. But I have overplayed my hand with them, they no longer challenge me, they do not like my attitude, they have realised that they are dealing with someone who sees straight through their hypocrisy. They hate the fact that someone like myself, who is flat out making a living, can demolish their arguments with such casual ease. They really hate that!
You have been subject to the monstrous ugliness of their pretentious hypocrisy. If it is any consolation, just keep in mind that behind their facade they are just scared little puppies who can’t even be honest with themselves let alone anyone else.
SL, it’s true that it depends how “in your face” you are with your views. The other week, I had a lovely lunch with some of my closest friends from uni. We all have quite different political views, and during the course of lunch, a political debate eventuated. Now if we hadn’t already respected and liked one another, it could have become really heated, but before it could do so, everyone backed down and agreed to disagree on this point. But if we hadn’t already gotten to the point where we respected and liked each other, it could have become very heated.
John, I’ve noticed that sometimes those who are most certain about a principle often violate it. So, for example, I had a Christian friend who genuinely believed that I was going to go to Hell. But this person did things which I considered deeply un-Christian insofar as I understand the principles of the Bible. The person concerned believed so strongly that she was right that she didn’t question her own actions.
That’s the rub – if you believe you are righteous in all that you do (whether you are religious, left wing or right wing) that is when you fall into the trap of being unjust, intolerant or whatever, because you no longer question your own actions.
This is why I do not like piety and righteousness: because I think that it produces hypocrisy and lack of self-awareness.
There is also the cynicism factor. If you really don’t care about political correctness, and believe the use of the “sexism card” is BS, or just an act of political gamesmanship by your opponent, you are likely to use accusations of sexism in cynical, politically opportunistic ways yourself. I think a perfect example of this is Obama’s pig comments:
“John McCain says he’s about change, too — except for economic policy, health care policy, tax policy, education policy, foreign policy and Karl Rove-style politics. That’s just calling the same thing something different. You can put lipstick on a pig; it’s still a pig. You can wrap an old fish in a piece of paper called change; it’s still going to stink after eight years.”
It’s clearly not sexist (especially in comparison to some of the things John McCain has said). and trying to make it sound sexist by taking a sentence out of context and juxtaposing it against another sentence, that would be sexist if it wasn’t self-depreciating, is a purely cynical exercise.
I think Obama made a genuine mistake there – listen to the audio – halfway through the comment, you can tell he wanted to call it back, but it was too late. He had lipstick on the brain (Palin’s line was a goodie – you have to concede that much), and it just popped out of his mouth. Even Andrew Bolt thinks that, and he’s a genuine conservative.
The thing is, for many conservative working-class people (and I saw this in my own family), sexism is simply a subset of bad manners. Lefties/liberals – because they often don’t respect traditions – generally have poor manners (something I’ve also witnessed time and again), so PC becomes necessary for them in order to cover for the traditional manners that have gone by the by. Conservatives have good manners in large part because they respect traditional values, not because they dislike sexism.
There’s a large part of me that suspects that – most of the time – conservatives are correct in their assessment of sexism. Until it becomes threatening (sexual harassment is best considered a subset of the category ‘assault’), then it is symptomatic of bad manners/lack of ‘broughtupcy’. Lefties have shown this in their treatment of Palin, and the GOP has been able to use it to good effect – the Republican ‘base’ still takes manners seriously. Instead of cynicism, it’s a classic case of groups of people talking past each other. The conservative view (both black and white) of much ‘black power’ rhetoric (to take one example) is very similar – google Bill Cosby’s ‘Poundcake’ speech for what a conservative black perspective on ‘bad manners’ looks like. That’s one reason why Palin has been able to paint Obama into a cultural corner: ‘Bros before Hoes’ is just plain bad manners and ‘getting out of line’ to someone in the GOP. The important cultural baggage for African-Americans is automatically deemed unworthy of respect, because the essence of much conservatism is ‘ask nicely, or not at all’.
For mine, the Palin blow-up is evidence – if any more were ever needed – that there really are fundamentally different ways of engaging with the world. It’s possible that lefties will keep knocking Palin, and keep paying for it at the polls, simply because the two tribes are incapable of observing the points where both overlap.
UPDATE: From looking at the NRO’s Corner, the conservative view seems to be that it is fair to complain about Obama’s ‘pig/lipstick comment’ once. It should then be forgotten; people should move on with the election:
This – for me – is evidence that conservatism is very often about basic personality traits. Some people can cop serious abuse and just shrug it off without feeling real rancor; others are broken by it for all time. Conservatives are usually the former, and don’t like evidence that they may be turning into the latter. That – as much as anything – seems to explain the political differences here.
And speaking of hockey mums…
Oh dear, classic. Very relaxed dog, too.
I think there is too much high theory in that explanation. For starters, the popularity of rightwing radio and television shock jocks, for example Rush Limbaugh and Bill O’Reilly (not to mention Anne Coulter), undermine the argument that the republican base above all favours good manners.
I don’t contend the left are any better, though. I generally agree with sentiments stated above — manners (and empathy) are primarily in-group behaviour, hence, the general lack of them in the adversarial and tribal political arena. I think if anyone is turned off by impoliteness, it isn’t the base, whom are probably quite excited by it, but the apolitical whom don’t see don’t see themselves belonging to a particular group, and don’t view politics through an adversarial lens.
Second, the horrible internet rumours about Palin are not the product of collective moral failing of the left; they are the product of a statistical function. When a group numbers in the millions, like internet democrats, its corresponding share of rude, bellicose and just plain mentally unstable individuals is going to add up to be a lot of people. Given the nature of the internet and its very low threshold for publishing, those people can all have a voice, and because of the nature of MSM, they can all be quoted as representing the entire group.
“M-H
America is not NYC, Chicago, LA and SF.”
Well, gee, who knew?
It is the rest of the country (the ‘flyover country”) to which I referred in my comment.
I don’t know that conservatives are necessarily more mannered than others. I think it all depends on the person.
Also, there can be ways of being rude which are concealed by “manners” (as I experienced in the UK from time to time, often at the hands of conservatives) – the put down which is so politely expressed that you are not quite sure whether you imagined it until afterwards.
Personally, I think manners are very important and I intend to teach my children to have good manners. It’s just a simple matter of showing respect for others. That’s what’s important – showing respect for other human beings regardless of whether they are different from you or not.
the classic was being propositioned by both halves of an ‘open relationship’ during the course of one evening.
.
I’m sorry Skeptic but how is that an example of intolerance?
Deep pork chops.
Love it, John. There’s even worse out there. When I had cable I had to give up my one girlie indulgence of watching Oprah Winfrey because she kept hosting Gary Zukov and his waffle about ‘the soul’. My instinctive reaction on seeing him is to go for a gun, and that can’t be healthy for a Quaker.
The alleged ‘Bush Doctrine’ faux-pas is a major misstep by the Palin-haters. WHAT “Bush” Doctrine. Pre-emption, especially to secure oil has been a constant of US foreign piolicy since Jimmy Carter and arguably earlier.
The word “Doctrine” is used by wonks and IR academics. I know about all this stuff because I have taken uni courses in diplomatic history and read obsessively for a few years.
The notion of a president’s “Doctrine” started with Truman’s pledge to fund Greece and Turkey and any other “friends” threatened by outsiders (Soviets). Eisenhower’s was ‘help any friend,’ Kennedy about containment of Communism – “we shall pay any price, bear any burden, meet any hardship, support any friend, oppose any foe, in order to assure the survival and the success of liberty” . Johnson didn’t really have a catchy foreign policy jingle, Nixon’s was to fight proxy wars.
Jimmy Carter set the tone for all subsequent “Doctrines” with an even more bellicose statement of the Truman Doctrine.
Let our position be absolutely clear: An attempt by any outside force to gain control of the Persian Gulf region will be regarded as an assault on the vital interests of the United States of America, and such an assault will be repelled by any means necessary, including military force.
Reagan’s was considered fanciful by many: simply to destroy Communism. He did. Clinton did not really have a “Doctrine.” But he was obssessed with shoring up American might through multilateral economic/trade institutions.
Similarly, there has never been a coherent Bush “Doctrine.” Sure there have been objectives and strategies but not like Truman, Eisenhower, Kennedy, Nixon, or Carter, or Reagan.
For Sarah Palin to ask for clarification from this journo angling for a “Gotcha” moment is totally appropriate. I would have asked also, presuming – correctly – that the journo didn’t really know what he meant either.
WHAT “Bush” Doctrine.
Well it’s not Bush’s doctrine. There is a doctrine. It’s been slowly growing since WWII. A bit at a time. The latest edition is simply more explicit.
And yeah, anyone who thinks the Democrats are significantly better then the Republicans are full of shit. The difference between Bush and Clinton isn’t moral, it’s financial. Clinton kept the costs down. That’s all.
Eeeewww!!!.
Adrien
The whole Palin to-do leaves me no choice other than to conclude that whenever I hear a white bourgeois woman describe herself as a “feminist” I recoil, feel nauseas, and wonder if Howard’s gun laws were really such an advance at all.
I have just watched the debate, but will allow the misogynist bints and feral feminazis let their legs get a bit hairier before opining.
One thing Palin has done is put the final nail in the coffin of “feminism” as a reputable sociological framework.
One thing Palin has done is put the final nail in the coffin of “feminism” as a reputable sociological framework.
.
I criticize certain feminists in certain respects. For example not adjusting to the changes in society which, arguably, make the idea of patriarchy redundant. However society is still sexist and still male-dominated and until these are things of the past feminists will continue to be relevant as long, that is, as they continue to be relevant.
.
Palin, like Margaret Thatcher produces mixed feelings for left-wing feminists (feminism like all movements of social emancipation is a predominantly left-wing phenomena). Of course such movements don’t graft onto the political spectrum perfectly.
Mrs Thatcher’s policies may alienate a lot of left feminists but she also proves their point. After Thatcher, whatever one thinks of her, one cannot argue that women are too soft or irrational to govern effectively. Her critics will say a lot about her but the words ‘soft’ and ‘irrational’ don’t come to mind.
Like all political movements there’s theory, activism and agency. Feminism is in the latter phase. The agents might not be ideal for some but what matter is that they’re effective. As Paglia illustrates well Palin has attributes that make her effective in ways that Mrs Clinton does not.
That said, yes, feminists left or right should condemn Sandra Berdhart’s nasty remarks. That they don’t is illustrative of certain problems of partisan polemics. This isn’t just a left wing problem however. Rational right wingers should be condemning Palin’s assertions viz the Earth is 6000 years old etc just as strongly.
But what can you do?