Women discuss Sarah Palin

So I was at the checkout counter in our great locally owned foodstore here in Charlottesville this morning, and I bumped into Deborah McDowell, a chaired prof in the University of Virginia’s rightly lauded English department. Debbie is an uber-talented African-American woman of commanding presence. After we said hi, I remarked how depressing it has been trying to deal with the emergence of Sarah Palin. She said she completely agreed. And as we stood there continuing to talk about the outrageous way Palin and other Repubs laid into Obama last week, the checkout clerk (female, white, over 40) joined in too.
We walked on out of the store. Debbie was asking, in her great English prof’s voice, “just how stupid can the American people be if they fall for this nonsense, after all that we’ve seen from Bush for eight years, and they elect just a continuation of the same thing… ?” Another woman, whom neither of us knew, (white, around 40?) walked over, cappuccino cup in hand, and joined in. She asked a question of fact– “Isn’t it true, though, that the Democrats have been in charge in Congress for the past two years?– that we tried to address. Later, I said one of the things I really resented was how Sarah had explicitly, from the get-go, tried to expropriate the feminist “mantle” from Hillary Clinton, whereas the policies she and McCain espouse on issues of particular relevance to women, including but certainly not limited to the right to choose to abort an early-term fetus, are deeply, deeply, anti-female.
Our new friend agreed completely with that, and said that– though she’s a little fed up with the raucousness of some of the Obama supporters around here– she does intend to vote for him. Because of the way she had asked the question at the beginning, she struck me as a thoughtful person.
All in all, an interesting conversation. Not a representative sample of anything, but indicative that there are still plenty of women around who have not been bamboozled by all the evident flair, the feistiness, and fol-de-rol of Sarah Palin.

26 thoughts on “Women discuss Sarah Palin”

  1. Yesterday I was in the checkout line at one of the lesser big chain supermarkets, and I overheard two women and the checker in the line next door clearly talking about She Who Must Not Be Named. One of the women was obviously an employee of the supermarket. When I finished I walked over and asked if they were talking about the woman I love to hate. As I walked out with two of them, we talked about it. I said I consider that appalling woman the most dangerous person in the United States right now, and they agreed enthusiastically.
    And yet, in a CBS poll last week her approval rating was 58%, disapproval 37%. How can that happen?! I mean, we know the majority of Americans are pro-choice, and she is a huge threat to the right to choose or not choose to terminate a pregnancy. I can’t believe the majority of Americans are so ignorant as to believe that religious doctrine (e.g. creationism, the world is 6,000 years old, the Grand Canyon was formed by the flood of Noah, etc.) should be taught in public schools as an equal possibility with scientifically proven facts.
    I thought the American public had reached the pinnacle of stupidity and mindlessness when they elected Bush for a second term, but this is worse – MUCH worse!
    Syria is looking better and better. It might be a poor third world dictatorship, but at least it is a secular state.

  2. PS Unbelievably, a number of people I know and work with, who are generally pretty astute and discerning, and very vocally in the Obama camp, found her speech at the Convention “impressive”. I was shocked.
    I did not watch the whole speech, but the parts I have seen and read were not even a little bit impressive. She came across as a midwestern housewife with a high school education and major attitude. Content and delivery were self-congratulatory, smug, snide, smarmy, and at times downright nasty. And of course, the whole speech was filled with out and out demonstrable lies. I also noticed when she was reciting her rotely memorized list of foreign-policy-sounding items, she faltered and had to look at the teleprompter, which suggests that she had no real clue regarding what she was clearly reciting by rote.
    And now, of course, they have her tightly protected from the press while I suppose they are giving her a crash course in VP 101. And look who is allowed to interview her – someone who as been seen visibly fawning over her.
    I have a real sense of doom.

  3. Shirin
    Cheer up and stop watching the decoy (described as “Inexperienced and Bush-level incurious”). Train your guns on the real target.
    http://www.economist.com/world/unitedstates/displayStory.cfm?story_id=12066224&fsrc=nwlgafree
    But it is hard to see how a woman who supports the teaching of creationism rather than contraception, and who is soon to become a 44-year-old grandmother, helps him with soccer moms in the Philadelphia suburbs. A Rasmussen poll found that the Palin pick made 31% of undecided voters less likely to plump for Mr McCain and only 6% more likely.
    But the Republicans seem to have gone furthest in subordinating considerations of competence and merit to pro-life purity. One of the biggest problems with the Bush administration is that it appointed so many incompetents because they were sound on Roe v Wade. Mrs Palin’s elevation suggests that, far from breaking with Mr Bush, Mr McCain is repeating his mistakes
    Just how much did the US government spend today to recover from the excesses of unregulated Robber Baron (literally) capitalism?
    The final trigger it seems was a refusal by investors in other countries to invest any more in the US. Ouch!!!

  4. Frank, McCain and Palin are 4 points ahead of Obama and Biden. Palin’s approval rating is 58%, higher than either McCain’s or Obama’s. That in and of itself is utterly shocking and says something about the American public I would prefer not to know, but it sure looks like it is Palin who is pulling McCain ahead. Now, maybe this is some kind of convention bump (which I also don’t understand considering what I saw of the RNC), but anyone who isn’t scared out of their wits by this is living in a dream world.
    A McCain-Palin administration would be a disaster not only for the United States, but for the world. McCain is clearly erratic and impulsive, and I think he is showing signs of early dementia. Palin is, if anything, scarier than McCain. And yet even people who should know better are impressed with her, even when they are well aware of her insane religious beliefs (Iraq is a task from God?!), her record and her shameless lies!
    Be afraid. Be very afraid, and don’t just sit there – DO something, or the world will pay the consequences.

  5. Shirin
    You can put lipstick on a pig and it remains a pig.
    And you can fool all of the people some of the time and some of the people all of the time, but not all of the people all of the time.
    I am not scared out of my wits by this deeply flawed demagogue. Because it is a certainty that the truth will come out in the next month or so.
    Argue against the analogy with Margaret Thatcher. Margaret held a ministerial position and was an opposition spokesman before becoming the leader.
    Margaret Hilda Thatcher (nee Roberts) was born in 1925 to the family of a green grocer in England. Her schooling was impressive culminating in a degree from Oxford in chemistry (BSc in Natural Science) and a law degree. As a professional, Margaret worked as a research chemist and an attorney specializing in tax law.
    It is now recognised that her sadomonetarist policies did vast unnecessary damage to the British Economy.
    This Paris Hilton person is a wannabe.
    Any time you feel like panicing just remember the Roman recruits who ran away screaming when Hanibal brought elephants over the Alps. Then remember Pompey whose men knew how to deal with elephants.
    Perhaps Bouddica might be a better analogy. Tacitus tells the tale:
    Boudica exhorted her troops from her chariot, her daughters beside her. Tacitus gives her a short speech in which she presents herself not as an aristocrat avenging her lost wealth, but as an ordinary person, avenging her lost freedom, her battered body, and the abused chastity of her daughters. Their cause was just, and the deities were on their side; the one legion that had dared to face them had been destroyed. She, a woman, was resolved to win or die; if the men wanted to live in slavery, that was their choice.
    However, the lack of maneuverability of the British forces, combined with lack of open-field tactics to command these numbers, put them at a disadvantage to the Romans, who were skilled at open combat due to their superior equipment and discipline, and the narrowness of the field meant that Boudica could only put forth as many troops as the Romans could at a given time.
    ….. Tacitus reports that “according to one report almost eighty thousand Britons fell” compared with only four hundred Romans. According to Tacitus, Boudica poisoned herself; Dio says she fell sick and died, and was given a lavish burial.

  6. Frank, all they have to do is fool most of the voters just long enough, and they are well on their way to doing it.
    Look, even some of my secular progressive friends here – including a number of very out and activist gay people – found her speech impressive. THEY won’t be voting for McCain, but what about all those who are not dyed-in-the-wool liberals or progressives?
    And I don’t get your point about Margaret Thatcher. She DID get elected, and she WAS able to do a lot of damage. And by the way, remember that George Bush got himself re elected even after people had ample opportunity to see what he was. And the damage McCain and this woman are likely to do will make George Bush look like a good guy, let alone Margaret Thatcher. George Bush has only managed to destroy two countries. With an erratic, impulsive President, who is showing signs of early dementia, and a religious fanatic/hypocrite/professional liar as VP, the world had better look out.

  7. You can make all the nasty cute comments about Palin you want, but do not under estimate her as others have. She is a smart. ambitious, ruthless person. Just remember Thatcher was ruthless, too. Palin has good people to people skills and will impress many people who will relate to her when she works a crowd.
    I would suggest that you read the e-mails by Anne Kilkenny and others at the Snopes site. Kilkenny is in Alaska and knows Palin. I would hope the news reporters would check her statements to see whether they are correct. In general that should be fairly easy to do. Here is the site at Snope:
    http://www.snopes.com/politics/soapbox/sarahpalin.asp
    Or just put in anne kilkenny at the Snpoes search.

  8. I could say quite a bit on the topic – I’ve been ranting non-stop – but at the moment I will only make a request of Helena (while agreeing with all her other sentiments):
    Your nickname ‘Wasilla the Hun’ for Palin is unjust to the small town of Wasilla. The poor town has suffered enough.
    And it _is_ name-calling, which is the kind of nastiness we dislike so much from the Republicans and Palin herself.
    I catch myself at it sometimes, and try to remind myself that I can be angry and make a forceful point without stooping to the kind of speech that I despise in others.

  9. Lucie, you’re right. It is name-calling and it’s not fair to the townspeople of Wasilla. I’ve thought this over a few times today and have decided to take out those name-calling references. We need to address her and talk about her in civilized, friendly, but quite forthright terms.
    Honestly, I can’t imagine being the parent of a newborn with special needs and then having this VP thing thrust upon me. (But then, she could always have said, “No.”)

  10. I don’t see how the VP nomination was thrust on her at all! Even most independent commentators have avoided the ‘pink elephant’ in the room: that Palin has a five-month-old infant, for god’s sake! They’ve been cowed into submission by the ‘sexist’ accusation.
    Feminista that I am, I still think a mother plays a more important role in the first 6 months than a father. And moreover, a male candidate IMO should shelve his ambitions for a year with a ‘special needs’ child.
    If this were a Dem candidate, the ultra-conservatives would rip her to shreds for being a bad mother.
    Palin’s political value comes from her reproductive choices–her own, and the one she is making for her pregnant daughter. Her family is her showcase. She is exploiting her children for her political ambitions. In a campaign dominated by “character issues,” why can’t this be said?

  11. Helena, come on! She had nothing “thrust upon her”. She is a ruthlessly, viciously ambitious woman who was willing to risk her baby’s well being by staying to make a speech rather than getting to a hospital when the amniotic sac developed a tear. Then she risked her soon-to-be-premaurely-born baby’s life and health by flying back to Alaska and passing up a couple of hospitals that were close to the airport to drive to a hospital an hour away. She left her newborn premature Down syndrome baby to go back to work after three days.
    She is shamelessly exploiting her children, especially her poor pregnant 17 year old. On one day she insists upon respect for her daughter’s privacy, and on the next day she is flying the baby’s father out to Minneapolis for a series of photo ops, and placing him and her daughter together prominently at the Convention. She has also shamelessly exploited her oldest son who will soon be taking part in a criminal enterprise, and who apparently joined the military because he was given a choice by a judge to either join up or go to jail.
    It seems to me her children are desperately in need of her attention. Teen pregnancy is usually a cry for help, a bid for attention. Getting in trouble with the law, ditto. And she has a very young special needs baby. Yet she chooses to undertake one of the most demanding jobs in the world. Some family values!
    Yes, she could have said no.

  12. Shirin brings up a good point about teen pregnancy and seeking attention. It’s something that I was wondering about Bristol Palin. So if she is 5 months pregnant, and her baby brother is just under 5 months old–Bristol got pregnant soon before her mother gave birth.
    I have read that Palin kept her pregnancy a secret from everyone–even her children–until a month before she gave birth. Maybe the news was a lot for this teenager to handle, while her parents were distracted with politics and a ‘choose life’ baby on the way.

  13. I applaud Helena’s move to adress the issues and stop chasing Will O’ the Wisp. Before we move away from names however there is one that should be kept in mind Incitatus
    http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/09/01/AR2008090101715.html
    The point about Margaret Thatcher is that she had both a substantitive training in the Hard Sciences and Law before serving a recognised apprenticeship for National Government and forming a coherent framework for policy.
    What people have overlooked while trying to interview Governor Hilton is the revelation in the Woodward Book that the Surge in Iraq committed the last military reserve to restore order in Baghdad in the face of warnings that if something went wrong elsewhere there was nothing that could be done.
    And so it turns out on the shores of the Black Sea.
    You all might like to reflect on how to focus debate on the military and financial bankruptcy of the US and its creaking infrastucture and what the candidates propose to do about it.
    The mortgage companies were rescued yesterday. Will anybody rescue Ford and General Motors?
    I like Helena’s suggestion that we propose ideas to her as to where the blog should morph to. I know what I want to understand becasue it affects where I want to do business and with whom and how. I want to write a couple of sides of A4 to structure my thoughts, and then we shall see.
    ps before anyone corrects my reference to Hanibal and Pompey in the above comments, I am aware that I should also have mentioned Scipio also called Africanus.

  14. Frank, I still don’t get how the Thatcher story connects with Sarah Palin. Thatcher was very experienced when she took office, and still did a lot of damage. Palin is supremely unqualified. So?
    And on another note directly relevant to Helena’s original post, yesterday while I was in the gym three women were on neighboring treadmills, obviously talking about She Who Must Not BE Named. As soon as I finished my set, I hurried over to join in. It is small consolation that in one of the most liberal – even progressive – areas of the country it is so easy to find these conversations going on in public among people who don’t even know each other, but it’s better than solitary despair, I guess.

  15. Shirin
    This mornings NY Times suggests that Lehman Brothers might be in trouble.
    Quick decision Governor. Bail em out or let them sink?
    Stratfor suggests a suggests a shift in Israeli posture to Russia. How shoud the US react to the Russians selling S-300 Air Defence to the Iranians to cover fuelling of the Bushehr reactor? Quick answer please!

  16. How shoud the US react to the Russians selling S-300 Air Defence to the Iranians to cover fuelling of the Bushehr reactor?
    They should shrug their shoulders and say “No bit whoop. Russia has the right to sell whatever they like to whomever they like, and the Iranians have a right to buy whatever they like to whomever they like. But DAMN! We really blew it didn’t we? WE could have gotten that big sale if only we and Israel didn’t keep threatening to bomb Iran into the stone age…………Oh wait – maybe they only bought that air defense system because we and Israel keep threatening to bomb them. Hmmmmmmmm.”

  17. Shirin
    Thanks for that. Lets stick to hard questions.
    Sex Education. I was surprised when I walked into my local (UK) health centre here for a scheduled checkup to see a poster on the wall saying that 20% of sexually active teenagers are infected with Chlamidya an easily treated Sexually Transmitted Infection.
    Left untreated it has seriously harmful effects.
    Apparently the US figures are similar.
    Annual teenage pregnancies in the us are said to run at 700,00 with 50% opting for a termination.
    Abstinence campaigning doesn’t work with the literature reporting the average age of losing virginity as 16 in UK. A recent Scotish survey reported on the the number of 14 year olds with an STI.
    A total of 281 Scottish children under 16 contracted a sexually transmitted infection (STI) last year, according to new figures obtained by BBC Scotland.
    Figures from the Information Services Division show 181 youngsters tested positive for chlamydia.
    A total of 62 were diagnosed with genital warts, 13 contracted herpes and 10 picked up gonorrhoea.
    STI rates have rocketed in recent years with one in seven young women and one in 10 young men contracting chlamydia.
    A recent NYT piece argues for Factually Based sex education.
    http://www.nytimes.com/2008/09/06/opinion/06blow.html?scp=1&sq=sex%20education&st=cse
    How do you stop the STI epidemic without some radical and factually based measures?
    Over to you Candidate. Policy Please.

  18. Well, if I were sitting in for Sarah Palin (since the McCain campaign does not trust her to sit for any interviews or questions of any kind except those delivered by a hand-picked person who has been known to fawn all over her, who will only ask questions provided by the McCain campaign, and who will agree to edit the tape so as to omit any gaffes, mistakes, or unpolished-looking parts), I would say “it’s God’s will. And anyway, who cares because Armageddon is imminent, and if I am elected I will see that it happens sooner rather than later”.

  19. Shirin
    getting people to talk about the hard questions calls into question the validity of the Free Ride interviews.
    Senator Obama’s responseto the painted pig controversy yesterday is good. Once you force the focus onto the issues the inadequate and unqualified will be found out.
    Try Maureen Dowd yesterday for an initial list.

  20. It was good to see Obama speaking plainly and firmly, and with some feeling. I also saw his comment about the lipstick thing on David Letterman. Although I am too tired and have too long a day tomorrow to stay up and watch it, so am TiVoing it, that snippet was on the news. He said “had I meant it that way [i.e. the way they have accused him of meaning it], SHE would be the lipstick”. Great remark, really, and perceptive. She is indeed intended to be the lipstick, partly because of her good looks (though I personally find something ugly in those admittedly well-formed features), and partly because of her expected appeal to religious “Christian” fanatics like herself, and partly because there ARE a few out there who are looking for a woman to vote for regardless of her positions and qualifications.
    As for the validity of the Free Ride interviews, I think we all know how valid they are.
    And by the way, I saw part of Biden’s interview on Meet the Press on Sunday. While I have never liked Biden due to his views on the Middle East, and his all-out devotion to the Israeli extreme right, I really liked his answer when asked when he believes life begins. He said as a Catholic he believes the Church’s teaching that life begins at conception, and at the same time it is a matter of one’s faith, and he believes that he does not have a right to impose his religion-based views on others who might be even more devout than he and whose faith teaches something different. My only objection is that he left out people who do not subscribe to any religious faith, and who have an internal rather an an externally imposed code of ethics and morality.
    The trouble is that the overwhelming majority of Americans are unbelievably superficial, and do not think about anything very deeply. Therefore, they are very prone to vote against their own interest.

  21. PS Speaking of the superficial, I REALLY cannot stand listening to Palin’s voice and speech patterns. She sounds like a self-satisfied, smug, snide, smarmy C-average high school cheerleader running for student council. I don’t understand how anyone can take her seriously.
    There is also something very revealing in her facial expressions as she speaks. In fact, some of it reminds me a bit of Bush.
    And she LIES consistently. Even after she has been called out on the lie she keeps telling the same lie – that that Bridge to Nowhere, which she enthusiastically supported until the Federal government (apparently) nixed it. THEN she was against it, nevertheless she kept the funds. If what I have heard from some very trustworthy sources is correct, it was not she who stopped that project, it was Washington, and she did an instant flip-flop on it without missing a beat. Dunno, but the lady appears to be showing signs of sociopathy, and probably narcissism.

  22. Shirin
    Another tough question.
    The financial bailout of the Mortgage companies (for an eye watering cost/liability that is being swept under the carpet) and the near failure of Lehman Brothers was caused by a a refusal of Russian, Chinese and Korean investors to buy US debt. The Chinese Central Bank went apeshit about the amount that had already been spent.
    OK Candidate How do you restore US credit worthiness and financial credibility in the world?
    Putting the US Air Force on eBay might be an option. Discuss.
    http://www.nytimes.com/2008/09/11/opinion/11Cohen.html?hp

  23. Heres a link to scare you:
    Palin’s source (Ben Smith’s Blog)
    Thomas Frank noticed in the Journal today that Sarah Palin used an odd source for a quote in her announcement speech attributed only to a
    “writer.”
    But I still can’t get excited about all of this. Ordinary folk should be measured for what we do rather than the accidental basics of what we are, age gender race etc. For the President of the United States of America, that surely should not be any less true. What was most important about FDR, that he was a cripple? And about Bush Jr, that he is male? Was it Lincoln’s beard that inspired the North? OK , so Palin feeds like a succubus on hidden depravity dwelling in the dark heart of middle America, I get that. But then George W Bush..has been what an incubus? I just don’t get the “she’s a monster AND she’s female oh no” vibe. Equal opportunity isn’t about superior potential or innate morality of any group, that is a “sugar and spice and everything nice” partisanry. In short Sarah Palin has every right to be just as appalling as George Bush and I have no doubt she will. Obama isn’t a sufficiently transcendant leader to make a difference to America’s decline and it’s disastrous effects on the world. And there are of course only ever going to be these two electable sets of candidates and their two political parties.

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