Palin - WTF?

Opinion Palin: wrong woman, wrong message
By Gloria Steinem
September 4, 2008

Sarah Palin shares nothing but a chromosome with Hillary Clinton. She isPhyllis Schlafly, only younger. Here's the good news: Women have become so politically powerful that eventhe anti-feminist right wing -- the folks with a headlock on the RepublicanParty -- are trying to appease the gender gap with a first-ever female vicepresident. We owe this to women -- and to many men too -- who have picketed,gone on hunger strikes or confronted violence at the polls so women can vote. We owe it to Shirley Chisholm, who first took the "white-male-only" signoff the White House, and to Hillary Rodham Clinton, who hung in there throughridicule and misogyny to win 18 million votes.

But here is even better news: It won't work. This isn't the first timea boss has picked an unqualified woman just because she agrees with him andopposes 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 womeneverywhere. It's not about a piece of the existing pie; there are too manyof us for that. It's about baking a new pie.

Palin appears to disagree with McCain on sex education

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."

This is not to beat up on Palin. I defend her right to be wrong, even on issues that matter most to me. I regret that people say she can't do the jobbecause she has children in need of care, especially if they wouldn't saythe same about a father. I get no pleasure from imagining her in the spotlight on national and foreign policy issues about which she has zero background, with one month to learn to compete with Sen. Joe Biden's 37 years'experience.

Palin has been honest about what she doesn't know. When asked last monthabout the vice presidency, she said, "I still can't answer thatquestion until someone answers for me: What is it exactly that the VP does every day?" When asked about Iraq, she said, "I haven't really focusedmuch on the war in Iraq."

She was elected governor largely because the incumbent was unpopular, andshe's won over Alaskans mostly by using unprecedented oil wealth to give a$1,200 rebate to every resident. Now she is being praised by McCain'scampaign as a tax cutter, despite the fact that Alaska has no state income orsales tax. Perhaps McCain has opposed affirmative action for so long that hedoesn't know it's about inviting more people to meet standards, notlowering them. Or perhaps 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 isfilling a job one 72-year-old heartbeat away from the presidency.

So let's be clear: The culprit is John McCain. He may have chosen Palin outof change-envy, or a belief that women can't tell the difference betweenform and content, but the main motive was to please right-wing ideologues; the same ones who nixed anyone who is now or ever has been a supporter ofreproductive freedom. If that were not the case, McCain could have chosen awoman who knows what a vice president does and who has thought about Iraq;someone like Texas Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison or Sen. Olympia Snowe of Maine.McCain could have taken a baby step away from right-wing patriarchs whodetermine his actions, right down to opposing the Violence Against Women Act.

Palin's value to those patriarchs is clear: She opposes just about everyissue that women support by a majority or plurality. She believes thatcreationism 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, which increase unwanted births, sexually transmitted diseases andabortions; she tried to use taxpayers' millions for a state program to shootwolves from the air but didn't spend enough money to fix a state schoolsystem with the lowest high-school graduation rate in the nation; she runs with a candidate who opposes the Fair Pay Act but supports $500 million in subsidies for a natural gas pipeline across Alaska; she supports drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Reserve, though even McCain has opted for the lesser evil of offshore drilling. She is Phyllis Schlafly, only younger.

I don't doubt her sincerity. As a lifetime member of the National RifleAssn., she doesn't just support killing animals from helicopters, she doesit herself. She doesn't just talk about increasing the use of fossil fuelsbut puts a coal-burning power plant in her own small town. She doesn't justecho McCain's pledge to criminalize abortion by overturning Roe vs. Wade,she says that if one of her daughters were impregnated by rape or incest, sheshould bear the child. She not only opposes reproductive freedom as a humanright but implies that it dictates abortion, without saying that it alsoprotects the right to have a child.

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 forPalin's husband.

Being a hope-a-holic, however, I can see two long-term bipartisan gains fromthis contest.

Republicans may learn they can't appeal to right-wing patriarchs and mostwomen at the same time. 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 thewombs of women.

And American women, who suffer more because of having two full-time jobs thanfrom any other single injustice, finally have support on a national stage from male leaders who know that women can't be equal outside the home until men are equal in it. Barack Obama and Joe Biden are campaigning on their belief that men should be, can be and want to be at home for their children.

This could be huge.

Gloria Steinem is an author, feminist organizer and co-founder of theWomen's Media Center. She supported Hillary Clinton and is now supportingBarack Obama.