Empty Promises

The New York Times today has an article about parents who have children with special needs and who are tempted to vote for McCain-Palin because of Palin's promise that "you will have a friend in the White House." Sarah Palin herself has a child with down syndrome, but offered no details on how she plans to better the situation for special needs parents.
Be careful. Don't be fooled, yet again, by empty promises. How can the Republicans help the situation and concurrently privatize health care? Empty Promises

Finally, someone said it....

If you are an intelligent person who regularly reads our nation's news, then you have probably seen this lady's mug in the past couple days. Her name is Judith Warner and she has written the most intelligent, and accurate article about Sarah Palin to date. I feel as though feminists and people alike have been attempting to put their finger on what it is exactly about Sarah Palin that is so offensive: Judith Warner has articulated it perfectly.
Read this article now.
Judith Warner: The Mirrored Ceiling

Pets and Their People

Abortion Not Linked To Depression

Some serious news for a change.....
Abortion and Depression

Speech-Less

I just watch Sarah Palin's speech from the RNC and....well.....fuck.
The majority of her speech focused on her family history as well as her present family situation. This poor woman was chosen as the VP Candidate mostly because of her family story, and it is depressing that she is whole-heartedly going along with it. I'm not saying that being a mom isn't something to be proud of. It is an amazing job that I think we need to respect more than we do, but I must say that this woman does not have enough political experience to be the Vice President. So, don't flaunt your family around as though tackling families issues is on par with the vice presidency. We all have family issues. Parenting is not the same as diplomacy, it just aint.
She picked on Obama for only being the author of two memoirs but not a single law or reform in the State Senate. Really Palin? I think political experience is maybe something you should try to avoid discussing. But by all means, if you must....

Her speech glorified her accomplishments as Governor of Alaska and surprisingly, her stats really rallied the crowds. I guess none of the people there were willing to show their skepticism over her ability to be the Vice President of the United States.
Man, I am worried. Four years ago, even eight years ago, I saw Bush on that screen using the same tactics. He was personable, friendly, accessible, sporting a stupid smirk, and for some God-forsaken reason it worked. They laughed at her jokes: "You know what the difference between a hockey mom and a pit-bull is? Lip stick." They embraced her family with all their faults, but they forgot to do one thing: really examine the issues. She continually focused on what should be as opposed to the present situation. She argued that we should be talking about Victory in Iraq, as opposed to giving up. We should be talking about drilling in America to end foreign dependency. We should confront the threat of Iran.
Lady, the situation at hand is already pretty grim. Let's work on fixing some things before digging ourselves deeper. It's called humility.

Anti-choice Feminist? Whoa.

An article in the New York Times this morning and the repeated use of the term “Pro-Life Feminist” on NPR’s morning edition reminded me of my on-going struggle to understand conservative women like Sarah Palin. There are so many contradictions between her actions and ideologies! Conservatives oppose a woman’s right to abortion while at the same time claim to want to reduce the government’s reach into the personal lives of Americans. What could be more personal than a woman’s right to choose? Conservatives also oppose sex education in public schools, despite evidence that rates of teenage pregnancy are never reduced by abstinence-only sex education. Conservatives want to reduce welfare to single mothers while at the same time claiming to champion family values. How can a single mother be a super-mom while working two or three jobs to make ends meet? Conservative female politicians believe it is important for a woman to stay home with her children, but they have chosen to work outside the home by running for office. How do conservative women reconcile all these contradictions? To answer these questions let’s do what I always do—look to our nation’s history to explain our current predicaments.

The oxymoronic term “Pro-life Feminist” reminded me of a book I read for a graduate course on feminist theory. Susan Faludi’s Backlash: The Undeclared War Against America Women exposes the concerted efforts of conservatives to undo the work of 1960s and 70s feminists. Although written in the 1990s, her book helps me put my mind around the always-confusing ideologies of the politically conservative women who baffle me—Sara Palin being a case in point.

Faludi, writing in the early 1990s, recounts the many political and cultural ramifications of the American backlash against feminism. She examines backlash as it occurred in government, politics, pop culture, advertising, fashion, academia, and pop psychology. She goes on to examine the toll the backlash has taken on working women, women’s bodies, and women’s rights. Pointing to women’s dissatisfaction with their lives—something that is never based in fact but is merely supposition—anti-feminists point to women’s lives outside the home and denial of traditional familial roles as the source of this unhappiness. Rather than looking to the social and cultural factors that may have been frustrating women—things like the glass ceiling, continued sexual harassment, and mixed cultural messages that women should achieve all that they can yet never abandon the home—the backlash blamed women for their own unhappiness. If women just stayed at home and embraced their “natural” role of wife and mother they would finally be fulfilled. Faludi never argues that there was a coherent, organized movement against feminism, but that backlash popped up all over the place because changes were taking place in American families and the threat to patriarchy was real. Those who would lose power if patriarchy disappeared fought back—and the fight continues on today and is embodied in the confusing ideologies of politicians like Sarah Palin.

Ooops.....?

It was announced today that Sarah Palin's 17 year old daughter is preggers. Wait, let me correct that, five months preggers.Even if this child was an Oooops child for Bristol, this unborn child will most certainly be a key spokesperson for John McCain. Essentially, McCain chose his running mate based on her reproductive track record: first, she decided to give birth to a child with down syndrome making her a pro-life role model and secondly, he chose her knowing that her daughter would be sporting a belly on the final stretch of the campaign trail.


Needless to say, McCain and advisers thought of the best way to spin this controversial issue into a positive thing. How is it that teenage pregnancy has become a positive thing? It's almost as though instead of addressing sexual education and advocating birth control we are embracing teenage pregnancy. Sure, the Jamie Lynn Spears and the Bristol Palin's of the world can manage, but what about other teenage girls? The Republicans seem so proud with their Pro-Life Mamma, yet will refuse to increase welfare. If their upper-middle class daughters can do it, anyone can right?