It was Friday evening and a number of us were around the phone (Jim, Jess, Dona, Ty, Kat and Ava) as C.I. spoke to a 74-year-old woman about Sarah Palin being the GOP vice presidential nomination.
["Please credit usage to the 2008 Republican National Convention and Reflections Photography, unless otherwise noted."]
The woman is not a PUMA. She is not a disheartened Hillary supporter. She didn't support Hillary Clinton because she never votes Democratic. The woman is a lifelong Republican and, guess what, she's also a feminist.
She explained she had her awakening in the 1950s when she went to work for the federal government and, despite several degrees, could only get a job as a secretary. She was a secretary for the FBI for many years before she realized that no amount of hard work was ever going to let her rise in that agency. Once she transferred to another agency, the promotions seemed to come faster "but that was as the women's liberation movement was picking up steam." She's semi-retired today (she does some consulting work part-time) and explains that she has "seen it all."
"Betty Ford," she remembers, "could be a very strong and vocal supporter of the Equal Rights Amendment. Even when her husband was running in 1976. ERA and the Republican Party had a long history. With Reagan, women began taking a back seat in the party and by 1988 it was becoming very difficult to be a Republican woman. My parents were Republicans, I am a Republican. I tried to argue for the rights of women in my party and though there was some success state-wide even after the Reagan revolution, nationwide, the party continued to be hostile to women."
That 74-year-old woman is not the only Republican feminist in existance. She is far from alone.
Which is why Sarah Palin being nominated is big news and a cause for celebration for many women.
Friday's NOW on PBS featured an interview with self-defined moderate Republican Christy Todd Whitman and host David Brancaccio billed it as if Todd Whitman was going to tear Palin a new one. That is not what happened. Todd Whitman noted that she and Palin probably had many points of agreement.
It's My Party Too was Whitman's book where she argued (our summary) that the Republican Party had moved too far to the right and was alienating those who considered themselves moderates as well as creating gridlock that made it impossible for Republicans to work with others.
If you're a Democrat or Green, we can't imagine that you're voting for Palin (though some, no doubt, will). But not voting for is one thing, refusing to note what she represents is another.
Sarah Palin represents a huge shift for the Republican Party that will have after effects for years to come. Much more so than Geraldine Ferraro.
That's nothing against Ferraro, that is noting that the Democratic Party (until John Kerry) had a tendency to eat their own and disown all candidates who did not make it into the White House. When Mondale - Ferraro lost the 1984 election, some of Ferraro's effects diminished.
Republicans don't tend to do that. They love Robert Dole and Dan Quayle to this day.
Palin being on the ticket of a conservative party that has been anti-woman (to put it mildly) is a huge thing. First, it means that a number of Republicans are going to be rooting for a woman and, for some, it will be the first time.
What was all the hoopla over Mia Hamm? That she ripped off her shirt? We kind of thought that it was over the fact that a female athlete was being followed and cheered on by a large number of people (men and women).
Republicans want to win this election. That means rooting for Palin. You can't underestimate the impact that has, the way it reshapes thinking for some.
You also can't deny its impact for Republican women who have felt (not all have felt this way) that their own party has turned against them. We spoke to several Republican feminists and the consensus was that Sarah Palin opens the door and that who knows what follows her. "Maybe," said one former elected official, "a pro-choice presidential candidate? Maybe one who calls for equality?"
There is very real excitement in Republican feminist circles (as well as in non-feminist circles) over Palin's nomination. That it's being greeted with cat calls and insults from Democratic feminists is not going unnoticed.
Said the elected official, "I remember ____ lecturing me that Ferraro's nomination was a good thing and even if I wasn't going to vote for her, I should take pride in the fact that a woman was on the ticket. I read her article and thought, 'Hmm, that's not the way you framed Ferraro's nomination'."
And it's not the way Ferraro's nomination was framed. Over and over, women were told this was a great moment. They were told it was a great moment for all women and that it didn't matter whether you agreed with her positions are not, it was still a great moment.
Twenty-four years later, the second woman nominated by one of the two major parties is not to be treated as a great moment, according to Democratic feminists. It's all a bunch of booing and hissing and, truthfully, sour grapes.
You can't have it both ways. And you can't fail to grasp that women have been pushed to the margins in the Republican Party over and over. Now that's changed a little.
In 1984, the Democratic Party nominated a woman for vice president. They've never done that since.
Democrats should grasp that Palin's nomination puts pressure on the Democratic Party to be a little more diverse.
Democrats should grasp that if Palin becomes the vice president, a world opens for women.
Some hiss, "Purely symoblic."
Uh, aren't most "firsts" more important as symbols than anything else?
What did Gail Collins accomplish for women when she was the first female editor of The New York Times op-ed pages? She came on with the paper having one women columnist. She had two spots to fill (Bill Keller who was promoted to editor of the paper and William Safire who retired). She filled both spots with men. With White men.
You think her bad writing added up to anything to be proud of? Her writing didn't and her decisions didn't. Her only power is symbolic.
If Palin becomes vice president and offers nothing other than her gender, so what?
So millions of little girls grow up knowing that it's possible to run on the presidential ticket?
That's not powerful?
That doesn't matter?
Actions last week insisted that was case.
Actions last week also made life very difficult for Republican feminists.
"I kept waiting," said the 74-year-old woman, "for some article from a feminist to argue the good of Palin's nomination. I didn't expect to read an endorsement of her run, I did expect to read someone talking about what a step it was for women. I never read that and it reminded me all over again that though I'm welcome at the marches, I'm not really considered part of the movement due to my being a Republican."
Is that the message feminists intended to send last week?
Did they really intend to insult their Republican counter-parts? (By counter-parts we mean Republican feminists, not all Republican women.)
That's the message they sent.
In 1992, there was a real effort to recruit Republican women into the Democratic Party. That year's convention had been a very vocal attack on women and, like most effective attacks, it included women attacking women. Marilyn Quayle was the most vocal with her 'the nature of women' remarks (which she later tried to back off and claim that her remarks were similar to arguments laid out in In A Different Voice) but she was far from alone. By 1996, a number of women had left.
One who didn't is a radio host (regional) and we spoke to her about Palin's nomination. The woman has served in the military, been a single mother for most of her life and is strongly pro-choice. She is among the Republican feminists who see Palin's nomination not just as a good thing for all women but as a stepping stone for women in the Republican Party.
"The thing is," she explained, "it doesn't stop with her. It doesn't work that way. We're not flying a vomit comit [the huge up to get into the area and then the plane dips]. This is more like a train and we're laying tracks. This is so huge and it's something McCain did that other nominees not only wouldn't consider, they wouldn't dare. The way it works on my show is, if you're not Condoleezza Rice, the bulk of the callers have no use for you. 99% of the callers are male, maybe more than that. I go whole weeks without one woman calling in. Thursday [the day after Palin's speech], I got five callers who were women and that's my all time record. I also got men speaking of her in laudable terms. Don't tell me she hasn't had an impact. I'm not just in what people consider a Red state, I'm in a redneck area. This was pretty big."
And it was unacknowledged by women stepping foward to boo and hiss at Palin.
Ellen Goodman has only survived for one reason: common sense. It was nowhere to be found in her column last week as she called Palin "Clara Thomas" (because a woman has to be a copy of a man?) and it only got worse:
Immediately, the "family values" folks who have fashioned a political wedge out of moral judgments began insisting that anyone who remarked on this baby bump was an insensitive invader of privacy.What did James Dobson of Focus on the Family say? This teen pregnancy showed that "she and her family are human." Tony Perkins at the Family Research Council praised Bristol for “choosing life in the midst of a difficult situation.” A spokeswoman for the Campaign for Family Values called the Palins "an American family out there living out their values."
We went back and forth over whether to include that or not. We don't want to comment on the pregnancy. If Sarah Palin or Bristol Palin goes on TV and comments, Ava and C.I. will note it in some form in a TV commentary. But it's really difficult not to note it above because Goodman's showing extreme stupidity.
First off, Ellen Goodman shows no grasp of the right-wing she's writing about. They are not anti-pregnancy. For a number of reasons. They are anti-abortion and anti-choice. It is not out of bounds for them to applaud a young girl who decides not to terminate her preganancy. That is what the right-wing preaches.
Secondly, Goodman leaves out the gutter rumors. Long before it was learned that her daughter was pregnant, scandal mongers were spreading the rumor that Sarah Palin's youngest child was actually her grandchild and that Palin had conocted a false pregnancy (someone's watched too many episodes of All My Children) -- with padding! -- in order to cover it up.
Goodman then 'tackles' the issue of that youngest child by noting Palin had a prenatal test. We've never read anyone say that Palin was against prenatal tests. Prenatal tests do not have to have anything to do with abortion. And if Goodman can't grasp that, she's led a very sheltered life.
If Goodman truly thinks comparing Sarah Palin -- a married woman in middle age -- to the underage Jamie Lynn Spears is an appropriate comparison, she's not only lost her common sense, she's lost her sanity. Palin is 44-years-old, she's married, she is not pregnant (as far as anyone knows) and she is an elected governor. Jamie Lynn Spears is 17-years-old, unmarried and a child performer.
Amy Carter and Chelsea Clinton were viciously attacked by many when their fathers decided to run for president (and the attacks continued after their fathers were elected). They were not adults and the attacks were rightly called out. Bristol Palin is not an adult. Add in the fact that no woman going through her first pregnancy (unless she's aiming for a Vainty Fair cover) wants the entire world staring at her. She is a private citizen, a child of a public official. She should be off limits. That Ellen Goodman -- of all people -- can't grasp that demonstrates just how cracked the world has become.
Goodman ends by calling Sarah Palin "a bridge to nowhere." How very non-sisterhood like. Goodman can support whomever she wants in the 2008 election, she cannot rip apart another woman (and the woman's under-age daughter) and continue to pass herself as a feminist. Change Palin's party to Democrat and the piece could have been written by Cal Thomas -- and that's really saying something.
As Ava and C.I. noted Thursday:
Sarah Palin walked across the Xcel Energy Center stage last night and into history.
If you didn't grasp it, Rudy G had to argue a feminist point last night.
"How dare they question whether Palin will have enough time to spend with her children while vice president?" asked Rudy. "When do they ever ask a man that question?"
That's a feminist movement success. Did Giuliani mean it? Who the hell cares?
Did you hear the roar when he said it?
Democratic feminists spend a lot of time trying to make a success out of failure. They did so following the 1976 Democratic convention as a number of them rushed to claim a success that never happened. (After silencing women in the only forum they were allowed to speak in -- as one participant said at the time, "Could a woman who is not a name be allowed to speak?")
Currently, they are trying to make a candidate -- who is, at best, luke warm on abortion rights and at worst, anti-abortion -- appear to be Sarah Weddington. That candidate is Barack Obama And the Democratic feminists have refused to call him out as he courts right-wing, anti-choice evangicals the same way they refused to call him out when he put homophobes onstage at a South Carolina campaign event.
It's really amazing how hard they'll work to spit-polish Barack Obama's lackluster image and it's really frightening that they seem to think they can get away with making anti-women, sexist statements.
Sarah Palin on the ticket already has led to the GOP convention cheering Rudy on when he called out sexism. That is huge. It is only sixteen years since Marilyn Quayle and others attacked the feminist movement at a GOP convention.
Robin Morgan argued for Hillary Clinton's presidency in a very powerful and amazing column. It's a shame that no feminist last week ever thought that Sarah Palin's nomination might be very important to Republican feminists and might have great meaning for them.
The women's liberation movement is supposed to be about the advancement of women. A woman is now on the ticket of one of the two major parties and there was no time to even celebrate that. Why? Because Barack's unqualified and in dead-heat with McCain in most polls. What the hell does that have to do with feminism? Not a damn thing.
Throughout 2008, we saw endless celebrations of race as Barack was billed as "Black" (he's bi-racial) and there was no time to celebrate women. There was plenty of time to attack women. Women were called the most vile names and their intelligence was insulted by many. Mark Karlin (
Flash<>>) had a heart attack in text form following Hillary's New Hampshire win and felt that what the world needed was a man telling the 'little ladies' that they were just voting their gender and that was wrong. How is what he did any different than what Ellen Goodman, Gail Collins, Barbra Streisand and countless others did last week?