NYC Letter: The Stepford Feminists

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Say this for feminist ideologues, they don't let their discombobulation slow their sputtering damns of Sarah Palin.

Sarah Palin makes me sick.

Mary Mitchell,
affeared feminist and newspaper columnist,
getting right to her point in spite of her being sick,
which happens to be her point
OP-ED September 13, 2008 (Chicago Sun-Times)

Let's take it from the top.

Sarah Palin makes me sick. I hate that she was able to steal Barack Obama's mojo just by showing up wearing rimless glasses and a skirt.

We cannot help but jump in here and point out that this is a classic sexist formulation: feminine allure as a substitute for some authentic deserving quality. Here Mrs. Palin marginalizes Mr. Obama "just by showing up wearing rimless glasses and a skirt". You see, Mrs. Palin has stolen Mr. Obama's "mojo", the authentic deserving quality of his masculine allure. [Pause.] This is topsy-turvy feminism.

I hate that she makes Joe Biden look like John McCain and John McCain look like the maverick he is not.

I hate that Palin reminds me of Susan Sarandon's feisty character in "Thelma & Louise." I loved Sarandon in that movie, yet I couldn't stand Palin's feistiness at the Republican National Convention.

Sarah Palin makes me sick -- not because she may speak in tongues -- but because she is a fast talker.

Not even ABC's Charlie Gibson can slow Palin's mouth.

I disagree with the people who claim Gibson caught her off guard during her interview when he asked her whether she agreed with the "Bush Doctrine."

"In what respect?" Palin fired back without so much as a stutter.

In fact, it was Gibson doing the sputtering as he pressed Palin to answer a question that he didn't seem to know the answer to himself.

It irks me that Palin is being painted as some kind of "New Age Feminist" by the so-called "elite" media.

She isn't.

Now, Ms. Mitchell, in a less modest moment, might recognize herself -- an editorial board member and syndicated columnist of a name newspaper, a guest panelist on WTTW's Week In Review, with appearances as a commentator on national news programs, including The O'Reilly Factor -- she might recognize herself as a member of this very same "so-called 'elite' media". And yet here she is undercutting her own assertion by disavowing the "so-called 'elite' media" paint-up. In our daily reading of the news services, the "so-called 'elite' media" seems to share Ms. Mitchell's morbulence in varying degrees.

As for "hockey-mommin," that's a stretch, too.

Palin is the governor of Alaska. Granted, Alaska is a sparsely populated state, but being governor of any state has to be a full-time job.

Even with a supportive husband, I doubt seriously that Palin has time to be a hockey mom unless she is making a personal appearance on a campaign trail.

And while 7-year-old Piper Palin gave the world a fuzzy moment on stage at the convention when she licked her hand and smoothed her baby brother's hair, and when Bristol, 17 and pregnant, held Trig against her chest while her mother shook the hands of adoring fans, I couldn't help but wonder what it's really like for these kids.

After all, there's no such thing as a superwoman, and children of driven moms make their own sacrifices.

For years feminists have argued that women can be both mothers and careerists. [Pause.] We are only here being disabused by these very same feminists. Sarah Palin is no mother, we learn to our horror. She is a sham. Too busy being governor of a state to properly care for her babies, which any responsible feminist mother would've aborted one or two or three. Had Sarah Palin never come along, we would even now be living the lie of the mother-cum-careerist.

Sarah Palin makes me sick because although black Democrats have been responsible for giving white candidates the boost they needed to beat their Republican opponents in tight races, these voters are now being insulted by feminists who say they will cross over into the McCain camp because of her.

How can that be?

[We shake our editorial head.] We don't know, Ms. Mitchell. We would guess it has something to do with choice -- the discernment of an individual for his druthers, which in the free play of politics often up-ends the presumption of group vassalage.

Palin's extreme views on abortion (she once said she would be against her daughter having an abortion even in the case of incest or rape) and her support of abstinence-only programs should make her a laughingstock to feminists.

Instead, she's a star.

That ought to be enough to make any true feminist sick.

And the true feminist is the feminist who thinks and pukes as Ms. Mitchell thinks and pukes.

Ms. Mitchell's complaint with Sarah Palin is that Sarah Palin has been a success. And now Sarah Palin brings that success to the Republican ticket to the detriment of the Democratic ticket. And that makes Ms. Mitchell sick.

In the bad old days of swaggering sexism, men had an expression for what ails Ms. Mitchell:

A PUSHY WOMAN