“Going Rogue,” the new memoir by former Alaska governor and vice presidential hopeful, Sarah Palin, came out yesterday, and as a result she’s all over the news again today. She’s talking to Oprah and Barbara Walters, and news stations are rife with reports about the book and her future plans. And when I heard NPR reporters speculating as to whether she would run for president in 2012 this morning, I snapped.
What is it with the right glorifying these stupid and/or horrifyingly offensive women? Carrie Prejean? Sarah Palin? Anne Coulter? I just can’t take it.
I mean, sure, we know the right isn’t opposed to putting morons into positions of power–they got W into the presidency for eight years for gods sake, a proposition so terrifying I still shudder to think about it… Well, I guess Coulter isn’t an idiot, she’s just just insane and full of vitriol. But still.
I just don’t understand the party’s decision to prop up these mouthy idiots? Why do you think this is okay? More to the point, I guess, is why would you want to do this? Obviously I’m not a conservative, but why don’t you want to find a woman who is attractive AND smart AND conservative AND level-headed? Is it that she just doesn’t exist?
When I think of the Katie Couric/Sarah Palin interview from last year, the notion that this brainless woman could even be considered to be at the helm of our country actually scares the living crap out of me. But she’s got that mixture of outspoken, stalwart, stubborn hunger and self-righteousness that drips from Prejean and Coulter that, evidently, makes conservatives thrilled, and me cower in fear. Their utter conviction in their small-minded, oppressive agendas–be it gay bashing or just filling the airwaves with overtly malicious lies–is the stuff of my nightmares.
Obviously, the thing that is so simultaneously upsetting and drawing about these women is that they are, in fact, women. Pretty women. Somehow, one expects the fairer sex to be more balanced and compassionate than these power-hungry, climbing shrews.
So we watch, and give this legion of terrifying Tracy Flicks the power to infect. Because everything about them seems to fly in the face of feminism and the fight that our bra-burning forbears had to fight. But that’s the thing about feminism–it’s not about the right to go to work out of the home just like a man, it’s about the right to choose: to work OR be a stay at home mom (or both!), to vote OR not to vote, to use your voice to spread good or evil.
It just chaps my ass that we have so many role models for the latter.
Comments
Dee Martin
November 18th, 2009 - 10:21:13 PM
The right wing chooses these women for their ability to lob incendiary remarks at the opposition. They are the female counterparts to Limbaugh and Hannity and Beck. Because they are pretty they are good for TV, while Limbaugh has a face for radio. And because they are female they can avoid the harsher face-to-face confrontations with male opponents. Remember Palin's "debate" with Biden? It was considered unwise for Biden to speak forcefully because he might appear to be bullying her. So she hides behind her skirts, so to speak. Same with her religion: she uses it as a sword and a shield. She attacks with it because it's hard to counter her position without appearing to attack her religion. These are effective right-wing tactics, older than Methusaleh.
Tisha
November 19th, 2009 - 5:33:58 PM
There are doing this deliberately to prove that women don't hve the brains to be leaders. They take the dumbest idiots they can find, dust them off, tell them that they are god's gift to men and for some reason people believe this, and then they allow these dim wits to say whatever trash comes to their minds.