With, without.
And who'll deny
It's what the fighting's all about?
Sarah Palin Sexism Watch, #6
I can't even begin to tell you how tired of this series I am already... This is an actual "news photo" published by the AFP yesterday:
Now when was the last time I saw a photo like this of a serious national contender? Oh, right.
What makes this picture extra super-awesome is the caption that accompanies it:
Republican vice presidential candidate Alaska Governor Sarah Palin stands on stage during a campaign rally in O'Fallon, Missouri on August 31. Palin got comfortable in her new role as a vice presidential candidate as she made the Republican case to stay in power. (AFP/Robyn Beck)She stands on stage? It's a picture of her fooking legs, not a picture of her. And you might think I'm making a pedantic distinction, except that I go through these daily photo dumps constantly, and if there's picture of a male politician in which his face isn't included, it almost always gets described like: "President George Bush's hand is seen waving to onlookers" or "The top of Senator Barack Obama's head is seen emerging from his campaign bus."
Their disembodied (ahem) parts are not called "George Bush" or "Barack Obama." But here, Palin's legs are described as "Alaska Governor Sarah Palin" full-stop. Curious, that.
And, aside from all that rubbish, let's face it—the picture is just appalling. And if you don't understand why, you're at the wrong blog. (Try here, for a start.)
[Sarah Palin Sexism Watch: Parts One, Two, Three, Four, Five. We defend Sarah Palin against misogynist smears not because we endorse her or her politics, but because that's how feminism works.]
It's Obama with the Lead...
As ever, take with a grain of salt...
Gallup Daily: Obama Hits 50% for First Time: "Gallup Poll Daily tracking from Aug. 30 through Sept. 1, finds Barack Obama leading the race for president with his highest share of support to date. Fully half of national registered voters now favor Obama for president, while 42% back John McCain."
Just a wild and crazy guess, but I bet this has something to do with it: "The Democratic convention appears to have helped solidify support for Barack Obama among former Hillary Clinton supporters, with the percent saying they will vote for Obama in November moving from 70% pre-convention to 81% after the convention, and the percent certain to vote for Obama jumping from 47% to 65%."
Amazing what some serious speechifizing can do.
But, please remember, if Obama loses, it's Clinton's fault.
Quote of the Day
This election is not about issues. - Rick Davis, McCain campaign manager during an interview with the Washington Post today.
Well, now that we've gotten that out of the way...
Boys Will Be Boys...and Girls Will Keep Their Mothers Humble
From a New York Times article about how Bristol Palin's pregnancy "changes the script" about Sarah Palin:
"I just thought, poor Sarah," said Mrs. Kincaid, who has 28 grandchildren and 6 children. "There is always one that knocks the socks off of you and keeps you humble just when you think you're the greatest mom."Poor Sarah, suffering the ghastly shame of a pregnant unwed daughter. (Someone get that girl a scarlet A.) Before that horrible slut ruined everything for her mother, she only had to deal with the perfectly normal trouble her perfectly normal son got into, like perfectly normal boys do.
Family friends said the couple has had some discipline problems with Track, who recently joined the Army. "Track was a big hockey star, and when you're a jock in high school there's a certain amount of ego and problems that goes with that," Mrs. Kincaid said. "But that's normal. They are a normal American family with all the joys and problems."
Post-feminist culture, bitchez.
OMFG
I am watching MSNBC right now, and Chuck "Murray" Todd is chatting with Jim Vandenhei and some other straight white dude, and I swear to Maude if one of them uses "daughter's pregnancy" and "Palin's judgment" in the same sentence one more time, there is going to be hell to pay.
Where hell to pay = me, sitting here steaming impotently.
Because He Did Such a Great Job with Katrina
President Fumblenutz on what Gustav should mean to the Congress:
President Bush said Tuesday that while it’s too early to assess Hurricane Gustav’s damage to U.S. oil infrastructure off the Gulf Coast, the storm should prompt Congress to OK more domestic oil production.RNC to Bush: No, really. Don't come anywhere near the convention. Thanks.
"One thing is for certain, when Congress comes back, they’ve got to understand that we need more domestic energy, not less," Bush said in the Roosevelt Room. "One place to find it is offshore America" lands that have been taken off the books, so to speak, by congressional law " and now they need to give us a chance to find more oil and gas here at home."
[H/T to ThinkProgress]
Because McCain Is Really Smart...
...he's destroying his once-enviable relationship with the press by being just as enormo a belligerent fuckneck toward them as he is toward everyone else.
Godspeed, man.
Happy Blogiversary...
...to Pizza Diavola, celebrating one year of stupendous pizzocity!
Pizza is one of the few bloggers for whom I still remember the first post of theirs I ever read: In January of this year, I stumbled upon Oh, Hell–Superbad and I never left!
Two-Minute Nostalgia Sublime
(For the Shaker Brits; suggested by Iain.)
"I don't belieeeeve it!"
Meltdown
So, in my earlier CifA piece regarding the annoucement of Bristol Palin's pregnancy, I said:
If there's any political point to be made here at all, it is about the very real possibility that the McCain campaign did not know about this pregnancy, despite reports to the contrary. There is a whole lot McCain evidently didn't know about Palin – and there have been reports that McCain chose her for the ticket after a half-assed vetting, about which even Republicans outside of DC have been grumbling. But even that is predicated on the idea that an out-of-wedlock pregnancy is so scandalous as to warrant preclusion of a related politician on a national ticket.And I stand by that wholly. I don't think Bristol Palin's pregnancy should be used as a political football against McCain, either, even if (as it appears) he lied about what he knew when.
However, there's plenty other stuff we're finding out about Palin that legitimately calls into question McCain's decision-making skills and competence:
• Palin was a member as recently as 1996 of the Alaskan Independence Party, "which, since the 1970s, has been pushing for a legal vote for Alaskans to decide whether or not residents of the 49th state can secede from the United States" and has as its motto "Alaska First – Alaska Always."
• Palin served until 2005 as a director of a 527 group organized by corrupt fuckneck Senator Ted Stevens.
• Palin's claim, in her veep acceptance speech last Friday, about her purported opposition to the infamous Bridge to Nowhere was a flat lie.
• Palin, despite her assertion that she's "championed reform to end the abuses of earmark spending," nonetheless relied on it as Alaska's governor.
• Palin has just hired an attorney regarding the ongoing Troopergate scandal, for which she's under investigation.
The New York Times (among other sources) reports that, irrespective of McCain campaign claims that Palin was thoroughly vetted, "a process that would have included a review of all financial and legal records as well as a criminal background check," the evidence suggests that's simply not accurate.
Although campaigns are typically discreet when they make inquiries into potential running mates, officials in Alaska said Monday they thought it was peculiar that no one in the state had the slightest hint that Ms. Palin might be under consideration.That truly sounds like a catastrophic vetting failure of Michael "Heckuva Job" Brown proportions. By the end of this thing, I'm wondering if having "Arabian Horse Association" as your primary professional reference isn't going to look like the Good Old Days when people with experience got hired by Republican presidents. Or those aspiring to the position.
"They didn't speak to anyone in the Legislature, they didn’t speak to anyone in the business community," said Lyda Green, the State Senate president, who lives in Wasilla, where Ms. Palin served as mayor.
Representative Gail Phillips, a Republican and former speaker of the State House, said the widespread surprise in Alaska when Ms. Palin was named to the ticket made her wonder how intensively the McCain campaign had vetted her.
"I started calling around and asking, and I have not been able to find one person that was called," Ms. Phillips said. "I called 30 to 40 people, political leaders, business leaders, community leaders. Not one of them had heard. Alaska is a very small community, we know people all over, but I haven't found anybody who was asked anything."
The current mayor of Wasilla, Dianne M. Keller, said she had not heard of any efforts to look into Ms. Palin’s background. And Randy Ruedrich, the state Republican Party chairman, said he knew nothing of any vetting that had been conducted.
State Senator Hollis French, a Democrat who is directing the ethics investigation, said that no one asked him about the allegations. "I heard not a word, not a single contact," he said.
I Am Pro-Choice
And I've got a new piece up at The Guardian's Comment is free America, in which I make use of that principle:
Already there is enough political hay to feed a stampede of unity ponies being made about the fact that an anti-choice (even in cases of rape) and pro-abstinence-only sex ed candidate has an unmarried, pregnant, teenage daughter. Bristol's pregnancy is fair game, so goes the argument, because it shows the failure of conservative policies.This was written earlier today, so a lot of these ideas have already been covered in the comments thread of my earlier post and in Zuzu's excellent post, but, if you like, you can read the whole thing here.
But does it? We have no idea what the circumstances of the conception were. Maybe Bristol and her partner knew how to use contraception, had secured contraception, were using contraception – and it failed. Wouldn't be the first time. Such a scenario would hardly make Bristol's pregnancy an indictment of Sarah Palin's politics; it would merely suggest that Bristol doesn't share her mother's politics. Wouldn't be the first time for that, either. Just ask Ron Regan Junior. There's the possibility that Bristol wanted to get pregnant and planned this pregnancy – which is a choice lots of young women make, including Barack Obama's 18-year-old mother, as he reminded us today. The term "pro-choice" is robbed of all meaning if it means only defending the choices with which we agree.
Or can't conveniently be used as a political football against a candidate we don't like.
Quote of the Day
"I have heard some of the news on this and so let me be as clear as possible. I have said before and I will repeat again, I think people's families are off limits, and people's children are especially off limits. This shouldn't be part of our politics, it has no relevance to governor Palin's performance as a governor or her potential performance as a vice president. And so I would strongly urge people to back off these kinds of stories. You know my mother had me when she was 18. And how family deals with issues and teenage children that shouldn't be the topic of our politics and I hope that anybody who is supporting me understands that is off limits."—Democratic nominee Barack Obama, on GOP veep nominee Sarah Palin's daughter's pregnancy.
Right on.
(And, yes, I remember that he hasn't always played by those rules himself, but expecting more means criticizing when it's due and commending when it's due; he's doing the right thing this time—and for that, I thank him.)
Palin's Daughter is Currently Pregnant
The Independent is reporting that Sarah Palin and the McCain campaign have confirmed 17-year-old Bristol Palin, who has been at the center of rumors that she is actually the mother of Trig Palin, Sarah Palin's infant son, is currently 5 months pregnant.
The Republican vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin has announced that her 17-year-old daughter is pregnant, in an announcement intended to knock down rumors by liberal bloggers that Palin faked her own pregnancy to cover up for her child.And because I am pro-choice, meaning I respect other women's choices, irrespective of whether they're the choices I'd make, and because I know that children and their parents don't always have the same politics, so it doesn't really matter whether Bristol Palin does what her mother preaches, that's all I'm going to say about that.
Bristol Palin, one of Palin's five children with her husband, Todd, is about five months pregnant and is going to keep the child and marry the father, the Palins said in a statement released by the campaign of Republican presidential candidate John McCain.
[H/T to Blue Gal.]
Killing the Message
It's Labor Day, so William Kristol basically re-runs his column from the Weekly Standard, which boiled down to: "Experience is overrated."
Let's kill off this meme, shall we? Experience is required, but more importantly, what you learn from the experience is even more essential. John McCain brags about his experience in government, and yet he's supported the worst president ever over 90% of the time for the sake of running to succeed him.
So if the GOP is frantically retooling their message to eliminate the experience requirement, what does that leave us with? Well, Gov. Palin is a "refreshing and bold" choice. That's fine if you're describing a new flavor of Diet Coke, but I don't think Madison Avenue works when you're selling a vice presidential candidate whose truck has the bumper sticker "VEGETARIAN: OLD INDIAN WORD FOR 'BAD HUNTER'". That supports gun rights and anti-Native American racism in seven words or less. That kind of "refreshing and bold" attitude is more suited to a Minuteman reunion.
The next meme is that the Palin pick “[w]ipes out the image of McCain as the crotchety elder and brings back that of the fly-boy and gambler, which is much more appealing, and the genuine person.” What, by caving to the right wing of the party? Sucking up to James Dobson and the Religious Reich? That's not bold; that proves he's a pushover, and if he's elected, the evangelicals will demand even more from him than the lip service they got from the Bush administration. They'll want the full monty, and with Palin in the West Wing, they'll probably get it.
A bold move would have been to pick Joe Lieberman. That would have proven his maverick status far more powerfully to the people that matter; the puppetmasters in Colorado Springs, and it would have indicated to the independents and disgruntled Hillary Clinton supporters that he was willing to have a voice for choice and progressive views -- in some areas -- in his administration. Instead, he went with someone who loudly proclaims that tokenism and surface appearances still matter in American politics and always will. (And, as Zuzu points out, it seems to be working.)
At least with Joe Lieberman they could have kept up the argument about experience with a straight face. The fact that Joe Lieberman too learned nothing from supporting the Bush administration's march into Iraq would at least given us something to discuss on a policy level rather than all of this head-spinning turnabout and the SNL level claim that because Alaska is close to Russia, Ms. Palin knows something about foreign policy... or what time zone Diomede Island is in. (Based on that, Florida Gov. Charlie Crist should be Secretary of Homeland Security because Cuba is 90 miles off Key West.)
It's probably too much to ask, but let's dispense with these ludicrous ideas that Gov. Palin's selection was both bold for the Republicans and disastrous for the Democrats. The happy talk from the Wormtongues like William Kristol and Rush Limbaugh is only out there to mask the internal discomfort that I know is being felt privately by some Republicans who see Ms. Palin as a token choice who, if elected, will make the selection of Dan Quayle in 1988 look positively brilliant by comparison. After all, she could be the next president or, by rights, the GOP nominee in 2012 or 2016, and people inside the party are really wondering if that's the way they want their party to go. But apparently John McCain and his Rovian advisers didn't think about that. That reminds me of the statement by Matthew Harrison Brady from Inherit the Wind by Lawrence and Lee: "I do not think about the things that ... I do not think about." To which Henry Drummond retorts, "Do you ever think about the things that you do think about?"
(Cross-posted.)
Hurricane Gustav: How to Help
CNN has an article about people staying behind in New Orleans despite evacuation orders. Some key quotes:
"The thing is... most people don't have cars to leave, don't have money for gas. Pay for a hotel for that long? I mean, you have to do whatever you have to do, and I guess I'm gonna stay and work." [--Michael Kennedy, dishwasher]
"If I left, I'll probably lose my job," said Jeremiah O'Farrell, another dishwasher who is staying put. "I really don't have anywhere to go if I could leave."
[Ninth Ward resident Sidney] William wants desperately to leave his native New Orleans to avoid Gustav. He didn't leave for Katrina because he didn't have the money. He won't talk about what happened to him during that storm.
"I wish I had the money to go." Rejected for disability subsidies, he depends on his 23-year-old daughter, Gloria, to support the family.
From an AP article on the mandatory evacuation:
About two dozen Hispanic men gathered under oak trees near Claiborne Avenue. They were wary of boarding any bus, even though a city spokesman said no identity papers would be required.
"The problem is," said Pictor Soto, 44, of Peru, "there will be immigration people there and we're all undocumented."
And:
Unlike Katrina, when thousands took refuge inside the Superdome, there will be no "last resort" shelter, and those who stay behind accept "all responsibility for themselves and their loved ones," said the city's emergency preparedness director, Jerry Sneed.Emphasis added.
Brownfemipower has a post up about how you can help low-income women of color and their families and prisoners who need to be evacuated. If you have any other information on how to help, please leave it in comments.
Shakers in the area, you and your families are in our thoughts.
Michelle Obama Racism/Sexism Watch, Part 15
The LA Times honors our potential first lady Michelle Obama with a great article about how smart and accomplished she is a crappy little sidebar about her "politics of fashion," accompanied by a slide show of her in 10 different outfits and a poll inquiring if you think she is: 1. Too frumpy; 2. Too matronly; 3. Flawless first lady; or 4. Too sexy.
It really bothers me that the first and fixed photo on this piece is one that includes Sasha and Malia, which suggests that the two little girls' "fashion choices" are to be judged, too. It's bad enough they're doing this shit to Michelle, but to do it to Sasha and Malia just makes me want to punch things.
[H/T to Shaker Sam. Michelle Obama Sexism/Racism Watch: Parts One, Two, Three, Four, Five, Six, Seven, Eight, Nine, Ten, Eleven, Twelve, Thirteen, Fourteen.]
Obama Racism/Muslim/Unpatriotic/Scary Black Dude Watch, Part 74
"Obama is my slave." The "best" part about the story is how the asshole who made the shirt in the first place may have invented the race-baiting story about a woman getting assaulted for wearing it.
Shakers Renee (who gets the hat tip) and Frau Sally Benz have more.
Obama Racism/Muslim/Unpatriotic/Scary Black Dude Watch: Parts One, Two, Three, Four, Five, Six, Seven, Eight, Nine, Ten, Eleven, Twelve, Thirteen, Fourteen, Fifteen, Sixteen, Seventeen, Eighteen, Nineteen, Twenty, Twenty-One, Twenty-Two, Twenty-Three, Twenty-Four, Twenty-Five, Twenty-Six, Twenty-Seven, Twenty-Eight, Twenty-Nine, Thirty, Thirty-One, Thirty-Two, Thirty-Three, Thirty-Four, Thirty-Five, Thirty-Six, Thirty-Seven, Thirty-Eight, Thirty-Nine, Forty, Forty-One, Forty-Two, Forty-Three, Forty-Four, Forty-Five, Forty-Six, Forty-Seven, Forty-Eight, Forty-Nine, Fifty, Fifty-One, Fifty-Two, Fifty-Three, Fifty-Four, Fifty-Five, Fifty-Six, Fifty-Seven, Fifty-Eight, Fifty-Nine, Sixty, Sixty-One, Sixty-Two, Sixty-Three, Sixty-Four, Sixty-Five, Sixty-Six, Sixty-Seven, Sixty-Eight, Sixty-Nine, Seventy, Seventy-One, Seventy-Two, Seventy-Three.
Sarah Palin Sexism Watch, #4
I opened my email this morning to about two dozen emails with the subject heading "Sarah Palin Sexism Watch." Sigh.
In Good News: Heather Michon takes on the Bad Mother meme in Sarah Palin, Now Starring In "What Kind of a Mother..."
And now the Bad News:
Bill Wolfrum forwarded this classy piece from the WaPo, in which Palin is never even mentioned by name: "John McCain will have to do better than naming Tina Fey his vice presidential choice." Fey is an unapologetic progressive and a feminist, which likely makes the flippant comparison an insult to both women. But they look alike! And that's all that matters when it comes to women, of course.
Shaker Elisabeth sent along some charming t-shirts and a bumpersticker (for which I won't provide links, but I'm sure you can find them if you really want to):
Shaker Veronica passes on this catch by Kate D. in which Yahoo/WSJ headlines Palin's "workout, eating habits." Says Kate: "something tells me this wouldn't be a headline on yahoo this evening if tim pawlenty had been mccain's vp pick."
Shaker Rebecca points to this post at Wonkette (by way of Maru) in which a picture of Anna Nicole Smith sitting on J. Howard Marshall's lap is offered as the new McCain-Palin campaign poster.
Shaker Juliemania finds another charming campaign poster at Slog: McCain/Trollop. I get that it's probably meant to point out that McCain is a sexist pig who reportedly referred to his own wife as a trollop, but that's not the way to do it. Seriously. Because too many people won't get the joke; they'll think the joke is that Palin's a trollop. Irony: FAIL.
More to come, I'm sure. Sigh.
[Sarah Palin Sexism Watch: Parts One, Two, Three. We defend Sarah Palin against misogynist smears not because we endorse her or her politics, but because that's how feminism works.]
