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[LosingNow]

A brilliant article  by a libertarian, "feminist".
--
http://www.salon.com/opinion/paglia/2008/09/10/palin/index.html

Fresh blood for the vampire
A beady-eyed McCain gets a boost from the charismatic Sarah Palin, a powerful new feminist -- yes, feminist! -- force.

 Plus: Obama must embrace his dull side.
By Camille Paglia

Sep. 10, 2008 |

Rip tide! Is the Obama campaign shooting out to sea like a paper boat?

It's heavy weather for Obama fans, as momentum has suddenly shifted to John McCain -- that hoary, barnacle-encrusted tub that many Democrats like me had thought was full of holes and swirling to its doom in the inky depths of Republican incoherence and fratricide. Gee whilikers, the McCain vampire just won't die! Hit him with a hammer, and he explodes like a jellyfish into a hundred hungry pieces.

Oh, the sadomasochistic tedium of McCain's imprisonment in Hanoi being told over and over and over again at the Republican convention. Do McCain's credentials for the White House really consist only of that horrific ordeal? Americans owe every heroic, wounded veteran an incalculable debt of gratitude, but how do McCain's sufferings in a tiny, squalid cell 40 years ago logically translate into presidential aptitude in the 21st century? Cast him a statue or slap his name on a ship, and let's turn the damned page.

We need a new generation of leadership with fresh ideas and an expansive, cosmopolitan vision -- which is why I support Barack Obama and have contributed to his campaign. My baby-boom generation -- typified by the narcissistic Clintons -- peaked in the 1960s and is seriously past it. But McCain, born before Pearl Harbor, is even older than we are! Why would anyone believe that he holds the key to the future? And why would anyone swallow that preening passel of high-flown rhetoric about "country above all" coming from a seething, short-fused character whose rampant egotism, zigzagging principles, and currying of the gullible press were the distinguishing marks of his senatorial career?

Having said that, I must admit that McCain is currently eating Obama's lunch. McCain's weirdly disconnected persona (beady glowers flashing to frozen grins and back again) has started to look more testosterone-rich than Obama's easy, lanky, reflective candor. What in the world possessed the Obama campaign to let their guy wander like a dazed lamb into a snake pit of religious inquisition like Rick Warren's public forum last month at his Saddleback Church in California? That shambles of a performance -- where a surprisingly unprepared Obama met the inevitable question about abortion with shockingly curt glibness -- began his alarming slide. (WN: I totally agree, if he loses this election, that moment will be pointed out as the start of his decline)

As I said in my last column, I have become increasingly uneasy about Obama's efforts to sound folksy and approachable by reflexively using inner-city African-American tones and locutions, which as a native of Hawaii he acquired relatively late in his development and which are painfully wrong for the target audience of rural working-class whites that he has been trying to reach. Obama on the road and even in major interviews has been droppin' his g's like there's no tomorrow. It's analogous to the way stodgy, portly Al Gore (evidently misadvised by the women in his family and their feminist pals) tried to zap himself up on the campaign trail into the happening buff dude that he was not. Both Gore and Obama would have been better advised to pursue a calm, steady, authoritative persona. Forget the jokes -- be boring! That, alas, is what reads as masculine in the U.S.

The over-the-top publicity stunt of a mega-stadium for Obama's acceptance speech at the Democratic convention two weeks ago was a huge risk that worried me sick -- there were too many things that could go wrong, from bad weather to crowd control to technical glitches on the overblown set. But everything went swimmingly. Obama delivered the speech nearly flawlessly -- though I was shocked and disappointed by how little there was about foreign policy, a major area where wavering voters have grave doubts about him. Nevertheless, it was an extraordinary event with an overlong but strangely contemplative and spiritually uplifting finale. The music, amid the needlessly extravagant fireworks, morphed into "Star Wars" -- a New Age hymn to cosmic reconciliation and peace.

After that extravaganza, marking the 40th anniversary of Martin Luther King Jr.'s epochal civil rights speech on the Washington Mall, I felt calmly confident that the Obama campaign was going to roll like a gorgeous juggernaut right over the puny, fossilized McCain. The next morning, it was as if the election were already over. No need to fret about American politics anymore this year. I had already turned with relief to other matters.

Pow! Wham! The Republicans unleashed a doozy -- one of the most stunning surprises that I have ever witnessed in my adult life. By lunchtime, Obama's triumph of the night before had been wiped right off the national radar screen. In a bold move I would never have thought him capable of, McCain introduced Gov. Sarah Palin of Alaska as his pick for vice president. I had heard vaguely about Palin but had never heard her speak. I nearly fell out of my chair. It was like watching a boxing match or a quarter of hard-hitting football -- or one of the great light-saber duels in "Star Wars." (Here are the two Jedi, Obi-Wan Kenobi and Qui-Gon Jinn, going at it with Darth Maul in "The Phantom Menace.") This woman turned out to be a tough, scrappy fighter with a mischievous sense of humor.

Conservative though she may be, I felt that Palin represented an explosion of a brand new style of muscular American feminism. At her startling debut on that day, she was combining male and female qualities in ways that I have never seen before. And she was somehow able to seem simultaneously reassuringly traditional and gung-ho futurist. In terms of redefining the persona for female authority and leadership, Palin has made the biggest step forward in feminism since Madonna channeled the dominatrix persona of high-glam Marlene Dietrich and rammed pro-sex, pro-beauty feminism down the throats of the prissy, victim-mongering, philistine feminist establishment.

In the U.S., the ultimate glass ceiling has been fiendishly complicated for women by the unique peculiarity that our president must also serve as commander in chief of the armed forces. Women have risen to the top in other countries by securing the leadership of their parties and then being routinely promoted to prime minister when that party won at the polls. But a woman candidate for president of the U.S. must show a potential capacity for military affairs and decision-making. Our president also symbolically represents the entire history of the nation -- a half-mystical role often filled elsewhere by a revered if politically powerless monarch.

As a dissident feminist, I have been arguing since my arrival on the scene nearly 20 years ago that young American women aspiring to political power should be studying military history rather than taking women's studies courses, with their rote agenda of never-ending grievances. I have repeatedly said that the politician who came closest in my view to the persona of the first woman president was Sen. Dianne Feinstein, whose steady nerves in crisis were demonstrated when she came to national attention after the mayor and a gay supervisor were murdered in their City Hall offices in San Francisco. Hillary Clinton, with her schizophrenic alteration of personae, has never seemed presidential to me -- and certainly not in her bland and overpraised farewell speech at the Democratic convention (which skittered from slow, pompous condescension to trademark stridency to unseemly haste).

Feinstein, with her deep knowledge of military matters, has true gravitas and knows how to shrewdly thrust and parry with pesky TV interviewers. But her style is reserved, discreet, mandarin. The gun-toting Sarah Palin is like Annie Oakley, a brash ambassador from America's pioneer past. She immediately reminded me of the frontier women of the Western states, which first granted women the right to vote after the Civil War -- long before the federal amendment guaranteeing universal woman suffrage was passed in 1919. Frontier women faced the same harsh challenges and had to tackle the same chores as men did -- which is why men could regard them as equals, unlike the genteel, corseted ladies of the Eastern seaboard, which fought granting women the vote right to the bitter end.

Over the Labor Day weekend, with most of the big enchiladas of the major media on vacation, the vacuum was filled with a hallucinatory hurricane in the leftist blogosphere, which unleashed a grotesquely lurid series of allegations, fantasies, half-truths and outright lies about Palin. What a tacky low in American politics -- which has already caused a backlash that could damage Obama's campaign. When liberals come off as childish, raving loonies, the right wing gains. I am still waiting for substantive evidence that Sarah Palin is a dangerous extremist. I am perfectly willing to be convinced, but right now, she seems to be merely an optimistic pragmatist like Ronald Reagan, someone who pays lip service to religious piety without being in the least wedded to it. I don't see her arrival as portending the end of civil liberties or life as we know it.

One reason I live in the leafy suburbs of Philadelphia and have never moved to New York or Washington is that, as a cultural analyst, I want to remain in touch with the mainstream of American life. I frequent fast-food restaurants, shop at the mall, and periodically visit Wal-Mart (its bird-seed section is nonpareil). Like Los Angeles and San Francisco, Manhattan and Washington occupy their own mental zones -- nice to visit but not a place to stay if you value independent thought these days. Ambitious professionals in those cities, if they want to preserve their social networks, are very vulnerable to received opinion. At receptions and parties (which I hate), they're sitting ducks. They have to go along to get along -- poor dears! (WN: absolutely true.. )

It is certainly premature to predict how the Palin saga will go. I may not agree a jot with her about basic principles, but I have immensely enjoyed Palin's boffo performances at her debut and at the Republican convention, where she astonishingly dealt with multiple technical malfunctions without missing a beat. A feminism that cannot admire the bravura under high pressure of the first woman governor of a frontier state isn't worth a warm bucket of spit.

Perhaps Palin seemed perfectly normal to me because she resembles so many women I grew up around in the snow belt of upstate New York. For example, there were the robust and hearty farm women of Oxford, a charming village where my father taught high school when I was a child. We first lived in an apartment on the top floor of a farmhouse on a working dairy farm. Our landlady, who was as physically imposing as her husband, was an all-American version of the Italian immigrant women of my grandmother's generation -- agrarian powerhouses who could do anything and whose trumpetlike voices could pierce stone walls.

Here's one episode. My father and his visiting brother, a dapper barber by trade, were standing outside having a smoke when a great noise came from the nearby barn. A calf had escaped. Our landlady yelled, "Stop her!" as the calf came careening at full speed toward my father and uncle, who both instinctively stepped back as the calf galloped through the mud between them. Irate, our landlady trudged past them to the upper pasture, cornered the calf, and carried that massive animal back to the barn in her arms. As she walked by my father and uncle, she exclaimed in amused disgust, "Men!"

Now that's the Sarah Palin brand of can-do, no-excuses, moose-hunting feminism -- a world away from the whining, sniping, wearily ironic mode of the establishment feminism represented by Gloria Steinem, a Hillary Clinton supporter whose shameless Democratic partisanship over the past four decades has severely limited American feminism and not allowed it to become the big tent it can and should be. Sarah Palin, if her reputation survives the punishing next two months, may be breaking down those barriers. Feminism, which should be about equal rights and equal opportunity, should not be a closed club requiring an ideological litmus test for membership.

Here's another example of the physical fortitude and indomitable spirit that Palin as an Alaskan sportswoman seems to represent right now. Last year, Toronto's Globe and Mail reprinted this remarkable obituary from 1905:


Abigail Becker

Farmer and homemaker born in Frontenac County, Upper Canada, on March 14, 1830

A tall, handsome woman "who feared God greatly and the living or dead not at all," she married a widower with six children and settled in a trapper's cabin on Long Point, Lake Erie. On Nov. 23, 1854, with her husband away, she single-handedly rescued the crew of the schooner Conductor of Buffalo, which had run aground in a storm. The crew had clung to the frozen rigging all night, not daring to enter the raging surf. In the early morning, she waded chin-high into the water (she could not swim) and helped seven men reach shore. She was awarded medals for heroism and received $350 collected by the people of Buffalo, plus a handwritten letter from Queen Victoria that was accompanied by £50, all of which went toward buying a farm. She lost her husband to a storm, raised 17 children alone and died at Walsingham Centre, Ont.


Frontier women were far bolder and hardier than today's pampered, petulant bourgeois feminists, always looking to blame their complaints about life on someone else.

But what of Palin's pro-life stand? Creationism taught in schools? Book banning? Gay conversions? The Iraq war as God's plan? Zionism as a prelude to the apocalypse? We'll see how these big issues shake out. Right now, I don't believe much of what I read or hear about Palin in the media. To automatically assume that she is a religious fanatic who has embraced the most extreme ideas of her local church is exactly the kind of careless reasoning that has been unjustly applied to Barack Obama, whom the right wing is still trying to tar with the fulminating anti-American sermons of his longtime preacher, Jeremiah Wright.

The witch-trial hysteria of the past two incendiary weeks unfortunately reveals a disturbing trend in the Democratic Party, which has worsened over the past decade. Democrats are quick to attack the religiosity of Republicans, but Democratic ideology itself seems to have become a secular substitute religion. Since when did Democrats become so judgmental and intolerant? Conservatives are demonized, with the universe polarized into a Manichaean battle of us versus them, good versus evil. Democrats are clinging to pat group opinions as if they were inflexible moral absolutes. The party is in peril if it cannot observe and listen and adapt to changing social circumstances.

Let's take the issue of abortion rights, of which I am a firm supporter. As an atheist and libertarian, I believe that government must stay completely out of the sphere of personal choice. Every individual has an absolute right to control his or her body. (Hence I favor the legalization of drugs, though I do not take them.) Nevertheless, I have criticized the way that abortion became the obsessive idée fixe of the post-1960s women's movement (WN: Eggjacktly) -- leading to feminists' McCarthyite tactics in pitting Anita Hill with her flimsy charges against conservative Clarence Thomas (admittedly not the most qualified candidate possible) during his nomination hearings for the Supreme Court. Similarly, Bill Clinton's support for abortion rights gave him a free pass among leading feminists for his serial exploitation of women -- an abusive pattern that would scream misogyny to any neutral observer.

But the pro-life position, whether or not it is based on religious orthodoxy, is more ethically highly evolved(WN:Eggjacktly) than my own tenet of unconstrained access to abortion on demand. My argument (as in my first book, "Sexual Personae,") has always been that nature has a master plan pushing every species toward procreation and that it is our right and even obligation as rational human beings to defy nature's fascism. Nature herself is a mass murderer, making casual, cruel experiments and condemning 10,000 to die so that one more fit will live and thrive.

Hence I have always frankly admitted that abortion is murder, the extermination of the powerless by the powerful. Liberals for the most part have shrunk from facing the ethical consequences of their embrace of abortion, which results in the annihilation of concrete individuals and not just clumps of insensate tissue. The state in my view has no authority whatever to intervene in the biological processes of any woman's body, which nature has implanted there before birth and hence before that woman's entrance into society and citizenship. (WN:Precisely)

On the other hand, I support the death penalty for atrocious crimes (such as rape-murder or the murder of children). I have never understood the standard Democratic combo of support for abortion and yet opposition to the death penalty. Surely it is the guilty rather than the innocent who deserve execution?

What I am getting at here is that not until the Democratic Party stringently reexamines its own implicit assumptions and rhetorical formulas will it be able to deal effectively with the enduring and now escalating challenge from the pro-life right wing. Because pro-choice Democrats have been arguing from cold expedience, they have thus far been unable to make an effective ethical case for the right to abortion.

The gigantic, instantaneous coast-to-coast rage directed at Sarah Palin when she was identified as pro-life was, I submit, a psychological response by loyal liberals who on some level do not want to open themselves to deep questioning about abortion and its human consequences. I have written about the eerie silence that fell over campus audiences in the early 1990s when I raised this issue on my book tours. At such moments, everyone in the hall seemed to feel the uneasy conscience of feminism. Naomi Wolf later bravely tried to address this same subject but seems to have given up in the face of the resistance she encountered.

If Sarah Palin tries to intrude her conservative Christian values into secular government, then she must be opposed and stopped. But she has every right to express her views and to argue for society's acceptance of the high principle of the sanctity of human life. If McCain wins the White House and then drops dead, a President Palin would have the power to appoint conservative judges to the Supreme Court, but she could not control their rulings.

It is nonsensical and counterproductive for Democrats to imagine that pro-life values can be defeated by maliciously destroying their proponents. And it is equally foolish to expect that feminism must for all time be inextricably wed to the pro-choice agenda. There is plenty of room in modern thought for a pro-life feminism -- one in fact that would have far more appeal to third-world cultures where motherhood is still honored and where the Western model of the hard-driving, self-absorbed career woman is less admired.

But the one fundamental precept that Democrats must stand for is independent thought and speech. When they become baying bloodhounds of rigid dogma, Democrats have committed political suicide.

Camille Paglia's column appears on the second Wednesday of each month. Every third column is devoted to reader letters. Please send questions for her next letters column to this mailbox. Your name and town will be published unless you request anonymity.

[pipsqueak]

unbearable article!

let me see, an amazonian woman who can tame a moose/running calf is the true "feminist" - right. 

[LosingNow]

unbearable article!

let me see, an amazonian woman who can tame a moose/running calf is the true "feminist" - right. 

so who is it?

The bra-burning, "I will not enter the kitchen" one ?

[pipsqueak]

unbearable article!

let me see, an amazonian woman who can tame a moose/running calf is the true "feminist" - right. 

so who is it?

The bra-burning, "I will not enter the kitchen" one ?

did i say that? i find this article's message utter tripe. i shall elaborate more why i find this article repulsive, maybe later in the day.

imo, there need not be a cut-and-dry definition for "feminist". in fact, i don't even acknowledge that term and never like to be called one.

i am not enamoured by Palin at all but i can somewhat see why she would appeal to a lot of american women.

[pipsqueak]

here's one example of her tripe

"Similarly, Bill Clinton's support for abortion rights gave him a free pass among leading feminists for his serial exploitation of women -- an abusive pattern that would scream misogyny to any neutral observer."

all of a sudden, the women gets "exploited"? 

what is her point any way?

[LosingNow]

unbearable article!

let me see, an amazonian woman who can tame a moose/running calf is the true "feminist" - right. 

so who is it?

The bra-burning, "I will not enter the kitchen" one ?

did i say that? i find this article's message utter tripe. i shall elaborate more why i find this article repulsive, maybe later in the day.

imo,there need not be cut-and-dry definition for "feminist". in fact, i don't even acknowledge that term and never like to be called one.

i am not enamoured by Palin at all but i can somewhat see why she would appeal to a lot of american women.

I do not agree with labels or approaches to labeling either.

Will wait for your post on why you find this article repulsive...

I think it lays out quite well some of the attractions of a Palin-like persona to a lot of the women here in US. I also think it rightly points out that the so-called "feminist" movement is wrong in making "pro-choice" as its signature "you are in or you are out" litmus-test issue.

[pipsqueak]

unbearable article!

let me see, an amazonian woman who can tame a moose/running calf is the true "feminist" - right. 

so who is it?

The bra-burning, "I will not enter the kitchen" one ?

did i say that? i find this article's message utter tripe. i shall elaborate more why i find this article repulsive, maybe later in the day.

imo,there need not be cut-and-dry definition for "feminist". in fact, i don't even acknowledge that term and never like to be called one.

i am not enamoured by Palin at all but i can somewhat see why she would appeal to a lot of american women.

I do not agree with labels or approaches to labeling either.

Will wait for your post on why you find this article repulsive...

I think it lays out quite well some of the attractions of a Palin-like persona to a lot of the women here in US. I also think it rightly points out that the so-called "feminist" movement is wrong in making "pro-choice" as its signature "you are in or you are out" litmus-test issue.

i want a candidate(woman) to be chosen because she is "qualified" to take on that role - not because she has been conveniently chosen as the pin-up girl. what is Palin besides that?

do you think Palin would have been chosen if NOT for her gender and her potential ability to lure a large number of (dumb)middle-class women who can "relate" to her with the typical thought process running "oh, she saves coupons just like me and she drives her kids to soccer too? geez! so like me and i must show my solidarity  by voting for her".  how is this "equality" and "powerful new feminism"?

for Paglia to present this Palin woman as the "ideal woman"  is offensive to me, as a woman, as a person!

let us look at her views on factors that just affect women(i am not even touching her views on creationism/banning books)

ban sex-education/contraception - who cares if young teenagers get pregnant due to lack of awareness!

rape victims? too bad, you are a woman, so raise the "life" inside you even though it may scar you for the rest of your life.

Palin, from what i see, represents almost everything i despise about the american mainstream conservative hypocritical culture. here's a woman who doesn't spare a thought for even a rape victim and i am to look up to her as the ideal, liberated woman? 

now let's look at Paglia's stance on abortion - simplifying the pro-life/pro-choice to an ethical issue is rather irresponsible and her Clinton analogy makes it even more ridiculous.

most people support women's right to choose not because they want to get pregnant over and over again and go through the thrills of a drive-thru abortion but for a woman not be persecuted *if* she has to make that difficult choice. there may be various realities that force this decision on a person and she should be accorded the choice and the right to do it.

actually, the real problem in society is not abortion but unwanted teenage pregnancies. how can that be combated? sex education and our Ms.Palin is against that! it is all very well to sit and preach abstinence but it is more prudent to get in touch with reality and solve the real issues.

this whole "pro-life"/"pro-choice" has become a political band-wagon used by the conservatives to tout their "moral superiority" and people like this author parroting them is despicable and REPULSIVE!

[kban1]

i want a candidate(woman) to be chosen because she is "qualified" to take on that role - not because she has been conveniently chosen as the pin-up girl. what is Palin besides that?

do you think Palin would have been chosen if NOT for her gender and her potential ability to lure a large number of (dumb)middle-class women who can "relate" to her with the typical thought process running "oh, she saves coupons just like me and she drives her kids to soccer too? geez! so like me and i must show my solidarity  by voting for her".  how is this "equality" and "powerful new feminism"?

for Paglia to present this Palin woman as the "ideal woman"  is offensive to me, as a woman, as a person!

let us look at her views on factors that just affect women(i am not even touching her views on creationism/banning books)

ban sex-education/contraception - who cares if young teenagers get pregnant due to lack of awareness!

rape victims? too bad, you are a woman, so raise the "life" inside you even though it may scar you for the rest of your life.

Palin, from what i see, represents almost everything i despise about the american mainstream conservative hypocritical culture. here's a woman who doesn't spare a thought for even a rape victim and i am to look up to her as the ideal, liberated woman? 

now let's look at Paglia's stance on abortion - simplifying the pro-life/pro-choice to an ethical issue is rather irresponsible and her Clinton analogy makes it even more ridiculous.

most people support women's right to choose not because they want to get pregnant over and over again and go through the thrills of a drive-thru abortion but for a woman not be persecuted *if* she has to make that difficult choice. there may be various realities that force this decision on a person and she should be accorded the choice and the right to do it.

actually, the real problem in society is not abortion but unwanted teenage pregnancies. how can that be combated? sex education and our Ms.Palin is against that! it is all very well to sit and preach abstinence but it is more prudent to get in touch with reality and solve the real issues.

this whole "pro-life"/"pro-choice" has become a political band-wagon used by the conservatives to tout their "moral superiority" and people like this author parroting them is despicable and REPULSIVE!

   

[dhruvdeepak]

http://www.theonion.com/content/node/85974

[prfsr]

Pip,
Agree with all your points, but she is hot! She is everything us middle-aged males want women to be. I wish my wife was a housewife who got paid (by the taxpayers!) for cooking at home. She earns enough to let her husband play round. Her husband did not get elected but gets to participate in governing the state. She is my model feminist.

[arjunah]

this article is utter crapitude under the disguise of being pro-women/ethical/morally right..also these labels of feminism, et al are just to confuse the electorate...but I agree choosing palin was a brilliant move and obama camp is still figuring out what the counter move is, if any...end of the day  educated and/or enlightened people on principle cannot vote for palin..she needs to understand the value of books and sex education should have started at her own home...so that her silly daughter would not be pregnant...and the dumb kid who got her pregnant would not have to go through the current farce...both of them should be slapped silly and asked to go read books rather than do the christian thing...but at the end of the day dumb women will buy this article and vote for her and dumber men will vote for her pretty face...that is why it is a brilliant move.. 

[keep-it-cool]

Is the next US president seriously going to be decided on the basis of their views on abortion?? 

[CLR James]

Well, let me see. This is an incredibly stupid and ignorant article, typical of a privileged first world person who really has no feelings for what the feminist movements (despite their shortcomings) have achieved all over the world in the last century. My mother's aunt was married off at nine, became a mother when she was thirteen. Ask her about nature and the freedom to abort!

1. The definition of Ethics in this article is dubious at best. Paglia seems to conflate ethics with theological principles. Ergo, you have ethics and deserve to stamp that in your bumper sticker only when it is solidly backed by the word of God. However, one of the great achievements of modern moral philosophy since Kant was exactly the seperation between ethics and dogma. That is, when human beings do the right thing out of their own intelligent volition or scruples, without any necessary fear of going to hell.

2. Now let us see:

"But the pro-life position, whether or not it is based on religious orthodoxy, is more ethically highly evolved(WN:Eggjacktly) than my own tenet of unconstrained access to abortion on demand. My argument (as in my first book, "Sexual Personae,") has always been that nature has a master plan pushing every species toward procreation and that it is our right and even obligation as rational human beings to defy nature's fascism. Nature herself is a mass murderer, making casual, cruel experiments and condemning 10,000 to die so that one more fit will live and thrive.

Hence I have always frankly admitted that abortion is murder, the extermination of the powerless by the powerful. Liberals for the most part have shrunk from facing the ethical consequences of their embrace of abortion, which results in the annihilation of concrete individuals and not just clumps of insensate tissue. The state in my view has no authority whatever to intervene in the biological processes of any woman's body, which nature has implanted there before birth and hence before that woman's entrance into society and citizenship."

The logical flow from the first and second paragraphs is convoluted or non-existent, but let me try to untangle things a bit. This issue is precisely whether the clumps of tissue are indeed 'individuals', or at what point they become so (by that point abortion is medically dangerous anyway). To quote George Carlin, if foetuses are individuals, why aren't they counted in the census? If my wife is pregnant, why can't I claim a dependant for tax purposes? Human beings, through science and industry, have always manipulated Nature. There is nothing called nature; it is what we make out of it, from age to age. The religious right, of all denominations, have always used a divinely ordained Natural Plan to keep women in place. It is of course only they who have punctual access to God's Will. Two hundred or so years ago it was about the use of anasthesia during chilbirth. They said that it could not be used since God willed that women have to suffer labor pain. That began to frizzle out from the moment Queen Victoria turned her royal head to ask for a pill to mitigate her ches. Today it is about abortion and birth control. All this stinks of hypocricy, not ethics. The same people have a scant regard for 'life' when poor people die without health insurance, or when thousands of innocents get bombed to the stone age in some far flung corner of the earth. Some of them continue to condemn the condom even when faced with an African AIDS holocaust.

3. So what makes the pro-choice stance ethical? It is ethical because it is based on science and not dogma. It is based on civil law and the rights of an individual over her body. These things are important because they distinguish us from animals. Animals, being in the realm of pure nature, never committ 'murder' (that is a legal term). They simply kill. On the other hand, we always play around with and divert courses of nature. We do not recognize any grand plan or will that is paramount. If we have a tumor, we do not immediately assume that god or nature wants us to cop it. We try and remove it. We try to institutionalize procreation through marriage. Matters of birth, inheritance, and social identity are not 'natural' or divinely created; they are man made. Similarly, pro-choice people do not believe that 'life' (in the juridical, social, or scientific sense of the term) comes into being at the moment of conception. It acquires all those characteristics at a later stage (along with the status of being counted in census reports). Till then, it is a matter of a woman's inalienable rights over her own body and its internal processes, her health, and her immediate priorities in life.

4. Lastly, here is the thing. Nobody is asking Bristol Palin to have an abortion. It is her life and her business. If some other Bristol somewhere else wants to have one, in view of her life, her tender age, and further interests, why can't the 'ethical' hynas keep out of her body and her bedroom? Why do they want the baby? So that it can grow up without healthcare, with very little child support and education till it can join the army?

[Cover Point]

great response CLR!!!

[achutank]

Why do they want the baby? So that it can grow up without healthcare, with very little child support and education till it can join the army?

lovely line CLR!!! 

[achutank]

i really hope someone digs out a sex tape on Phallin - whoa!!!! 

[poondu]

So, only WN thinks this is a brilliant article ?

[prfsr]

So, only WN thinks this is a brilliant article ?

No there are many women who for some reason think Palin is the face of feminism. 

I guess they are just happy that the republican party finally brought up a woman to a top position.
That is why the author tries her best to bring down McCain and present Palin as the face of the ticket - the really qualified one.

[prfsr]

Another face of feminism

http://www.mcclatchydc.com/homepage/story/52266.html

Critics: Under Palin, Wasilla charged rape victims for exam
 
By George Bryson | Anchorage Daily News
Two state leaders lashed out at the public record of Gov. Sarah Palin on Wednesday as witnesses in a new "Alaska Mythbusters" forum coordinated by supporters of Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama.

Speaking to a teleconference audience of reporters around the nation, former Gov. Tony Knowles and current Ketchikan Mayor Bob Weinstein -- both Democrats -- accused Palin of misleading the public in her new role as the vice presidential running mate of Arizona Sen. John McCain.

While some of their complaints have already been aired, Knowles broke new ground while answering a reporter's question on whether Wasilla forced rape victims to pay for their own forensic tests when Palin was mayor.

True, Knowles said.

Eight years ago, complaints about charging rape victims for medical exams in Wasilla prompted the Alaska Legislature to pass a bill -- signed into law by Knowles -- that banned the practice statewide.

"There was one town in Alaska that was charging victims for this, and that was Wasilla," Knowles said

A May 23, 2000, article in Wasilla's newspaper, The Frontiersman, noted that Alaska State Troopers and most municipal police agencies regularly pay for such exams, which cost between $300 and $1,200 apiece.

"(But) the Wasilla police department does charge the victims of sexual assault for the tests," the newspaper reported.

It also quoted Wasilla Police Chief Charlie Fannon objecting to the law. Fannon was appointed to his position by Palin after her dismissal of the previous police chief. He said it would cost Wasilla $5,000 to $14,000 a year if the city had to foot the bill for rape exams.

"In the past we've charged the cost of exams to the victims' insurance company when possible," Fannon told the newspaper. "I just don't want to see any more burden put on the taxpayer."

An effort to reach Fannon by phone Wednesday was not successful.

Knowles and Weinstein also went after the Republican ticket on several statements now airing in campaign ads around the nation, including Palin's claim that she opposed federal money for the "bridge to nowhere."

The governor has refused to acknowledge her explicit support for the $230 million Gravina Island Access Project in her effort to sound more like an anti-earmark reformer to a national audience, Weinstein said.

And she still supports spending $400 million to $600 million on "the other Bridge to Nowhere," the Knik Arm Crossing, which would provide residents in Palin's hometown of Wasilla faster access to Anchorage, Knowles added.

"That project is moving right ahead," said Knowles, who served as governor of Alaska from 1994 to 2002. "The money for that project was not diverted anywhere else. ... So (for her) to say she said, 'Thanks, but no thanks....' I would say she said, 'Thanks!'"

A phone call to Meg Stapleton, a spokeswoman for the Alaska office of the McCain-Palin campaign, was not returned Wednesday.

However, the Republican side lost little time in organizing a national truth squad of its own to battle what it considers "smears" of Palin by Democrats. A list of the names of more than 50 members of a Palin truth team, posted Monday on the Atlantic Monthly magazine Web site, included three Alaskans: Stapleton (a former Palin aide); Kristan Cole, a longtime friend; and Republican Lt. Gov. Sean Parnell.

As a former governor, Knowles said, he's reluctant to criticize an active governor. But he decided to make an exception with Palin.

"In this situation it's not just a sitting governor," he said. "Our current governor is a candidate for the vice presidency and a heartbeat away from the presidency."

[prfsr]

Breaking news: Palin says attacking Russia may be necessary.
http://abcnews.go.com/Politics/Vote2008/story?id=5778018&page=1

[LosingNow]

Breaking news: Palin says attacking Russia may be necessary.
http://abcnews.go.com/Politics/Vote2008/story?id=5778018&page=1

So now you have started spinning  like the republicans.. Great!!
--
What exactly is wrong with what she has said here.. I am really missing it...and please start your response with "since you are a republican.." (just kidding)


When Gibson said if under the NATO treaty, the United States would have to go to war if Russia again invaded Georgia, Palin responded: "Perhaps so. I mean, that is the agreement when you are a NATO ally, is if another country is attacked, you're going to be expected to be called upon and help.

"And we've got to keep an eye on Russia. For Russia to have exerted such pressure in terms of invading a smaller democratic country, unprovoked, is unacceptable," she told Gibson

[prfsr]

Breaking news: Palin says attacking Russia may be necessary.
http://abcnews.go.com/Politics/Vote2008/story?id=5778018&page=1

So now you have started spinning  like the republicans.. Great!!
--
What exactly is wrong with what she has said here.. I am really missing it...and please start your response with "since you are a republican.." (just kidding)


When Gibson said if under the NATO treaty, the United States would have to go to war if Russia again invaded Georgia, Palin responded: "Perhaps so. I mean, that is the agreement when you are a NATO ally, is if another country is attacked, you're going to be expected to be called upon and help.

"And we've got to keep an eye on Russia. For Russia to have exerted such pressure in terms of invading a smaller democratic country, unprovoked, is unacceptable," she told Gibson

Sorry WN, if anyone is spinning, it is abc. Here is the *first* sentence from the webpage I linked to.

"On the anniversary of the worst terrorist attack in U.S. history, Gov. Sarah Palin took a hard-line approach on national security and said that war with Russia may be necessary if that nation invades another country."

What part did I spin?

edit: I missed the second and third pages of the interview. I thought abc was quoting unpublished parts of the interview. On second reading I agree with you abc (again not me!) is being sensationalistic. In fact she
backtracks soon (in a sensible way).

"GIBSON: And you think it would be worth it to the United States, Georgia is worth it to the United States to go to war if Russia were to invade.

PALIN: What I think is that smaller democratic countries that are invaded by a larger power is something for us to be vigilant against. We have got to be cognizant of what the consequences are if a larger power is able to take over smaller democratic countries.

And we have got to be vigilant. We have got to show the support, in this case, for Georgia. The support that we can show is economic sanctions perhaps against Russia, if this is what it leads to.

It doesn't have to lead to war and it doesn't have to lead, as I said, to a Cold War, but economic sanctions, diplomatic pressure, again, counting on our allies to help us do that in this mission of keeping our eye on Russia and Putin and some of his desire to control and to control much more than smaller democratic countries. "

I will wait for Ruchir and you to trash her -- when Obama gave nuanced responses like this you said he was undecided/unable to make up his mind and Ruchir said he flipflopped and could not be trusted 

[LosingNow]

Breaking news: Palin says attacking Russia may be necessary.
http://abcnews.go.com/Politics/Vote2008/story?id=5778018&page=1

So now you have started spinning  like the republicans.. Great!!
--
What exactly is wrong with what she has said here.. I am really missing it...and please start your response with "since you are a republican.." (just kidding)


When Gibson said if under the NATO treaty, the United States would have to go to war if Russia again invaded Georgia, Palin responded: "Perhaps so. I mean, that is the agreement when you are a NATO ally, is if another country is attacked, you're going to be expected to be called upon and help.

"And we've got to keep an eye on Russia. For Russia to have exerted such pressure in terms of invading a smaller democratic country, unprovoked, is unacceptable," she told Gibson

Sorry WN, if anyone is spinning, it is abc. Here is the *first* sentence from the webpage I linked to.

"On the anniversary of the worst terrorist attack in U.S. history, Gov. Sarah Palin took a hard-line approach on national security and said that war with Russia may be necessary if that nation invades another country."

What part did I spin?

The ABC title of the story said
"Sarah Palin Defends Experience, Takes Hard Line Approach on National Security"
..and you posted
"Breaking news: Palin says attacking Russia may be necessary"

A. you put this as the lead
B. Even if you choose to put the first line.. you did not put it in full...you missed..  "if that nation invades another country", which is an important context (whether you agree with it or not, is a different matter)

[prfsr]

Come on now. Have you heard of *anyone* in this age go to war without a reason? To put all the nuances in the title would make it an essay -- "X might go to war with Y if (a)...(b)...(c)...............".

I do not think this machismo is warranted - I completely understood even before I read the full post that she was posturing for her base, and did not mean it. However we, and especially the right, did not take kindly to such posturing from the Iranian leader. We would be upset if Pak leaders started such talk before their elections. Suddenly it is ok for her?

[LosingNow]

Why do they want the baby? So that it can grow up without healthcare, with very little child support and education till it can join the army?

lovely line CLR!!! 

.. let's KILL anyone who is going to grow up without healthcare, with little child support and education till they can join the army.

Come on, rhetoric is cheap and doesnt go far.

[LosingNow]

Come on now. Have you heard of *anyone* in this age go to war without a reason?

George W Bush.. circa 2003!!

[prfsr]

Come on now. Have you heard of *anyone* in this age go to war without a reason?

George W Bush.. circa 2003!!

What??? I did not say valid reason...just a reason...as in I am attacking X because I can.

[CLR James]

Dear WN,

Abortion is NOT killing. It is stopping a germinating process inside the body. It is a decision not to terminate life, but pertaining to whether a parent can afford to bring life into this world. And I do not consider a human person (not a metabolic entity) to be born untill she/he is born and cries out loud for that first gasp of air. But then, that is me.

This could be an opinion shared by me and many other people. Well let us misguided people have the freedom to do whatever we feel like with our bodies. Just keep your moralism to yourself and stop trying to impose it on other people, unless you consider women to be basically nature's incubators cum reproductive machines.

But be careful. Your one line response to my long post was typical of republicans. When they run out of gas or reason, our discourse becomes uppity rhetoric. Anyway, do get back to me about the rest when you get the chance.

[CLR James]

Nuance is really not her strong point. The Georgian president Medvedev really messed up by sending in the army to South Ossetia. The Russians were waiting for what they could claim as a provocation. This of course does not mean that Putin and company are holy fools. Quite the contrary, and despite the backtrack, Palin has just added momentum to a regressive and militant nationalism in Putin's Russia by even inferring that USA might have to attack Russia if Georgia were in NATO, and if there were further skirmishes.

Why, pray, is she fooling? Iraq cannot be handled; now, after the 'surge', the war front has simply shifted to Afghanistan again. Russia? Has she forgotten that her own economy is tanking by the day. Russia is insurgent, and people forget, is the only country which has the nuclear stockpile to make 9/11 look like a kitty party.

[prfsr]

(cheesy) humor break
http://righttruth.typepad.com/right_truth/2008/09/sarah-palin-facts.html

[LosingNow]

Just saw her on ABC World News Tonight with Charles Gibson..

..she looked flat, scripted, nervous and uncomfortable. (maybe the subject of foreign policy and national security was not in her comfort zone). No wonder, McCain's gang is hiding her

[prfsr]

I missed the interview but saw clips online. I must say I found her demeanor and personality more impressive than McCain! Obviously, I do not like her views but I see why righties are thrilled.

edit: consider this - if they wanted a new star, it was between her and Jindal. Blech!

BTW the reason I like her (her discomfort notwithstanding) is that she tries to nuance her views 
Not two word answers like McCain. Like a sensible person she refused to be drawn into yes/no answers although Charlie Gibson tried at times. She also seems (that is the keyword - seems) like a simple, open person.

Will try to catch the whole interview.

[arjunah]

Is the next US president seriously going to be decided on the basis of their views on abortion?? 

Nope, it is based on how pretty the candidates are..

[pipsqueak]

I missed the interview but saw clips online. I must say I found her demeanor and personality more impressive than McCain! Obviously, I do not like her views but I see why righties are thrilled.

edit: consider this - if they wanted a new star, it was between her and Jindal. Blech!

BTW the reason I like her (her discomfort notwithstanding) is that she tries to nuance her views 
Not two word answers like McCain. Like a sensible person she refused to be drawn into yes/no answers although Charlie Gibson tried at times. She also seems (that is the keyword - seems) like a simple, open person.

Will try to catch the whole interview.

you like her for not knowing what the phrase Bush Doctrine means?

And, yes, who cares - she can kill a moose and so I must look up to her as the modern, emancipated woman!


Charlie:  Do you agree with the Bush Doctrine?

Palin:  In what respect, Charlie?

Charlie:  What do you interpret it to be?

Palin:  His worldview?

Charlie:  No, No, the Bush Doctrine.  He enunciated it in September 2002, before the Iraq War.

Palin:  I believe that what President Bush has attempted to do is to rid this world of Islamic extremism, terrorists who are hellbent on destroying our nation.  There have been blunders along the way, though.  There have been mistakes made.  And with new leadership--and that's the beauty of American elections and democracy--with new leadership comes the opportunity to do things better.

Charlie:  The Bush Doctrine, as I understand it, is that we have the right of anticipatory defense.  We have the right to preemptively strike any other country that we believe is going to attack us.

Source: DailyKos

<a href="http://www.youtube.com/v/Z75QSExE0jU&rel=0" target="_blank">http://www.youtube.com/v/Z75QSExE0jU&rel=0</a>

[RicePlateReddy]

you like her for not knowing what the phrase Bush Doctrine means?

Yeah, not knowing the Bush Doctrine may be a good thing no 

I know you said 'phrase' - Seriously, the way I interpret it is the doctrine (literally means 'body of teachings'  ) is broader. "Those not with us are against us" is also part of the doctrine.

[prfsr]

I missed the interview but saw clips online. I must say I found her demeanor and personality more impressive than McCain! Obviously, I do not like her views but I see why righties are thrilled.

edit: consider this - if they wanted a new star, it was between her and Jindal. Blech!

BTW the reason I like her (her discomfort notwithstanding) is that she tries to nuance her views 
Not two word answers like McCain. Like a sensible person she refused to be drawn into yes/no answers although Charlie Gibson tried at times. She also seems (that is the keyword - seems) like a simple, open person.

Will try to catch the whole interview.

you like her for not knowing what the phrase Bush Doctrine means?

And, yes, who cares - she can kill a moose and so I must look up to her as the modern, emancipated woman!


Charlie:  Do you agree with the Bush Doctrine?

Palin:  In what respect, Charlie?

Charlie:  What do you interpret it to be?

Palin:  His worldview?

Charlie:  No, No, the Bush Doctrine.  He enunciated it in September 2002, before the Iraq War.

Palin:  I believe that what President Bush has attempted to do is to rid this world of Islamic extremism, terrorists who are hellbent on destroying our nation.  There have been blunders along the way, though.  There have been mistakes made.  And with new leadership--and that's the beauty of American elections and democracy--with new leadership comes the opportunity to do things better.

Charlie:  The Bush Doctrine, as I understand it, is that we have the right of anticipatory defense.  We have the right to preemptively strike any other country that we believe is going to attack us.

Source: DailyKos

Yes   The less you know about it the purer you are.  

No as I said, if you share her views she comes across as more impressive/likeable than McCain.

[keep-it-cool]

Is the next US president seriously going to be decided on the basis of their views on abortion?? 

Nope, it is based on how pretty the candidates are..

That's better

[prfsr]

you like her for not knowing what the phrase Bush Doctrine means?

Yeah, not knowing the Bush Doctrine may be a good thing no 

I know you said 'phrase' - Seriously, the way I interpret it is the doctrine (literally means 'body of teachings'  ) is broader. "Those not with us are against us" is also part of the doctrine.

SSL,
Your (and Pip's) baidu/google cache hunting skills will be useful again. 

http://dailykos.com/storyonly/2008/9/11/14119/1262/889/595083

[keep-it-cool]

I missed the interview but saw clips online. I must say I found her demeanor and personality more impressive than McCain! Obviously, I do not like her views but I see why righties are thrilled.

edit: consider this - if they wanted a new star, it was between her and Jindal. Blech!

BTW the reason I like her (her discomfort notwithstanding) is that she tries to nuance her views 
Not two word answers like McCain. Like a sensible person she refused to be drawn into yes/no answers although Charlie Gibson tried at times. She also seems (that is the keyword - seems) like a simple, open person.

Will try to catch the whole interview.

you like her for not knowing what the phrase Bush Doctrine means?

And, yes, who cares - she can kill a moose and so I must look up to her as the modern, emancipated woman!


Charlie:  Do you agree with the Bush Doctrine?

Palin:  In what respect, Charlie?

Charlie:  What do you interpret it to be?

Palin:  His worldview?

Charlie:  No, No, the Bush Doctrine.  He enunciated it in September 2002, before the Iraq War.

Palin:  I believe that what President Bush has attempted to do is to rid this world of Islamic extremism, terrorists who are hellbent on destroying our nation.  There have been blunders along the way, though.  There have been mistakes made.  And with new leadership--and that's the beauty of American elections and democracy--with new leadership comes the opportunity to do things better.

Charlie:  The Bush Doctrine, as I understand it, is that we have the right of anticipatory defense.  We have the right to preemptively strike any other country that we believe is going to attack us.

Source: DailyKos

 

[pipsqueak]

No as I said, if you share her views she comes across as more impressive/likeable than McCain.

has to be the middle-aged men syndrome you mentioned.