Posted by
Andrews on Wednesday, September 03, 2008 11:33:22 PM
I seem unable to leave the topic of hypocrisy lately, but it really is appropriate when discussing the comments being made by liberal commentators about Palin.
It is interesting that they keep making comments they would consider intolerably sexist if made about anyone else. Criticizing her daughter's exercise of her "reproductive freedom", questioning whether she can be a mother and vice president, aren't those things the left has told us we aren't supposed to ask? Aren't we supposed to accept without question that a woman can be a mother and a worker? That it is horrible for us to even suggest that working takes time away from her children? Isn't it supposedly an archaic paternalistic attitude that motherhood is more important than a career? And wrong to even ask if careers interfere with motherhood?
Worse still, no one on the left has thought to point this out. The same way the women's movement changed their beliefs for Clinton. ("No one would lie about rape" was suddenly forgotten in the case of Clinton's "bimbo eruptions"), they are also forgetting all the tenets of femiism in their rush to criticize someone who threatens the messiah from Chicago.
Or, perhaps this is yet another of those bizarre exceptions, like "oreos" and "bananas" and "apples", all those terms for minorities who are "white on the inside", maybe conservatives with two X chromosomes aren't "really" women, and so don't deserve to be protected by feminists. That would be consistent with the leftist view which places race/class/sex solidarity above all else EXCEPT when a minority or woman or disabled person or gay has the audacity to think for themselves politically, in which case all that solidarity vanishes and they can be subjected to the most hateful slanders. (Think of how sensitive the left was when George Michaels was caught in a men's room versus how gleefully malicious they were about Larry Craig. All of that sensitivity about sexual identity goes out the window when they get the chance to draw Republican blood.)
So, I suppose it does make sense. My mistake was believing they were the party of "caring". The Democrats and the left in general are not the party of compassion, they are the party of compassion for anyone who shares the right political views, and the most vicious, insulting, demeaning stereotypes for those who don't.