Friday, 19 September 2008

A brief note on Sarah Palin which turned into a rant



Sarah Palin's Alaska Office, image courtesy of The New York Times

I would be surprised if you told me you had never heard of Sarah Palin before. Personally I am irritated by the way she is taking press away from Barack Obama when she is the VP candidate and not even the presidential candidate. BUT she is a phenomenon which needs to be addressed. So just some little points on why Sarah Palin should not be hailed and voted for by women.


A woman candidate is not the same thing as a woman's candidate. There are so many reasons why Sarah Palin is against women's rights. Firstly she cut funding for a program in her state for young women who found themselves pregnant and wanted (or were forced) to carry the pregnancy to term. As the Washington post states in its 2 September article:
Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin, the Republican vice-presidential nominee who revealed Monday that her 17-year-old daughter is pregnant, earlier this year used her line-item veto to slash funding for a state program benefiting teen mothers in need of a place to live.
...
According to Passage House's web site, its purpose is to provide "young mothers a place to live with their babies for up to eighteen months while they gain the necessary skills and resources to change their lives" and help teen moms "become productive, successful, independent adults who create and provide a stable environment for themselves and their families."

Secondly as Mayor of Wasilla she ensured that the state no longer paid for rape kits for victims, instead insisting that the rape victims of Wasilla pay between US$300 and US$1200 to have the police take evidence for a crime, despite protestations by the police chief himself. Thirdly she is staunchly anti-choice - even if you yourself would never get an abortion, that does not mean that clinically-safe abortions should not be available for women who may not be so lucky. The fact that Palin spoke about her daughter Bristol's "decision" (and the family's "decision") to keep her child is infuriating when Palin herself would refuse to give any other girls/women/families a "decision" in such a matter - especially if we change the word "decision" for say, "choice". Their words: "We are proud of Bristol's decision to have her baby and even prouder to become grandparents." [emphasis mine]

See this hillarious clip from the Daily Show to see how much the word "choice" instead of "decision" made Republicans squirm at the Republican Convention:




Fourthly (that's totally a word), she has stayed mysteriously quiet on the Equal Pay for Equal Work bill which McCain voted against as a Senator, despite questions being raised over the issue after Obama targeted her stance on the issue. I have no doubt that Palin supports the idea of more women in positions of power, however this does not equate to being feminist nor does it equate to being 'pro-woman' if you are against women in other financial, medical, or emergency situations.

Furthermore, to say that attacks on Palin based on her (minimal) experience are sexist is to completely miss the point. When republicans and some Obama supporters attack Clinton based on her 'pantsuits' and the sound of her voice, that is sexism. When democrats attack Palin based on her inexperience and lack of foreign policy knowledge, that is critical debate. The same attacks would have been made on "Samuel Palin". I absolutely understand that sexism does exist for Palin, but most of this seems to be coming from the Republican party itself: VPILF badges and rumination (see this article on how "Palin will become the country’s first VPILF": this quote makes it clear that 'VPILF' is a male-over-female term and not just talking about good looks amongst politicians), action figures with a 'catholic schoolgirl' outfit, continuous talk on her role as a hockey mom, the list goes on.


Sarah Palin is the same as every other fundamentalist christian conservative right-wing candidate. She holds the same, sometimes even more extreme, views as they do. She is pro-drilling in national wildlife reserves; she is a climate change disbeliever; she is "pro-life" when it comes to abortion but "anti-life" when it comes to prisoners, wildlife, or raped women; she has been involved in a corruption scandal; she talks 'local' but is really a part of the elite who are blessed with white genes and lots of money and want to keep giving money to big business in hopes of a 'trickle-down' effect which never seems to eventuate; she thinks both creationism and abstinence-only education should be taught in all schools; and last but not least she believes her foreign policy experience is up to scratch because her son is going to Iraq and she can see Russia from her house - and still thinks nuking them is a nice option to have on the table.

When republicans continue to focus on her gender as the issue, they are attempting to draw attention away from all of these very contentious problems facing Sarah Palin. Particularly since such policies put her a lot closer to the Bush mandate. The amount of press she has been getting has been successful insofar as it has sucked a lot of life out of the political momentum being gathered by Barack Obama. It's no coincidence that McCain announced his VP nominee within a few hours of Obama's extremely successful Democratic Convention speech.

So the question is, once people realise that a female candidate is no different to a male candidate, will they take the issues to her? Or will they be so scared of being called "sexist" that they'll let her get away with anything? We can already start to see this in the Obama campaign's decision to focus only on McCain, as they are very savvy to the fact that if they attack Palin, they'll be seen as "bullies". This, to me, is the sexist attitude: that the republicans feel Palin needs to be protected from those big bad boys who keep attacking her resume. Well I, personally, like to be able to check and criticise the background of all candidates, be they male or female. To deny people that right is to deny people freedom in the democratic process.

So let's get over the fact that she has two X-chromosomes and look at the simple fact of the matter: Palin is an old-school, run-of-the-mill conservative fundamentalist Republican. Actually, now that I think about it: if the voting record of the American public over the last eight years is anything to go off, maybe she will be elected after all.

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// posted by sparliament @ 6:19 am 0 Comments

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