Through the Prism
John McCain figured he had the answer to the old question, “What do women want?”
When Hillary Clinton was not nominated, amidst speculation about where her
disaffected voters would eventually perch, he must have assumed that they
wanted another woman: to stand behind, cheer for, vote for. Any woman would
do; cute, fairly young and lacking political baggage were pluses. McCain must
have thought he’d scored a home run with Sarah Palin.
The final inning is still in play, but with regard to “any woman will do,”
McCain struck out. Within a week of the 88th anniversary of women’s right to
vote, McCain’s choice stands firmly against what generations of women have
fought for: she’s anti-feminist, anti-choice, anti-environment, a do-nothing
about education, anti-intellectual, and feels smugly justified in mocking
“community organizers.”
Pages in U.S. history tell us what organizers do: they arrange for and guide
people who gather in church halls, living rooms, town centers, and basements
with the purpose of enhancing a community’s well-being; in those places, the
women’s suffrage movement began, the 40-hour work week gained support, labor
rights were solidified, and the civil rights movement took hold.
Is a community’s well-being better supported by teaching creationism in public
schools; drilling for oil in the Arctic National Wildlife Preserve; taking away
all women’s right to decide, according to their own consciences and
circumstances, whether to bear children; looking away from school improvement
in a community whose academic performance standards for children are far below
average?
Sarah Palin is wrong-minded about nearly every issue that women voters have
supported over decades and is also woefully unprepared to step into
presidential shoes, should the situation arise. Can she stand toe-to-toe with
world leaders and temper toughness with diplomacy? All we see now is that
she’s shying away from TV interviews, presumably for fear of tough questions.
This week, in the most-accessed article published on the web, Gloria Steinem
made a simple, memorable point: “To vote in protest for McCain/Palin would be
like saying, ‘Somebody stole my shoes, so I’ll amputate my legs.’”
- None Found
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