Posted on 06/18/2011 6:31:50 PM PDT by 2ndDivisionVet
As a woman who has spent much of her adult life lobbying for and writing about equal rights and opportunities for women, I am distressed that some candidates for the upcoming national elections make me sick to my feminist stomach. I am talking about people like Michele Bachmann and the omnipresent Sarah Palin.
I want to see women in the highest offices in the country, I really do. But I feel obligated to evaluate female presidential candidates by the same standards I use to evaluate male candidates. They should be experienced, appropriate, articulate, and knowledgeable in domestic and foreign policy so they can effectively represent this nation in critical national and international forums.
This means that people who don’t realize Concord, Mass. is different from Concord, N.H. or who insist Paul Revere’s famous ride was to warn the British flunk the test.
Add to this the fact that neither of these women supports any of the issues American women have fought so hard for, for decades, and you have the Equal opportunity, child care options, reproductive freedom, and freedom from sexual harassment are just a few of the issues American women are still fighting hard to obtain and/or preserve: neither Bachmann nor Palin seem interested or informed on any of them. It seems unconscionable that women could rise to the heights of power as these two have and still be depending on vapid qualities for their popularity. Ask any man who likes either or both of them and the first thing he’ll tell you is how “hot” they look!
Will America now return to the old “casting couch” method for moving women up in the political pecking order?
I had a lifelong friend, an evangelical right-winger, chide me for not supporting Palin in 2008. When I suggested Palin actually opposed many of the issues critical to women I had spent my life fighting for, my friend said, “But you have to admit she’s a “pretty girl.”
I know looks have a role in political success, stupid as that is. It is one of the reasons men like Hubert Humphrey never got to be president and why JFK won the Nixon-Kennedy debates. I didn’t just fall off the political turnip truck, but I want to raise a big red flag over that truck that says, “Get Real, America!”
The idea of Sarah Palin of Michele Bachmann in the same sentence with President of the United States doesn’t make any more sense to me as a voter and a woman than nominating Barney Frank to the diplomatic corps. People are who they are, with qualities and liabilities. Intelligent, mature observers must separate the world as they would like it to be from the candidates as they, in fact, are.
I am willing to do this on the left and I implore those on the right to stop trying to support the policies they believe in through candidates totally unqualified for the full presidential responsibility.
I, for one, don’t want to hand the red phone to anyone who can’t even spell “nuclear holocaust.” Do you?
Rhode Islander Magazine named her one of the state’s “Bulldogs” for advocacy and she has been honored by NOW, The House of Compassion (AIDS), RI Rape Crisis, Travelers Aid for the Homeless, Survivors’ Network (Catholic survivors of sexual abuse by priests) and Planned Parenthood for her dedication to human rights causes.
Author: Abortion: The A Word – Real Women, Tough Choices, Personal Freedom.
The author
The fact people like her detest Sarah Palin is one reason to like her. That’s one of the first things I look at in a candidate: “Do the right people hate you?”
But I bet she's fine with handing the red phone to someone who wants to protect all 57 states...
to evaluate female presidential candidates by the same standards I use to evaluate male candidates. They should be experienced, appropriate, articulate, and knowledgeable in domestic and foreign policy so they can effectively represent this nation in critical national and international forums.
Yeah, right...I am sure Obama passed that evaluation. You know this Leftwinger voted for, and probably campaigned for that WH resident who has NONE of those qualifications. Guess for him, she lowered her standards.
I recommend that people avoid adopting Leftist newspeak. Since when does killing babies mean "reproductive rights?" Reproduction means conceiving and bearing children. No one is blocking women from reproducing.
I didn’t write that, it’s from her bio.
Planned parenthood exec? Of course!
This woman seems to find experience and knowledge to be important factors in voting for President. So she didn’t vote for Obama, did she?
This is BS on some levels.
If one is a feminist, and one wants to see women advance in politics, one has to realize that there is a whole spectrum of political ideology out there. Some women candidates for office will not be knee jerk liberals.
If one truly wants women to advance in politics, one must be intellectually honest enough to admit that such women may not agree with you politically on various issues. But, nonetheless, steps forward for women are taken when women run for and are elected to office.
It’s not even news anymore if a woman is elected a U.S. Senator, or the governor of a state.
A woman president will be elected in our lifetimes. It could happen sooner than we think. And it’s quite possible that this woman will be Republican.
It will still be a ground breaking achievement when a woman is elected president, if that woman is Republican. You can’t say you want advancement for women, but that only liberal women are allowed. At least if you are intellectually honest you can’t say that.
With the corpse men!
Ahhh, the femi-Nazi speaks out. Sorry lady but you do not represent the majority of womanhood. Especially since you TOTALLY represent the myth that women have some God-given right to murder their babies just so they can clear their social calendar and fit in their prom dress if they’re a teenager.
Ugh! Ugh! This kind of ugly nutjob is THE problem in this country.
"... willing to champion my ability to butcher live babies. Lots and lots and lots of babies. BUCKETS of 'em."
This needs a New Hampshire ping.
Keene is one of those liberal cesspools of NH. Not surprising to find a college there, as you would some of the other liberal cesspools like Hanover and Durham.
LOL, good editorial cartoon!!
Mary Ann is nuts. Try this:
I had never imagined how powerful our ovaries could be
Posted: Monday, April 11, 2011 12:15 pm | Updated: 12:10 pm, Mon Apr 11, 2011. By Mary Ann Sorrentino | 0 comments Most Americans never realized that the answer to straightening out the current financial crisis they are slogging through is to muck up the environment and retake control of women’s hard-fought reproductive rights. Of course, we should have known: It makes perfect sense that if the nation simply adopts a policy of forced pregnancy and then weans all the newborns off their mothers’ breasts and into an atmosphere of poisonous air and tainted water all our fiscal woes will just disappear.
Recent photos suggest that she is on her way to approaching the Helen Thomas level of physical ugliness.
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