Posted on 10/03/2008 1:45:03 PM PDT by nickcarraway
As much of the nation was preparing to watch a fortysomething working woman, governor and mother debate a gray-haired male senator for the vice presidency, feminist icon Gloria Steinem ridiculed John McCains choice of Sarah Palin as a running mate.
The reason we have Sarah Palin as the vice presidential candidate for Sen. McCain is because he couldnt have the competent woman vice president he wanted because the Christian right wing would not allow it, Steinem told a standing-room-only crowd of about 450 mostly women packing an auditorium at the State University of New York at Cobleskill.
Steinem cited Maine Sen. Olympia Snowe among other Republicans she said McCain passed over because they were not conservative enough.
Most of Steinems 80 minutes at the lectern focused on reproductive rights and the strides toward equality that women have made in the 58 years since Steinem, 74, was in high school in Toledo, Ohio.
Occasionally, however, the co-founder of Ms. magazine leveled pointed blasts at Palin and the Alaska governors own claim to be a feminist while being against abortion rights.
She declares herself to be a feminist in order to declare the movement over, Steinem said. When theyre on your side, youre winning. I take it as a tribute.
About a quarter of the crowd stayed to watch the live broadcast of Palins debate with Sen. Joe Biden on a giant screen in Bouck Theater.
Its going to be a double-feature, Steinem said as she began her lecture on 50 years of the feminist movement.
Who knew when we planned this we would have the vice presidential debate afterward, she said.
Im not here to tell you who you should vote for, Steinem said. But without directly singling out Barack Obama, she cited a Congress of mostly white men and a patriarchal culture, noting that forecasts are that before 2050 ... it is inevitable that European Americans will be in the minority in the United States.
We have been given the perfect presidential candidate to help us make this transition ... to a country that looks more like the world, Steinem said.
Based on a show of hands, roughly 90 percent of those in the audience were not alive when Steinem was in an east Toledo high school where boys planned to work in the factories and girls had to be virgins or pretend they were virgins or face rape or sexual assault. Anything could happen to you and it would be your fault, she said.
Thanks to the womens rights movements ... many of the lives there have changed, she said.
Going back for a visit, Steinem said, she was called the slut from Toledo.
Ill put that on my tombstone, she said. Here lies a slut from east Toledo.
Several younger members of the audience admitted to a reporter that they werent too sure who Steinem was before hearing her talk.
I had no idea who she was, said Samantha Infante, a 19-year-old sophomore from the Bronx.
Infante, studying the restaurant field, said she took Steinems message to be that women should be out instead of staying home.
Several members of the audience were from a Middleburgh High School class in U.S. history seeking extra credit for writing about the lecture, according to junior Taylor Hayes.
Before Steinem came on stage, Hayes acknowledged that she didnt know much about her.
As a member of a generation that came of age in the 1970s, when Steinem was a noted force in feminist politics, Hayes mother, Margaret Hayes, 51, said she urged her daughter to come.
She needs to know about this, she said.
The elder Hayes said the feminist movement has helped women move forward in the workplace.
Look at Hillary [Clinton], she said, and Sarah Palin, as well.
During her talk and in a question-and-answer session afterward, Steinem also localized some of her points by citing the cultural and political control Iroquois Indian women had when they dominated the region in pre-Colonial days. Answering one womans question about the role and status of women on rural family farms, Steinem suggested the movement toward locally grown foods as well as anti-pollution efforts and animal rights issues might be a version of the womens movement in the land.
America was a patriarchy in the beginning and that was a good thing. The Constitution arose from that culture. Between the Civil War and World War II, the first feminist movement took a hatchet to the foundations of the patriarchy, and as a direct result all hell broke loose throughout the culture in the period between World War II and now.
Notice that she's like many others are still staying their sorry behinds here in the US instead of leaving.
As a Conservative woman, I’d really hate it if Gloria liked me!
I swear that liberals must have an inverter in their brains or else the whole thing is wired in backwards. How this woman can be 180 degrees out of phase with reality is stunning.
‘...it is inevitable that European Americans will be in the minority in the United States.”
Sorry, Gloria, liberals abort their future. Try again.
***Yeah she work as undercover reporter as Playboy bunny**
How deep “undercover” was she?
'Women's Liberation' Aims to Free Men, Too' The Washington Post Sunday, June 7, 1970 By Gloria Steinem"Probably the ultimate myth is that children must have fulltime mothers, and that liberated women make bad ones. The truth is that most American children seem to be suffering from too much mother and too little father."
http://scriptorium.lib.duke.edu/wlm/aims/
Geeze... it sounds like a ringing endorsement for Sarah Palin!
I don’t know LOL!
Actually there was Lifetime movie based on called Uncovered Bunny with Kristie Alley playing Gloria Steiem character
Has she ever had children? I couldn’t find anything on the Internet about this.
Is that you Ms. Steinem?
BTW, you really are PATHETIC.
LOL! Since when did Gloria begin speaking for the "Christian right wing?" She sounds desperate. Even so, it must be pretty awful to be upstaged by a woman who doesn't hate men nor walk in lockstep with the perpetually angry feminist movement.
I can only surmise this makes Gloria "angry". It's really so tantrumic. Not getting "her" way and blowing a gasket-sized tantrum at anyone, any movement, anything, any person.
Pitiful to see gender feminism exposed so clearly. Perhaps the gender feminists feel "Left Behind". And why they so cleave to an "end times" scenario of their own.
“Based on a show of hands, roughly 90 percent of those in the audience were not alive when Steinem was in an east Toledo high school where boys planned to work in the factories and girls had to be virgins or pretend they were virgins or face rape or sexual assault. Anything could happen to you and it would be your fault, she said. “
WHAT?
She is not now, nor has she ever been an icon to me.
The B$tch Gloria knows when Sarah becomes Vice President that will be end of her nags as a political power.
Young women with ability and talent will choose Sarah as a role model instead of ugly probable Lesbian man haters.
Give up it up Gloria and get off the stage. We don’t want to hear you nor see you anymore.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.