Elaine Lafferty, former editor-in-chief of Ms (and soon-to-be-savaged “anti-feminist” feminist):
It’s difficult not to froth when one reads, as I did again and again this week, doubts about Sarah Palin’s “intelligence,†coming especially from women such as PBS’s Bonnie Erbe, who, as near as I recall, has not herself heretofore been burdened with the Susan Sontag of Journalism moniker. As Fred Barnesâ€â€God help me, I’m agreeing with Fred Barnesâ€â€suggests in the Weekly Standard, these high toned and authoritative dismissals come from people who have never met or spoken with Sarah Palin. Those who know her, love her or hate her, offer no such criticism. They know what I know, and I learned it from spending just a little time traveling on the cramped campaign plane this week: Sarah Palin is very smart.
I’m a Democrat, but I’ve worked as a consultant with the McCain campaign since shortly after Palin’s nomination. Last week, there was the thought that as a former editor-in-chief of Ms. magazine as well as a feminist activist in my pre-journalism days, I might be helpful in contributing to a speech that Palin had long wanted to give on women’s rights.
Now by “smart,†I don’t refer to a person who is wily or calculating or nimble in the way of certain talented athletes who we admire but suspect don’t really have serious brains in their skulls. I mean, instead, a mind that is thoughtful, curious, with a discernable pattern of associative thinking and insight. Palin asks questions, and probes linkages and logic that bring to mind a quirky law professor I once had. Palin is more than a “quick studyâ€Â; I’d heard rumors around the campaign of her photographic memory and, frankly, I watched it in action. She sees. She processes. She questions, and only then, she acts. What is often called her “confidence†is actually a rarity in national politics: I saw a woman who knows exactly who she is.
Right. A snowbilly reindeer breeder with a doublewide stuffed full of moose antlers and Jaqueline Smith K-Mart collection clothing. A religious zealot who speaks in tongues and is anti-woman to the point of shaping her coif like the head of a menacing penis bent on forcible procreation. A dundering political toy to be fondled by NASCAR aficionados while their fat, bleach blond wives are busy in the kitchen throwing together a canned tuna and pea casserole.
I know this. Because beltway insiders who once saw pictures of caribou and own the first two seasons of “Northern Exposure” on DVD assure me it is so.
And no former, false-consciousness-ridden wannabe feminist whose primary claim to having a useful opinion on the matter is spending time with the vile, pageant-schooled ice slut is going to change my mind — especially not after Peggy Noonan’s hot flashes have weighed in.
So ramble on all you like, Ms Lafferty. But my mind is made up. I mean, tanning bed. Hello…
For the sin of being a Christian personally opposed to abortion, Palin is being pilloried by the inside-the-Beltway Democrat feminist establishment. (Yes, she is anti-abortion. And yes, instead of buying organic New Zealand lamb at Whole Foods, she joins other Alaskans in hunting for food. That’s it. She is not a right-wing nut, and all the rest of the Internet drivelâ€â€the book banning at the Library, the rape kits decisionâ€â€is nonsense. I digress.) Palin’s role in this campaign was to energize “the Republican base,†which she has inarguably done. She also was expected to reach out to Hillary Clinton “moderates.†(Right. Only a woman would get both those jobs in either party.) Look, I am obviously personally pro-choice, and I disagree with McCain and Palin on that and a few other issues. But like many other Democrats, including Lynn Rothschild, I’m tired of the Democratic Party taking women for granted. I also happen to believe Sarah Palin supports women’s rights, deeply and passionately.
Many of thoseâ€â€not allâ€â€who decried the sexist media treatment of Hillary Clinton have been silent as Palin has been skewered in the old ways that female public figures are skewered, as well as a host of sexualized new ways as well. Some feminists have weighed in; “Even the reportedly clear glasses she wears to play down her beauty queen credential and enhance her gravitas can’t make up for experience,†writes my heroine Suzanne Braun Levine, former editor of Ms. Oppose her on policy? Fine. But how sad for feminist leaders to sink this low, especially when Palin has worn glasses since she was 10 years old.
Last month a prominent feminist blogger, echoing that sensibility, declared that the media was wrongly buying into the false idea that Palin was a feminist. Why? Well, just because she said she was a feminist, because she supported women’s rights and opportunities, equal pay, Title IVâ€â€that was just “empty rhetoric,†they said. At least the blogger didn’t go as far as NOW’s Kim Gandy and declare that Palin was not a woman. Bottom line: you are not a feminist until we say you are. And there you have the formula for diminishing what was once a great and important mass social change movement to an exclusionary club that rejects women who sincerely want to join and, God forbid, grow to lead.
— And? Listen, honey. Feminism has a job to do. You don’t have to fall in love. Just fall in line.
And Palin has not only left the quilting circle, she’s canceled her subscription to Oprah’s magazine and is off buying pre-fab Martha Stewart collection comforters from fucking Target.
Sorry. Women like that we don’t need in the feminist movement. Lest it gets all confusing. Plus, really big flies, I hear…
(h/t B Moe)
Martha Stewart’s collections are K-Mart exclusives.
*ahem*
Other than that, you’ve brought your A Game snark in the last few posts, Messr. Goldstein. For this, I applaud you.
Sorry, and Macy’s carries a line of her stuff. I have to drag the wife past it at 40 mph, lest we be sucked in past the Retail Shopping Event Horizon, a space wherefrom my wallet cannot achieve escape velocity.
“Jaqueline Smith K-Mart collection clothing”
But $150,000.00 worth?
Isn’t that a bit of overkill?
I got a big lecture from my little brother this weekend about how ‘stupid’ Sarah Palin is. When I reminded him that Joe Biden spent the entire VP debate making shit up, he walked out of the room. He could not have been less interested in a dialogue if he’d stuck his fingers in his ears and yelled “LA LA LA.”
According to him, we’re better off electing a polished, smooth-talking professional BS artist than an honest, plain-speaking executive.
I blame this on his bitchy little communist fishwife.
If the black guy gets it, slavery will have been forgotten. If the chick gets it, chicks won’t be our slaves anymore.
Logic.
What’s the matter with you people. SHE TALKS FUNNY! And not in that “moving past your hillbilly southern drawl roots a la Bill Clinton” funny either.
WHERE HAVE ALL THE “G’s” GONE? HUH?
When I’m king of the United States, I’m going to round up all the feminists, shave their naughty giblets, and force them to knit vests from the clippings. I’ll then send the vests to our brave men in combat. It’s about time they had a lightweight, impenetrable garment.
Al, I believe that there is a reserved spot in feminist hell for you. ;-)
That’s nice, alp, but when I became dread dictator and malificent overlord I’m going to send nearly everyone back to drivers’ school. When you got people on the side of the interstate who pull right out in front of you and not accelerate then something needs to be done.
Either lessons or electric shocks. I’m open to suggestions.
Knitted pube hair vests are impenetrable? That explains all the shaved genetalia in porn these days. Or so I’m told. About the shaved genetalia. In porn. From what I hear.
Al, I believe that there is a reserved spot in feminist hell for you. ;-)
And, unless I miss my guess, “Feminist Hell” would be full of ladies with huge boobs who would make a sandwich for me any time I want.
Will the future feminists be doing studies to ascertain (what they already know: PATRIARCHY!) when, where, why and how genital shaving took over their world? Can’t wait for the news.
Sarah Palin is a pioneer really what needs to draw on courage and strength while our favorite harvard boy baracky is a la la la historical doofus messiah what’s never broken a sweat in his whole coddled insular little life of no notable accomplishment. Yeah that’s some sexism there what the dirty socialists are banking on. NPR has been reveling in it, which surprised me at first but then you look at fat unkempt piglets like Andrea Seabrook and scrawny ferret women like Terry Gross who have no discernible sexual characteristics and you can kind of understand how their studios might be rife with the misogyny.
“A snowbilly reindeer breeder with a doublewide stuffed full of moose antlers and Jaqueline Smith K-Mart collection clothing. A religious zealot who speaks in tongues and is anti-woman to the point of shaping her coif like the head of a menacing penis bent on forcible procreation. A dundering political toy to be fondled by NASCAR aficionados while their fat, bleach blond wives are busy in the kitchen throwing together a canned tuna and pea casserole.”
and this is why i still come here, despite the trolls. sniff. ;)
And, unless I miss my guess, “Feminist Hell†would be full of ladies with huge boobs who would make a sandwich for me any time I want.
And no flannel or Melissa Etheridge CDs.
hf, I’m begging you, you’re killing me, here! Can’t breath…
And absolutely, positively No Women’s Studies Programs!!!
“To dream …. the impossible dream…”
I quote the greatest Christmas movie of all time, “What the fuck is it with you and sandwiches?”
“WHERE HAVE ALL THE “G’s†GONE? HUH?”
The G Spot, of course.
Not only is Martha’s shit K-Mart exclusive, but Target’s demo-locking strategy of the ’00s has been to purge its aisles of all -billies, snow- and otherwise, to distinguish itself in its demo’s minds from the lowly Wal-Mart — which strategy is superfluous, because Wal-Mart is actually hated by our betters because it’s full of broke-ass black people and Mexicans, cunningly rhetorically umbrellaed under “white trash” (Derrida-style), and Target doesn’t put stores where those people are anyway.
But they’ve provided white people with something to say to each other. A new piece of code, if you will.
(Search “target wal mart trash” for a good time.)
There is nothing more enjoyable than watching extreme feminists twists themselves in to unresolvable knots over Palin.
It’s their absolute worst nightmare: A strong, intelligent, educated woman who has been able to manage a career and a family successfully, thanks in many ways to the advances of the feminist movements in breaking down the misogynist barriers, yet she loves to dote on her husband, she shoots animals, and she’s a pro-life Republican.
They don’t make straight jackets as constricting as this.
Screw the original post – the comments are making me laugh so hard I’m about to shit myself.
Hey Jeff. Ace thinks he knows what you should be doing this weekend. Along with the other denizens of this site:
http://ace.mu.nu/archives/276804.php
“Jeff Goldstein in Colorado, for example, and all of his readers heading out to get out the vote, then having drinks afterwards.”
Hey, I’m up for that. Don’t know if I can actually DO it, but it sounds like fun.
Except for the drinks part. I’m one of those, you know…
“I suggest you and your Kmart Jaclyn Smith Collection outfit… stay the hell away from Derek Zoolander!”
Sadly, I’ve seen my fill of candidate speechifying. Of the four of them, Palin is easily the fastest, most perspectived thinker of the bunch.
This woman is bright. That is why she connects. Well, that and the honesty.
Biden is a loud tape loop of gaffes and DC insider doubletalk. McCain is a terrible debater but gets in the occasional lick (and actually really rocks doing comedy, oddly). Obama is turgid, halting, probably too busy checking his lies file, ala Clinton, to make much sense, although Bill could charm the birds out of the trees.
But Palin gets it, speaks in real time, processes right now, and just doesn’t lose a point. All this talk questioning her mind is the single most bigoted thing in this cycle.
The left hates them some stereotypes — they’re the real-world version of SNL losing it’s ass trying to rap at Palin while she sat right there, smiling, having them on without saying a word.
Brains and class. No real idea what she has in terms of policy, but what’s that got to do with running for the presidency, anyway. Just ask the other side.
You get an AMEN to that, JH.
David Brooks says baracky is no liberal goo-goo. That sounds like something a retarded person would say I think. An effete retarded person.
I voted yesterday. In a Wal-Mart. For iCarly over Hanna Montana.
#25 JHoward:
McCain was a navy pilot. I bet he was more jokes and stories than are printable*, even in these lax days. Pity we can’t hear them.
*My little brother is an army officer, and yeah he has got some stories. IIRC, a missile test was being done on a Lance missile. It was to shoot off of Crete into the Med. Everything went fine except the safety pins securing missile to launcher were not removed. Both entered the Med. First time a tracked vehicle tried to break the sound barrier.**
**So I was told. I have no idea if this is a true fact, but the story is too good not to tell.
He had another one – again I don’t know about the truth…
An exercise. A column is moving along a road and across the valley was a hill with Belgians – the OpFor. The Belgians light up the front of the column and some officer has a Lance turn, face the hill, and do an unarmed “launch” at the Belgian position. The referees rule that the “launch” takes out so many vehicles in front and back, but also takes out the Belgians due to speed+fuel+shrapnel from missile and everything else where it would have impacted. Something about ‘breaking-the-sound-barrier-into-the-ground’.
Reportedly, the Belgians were pissed about that ruling.
Note: Never get in an argument with a man who buys ink by the barrel, or has his own track mounted nuclear deterent.
Again, I don’t know how true the story is…
Sorry, and Macy’s carries a line of her stuff.
Wal Mart and Michaels carrying her craft kits too. Paper lion heads and crepe paper flowers and such.
“There is nothing more enjoyable than watching extreme feminists twists themselves in to unresolvable knots over Palin.”
She lives a full, happy and complete life without needing them to take care of her.
McCain is a terrible debater but gets in the occasional lick (and actually really rocks doing comedy, oddly).
Dole is that way, too. He’s hilarious when he takes the stick out of his ass.
Oh, I’d be willing to bet that Palin has worn her share of flannel in her day.
Wearing flannel to keep warm in the outdoors rather than as a fashion statement doesn’t count, though, I suppose.
Mikey NTH
My dad is ex-Army…
I believe your story
Sarah is totally comfortable in her own skin and she doesn’t live longing to be loved by everyone. The Left thinks if McCain loses that Sarah will slink back to AK, whimpering from the beating they have delighted in dishing out.
But she really doesn’t care what they have lied about her.
So watch out 2012 regardless of next week’s outcome.
So this mech Infantry company is going out to the range just south of the DMZ one fine morning to spiff up their marksmanship.
Triple ammo allowance.
The CO hears on the freq that an OP is under Nork attack (ca 1965). So he calls control and tells them he’s five minutes out and the Nork intel won’t be expecting him.
Gets down the DMZ road to behind the OP, do a right flank march and the M113s come over the berm and they finally had to police up nearly a Nork battalion. No reference to how they were buried. Or what happened to the Nork intel guys.
Heard rumors some units in the 2ID qualified for the CIB in the Sixties.
But, anyway, will we have stories like this if O is CINC?
Mrs. Palin falls in the “all woman” category.
Shames metrosexuals, instantly pisses off Oproids (male and female), draws the envy 99% of attractive women have for the woman who is more attractive than they are, and instills instant respect just by entering a room.
She’s got the bearing, charisma, and presence – three bags heaping full – that tools like Obama and Clinton and Biden spend years attempting to fake.
I don’t watch TV news, so maybe I’ve missed it, but I can’t recall seeing the Governor speaking in public for literally weeks. The media knows she’s too good to be allowed exposure.
#35 Darleen:
Thanks. They aren’t my stories, just a couple my brother has told me.
My Own USCG Aux aren’t real exciting, just (I think) funny. Like doing patrol for a regatta that was going into a yacht club at the southeast side of Grosse Isle, across from Sugar Island. We were near a channel bouy and a boat moved towards it while taking in sail. I said, “There’s a sandbar there.” Stan (the guy whose boat I was on) said, “Yep.” The boat stopped moving so we radioed in and observed as we were told to do by station Belle Isle. Another boat came up and asked if we were going to do anything. We told what the station said, and a person on the other boat said “They’ll sink!” I said, “They can’t sink – they’re already on the bottom.”
I know I’ve told that one, but I still like it.
“But, anyway, will we have stories like this if O is CINC?”
They’ll probably be a little different than those in the past…
“Well, I deserted and came home in 2011 when they sent 1 ID to disarm and pacify the OKC – Houston Prosperity Corridor. Half my platoon was already gone… just never showed up after what happened to all those people in Texarkana we were sent to “protect”…”
It will be a time of hope and change.
#37 Richard Aubrey:
Those situations will occur. Now, when the little bro was in Afghanistan, he worked arranging meetings, and apparantly certain guys from a southern hemisphere nation set themselves up to draw in an attack, which they then cleaned up.
Of course they weren’t to be doing that, but let me say that the spirit of Freyberg is still alive – and he was one bad dude, he would have approved.
They hate her because she’s pro life and beautiful. Nothing engenders hate like guilt and envy.
I will note that looniness is out there – I recall that a few years back an El Salvadoran soldier in Iraq was caught in an ambush and went all-Latin with his knife.
I think the various Joes, Tommies, Fritzes, Jacques, etc. would like nothing better than to be able to slip the apron strings once in a while. It’s a young man sort of thing – heck, just check out a soccer riot to see what sort of piss-and-vinegar is actually in them, if the intellectualist wet-blankets would just shut-up and say ‘Go there; have fun’.
I mean – can you imagine a group of Germans not wanting to fight unless they were ordered not to?
Yeah, those days when we were all–euphemism alert–all thyroid and no judgment.
If it weren’t for the knees. And the back. And the eyes. Not to mention the wind.
Shame to have O in charge of such kids.
I have read a bit about Freyberg, who was reputed to have more scars than anybody in
ANZAC, mostly from WW I.
Scary story about the OKC-Houston Prosperity Corridor. Not completely unbelievable.
i was in trouble once..in some far away land..
an anti-american land…but thank the good lord the U>N> blue meanie helmets showed up…
and then out of the limo came my savior-Richard Holbrooke…
he “paused” them to death…
am I dreaming…
[man-I hate that guy!]
“The political landscape is littered with the bodies of those who have underestimated Sarah Palin.” – Tony Knowles, former AK Governor.
Just why do the faux Feminists think that listening to a bunch of hungry, dirty-diapered infants has ever informed anyone as to the the nature of “real women”? Perhaps they think the Barbara Boxer cinchable thorny thong is magic?
if u litter in alaska..does it matter?
i mean-such a big country-whats a fast food wrapper out the window?
i’m pro-trash-
just not the nyc transvestite-heroin chic-forced down my throat
who’s cool?-lou reed?amy winehouse?
bitter clingy blue staters—
when i jack my lever for the palin bunny-i call it performance art!
I thought you hated her, nishi. You called her a cancer and blamed Jeff for her, IIRC.
Litter makes caribouses cry.
It is ironic that for all the grief Sarah Palin gets she does seem to be a whole lot smarter than her opponent, Joe Biden. If she said half the dumb things he said she’d have been laughed out of the campaign. But since Biden’s a good liberal, he gets a pass.
bty, Sarah’s husband is quite a guy too. He’s someone I’d like to go hunting or fishing with.
It is ironic that for all the grief Sarah Palin gets she does seem to be a whole lot smarter than her opponent, Joe Biden.
Driving 16 miles up a road to a place untainted by rural electrification and those killer cell phone signals, I suddenly realized I was going to have to report on the VP debate to some Libs. So I told them simply that “Palin has already caught up to Biden”. The male said, ‘Oh?”. The female only said, “good”, and kept on doing what she was doing. Ha – ha – ha. That was literally all they could take, or chance.
J, you are lucky they didn’t go all scanner on you.
Yeah, Tmj, but when you have to be too close, the danger goes both ways, unfortuneately.
The engine of discourse had ground nearly to permanent halt in the case of the woman, when I was trying to establish some common ground and she steadfastly refused to acknowledge on two separate occasions that OBL had declared war on America. She didn’t dare even ask me why I thought OBL had declared war. – So I didn’t tell her. First things first, maybe, like her asking for evidence? Oh, well.
But previously, she had become so upset with the mere mention of “Bush” that she threatened to…to…not cook anymore if I kept saying his name. She happened to have been standing there wielding a cast iron skillet at the time, and I was seated, so the pause was of some real drama. I seriously thought that my head might be exploded – though I knew she’d probably have to wind up first.
oops, just closed italics, I hope.
[…] Ms. magazine editor Elaine Lafferty says to assume Sarah Palin is not smart at your own […]
I don’t see why tuna casserole always has to get dragged into these proto vs. pioneer feminist debates. Can’t it be inviolate like the lunch expenses in Brussels or something? In this house of degrees, we think, we read, and we crush Stove Top stuffing cubes to make the crunchy topping.
my prayer/
ramen noodle toodle
toast not too burnt
cold beans by all means
please deliver me pizza
to my double wide…
it’s on the left side
theres a tear in my beer
hamburgher helper help me
[…] “Sarah Palin’sa Brainiac†It’s difficult not to froth when one reads, as I did again and again this week, doubts about Sarah Palin’s “intelligence,†coming especially from women such as PBS’s Bonnie Erbe, who, as near as I recall, has not herself heretofore been … […]
Comment by N. O’Brain on 10/28 @ 2:26 pm #
“Jaqueline Smith K-Mart collection clothingâ€Â
But $150,000.00 worth?
Isn’t that a bit of overkill?
Yea, and Obama has spent over $1 Billion Dollars on his Presidential Campaign, so , What’s your point ?
[…] “Palin is a Brainiac” Not surprising, actually. […]
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