It’s the day we play “uterus politics”!
Apparently, since the left can’t really go after Palin on her experience (Obama has equal or less, and he’s running for the TOP job, not the bottom) or her record, which seems very appealing to a reform-minded electorate, the left has settled on the uterine comings-and-goings of not just Sarah Palin but of one of her “witchy-named” daughters, too.
Yes, the washerwomen are whispering and what they’re whispering is imaginative: According to them, Little Trig, (aka “that seriously disabled” Down Syndrome Baby that should have been aborted) whom Palin seems to have taken to the office and breastfed is not Palin’s son but her grandson. One of her daughters, you see, is the actual mother, and oh yes…some of these whisperers even suggest that the baby has an extra chromosome because of…wait for it…incest.
I trust you ladies out there in progressive land are taking notes?
Women being bashed for their right to choose having a family and a career with the support of their spouse.
Women being called sluts, bimbos and brood mares.
Women having their appearance dissected and witchhunts for compromising photos.
Innocent young girls being slandered with rumors & innuendos.
Via Maxed Out Mama – “This stuff really, really convinces women that Democrats are for women:”
Some of us have been pointing this out for a while, you know.
What’s more, the fools are creating an atmosphere of nastiness that could blow it for their candidate.
At some point, Senator Obama is going to have to tell ’em, “Shut up already, I don’t need this. The target is McCain, dammit.”
Just watched an interview with james carville on CNN. He’s sitting in the path of hurricane gustav, but still took the time to hold up pictures of the town hall where Ms Palin served as mayor. He described it as looking like a bakeshop. No mention of her being governor.
Time to get down and dirty. Bring on the swiftboat guys. There isn’t a black family in America that doesn’t have someone serving time in prison somewhere. All they have to do is dig.
Predictable…especially by the KosKids.
Kate…sorry for the following OT, but did you read/see this?…(from the following story)
http://www.style.com/vogue/feature/090108VFEA/
‘Curious about what kind of a background could produce someone like Palin, I called up her parents, who live 40 miles from Anchorage in the small town where Palin was mayor. “Come on over,” her father, Chuck Heath, said on the phone, “unless you have a problem with small dead animals.”
The last quote from Mr. Heath? 😉 Coincidence?…I think not!
It’s OK.
The Libcoms are reacting just as expected. Don’t fight it. Embrace it, and use it as the tool against them that it is.
It may just be me, but it seems that the tide is turning and the morons are being recogonized by the regular public for what they really are.
I’m thrilled. A Republican in office, and Harper with a majority. Now on to the civil service and the CBC.
I head Diane Francis loves her… not!
Apparently even the Canadian fiscal quasi-feminist conservative set is in full on attack mode.
Diane Francis has drunk the Obama Kool-Aid.
On a theoretical level I find this fascinating because we are witnessing in front of our eyes what happens continually with discursive categories of identities (like gender, race, class, ethnicity…). One’s sex as male or female is quite fixed and easily determined. One’s gender, as a man, woman, trans, is a much more variegated and shifting reality that is discursively constructed across time and space. I think what we’re seeing is that progressives indeed are for “women” which they posit as a certain way of being. Likewise, conservatives are in favour of “women”, which they too posit as a certain way of being. Point is, the stakes are quite high, for the fight continually is over the very definitions of womanhood, if there is such a thing, and which versions become predominant.
Politically, Republican supporters whining over scurrilous and personal attacks is just a tad ridiculous. The Republicans elevated smear and negative tactics to the level of a given in contemporary politics. They also proved that going negative is highly successful. Harper learned this well (from day one he has attacked Dion’s “manhood”) and has been very effective at portraying Dion as a spineless, wimpy, leader.
There seem to be two options. Reintroduce integrity in politics, reinvigorate an electorate that is turning out in record low numbers, and don’t reward these bums by voting for them. Or, accept this mudsling as the new bottom in politics and turn politics into a Teflon contest. The latter, sadly, seems much more likely. But don’t cry foul when politicians are attacked. Rather thank Cheney, Rove and the neocons for taking nastiness and win at all costs to the next level.
btw I don’t need, as I have in the past re: my discussion on “culture”, to be lectured by pimply faced know it all MA’s. If you disagree with the idea that identity is discursively constructed, fine. I get that people also have essentialist notions of identity. That’s fine too. In that case, we’ll just agree to disagree.
I think your ideas about identity are interesting and I won’t argue with you about them. However, what ever gave you the idea that Dion is not a “spineless, wimpey, leader”.
Billygoat said: “…”unless you have a problem with small dead animals.” [quoting from Palin’s dad]
Not SDA, but a kindred spirit of sorts – if you catch the picture of mom and dad sitting in their Alaska living room, you’ll get it right off. This is bush country – they’re hunters, the evidence is on the wall – everywhere. The tree huggers are going absolutely apoplectic all over the internet about this. What a novel concept: hunter-gathering to survive – who’d thought of that?
ROTFLMAO!
Bill, I find your ideas interesting and would like to subscribe to your newsletter…
OMG.
The moonbats are turning themselves into pretzels dealing with Sarah Palin. Everything they believe about women–their equality, their abilities to do anything a man can do, their right to reproductive freedom, their breaking through the glass ceiling–is being challenged by Palin.
And they can’t handle it. Everything that’s fine for a lib-left feminist–in fact, everything they EXPECT of a left-lib feminist–doesn’t compute when all of their litmus-test expectations show up in a family-loving, pro-life (Palin CHOSE her reproductive freedoms by having five children), gun-toting, Republican politician.
Of course, I guess being able to handle a gun, going to a Christian church, and choosing a large-ish family, with the newest member having Down’s syndrome, doesn’t permit Mrs. Palin membership in the feminist moonbats’ “august,” “enlightened,” “tolerant,” “open,” and “diverse” club. There’s only so much tolerance, openness, and diversity one can permit, after all.
Boy, are these lefties getting bent out of shape. As Revnant Dream puts it, they’re having a massive and very public nervous breakdown.
Looks good on them. Real life really challenges these shysters.
DailyKos has finally seen the error of there ways, sort of:
“The Republicans elevated smear and negative tactics to the level of a given in contemporary politics.”
Examples please. Was it pointing out that Kerry was never in Cambodia on Christmas morning, 1968, as he claimed was “seared, seared!” into his memory? That is the usual example.
What is the Republican version of Farenheit 911? Or is that stuff all true? What was the Republican version of claiming that secret operatives blew up the World Trade Center? Or is that true?
What are these smears? Really. Obama attended Islamic schools in Indonesia? I don’t know, but I think the evidence points to that he did.
Was it the whole Reverend Wright thing? Let’s see, the autobiography which he wrote in hist thirties after accomplishing exactly nothing was named “The Audacity of Hope” a phrase from crazy Reverend Wright, to whom Obama never listened? Is that the smear?
Really. But, in case you are as stupid as you seem, we are not “whining” about the “nuts and sluts” attack on Palin, we are celebrating it, shouting it from the rooftops! Exactly the opposite of Kerry’s approach to the swift boats, which was to try to prevent people from hearing the actual facts of the “smear”, but to dutifully plug their ears if it ever comes up.
I am 100% confident that you will not reply to my declaration that Kerry lied about being in Cambodia on Christmas 1968, because to admit that the Swift Boaters hurt Kerry because “the truth hurts” would be beyond your level of self awareness.
“There isn’t a black family in America that doesn’t have someone serving time in prison somewhere. All they have to do is dig.”
I love conservatives. “What? We’ve been one-upped in the slime department? Well, let’s get ON it, people!”
Posted by “The Red Pen” at Daily Kos, August 31, 2008 @ 8:50 p.m., accompanied by a photo of an obviously pregnant Sarah Palin five days before Trig Palin’s birth:
[begin quote]
OK, there is a visibly-pregnant Sarah Palin talking with a CBS 11 (Dallas [crossed out]) (Juneau) reporter at the Governor’s meeting (in Texas [crossed out]) end of the Alaska legislative session. She clearly appears to be pregnant.
Unless someone has counter evidence, we can drop this crap now. Yes, there are still some interesting questions, such as why she flew to Dallas and back when she was this pregnant, and why the Alaska Airlines crewmembers insisted that she was not visibly pregnant on the flight. Nevertheless, until this photo is debunked, we look stupid pushing this rumor.
That is all.
[end quote]
Yeah, that’s all, and the Kos Kids look more than stupid. They’ve shown what douche bags they are and that they live in a scuzzy alternate universe most of us don’t ever want to visit.
I’m off to have a shower.
bill stewart – you sound like you’ve taken too many introductory courses in women’s studies and postmodernist ‘cultural studies’. You’ve got the jargon (sex vs gender; discursive identities etc).
However, -has it ever occurred to you that this jargon is, itself, a discourse and therefore, an abstract creation of the mind? And far, far removed from reality?
No, the world doesn’t operate within a binary frame of Either Physical Essentialism OR Discursive Conceptualism. The world is a bit more complex than such undergrad binarisms.
The world is real, which makes it complex rather than simple. And both essentialist and discursive identities are simple constructs: physical vs mental. The world operates within BOTH ‘realities’: the factual and the fictional. The two realities, the physical and the conceptual, interact.
What you are describing are only the cultural constructs of identity – what is the normative ROLE of a man or woman in a particular society. However, normative roles are only the average, and are dependent upon the ECONOMIC identity of the society.
A dynamic society enables and permits a wide statistical variation. A no-change no-growth society doesn’t enable much deviation from this norm of ‘proper behaviour’.
So, our modern industrial nations must enable a wide variation of normative behaviour of both genders. Again, this normative behaviour is always restrained by physical reality; it must be; we cannot live in a purely fictional world, despite what the postmodernists wish.
As for your comments about Republicans ‘whining’ about scurrilous attacks – I disagree. You are, of course, setting the stage for your readers by your own biased words (whining etc). To attack someone, ad hominem, is always reprehensible. Your obvious leftist bias (and that includes your focus on discursive identities) means that you ignore the Democrat and Liberal smear campaigns.
Speaking of discursive creations, Kerry’s self written version of himself as a Vietnam hero was put down by the Swift Boat truths, and Obama is nothing but a discursive creation; there’s nothing there other than words.
No, Harper has never moved into personal ad hominem. Could you provide a specific example of his attacking Dion’s ‘manhood’? He certainly has said that Dion isn’t a leader. So? Does that have any truth in it? Meanwhile, from day one, Dion has attacked Harper as a ‘control freak’.
And finally, Bill Stewart, it is an invalid argumentative strategy to try to defect an opponent’s argument by ad hominem descriptions of any who disagree with that argument as ‘pimply faced MA’s. Let’s focus on your argument instead. It’s invalid.
As I said, your simplistic reduction of reality to the binarism of physical Essentialism vs mental discursiveness – is invalid. Reality is more complex. Try reading Aristotle’s Metaphysics rather than Derrida and the rest of that gang.
The heart of the feminist is not about what a woman can accomplish, or about opportunity. It is a disdain for the Judeo-Christian family model.
Linking To D.U.!!?? EWWWWWWWWW!!@!!!
minuteman, hope I didn’t give the impression that I wished to defend Dion. There are many substantive reasons over which to disagree with Dion. My point was that, from day one, the conservatives, clearly influenced by the success of the neocons south of the border, have done little else than ad hominem attacks on Dion’s character (not that the fear mongering perpetrated by the Liberals was any better). And it’s largely been successful, since the one thing people seem to know about Dion, despite not knowing anything else, is that he’s a weak leader, a view which interestingly hinges on accepting a certain view of masculinity. Unfortunately we are increasingly becoming polarized around these issues and partly because so much is at stake. I think people that define our differences as purely regional, or as a rural/ urban split miss the point that at issue are more profound discourses. Discourses that define what it means to be a man, woman, trans, that define what security and freedom mean, what leadership means, what community means etc. And neither side wants to see the other side become hegemonic.
sheesh, bill stewart – can you move out of the undergrad jargon?! You are trapped in it. There’s reality outside the classroom, you know.
No, your attempt to justify your original statement that Harper attacks Dion’s ‘manhood’ by now linking that to the claims that Dion is not a leader ..are invalid. Leadership and ‘manhood’ are not synonyms. Tell that to Margaret Thatcher. Or Sarah Palin. Furthermore, coming to a conclusion that Dion is not a leader is, well, it’s valid. Are you actually suggesting that to say such a thing is unacceptable?
Could you provide some evidence for yet another conclusion of yours – that the Conservatives are ‘influenced by the neocons south of the border’. Since the term ‘neocon’ is in common jargon an insult, you seem to be suggesting that concluding that Dion is not a leader is a result only of the American-influenced politics of the Conservatives. (Is it Bush’s fault?)..and has nothing, absolutely nothing to do with Dion’s own behaviour.
So – Dion IS a leader according to you?! How has he shown these attributes? After all, according to you, the view that we have of Dion as not a leader is created by the neo-con Conservatives and is purely a discursive image. Not real. Heh.
My, my, so according to you, our political identity, which is splintered into various identity-blocs (regions, rural/urban) can be even more splintered into ‘what it means to be a man, a woman, what leadership means, what community means and so on. These are debates that are philosophical, that actually transcend the lower realm of politics and can’t be legislated within any House of Commons.
As for ‘neither side wishing the other to be hegemonic’ – again, you are slipping into simplistic binarism. As well as cultural jargon which has zilch to do with politics. After all, each side wants to win. That’s what the political system is based on; one party gets to form the govt.
Hey Mr. B. Stewart. You might want to check out Democratic and Leftwing attacks on Reagan, long before any neocons “started” anything against Clinton or Kerry. You also might want to check out Michelle Malkin’s links to the acts of unhinged leftists in 2004. The physical and verbal attacks on Republicans and the sheer hatred directed at W. Bush have been beyond anything we’ve ever seen in politics yet. I mean, movies about SHOOTING him that win awards? And what about the ads against Harper with the gun pointing at the TV viewer, his so-called “secret agenda” and the scary fascist Canadian soldiers in Canadian streets? And now the feminists of the left and the oh-so-sensitive-and-progressive males of the left attack a vice-presidential pick because she’s a woman, a mother with a career (just not one they like, as it involves oil and politics), and made a choice to have a disabled fifth child.
Libs label Cons as bigots, racists, phobes, sexists, yawn-and-on-and-on, and that’s never smearing, merely telling the “truth”. Cons say Libs still haven’t returned or accounted for billions of lost Canadian tax $, and that’s “dirty politics” and “character assassination.”
Sigh.
Hypocrisy, thy name is Liberal. Of course, dirty politics are always, always started and played by “neocons” and Rove, etc., never by Dems and Libs. Never. Innocent as babes, those liberal chaps. Merely telling everyone the truth.
“‘There isn’t a black family in America that doesn’t have someone serving time in prison somewhere. All they have to do is dig.’
I love conservatives. ‘What? We’ve been one-upped in the slime department? Well, let’s get ON it, people!'”
I agree. There was no cause for such a low statement.
Now moving on, some SDA folks might be interested in some Palin/Biden comparisons (rather than the silly Palin/Obama apples-and-oranges ones).
For all the Democrat noise over Palin “merely” being a former municipal politician and governor of a state with an “insignificant” population:
Please remember that Senator Biden is from DELAWARE. He has been elected, and re-elected to the US Senate on no more than a hundred thousand votes (plus or minus) on each occasion.*
Also – guess what he was before he was a senator? Yup. A city councilman in Wilmington. In other words, a municpal politician.
* The population of Delaware is 850,000, only a quarter million more than Alaska.
“he’s a weak leader, a view which interestingly hinges on accepting a certain view of masculinity”
Bill, so nice of you to suggest there are alternate forms of masculinity. There aren’t Bill. Masculinity is defined as having qualities traditionally ascribed to men, as strength and boldness.
Key word here is traditionally. Your alternate view only appeared once the feminization of Western society got rolling in the late sixties. The result being that you, a man, would suggest that there might be a way to define Dion as masculine.
Bill’s ideas on masculinity, brought to you from the halls of academia.
Best election ever. Some of the Progressives need their nappies changed. I’d like to nurse them, but my nipple’s sore.
Bill : I’m just a “lowly ditch digger” , but you seem to have missed something, all the discourses you seem to think are important once where : when society kept things simple in their communities, their personal lives, and placed great value in keeping them that way. Tradition comes to mind, and governments at one time knowing their place when it comes to society.
You need to be pointing fingers at progressives, not people that have seen changes in society, and the frivolous reasons for many of them.
You just adding more gobbledygook, to a readily apparent mess.
If Sarah Palin indeed comes from simple, salt of the earth stock. The left should be more careful they don’t give her ammo, to call a spade a spade.
Whine you say? You have no idea Bill.
Plenty of misogynistic hatred on the Left, including amongst those who vote Democrat.
Watch and listen to the Left from now on. Witness the insanely jealous hatred they’re going to spew towards Ms. Palin just because she’s a woman, smart, successful… and not-leftist. Worst of all for the Left, she’s going to make history instead of a Left-winger called “Hillary”.
Leftists just hate it when it’s not their side “progressing”. They don’t care if Ms. Palin represents all women; the fact that she’s not a leftist is, to them, unforgivable and somehow makes her a devil or something…
Why don’t the Left simply attack Ms. Palin’s conservatism? Why do they express misogynistic hatred instead? I guess it’s cause there’s really nothing wrong at all with being a conservative after all.
There must be nothing bad about Ms. Palin that they could use against her, seeing as they can only fabricate falsehoods and spew ’em with zealously hateful fury, sort of like the Nazis did against Jews and sort of like the “Palestinians” do against Israel. Par for the course…
Bill Stewart said “Discourses that define what it means to be a man, woman, trans, that define what security and freedom mean, what leadership means, what community means etc. And neither side wants to see the other side become hegemonic.’
Hegemonic? Bill, come on. Everybody knows what those words mean. We have dictionaries. This is not a discourse, its a friggin’ full-on battle to decide if we are going to have a free country or not.
The battle between “Left” and “Right” boils down to the Left finding personal freedom and the sovereignty of the individual inconvenient, because it clashes with their economic and social theories. For Leftist economics to work, everybody has to know their place and do what they are told, because they believe people are stupid and must be controlled. That’s the rock everything they do is founded on.
All the crap about sexual identity and feminism is just a bat to beat up traditionalists with. You can see just how much they mean it by their treatment of Sarah Palin.
The traditionalists are the ones who have been resisting the loss of economic freedom and individual sovereignty being imposed by the Left. They are the people who have become weary of being treated like retarded children by their institutions, and would like said institutions to back the hell off, thanks very much.
The CPC is -slightly- less wedded to central planning socialism than the Liberals, and therefore supported by traditionalists as the least evil they can get at the moment. Harper merely points out the socialist intentions of the Liberals and their obvious corruption. At best they’re going to take all your money and waste it on non-functional social programs. At worst they will just take all your money.
Calling Dion a wimpy totalitarian is not a smear, Bill. Its a description. Just like calling the American Left a bunch of hate filled, misogynistic pecker heads is a description.
I am waiting for the MSM to say she is a racist. She is married to a man who is part Eskimo, but that won’t count.
McCain has succeeded to changing the channel on the 24/7 Obama coverage. Good for him!
I think mike murphy – a former (
Current on the back channel?) mc Cain advisor who is now a regular on MTP – may have outlined it best. McCain took this high risk veep (gamble implies a degree of foolhardiness that denigrates/discounts mccain’s application of decades worth of political wisdom IMO) option because it was his be chance to put this campaign onto the topic that has been his battle his entire political career-reforming how government governs. Palin was the only choice who truly meshed with his philosophy and who because she was female and unknown would cause enough of a stir to take the focus away from BO. If JM’s reaction on fox yesterday on how much money his campaign recieved since the announcement from the conservative wing that part of SH may not have been a primary factor in his decision.
So far stage one – stealing the limelight from BO has been an unqualified success. The next stage – as murphy pointed out – will be much less certain. If SH performs well under it still may not work out if the dems succeed in putting the focus on SP’s staunch conservative views and away from JMs change government meme. Things like pro-life even in the case of rape and the issue thatsunk stock day north of the border -a belief in creationism and that it should be taught at the same level as evolution are very much on the fringe of american opinion and not agreed to by most of the key swing/independent voters.
Murphy’s body language and tone on MTP leads me to believe that he is not optimistic that JM can keep things from going in the latter direction.
” .. because they believe people are stupid and must be controlled. That’s the rock everything they do is founded on.” Phantom
IMO, it is the ‘latte fascist liberals’ who truly think that. The stupid intellectuals.
The ‘working person left’ are trying to increase their lot in life by using unworkable (no pun) socialistic means.
Dirty politics has been around forever. At least these days most just attack verbally and with bizarre conspiracy theories.
In our instant access, media overloaded age, politics has become a drama. For every person who is genuinely interested in the issues there are many more that either don’t care or want to be entertained. Obama and his handlers know this and have played the game very well by making him into a celebrity – The One. Now here comes another charming personality but a style opposite to Obama’s. An all-American woman with an equally engaging story but who is regular and down to earth. His story is victim politics, righting the wrongs, salvation through government programs, mysterious associations and elitism. Hers is a tale of the girl next door might make it all the way to VPOTUS and beyond. A woman who took on corruption and won her way to the top against the odds.
I think that Palin’s critics should not underestimate how much people will want her to win. Attacking her teenage daughter and the parentage of her disabled infant will make the average fair-minded American want to protect her and make the uninterested take notice of her story. Obamaites could look like bullies and Obama himself risks being upstaged by her (I suspect his ego will react very badly to that).
I wonder if Ron Paul and his legions well come out and support McCain’s “reforms?”
Hi Kate, you were never a big fan of McCain, what do you think of the Palin pick?
The Republicans raised 7 million over the weekend after the Palin annoucement.
Anyone else been turning down the CPC fundraising over the weekend?
The Messiah failed to marginalize the nutroots. Maybe there is something he can’t do afterall.
The anger and ‘hatred’ shown towards political aspirants is a direct result from partisanship – and being slotted into camps.
The Amaricans have a well developed democracy, with citizens engaged and an active political discourse.
They’ve also allowed themselves to have drunk the koolaid that a politician can change everything.
Great marketing, but not true. The people are the government.
Those who want leadership in a pill are the same lazy asses who demonize the competition, and remove their humanity.
And the left will always be the most bitter, because they are the laziest.
lynnh at September 1, 2008 12:03 PM
“I think that Palin’s critics should not underestimate how much people will want her to win. Attacking her teenage daughter and the parentage of her disabled infant will make the average fair-minded American want to protect her and make the uninterested take notice of her story.”
Gord Tulk at September 1, 2008 11:50 AM
“Murphy’s body language and tone on MTP leads me to believe that he is not optimistic that JM can keep things from going in the latter direction.”
Gord would be correct if the Dems had held their rage in check and started out attacking those positions of Palin instead of the point of attack undertaked by the Dems. Obama’s campaign started it when they first announced an un-complimentary greeting to Palin welcoming her to the race. By the time Obama could issue a retraction the genie was out of the bottle and the gnashing of teeth beganeth.
Because of this, I do believe Lynn has generously afforded us with a perception most “mothers” and an Oprah’d American society would feel towards Palin. That demographic is a significant portion of the 52% of voters in the US overall.
Seems daughter Bristol is actually 5 months pregnant (with plans to marry the father). I’m waiting for the, “Well, if she wasn’t so absorbed in her work maybe her daughter wouldn’t be pregnant meme” to start.
The libleft bottom feeder, aka Mikey, dives back under his rock.
…-
“Coward Michael Moore Removes His “Show Us The DNA!” Smear From Website Re: Palin’s Baby
Michael Moore’s Website”
Poster says: “Fortunately we took two screenshots so that the weasal can’t pretend he didn’t say it.”
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/2072395/posts
Woo hoooo it has got a lot more interesting “down south” the coronation of Obama seems to have been knocked off it’s little tin wheels. Sarah Palin sure seems like a breath of fresh air, a “real” person who happens to be a woman to boot. The usual leftard suspects have gone into ultra-smear mode, I think this will hurt the Obama-messiah far more than Mrs.Palin. Unlike him she has actually done things, run things, and walks the walk, does anyone else find it just a little strange that Obama has written multiple autobiography’s before he has actually done anything?? Only politican I recall doing this wrote “mein kampf” the crowds adored him also that didn’t end well.
cheers Bubba
This whole situation is pretty low on the morality scale.
I can’t believe the left would even conjure up something like that.
Yes, it’s on both CNN and Fox, that Bristol Palin, who is 17, is five months pregnant, will marry and keep the child. And that McCain knew of this situation before picking Mrs. Palin as VP nominee.
They only went public to stop the rumours that Bristol is the mother of Mrs. Palin’s fifth child.
What puzzles me – is why did these rumours start? Why such a vicious slander against so many people, Mrs. Palin and her husband, Bristol, …why such slander?
The left can’t abide women who are successful outside of the Left Bloc. The Left Bloc has a specific ideology that you must accept or you are not a ‘valid woman’: namely, pro-abortion, adversarial against men, socialist for others but quite satisfied with enormous self-wealth. Any woman who operates outside these axioms is attacked by the left.
Now- what will be the result of the announcement of Bristol’s pregnancy and marriage? The fact that Mrs. Palin is Trig’s mother will obviously have to disappear. What will they attack her with now? Having her daughter marry rather than abort? Probably that will be the next theme.
Incredible how vicious the left is against successful women. The constant references to her as Mayor of a small town, utterly ignoring that she’s Governor of a state – a state with a population about the same as Joe Biden’s Delaware and he’s only a perpetual Senator without executive experience.
Ah well – the left is in a knot.
Bill Stewart at 9:20 AM
tho there is merit to your position as to IDENTITY, that is not the point being made here. One of the key planks of liberalism is EQUALITY, this includes gender equality, thus liberals have positioned themselves to be held to a higher standard in this mater, and yet they are more vicious on their attacks pertaining to gender. This is not just an observation in conjunction with the Palin thing, but in general every day life as well, I’v commented on this for at least 20 years.
So I feel you should really step back and try and grasp the essence of what is happening.
And as far as the portion of you ” rove, cheney, etc” comment, well lets just say the mass media has opened a door that does not lead to a rose garden. Something that should be addressed and dealt with, and rove and company only fine tuned the art, Clinton and company were no strangers (even to other dems)to this sort of thing.
“There isn’t a black family in America that doesn’t have someone serving time in prison somewhere. All they have to do is dig.”
I’ll second the motion that slurs of this nature are unwelcome here.
Besides, even if it were true, it doesn’t apply to Obama. He doesn’t come from a black American family. He is as alien to the average black American family as Stephane Dion is alien to the average Quebecois family.
Both carpetbaggers to the core!
Bill Stewart comes on here and makes declarations that he apparently cannot support, then he expects us to listen to him.
“Hegemonic”? Must have fallen asleep last night reading Chomsky.
I am still waiting to see how the Swift boaters lied about Kerry’s claim that he was in Cambodia on Christmas day, 1968. Still waiting.
To Bill Stewart’s way of thinking, even to state an opinion, e.g. that these troglydites that are smearing Palin support Obama, and therefore are on his “team” is to lie.
Battle tactics. Choosing the terrain and executing suprises flawlessly, nailing the timing, and getting the lucky break that the adversaries first re-action is a bad one, even a wrong one that hurts them more than the suprise.
Interesting to note the only candidate with military training and experience is McCain.
Chopping off the medias pending love-in for the ones ascension has taken control of the fight away from Democrats, forced a major error right off the bat (small-town mayor is a bad thing?) and sparked the interest of the conservative base. And they will IMHO react very strongly to the smears being flung right now, at a very popular sitting Governor and her family.
The frog, having believed the scorpion, could not understand being stung in the middle of the river…you knew what I was…
The Democrats embraced their hard left, allowed them access to the agenda and the tone (and look at the tone right now), and now have a very ugly choice. McCain is deep inside their decision loop, has them off-balance, and has had a long time to prepare his battle plan.
bluetech: “The heart of the feminist is not about what a woman can accomplish, or about opportunity. It is a disdain for the Judeo-Christian family model.”
ET: “The left can’t abide women who are successful outside of the Left Bloc.”
Exactly. There’s the “equality feminist” who, as ET points out is pro-abortion, anti-men, and on the government gravy train (‘finds it hard to succeed, let alone exist, when not slurping at the public trough: LEAF, HRCs, SOW, etc.) and then there’s the rest of us for whom the “equality feminist” has only disdain, contempt, and ridicule.
I’ve never actually met a radical feminist I like, and they tend to hate me.
So, Bristol Palin is five months pregnant? One more front on which Sarah Palin can relate to North American women and families. I don’t think there are too many families who haven’t had someone become pregnant out of wedlock. The Palins and John McCain didn’t try to hide it: They could have left Bristol at home and made some excuse, but they didn’t.
The Left is being hoist on its own petard. Every time they open their mouths to belittle Sarah Palin and her family, they show their true colours which are dark, nasty, and ugly.
America is watching.
“Ah well – the left is in a knot.”: ET
And they’re becoming increasingly shrill in their desperation to maintain the sociological pendulum at the extreme position they have managed to achieve since the 1960s. Is it possible that a direction reversal is inevitable.
So,let me get this straight.According to the Dems,a teenaged girl,that has a little unplanned pregnancy..is worth the smear campaign of the century,but Billy Boy,the former Pres.is the biggest man-slut ever in politics,and that’s ok?? Got it!
Dear ET,
Yes, I’ve taken my share of graduate and undergraduate continental philosophy and poststructuralism inspired courses. In fact, I’ve even taught a few university courses on the subject. Making fun of a topic or characterizing an argument as “undergraduate” does invalidate an argument.
“has it ever occurred to you that this jargon is, itself, a discourse and therefore, an abstract creation of the mind? And far, far removed from reality?”
Of course it has, considering one of the mantras of poststructuralism by Derrida, of which you are no doubt familiar, is “There is nothing outside the text.” I cannot speak from a position outside of textuality. Now I’m not sure what you mean by reality, but based on the confidence with which you refer to “reality”, it only makes me suspicious because there is where pure ideological chauvinism resides. As I see it, “reality” is not removed from discourses, but rather impossible without them.
“The two realities, the physical and the conceptual, interact.” or you can’t socialize a desklamp.
Agreed, now that we don’t have the single monolithic reality that you seemed to have command of previously, but I still find it interesting that the material is factual and the discursive is fictional. Have you ever seen anyone act without “discourse”? I would argue that even the so-called instincts in human beings are refracted through culture. Eating is never simply an instinct. Sex likewise, otherwise there would be a lot of frustrated women out there if men performed every time exactly the same way as they did their first time 🙂 There’s nothing fictional about culture and its discourses.
“However, normative roles are only the average, and are dependent upon the ECONOMIC identity of the society.”
Are you outing yourself as a dialectical materialist, a Marxist no less. If so, welcome aboard. Marx couldn’t have said it better himself. Also, if my discursive identity is constrained it’s not because discourse is fictional, it’s because I am a body, a human one at that, situated in time and extended in a particular space. Thus, I am different from a Tibetan monk not because of the fictionality or untruthfullness of discourses, but because of the culture(s) I happened to have been born into.
“To attack someone, ad hominem, is always reprehensible.”
Except of course when you do it by trivializing another’s words as undergraduate, jargon, etc.
“Your obvious leftist bias (and that includes your focus on discursive identities) means that you ignore the Democrat and Liberal smear campaigns”
I tend to agree with the first part. Both that I have a bias (everyone does, it’s called discourse) and leftists might be more open to postmodernism. However, I completely disagree with the second part. Not only do I mention in my comment that the Liberal (and I would add sometimes Leftist) fear mongering regarding Harper’s conservatism was no better than what the Conservatives did, but also I’ve often stated that I hold equal contempt for Liberal and Conservative ideology. Liberals and Conservatives despite their differences, hold, as a point of departure, the assumption that capitalism is beyond reproach. Socialists hold, as a point of departure, the assumption that at the very least, capitalism must be challenged and reformed. Thus, the reason I’d prefer to be called a moonbat than a Liberal. Liberals are your retarded brothers. 🙂
p.s. I wasn’t deflecting, I have received rude comments from people invalidating my arguments on the basis that they have received a MA degree.
“Leadership and ‘manhood’ are not synonyms”.
No, but one’s view of what constitutes masculinity certainly affect one’s expectations surrounding leadership. For many, leadership remains the purview of men only, and then only of certain kinds of men (strong, powerful, phallic, controlling). For some a leader need not be a man, perhaps a person who enables other to do their best, who brings out the best in others, who brings together a strong collaborative team etc. My point was simply that one of the things being decided in the next election is what expectations do Canadians have surrounding leadership? Harper represents a controlling, more masculine type of leader and Dion represents a more decentralized, less masculine type of leader. I’m simply saying that way one defines masculinity for oneself tend to affect one’s expectations of a leader. I’m not sure what’s contentious about that.
ps. I’m not saying the neocons invented smears and dirty politics. I’m simply saying, in part through their success, they helped make them normative. Since it’s now commonplace, no one should be whining about it, least of all neocons.
Peace, or not
Could Bill Stewart be new/food media/haye,etc?
I can’t get over the doublethink involved in focusing on Palin’s experience. It is more than Obama’s by any traditional measure. I hope they keep it up, because, as people realize how inexperienced Obama is, they are going to swallow hard before voting for him.