Memo to John McCain: We may be angry, but we haven’t gone completely mad.
Like many women, I have been disappointed that Hillary Clinton isn’t the Democratic nominee. Beyond that, I don’t feel it was a fair fight. Having said that, however, I am not going to ditch all the values that Clinton and many of us believe in to vote for someone just because she is a woman.
Such behavior would be so typically male, not to mention one of the reasons why women have not yet been able to achieve the equity we deserve.
So John McCain can try to shove Sarah Palin down our throats, but most of us won’t find sisterhood in this ticket.
If former Hillary supporters selected a stridently anti-choice, environmentally impaired creationist, it would prove that they never really understood what Clinton stood for in the first place.
Palin’s beauty queen-PTA-governorship path to political prominence may be enough to satisfy the right-wing fringes. But Clinton supporters, who backed her because they considered her the most qualified candidate, don’t see in Palin what they seek in a leader, regardless of gender.
The notion that women vote solely with their chromosomes is insulting beyond words. On the contrary, feminists have always found that their toughest opponents were also women — women just like Palin, by the way.
Such women tend to see the appropriate place for the rest of us as tied to our husband’s leashes, subserviently waiting for the next command to leap in the air when any male says, “Jump!”
A politician of either gender who believes in forced pregnancy, as does Palin, even if caused by rape or incest, has no understanding of the basic tenet that control of a woman’s own fertility is central to her freedom.
One who would force religious theories of human evolution into the public education system to compete with scientific realities has either never read or cannot comprehend the US Constitution.
Any leader who, despite mounting evidence to the contrary, refuses to acknowledge how humankind’s mindless abuse of the environment threatens our lives, our health, and the planet is either totally insensitive, grossly unaware, or politically bought and paid for by the primary abusers.
The Obama camp need not panic, but it must get a grip on the snake oil show being created by the Republicans.
Proving that Sarah Palin is not and can never be Hillary Clinton should be child’s play.
Real Hillary supporters don’t want McCain or Palin, God forbid, answering that ringing red phone at 3 am. They don’t even want Palin on the commander-in-chief’s speed dial.
Let’s leave mindless rote voting to the fanatical fringes, where it has always existed and cannot, apparently, be exorcised.
