The Arizona Shootings, Sarah Palin and the Tolerant, Compassionate Left

Twitter Users Wish Death on Sarah Palin from JoeKenha on Vimeo.

Liberals to Women Who Don’t Conform: Face Sexist Slurs

From Kirsten Powers on The Daily Beast:

“What about saying that she’s a whore?”

No, I wasn’t eavesdropping on a Duke fraternity meeting. This was the suggestion of an aide to Democrat Jerry Brown on how to deal with his GOP rival for the California governorship, Meg Whitman.

Brown’s response? “Well I’m going to use that.”

Not anymore.

Once a tape of the conversation was leaked, the Brown campaign apologized.

While we, sadly, are all too familiar with the casual misogynistic comment, what perhaps is more surprising is where these slurs lately have been coming from—progressive bastions like the Brown camp, and liberal women.

Last month, liberal talk show host Stephanie Miller laughed uproariously when a female guest on her show said that if she ever met Michelle Malkin, “I would kick [her] right in the nuts,” and warned, “Wear a cup, lady.”

Charming.

Or how about this: “You have to lift their skirts to find out if they are women. You sure can’t find out by how they vote.” This is what Democratic Rep. Janis Baird Sontany of Nashville said earlier this year of her female GOP colleagues.

Or this: “Sarah Palin may be a lady, but she ain’t no woman,” as Cinta Wilson wrote during the tsunami of anti-Palin hysteria in 2008. In her Salon piece, Wilson went on to refer to the Alaska governor as a “Christian Stepford wife in a ‘sexy librarian’ costume” and the GOP’s “hardcore pornographic centerfold spread.”

Who needs misogynist men when liberal women will do the job for you, often sounding that shopworn theme that women GOP candidates are somehow inauthentic women?

Palin, of course, has been the target of many such smears. She was derided as, “Bush in a skirt” on Huffington Post, and at The Washington Post, Wendy Doniger blogged of then-VP candidate Palin: “Her greatest hypocrisy is in her pretense that she is a woman.”

Not that liberal men are much better.

Ann Coulter is often referred to as “Mann-coulter” on political blogs in an effort to de-feminize her. And MSNBC’s Keith Olberman once referred to Malkin as a “mashed-up bag of meat with lipstick.”

In a Salon column last month headlined “Forget about the tea party—what about the crumpets?” Gene Lyons wrote that, “The most entertaining aspect of the 2010 election season has been the rise of the right-wing cuties—political celebrities whose main qualification is looking terrific on television. From where I sit, in a comfortable chair in front of the tube, the GOP Cupcake Factor has enlivened an otherwise dreary campaign season.”

You, Sir, are a pig.

The “cuties” in question are a former Governor (Palin), a current Congresswoman (Michelle Bachmann) and a current Senatorial candidate (Christine O’Donnell.) Lyons take on O’Donnell was this: “Everybody knows some poor fool who married a woman like that.”

To anyone who believes that a man with the same religious views as O’Donnell would have received the same nonstop vicious mockery, I have one name for you: Mike Huckabee.

Yes, sexism matters—as does gender. But whereas you never hear anyone claim that men should vote a particular way because of their gender, feminists have no trouble treating women like pre-schoolers who have to be herded into the right camp, a camp that is apparently preordained at birth. In an interview with Katie Couric last year, Gloria Steinem said that where conservative women stand “is squarely against what most women need and want. If [women] still vote for them, they are voting against themselves, which is quite tragic to me.”

This kind of attitude should be antithetical to feminist thought because it is infantilizing to women.

Politically, I agree very little with any of the conservative women mentioned in this column. But they have the same right as any woman to be treated with respect and dignity. Every time anyone—liberal, conservative, man or a woman—engage in sexist smears, all women lose.

Of course, blacks who fail to play the role assigned to them by white liberals and leftists — the role of perpetual grievance mongers — face the same nasty response.

All of which tells something about contemporary liberalism. It’s not defined (as classical liberalism was) by a set of ethical principles. It’s defined by its division of the whole world into “oppressor” groups and “victim” groups.

Liberals pride themselves on siding with the “victims.”

Thus when the “victims” fail to play their assigned role, it’s a direct frontal assault on liberals sense of self-righteousness and self-worth. Of course, that is met with aggression.

But as Powers points out, this is profoundly demeaning to the “victim” groups in question. It means they are not allowed to reach independent conclusions. It means they are not allowed to stray off the liberals’ plantation.

Happily, liberals can’t (yet) use government coercion to shut such people up. So all they can do is demean and deride them.

Sarah Palin Derangement: Threatening Her With Rape

A supposed “comedienne” named Sandra Bernhard has been rather a hit attacking Sarah Palin.

She warned that Sarah Palin better not come into Manhattan lest she get gang-raped by some of Sandra’s big black brothers.

Her rant continued with a nasty anti-Christian riff.

Now you got Uncle Women, like Sarah Palin, who jumps on the s--t and points her fingers at other women. Turncoat b---h! Don’t you f--kin’ reference Old Testament, bitch! You stay with your new Goyish crappy shiksa funky bulls--t! Don’t you touch my Old Testament, you b---h! Because we have left it open for interpre-ta-tion! It is no longer taken literally! You whore in your f--kin’ cheap New Vision cheap-ass plastic glasses and your [sneering voice] hair up. A Tina Fey-Megan Mullally brokedown bulls--t moment.

You can see the bigoted tirade at this link.

The audience eats it up.

Nobody seems to have noticed that claiming that “black brothers” would gang-rape Palin plays on one of the nastiest (and historically most dangerous) racial stereotypes.

Which says something important about a large part of the left. They know perfectly well that words like “cunt” and “bitch” are unacceptable ways of referring to a woman, and that stereotyping black men as rapists is incendiary.

But when they think of Palin, the inhibitions disappear.

Deranged About Sarah Palin

We are not going to describe this page (which sells t-shirts).

And we warn you not to go there is you dislike nasty sexist language.

But the fact that these t-shirts actually have a market says volumes about the attitudes of a large part of the left.

Palin Derangement Syndrome: Canadian Version

If the video is not embedded above, click this link.

Clinton Strategist: Media Especially Tough on Palin

From CBS News, an interview with Mark Penn, top aide to both Clintons:

CBSNews.com: Your former colleague Howard Wolfson argued that you all unintentionally paved the way for Palin by exposing some of the unfair media coverage that Hillary Clinton received. And, therefore, a lot of the media may now be treating Sarah Palin with kid gloves. Do you agree with that?

In what sort of alternative universe does CBS live?

The answer to that is simple: a universe where Republicans are bad and wrong, and if any Republican is popular or beats a Democrat in an election, it must mean that the media have fallen down on their job.

Mark Penn: Well, no, I think the people themselves saw unfair media coverage of Senator Clinton. I think if you go back, the polls reflected very clearly what “Saturday Night Live” crystallized in one of their mock debates about what was happening with the press.

I think here the media is on very dangerous ground. I think that when you see them going through every single expense report that Governor Palin ever filed, if they don’t do that for all four of the candidates, they’re on very dangerous ground. I think the media so far has been the biggest loser in this race. And they continue to have growing credibility problems.

And I think that that’s a real problem growing out of this election. The media now, all of the media — not just Fox News, that was perceived as highly partisan — but all of the media is now being viewed as partisan in one way or another. And that is an unfortunate development.

CBSNews.com: So you think the media is being uniquely tough on Palin now?

Mark Penn: Well, I think that the media is doing the kinds of stories on Palin that they’re not doing on the other candidates. And that’s going to subject them to people concluding that they’re giving her a tougher time. Now, the media defense would be, “Yeah, we looked at these other candidates who have been in public life at an earlier time.”

What happened here very clearly is that the controversy over Palin led to 37 million Americans tuning into a vice-presidential speech, something that is unprecedented, because they wanted to see for themselves. This is an election in which the voters are going to decide for themselves. The media has lost credibility with them.

The de facto semi-alliance between the Clinton people and Palin supporters may seem a bit odd, but it actually makes a lot of sense.

Hillary Clinton was the first victim of the media’s infatuation with Obama. So in spite of partisanship and ideology, they recognize when it’s mobilized against Palin.

Palin, God and Iraq: Liberals Are Lying

Here is the famous video clip were Sarah Palin supposedly said that the troops in Iraq are engaged in a “task from God.”

YouTube Video
Liberals, of course, never seem to mind when religious types say that God is on their side. They never raised an objection, for example, when a bunch of leftist clerics started an anti-SUV campaign, asking “What Would Jesus Drive.”

In 1964, all the Mainstream Protestant organizations came out in favor of the Civil Rights Act. They took the position that God hates racial prejudice.

Then why should we object to saying that God hates terrorists? That’s just as plausible.

But in fact, Palin never said that the Iraq War is a “task from God.”

She said to pray that it is a task from God.

Here is the quote (go to approximately the 3:35 point):

Pray for our military men and women who are striving to do what is right also for this country, that our leaders, our national leaders, are sending them out on a task that is from God.

And further:

That’s what we have to make sure that we’re praying for, that there is a plan and that that plan is God’s plan.

Linguistically, this isn’t difficult. She is telling people to “pray . . . that our leaders . . . are sending them out on a task from God.”

Both the Mainstream Media and the elites in the Democratic Party are highly secular, so we might suppose that they don’t know what a prayer request sounds like.

But can’t they read English?

In fact, what we have is secular cultural elites who hate Palin, don’t like Christians, and don’t especially care whether what they say about either is true.

Liberal Elites and Sarah Palin

Sometimes the most revealing things happen in e-mail exchanges, and this is one we got copied on.

From my good old friend Edd some interesting I’m sure known facts about Ms. Palin

Cousin,

I hope that you are keeping up with the seemingly never ending trail of white trash evidence that we are finding out about Sarah Palin and her family. I sure am. First of all, what would the late great George Carlin have to say about her kids names, Track, Trig, Bristol, Willow and Piper, not to mention the husband, Todd. We all have heard the bit. Some of my favorites from this weeks edition of “Are the Palin’s bigger pieces of White Trash than Lyndi England (you might remember Lyndi from her work stacking naked Iraqi’s into a pyramid and taking a picture giving a thumbs up)” Sarah’s Husband, Todd, not only has 2 DUI’s, races snowmobiles, and was a former member of the Alaskan secessionist party, but he recently referred to himself as “the first dude.” And what can we say about young Bristol? What a peach she is, and she sure knows how to pick ‘em too. Enter Levi Johnston, who describes himself as a “f**king redneck” on his myspace page. The only positive out of this is that if McCain were to be elected and something were to happen to him and he dies, we are now part of our own live version of “King Ralph.”

The friend of ours who forwarded this also forwarded his response:

Incredibly, incredibly judgemental and condescending, coming from someone who obviously considers himself part of the “diversity” crowd. . . . As if George Carlin’s comments or potential comments (were he still alive) are to be gospel for politics or... hmmmmm, let’s say.... religion? A further question--define “white trash” you guys... As opposed to what -- black trash? If you mean uncultured thugs who demean women and see white people as either sources for easy cash or an easy target for their own community’s failures, I would like to see the liberal elite “trash” them equally with hicks and their fellow travelers . . .

I, for one, much prefer the company of simple countryfolk (both black and white)--who at least have viable families and a discernable moral compass--over spoiled whiners who make up much of the voting base of the Democratic Party in places like River West, Shorewood, etc. . . . God f**king forbid that they actually take some responsibility for their actions and do some inner reflection! As opposed to smugly putting down snakehandlers and Alaskan snowmobilers to make themselves feel like part of some select few of Gnostic know-it-alls who can easily dismiss much of America as unworthy simpletons. . . . An overdeveloped guilt complex has proven to be, from what I know of human history, much more socially-constructive than moral relativism and outright hypocrisy in putting down other people’s lifestyles while making no apologies for faults in your own... It at least engenders quite a bit of humillity, while the latter makes one feel entitled to socially engineer to one’s heart’s content (see Wikipedia under “National Socialism” or “Stalinism,” for example)!

I have been involved in politics long enough to get to know people on both sides of the aisle and, I have to admit, the snobbery I’ve heard on the left wing far outshines the judgementalism of most conservatives I know (who often turn out to be a bit Manichean, yes, but at least honest more often than not). . . . On numerous occassions, I have heard liberal politicos and elected officials actually say: “People don’t know what’s good for them.... That’s why they voted for Bush, etc. etc.” People don’t know what’s good for them???? I, along with most of my fellow believers in the inherent value of moral agency in determining communal life, send to such people a well-deserved and long-coming “arm of honor” (as the French say)!!!!! I don’t know what’s good for me??? That’s for me and God to decide, you freaking walking windbag of complexes!

Guys, seriously--I will happily read such comments from serious and well-intentioned liberals that used to make up, say, FDR’s voting base. But outright garbage like this, please don’t send. . . . Mr. Pailin or future son-in-law at least have the gall to admit that they’re “f**king rednecks”... Why don’t Joe Biden, Nancy Pelosi, or the rest of the liberal cognisenti add to their MySpace pages the label: “f**king bleeding heart who knows what’s good for you -- Trust me, I do”?

Probably because they know that most of America retains the common sense God gave us all and upon which the Founding Fathers had such enduring trust that they would run them out of freaking town, much or less elect them to public office! I love you guys, but please don’t push my buttons like this! Serious and honest discourse, as you well I know, I absolutely love, but talking down to my well-intentioned, though sometimes misguided, countrymen frankly pisses me off! Amen!

Sarah Palin: Leftists Can’t Resist the “B-word”

In the National Post in Canada, a very perceptive column by George Jonas about the candidacy of Sarah Palin.

But the hair raising thing here comes not from Jonas, but from the first comment following the article.

(It may not be the first comment if you go to look an hour or a few days from now.)

Sara Palin proudly described herself as Pit ball with lipstick. Is that what America needs, after eight years of Bush Cheney administration, a self proclaimed vicious bitch in a Vice President?

And from a leftist blog:

Haha, one more thing re: Sarah Palin shitting on community organizers/non-profit workers

Because she’s a bitch.

Well, hope you like this little video, you bitch.

We won’t bother to describe the contents of the video.

Then there is this blog entry complaining about the Republican convention using Heart’s “Barracuda” as theme music for Palin:

Sarah Palin, no Barracuda for you, Bitch

Then there is another blog entry:

Sarah Palin is a retarded bitch

And there are more like this.

And finally, a comment to a blog post.

WTF, does she mean by soldiers were sent into iraq as a task from god, what is this bitch talking about.

And yet another comment to the same post:

I hope the poisonous bitch chokes on a mooseburger.

A fair assessment of Palin is that she is a tough, smart women. But since she is a Republican that translates among leftists into “vicious bitch.”

Of course, if one should Google “Hillary Clinton” AND “bitch” one would doubtless find quite a lot of people using similar language toward the former first lady.

In fact, the leftist blogosphere contains one poorly sourced claim that Palin used the term to refer to Hillary, and the fact that she giggled when a shock jock called a political rival of her’s a “bitch.” In fact, the actual clip shows that Palin did giggle (apparently a nervous giggle) and then said “oh” or “no,” in apparent dismay.

This account also says she giggled when her rival was called a “cancer,” but the audio clip shows this to be flatly untrue.

But no doubt conservative bloggers have used the same language about Hillary, and done so often.

But then, the Democrats claim to be the party of feminism. They claim to eschew nasty racial and gender epithets. But confront them with a strong, intelligent and accomplished woman who disagrees with their political views, and the sexism surfaces with amazing speed.

Biden: Attacks on Palin “Outrageous”

From The Hill:

Democratic vice presidential candidate Joe Biden repeated a Republican line of attack Thursday, slamming reporters for their “outrageous” and “sexist” treatment of Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin (R).

“I just think some of the stuff said has been over the top, totally unfair, and has been sexist and I think the way the governor has handled it has been admirable,” the Delaware senator said on ABC’s “Good Morning America.” “I think this stuff about how can she be a governor and vice president and raise three kids, c’mon, whoever those folks are don’t know any strong women.

“The truth is, some of the stuff that the press has said about Sarah and that others have said about the governor, I think, are outrageous. Look, I think kids are off-limits, flat off-limits.”

One could, of course, one could posit that Biden and Obama (who has also condemned the attacks on Palin) are playing a cynical little game of making humane statements, knowing that the leftist bloggers and Mainstream Media attack dogs will continue to go after Palin.

But maybe they have simply made a shrewd calculation that the attacks are likely to backfire, and want them stopped for that reason.

Or maybe, just maybe, they honestly think the attacks have been unfair. Biden, after all, was the single parent of young children after his first wife died. He stayed in the Senate nonetheless.

Is it an embarrassment that Sarah Palin’s unmarried daughter is pregnant? Absolutely. But then Obama’s father ran off and failed to support his family, and Obama has a brother living in abject poverty in Africa.

Like most Americans, Obama has a few embarrassing situations in his family.

So maybe, just maybe, decency has prevailed in the Democratic ticket.

Ragardless, the statements of Biden and Obama have cut the legs from under the liberal attack squad.

Liberals: Fearing (and Therefore Hating) Sarah Palin

The attacks on Sarah Palin have been utterly unprecedented. Over the top. Obsessive.

And why is this?

Because Sarah Palin is a huge threat, both to their electoral prospects and (more importantly) to their worldview.

While her nomination certainly has its risks, it shakes things up thoroughly, and makes the election of The Anointed One more questionable. Ideological feminists won’t vote for her, of course, but a fair number of independent and conservative Democratic women may do so. They can identify with her.

But worse is the threat to the smug stereotypes of the liberals and leftist.

For those folks, all “real” women are feminists. Women who aren’t feminists are inert, reclusive lumps who stay home, bake cookies, and stay out of politics.

So now they are faced with a woman who is an achiever -- indeed an overachiever -- outspoken, aggressive, strong willed, and conservative.

It’s cognitive dissonance run wild.

In reality, of course, genuinely strong and independent women tend to be conservative. A passive “go with the flow” woman will quite likely be told by her high school teachers that she should be a leftist feminist, almost certainly be told the same thing by her college professors, and all the while be given this precise message by the media.

Conservative women have to be counter-cultural. They have to buck the stereotypes.

A Christian teen girl to resolves to abstain from sex has to have the strength to resist huge media pressures, and often high school teachers who sneer at the notion of abstinence. The “go along” teen who passively accepts the media message will be promiscuous.

Thus Sarah Palin is the sort of woman that liberals think does not exist. The fact that she does blows their minds.

Imagine a group of Klansmen faced with a black guy who is obviously smarter, more capable and more accomplished than they are. Eventually, the Klansmen will have a bunch of rationalizations about how the guy is not so smart, is corrupt and has no business being here.

But the first reaction will be hostility and fear. The liberals might be on average a bit more clever and verbal than the Klansmen (who isn’t?), but the basic dynamic is the same.

Bubbleheads: Not Getting Sarah Palin and the Evangelicals

A perceptive (as usual) comment from Peggy Noonan:

Let me say of myself and almost everyone I know in the press, all the chattering classes and political strategists and inside dopesters of the Amtrak Acela Line: We live in a bubble and have around us bubble people. We are Bubbleheads.

And again we know this, we know this is our limit, our lack.

But we also forget it.

And when you forget you’re a Bubblehead you get in trouble, you misjudge things. For one thing, you assume evangelical Christians will be appalled and left agitated by the circumstances of Mrs. Palin’s daughter. But modern American evangelicals are among the last people who’d judge her harshly. It is the left that is about to go crazy with Puritan judgments; it is the right that is about to show what mellow looks like. Religious conservatives know something’s wrong with us, that man’s a mess. They are not left dazed by the latest applications of this fact. “This just in – there’s a lot of sinning going on out there” is not a headline they’d understand to be news.

So the media’s going to wait for the Christian right to rise up and condemn Mrs. Palin, and they’re not going to do it because it’s not their way, and in any case her problems are their problems. Christians lived through the second half of the 20th century, and the first years of the 21st. They weren’t immune from the culture, they just eventually broke from it, or came to hold themselves in some ways apart from it. I think the media will explain the lack of condemnation as “Republican loyalty” and “talking points.” But that’s not what it will be.

One of the key failures of the liberal New Class is that fact that it is not only secular, it is actively hostile to Christians.

(It’s not hostile to Muslims, but that’s because they don’t actively contest with the secular types for control of American culture, and the Muslims can be treated as a politically correct victim group.)

The Democratic party is pretty much controlled by people with a secular orientation, and occasional claims of religious faith (which may be sincere, but are certainly superficial) aren’t fooling anybody.

But happily, the Democrats ignorance of people of faith and frequent hostility toward people of faith harms them politically. They just don’t get it, and therefore make serious political miscalculations.

Sisterhood is Powerfu . . . Oh, Never Mind

Abortion: Faced With the Choice

From 4-Block World, Obama vs. Palin on abortion.

Sometimes rhetoric isn’t needed. Blunt reality tells the story.