There is an aspect to the misogyny that is mentioned here and there, but doesn't get the full attention it deserves, and that is the class bias thoroughly interwoven with the gender hatred. Gov. Palin (yes, kids, she *is* a governor and I'm damnwell giving her the title she has earned.) and even more her daughter are being typified not just as female or sexually promiscuous females, but specifically as white trash females. Class, race and gender are all mixed into a seething stew served up by the privileged white males (and far too many females) of the MSM and the political establishment (Both parties - contemptuous stereotyping is not just for Republicans anymore!). In a class by itself, we get the raving Boyz of Left Blogistan, revving up the Kandy-Kolored Tangerine-Flake Streamline Baby known as Daily Kos and going for a gang-banging joy ride through the Palin family's reproductive organs.
I have written about this before, pointing out the deep revulsion the political and cultural elite feels towards things working class and especially things working-class, white and Southern. The original sin of Bill Clinton was to be a hick from Arkansas who didn't disavow his roots. The greater sin of Hillary Rodham Clinton was to marry that hick and stick with him even when he acted like a Bubba. Lower class white females are treated with even greater contempt than their male counterparts, reduced to Dolly Parton boobs, Daisy Duke butts, and Britney Spears midriffs. Above all, a lurid fascination with their alleged propensity for beastiality and incest, with accusations of the latter making an appearance in the current assaults. After all, "we" nice clean college educated denizens of Whole Foods Nation know about "those" kind of people. What do we know about them?
- Poor
- Lazy
- Uneducated
- Racist
- Stupid
- Religious
- Unhygienic
- Drunkards
- Druggies
- Violent
- Promiscuous
- Smokers
- Unhealthy
- Bad taste
It is not just that Gov. Palin is female and conservative. The cheeto brigade would not heap this kind of visceral hatred on Republican women who are part of their own class. The names are already bandied about - Carly Fiorina, Kay Bailey Hutchison, Christine Todd Whitman, Liddy Dole, etc. "Why weren't these more deserving women selected?" goes the cry (hint, it has to do with the conservative base, you know, a political decision?) These women are not "beauty queens" with questionable sexual pasts (that we know virtually nothing about their sexual pasts kind of proves the point - they are not being dug up), they have the correct number of children (if any) born at respectable points in their lives and properly raised not to get knocked up at politically inconvenient times. That Gov. Palin is a smart, college educated woman who knows how to gets things done (bracketing for a moment whether those are the things I would wish to see done) simply won't be acknowledged. It's all about how she uses her reproductive tract. It is even alleged that McCain chose her because he simply wanted to stare at her body, agin reducing her to her (slutty) sex appeal and him to a dirty old man. As I've discussed over the last few days, the refusal to look directly at the political reasons for choosing Gov. Palin only hurts Democrats.
Another element I don't think is being addressed enough is the "taking out" part of removing the trash. Aside from Hillary, name me another presidential ticket contender who has been the obsessive focus of such widespread and aggressive verbal violence. These attacks are far in excess of anything necessary to discredit a political rival. The politically savvy thing to do was to play it cool like Hillary did, and calmly, politely and firmly dismiss this person on the only grounds that matter - Republican policies. Hillary keeps trying to remind the party that when the political objectives of your opponent are wrong, none of the rest is relevant. The Democratic message should be the same whether the VP choice is Palin or Pawlenty, Ridge or Romney.
But there do not appear to be any bounds to the indignation, even rage, that this, this, tart from Alaska presumes to be the VP. As with the assaults on Hillary, the squalls of the MSM and the blogosphere are like the infant who can't make Mommy do what he wants so he is going to wish her dead. The posts and comments on Gov. Palin and her oldest daughter are invasive, trying to tunnel inside of their offending bodies and shred them from within. It is the same rage that Olbermann spewed when he asked for someone to take Hillary into a dark room and murder her. It is not as far from the recent murders of women in Pakistan - shot and buried alive - as we would like to believe. These women sought to control their bodies and their lives and were murdered for it. Bristol Palin is living her incredibly ordinary teenage life and these modern day Dimmesdales have appointed themselves judge, jury and executioner in her case. How dare a 17 year old "girl" fuck without our consent! (Or our participation...)
And now we are into more tropes of white female trashitude with the Boyz naming her upcoming union a "shotgun wedding". Never mind that she wears an engagement ring and that her neighbors were well aware of the situation and were happy for the young couple. Yup, Pappy's gunna make that young buck git hitched, even iffen' he don't wanna, an make an honest women outta the lyin' slut. Um, no. I have too many friends who are in fully committed relationships from their late teens onward who do not bother to get married until a pregnancy occurs. My own very traditional in-laws had collective freak-outs over the fact that me and the spousal unit were (gasp!) living together in sin (What are her folks going to think? my FIL demanded of my not-yet husband) until I was presented a proper engagement ring. Then it was cool. Then the hubby had done the correct social thing and his immigrant Catholic family was content that all was right with the world. The rituals of marriage are more flexible and common sense than you think.
The media mesage is coming through loud and clear - white trash women are sluts for us to fuck with as we please. They should not aspire to higher than the shanty that houses their (incestuous) family and should know this is not their place to trash. They need to remain breeeders and feeders. I mean, how can we associate with these women? They don't even have Ivy League degrees to make up for their slutitude! If they won't stay in their place then we will take them out like the trash they are.
Women preceived to be of a lower socio-economic classes, regardless of their color, regardless of their actual status, are treated like trash - cheap, dirty, used, disposable objects undeserving of civil rights and privacy, let alone common decency.
Anglachel
12 comments:
The repugs and the main stream media made this mistake with Bill Clinton. Regular people saw in Bill Clinton a regular guy that did what many regular guys do give the chance. The public wasn't going along with the impeachment nonsense and his approval ratings remained high.
Gov. Palin, especially of she blows them away in speeches and interviews, could do the same thing. Millions of everyday people have teen age daughters that got pregnant and had to get married -including our presidential nominee on the other side. This reaction of the MSM is not going to be the reaction of middle america-there but or the grace of god go I they will say
Damn, girl.
Best thing you've ever posted, and that's saying something.
I'm a product of class privilege who now lives, first by necessity and now by choice, among people who are white, poor, and Southern. I'm very aware of the prejudices I've had to shed and the shameful reckoning I had to make with myself over what I once believed about these people, but I think the "Prog Boyz" and their MSMS counterparts are flat incapable of shame.
And they wonder why the "party of the working man/poor/underprivileged" has been such a failure at winning presidential elections. They wonder why the love for Hillary ran so deeply and fervently, why Bill is still so revered, why voters will rush to defend and embrace Palin regardless of their agreement with her political positions (another argument entirely).
The Democrats have miscalculated this thing from day one and are continuing to play a dangerous, tone-deaf, game of Risk. It remains to be seen whether they can reverse course, not now, but in the future. Perhaps an Obama loss is the only wake-up call that will work.
When did Democrats become so disrespectful of people's personal lives, their personal decisions and personal problems? And if Palin were a man there is no way the media attacks would be this vicious. In fact there'd probably be an element of empathy for the man whose "little girl" got pregnant out of wedlock.
Where's my Democratic Party? I want to be a member of a Party that does the right thing
Go girl! Better than well said!
I can't help noticing that the Republicans are quickly accepting a women who agrees with them politically.I am not talking about the nattering naybobs.
It seems that the left is choke full of adolescent males and their female followers.
What you describe has been there all along but has been thrown in far sharper relief on the heels of Hillary trashing.
I don't want to be the part of any group who would act in such a way or a party whose leaders are so spineless that they don't come out hard and strong against it.
I agree with nacabet. Where is my Democratic Party?
"Why is Chelsea Clinton so ugly? Because her father is Janet Reno."
--John McCain before a crowd at a Republican Senate fundraiser, 1998 (prior to calling his wife a "cunt" and a "trollop")
That's not to mention Ronnie Reagan's opinion that the correct word for young, unmarried pregnant women is, "promiscuous," unless of course, he was just pandering to the National Association of Evangelicals when he said that in 1983.
Yeah, misogyny happens on both sides of the isle and is ugly as hell, but in the case of the quotes, I'd kinda prefer to look at elected officials, particularly ones currently running for president. What some douchebag blogger writes about really doesn't have a whole lot of effect on me.
In terms of the real issues, though, I'm getting more and more convinced that Palin was a terrible mistake.
Thank you for once again getting me passed my state of shock at how outrageous the Prog Boyz are. Some former Hillary supporters have completely lost any sense of shame and are stopping at nothing to trash this woman for making choices that they disagree with. It is all really a wolf-pack subterfuge.
It is really nice to know there is someone sane out there!
anglachel you have hit the nail smack on the head. the prog smears on palin are a particulary venomous mix of sexism and upper-mid-income class hatred aimed at the whote working class.
the "hilbilly" and "redneck" attacks on hillary's voters were precursors, but this new batch of attacks is even more intense.
the democrats have become utterly lost.
i am voting repubican for the first time in my life. for me the democratic party is now just a shell - an empty vehicle for antidemocratic technorats.
Please compare the Palin family to:
the kennedy families (all of them)
the Rockefellers
Ike and Mamie
Ronald Reagan
the Clinton's
Carters (remember Billy)
FDR
Teddy Roosevelt's brother Elliott
Bush I and Bush II
John Kerry (marriage 1)
Obama's family
Where do the Palin's rank in family dysfunction with this lot?
I can not believe that the Obama camp is apparently bent on making this election about abortion rights and family values. And how has that worked for Democrats over the last decade? What happened to all those issues that Hillary outlined for us as the core of what this election must address? The Obamaopolis speech?
I'm a little late, but power has been intermittent at my home in the Arkanshire thanks to Gustav.
The Whole Foods Nation makes it obvious that it considers white working stiffs to be subhuman, deserving only scorn and punishment, and then it wonders why those working stiffs won't vote for the anointed candidates of WFN.
The WFN elitists need to take a lesson from the Elephascist elitists: One can sneer at the rubes behind their backs all one likes--as I suspect Karl Rove, for example, does--but only fools sneer at them to their "bitter" faces.
Re the engagement thing: I just finished The Novice's Tale by Margaret Frazer (recommended by a friend)and from it I learned that in the 1400s a betrothal, even a secret one between a girl and a boy, was considered by the Catholic Church to be as binding as a wedding in a cathedral. One could not marry another unless it was broken - something as hard to do as to dissolve a marriage.
Interesting, no?
p.s. The misogyny is stunning - and confirms my belief that all that guff about "I just hate her because she's Hillary" was, at least, 50% BS.
Excellent post.
I was also surprised by the degree to which the Progressive Folk felt free to attack Gov. Palin on an explicitly gender basis. A few days ago, I left a little comment over at The Poor Man concerning this, and it didn't take long to see that it's not a subject to be discussed calmly -- or at all, for that matter.
It seems that the overriding urge to jump on a pigpile transcends mere ideological differences.
Thanks for expressing precisely what has bothered me since Palin entered. As a woman and feminist, I was profoundly offended by her selection. Her rotten political positions should be all we focus on. I fear the male lefty lip-smacking over Palin's personal stuff that only distract from the looming possibility of McPain in the WH.
There are many ways to be racist; people of color are always sensitive to the signals. Trash- talking about poor whites indicates that your class-based ravings could be about any "other" with a less privileged background.
Post a Comment