What Happened to Feminism? Republican Women on the Rise
I lost it with the fuddy-duddy, seventies-style women’s libs after their pathetic non-response, post 9/11, to Islamic misogyny.
Stuck in time, the leftover libbers still regarded membership rules at Georgia country clubs as a more serious threat to women than the billion-plus people under Sharia law.
This reached its black comic apogee (for now) with Nicholas Kristof’s recent review of Ayaan Hirsi Ali’s new book in that bastion of feminism, the New York Times. Kristof — husband of the Times‘ Sheryl WuDunn — attacked a woman whose filmmaking partner was assassinated by an Islamist, who has had a forced clitorectomy, and who is under constant threat of being murdered … for going too far in her criticisms of Islam.
Oh well. What’s a little multiculturalism among “feminist” friends?
Meanwhile, in the real world of yesterday’s election results, Republican women seem to be gaining everywhere, breaking glass ceilings as if they weren’t even there. As my grandmother used to tell me, it’s not what you say, it’s what you do.
Some of that doing is occurring — and none too soon — in my home state of California where Meg Whitman and Carly Fiorina will be helming the Republican ticket this November in the gubernatorial and senatorial slots.
These are going to be fascinating races.
This will be interesting indeed. It’s hard to see Fiorina, and her, so called, anti-choice credentials appealing to pro-choice independents and Democrats. But I expect she’ll try and avoid that issue as much as she can. California is a pro-choice state. Barbara Boxer is a polarizing figure it’s true. But the left loves her and goes to bat for her. I’ve lived here long enough to see her squeak by a few times. Votes in more conservative SoCal get counted first only to get canceled out as the returns come in from NoCal. Meg Whitman will soon learn that money isn’t all it takes to win an election. We’ve had several millionaire candidates in Ca. and generally they go down in flames. California is in a tough place for sure, but our state isn’t Ebay and shouldn’t be run like it is.
California would benefit from someone that actually knows how to succeed, make money, and has some idea on how to run a business…as a state is a business. like it or not.
.
Pulling Brown out of the closet is desperation at it’s lowest . He might be Dr feelgood, but not Dr Do good…talks a good game too.
The numbers turnout in Tuesday’s primaries show the uphill climb the Republicans have in California this fall — despite both Brown and Boxer being shoo-ins to win their nominations, while the GOP primaries were far more closely contested up until the final days, the number of Democratic voters still outpaced the number of voters casting ballots in the GOP primary.
That doesn’t mean people might have had other local elections they were concerned about, and will slide over the Fiorina and Whitman come November, but it does show that even in a year when Republican enthusiasm is up and Democratic excitement is muted, the best you can get turnout-wise is something around a 52-48 D over R split. It really may take a state default before some Californians are forced to face the fact that the taxpayer gravy train is over.
I absolutely agree with this. I noticed the numbers and thought to myself, if Jerry Brown can still get over a million votes, the state is lost. I would very much like to leave but my kids and grandkids are here so it is hard. I even had an offer from the Times’ esteemed political correspondent, George Skelton, to provide me with a map yesterday in a gentlemanly e-mail exchange. Nothing but default and collapse of state services will convince the left that their policies have ruined the state. His column alleging that Ronald Reagan would be rejected by today’s GOP was an example of the thinking that is leading us down that road paved with good intentions.
I’ve read quite a few who are claiming that the fault lies not in their policies, but in the fact that the evil rich are leaving the state rather than stay and pay their fair share.
Sometimes people, like me for example, vote democrat in the primary to vote against someone. Not to vote for someone.
That’s a protest vote that hurts all of us. Although i do understand your frustration…a lot of us are in the same leaky boat..
Does this split include absentee ballots? A lot of people in Republican districts and who vote the Republican ballot, like my husband and I did this year, vote by mail.
Maybe business “persons” are good for politics, but remember that not too long ago, Fiorina was CEO of H-P and was forced to resign by the board. I believe that H-P stock lost 60% of its value during her tenure. At least she’s not Ivy League and from New York City.
Be careful what you wish for. Not all CEOs are created equal.
Fiorina was forced out by a combination of board politics that included a personal vendetta by a major shareholder who inherited his shares, and short-term financial thinking that sought a head to chop for the “faliure” of Fiorina-led policies like the acquisition of Compaq. Those policies eventually resulted in H-P’s major comeback, but the comeback did not come soon enough to please the what-have-you-done-for-me-this-quarter mentality of Wall Street.
California may not be Ebay, whatever that means, but it surely needs to be run with fiscal discipline, something with which Ms. Whitman has substantial experience and a successful track record. And it needs to stop punishing and penlizing what businesses it still has, so that the state has a chance at a sustainable economic future. Someone who has run vast budgets under challenging economic conditions would seem a better choice than career glad handers and panderers to special interests.
California, like other leftist populations, has a reflexive distrust of “business,” and instead elects “public servants.” How’s that going?
I think Czarly is going to get blasted by her tenure at HP. First the massive payment by HP to get her to leave Lucent and then her payoff by HP to leave HP, next her chaotic tenure as CEO of HP, these are handouts to Boxer’s campaign manager. Her battle to purchase Compaq weakened HP (although some say that after years of integration sweat, it added strength to HP’s PC position) and then the payout that Capellas got to leave HP, even more freebies to Boxer. I will be stunned if she somehow pulls a win out of this even though I will vote for her to get rid of Boxer. All in all I think Campbell was the better candidate, both to beat Boxer as well as to help CA.
When you boil it right down, few leftist feminists have any practical experience of taking life by the horns, reaching out to others, and doing something optimistic with their womanhood: marrying, raising kids, leading, starting a business. They are self-absorbed and sorry for themselves, prefering to sit on the sidelines and criticize those who participate in life. Since almost everything about being both an American and a woman has been politicized into oblivion by the Left, they have little to do. Their idea of being a vital human being is painfully self-absorbed–a sexless, relativistic, meaningless existence. Leftism is fundamentally a very pessimistic and soul-destroying worldview.
How does that apply to Barbara Boxer, Nancy Pelosi, or a host of other Democratic left of the political spectrum women? They have rather large families I understand. You may disagree with their political stance on issues but to say that they aren’t “doing something optimistic with their womanhood” is a little simple minded. They may not be fulfilling their womanhood as you see fit but that is precisely the main pillar of American feminism. That is, for women to chart out their life path as they see fit and have the freedom to do it regardless of what people like you think.
Moreover, we can’t ignore the main problem for any GOP candidate in Ca. That is Democratic registration advantage. Current figures indicate that Republican registration has dropped from 34.4 percent four years ago to 30.8 percent now.
In the same time, Democratic registration increased from 42.7 percent to 44.5 percent. Voters who decline to state a party affiliation climbed from 18.5 percent to 20.2 percent.
What does this mean for a Republican candidate running a statewide race? It means that they must have their base united 100% behind them. However, in pandering to their base they alienate the vast majority of voters who are center-left in California. The numbers don’t add up and they lose.
http://cbs5.com/local/california.voter.rolls.2.1733902.html
Praetorian,
Your political demographic points about CA’s electorate are good ones. My question is this: Given the grave condition of California’s economy, the governments huge deficit, the exodus of monied interests leaving the state and it’s other problems caused by poor management, are CA voters ready to elect more responsible leaders? Your thoughts would be appreciated.
Are you inferring that the responsible choice would be a Republican? As I’ve said before, people generally vote for the lesser of two evils (sad state of affairs but true). Why would they go back to the greater evil in search of a solution? We played that game for eight years and look what that got the country. The best hope the GOP has is that people have short memories.
Thanks Praetorian for responding and showing your economic ignorance. Bush f’ed up by letting government grow larger. However, his tax cuts also produced 53 straight months of economic growth. If CA doesn’t slash it’s spending it’s population of entrepreneurs will continue to contract and it will continue to spiral into further economic difficulty. Tax revenue will continue to fall.
By the way, when Obama let’s the tax cuts expire in January, our economy will contract, as will federal tax revenue. When liberals finally learn that an expanding economy due to friendly capitalist policies actually creates revenue they can spend on their cherished govt programs, conservatives will be in trouble. Until then, when you Keynes types run things it is only a matter of time before the American people reject what you promote. That is because they are reminded that it doesn’t work.
Roger Simon and I must be cosmically in touch, for yesterday I wrote about the subject of the now obsolete feminists of the 1960s as a way of contrasting Ayaan Hirsi Ali’s feminism with the women artists who achieved fame in the 1970s. Similarly, I was horrified by Kristof’s nasty review of NOMAD in the NYT. My blog on Hirsi Ali is here: http://clarespark.com/2010/06/08/ayaan-hirsi-alis-love-letter-to-the-world/. I would not say that these left feminists were sexless, rather they seized on sexual subject matter, but were also anti-American in their rejection of the Vietnam war, as were many liberals. In the end, most were enemies to dread white males and dead white males, and often anti-art, unless it was produced by the victims of U. S. “Imperialism.” And so they entered the academy and got famous and tenured.
“California is in a tough place for sure, but our state isn’t Ebay and shouldn’t be run like it is.”
Huh? Ebay is a success. California is a disaster. Where do you live? Look around you. I live in West Hollywood and I’ve never seen things worse in my lifetime. Storefronts closed everywhere. It’s crazy.
WOW..nice response and SO true!! However dont confuse the lefies with truth..its like light to the gremlins.
1. Praetorian : “California is in a tough place for sure, but our state isn’t Ebay and shouldn’t be run like it is.”
3. Nancy Lopez: Huh? Ebay is a success. California is a disaster.
Lets continue with people with no real world experience at creating jobs or running anything successful. More elites from big colleges thats what we need……or at least made the mess that is cali!
America is caught in whirlpool. Neither party has the
vision or intellectual where-with-all to think its
way out of the present mental and emotional paralysis.
California least of all. To understand where you are
you need perspective and California has none. Its a
place where Hollywood hacks call themselves “artists”
1958 is ancient history, and the deepest spiritual
moment is watching a sunset while stoned.
There is no boundary whatsoever between make believe and reality. Actors become politicians and govern the State according to a screenplay they have running in their head, and politicians become actors along with canned lines, fake emotions and a laughtrack in the
background. Round and round the place goes dying a little more with every revolution around the drainhole.
Annihilation will come in the familiar form of a
third world cesspool. Los Angeles already looks and smells and functions like Mexico City. By 2016 whites will be a minority and the last barriers between
the USA and the other 26 Latin American failures to the South will come down. But in the meantime Californians
can smoke another joint, watch a few more sunsets,
discover join the egomaniacal “human potential”
movement of their choice, and pretend its all not important.
So you think running an internet junk site is the same as running a state? I’ll leave that one alone. You don’t live in West Hollywood, hon. Businesses are feeling the pinch everywhere but hardly the boarded up ghost town you describe. In the end, we end up voting many times for the lesser of two evils. It’s hard to see people going back to the greater evil to solve the problems.
I love the way you demonstrate your lack of knowledge so readily.
Why do you put down e-bay as a junk site? It’s a very successful business that has helped millions of people earn a little money, and millions of other people save some money.
Your elitism is showing again.
The liberal left will always play the “intellectual
superiority” gambit. But then instead of ideas, philosopical depth, historical understanding they begin talking about which Talking Head on TV is better.
After all what else makes up their world but slick
images, warm and fuzzy feelings, sound bites..all the apparatus of the TV and the sit-coms that have shaped
their world since diaperdom
Honestly, have you seen the crap they sell on that site? Most of it IS junk. Knitted beer cozies, old Christmas ornaments, etc. It’s an online yard sale. Certainly you might find a little treasure here and there but they are far and few between. Maybe you like that type of stuff. And that’s exactly who Ebay is for.
You are belittling something you obviously know nothing about and you sound silly
Lets see if I have this straight.
1) The site sells some things that you consider junk.
2) Therefore the site itself is junk.
1) Therefore the person who ran the site is incompetant.
When you want ignorance, the best place to find it is any liberal.
1) Like most libeals, you assume that you and your opinion is the standard by which all things must be judged. You find the stuff to be junk, therefore it is. No debate allowed. How f’n elitist of you.
2) From your false assumption we know get an invalid comparison. Even if a fraction of the stuff sold on the site qualifies in your pitiful excuse for a mind as junk, it does not follow that the site itself is junk.
3) Since you haven’t proven that the site itself is junk, the claim of incompetance does not follow either.
“Honestly, have you seen the crap they sell on that site? Most of it IS junk. Knitted beer cozies, old Christmas ornaments, etc. It’s an online yard sale”
You do realize, Praetorian, that you really give yourself away here.
1) Elitist: Who are you to say that a knitted beer cozy is junk? To someone else, it may be “pop art”.
2) Anti-green: Old Christmas ornaments… why not? Recycle, right? Isn’t that better than NEW ornaments?
3) Ignorant and Proud of it: “Most of the Stuff..” Really? Tell me what kind of goods are NOT available on E-bay. People like you love to spout off nonsense withouth actually knowing, don’t they? Because *feeling* something, to the Left, trumps *knowing* something, doesn’t it?
4) The screen name is a perfect one, of course. The Praetorians were the elite of the Roman Army- and were given huge sums of money in return for politically supporting their preferred Emperor, and costing the average Roman dearly. And they didn’t even have to defend the Roman frontier against the barbarians. Quite a deal they got from Claudius, don’t you think?
Our Public Employees are our modern day Praetorians, being treated to lavish, generous paychecks and perks at our expense, in return for their support for Barakus Obamus.
And the Visigoths are mustering beyond the Rhine.
Nice job all…. Extra points for Swami with the historical references.
Impressive!
So…what experience does Boxer and company have?
She has been in politics for 28yrs(going back to the greater evil as you put it?) and CA is in the dumps..worse than most states. Yeah..stick with that experience. Im all for it…companies are fleeing the state, moving to the south and other places.
also…Nice put down of Ebay to “prove” your point.
How about Obama, polosi, reid? What is their experience????
I would rather have someone with experience running even a small company successfully than someone who has been in politics for 20yrs or spent most of his/her time in some elite college.
“I would rather have someone with experience running even a small company successfully than someone who has been in politics for 20yrs or spent most of his/her time in some elite college.’
We had that for eight-years with G.W. Bush. It was a very bad idea. But you can go ahead and defend failure.
LOL Bush comes from a political family and never really ran a small/mid/large company successfully. Plus you proved my point about “elite colleges”.
So…..u stil havnt proven how an experienced leader of a successful company has less experience than boxer or obama or whoever….
Besides i wasnt defending Bush/failure as you say. You must have missed my whole argument to inject Bush into it.
Amazing..first you slander ebay as your argument, then blame Bush. The whole time never having answered my thought..except some nonsense about Bush??
so i must be feeding a troll….
Oh, nice! So Whitman should sell California to the highest bidder?
Hmm, if the reserve price is a dollar, forget it.
The problem with the GOP is that most of the men currently in office are pu$$ies.Their career is more important than,truth,honor and integrity.
Im scared… i actually think u hit the nail on the head!!!!
The GOP in general must stand for its principles not just mouth off about them. When push comes to shove they need to make a stand and stick to their guns!
If CA re-elects Gov. Moonbeam, then that will be conclusive evidence that there is no hope left for that state.
Hmm..How close are Whitman and Fiorina ?
How likely is it that they can convince
the wives and mothers to convince the
husbands that this time it is not
politics as usual ?
Since the CA legislature is controlled by Dems, would it be better to elect Brown? Maybe it would bring the crisis to a head.
The crisis is already at a head. That’s the problem.
Your point is interesting. Let the Dems have complete control so they can either fight with each other about forced austerity or simply run the state completely into the ground. We would also be treated to more self indulgent preening about immigration etc while the CA taxpayer is forced to pay for the education and support of illegals who are flooding into the state. It’s perfect chaos, completely self inflicted when you think about it. If the people of CA vote for more of it, they will get exactly what they so richly deserve for ignoring reality for so long.
It’s fantastic lunacy utterly disconected from the real world the rest of us inhabit.
California is a very pro choice State and I’m not sure if it has ever elected a Senator who wasn’t. (Did S.I. Hayakawa ever opine on the issue?)
On the other hand, the only pro choice nominee, Tom Campbell, went dark the last week of the primary. A candidate who can’t even raise enough money to run any advertising on the last week of an election is dead in the water in this state, much more so than a candidate who isn’t pro choice.
Hooray, more ersatz.
Against a backdrop of bad news, some things are moving in the right direction: We are learning to recognize the contrast between Thomas Jefferson liberal, the real thing, and John Kerry liberal, the real McDecoy. We are also learning to notice the ideological Grand Canyon within feminism, separating authentic Sarah Palin feminism from the grandiloquent affectations of Gloria Steinem and consort.
If we keep this up, pretty soon we will debate Judeo-Christian values in the western world, as opposed to the toxic mixture of leftism and Islam presently attempting to saturate the airwaves. This distinction should be the natural synthesis of the new clarity regarding liberalism and feminism. It’s all a matter of recognizing what’s authentic and what’s not.
One of these days we are going to wake up and demand that the ground zero mosque not be one inch taller than the cathedral of Fallujah or the synagogue of Jeddah, whichever rises the highest. The western culture has produced both Beethoven and Marx, but the islamic tradition has only competed on the Marx side of the equation. What in the hell is wrong with being proud of our Judeo-Christian values? People are leaving the muslim world to become free citizens in America? There must be some reason.
“authentic Sarah Palin feminism” I almost blew my lunch! Yes, our favorite snow-billy, cut and run governor, right-wing mouthpiece, is exactly what feminism is all about.
You started out with a well considered first comment in the thread (though it is the independent voter that decides elections, even in California, not registered party members).
Now you show your usual sophomoric asininity in this comment. Couldn’t help yourself.
In the world of the far, far left. You can’t be a woman, unless you are a liberal.
You can’t be a black, unless you are a liberal.
You can’t be an hispanic unless you are a liberal.
Scratch a liberal and you will always find a hate filled bigot. As preaetorian shows time and time again.
Though you may vehemently disagree with her political views, her brand of feminism is authentic. Everything she’s achieved thus far in life has been done so without depending on a well-heeled family or as a result of marrying wealthy men – precisely the opposite of Boxer and Pelosi. People stuck in rigid, 1970′s era feminist orthodoxy reject political conservatives like Palin because they hate heretics with a passion rivaled only by Wahabists.
What I also find revealing is that on the other end of the political spectrum you have someone like writer Camile Paglia – an unapologetic lefty and academic- who has lauded Palin’s true feminist credentials and gets routinely excoriated for it.
Excellent!
I don’t agree with all of Palin’s political views. But I look past that and know I’d rather be a Sarah Palin feminist than a Pelosi/Boxer etc., any day of the week.
I believe this is one of the reasons Sarah Palin is so popular. Women are able to see past the media BS and appreciate her and women like her.. and Whitman.
For Praetorian and those like him, having a career, being able to express yourself freely, have your own views and voice, and be who and what you wish to be…
…have nothing to do with feminism, if you don’t parrot the Imperial Line.
The fact that Sarah Palin **is free to piss off liberals by doing exactly what she wants to do** is feminism in action.
Like Obama, when spontaneous you fall short of insightful comment and reveal a rather unattractive persona. Childish retorts come to mind.
Careful..Muslims leave the Muslim world for economic
benefits. But the hatred and resentment stew
forever. There may be moderate Muslims…but there
is no moderate Islam. If you truly commit yourself
to the Quran you will be a terrorist. Which leaves
us with the real question..why are we taking this
terrible terrible risk by allowing any Muslims
into the West, because sooner or later we will pay
for our delusions in blood.
“ground zero mosque” I don’t have the words to adequately describe my disgust at this foul excrescence’s very existence. New York, you are absolutely dead to me.
My lib female relative bashed Sarah Palin throughout the campaign for giving birth (at her age) and “I can see Russia from my house” to name just a few of the simpleton media one liners. Then when I pointed out how STUPID a remark the Secretary of Homeland Security Napilasomethingarather made, “The system worked” she jumped all over me and said; “If a man had said that it would have been OK.” She will no doubt find fault in successful women that know how to balance huge budgets like a Whitman and a Fiorina. All I can say to my dear relative anymore is, “Are you Insane?”
She must still get her news from SNL…sad…
Sarah did not say the Russia line..maybe your lib relative has a little problem with strong females..is she still in the closet?
I think the most important lesson my Dad taught me in life was never try arguing with a liberal.
He was right of course.
“I can see Russia from my house”
—
The really dumb thing is that Palin never said this.
With all the economic, social, political, and military problems brewing all over the world, the most important things, the most fundamental things, are that Sarah Palin is not the VP and that Tina Fey is, like, super funny and awesome. Right?
Praetorian,When did ignorance become a point of view ?
When liberals declared themselves the judge of all things.
Rep. Nancy Pelosi (D-Cosa Nostra) does indeed “have a very large family.”
This is a notion near and dear to my heart, Roger…this “liberal” mantle given to those who adhere like barnacles to the “playbook”, with real fear of shunning for the slightest stray thought.
The death of utility in almost any “ism”, comes not from expansion into the far reaches of expansion, but from the “Bloc Plague”, where new thoughts and ideas are strangled as infants, before they might grow, germinate and advance the “elder wisdom”.
Boxer is a carrier. Many boomer’s are. Stuck in 60′s flashback adrenaline rushes, they have become permanent scolds, whose approach to the country is to find scabs and pick at them…a leper colony in love with finding the next blemish…so much so, they are willing to create them out of whole cloth, if none exists.
There is something necrotic and diseased about the whole notion that the entirety of your politics is to spotlight national blemishes, pick at them until they bleed, apologize for those “others” who brought them about, and create cottage “industries of penance” …the collection basket as absolution.
When a “movement” no longer is propelled on natural energy, it must be fueled by fraud. The massive engine for this fraud, the legacy media….bombards the masses with daily doses of warts, boils, open sores…for our consumption. They do this as an arm of the movement…leaving the masses shill-shocked with all our “ugliness” as a body politic.
They are a “mirror” held up to our faces…a fun house mirror, distorted and manipulated…the looking glass that reflects a preordained image.
No, Rpger….there is nothing “liberal” about kneejerk, pre-masticated, opinions of the scolds. The irony is…in order to survive…it must lie to itself about everything it pretends to stand for…and against.
Beautifully written, scathing but making points. The liberal left can’t really think for itself in the moment I’ve found. You can’t argue with a liberal because it’s very existence is in the past.
cfbleachers:
Excellent writing and accurate thoughts on the flawed humans who have deemed themselves our leaders. When I read comments like yours, I actually see a glimmer of hope on the horizon. Then, I see Katy Couric on TV and the gloom settles in once more.
What happened to feminism? Well, some of us believed the rhetoric that its supporters wanted women to make choices about their own lives. All women. Whether they had a career and/or a family. Whether they wanted to go to college and have credit cards in their own name, whether they wanted to get married or not. 2008 was a rough year for us for we learned that Gloria Steinem is OK but Palin never can be.
Here’s a clue or two for the Democratic Party and why so many women like me are backing away from supporting you. We have worked hard to get where we are and will not be held hostage by a party that wants to keep reminding us we are victims and our priority can be no higher than where we rank in your pecking order of identity politics. We believed the rhetoric and can no longer relate to your sense of who “has made enough” and who deserves a hand out. Many of you all are looking backwards and frankly, that’s not your best side. Quit whining, lefties, and let the grown ups take charge. Female grown ups too.
I suspect that a lot of these so called feminsts are starting to wonder if the choices they made in life really were the best ones for them.
Instead of dealing honestly with their doubts, they are doubling up on their anger for anyone who made choices different from theirs.
In their minds, if they can prove that those other choices are invalid, then they reinforce their own sense of rightness for making the choices that they did.
Let’s put politics aside for the moment: Sarah Palin is not heir to wealth or power, nor did she marry it. Sarah Palin is a wife and mother and a politician who worked her way up from the community level to Vice-presidential nominee. Sarah can bring down a moose and then field dress it. Sarah Barracuda is a former television sportscaster who was a high school basketball star. She’s a bush pilot and a commercial salmon fisherman. She’s a small business owner. When she became pregnant with a Down’s syndrome child, she weighed her options, sought council from God and made her choice, her choice. She has a best-selling book and a successful new career as a public speaker. She is highly influential and her endorsement is much sought after.
How can anyone who calls herself a feminist not celebrate such a woman? Yes, Sarah’s a beautiful woman and an ex-beauty queen which seems to be held against her, but wasn’t icon Gloria Steinem also a beautiful woman and an ex-Playboy bunny? So, it must all come back to politics. Conservative, pro-life women must be scorned no matter their accomplishments. Which marks the traditional feminists as the narrow-minded iconoclasts they are.
As far as “their pathetic non-response, post 9/11, to Islamic misogyny,” it appears with this crowd that politically correct multi-cultural sensitivity will trump the rights of women every time.
You forgot:
Major in Broadcast with a minor in PoliSci. Competed in beauty contest to get college money, because her family couldn’t afford it.
Has a hunky man’s man for a hubby who does not mind taking a backseat for her. That must just frost the feminists!
Has a fine family and a career. Has become a national icon, no matter how they run her down. She simply has it all.
They HATE her.
Feminists on the right are not professional feminists, in that they do not make their living by being feminists. They live in the real world.
Exactly. We work, we marry, we raise a family. Sometimes we make (earn) more than our husbands. We not only benefit from the acts of the early feminists and equal rights crusaders, we also prove that we can be successful. But there is a cost involved, I believe. We got what the feminists wanted, and now a two-income family is almost necessary in order to pay the mortgage and buy the toys. And support the welfare state.
Well, the lefties and the feminists were caught wrong footed after 9/11. Had they continued condemning Islamic misogyny and other human rights violations (and many of them had, up til then) they would find themselves on the same side as the hated BusHitler, aka Smirkeychimp W. McHitlerburton. Such a horrid position would have been untenable, would have shattered the foundations of their smug insulated world. The only thing they could do to maintain self respect was to shut up.
It puts me in mind of the observation I made mid decade, that in some leftist enclaves, there was perhaps an 80% likelihood that any car with a “Free Tibet” sticker would also have a “No War in Iraq” one. It puzzled me for a while, wondering why Tibetans deserved freedom but not Iraqis. Two answers occurred to me: one, the car owners would be sucking up to Beijing had Bush done anything to bring about freedom for the Tibetans; and two, that they were not using the word “Free” as a verb.
In any event it showed up the shallow and positional extent of their supposedly deeply held convictions.
No one can claim that leftists are deep thinkers (lefties just think they are to enhance their self esteem).
Thirteen of the seventeen woman serving in the Senate are Democrats.
Do Republican women have their own set of glass ceilings to break?
let’s see – among the many politico’s feminista’s love and blindly support are Teddy Kennedy and Bill Clinton. they talk the talk – as long as pretty young women hang on their arm and accomodate them. such a deep and abiding respect they have for women. /sarc.
What happened to feminism? Sarah Palin happened.
Modern feminism became just another branch of the far-left Democrat party. They mouthed the words and made symbolic gestures, but they remained staunch operatives of whoever the Dem candidates were.
The mantras of ‘equality’, ‘choice’ and ‘freedom’ were just words, as long as the candidate promoted their one true issue: abortion on demand. If you made the ‘wrong’ choice, you were dead meat as far as the ‘main stream’ feminists were concerned. And of course, the ‘wrong’ choice was always to be a member of the GOP.
The question for me is, can California fix itself? That means electing the best we have so far, which is Meg Whitman. Can we do it? I don’t know, though I’m going to work toward that end.
If we elect Jerry Brown, well, the show is over. Our friends and neighbors in the other 49 states get to bail us out because we’re beyond bankrupt. In this sense, Praetorian, we do need to run the state like ebay.
There is no doubt that the Democrats are devoted to the environment. They are recycling a used and used up Governor.
I’m a Conservative Californian but I’m thinking of voting for Jerry. I watched the Conservatives in this state turn their backs on The Governator because he was insufficiently orthodox on the social issues. Most of the half-wits in this mentally challenged state are going to pack both houses of the legislature with a gaggle of hippies and Mexican National Socialistas whose only loyalty is to the parasitic public employee unions who violently oppose any change in their absurd pensions. Jerry’s just the little guy to be on top of the wedding cake as the doo-doo hits the state subsidized alternative-energy windmill. This state deserves Jerry and The Demo Gang to reward the electorate for their wise, caring choices as the Love-in goes bankrupt.
That’s the kind of thinking that gave us Obama.
The reason why this conservative turned on the Governator is because he blew public pension reform with his insistence on a special election and then once blown, he refused to revisit the issue (and his costly job-killing stances on climate change, carbon emissions and energy didn’t help a bit). Moonbeam is the one who gave us public sector unions in the first place and will be absolutely useless on their reform much less their abolishment. The only thing worse than the California legislature would be the California legislature with Jerry Brown ready and eager to sign their abominable bills into law. At least Whitman will give us a fighting chance.
No! Don’t ask Mickey Kaus who he’ll vote– AAAAAAH! Now we’ll have a month of blog posts of him making up his mind!
Note to my fellow Republicans – to those who think that Fiorina and Whitman are less than perfect Republicans — please keep in mind that their opponents ARE PERFECT MARXISTS.
If at least Whitman does not win in November, then California will be lost to massive rioting and civil unrest. The state will be on an irreversible path to chaos and collapse, and could bring all of America down with it.
And the United States? When President Comrade Hussein decides to bail out a bankrupt California, I venture that Rick Perry may say enough is enough and force a civil war, that Red State America would win, since it has most of the military behind it.
I disagree, Eric. R. They aren’t “PERFECT MARXISTS.” They don’t have anything near that kind of theoretical standing (not that it’s much). They are mush-head big spending liberals with some kind of vague belief in tired Keynesian economics who are desperately clinging to power by appealing to interest groups. In so doing, they are wrecking the state. A tiny bit of Marxism, sure. But have they really read Das Kapital? I doubt it. Well, maybe, Jerry, but I’m sure he would have many quibbles with it. I doubt Boxer has read anything serious through. Know your enemy. Don’t be knee-jerk in your views just because they are.
One experiment is worth a thousand theories.
California is leading the nation to reform or default.
Aunt Stella used to say, “If women were not allowed to vote, operate motor vehicles or speak on the telephone, this world would be a much more peaceful, safe and quiet place.”
GOP leaders boosting female candidates are assuring GOP defeat in the upcoming elections. Doesn’t one suppose that these political genii know this to be true?
I watched the Conservatives in this state turn their backs on The Governator because he was insufficiently orthodox on the social issues.
I have to disagree. Arnold was a well-known social liberal when he was FIRST elected. Conservatives who wanted a social conservative could have voted (and did vote) for Tom McClintock in that election. McClintock got 20%. Arnold got 40%. Given that Prop 8 passed in 2008 with 52% of the vote, that means there are more than 20% social conservatives in California, which means that a not insignificant number of social conservatives voted for Arnold.
I am one social conservative who did. I cast my vote for Arnold because the CA economy to me was Issue #1, Issue #2, and Issue #3. Since Arnold was a devotee of Milton Friedman, I concluded that not only had he paid serious attention and study to economics but also, miracle of miracles, he actually believed in the FREE MARKET. Which put him, in my book, miles ahead of the horrible choices the Dems were offering up, Gray Davis and Cruz Bustamante.
I knew I wasn’t backing a Ronald Reagan but that was okay with me. I voted for Arnold to steer the CA budget off the rocks, and I believed him to be the candidate both best equipped to win and to take on the CA legislature.
The people who put the knife in Arnold’s back were not social conservatives but Hollywood liberals.
Arnold was one of them — a Hollywood legend, a social liberal, married to a Kennedy for pete’s sake. You would think they would have been at least politely admiring the ascent of one of their own to a run for governor. But no. He committed the unpardonable sin of running for office with an R after his name. I was working on a TV show in 2003 and you should have heard the top-of-the-voice, vitriolic b!tching, day in and day out, about how awful Arnold was. The screeching went into overdrive when the LAT came out with the Gropegate hit piece like, what, 5 days before the election.
I thought it ironic that the same people who preached “tolerance” became the most red-faced fundies with someone who was, all things considered, a pretty moderate candidate. BTW, none of their criticisms of Arnold were directed at his ideas on economics. It was all ad hominem — “pig,” “idiot,” “male chauvinist” etc.
These were not stupid people, mind you (I was working in a writer’s office; these were all smart, articulate, talented and otherwise very likeable folks), but they did not EVER engage in argument on the merits when it came to Schwarzenegger. And BTW they could not come up with the name of the radical student organization that Cruz Bustamante had been a member of (MEChA); a few of them only knew generally that Bustamante had belonged to something or other, and that there had been some back-and-forth in the news about it. IOW their actual *knowledge* of politics and policy did not go nearly as deep as their opinions. Roger can obviously say better than I can whether this is typical or not, since this is the pond he swims in regularly. I merely dipped a toe in the water for a couple years.
BTW, Roger, I once worked on a TV movie with Ron Silver. Between takes he used to go off to some corner spot and quietly study his script. I frequently saw him wearing his kippah. I only spoke to him a few times in the course of on-set stuff so I can’t say I ever had a “real” conversation with him, and obviously I did not know him on the level you did. But even from casual observation he just came across to me as a smart and classy guy. I did tell him that one of my favorite roles of his was his guest appearance on “Wiseguy.”
Some of us believe that this country would be a better place in which to live if ladies were not allowed to vote, let alone hold public office.
Would we not be better off without Hillary, Pelosi, Boxer, Sebellius, Whitman, et sim?
The same principle might also be applied to the use of automobiles and telephones?