“…The only trouble with this one is, it almost feels as if all these women winning are kind of a blow to feminism.” – Tina Brown
It’s cleavage Friday! Again. This time because Sarah Palin is the target, not Hillary. Let me explain…. Then we’ll get to Tina Brown’s blast against Tuesday’s ladies’ night winners.
This was a regular feature back when Hillary was running for president, inaugurated because of a July 2007 C-SPAN cleavage column by Robin Givhan which was a turning point in my relationship with Clinton. When I began shifting away from being a primary agnostic. It was also beginning of the ramp up of an assault on Clinton that didn’t stop until the primaries were over. Clinton knew what it was and sent out a fundraising letter on it. Sarah should do the same. After Givhan’s cleavage column, “cleavage Fridays” became a regular de-stressing event around here.
So, Sarah, Hillary (and many of us) can feel your frustration.
It hardly matters if this cleavage kerfuffle about Sarah has any factual basis. It’s simply nobody’s business and if it wasn’t for Sarah’s incredible popularity and power no one would be noticing. Obviously, the attack on Sarah is also a lot different. It’s interesting that it’s women that are doing the attacking, just like what happened to Hillary, at least at the beginning; though no one will ever have to endure what Hillary went through again. But I’m having none of it except to say, if you’ve got ‘em and know how to flaunt ‘em, then bring out those bad girls, ladies. Don’t let the political peanut gallery make you think twice.
As for Tina Brown’s charge that the winners on Tuesday are a “blow to feminism,” well, you have to be a feminist before that could be true. Any woman not supporting women’s individual freedoms is not a feminist. I’ve been writing this long before other websites and newspapers started picking this theme up. Sarah Palin and her “mama grizzlies,” including the talented women who won Tuesday night are professional women with a lot to say, but they are not feminists.
The reality and point Ms. Brown doesn’t deal with is that their rise is because they unapologetically defend their views and never and I mean never sell them out. That’s why they’re rising.
Unlike many progressives, especially those in Congress today, the women who are supposed to stand up for women’s individual freedoms have instead, for instance, made it more difficult for women in the health care bill. Instead of a star female standing up for women during the health care debate, we had Speaker Pelosi making back room deals with the help of Catholic bishop representatives and Bart Stupak to sell us out. Remember the House “pro choice progressive caucus” and how they fell silent when Stupak was rising? That would never happen with Sarah Palin and the conservative women who won on Tuesday. Though I will say this latest news on behalf of military women is a sign that someone gets it.
So, though I appreciate Tina Brown’s stance, it only skims the problem that progressive women have today. The first being that the women on the right will not be silenced. While progressive women in Congress are willing to compromise on the most fundamental woman’s right, individual freedom.
In light of this, a discussion about who’s a feminist and who isn’t hardly matters, because the women who actually support women’s individual freedoms won’t stand up for them.
No progressive Congressman or woman is addressing the ultrasound bills popping up in the states across this country, which is a direct assault on women’s individual freedoms and privacy. Reproductive freedom is the basic tenet of feminism, so anyone demanding a woman get an ultrasound, because a state thinks she’s too stupid when she makes a private decision about her life, doesn’t get it. You can’t be a feminist, then demand to interject the state in a private decision of individual freedom. But nice try, Tina. At least you stood up.
The conservative women who won on Tuesday may be smart, capable, business women (though this has minuses to match pluses), politicians and legislators who know their stuff, but they are not feminists. They are new breed of conservative anti-feminists who are rising, because even though their message is against women’s individual freedoms, they are strong-willed women who know what they want and are articulating it, because strong and wrong always beats weak and right.
Comments are closed.