Saturday, September 13, 2008
Free associative condemnation
I am having Sarah Palin nightmares. I dreamt last night...
This is a powerful beginning. We are about to be inspired with Ensler's deepest feelings and aspirations. She evokes speakers who have come before her in the civil rights arena. When you start your speech with some variation of "I have a dream", you are holding yourself to a high rhetorical bar. A high bar indeed. One Ensler is apparently going to tunnel under, as this turns out to be some sort of backcountry hallucination.
...that she was a member of a club where they rode snowmobiles and wore the claws of drowned and starved polar bears around their necks.
I have a particular thing for Polar Bears. Maybe it's their snowy whiteness or their bigness or the fact that they live in the arctic or that I have never seen one in person or touched one. Maybe it is the fact that they live so comfortably on ice. Whatever it is, I need the polar bears.
I, for one, am relieved that the Polar Bear population has recovered so dramatically since the 1950s. Ms. Ensler and I need Polar Bears more than fish need bicycles. I'm also relieved, being big and white myself, that it isn't cause for Ms. Ensler to discard me like..an old fish.
I don't like raging at women. I am a Feminist and have spent my life trying to build community, help empower women and stop violence against them. It is hard to write about Sarah Palin. This is why the Sarah Palin choice was all the more insidious and cynical. The people who made this choice count on the goodness and solidarity of Feminists.
This is the dark Rovian tactic of...giving you what you want. Or what you thought you wanted when feminism meant empowering women and didn't mean passing a variety of ideological litmus tests bearing almost no relationship to feminism. To whit...
But everything Sarah Palin believes in and practices is antithetical to Feminism which for me is part of one story -- connected to saving the earth, ending racism, empowering women, giving young girls options, opening our minds, deepening tolerance, and ending violence and war.
Yes, environmentalism and war are deeply feminist issues.
I believe that the McCain/Palin ticket is one of the most dangerous choices of my lifetime, and should this country chose those candidates the fall-out may be so great, the destruction so vast in so many areas that America may never recover. But what is equally disturbing is the impact that duo would have on the rest of the world. Unfortunately, this is not a joke. In my lifetime I have seen the clownish, the inept, the bizarre be elected to the presidency with regularity.
And we have seen the inept, bizarre and clownish somehow elevated to the level of 'public intellectual'. It is time for bloviators like this to put their money where their mouth is. In a world where air quality and standards of living are improving around the Western World, why is it so easy for people to spout nonsense about vast destruction? Ensler should be focusing her energies on China and the former Soviet Bloc if she is in the least serious about her concerns.
Sarah Palin does not believe in evolution. I take this as a metaphor.
Naturally. Taking things factually is not Ensler's forte. I didn't think this could get even more tendentious.
In her world and the world of Fundamentalists nothing changes or gets better or evolves. She does not believe in global warming.
False, apparently. She at least believes in it enough to make policy that relies on it.
The melting of the [A]rctic, the storms that are destroying our cities, the pollution and rise of cancers, are all part of God's plan. She is fighting to take the polar bears off the endangered species list. The earth, in Palin's view, is here to be taken and plundered. The wolves and the bears are here to be shot and plundered. The oil is here to be taken and plundered. Iraq is here to be taken and plundered. As she said herself of the Iraqi war, "It was a task from God."
False again. Isn't it anti-feminist to stuff so many false ideas into Palin's mouth? What sort of double standard is this?
Sarah Palin does not believe in abortion. She does not believe women who are raped and incested and ripped open against their will should have a right to determine whether they have their rapist's baby or not.
She obviously does not believe in sex education or birth control. I imagine her daughter was practicing abstinence and we know how many babies that makes.
False. She is on record in favor of sex education and birth control. She is, however, a firm believer in the rights of the unborn. I don't agree with her, but the 'anti-feminism' of this position has never been entirely clear to me. Abortion is about when life begins and rights are invested in the (male or female) baby. But, as you know, believing in the rights of the unborn is an excommunicable offense.
Sarah Palin does not much believe in thinking. From what I gather she has tried to ban books from the library, has a tendency to dispense with people who think independently.
From what I gather, Eve Ensler does not 'much believe' in reading, has a tendency to write in comma-joined clauses of untruth.
She cannot tolerate an environment of ambiguity and difference. This is a woman who could and might very well be the next president of the United States. She would govern one of the most diverse populations on the earth.
Sarah believes in guns. She has her own custom Austrian hunting rifle. She has been known to kill 40 caribou at a clip. She has shot hundreds of wolves from the air.
Hang on a second. These are issues of deep relevance to feminists?
Palin passed a law that allows culling of wolf herds. She does this herself? Cite please?
Sarah believes in God. That is of course her right, her private right.
Mighty white of you, as they once said
But when God and Guns come together in the public sector, when war is declared in God's name, when the rights of women are denied in his name, that is the end of separation of church and state and the undoing of everything America has ever tried to be.
I think she must be referring to abortion, which I understand she views as a woman's right. I lean towards Ensler's position myself, but her ignorance of the alternative view that the unborn have rights is more than a little disturbing. Who, exactly, is being dogmatic?
I write to my sisters. I write because I believe we hold this election in our hands. This vote is a vote that will determine the future not just of the U.S., but of the planet. It will determine whether we create policies to save the earth or make it forever uninhabitable for humans. It will determine whether we move towards dialogue and diplomacy in the world or whether we escalate violence through invasion, undermining and attack. It will determine whether we go for oil, strip mining, coal burning or invest our money in alternatives that will free us from dependency and destruction. It will determine if money gets spent on education and healthcare or whether we build more and more methods of killing. It will determine whether America is a free open tolerant society or a closed place of fear, fundamentalism and aggression.and why wouldn't they? Obama! Change, with a side of Polar Bear Hallucinations!
If the Polar Bears don't move you to go and do everything in your power to get Obama elected ..
...then consider the chant that filled the hall after Palin spoke at the RNC, "Drill Drill Drill." I think of teeth when I think of drills. I think of rape. I think of destruction. I think of domination. I think of military exercises that force mindless repetition, emptying the brain of analysis, doubt, ambiguity or dissent. I think of pain.
Free association is fun. I'm thinking of a glass of scotch, Joe Pass and a colorful sunset. If Ensler went to her local depot and said "drill, drill" she might come up with another set of associations.
Do we want a future of drilling? More holes in the ozone, in the floor of the sea, more holes in our thinking, in the trust between nations and peoples, more holes in the fabric of this precious thing we call life?
I have to hand it to Ensler there. There ARE holes in her thinking. She has 'emptied her brain of analysis, doubt, ambiguity or dissent'. See? Palin is already working her insidious agenda with massive rays of cognitive dissonance, disorienting pundits everywhere. She's a wolf-killing, oil-drilling mad scientist with an insidious scheme to rip apart pockets of unthinking progressive cocoonery all over the country.
Is there anything Sarah Palin can't do?
Palin and I disagree on so much, but I'm beginning to really like her. I haven't fisked in ages.
UPDATE: one of the 'feminists' in my discussion group just called her a 'dumb broad'. I'll say it again - is there anything Sarah Palin can't do?
17 Comments:
By 
D.E. Cloutier, at
Sat Sep 13, 12:40:00 PM:
Re: "Palin and I disagree on so much, but I'm beginning to really like her."
Sarah Palin supported Steve Forbes for President. As a businessperson, you need to remember that.
From Factcheck.org: "Palin never endorsed or supported Pat Buchanan for president. She once wore a Buchanan button as a 'courtesy' when he visited Wasilla, but shortly afterward she was appointed to co-chair of the campaign of Steve Forbes in the state."
Link:
http://www.factcheck.org/elections-2008/sliming_palin.html
By Andrew Hofer, at
Sat Sep 13, 12:45:00 PM:
Right. I just need to remember that I'm pro-choice and think debating creationism in school would be waste of time.
Also, I disagree with her conversion on global warming. Her skepcticism of warming models is more than merited, more politicians should stop being bullied by the religionists on a scientific issue (kinda like creationism).
By Anthony, at
Sat Sep 13, 12:48:00 PM:
Ensler's article represents a real synergy: the perfect union of fruit and cake.
By D.E. Cloutier, at
Sat Sep 13, 01:15:00 PM:
This comment has been removed by the author.
By D.E. Cloutier, at
Sat Sep 13, 01:17:00 PM:
Subj: "I'm pro-choice"
Nothing much happened under Reagan. Nothing much happened under Bush I or Bush II. The Democrats control Congress. Worry about real issues.
By 
, at
Sat Sep 13, 03:27:00 PM:
False. She is on record in favor of sex education and birth control.
Miles, it would be useful if you could point your readers to a link where she says that she is in favor of one or both. Her answers in her 2006 Gubernatorial campaign belie her support of either:
"Will you support funding for abstinence-until-marriage education instead of for explicit sex-education programs, school-based clinics, and the distribution of contraceptives in schools?
Palin: Yes, the explicit sex-ed programs will not find my support."
By Andrew Hofer, at
Sat Sep 13, 03:35:00 PM:
How about more recently:
"I'm pro-contraception, and I think kids who may not hear about it at home should hear about it in other avenues,"
http://www.latimes.com/news/politics/la-na-sexed6-2008sep06,0,3119305.story
By Anthony, at
Sat Sep 13, 03:39:00 PM:
I'll grant her sex-ed answers were ambiguous (just what is "explicit?"), but I think her actions as governor clarify things.
I really think in Palin we're seeing a genuine Western conservative, for whom social issues (to paint broadly for a moment), while important to her, are not issues to be pressed in government. Far more important are economic and clean-government issues.
By , at
Sat Sep 13, 04:51:00 PM:
Eve Ensler can be described with the same phrase I've used here regarding Nancy Pelosi: She is so dense, light cannot escape her. And fellow Missourian Mark Twain described her truly embarrassing blather perfectly: "The problem ain't what folks don't know, it's what folks know that isn't so."
By Simon Kenton, at
Sat Sep 13, 06:26:00 PM:
"And we have seen the inept, bizarre and clownish somehow elevated to the level of 'public intellectual'."
Come on, you think you're so cool, well, look what I've seen. I saw the best minds of my generation destroyed by madness, starving hysterical naked, dragging themselves through the negro streets at dawn looking for an angry fix.
Top that, Mr. Dismal Science.
By Gary Rosen, at
Sat Sep 13, 06:47:00 PM:
"Nothing much happened under Reagan. Nothing much happened under Bush I or Bush II. The Democrats control Congress. Worry about real issues."
Exactly, DEC. Unless the President appoints SC justices who will overturn Roe v. Wade, they have almost no influence on the "social issues". Just to take one example, when "social conservative" George W. Bush took office gay marriage was a radical fringe idea, now it is the law in some states. What the President does have the most control over is foreign policy, which is why I will be voting Republican for the foreseeable future.
By Georg Felis, at
Sat Sep 13, 08:04:00 PM:
Actually I find it a good barometer of who to vote for when the left-wing loons come out in frothing incoherence much like Delphic Oracles. Anybody they hate that much has got to be a good pick.
By Purple Avenger, at
Sat Sep 13, 10:00:00 PM:
Is there anything Sarah Palin can't do?
I had a flat tire today. Of course I blame Palin
By Elise, at
Sun Sep 14, 01:41:00 AM:
Great job taking this apart, but you missed my two favorite lines:
This is why the Sarah Palin choice was all the more insidious and cynical. The people who made this choice count on the goodness and solidarity of Feminists.
No one is likely to make that mistake again.
I imagine her daughter was practicing abstinence and we know how many babies that makes.
Only one that I’ve heard about and that was quite some time ago.
Ensler grossly misunderstands feminism. True feminism is not tied to polar bears, ice, environmentalism, opposing war, opening minds, evolution, global warming, animal rights, hating guns, not banning books, opposing religion, hating coal, funding education, universal healthcare, supporting diplomacy, or hating dentists. Even more shocking, it is quite possible to be a feminist and be against abortion. Most shocking of all it is quite possible to be a feminist and be virulently racist: the only requirement is that you hate men and women of (fill in despised group) equally.
I’m a Real Feminist; Ensler is an Institutional Feminist. Institutionals give Reals a bad name.
By Whiskey, at
Sun Sep 14, 02:27:00 AM:
the explicit sex education is just that, explicit. Graphic descriptions and depictions of various sex acts, behaviors, and such that even Playboy and Penthouse magazines would reject as crossing the line. Including various gay and straight sex acts.
I do see a point in finding the utility of that graphicness to be counter-productive, for one thing it relies on shock and you'll have tittering teens laughing embarrassed instead of focusing on a honest assessment of their risks and various ways to reduce the risks. Not all of which btw are pregnancy either.
Palin supported sex ed, including contraception advice, just not graphic depictions of sex acts and so on. I tend to agree, on instructional grounds if nothing else.
By , at
Sun Sep 14, 04:31:00 AM:
I hope Ensler has a gas oven. Because nothing says "Fuck you" like doing a Sylvia Plath.
Then we'll be sorry. Oh yes, we will.
By joated, at
Sun Sep 14, 09:02:00 PM:
I love the part where she claims Palin has personally shot 40 caribou at a clip and has shot hundreds of wolves from the air. (At least that's what it said in the copy forwarded to me. I'm not going to click trough and see if it's in the HuffPo post.)
I'd say Ensler has lost all touch with reality but The Vagina Monologues indicates she had, at best, a passing aquaintance.
