Tuesday, October 28, 2008 - Posts
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I'm glad Ann brought up this piece by Elaine Lafferty. Her go-go enthusiasm for Palin is deeply peculiar and, I think, speaks to some deep tensions present in the women's movement—old guard vs. new, third wave vs. second wave—and some of the concerns feminists of all kinds had when it became clear Hillary Clinton's campaign wasn't heading to nomination night in Denver.
What bothers me about Lafferty's cheerleading is not simply that it's condescending—and that line Ann pulls out is particularly awful "... a mind that is thoughtful, curious, with a discernable pattern of associative thinking and insight"; what job doesn't require thoughtful curiosity?—but that it's also completely disingenuous. Lafferty is a consultant to the McCain-Palin ticket. She says it right up front, but somehow it's easy to forget as you make your way through the story. She came over to the campaign right after the Palin pick—a moment when the country barely knew the name of the governor of Alaska, let alone whether she was a "quick study" or a bumbling idiot. There is something disconcerting to me about seeing her sitting there, behind Palin, on stage as the candidate assumes a quasi-feminist stance and steals Hillary Clinton's lines about glass ceilings
And now Lafferty simultaneously mocks the so-called "inside the beltway feminist" establishment that shuns Palin for her Christian-political positioning but then uses her own insider feminist credentials (former Ms. editor) as a shield against any criticism that she's remotely swallowed the Kool-Aid on this one. It's not a critique, it's a turn-conventional-wisdom-on-its-ear essay designed to rile people up. Why else be so casually dismissive of the rape kit story and the book banning rumors? (Of the latter, Noam Scheiber's excellent piece on Palin explains her efforts quite clearly.) Does Lafferty really have such live-and-let-live relationship to Palin's positions on choice, feminism itself (Palin has recently rejected the label), and McCain's inability to support the Ledbetter Fairpay Act? I don't buy it.
Over at Jezebel there's an angry but cogent takedown of Ms. Lafferty and her strange tenure at Ms. If you click through the links to the New York Observer stories on Lafferty chafing against Eleanor Smeal and Gloria Steinem in her final days at Ms., it opens up a few other questions. Namely: While I think its essential to the future of feminism expands the definition of feminist beyond the white middle-class women who served as figureheads in the 1970s, upon reflection, why does this feel like Lafferty's means of getting in a few punches at her old colleagues?
Addendum: Emily's take below really cuts to the point. There are plenty of good feminist reasons beyond abortion to reject the McCain ticket. Lafferty has resorted to old bromides that just don't ring true.
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Good point, Ann. I found Lafferty's take on Palin tiresome for a different reason—it read to me like a rehash of the worst of the days of women beating one another up over Hillary Clinton's candidacy. I'm perfectly happy to be told that Palin is smart, since at the moment, I've started worrying that if McCain loses we're going to have to listen to some of his supporters blame a woman and her campaign's dumb idea of a $150,000 shopping trip. But Lafferty then trots out all the old horses: Feminists reject Palin "for the sin of being a Christian personally opposed to abortion." They "have been silent as Palin has been skewered in the old ways that female public figures are skewered, as well as a host of sexualized new ways as well." And they say she's not a feminist, Lafferty accuses.
Whatever. There are plenty of feminist reasons to oppose Palin no matter what you think about abortion, if you define feminism as advocating social policies that help women and families. Feminists haven't been silent about Palin and sexism, but some of them have wisely separated valid criticisms—she knows little about big important matters!—from the problematic put-downs. And sure, Palin can call herself a "conservative feminist." (Though has she actually used that term?) But is any of this an argument for why women, or anyone, should support her? At this point of One Week and Counting, that's the only debate that really matters.
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Debating Palin's wardrobe was fun, but now we're back to the woman herself. Does her "claim to fame [lie] in her repudiation of Clinton-type exceptionalism," as Judith Warner wrote in the New York Times Week in Review Sunday, or in being a "brainiac," as Elaine Lafferty, former Ms. editor-in-chief and longtime feminist, writes on the Daily Beast? At least the first can be supported with words from Palin herself. What's strange about Lafferty's praise is how, well, elitist—and even sexist—it sounds.
This former Hillary supporter pays tribute to "a mind that is thoughtful, curious, with a discernable pattern of associative thinking and insight. Palin asks questions, and probes linkages and logic that bring to mind a quirky law professor I once had." And for her clinching assessment, she invokes as a standard a down home man who kept his Harvard Law pedigree quiet: "Senator Sam Ervin, the brilliant strict constitutional constructionist and chairman of the Senate Watergate Committee whose patois included 'I'm just a country lawyer.' ... Yup, Palin is that smart."
This calibration of Palin's candle power is the result of one plane ride with the vice-presidential candidate. Am I wrong to think that a little more exposure might be required to thoughtfully assess a mind deemed so thoughtful and curious—-and that such a far-fetched comparison wouldn't get invoked for a man, at least not with a straight face? Like McCain's patronizing expressions of pride in his running mate, Lafferty's curiously condescending flattery helps explain the rogue impulse, I would say.
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