You've got to love the Pavlovian instincts of the crowds at Sarah Palin's recent speeches. So, the other day when she (mis)quoted from a New York Times article about Barack Obama's tenuous ties to Weatherman founder Bill Ayers, the crowd reaction went something like this:
"New York Times! Elite liberal media, boo! Rubish, filth, slime, muck! Boo! Booooo! BOOOOOO! Oh, wait, they said something bad about Obama.....Yay! New York Times! Woo-hoo!"
The same kind of thing happened today when Palin (mis)quoted former Secretary of State Madeline Albright, telling a crowd in California that "there's a special place in hell for women who don't support other women." Aside from more reflexive booing ("Clinton appointee! Boo! Oh, wait..."), I have to wonder...is Palin stupid, or does she just think we are?
Now, for the record, I don't think Palin is stupid. Like her references to Hillary Clinton the day she was announced as John McCain's running mate, I think this was yet another calculated attempt to tie her candidacy to the feminists who've done the real work of advancing women, despite the people like Palin's running mate and many of his supporters, who've done everything they can to undermine that work. It's a cheap way for conservatives to pretend that they're feminists without the inconvenience of having to support anything that's good for women.
Unfortunately, what Albright actually said was "help" women, not "support." And I find it hard to believe that the first woman Secretary of State would ever advise anyone to cast a knee-jerk vote for someone based solely on that person's gender. As I said many times earlier this year when explaining why I wasn't voting for Clinton, voting for someone just because she's a woman is just as sexist as not voting for her because she's a woman. Whether you want to "help," "support" or both, I'd urge you to remember one thing: one of our future vice presidents wrote the Violence Against Women Act; the other one thought that taxpayers shouldn't have to have the "burden" of collecting evidence in crimes against women. Just sayin'.
And I have to say that Palin's anti-intellectualism is really starting to piss me off. She read the Albright quote on the side of a Starbucks cup? Really? God forbid she had read it in, I dunno, a newspaper or something. And I'm sorry, I grew up in a small, rural town, too. My parents couldn't afford to send me traveling all over the world, either. But I still manage to learn things about other places, people and their points of view. Just because you're "Joe Sixpack" doesn't mean you have an excuse to be unengaged.
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