Fifth columnist

I guess Barbara Amiel, rattling around the Palm Beach estate, needed to make a few extra freelance bucks. This from yesterday's Wall Street Journal:

Imagine watching Sarah Palin, the gun-toting, lifelong member of the NRA, the PTA mom with teased hair and hips half the size of Hillary's, who went ... omigod ... to the University of Idaho and studied journalism. (Actually, Palin bounced around a bunch of universities -- Antonia) Mrs. Palin with her five kids and one of them still virtually suckling age, going wham through that cement ceiling put there exclusively for good-looking right-wing/populist conservative females by not-so-good-looking left-wing ones (Gloria Steinem excepting). There, pending some terrible goof or revelation, stood the woman most likely to get into the Oval Office as its official occupant rather than as an intern.

<SNIP>

Sarah Palin has put the flim-flam nature of America feminism sharply into focus, revealing the not-so-secret hypocrisy of its code and, whatever her future, this alone is an accomplishment. As she emerged into the nation's consciousness, a shudder went through the feminist left—a political movement not restricted to females. She is a mother refusing to stay at home (good) who had made a success out in the workplace (excellent) whose marriage nevertheless is a rip-roaring success and whose views are unspeakable—those of a red-blooded, right-wing principled pragmatist.

The metaphorical hair stood up on the back of every licensed member of the feminist movement who could immediately see she was a monster out of a nightmare landscape by Hieronymus Bosch. Pro-life. Pro-oil exploration in Alaska, home of the nation's polar bears for heaven's sake. Smaller government. Lower taxes. And that family of hers: Next to the Clintons with their dysfunctional marriage, her fertility and sexually robust life could only emphasize the shriveled nature of the one-child family of the former Queen Bee of political female accomplishment.

Charming, and unsubstantiated.

For example, Amiel misquotes NBC's Andrea Mitchell who did not say that ''only the uneducated'' would vote for Palin. What Mitchell said actually was:

Well, they, (Republicans) think now that they have a story. They have a story of a working mom, she is a colorful character, an Annie Oakley, you know, Annie get your gun. They love her story. But when she tried to talk about Hillary Clinton in Pennsylvania, in western Pennsylvania yesterday at a rally with conservative Republican voters, Hillary Clinton was booed. So she can use the Hillary Clinton and Geraldine Ferraro analogy if she wants to in interviews. She cannot use that at Republican rallies. She is not appealing to the same women who were really voting or supporting Hillary Clinton on ideological issues, but they think that they can peel off some of these working class women, not college-educated, who--the blue collar women who were voting for Hillary Clinton and may be more conservative on social causes.

Feminists rose to defend Palin against sexist attacks that came from MEN -- and traditional and conservative women (Come on down, Dr. Laura!) -- who questioned her ability to be a mother and vice-president.

Feminists' problem with Palin is that she stands for nothing to help women, children and families in a shrinking economy and deteriorating environment. Lower taxes for whom? Pro whose life? (Amiel herself had an abortion, at age 24, when she was five months pregnant.) Perhaps Amiel might want to spend some time with asthmatic children with not enough to eat in run-down and scary neighbourhoods?

Not that Amiel would know.

So anyway, where was she when Hillary Clinton was being pilloried by the very same misogynistic right that now are wah-wah-wahing about the criticism of Palin?

More:

Only nanoseconds before the choice of Mrs. Palin as VP put her a geriatric heartbeat away from the presidency, a woman's right to have a career and children was a shibboleth of feminism. One always knew that women with views that opposed those of official feminism were to be treated as nonwomen. To see it now out in the open was the real shocker.

No. As my colleague Lorraine Sommerfeld noted today, Palin wants to suck and blow at the same time.

The fact her youngest has Down syndrome makes her neither a hero nor a martyr in my view. Families with far fewer resources take on far greater challenges every day. The fact her 17-year-old daughter is pregnant is also a non-starter. I find it preventable and sad, but it's increasingly the profile of many families.

That quizzical look on my face? That's for the Bible-thumping Republicans who are suddenly celebrating the charade parade of affianced teenagers they had long found abhorrent until Sarah sparkled at them.

Her statement on both her decision to have her last child, and her daughter's decision to carry her own child use curious terminology for a staunch pro-life advocate. She "chose" to have her baby; her daughter "chose" to have hers. Yet she wants to remove that right from other women, even in the case of incest or rape? Don't they also get to choose?

Amiel, despite the reservations of very credible Republicans and conservative pundits, finds no fault with Palin -- and even draws comparisons between her and Britain's Margaret Thatcher.

An insult to the Iron Lady, if you ask me. Thatcher had cabinet service before she became prime minister, a position with less executive power than a vice president could have with a president of uncertain health in the Oval Office. What's more, Thatcher was a fiscal conservative and not a wacky social conservative who doesn't support realistic sex education, would outlaw abortion in all instances unless the mother's life were in danger, and spouts scary ''a task from God'' nonsense about war.

Amiel is so full of it.

Comments

[sooey]

She's just having a bit of fun with the irony of Feminists on the Liberal/Left working so hard, while their Liberal/Left male partners cheer them on, to find a place for women on the political landscape, only to have those places snapped up by kooky Conservative beauty queens - thanks to men on the Right.

As a Feminist on the Liberal/Left, I take her point.

[Antonia]

Excellent piece comparing Thatcher and Palin here:
http://waugh.standard.co.uk/2008/09/sarah-palin-ain.html

Here's a quote:
"Thatcher had been an MP for a full 20 years before she became Prime Minister. Furthermore, she had also been a Cabinet minister for four years and then spent a further four years as Leader of the Opposition before entering Number 10. Palin has been governor of Alaska for two years. Prior to that her political experience comprised being a local councillor and mayor of Wasilla - population 9,780. Yes, you read that right, population 9,780.''

[The Stygian and his Shemitish Dogs]

"She's just having a bit of fun with the irony of Feminists on the Liberal/Left working so hard"

not as much fun as I am

[sooey]

Of course, when Babs wanted an abortion, she got one. All those Pro-Life ladies on the Right are like that. They just tell the Gawd-boys on the Right what they want to hear because they're ambitious.

[The Stygian and his Shemitish Dogs]

"Of course, when Babs wanted an abortion, she got one."

Sooey, Sooey, Sooey.

Have you actually read her description of it in "Confessions"?
Someone has stolen my copy (or more likely I' ve lost it in the junk), so I'm quoting from a memory that is not as good as it used to be.

I think she says things like "the child I killed"; "because it IS murder", "I would not shrink from murder to protect my interests", etc.

I don't think "pro-choicers" really want to use that one, if they're confronted with the actual text.

And if you remember Margaret Thatcher as accidental Leader of the Opposition, before she made it to No. 10, the comparisons with Sarah Palin are actually quite strong.

Today's National Post had two wonderful articles on by both Barbara Amiel's former and her current(?) husband on Sarah Palin.

I'm afraid that "Feminists on the Liberal/Left" have really been forked by this one.

[...pat.]

Maybe Ms. Amiel's just greasing the wheels in case Mrs. Palin might, at some point in the future, wield executive power, and be in a position of granting the Lord a pardon.

Nah. That couldn't be it. She's written too much other right-wing anti-feminist stuff in the past.

[hysperia]

I love this post. The conversation, and Amiel, make me barf. Sorry ...

[sooey]

Oh, I don't think so. You're the one who seems "done" to me.

[sooey]

I think of Babs Amiel as an Uber-Feminist. Nothing, absolutely nothing, stops her from doing whatever the hell SHE wants. She simply has no interest in helping OTHER women do whatever the hell they want, too. That's all. I mean, she's the antithesis of what men on the Right think a woman should be, and yet - they fall at her feet in adoring worship. As you can plainly see, what they say and what they do - are two different things. Which is why what they say should be ignored.

They're all a bunch of kooky nuts, I think.

[Antonia]

For the record, I have the original 1980 hardback of Confessions, in which Amiel discusses her abortion -- pages 143-4 -- which was, at the time, illegal. (She doesn't dwell or even mention that except to mention a ''back room.'') I don't wish to dwell on this, and I admire her forthright admission of having had one. However, she does not end with the concludion that it's murder but that, if woman have abortions for convenience sake, as she did, then men should have the equal right to opt out of supporting a child they find inconvenient.

[sooey]

For the record, I don't even believe she had an abortion. How's that for cynical about the Ladies on the Right?

[chris]

Seriously, why would anyone in their right minds believe ANYTHING Barbara Amiel (aka, Lady Tubby) says? She'll contradict herself if it means making a point for the moment. Jon Stewart and the Daily Show would chop her up into little pieces if given the chance.