Tag Archives: Sarah Palin

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Commentary from CNN’s Campbell Brown

Commentary: Sexist treatment of Palin must end

By Campbell Brown
CNN

Editor’s Note: Campbell Brown anchors CNN’s “Campbell Brown: Election Center” at 8 p.m. ET Mondays-Fridays. She delivered this commentary during the “Cutting through the Bull” segment of Tuesday night’s broadcast.

NEW YORK (CNN) — Frankly I have had it, and I know a lot of other women out there who are with me on this. I have had enough of the sexist treatment of Sarah Palin. It has to end.

She was in New York on Tuesday meeting with world leaders at the U.N. And what did the McCain campaign do?

They tried to ban reporters from covering those meetings. And they did ban reporters from asking Gov. Palin any questions.

I call upon the McCain campaign to stop treating Sarah Palin like she is a delicate flower who will wilt at any moment.

This woman is from Alaska for crying out loud. She is strong, she is tough, she is confident. And you claim she is ready to be one heartbeat away from the presidency. If that is the case, then end this chauvinistic treatment of her now. Allow her to show her stuff.

Allow her to face down those pesky reporters just like Barack Obama did today, just like John McCain did today. Just like Joe Biden has done on numerous occasions. Let her have a real news conference with real questions.

By treating Sarah Palin differently from other candidates in this race, you are not showing her the respect she deserves.

Free Sarah Palin.

Free her from the chauvinistic chains you are binding her with.

Sexism in this campaign must come to an end. Sarah Palin has as much a right to be a real candidate in this race as the men do.

http://www.cnn.com/2008/POLITICS/09/24/campbell.brown.palin/index.html#cnnSTCText
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The Conservative White Male/Vagina Vote – Bull Shiggidy!

I have to tell you – I have had it up to here with the McCain/Palin ticket, their media manipulators and the STUPID Americans that are still allowing themselves to be playd by their foolishness. 

You would think that when people see that the house is burning, they would have the good sense to get out.  But oh no!  Some of these fools would rather get burned than to have a black fire fighter help them out.  I SAID IT – YES I DID! 

Look all around us.  The war against terrorism as it relates to Iraq has been a dismal failure.  It was doomed from the start.  It’s so tired we don’t even talk about it anymore.  The economy is in the tank.  Freddie and Fannie are hanging on by way of welfare, Lehman Brothers, a Wall Street baller for almost 160 years is shot to shiggidy,  Merrill Lynch almost 95 years old sold out to Bank of America, and now AIG.  Unemployment is rampant, the mortgage crisis continues to swell and this fool McCain maintains that the economy is fundamentally strong.  What the fudge? 

It makes sense that to him things are fine.  Hell, he has 8 houses neither of which I am sure are in danger of being in foreclosure status, and his wife has more money than God.  His finances are quite “fundamentally strong.”  I ain’t hating.  But damn come on America.  Some of y’all are still going for this crap?  I work on the trading floor of one of the biggest securities exhange firms in the world, and I hear the rumblings every day. 

As for Palin, this woman who has no freggin idea what she has gotten herself into – makes a fool out of herself while interviewing soft ball throwing Charles Gibson saying that we would actually fight Russia because Georgia is a part of NATO.  WRONG!  And yet the polls in mid September are still close and some of y’all want this woman in the VP’s chair?  She has all kinds of shiggidy going on at home that she refuses to answer to.  After 8 years of corruption you would think Americans would have had enough.  It’s one thing for rich people to vote for the McCain/Palin ticket.  They obviously think their coffers won’t get touched.  Recent history shows otherwise.  If a rising tide lifts all boats, surely if you keep drilling holes in the Titanic it will eventually sink too.  I can see if they are blind to this.  But for middle to lower class Americans to even consider this foolery is beyond me.

Many Americans played themselves when “W” got into office.  They thought Gore was old time Washington and an extension of Clinton.  “W” came off as the hick guys wanted to have a beer with.  So never-mind he seemed out of touch with the basic needs of the nation – they just wanted a good ole’ boy, a cowboy like Ronald Reagan to be in office.  The second term was more of the same.  They allowed scare tactics about terrorism and swift boat ads to down Kerry, who was a war hero.  I know Kerry was not the idea candidate, but you picked a man who ran from service over a man who served with honor.   If you felt that service in war was not enough to be pres.,  what the hell happened to that thinking?  How did McCain’s service record over the same period become such a virtue for the presidency?  Speaking of Gore, are the McCain people saying this dude invented the Blackberry now?  But I digress. 

Some women are still bitter about Obama’s victory over Clinton. So they are willing to vote with their vaginas and going with Palin, a woman who stands for everything Hillary doesn’t.  What kind of shiggidy is that?  Black folks did not endorse Clarence Thomas for the supreme court because he was black.  We know that everyone who is our skin folk are not necessarily our kin folk.  We would rather have had another white man who was fair than a black man who is a garden tool for neo-conservative interest and a puppet of Justice Scalia’s.  Women need to learn the same message.  Making history is one thing, damaging your future for the sake of making history is another.  You think she is a friend to the average woman?  Check how how she deals with rape and domestic violence against women in the state of Alaska. When she was mayor of Wasilla, women who were raped or sexually abused had to pay for their own rape kits.   

I’ve already made it known to some and I will say it publicly.  If McCain/Palin get the White House, and we find that the difference were Clinton supporters who decided that they didn’t want to vote for a black man, even a black man who has their economic interest at heart – a man who has the best ideas for this country who happens to be black – you will get exactly what you deserve over the next 4-8 years.  I’m telling you NOW don’t cry on my shoulders cause I ain’t gone have NO love for ya!  When your jobs go bye bye , you can’t put your kids in college and fuel and food cost push crime to an all time high… I don’t want to hear it!  It’s amazing how racism is such a cancer and yet people would rather die from the self inflicted sickness of it than do something to help themselves – simply because the help may come by way of the dark hand that they are not used to.  AMAZING! 

SIDE NOTE: White Democrats who voted for Hillary but who choose not to vote for Obama should remember that it was the black vote that put the Clinton’s over the top TWICE.  It was the black vote that stuck with Bill through Whitewater and Monica Lewinski.  Why do you think he went around thinking he was the first black president?  It was black women who stood by Hillary when Bill was gettin’ head in the Oval Office and said she was courageous.  And now some of y’all act like you can’t vote for the black man who beat her?  If you can’t do right, never again ask me to participate in putting another white democratic nominee in the highest office.  My vote will not be whored out to those who can’t appreciate or represent me when the time comes.  Back to the issue at hand. 

Lets compare and contrast.  McCain supporters refer to Obama as being a glorified speech maker with no real solutions.  McCain hasn’t even spoken on the issues, cause he’s too busy distracting us with lipstick comments about Palin.  McCain supporters call Obama elitist.  What?  Are you saying a man who has achieved great things like becoming the first African-American head of the Harvard Law Review, and taught 12 years of Constitutional law is elitist?  What – because he’s smart?  What?  You don’t want him upholding the constitution?  You would rather have a dumb or lesser informed person in the White House?  You are just like the kids in school who put down the kids making straight A’s saying they are “acting white.”

Let’s be clear.  This race isn’t about issues.  It’s all about race and gender… mostly race.  I hope for the sake of the nation the majority of us make the right decision – but if not – I don’t want to hear any more bellyaching from the folks who put these clowns in charge after they flub up the rest of the country.

This is some Bull Shiggidy!

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White Priviledge: Tim Wise

 I got this from a friend in an email.  Tim Wise has been the leading critic of white priviledge in America.  This post is yet another reason why. 

A BUZZFLASH GUEST CONTRIBUTION

By Tim Wise

For those who still can’t grasp the concept of white privilege, or who are constantly looking for some easy-to-understand examples of it, perhaps this list will help.

White privilege is when you can get pregnant at seventeen like Bristol Palin and everyone is quick to insist that your life and that of your family is a personal matter, and that no one has a right to judge you or your parents, because “every family has challenges,” even as black and Latino families with similar “challenges” are regularly typified as irresponsible, pathological and arbiters of social decay.

White privilege is when you can call yourself a “fuckin’ redneck,” like Bristol Palin’s boyfriend does, and talk about how if anyone messes with you, you’ll “kick their fuckin’ ass,” and talk about how you like to “shoot shit” for fun, and still be viewed as a responsible, all-American boy (and a great son-in-law to be) rather than a thug.

White privilege is when you can attend four different colleges in six years like Sarah Palin did (one of which you basically failed out of, then returned to after making up some coursework at a community college), and no one questions your intelligence or commitment to achievement, whereas a person of color who did this would be viewed as unfit for college, and probably someone who only got in in the first place because of affirmative action.

White privilege is when you can claim that being mayor of a town smaller than most medium-sized colleges, and then Governor of a state with about the same number of people as the lower fifth of the island of Manhattan, makes you ready to potentially be president, and people don’t all piss on themselves with laughter, while being a black U.S. Senator, two-term state Senator, and constitutional law scholar, means you’re “untested.”

White privilege is being able to say that you support the words “under God” in the pledge of allegiance because “if it was good enough for the founding fathers, it’s good enough for me,” and not be immediately disqualified from holding office–since, after all, the pledge was written in the late 1800s and the “under God” part wasn’t added until the 1950s–while believing that reading accused criminals and terrorists their rights (because, ya know, the Constitution, which you used to teach at a prestigious law school requires it), is a dangerous and silly idea only supported by mushy liberals.

White privilege is being able to be a gun enthusiast and not make people immediately scared of you. White privilege is being able to have a husband who was a member of an extremist political party that wants your state to secede from the Union, and whose motto was “Alaska first,” and no one questions your patriotism or that of your family, while if you’re black and your spouse merely fails to come to a 9/11 memorial so she can be home with her kids on the first day of school, people immediately think she’s being disrespectful.

White privilege is being able to make fun of community organizers and the work they do–like, among other things, fight for the right of women to vote, or for civil rights, or the 8-hour workday, or an end to child labor–and people think you’re being pithy and tough, but if you merely question the experience of a small town mayor and 18-month governor with no foreign policy expertise beyond a class she took in college–you’re somehow being mean, or even sexist.

White privilege is being able to convince white women who don’t even agree with you on any substantive issue to vote for you and your running mate anyway, because all of a sudden your presence on the ticket has inspired confidence in these same white women, and made them give your party a “second look.”

White privilege is being able to fire people who didn’t support your political campaigns and not be accused of abusing your power or being a typical politician who engages in favoritism, while being black and merely knowing some folks from the old-line political machines in Chicago means you must be corrupt.

White privilege is being able to attend churches over the years whose pastors say that people who voted for John Kerry or merely criticize George W. Bush are going to hell, and that the U.S. is an explicitly Christian nation and the job of Christians is to bring Christian theological principles into government, and who bring in speakers who say the conflict in the Middle East is God’s punishment on Jews for rejecting Jesus, and everyone can still think you’re just a good church-going Christian, but if you’re black and friends with a black pastor who has noted (as have Colin Powell and the U.S. Department of Defense) that terrorist attacks are often the result of U.S. foreign policy and who talks about the history of racism and its effect on black people, you’re an extremist who probably hates America.

White privilege is not knowing what the Bush Doctrine is when asked by a reporter, and then people get angry at the reporter for asking you such a “trick question,” while being black and merely refusing to give one-word answers to the queries of Bill O’Reilly means you’re dodging the question, or trying to seem overly intellectual and nuanced.

White privilege is being able to claim your experience as a POW has anything at all to do with your fitness for president, while being black and experiencing racism is, as Sarah Palin has referred to it, a “light” burden.

And finally, white privilege is the only thing that could possibly allow someone to become president when he has voted with George W. Bush 90 percent of the time, even as unemployment is skyrocketing, people are losing their homes, inflation is rising, and the U.S. is increasingly isolated from world opinion, just because white voters aren’t sure about that whole “change” thing. Ya know, it’s just too vague and ill-defined, unlike, say, four more years of the same, which is very concrete and certain.

White privilege is, in short, the problem.