I went to dinner at the house of some new people I met by chance, and it was very charming. Another world. The sun stays luminous and gold.
Hallowe’en is my favorite holiday. I am going to spend it in the country. Almost everyone else there will be an oilfield worker, because this is Louisiana. My cat is decorated for Hallowe’en already. Through Tuesday his name remains Little Barack.
REVIEW OF THE BARACK OBAMA CAMPAIGN HEADQUARTERS
They do not have enough paraphernalia. I realize that we can also get paraphernalia on line, but I am very old fashioned. I like to get my paraphernalia in person at the campaign headquarters.
There are not that many Obama signs here. If it is true as the Obama headquarters personnel say that they have received great amounts of paraphernalia and it has all been taken, I want to know where this paraphernalia is.
REVIEW OF THE NICE WHITE LADIES AND GENTLEMEN WHO STILL WANT ME TO BE KIND ABOUT PALIN.
I think these ladies and gentlemen are very, very conservative, despite calling themselves “liberal,” “progressive,” and sometimes “radical.” It occurs to me that much though they may lecture about how important it is to realize that there are officially conservative women, they may not actually know any in fact.
I know many, starting with my neighbors and continuing on to my students. If you go to my Facebook page, you will see that many of my Friends list their political views as “very conservative.” They belong to groups like CAPITALISM IS GOOD, NOBAMA, 1,000,000 STRONG AGAINST HILLARY CLINTON, and more. I talk to these people daily. I write them letters of recommendation to good schools, and they get in. We crack jokes in the halls. They help me out during hurricanes. And I am going to spend Hallowe’en with mostly oilfield people, not all of whom will be Black. Many of the white ones will be Republicans. So all of you who say gosh, did I realize conservatives were human beings, not cartoon characters, get back.
My ceramics class is composed entirely of conservative Christian women and they are very nice. We do not discuss politics in our class. We do not take the Lord’s name in vain. Only I do not mention attending Bible study. We are supportive of each other and we like each other very much. Most of the students are older than I am. The majority were raised to be far stronger than I was, and have led far more feminist oriented lives. They did things like break into engineering as women in Mississippi. I’ll bet I have more respect for them than do some of you, who exhort me to expand my horizons and be tolerant of Sarah Palin.
So, once again, get back, you faux liberal hijos de sus rechingados padres. I am still not willing to be “tolerant” of Sarah Palin as Vice President or President. John Clees (a man – how evil of me to quote one!) explains why.
AN ACTUAL FEMINIST DISCUSSION ON PALIN
The only person I have seen be actually kind to Palin, as opposed to mean like me, or fake kind like a great many, is WoC PhD. I will quote her in full.
- his choosing an unvetted woman because he thought women voters would vote with their ovaries and not their brains
- his belief that he could silence and control a woman who is known for being outspoken and forceful based on nothing more than what one must assume is her gender
- his condescending handling of her with the press in which she must be perched on her pedestal away from the press unlike any male candidate for the same position (or Ferrarro when she was the first major party VP candidate on the democrat’s side for that matter)
- his childish belief that a wardrobe worth almost twice the cost of “Joe the Plumber’s” house and more than the average undergrad’s college loan debt would make all us gals ooh and oh at Palin like she really was “Caribou Barbie”
However, none of her incompetence excuses McCain’s sexism.
SNIPPET OF CONVERSATION FROM THE CERAMICS CLASS
“Now, my daddy has a lot of friends now because he took care of all of his men back then. One of the costs of doing business in Jackson in those days was bail. If you had Black men working for you, and you wanted the job done, you would have to go down, often, and bail them out of jail because that was how it was then. I am sure you remember. Black men were always going to jail, so much more often than now.”
So much more often than now. That is true enough but if you look at the post just before this one you will see what the police are still up to in places like Texas and California.
*
I went to dinner at the house of some new people I met by chance, and it was very charming. Another world. The sun stays luminous and gold.
Hallowe’en is my favorite holiday. I am going to spend it in the country. Almost everyone else there will be an oilfield worker, because this is Louisiana. My cat is decorated for Hallowe’en already. Through Tuesday his name remains Little Barack.
Axé.
coldhearted scientist وداد 
great post.
in response to WoC PhD, i dont see it as sexist to assume your VP is going to play second fiddle to you, if you are running for President; to stay on message, stay behind your lead. i mean, that’s not about women, that’s about the heirarchy of the two jobs. if biden started contradicting obama and criticizing his campaign…would Obama let him go cuz he’s a man? HELL no! he’d yank that joker back so fast in line we’d just see blurs. so that one part i have to disagree with. i see it as extremely undisciplined and preposterously arrogant that she is not minding the campaign message and platform, etc. i can understand how it would make some women proud, no doubt. but in the light of what the job is? we just have to remember how she answered the question on “what is the job of the VP” to see she has cheney-derived views on it, and that’s what her being “off-message” is about. but McCain is reaping the whirlwind because yes, he made a bunch of stupid assumptions and didnt vet her at all. (and is clearly sexist to boot.)
I wonder if the kind of Christian, conservative women you associate with are really the Palin base. They may have their status notions and racial notions, but they have been around. Palin is a complete hick and very mean spirited.
I know one woman of the kind you write about, a transplant from Louisiana. She is just darling, the soul of kindness. If she has a racist bone in her body I don’t know where it is. But she is a born again and goes to Bible study “religiously.” We don’t talk about religion, and I understand why it would be impolite to engage such a woman on religious matters. For her part, she does not push me about my beliefs.
We work together on progressive causes.
Nez – HI! I think the WoC PhD’s point is (also) that Biden isn’t treated by the Obama campaign as she is by the McCain one. Part of her behavior is ignorant and unprofessional – and egotistical and so on. Part of it is a response to the way she’s being used.
Hattie – maybe, or I’d like to think so. But I’d be afraid to drive in that neighborhood with an Obama sticker on my car (it is one of the reasons I do not have one) and I’d be more afraid to go there while Black unless I were driving a service mobile.
Of course a woman who leaves a racist environment to come and live in Hawaii would not be hard core.
Great pos, lots of textures!
At times (when I am alone) I tell myself that it is best not to associate in any context with folks whose politics offend my reality.
But life is not that simple hey.
Still, I am not looking to all the dinner chatter about the Obama ‘post race’ society whether he wins or not.
Should we be eating alone more often? 🙂
Peace,
Ridwan
Hi Ridwan! Eating alone more often – well having had to deal with McCain / Palin voters last night, I’d say yes. I can deal with them, but it is boring. And of course they say I am sexist not to be voting for a woman, any woman.
But: the meaning of an Obama win won’t be post raciality. Look it as a step toward reblackening. ! Mostly it’s a step back toward civilization, as opposed to the rapid descent into utter barbarism represented by McCain/Palin.
I think the post in question and therefore my politics have been unintentionally misreprented here. The point of my post was that McCain’s sexism, which is a key issue for women in this election, has all but been forgotten because of the essentialist view of his runningmate, yet his treatment of her (his second in command) is so riddled with sexism that it does not bode well for any of us women. There is nothing wrong with addressing sexism wherever it is, b/c sexism on the left or the right is unaccaptable, nor does deconstructing sexism on the right translate to an endorsement of the right especially in the way that I was using it to illustrate a pattern of sexist leadership at the highest level that will utlimately impact all of us.
If you read my blog, you will see clearly that I have taken a deconstructive eye to all of the candidates and a particularly critical stance with Palin’s leadership, intelligence, and support of racism and xenophobia either through use of coded language or silence when threats and racist names are called out.
nezua at no time did I say:
“i dont see it as sexist to assume your VP is going to play second fiddle to you”
I said “assumed he could control her” which was a direct reference to the ways that he has been reported to be trying to silence and sequester her against her own wishes. Further, as I imply in the post, it mirrors behavior we had all been talking about prior to his VP pick between McCain and his wife – who he actively insults, silences, and pushes out of the way in public and private.
I am neither championing Palin, who I would not trust to run a lunch line fairly, nor conservatives whose politics I see as the reason we are now 8 years in the whole from social issues like diversity, education, civility, and/or civic mindedness or social justice to foreign affairs where we not only have made the lives of people, largely poc, worse but particularly those of women and children. A ticket in which Palin may one day be in charge of those lives is a ticket that, if her record on women’s issues in Alaska is any indication, will make women’s reproductive options, safety from rape and ability to prosecute, and access to secure and ethical work and advancement even worse.
I’m not being nice when I call McCain a sexist, I’m being honest. I’m not being Pro-Palin when I say sexism against her is not ok, I’m being a feminist who thinks ALL women have the right to be treated with equal respect to men. And a call for gender equality is not a call for silence around her incompetence, to which, in the above quote, I actually said “no” that is not an insert as the brackets imply it is a call to address those incompetences in a competent manner.
Thanks for reiteration & expansion, Prof BW! Yes, that’s what your post says, or at least that is how I read it. I *do* think you are more genuinely kind – or let’s use a different word, FAIR to Palin with this analysis than her supporters are.
“I’m being a feminist who thinks ALL women have the right to be treated with equal respect to men. And a call for gender equality is not a call for silence around [Palin’s] incompetence….” SIII.
VERY, VERY IMPORTANT: “I said ‘assumed he could control her’ which was a direct reference to the ways that he has been reported to be trying to silence and sequester her against her own wishes. Further, as I imply in the post, it mirrors behavior we had all been talking about prior to his VP pick between McCain and his wife – who he actively insults, silences, and pushes out of the way in public and private.”
I think that prank calls settles the question where Palin’s concerned. Cleese noted the way she parrots things with no understanding.
If you belong a sect like the one she does words can have no meaning. I think it has always been that way for her. This is the tragedy of fundamentalism.
I hate her and what she stands for, but I know she is ultimately a sad figure. Not big enough for tragedy. She is an emotional pauper.
“If you belong a sect like the one she does words can have no meaning.”
This is key.
My apologies, when I cut and pasted what I thought was a sentence from the middle of the post and put it at the top, I seemed to have changed the entire direction of the comment by pasting more than I meant to above the following address to nezua:
Nezua at no time did I say . . .
Obviously profacero reads my blog and knows all of the posts I’ve written critiquing Palin, hence why I thought the misrepresentation was “unintentional.”
everything in my comment should have come after the above address to Nezua accept the first two sentences:
I think the post in question and therefore my politics have been unintentionally misreprented here. The point of my post was that McCain’s sexism, which is a key issue for women in this election, has all but been forgotten because of the essentialist view of his runningmate, yet his treatment of her (his second in command) is so riddled with sexism that it does not bode well for any of us women.
My point was just that feminism is important and does require that we address sexism against anyone, and that I have taken considerable time on my blog to draw distinctions between those things which Palin is actually guilty of and those which are sexist critiques to both highlight the problems with the McCain camp on not only domestic and foreign affairs but also on social justice issues like gender, race, sexuaity, etc. And that either embracing a politiK of not addressing sexism on the right or of excusing it, keeps us from dealing with key issues in which “the left” differs strongly from “the right” and what that will mean for those same social justice issues.
And I was concerned b/c I was seeing my name linked to an increasingly watered down and foreign representation of my actual words/thesis and worse a dismissal of sexism from a comment maker for whom I expect more astute analysis.