Wednesday, September 3, 2008

Palin must make Emily pissed

I don't think I'll vote for Sara Palin, but I have a crush on her for the way she upset feminist who wanted a strong woman, meaning one who agrees with them. During my 40 years, I watched as feminists flexed news media power to the point that "choice" became limited to one subject. I think one of the main reasons this happened was simply that many male reporters embraced feminism in order to embrace feminists. Another reason was a successful sex discrimination suit against the AP, which had a near monopoly on news gathering and distribution - the latter thanks news consumer allowing UPI to be reduced to working out of a broom closet in Washington.
The list of power points - the old kind - is a long one. With the possible exception of William Safire, no one asked a simple question during the initial media beachhead over Ms. Mrs. or Miss. Why were men limited to Mr.? Or why did women have "courtesy titles" to start with?
Then there was Emily's List, the fundraiser designed to elect women to office. What reporter had guts enough in those early days to ask "what kind of women?" I can remember standing on the steps of City Hall in San Francisco at a news conference by a list official and asking if she would back an anti-abortion woman. "We aren't that ready to step out of the mainstream," she said. I never saw the exchange in print.
Earlier, the purge of anti-abortion feminists from key NOW posts went virtually unreported, even though it made me recall the Night of the Long Knives in Hiitler's Germany.
Add to this, the media's forked tongue on the terms used in the abortion debate: pro-choice can stand alone but not pro-life (although this situation has cleared up a bit since the Internet joined the game.)
And, please see my July 1, 2007 posting on Title IX, which, thanks to a lapdog media, is one of the great stealth laws of all time.
I think movies have been better about capturing this than reporters. My favorite line is in "Mona Lisa Smile." A student asks a teacher, who is constanly pushing her students to be strong and independent thinkers, something like this: "You want us to make choices and then condemn us for making ones you wouldn't."