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January 31, 2011

NOW Goes Shark-Jumping

By Betsy M. Galliher
It is both peculiar and fitting that President Obama would use his State of the Union address to evoke what many consider a rather humiliating moment in our history: our "Sputnik moment." 

The Russian Sputnik satellite ultimately served as a catalyst for our space dominance, from which remarkable innovation, scientific advance, and technology was born.  But before that, Russia's "win" was America's shame.  In today's world, the U.S. would be accepting the self-esteem award for the pitied team sent home without a trophy, to chants of "We're no. 2!  We're no. 2!"

Following the president's lead, the National Organization for Women called for its "own Sputnik moment for women."  This, we can now surmise, was apparently not when NOW called Teddy Kennedy a "champion of women's rights" in 2009.  A press release from NOW's Terry O'Neill states in part that "[a]s the president reaches for the stars, the National Organization for Women will be working to ensure that the women of this nation are lifted up as well."

It seems odd that American women still debate the confines of their equality, especially to those of us who have quite successfully behaved as equals for some time now. 

The women of NOW share a palpable disdain for certain women, but particularly those who refuse to accept the narrative of their inequity -- and most notably Sarah Palin.  In an August 2008 press release, PAC Chair Kim Gandy stated, "'[W]e recognize the importance of having women's rights supporters at every level but, like Sarah Palin, not every woman supports women's rights."  Or, in the words of University of Chicago professor Wendy Doniger, Palin's "greatest hypocrisy is in the pretense that she is a woman."

Touché.  Meet the feminists of today, or, Women In Name Only. 

Meghan McCain, who holds the dubious honor of being both a RINO and a WINO, recently declared Michele Bachmann the "poor man's Sarah Palin."  WINOs disparaging the women they claim to champion is nothing new.  But McCain managing to spit on the poor, Bachmann, and Palin all in one fell swoop is a new low for a WINO -- even a young elitist who makes a living feeding the progressive fires of the left.

Palin is used to vitriol in the extreme.  She makes the Dan Quayle media attacks of old look like a toddler's sandbox scuffle.  She's been called a "turncoat b****, Uncle Women, a whore in f****** cheap glasses with her hair up, a f******* hyper conservative," a "Christian Stepford wife," an "Alaskan hillbilly," "Caribou Barbie," a "pig with lipstick," "yammering," an "idiotic c***," a "whore," and a "f******monster."  She has endured "jokes" about the rape of her teenage "whore" daughter.

And those are only the accusations from other women.

In 1966, NOW endorsed "continuing efforts to recruit and advance women according to their individual abilities."  Flash forward, and the same organization which also claimed to "hold itself independent of any political party" had this to say following Obama's SOTU address:

President Obama spoke about creating jobs through building our country's physical infrastructure, investing in research and development, and reinventing our energy industry.  Worthy objectives - but currently those fields are dominated by men.  Much work remains to be done to bring women into parity in these vocations, known as STEM (science, technology, engineering, and math).

... Next month, I will take part in the 55th session of the U.N. Commission on the Status of Women, which will focus on the access and participation of women and girls in STEM.  However, until we make significant progress in this area, if we want to talk about creating jobs for women, we have to talk about rebuilding our human infrastructure - including teaching, nursing, and social work. These positions not only employ women but they serve some of the most vulnerable people in our country, those the President promised to safeguard. (Terry O'Neil, president, NOW)

It wasn't long ago when WINOs were calling for women to leave the "typical" female vocations of teaching, nursing, and social work to enter more male-dominated fields.  Women have made gains in STEM-based vocations, to everyone's betterment, but the discussion still raises the never-asked-never-answered question: do women really lack opportunity, or do they make career choices based on innate ability, or relative to combining work and family? 

Of course, should WINOs care to note, one rather familiar face has extensive experience in infrastructure, research and development, and the energy industry, and her name is not Tina Fey.  Leftists don't dare research Palin's actual accomplishments for the same reason they neglect to investigate Barack Obama's past -- they're afraid of what they might actually find.

While Obama went from community organizer to voting "present" in the Senate to president in only a few short years, Palin was working for all Alaskan men and women as a mayor, a governor, and furthermore: 

  • president of the Alaska Conference of Mayors,
  • vice chair of the National Association Natural Resource Committee, and
  • chairman of the Interstate Oil and Gas Compact Commission, who
  • opened drilling for oil and natural gas at Pt. Thompson after thirty years of corporate stalling,
  • created Alaska's Petroleum Integrity Office to oversee all aspects of energy development,
  • signed Alaska's Clear and Equitable Share (ACES) bill into law, ensuring the Alaskan people receive a clear and equitable share of oil profits, and
  • opened up competitive contracting for the implementation of a 1,715-mile natural gas pipeline providing natural gas from Alaska's North Slope to the 48 lower states and Canada.  This is the largest infrastructure project in the history of North America (to be completed by 2019).
And all this (to highlight only a small portion of her résumé) while she fought corruption in her own party, overhauled state ethics laws, cut pork, slashed bloated budgets, ensured Alaskans' security and financial solvency, brought more transparency to government, safeguarded environmental protections, and embraced private-sector solutions.  Palin only reluctantly retired from the governor's office after exponential increases in FOIA requests and frivolous ethics complaints flooded her office as part of a liberal attack strategy.  The manpower required would have cost Alaskan taxpayers millions were it not for Palin's return to the private sector.

Sarah Palin's real crime isn't in her résumé or her refusal to trumpet abortion or kowtow to liberal elites; it's in her refusal to be miserable.  It's in her ability to embrace the bumps in life -- an unexpected pregnancy with a special needs child, a teenage daughter's early parenthood, and an all-out assault from a media hell-bent on her destruction.  Her resilience in adversity and her unfettered optimism simply don't support the left's misery narrative.

Women like Sarah Palin deny miss-ogynists their self-loathing due and elevate all women in the process.  There's no doubt American women owe previous generations an enormous debt for the opportunities wide open to women today.  But there comes a time to honor those who came before by safeguarding, not savaging.

If only modern feminists took to heart the words of Betty Friedan in NOW's original 1966 Statement of Purpose:

IN THE INTEREST OF THE HUMAN DIGNITY OF WOMEN, we will protest, and endeavor to change, the false image of women now prevalent in the mass media, and in the texts, ceremonies, laws, and practices of our major social institutions.  Such images perpetuate contempt for women by society and by women for themselves.  We are similarly opposed to all policies and practices - in church, state, college, factory, or office - which, in the guise of protectiveness, not only deny opportunities but also foster in women self-denigration, dependence, and evasion of responsibility, undermine their confidence in their own abilities and foster contempt for women.

The context may have changed, but the narrative never will.

NOW is really no different from any other leftist organization that inevitably descends into cannibalism.  Again and again, leftists prove that their goal is no longer liberation, but victimization.  There's simply no other way to perpetuate the narrative.

So naturally, there's no worse affront to women -- no greater path to subjugation according to WINOs -- than Sarah Palin.  In reality, however, the enemy is the left's favorite tour de force -- statism. 

I can confirm with all the gratitude of a happy, liberated, free American woman -- Sputnik is launched.  Catch up if you can.
on "NOW Goes Shark-Jumping"