The XX Factor: What women really think.

(Sorta) Defending Michelle Bachmann

If negative campaigning really had finally found its floor, in any case, that would be the best thing since Caller ID. And whatever her motivations, I'm glad Sarah Palin has apologized for her comments dividing us into the "real America'' of small towns like the ones she and I grew up in and...not so real America, like New York and Washington, where lots of us small town natives wind up. As Jon Stewart said the other night, Bin Laden must feel like a real *&F@# after having realized he bombed the wrong America. Not to mention those from-the-wrong America firefighters who ran into the Twin Towers; gosh are they embarrassed.

Ready for the Election

Whole New Ways To Not Get It ...

Color me baffled. In response to a question about Sarah Palin’s qualification to be president, John McCain talked first about her credentials as a reformer and then moved swiftly to explain that Palin “understands special-needs families. She understands that autism is on the rise, that we've got to find out what's causing it, and we've got to reach out to these families and help them, and give them the help they need as they raise these very special-needs children. She understands that better than almost any American that I know. I'm proud of her.” Later on, he added—again regarding autism—that “Sarah Palin knows about that better than most.” Now, we know Palin has a special-needs child: Her infant son, Trig, has Down Syndrome. So it’s fair to suggest that she understands special-needs families and that—even though it’s not clear what she’s ever done or even proposed doing for them—she might one day be an advocate for them. But I can’t figure out why McCain was coupling Palin with autism, rather than Down Syndrome. Yes, his comment started as a testimonial to her concern for those with special needs, but it came off sounding like he just didn’t know that autism and Down Syndrome are very different. A quick Web search reveals that the main connection between Palin and autism appears to be that, like McCain, parents of autistic kids are blogging hopefully that she will have some special sensitivity to their situation. (Also, it seems Palin has an autistic nephew.)

As panders go, I am finding this autism gambit baffling. Did McCain just get confused about the fact that Trig has Down Syndrome? Or was he trying for some kind of broad-brush special-needs appeal, only to end up awkwardly implying that all special-needs families are the same? So much so that you can swap out diagnoses and nobody will notice? That same broad brush was slapping around later when, in discussing abortion, he started sneering about the trickiness of allowing exceptions for the mother's health. No nuance here. Just the bold implication that all health exceptions represent some kind of female trickery. Last time I checked, women thought their health was sort of important. Toss in his eye-crossing claim that anyone who supports abortion rights is, by necessity, not going to be qualified to sit on the Supreme Court, and it was time to kiss women voters goodbye. How can a man who can see all the complexity and subtlety in foreign policy and health care reform talk to and about women and families in terms that persistently read like cave drawings?

McCain really proved tonight that his brand of feminism is frozen in 1960—an artless pander to the mommies tacked onto the claim that he is “proud” of his vice president. It's all reminiscent of the ad men on Mad Men, chivalrous but wrong.

Strike a Pose

Back to basics for a second here. We are getting rather divisive on "XX Factor" itself. True, I do not get Rachael's politics. I consider her a friend and a colleague and I admire her competence and her smarts, but on politics, she and I are on opposite ends of the spectrum. I don't get it.

But I want to.

I wish I could wake up one day with a conservative brain and see the world as Rachael sees it and see how the things she believes can make sense to her. I wish someone made conservative-colored glasses that I could try on. Oddly, I come from a family of conservatives, and I still don't get it.

I also feel bad that Rachael is surrounded by liberals. I imagine it's a bit how I'd feel if I worked at Fox News (don't overthink that comparison, please). And I feel bad that McCain and Palin are the candidates that Rachael is being put in a position to defend when their behavior is at times indefensible. I think we all agree that it is absolutely great to have Rachael's intelligent voice on XX Factor, especially since we don't all agree on the many topics we discuss here, and having her here leads to some lively debate, and hopefully some understanding.

But.

I think we are forgetting something. Obama, McCain, Biden, and Palin are first and foremost politicians. Palin is not of the heartland; she does not even feel of the heartland to me. Look at her wardrobe for one. I don't know anyone of the heartland who has a wardrobe like that. In fact, I live in New York City. I have freelanced at Vogue magazine. Even the people who work at Vogue don't have wardrobes like hers. She is wealthy. She is a celebrity. She is a politician. She is not like you and me. Her claims to the heartland are a pose meant to appeal to the Republican fantasy of the average American.

But neither are the others like you and me. They are all wealthy, educated (or, if you prefer: elitist) politicians. They are all posing.

Often it comes down to whose pose you believe in more, whose pose feels more authentic. Bill Clinton was a great poser.

Palin's "regular gal" pose feels particularly transparent. McCain is posing as a dyed-in-the-wool pro-life Republican (I remember I used to like him before he became a candidate in this election and was being himself more). Biden is posing as someone who would be happy in the No. 2 spot and agrees 100 percent with Obama's positions. And Obama is posing as ... I'm not sure what, exactly ... the candidate who cares?

I remember listening to a speech of his several months ago, and a line from a Joni Mitchell song popped into my head, "Pretty lies, when you gonna realize they're only pretty lies ..."

I love what Obama talks about. I want to believe. Please don't let him be telling us pretty lies. But this is what all politicians do, don't they? They make campaign promises—that they have no intention of keeping or that they are incapable of enacting once in office.

But I like what Obama is saying. He is at least saying the right things. McCain is not. In my humble opinion. And Palin is definitely not. She jumped right on the lying bandwagon so quickly, it makes me a little sick. Maybe she's a Washington outsider, but she has learned to be sleazy in record time. My sense is that she doesn't even know McCain that well, and yet she is willing to say whatever she has to—morals, ethics, common decency be damned.

I was particularly impressed with Obama when after Bristol Palin's pregnancy became known and a reporter asked him what he thought, he said that the families of candidates are off-limits, particularly the children. That's class. I can only imagine how the Republicans would have buried him if he'd had a pregnant daughter who was Bristol's age.

I don't think that even McCain believes what he's saying. "My friends," is a stall so he can think of his next talking point, the talking points devised by the party to get him elected.

But, back to the point. Let us not be so entrenched behind our candidates of choice that we cannot be critical of all of them. They are, after all, just politicians. Even Obama, whose pose is so convincing that I really hope it's not a pose at all.

New Wrinkle on McCain and Pay Equity

While John McCain might have made the politically ill-advised move of voting against the equal pay bill, it’s nice to see he practices pay equality. Women in his office make $1.04 for ever $1 his male staffers make. And InstaPundit links to this blog post saying that Senate records show that women working on McCain’s Senate staff make more money than their counterparts in Obama’s Senate office.

I figured that it couldn’t be as simple as that, so I did some Googling, and indeed there is an explanation. But it doesn’t really help Obama very much. Turns out McCain has more senior staffers that are women. Per ABCNews’ Jake Tapper:

Only one of Obama's five best-paid Senate staffers is a woman. Of McCain's five best-paid Senate staffers, three are women.

Of Obama's top 20 salaried Senate staffers, seven are women. Of McCain's top 20 salaried Senate staffers, 13 are women.

Granted, it's a small sample size, so I don't think we should try to infer too much from it. It doesn't mean that Obama's a sexist pig or that John McCain is the most enlightened gent in the Senate. But it should quell some of the skepticism that McCain is "anti-woman."

Book-larnin'

There you go again, you pointy-headed Ivy Leaguers: trying to “understand” current events through the study of “history” (undertaken at Yale, of all places!). Sure, it’s fascinating to read about the Renaissance origins of the image of the mother-as-regent, fiercely protecting the husbands and sons who are really in charge of the realm. But isn’t it enough just to understand deep in our gut that Palin makes people feel, in some inchoate way … er, something vaguely positive about women and values and family and babies? Something warm and wonderful and maverick-y that inheres in her very person, independent of (indeed contrary to) any action she’s taken in office or any policy she espouses?

The smell of my daughter’s clean laundry makes me feel warm and wonderful about families, but I’m not electing a pile of it vice president of the United States. I’ve had it with hearing about Palin’s family. I want to know what the next administration we vote into office is going to do for our families—yours and mine.

Some Thoughts on Pigs in Lipstick

I'm trying to get work done on something else—a piece of writing and thinking not related to the Alaskan body-snatcher who seems to have invaded our collective brain—but my mind keeps returning to the trivial campaign flap of the day, this flurry of feigned outrage about "lipstick on a pig." Rachael's right that the Obama campaign's unfortunate choice of this phrase to describe the cynical repackaging of John McCain's economic plan opens the Dems up to charges of sexism. But I honestly can't decide: Is the use of the phrase, even if it does include a veiled jab at Palin, really sexist? After all, this is a woman who, in a much-praised convention speech (now being endlessly repeated on the stump) referred to herself as a "pit bull with lipstick." Isn't Obama's repurposing of a related metaphor just pointing out that, beneath that lipstick, the emperor's pit bull has no clothes?

As is being widely blogged today, McCain used the same figure of speech to deride Hillary's health care plan back in May. (The Christian Science Monitor reports that Dick Cheney also used it to demean Kerry's war record in 2004, and that Obama used it earlier in the campaign to criticize Bush's Iraq policy.) As far as I can recall, the Clinton campaign, which was never slow to seize upon opportunities for umbrage, let the phrase pass unnoticed (if anyone has a clip to refute that claim, please send along). Then again, McCain did preface his comparison with the sentence "I don't like to use this term." Why not? What would his disclaimer mean, if not that the phrase was somehow offensive to Hillary?

Pigs and pit bulls: two animals popularly considered to be unpleasant (though both can actually make smart and loving pets!), both repackaged with a slapped-on coat of Revlon (personally, I like Cherries in the Glow). The difference, of course, is that the pit-bull joke puts an admirable spin on the image of the dolled-up beast: Pit bulls are to be admired for their toughness and tenacity (and lipstick only makes them cuter!) while a pig is just a pig, cosmetics or no. What do the rest of you XX-ers think: If the Hillary campaign had cried sexism over the same porcine imagery, would you have given it more or less credence? And would you rather compare yourself to a dog, or have someone else compare your ideas to a pig?

Oh, Bridget

From Nina Shen Rastogi, who is having technical difficulties:

Until now, the McCain family has kept their youngest child, Bridget, out of the public spotlight—in part because she's young (but not younger than Bristol Palin, we might note) and in part because, in 2000, she was used in a vicious smear campaign against her father. (It was suggested that Bridget, a dark-skinned girl adopted from Bangladesh, was the product of an interracial affair.) As one blogger notes, Bridget didn't even appear in a recent People photo shoot that featured her family alongside the Palins.

As a South Asian, I've always been interested in Bridget. But I respected the McCains' decision to protect her privacy and, in this age of adopted-child-as-designer-accessory, I sort of appreciated it. How upsetting, then, that the first time I've seen them really talk about her in a big, public way, it's to trade on her tragic past in order to buff her parents' image. I shouldn't be surprised—after all, there's been plenty of conflicting talk lately about how and when it's appropriate for candidates to use their children on the campaign trail. And everyone in a candidate's family gets symbolically trotted out at some point. But really, did Cindy have to lump her daughter in like that with a survivor from Rwanda? As if there's no different between the two? It seemed like a crass move—and, by all accounts, an inaccurate reflection of the family's genuine love for their daughter.

As a side note, someone has already been doing a lot of thinking about what Bridget's life in the White House might be like ...

The Rain in Spain ...

A guest post from XX reader, Nicole Beckton:

In thinking about Sarah Palin's first big national evening, I realized that one of the "benefits" of McCain's pick is his total control of—if not her image, that's now impossible—her policies, her ideas, all of her political substance. Because of Palin’s perceived lack of interest/indifference to serious foreign policy concerns and limited record of opinions on such matters, she is a dream pick for McCain because, unlike Joe Biden, who has thought substantively about global and domestic concerns for decades, Sarah Palin is a relative blank slate.

Palin is an ultra-conservative who seems likely (because of her lack of experience) to pretty much accept anything the McCain campaign tells her to think about foreign and domestic policy. In fact what she has been asked to do, in preparation for this evening, is to simply parrot McCain on every ideological and policy level: To not have a mind of her own, to not have come to her opinions on our most pressing problems through careful thought, reflection, analysis, or legislative action. She is clearly willing to do so. That’s why Lindsey Graham raves that “she's smart and she will learn over time.” That’s why McCain advisers have said that part of her appeals for him was that “he felt she would be able to be educated quickly.”
Palin is thus the attractive new face of neo-conservativism with no recorded policy thoughts of her own. As a woman, this is more insulting to me than the fact that they barely vetted her—although I'm disturbed by that too! I think they vetted her just enough to know they could control her big policy positions ... unlike Kay Bailey Hutchinson, Olympia Snowe, Meg Whitman, and other more qualified female GOP leaders. Simply put, it feels like they picked a woman with no record or opinion on tough FOREIGN POLICY positions ... but with extremely strong views on DOMESTIC social issues—all of which seems to me to say, she's being kept in her place.

Palin and Cable TV

Slate's Jim Ledbetter sends in the following guest post:

The irony struck me while watching cable television from my Denver hotel room on Friday morning: A kind of token feminism had finally hit the Republican Party, and was immediately being questioned by—of all people—cable television commentators. Does anyone believe that the blowdried blonds (male and female, but for purposes of this argument, female) who read newscasts from teleprompters are chosen strictly for their journalistic skills? Putting women in front of the camera—like putting women on the covers of magazines—is a proven way of attracting the attention of media consumers both male and female. It should come as little surprise that the McCain campaign—which has never come anywhere near 50 percent support in any credible national poll—sought to apply this same media logic to politics. Don’t get me wrong: I share completely the view that Sarah Palin is not qualified to be the vice president of the United States, and that McCain’s choice is a world-class act of cynical political calculation, rather than any attempt to put “Country First.” At the same time, neither liberals nor conservatives have figured out the right balance between rewarding “qualified” women and sheer representation of women in places where it is deemed to matter. The logic of affirmative action is that given equal or near-equal conditions, preference should be given to members of historically underrepresented groups. The current contortions through which Republicans are trying to argue that Palin is qualified can be read as an argument that gender representation trumps experience, an argument not unfamiliar on the democratic left, and certainly not on cable television. And anyway, if McCain and Palin end up losing, who doubts that CNN and Fox will be competing to offer her a show?

The Palin Paradox

The misogyny gap

Something that keeps running through my mind as the blogs light up with posts about whether Sarah Palin is a serious candidate or presidential arm candy: What would Chris Matthews and Rush Limbaugh be saying about Palin had she been Obama’s veep choice instead of McCain’s? Would we be seeing Sarah Palin nutcrackers by the weekend? Would Fox News be airing a segment next week about her “nagging voice” in which so-called experts opine that ‘“men won’t vote for Sarah Palin because she reminds them of their nagging wives.” Would Chris Matthews liken her not-yet-ready for primetime voice to “fingernails on a blackboard?” Having watched Palin’s tribute to Hillary in Dayton this afternoon would Matthews accuse her of “playing the woman card?” Will he repeat the great wisdom that “"modern women" like Palin are unacceptable to "Midwest guys?” Will Tucker Carlson cop to the fact that every time he sees Palin, “I involuntarily cross my legs?” I don’t doubt Sarah Palin will face brutal misogyny in the coming weeks on the trail, and that infuriates me. But I’m willing to bet she won’t be called a “she-devil” or “bitch,” it won’t be happening in primetime, and it won’t be considered hilarious.

McCain's Blindness on Equal Pay

I want to say amen to your excellent post about McCain and equal pay, Emily. The only thing I'd add is this: I found McCain's comments about the bill particularly dismaying because he invoked an old canard—that women are less qualified than their male peers, and that (by implication) is mainly what keeps their pay low—instead of dealing with the possiblity that discrimination exists.  While campaigning in Kentucky, the AP reported, McCain expressed his oppposition to the equal pay bill by noting that what women need is more training:

"They need the education and training, particularly since more and more women are heads of their households, as much or more than anybody else," McCain said. "And it's hard for them to leave their families when they don't have somebody to take care of them.

"It's a vicious cycle that's affecting women, particularly in a part of the country like this, where mining is the mainstay; traditionally, women have not gone into that line of work, to say the least," he said.

Now, to be fair, this quote is taken out of context and I don't know what he said before it. But as a sentiment, this simply doesn't deal with the reality of gender discrimination in our country. Nor will more training help any woman who is being paid less than she should be because of it. McCain's proposal is not a viable alternative, in other words; it's a form of putting one's head in the sand and redirecting voters away from the real, if vexed, issue: that sexism still exists, and we need to find a thoughtful legal way of dealing with it.

 Read the rest of the equal-pay conversation on XX Factor.

Mmmmmm, Moderately Crazy??

OK, Anne, I’ll go there with you. But only because you called me an old-timer.

I don’t dispute for a moment that John McCain is a true maverick. But—and I can’t say it better than Matt Taibbi did—McCain’s “arrogant refusal to be a craven imbecile” is not moderation, either, even if it “makes McCain suspect in the eyes of Limbaugh and Coulter, who are terrified at the prospect of a Republican president uninterested in book burnings.”

Yes McCain has partnered with moderates and even liberals on occasion, and he’s shown us over and over that he’s nobody’s lackey. He has evinced an admirable desire to solve problems rather than howl at the moon, and for a while there, nobody but McCain was leading the charge against reverting to the rack and screws in the war on terror. But perhaps in trying to mollify the book burners he’s also managed to turn himself into a parody of a wing nut. He wants to make Bush’s tax cuts permanent? The man who has crusaded against torture voted against requiring the CIA to constrain interrogation techniques to those permitted in the Army Field Manual? He’s suddenly fallen in love with Justices Alito and Roberts? And as you point out, Anne, on the one issue most of us care about most, the war in Iraq, this is the one guy in America whose enthusiasm for the project has soared of late.

We can bicker about these details, but I take your linguistic point. But my response is that McCain may be independent-minded, even contrarian, but I don’t believe he’s a moderate. And certainly not on the issues that worry me the most.

Depends on How "Moderate" Your Definition of "Moderate" Is

Greetings to all newcomers (including the ones I failed to greet months ago!) ... but I'd like to pick a tiny bone with an old-timer. I dunno, Dahlia, maybe if you are located somewhere out beyond Dennis Kucinich then John McCain doesn't look like a "moderate," but if you're located anywhere in the American mainstream, it's hard to know what other expression to use. He sure isn't a man of the left, and he is not now and never has been a member of the Democratic Party, but he is a Republican who has put his name on legislation dealing with climate change (co-sponsored with Joe Lieberman), with campaign-finance reform (with Russ Feingold), and, most controversially, with immigration (with Teddy Kennedy). All of these bills represented, for better or for worse, attempts to find compromise, bipartisan, "moderate" solutions to otherwise intractable problems, and pretty much everyone on the out-Right of his party hates him for it.

Though lots of people would like to rewrite history now, his views on Iraq were also, at the time of the invasion, smack in the middle of the moderate center of American politics and differed little from the views of, say, Hillary Clinton. Since then, they have evolved in a way you might not like, but at least are remarkably consistent, unlike the views of, say, Hillary Clinton. He was for the war; he criticized, rather harshly, its execution; he now thinks we should stay and fix it.

But that's not the point, since I'm not making a political argument here but a linguistic one. The word moderate, dull and uninspiring and boringly unradical though it is, deserves to be saved from total evisceration. Also, I'm sensing this rapidly growing desire to paint McCain as a closet winger and a fully paid-up member of the vast right-wing conspiracy, now that he's the candidate. But if McCain's not a moderate Republican, what is Mike Huckabee? A stark raving lunatic Republican? (OK, OK... I realize the answer may be yes)

The Audacity of Hopelessness, Part 2

Dahlia, your post about McCain's powerful message of hopelessness cracked me up and reminded me of this great spoof of Obama's "Yes We Can" video: You might call it McCain's "No, We Can't." Check out the actors' expressions toward the end.

That said, I have a grain of admiration for McCain's willingness to take a politically unpopular position during the season of high political posturing. I cringe when McCain argues that we could be in Iraq for 10,000 years, and should be, if that's what it takes. But then I also cringe after watching the Oscar-nominated Iraq documentary No End in Sight, as I did last night, and realize that an early withdrawal from Iraq could leave not only America but Iraq much worse off in terms of security. I'd love to believe in the message of hope but it needs to be anchored by some pragmatic foreign policy, and sometimes I wonder just how pragmatic these pull-out-of-Iraq plans are. We don't want to bolster America's terrible (i.e., nonexistent) postwar strategy with a terrible withdrawal strategy.

Meanwhile, anyone who hasn't seen it yet should check out No End in Sight. It's not exactly a Valentine's Day treat, though.