Wednesday, October 22, 2008

Palin's "Prop"


A local feminist Democrat accused Governor Sarah Palin of using her handicapped infant son as “a prop on late night television.” It caused a fuss and she resigned last week from Representative Carol Shea-Porter’s (D-NH) campaign as a result. It’s not clear whether she was asked to resign or she did it on her own initiative. No matter. The remark crystallizes why Palin drives feminists crazy.

Radical feminists say they’re “pro-choice.” It looks to them like Sarah Palin made a choice when she got pregnant in her forties after being inaugurated the first woman governor of Alaska, but we can’t be sure of that. To make a choice, she would have had to consider an abortion and we don’t know if it ever entered her mind. Only she knows that. Maybe she discussed it with her husband before anybody else knew she was pregnant and made a choice then. We just don’t know.

During the pregnancy, she found out her baby had Down Syndrome. She’s bound to have known families with such children and thought about how difficult it would be to raise her child. Maybe she considered abortion then. Maybe not. Maybe someone else asked her if she thought about abortion. Maybe not. It could be her friends and family believed she would never consider it because she had borne four children already and knew what was inside her was her child. Maybe they knew she believed abortion was murder so they never brought it up. Maybe she and her husband had a private conversation in which they weighed the prospect of living with a Down Syndrome child against the prospect of living with the guilt they would feel for killing it. Maybe they made a choice then. Or, maybe it never came up because each knew what the other would say.

Whatever went on in Sarah Palin’s mind during her pregnancy, she clearly carried a handicapped baby to term and delivered it when she could have had an abortion. She rejected that most prized “constitutional right” feminists believe they “won” for women everywhere in America and has a highly successful political career without it. When Palin’s family is on stage with the older girl holding her handicapped, infant brother, it drives the local feminist mentioned above and all the rest in the “sisterhood” of feminism nuts. She calls the infant boy, whose name is Trig, a “prop” because, although he’s the smallest, he stands out most in her eyes.

Perhaps it would be petty of me to speculate about another thing that annoys feminists about Palin: In addition to all the above, and after bearing five children, she’s attractive. Back in 1987 when Rush Limbaugh wrote that “Feminism was established so as to allow unattractive women access to the mainstream of society,” I believe he was kidding - mostly. As with all humor though, what makes it funny is that there’s a grain of truth in it. Feminists have long railed against societal standards of female beauty and they’ve made some good points along the way, but many of us have sensed that, as Shakespeare put it, they “protesteth too much.” Do many feminists resent attractive women and the advantage it gives them? I think so. Is there a disproportionately large number of angry, man-hating, homely women in the “sisterhood”? I think it’s pretty obvious that there is. I believe it’s safe to say that jealousy is also a factor in their hatred of Governor Palin.

The feminists favored candidate, Barack Obama, has the most pro-abortion record in the US Senate - indeed the most pro-abortion record of any candidate for president in history - by far. Speaking on sex education and his two daughters during the campaign last April, he said: “I am going to teach them first of all about values and morals. But if they make a mistake, I don't want them punished with a baby.” To Obama, babies are “punishment.” While in the Illinois State Senate, he voted against the “Born Alive Infant Protection Act.” He would rather leave babies born alive after unsuccessful abortions to die on a shelf in another room, alone and unattended, because to recognize them as human beings would threaten the legality of abortion itself. Explaining his vote, Obama said, “I mean, it - it would essentially bar abortions, because the equal protection clause does not allow somebody to kill a child, and if this is a child, then this would be an antiabortion statute.” If it’s not a child, Barack, then what the hell is it?

Ignore that crying baby in the other room. We must protect abortion. No wonder feminists love Obama and hate Palin. To them, her baby is a prop, a symbol that she rejects their culture of death.

20 comments:

Anonymous said...

Excellent observations of what is really going on in the verbal assasination of Sarah Palin by the Obama supporters. The only truth coming from Obama's campaign is coming from his VP pick!
Please keep it coming Tom.

Bob Sharkey

Vanessa said...

Tom thank you again for writing the truth! Vk in LA

Anonymous said...

I read the Daily Sun regularly. In fairness to them they print a grat variety of viewpoints. Toms are always nice. Susan I have always thought of as just so wound up that it would only be a matter of time until she put her foot in her mouth. Guess we found that monent in time! Maybe she will stop that insane whining now! And that would be a good thing.

Anonymous said...

Tom McLaughlin is the only guy I will read. No one else.

Anonymous said...

You're right on as usual, Tom. I don't see how any sane person can think of voting for Nobama.

Harvey in North Baldwin

Anonymous said...

Sometimes there is justice in this world, and this is one of them. Thanks for another great article Tom.

susanthe said...

What a fine bunch of readers you attract, Tom!

If you had any ovaries, you'd have called and asked me about my resignation. I resigned before the Congresswoman even knew what happened. It's unfortunate the GOP has so little to offer that they have to stoop to sniffing through blogs to find things to feign outrage about.

I sure hope all you GOP donors have enjoyed spending all that money on Caribou Barbie and her wardrobe!

Susan Bruce

Tom McLaughlin said...

I don't have any ovaries, actually. Thought you knew that.

This is the first time I've heard from you directly, Susan. When did you ever call me before slamming me in your columns so many dozens of times over the years. Let me think . . . Umm, never. Why would I extend you that courtesy?

Anonymous said...

dear tom, you are such a great writer, i do not you have written a single artical that I have not agreed on. Well done.


p.s. you are quite the atractive fellow

Anonymous said...

Hey Susan Buce,

Would you prefer Sarah's wardrobe be funded just as Obama's campaign... via George Soros' illegal manipulation of campaing financing laws?

By the way, how many $1,500 Hartmarx suits does Barack own? The Chicago Sun Times (http://www.suntimes.com/news/politics/obama/1234832,CST-NWS-obamasuit22.article) goes on to say that he's bought 2 more... Let's see, we're already up to $4,500. Do we dare talk about Michelle's wardrobe? At least Joe Biden is balancing it all out - I imagine he's a jeans & sweatshirt guy when he's hanging out at the local Home Depot.

Your response is not surprising... best to follow Obama's lead and not address the issue in the article, just redirect to someting superfluous.

Good luck in the private sector! Sounds like you'll be one of the "poor me" people looking for Obama's handouts, though.

Anonymous said...

i have just seen this article in the paper.I thought i was very interesting.i agree excellent observation.

Anonymous said...

I normally do not engage in personal attacks,if they are not deserved.
But, I could not resist responding to Mr. Bruce's comments on female genetalia...
It is time to shave old man, your, "Five O'clock Shadow" is showing!

Bob Sharkey

Garnet said...

"Do many feminists resent attractive women and the advantage it gives them?"

Attractiveness

Is a state of mind

And a sense of style,

Not looks.

Anonymous said...

Tom,
I agree with much of what you say almost always. Even more pertinent, I enjoy the provocation of thought your articles give me, I usually spend a couple hours after reading your articles researching and reading up on the days idea.

I consider myself a "liberal" conservative. I know, I know, I also shudder when speaking the word too. Like I said my views are mostly conservative but the one that makes me that "L" word is my stance on abortion. I belive that abortion should remain legal for a few reasons but the biggest being that abortion reduces crime.

In the May 2001 "Quarterly Journal Of Economics" published by JOHN J. DONOHUE III AND STEVEN D. LEVITT http://pricetheory.uchicago.edu/levitt/Papers/DonohueLevittTheImpactOfLegalized2001.pdf
Donohue and Levitt explain "We offer evidence that legalized abortion has contributed significantly to
recent crime reductions. Crime began to fall roughly eighteen years after abortion
legalization. The five states that allowed abortion in 1970 experienced declines
earlier than the rest of the nation, which legalized in 1973 with Roe v. Wade.
States with high abortion rates in the 1970s and 1980s experienced greater crime
reductions in the 1990s. In high abortion states, only arrests of those born after
abortion legalization fall relative to low abortion states. Legalized abortion appears
to account for as much as 50 percent of the recent drop in crime."
I would like to hear your thoughts about the correlation beween abortion and crime. Again thanks for your thought-provoking writings.

Anonymous said...

...Tom, you are like a voice in the wilderness.

Probably literally too if I remember that part of the East Coast.

Keep up the standard friend.

Tomax7

Tom McLaughlin said...

Tomax7: Thanks for the kind remarks. Irate radical feminists have written nasty letters in one local newspaper in response to this column, which I was happy to see.

I'm annoying the right people.

Tom McLaughlin said...

Liam:

I don't doubt that legalized abortion has contributed to lower crime rates, but I can't agree with you that it justifies abortion in any way.

At the risk of bringing the racism charges which are inevitable when discussing statistics like the following, here they are anyway: Abortion rates are much higher among blacks and so are crime rates. So, any increase in abortion rates among blacks will likely result in lower crime rates. Consider a Fox News report here:

http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,348649,00.html

"Blacks do, indeed, have much higher rates of abortions than whites or other minority groups. In 2000, while blacks made up 17 percent of live births, they made up more than twice that share of abortions (36 percent). If those aborted children had been born, the number of blacks born would have been slightly over 50 percent greater than it was. The comparison with whites and other minorities is striking. Whites made up 78 percent of live births, but only 57 percent of abortions."

Then consider a Justice Department study here:

http://www.ojp.usdoj.gov/bjs/homicide/race.htm

It reports that for homicides:

"In 2005, offending rates for blacks were more than 7 times higher than the rates for whites"

There's plenty more statistical evidence where the above come from to support what you suggest, but there are better ways to bring down crime rates than killing babies no matter what their color.

Anonymous said...

SB: "If you had any ovaries, you'd have called and asked me about my resignation"...

Tom, I really think we need to get some pills for this poor lady. She has simply just gone over the edge completely!

Anonymous said...

You cannot talk about black children in America without pointing out that 7 out of 10 black babies are borne to single mothers. Most will never know their fathers. An appallingly large numnber of young black males between 19 and 27 are in prisions. This destruction of the family is the tragedy of our time. The redistribution-of-wealth schemers have created the modern welfare state. These babies are the victims. And we have annointed a man as king of the world, who after his grand coronation will apply himself to more of the same by "spreading it around more".

How can any thinking person not see what is happening?

Jenn said...

I'm coming in late on this, but anyway... Susan, you are an utter disgrace to the female gender.