Month: June 2009

Yet Again

by digby

I assume that most of those who read this blog are following the reaction to the administration’s inexplicably bigoted defense of the DOMA yesterday. If not, you can catch up all over the blogosphere as people weigh in with justifiable dismay and anger.

Americablog has, unsurprisingly, been leading the charge. And if you read nothing else on this issue, read this piece by Joe Sudbay. Here’s a short excerpt:

Yesterday, a Democratic President of the United States of America, in the year 2009, and an African-American child of inter-racial parents no less, gave his lawyers the go ahead to compare our marriages to incest on the same day that 42 years ago the Supreme Court ruled in his parents’ favor in Loving v. Virginia. And these people, along with our President, are suggesting that the appropriate response is to shrug our shoulders and go home, since, after all, the law is the law?

So, yes, I am advocating that we push the envelope and demand new and creative thinking on legal issues, on our civil and human rights. That’s how change happens (there’s that pesky word again). That’s what we expect from our President who promised change, who promised to be a “fierce advocate” for our rights.Yesterday’s homophobic brief would have met the expectations we had from George Bush (or Jerry Falwell). From President Barack Obama, it was an appalling betrayal of our humanity, and his own.

It’s important that people keep in mind that there is often a difference between justice and the law. Lately, we are seeing this sort of creeping, legalistic literalism in a number of different ways, such as when people rebuke Bush and Cheney for torture with a simple “because it’s illegal, that’s why.”

What if it weren’t? Would that make it ok?

I think we are about to find that out as we see the administration asking the congress to retroactively legalize secrecy on the photos, (on the heels of the Bush administration having the congress “legalize” the Guantanamo policies under the ultimately reversed MCA.) We all rightly excoriated the “unitary executive” theory as being an unconstitutional usurpation of power, but that was only half the story. What the unitary executive used his theory for was equally important. If congress had signed off on every one of Bush’s War On Terror policies in detail it still wouldn’t have made them just or proper under the constitution.

And likewise, merely because an unjust law is on the books doesn’t mean that it’s right for the DOJ to defend it, particularly with the kind of inflammatory and (one hopes) disingenuous arguments used in the brief. This isn’t God’s Law we’re talking about (assuming there were such a thing.) This is just a system set up by human beings to create an orderly and (hopefully) just society. Separating justice from the law makes the law nothing more than an arbitrary exercise in power. (I recognize that it is that mostly anyway, but there’s no reason to legitimize that by saying that anything goes as long as it’s “legal.”)

If he really felt constrained by the law in this case, Eric Holder could have simply argued that the couple in question didn’t have standing and let it go at that. The other arguments were gratuitous and seem to me to be designed to form a strong legal bulwark in favor of the law rather than setting the stage for reversing it. Which brings us to the politics.

Needless to say, after so many slights, snubs and various betrayals it’s pretty hard to deny that the LGBT community is being used as a pawn in the president’s “outreach” to social conservatives. It’s a cruel dismissal of a strong and loyal constituency on an issue of fundamental civil rights. I can’t defend it and I don’t know how the administration is going to keep defending it. And it won’t buy them a single vote, I guarantee it.

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Talking The Talk

by digby

On the CNN Money show this morning, chief fiscal scold David Walker said the budget deficit is the biggest problem facing the country and will cause every citizen to have to pay the government $155,000 in higher taxes. There will be ever tighter credit, higher interest rates and higher oil prices.

Then the editor at large of Fortune magazine came on and said the only solution to this pressing and immediate crisis is going to be an enormous tax increase on the middle class that the president is simply not telling us about.

Finally, they turned to Mark Weisbrot of the CEPR who began to talk about how this fear mongering was completely absurd, that more than a century of statistics show … and he was cut off for breaking news. Maybe they’ll go back to the subject tomorrow. But if you were watching today, you were left with the impression that the deficit is the cause of all of our economic problems and that unless the government stops spending money right NOW, you can expect a bill from the IRS for $155,000.

This is why people are brainwashed into believing that the problem with our economy isn’t a bunch of rich gamblers playing with other people’s money while skimming off millions in bonuses for themselves — or wealthy corporations rigging the system to make the taxpayers bear the burden for their failures. It’s that the government is spending too much money on old and sick people.

Yesterday I even saw Gretchen Morgenson, one of the smartest economics writers out there, say on MSNBC that a public option was a problem because we’ve all seen that when government gets involved in industries it always ends up costing more. It was like it was a tick, a bit of reflexive social lubricant that’s required in order to be taken seriously as a member of the club.

We know that the US already spends more on health care per capita than any other industrialized country and doesn’t cover everyone. Is it really reasonable to believe that the insurance companies are going to voluntarily cut their own profits? Doesn’t the government have to get involved to fix health care? And if they get “involved” they might as well do it right and create a plan that will actually force the insurance companies to do what’s necessary to bring down costs so that we don’t spend more money while we treat everyone, correct? How else will this happen, fairy dust?

I don’t think people quite realize how pervasive and unthinking free market fundamentalist assumptions and anti-government ideology is among the ruling class and the media elite. Even those who know better simply don’t know how to think or speak from any other framework. This hard push on the debt and fear of higher taxes runs on well worn grooves in American politics — they sound reasonable and familiar and work hand in glove with the moneyed interests which are determined to stop any kind of fundamental reform that erodes their privilege.

Update: Fredericka Whitfield is hosting a health care hour and did say something to the effect that at the very least, the sad little losers who don’t have health insurance at all probably need to be “given” a little something so they don’t keep forcing the hospitals to raise costs. (Maybe we could get something like Doctor’s Without Borders to pitch in. Oh wait.) I guess we probably should be grateful that well compensated television celebrities are so compassionate that they don’t think it’s a good idea that their fellow citizens die on the streets. (Those millions who are going bankrupt from being undercovered or who are living as slaves to their employers so they don’t lose their coverage are just out of luck. They should become TV celebrities too so they don’t have such problems.)

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Iran

by digby

Not good:

It’s Saturday afternoon in Tehran, and the streets are generally quiet. But the aftermath of Iran’s rigged election, in which radical-right President Ahmadinejad and his paramilitary backers were kept in office, has left Iran’s capital steeped in anger, despair, and bitterness…

To get some perspective on the crisis, today I went to see Ibrahim Yazdi, a leading Iranian dissident and Iran’s foreign minister in the early days of Islamic republic.

Read the whole interview. It’s quite disturbing. But here’s the kicker:

What is your reaction to the results of the election?

Many of us believe that the election was rigged. Not only Mousavi. We don’t have any doubt. And as far as we are concerned, it is not legitimate.

There were many, many irregularities. They did not permit the candidates to supervise the election or the counting of the ballots at the polling places. The minister of the interior announced that he would oversee the final count in his office, at the ministry, with only two aides present.

In previous elections, they announced the results in each district, so people could follow up and make a judgment about the validity of the figures. In 2005, there were problems: in one district there were about 100,000 eligible voters, and they announced a total vote of 150,000. This time they didn’t even release information about each particular district.

In all, there were about 45,000 polling places. There were 14,000 mobile ones, that can move from place to place. Many of us protested that. Originally, these mobile polling places were supposed to be used in hospitals and so on. This time, they were used in police stations, army bases, and various military compounds. When it comes to the military compounds and so on, if even 500 extra votes were put into each of the 14,000 boxes, that is seven million votes.

Mousavi and Karroubi had earlier established a joint committee to protect the peoples’ votes. Many young people volunteered to work on that committee. But the authorities didn’t let it happen. Last night [that is, election night] the security forces closed down that committee. There is no way, independent of the government and the Guardian Council, to verify the results.

Juan Cole has more on specific anomalies. This looks pretty clearly to be a rigged election. And now Ahmadinejad is talking about getting rid of the term limits on the presidency.

This makes everything even more complicated. You have in power an Israeli hard liner with an itchy trigger finger and an Iranian nutball without any legitimacy. It’s a recipe for serious misjudgment.

Update: I was going to talk a bit about why this vote rigging was so obvious and then I came across this post by Kevin:

I was at a book party for Bob Wright’s The Evolution of God last night, and even then it was obvious that the Interior Ministry was probably rigging the vote. One of the topics of conversation was: when autocracies decide to do something like this, why do they do it so clumsily? Why not give Ahmadinejad 52.7% of the vote, which would be at least within the realm of reason? Or force a runoff and let Ahmadinejad win a week from now? Why perpetrate such an obvious fraud?

Hard to say. Maybe it’s just too hard to orchestrate something more believable. Maybe, against all evidence, they believe that smashing victories are always more convincing than close ones. Maybe it’s just rank panic and stupidity. It’s a mystery — and a counterproductive one, too: there isn’t a person on the planet who thinks that Ahmadinejad could have won two-thirds of the vote with a turnout of 85%, and the possibility of inciting an internal revolt is a lot higher with a barefaced fraud like this than it would be with something a little more subtle.

On the other hand, maybe we’re looking at this through the wrong lens. Obviously something about Mousavi started to badly spook the powers-that-be during the past week, and maybe they decided something needed to be done about it. Maybe they wanted to provoke a round of violence from Mousavi’s supporters as an excuse to lead a crackdown on dissidents. And what better way to do that than to make the election rigging so obvious even a child could see it?

I think it’s clearly the latter. Authoritarians need to demonstrate their power and one of the ways they do it by making openly ridiculous claims and daring anyone to prove otherwise. If dissidents try, they will be put down hard. This is how they make the population feel impotent and powerless: “Yeah, I stole the election, what are you going to do about it?”

If they can get the media to tell the citizens to “get over it” they will complete the process.

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Choice

by digby

John Amato caught Chuck Grassley letting the cat out of the bag:

Sen. Grassley, the Mad Twitterer, was on with Andrea Mitchell and she asked him about the public option. She didn’t bring up his tweets, unfortunately. He said that he was against the public option because a think tank study told him around a hundred and nineteen million people would opt out of private health insurance and join it.

There you have it. He’s obviously not including the uninsured, who are only opting out of horrible anxiety and bad health. He’s admitting that over a third of the American people would leave their current crappy insurance company (or job they loathe but are stuck in because it’s the only way they can get decent coverage) and choose a public health option, which is a big problem for the insurance companies. Therefore, Americans must not be given that choice.

Meanwhile, Grassley and his fellow corporate servants will tell you that the key to bringing down costs is competition.

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Into The Monster’s Maw

by digby

Joan Walsh went on Bill O’Reilly’s show to talk about Dr Tiller and lived to tell the tale. She’s written about the experience and I urge you to read it all. It’s just fascinating:

I thought about it, but not for long. I like doing TV. I’m not terrible at it. I criticized him, I should have the guts to repeat it to his face. I also need to say that when I announced I’d said yes, every one of the doubters, and more, sent me great advice and good wishes. (Thanks to Media Matters who, unbidden, just had staff start sending me clips to watch, about O’Reilly’s lies. And if you’re not on Twitter, well, Twitter rocked for me.) My daughter coached me; so did my litigator ex-husband, so did my friend and Salon co-conspirator Kerry Lauerman. It takes a village to debate Bill O’Reilly!His producers also helped by doing that thing they do: “Hey, Bill really respects you for coming on the show! He wants to have a conversation! It’ll be fine!” (And they promoted my appearance on the show by identifying me on the Web site as “Joan Walsh of Slate.com.”)Well, it was so not fine. I think the high or low point was when he shrieked at me, “You have blood on your hands!” At one point he also either told me to “Shut up” or “Be quiet,” I can’t remember. (If I’m wrong about that, when I see the clip, I’ll correct it. UPDATE: Actually, he shouted “Stop talking!”) He called me “vile.” I think I said he was vile, too. There were a couple of “I know you are but what am I?” moments that I’m not totally proud of. It was a kaleidoscopic nightmare, a TV acid trip, and I don’t do acid. It almost seems like O’Reilly does, but I don’t think so. The man is driven by demons. God bless him and save him.

Joan has guts of iron to face that maniac and she did great. I would probably throw the mike down in disgust and walk off, thus giving him a big victory. (Those know-it-alls with the psychotic eyes that go dead when they get angry make my flight instinct go into high gear.) You can watch the vid, here. But Joan’s account of the experience is what’s most interesting. I’m in awe of anyone who willingly faces that giant jackass and then has the presence of mind to retell the experience in such riveting, almost Hunter S Thompsonesque detail.

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Update: At the end of a great post about Joan Walsh’s O’Reilly smackdown, with video and backround, David Neiwert has posted the opening of hihttp://www.blogger.com/img/blank.gifs book The Eliminationists and I just wanted to reprint it here for posterity:

Just to back up Walsh’s point: Below is an excerpt from the opening pages of my new book, The Eliminationists: How Hate Talk Radicalized the American Right:

In July of 2008, a graying, mustachioed man from the Knoxville suburb of Powell, Tennessee, sat down and wrote out by hand a four-page manifesto describing his hatred of all things liberal and his belief that “all liberals should be killed.”

When he was done, Jim David Adkisson drove his little Ford Escape to the parking lot of the Tennessee Valley Unitarian Universalist Church in Knoxville. A few days before, the church had attracted media attention for its efforts to open a local coffee shop for gays and lesbians. Leaving the manifesto on the seat of the car, he walked inside the church carrying a guitar case stuffed with a shotgun and 76 rounds of ammunition.

The congregants were enjoying the opening scene from the church’s production of the musical Annie Jr. when Adkisson, in a hallway outside the sanctuary, abruptly opened the guitar case, pulled out the shotgun, fired off a harmless round that startled everyone, then walked into the sanctuary and began firing indiscriminately. Witnesses report he was saying “hateful things.” An unsuspecting 61-year-old grandmother and retired schoolteacher named Linda Kraeger was hit in the face with a shotgun blast. A 60-year-old foster father named Greg McKendry got up to shield others from the attack and was hit in the chest.

When Adkisson stopped to reload, a group of men, who had already begun closing around him, tackled him and wrested away his gun. Adkisson complained that the men were hurting him. “The only thing he said was he was asking us to get off of him, that he wasn’t doing anything,” said Jamie Parkey, one of the men who tackled him. “We just looked at each other incredulously, like ‘How dare you?’ “

Greg McKendry was dead at the scene. Linda Kraeger died the next day. Seven other congregants were wounded.

A detective who interviewed Adkisson and examined his four-page manifesto reported to his superiors that Adkisson targeted the church “because of its liberal teachings and his belief that all liberals should be killed because they were ruining the country, and that he felt that the Democrats had tied his country’s hands in the war on terror and they had ruined every institution in America with the aid of media outlets.”

When the detective interviewed Adkisson, he said he’d decided that since “he could not get to the leaders of the liberal movement that he would then target those that had voted them in to office.”

Knoxville’s police chief told reporters the next day that Adkisson was motivated by his “hatred of the liberal movement” and “liberals in general, as well as gays.” He was also frustrated by his inability to get a job, a problem he also blamed on liberals. His neighbors in Powell described Adkisson as “a Confederate” and a “believer in the Old South.”

When detectives went to Adkisson’s home in Powell, they found—scattered among the ammunition, guns, and brass knuckles—books written by leading conservative pundits: Liberalism is a Mental Disorder by Michael Savage, Let Freedom Ring by Sean Hannity, and The O’Reilly Factor by Bill O’Reilly, among others. Adkisson’s manifesto, released some months later to the public, was in fact largely a distillation of these works, ranting about how “Liberals have attack’d every major institution that made America great. … Liberals are evil, they embrace the tenets of Karl Marx, they’re Marxist, socialist, communists.”

And then he went the next logical step, in the logic of anger:

This was a symbolic killing. Who I wanted to kill was every Democrat in the Senate & House, the 100 people in Bernard Goldberg’s book. I’d like to kill everyone in the mainstream media. But I know those people were inaccessible to me. I couldn’t get to the generals & high ranking officers of the Marxist movement so I went after the foot soldiers, the chickenshit liberals that vote in these traitorous people. Someone had to get the ball rolling. I volunteered. I hope others do the same. It’s the only way we can rid America of this cancerous pestilence.

… If decent patriotic Americans could vote 3 times in every election we couldn’t stem this tide of liberalism that’s destroying America. Liberals are a pest like termites. Millions of them. Each little bite contributes to the downfall of this great Nation. The only way we can rid ourselves of this evil is Kill them in the streets. Kill them where they gather.

I’d like to encourage other like minded people to do what I’ve done. If life aint worth living anymore don’t just Kill yourself, do something for your country before you go. Go Kill Liberals.

The events that sunny Sunday left the church’s pastor, Rev. Chris Buice, with a shattered congregation. “People were killed in the sanctuary of my church, which should be the holy place, the safe place. People were injured,” he told PBS’s Rick Karr a couple of weeks later. “A man came in here, totally dehumanized us—members of our church were not human to him. Where did he get that? Where did he get that sense that we were not human?”

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Yoo Hoo

by digby

Will he take the fifth?

John Yoo, a former Bush administration lawyer who wrote crucial memorandums justifying harsh interrogation techniques, will have to answer in court to accusations that his work led to a prisoner’s being tortured and deprived of his constitutional rights. The government had asked Judge Jeffrey S. White of Federal District Court in San Francisco to dismiss the case filed by Jose Padilla, an American citizen who spent more than three years in a military brig as an enemy combatant. Judge White denied most elements of Mr. Yoo’s motion and quoted a passage from the Federalist Papers that in times of war, nations, to be more safe, “at length become willing to run the risk of being less free.”

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The Last Time

by digby

I have always considered myself a pretty good armchair historian of the 90s. I was paying close attention to politics during that era and I tend to recall the details fairly well. But Bob Somerby surprised me with this — I’d totally forgotten about it:

Last week, Scott Roeder killed Dr. George Tiller. Result: Some are wondering if the rise of Obama is creating stress in the minds of some unbalanced people, stress which has led them to act. This is a thoroughly worthwhile discussion. And it’s worth remembering that the same damn thing pretty much happened the last time. By “last time,” we mean the last time we had a Democrat president. As you may recall, that president was Bill Clinton—and crazy stories spread far and wide about his intolerable ways. The liberal world ran off and hid in the woods—and, to all intents and purposes, the “mainstream press corps” didn’t exist. And sure enough! By September 1994, a man name Frank Corder decided to act. This incident largely went down the memory hole, like most misconduct directed at Clinton. But in real time, Judy Keen reported the apparent attempt on the president’s life in USA Today. “Crash exposes risks,” the headline said. “How tough is it to protect a president?” Even after 9/11, this event remained largely deep-sixed:

KEEN (9/13/94): Frank Corder’s flight in his tiny red-and-white Cessna exposed one of the White House’s main vulnerabilities—an attack from the air.

“It finally happened,” says Marlin Fitzwater, press secretary to former presidents George Bush and Ronald Reagan. “Everybody has always speculated that someone could fly kamikaze-style into the White House. I don’t think there’s any way to prevent it.” If there is, Secret Service officials are hunting for it now. President Clinton and his family were asleep at Blair House, across the street from the White House, when Corder flew over Washington’s treetops under a sliver of moonlight, somehow evaded what’s supposed to be the world’s best security and crashed into an old magnolia tree two floors below the Clintons’ empty bedrooms. The worst damage: a cracked window. But the “what ifs” surrounding the incident reignited ominous questions around the capital—questions that get to the heart of how tough it is to protect a president. What if the plane had been carrying explosives? What if terrorists had been piloting it instead of the inexperienced Corder? The White House’s occupants made light of the dramatic crash. “This has been quite an unusual day here at the White House,” Hillary Rodham Clinton told guests. Still, one fact loomed large: Monday’s incident was the worst White House security breach in nearly two decades.

In fairness, the Clintons were murderers, drug-dealers, socialists. Perhaps for that reason (no one seemed to know), Corder had finally decided to act. He tried to crash his plane into the White House, hitting a large tree instead. Corder died in the incident. It was “the worst White House security breach in nearly two decades,” Keen reported. And a few weeks later, it happened again. “Target: White House,” said the headline on Keen’s report. “Did bullets also bring a wake-up call?”

KEEN (10/31/94): Two weeks ago, President Clinton stood at a podium outside the White House’s north entrance to welcome a U.S. delegation home from Haiti. Saturday, that same north entrance was sprayed with a gunman’s bullets. If the motives for the shooting spree at the White House were murky Sunday, one thing seems increasingly clear: This president—who loves to mingle with crowds and chafes at being trapped in the Secret Service’s protective bubble—is probably about to change his ways. That may mean no more meandering across Lafayette Park on his way home from church, as he did a few weekends ago, with tourists flocking just feet away. And no more north entrance appearances.

The shooting was the second frightening White House security breach in six weeks. Last month, a Maryland man crashed a stolen plane onto the lawn, killing himself. “These two incidents may save this president’s life at some point, because he’s had a wakeup call,” says terrorism expert Neil Livingstone.

In this incident, a man named Francisco Duran “pulled a rifle from his coat, stuck it through the fence and started spraying rounds,” Keen reported. “It took Duran 10 seconds, the Secret Service estimates, to squeeze off 20 to 30 rounds” before “two passersby subdued him.” Given the zeitgeist of the 1990s, memory of these incidents quickly disappeared. We recall them because, as a comedian, we did a few jokes about these events (and perhaps one other) for a brief time in early 1995. Our premise? The crazy attacks seemed to stop as soon as Newt Gingrich became House speaker. (In the wake of the November 1994 elections.) Our jokes got a few laughs in DC. (We were surprised.) We didn’t try them elsewhere. Were unbalanced people driven to act by all the crazy talk about Clinton? Are unbalanced people being so moved by Obama’s rise today? By crazy and semi-crazy talk about him? Von Brunn, who killed a decent person, apparently believed Obama isn’t a citizen. But then, Corder and Duran may well have thought that Clinton kept murdering people. Not to mention his drug-dealing ways! We think it’s worth remembering that this happened the last time too. Beyond that, we think it’s worth wondering why the attacks by Corder and Duran found their way down the memory hole to the extent that they did. Hint: This was very much the way of the 1990s. In its own more dignified manner, the mainstream press corps was also flying little planes into the White House at this time. (They have never tried to explain why.) Later, they spent two year flying planes into Campaign 2000. In that case, they finally got their way. Are we happy with how that turned out?

I was listening to right wing radio today and they were downright apoplectic about Paul Krugman’s column. (After all, Von Brunn was a liberal, which means it was Krugman who made him do it.) Anyone suggesting that right wing violence is on the rise is completely delusional. It’s left wing violence that is on the rise — al Qaeda and cop killers and anti-semites are all liberals. And according to this logic it was liberals who went after Clinton too.
I think they really believe it. And it makes them very angry and violent. Which means they’re liberals too. I guess that explains why the liberal media is protecting them.

Update: And anyone who isn’t convinced of Krugman’s thesis, read this.
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Fold-In Humor

by digby

If your biggest influence in life wasn’t MAD magazine, as it was mine, then perhaps you won’t find this as brilliant as I do.

And, by the way, if people aren’t following Sadly No religiously during this magnificently dramatic conservative meltdown, they’re simply missing thee full effect.

A doff of the hat to Batocchio

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Jill Richardson Reviews Squeezed

by tristero

Jill Richardson of the excellent food movement blog La Vida Locavore reviews the new book, Squeezed: What You Don’t Know about Orange Juice, by Alissa Hamilton. Jill’s conclusion is fascinating, a succinct expression of the complexity of the issues swirling around mass market food production and eating today.

There’s nothing in orange juice that would kill you or make you sick or even gross you out. And that’s precisely the question the book is getting at: does it matter if we are eating (or drinking) a highly processed food and that the processing is hidden from us while the marketing makes us believe that the product is “fresh from the grove”? And what’s funny is how our perceptions have changed over time! The 1960’s era housewife remembered a time when juice came only from fresh squeezed oranges, and she was upset that a processed product was being sold under the guise of freshness.

Today? My hunch is that few people really care. It’s orange juice. It came from oranges. Do we care if the oranges aren’t from Florida, but were actually brought here from Brazil? Or that even 100% Florida orange juice includes flavor packs derived from oranges grown all over the world? Or that the OJ might contain tangerines? Or that the “quality” we perceive is really just a highly engineered flavor pack? Most of us have never known an alternative, and orange juice (even with its processing) is one of the most natural and unadulterated foods sold in a grocery store (excluding the produce section). These are questions more than they are answers, but my hunch is that if we were not as far removed from our food as we are today, we’d be healthier and better off – even if processed orange juice specifically is far and away not the biggest food problem we’ve got.

On a related food note, the movie Food, Inc. is out today. I’m incredibly busy at the moment, getting ready for a recording session, but can’t wait to see it.

On Nuts ‘N Sluts

by digby

I wasn’t going to wade into the David Letterman thing because it seemed pretty trivial to me on the media sexism scale. But it’s obviously a growing brouhaha, so I might as well.

First of all, Sarah Palin does not look or act like a “slut” and it’s nothing more than a sexual fantasy to think of her that way. She married her high school sweetheart and has five kids. She’s a born again Christian. She does not dress provocatively, and she has said that she put her hair up and wore glasses specifically to take her looks off the table as much as possible. She’s an attractive 40 something politician, she’s not a Playboy model (not that there’s anything wrong with that) and it would be nice if she didn’t have to put up with that stuff. She’s not trying to “sex herself up” for the camera or anything else. There’s enough to criticize her for.

The daughter thing was in poor taste. Leave the kids out of the jokes. The fact that he meant her older daughter is obvious, but that doesn’t make it any better. She’s a young girl who didn’t ask for the limelight and doesn’t deserve to be mocked by middle aged men. It’s cruel and unnecessary.

I’ve never particularly liked the way Letterman treated certain women. He clearly has no tolerance for certain behaviors and over the years he’s pissed me off more than once by just being a superior jackass to women and girls who were obviously nervous or perhaps a little unpolished and unsophisticated. But then he’s always made fun of people who are a little dumb or a little bit crazy, which is something that never sat well with me. The weird thing is that since he had the kid I thought he’d mellowed substantially. He just seemed kinder and less judgmental. This seems a little bit out of character for him as he’s been in recent years.

Having said that, this ridiculous accusation that he was talking about raping the 14 year old is over the top and disingenuous, to say the least. That clearly was not his intention and claiming it was really cheapens the validity of the complaint.

And making Palin into a feminist hero because of this cheapens feminism. This woman is defending herself and her own daughter, but as Governor she never quite finds the voice to defend other women who have average real life problems, like workplace discrimination, rapes or unwanted pregnancies. Her complaints are not coming from feminist principle but rather political opportunism.

And these right wing monsters like Limbaugh who are suddenly concerned about the treatment of women in the media is laughable. This is the man who coined the term feminazis, and called Chelsea Clinton the white house dog. His record of rank, violent misogyny is clear. If Palin repudiated him as quickly as she goes on television to condemn Letterman, I might be able to take her a little bit more seriously as a feminist.

The media are fascinated by Sarah Palin, at least partially because of her camera friendly appearance and her colorful family life. That doesn’t mean they can call her a slut and use her teenage daughter as the butt of crude sexual jokes. But it also doesn’t mean that she and her politics aren’t reactionary and anti-feminist. Having some feminist principles are required for that and Sarah Palin only seems to develop them when it involves her.

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