NRA Jewess: Palin’s gonna get ya!
First Linda Lingle, Hawaii's Jewish Republican governor, came to the defense of Sarah Palin. And now Sandra Froman – the only Jew and only the second woman to serve as president of the NRA – has the GOP running mate's back, in an op-ed that she's sent out via e-mail.
Our favorite line: "In addition, Palin's an NRA member and hunter. Barack Obama has never hunted wild game or field-dressed an animal. Frankly, Barack Obama should not welcome a comparison with Sarah Palin as to who is more rugged."
Fine, but how would Palin stack up against Woody Allen?
Here's Froman's full piece:
Sarah, Get Your Gun!By Sandy Froman
This week's treatment of Sarah Palin has been an appalling display of sexism and elitism. But the hatchet-men are in for a rude awakening.
The attacks over the past few days come down to two things:
First, Sarah Palin is supposedly out of her depth. She's only been in high office for two years, age 44, and has no foreign policy or national security experience. They say she's not ready for the big game.
Second, they imply she's a bad mother. She has a Down Syndrome baby, and her seventeen-year-old daughter soon will have a baby as well. Some are saying that a fit mother wouldn't take on a job like this under these circumstances.
This is rank sexism, and dripping with condescension.
Would anyone dare ask these questions if the candidate were a man? Evidently not because they haven't with Barack Obama. The freshman senator has only four years in office and half that campaigning for president, so really only two years foreign policy experience and has never handled national security. He has young children, but no one's suggesting he'd be a bad father.
The comparison is worse when you consider their experience and their jobs. She runs a state several hundred times bigger than Joe Biden's Delaware and has roughly as many constituents as Biden. And while Obama and Biden talk for a living, Governor Palin daily makes dozens of decisions and is commander-in-chief of the fiercely-independent Alaska National Guard.
In addition, Palin's an NRA member and hunter. Barack Obama has never hunted wild game or field-dressed an animal. Frankly, Barack Obama should not welcome a comparison with Sarah Palin as to who is more rugged.
Conveniently lost in this male condescension of an "uppity" woman who refuses to know her place is that she's a candidate for vice president, not president. The president is the commander-in-chief, sets the government budget and makes appointments. The vice president breaks tie votes in the Senate and advises the president. That being the case, I want to ask all these men who have trouble with Governor Palin one question:
Explain to me how Barack Obama can be qualified for president if someone with at least as much, if not more, experience is unqualified for vice president?
Their answer, I suspect, is that Barack is a man, Sarah is a woman. Therefore with equal or less experience, he can be president while she can't even be vice president. Any woman who claims to support equality for women, but doesn't fume in rage at this, is a hypocrite.
I know something about unspoken sexism. When I graduated from law school in 1974 there weren't many woman lawyers and it was still considered a man's job. I was the first partner in the, then, 50-year history of the major California law firm where I worked. When I joined the NRA, some expressed surprise because it was thought of as a man's organization. When I was elected to the NRA board of directors, it happened again. And when I was elected president of the NRA some male jaws dropped while women nodded in knowing approval.
During my tenure as NRA president, there were a few male advisors who tried to coax me into ridiculous speeches in settings that underutilized me because even then, they didn't consider me up to certain tasks. Never mind that I was a graduate of Harvard Law School and an honors graduate of Stanford, or that I had a resume a mile long. I was a woman, and so a man would be better suited to be where the hottest battles were being fought.
I went ahead and did those things anyway. I never fumbled the ball, I never faltered, and when I concluded my term of office, I left on a high note.
I look to Governor Sarah Palin as someone who can do that on a much higher level on the national stage. This tough Western woman refuses to take a back seat. This woman who knows how to look down the barrel of a gun and gut an animal in the wilderness is not afraid that she'll break her nail when she punches some deserving opponent right between the eyes in a political brawl. She's demonstrated that grit and determination in pummeling the former Republican governor out of office, felling the former Alaska attorney general, and dispatching the former Alaska GOP chairman. Do you think those men rolled over? Do you think they graciously conceded? No, they fought her tooth and nail, and she beat them into the ground.
The sexist commentators denigrating her right now are destined for the same fate. Watch out, boys. This girl's gonna get ya!
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What I find much more disturbing is the fact that she fired the Public Safety Commissioner of Alaska because he wouldn’t fire a State Trooper who had divorced her sister. That, pure and simple, is an abuse of power the likes of which we have not seen since the Nixon administration.
Distract us from the real issues: war and the lack of accountability as well as the huge expense (where is this money going anyway?), economy, cost of fuel, national debt, lack of health care, unemployment and the minimum wage crisis, competition with foreign corporations, and how much we owe China, the decreased funding of public schools, the abbreviations of our constitutional rights, and the defense of the use of torture. Did Sarah Palin run a national campaign and win the endorsement of a major political party? Has Palin ever served in Congress as a successful senator for her state? Has Palin had to vote for legislation effecting thousands of troops in Iraq? Has Palin had to deliberate over any really substantial issues effecting the entire country? What kind of resume’ does she have, her BA degree
There are all these Republicans up in arms that Palin is being unfairly criticized as lacking essential qualifications to become president should something happen to the 72 year old McCain. According to them it is only sexism. Frankly: If Palin wasn’t a woman would she ever be offered this job? Can you imagine McCain offering a job just a heartbeat away from Presidency to a man with a BA in a mid-western school who has no foreign political experience and only limited knowledge of other subject matters?(Sure according to them Vasilla, Alaska, is a bustling metropolis full of political and economic problems, something akin to Detroit or New Orleans.) Of course if he offered the position to a man, would all the disenfranchised Hilary suporters give McCain the votes he will now get despite Palin’s extreme right wing views so diametrally opposite to Hilary’s progressive policies and ideas)?
Politics have always been dirty and all the candidates do whatever helps them to get on that moving truck to White House. But in some cases, the politics is dirtier. McCain maybe in essence a nice old man, but his insticts and those around him are killer instincts and if Palin will serve his purpose he will use her as a stepping stone to Presidency.
Obama’s people are in a double bind now: They do not really dare to criticize McCain because they are in danger of slighting the mantra of his Viet Nam experience, and now they do not dare to criticize Palin, because she is a woman, mother of five and an ex-PTA member. Neither one case should prevent a healthy and honest debate about the real issues. Future of this country depends on it.
I am very proud of Lingle and Froman for speaking up for Palin. I hope that other Jewish women will take the time to familiarize
themselves with her positions.
I do think that Isreal has no better friends than the people that have a real biblical knowledge about how peoples that curse Isreal will be cursed and that those who bless Isreal will be blessed. May God Bless Isreal!!!!! Do not give on mmore inch of the land that the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob has given to you. You can tell that the person or persons that comented on the Jewess Palin spoke of her in a derrogatory choice of words is obviously antisemetic. I believe that this county was based on Biblical principals which this country were founded upon and that the principals the country of Isreal were founded upon will never die and we better find out what God has to say!!
Despite your degrees from Harvard and Stanford your article bordered on nonsense. Killing and skinning an animal is qualification for Vice President? At least she didn’t shoot someone in the face. Experience with the national guard? Let’s make her the Chair of the Joint Chiefs she is obviously qualified.
All the whinning about sexism and media unfairness is complete garbage. The Republicans took a man who served in Viet Nam and won a medal and defamed him and slandered him. They attacked the Clintons about White Water before he even took office and after 8 years and millions of dollars found nothing. Now you complain about questioning her fitness to be President if McCain dies. You can dish it out but you can’t take it. She should be “rugged” enough to handle politics as usual.
Re: “She has a Down Syndrome baby, and her seventeen-year-old daughter soon will have a baby as well. Some are saying that a fit mother wouldn’t take on a job like this under these circumstances.”
Well, Barack Obama would have recommended a simple solution to both “problems,” noting that he doubtlessly does not believe that Sarah Palin should have to be “punished” with a Down’s Syndrome baby. Abort the babies, toss them aside to die without food, water, or medical care if they happen to be born alive, and throw them in the dumpster--end of problem.
New slogan: “You don’t have to be pro-life to oppose live birth abortion (infanticide), you just have to be human.”
Re: “If Palin wasn’t a woman would she ever be offered this job? Can you imagine McCain offering a job just a heartbeat away from Presidency to a man with a BA in a mid-western school who has no foreign political experience and only limited knowledge of other subject matters?”
Can you imagine the Democratic Party offering the PRESIDENCY to a man with a BA in political science who has no executive experience whatsoever, only two years in the Senate, and only limited knowledge of other subject matters?
So let’s see--who would I trust with the United States’ security and freedom in the face of a threat from the new Russian Empire, or a nuclear-armed Iran? The retired Navy captain and Annie Oakley/Sarah Barracuda, or the “community organizer” from the racist church and his left-wing anti-Second Amendment appendage Biden?
Re: “The Republicans took a man who served in Viet Nam and won a medal and defamed him and slandered him.” John Kerry said that he committed atrocities in Vietnam, and that his fellow veterans behaved like Genghis Khan. We can go by what he said about himself, not what the Swift Boat veterans said about him.
This is what I’ve always “liked” in us, Jews. When we see an opportunity, we grab it, no matter what. Now, why would a highly educated “elite” lawyer would join and reach the highest ranks of an organization like NRA? I guess the Republican bandwagon appeared to her as a much better vehicle towards her goals.
All this whining about the “unfair” treatment of Palin? This coming from a group who clearly values hooliganism as a social interaction, a group whose hypocrisy is totally limitless. During Palin oratorical feat, the only thing missing was a generous sprinkle of Sieg Heils.
Oh..I guess you haven’t read blogs splattered all over Moveon.org or DaikyKos with antesemitism that is as casual as it was in Germany in 1936. The hypocrisy is from the left except that you want to beieve it isn’t there.
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Linda B
09/04/08 11:43 AM
The issue is NOT that Palin is a “bad mother” simply because her daughter is pregnant. Things do happen to the best kids of the best parents.
However, Palin professes to believe in family” and “Christian” values as part of her platform. She believes in teaching abstinence only to
teenagers. (And we see how well that works.) In so doing, SHE makes her daughter’s pregnancy an issue- because she talks about that stuff all the time.
A VP (potential president) is a major role model. Do we want to support the idea that having a pregnant 17 year old (16 when she got pregnant ) moving into a classic shotgun marriage to an immature boy who does not want children (his website) is the way leaders of our country support their unwed pregnant daughter? Is this the model to which the people of the USA aspire?
It can’t be considered off limits as an issue when Palin makes “morality” and “God” and “integrity” and teaching “abstinence only” part of her platform. PLAIN herself makes her daughter’s pregnancy germain.
And besides, if she failed so obviously in imparting to her own child, her Christian values of no premarital sex-- she sure isn’t much of a leader within her own family.