Firstly: Sarah Palin is a good feminist in the spirit of Susan B Anthony, because, like Susan, Sarah Palin loves her husband first and her children second.
*blink* *blink*
I actually read that today. I read a real live woman making that claim on the Internet. I can only hope it was a Crazy Fundie Bot programmed to act like a real live woman. How can a living thinking organism live believing that is fact? No one, in all the years she was in school learning about Ms. Anthony said, "Oh, by the way kids, Susie B? Totally single." I can understand that they might not add the "and possibly a lesbian," and I agree that they definitely should not have gone on with, "and what I would have given to be in a Susan B Anthony/Elizabeth Cady Stanton 3-way!" but no one said the first part?
Second: Sarah Palin not only wants to reverse Roe v Wade, she wants to make contraception illegal too.
There are days that I think nothing would make me happier than a government that required a license to parent, because there are plenty of "parents" who aren't up to the task. But that would not be in any way, shape, or form an acceptable move for our government.
If you want to adopt a child, or even a dog, the process is long and difficult- there are screenings, references, meetings: someone else will ultimately decide if you are allowed to adopt regardless of whether you think you're fit. But if you can get pregnant and have your own, more power to you! Have as many as you want, give them up for adoption if you can't feed 'em, whatever! But to then say, "Oh, but don't abort it?" Wha-huh? That doesn't fit.
Our government has no more right to deny a birth than to allow a birth, or, in the case of Pro-Life, force a birth.
How someone can be Pro-Gun and Pro-Life boggles my mind as well. I'm generally pro-gun, myself. I grew up around hunters, I know how to behave myself around weapons. I think if everyone had the same respect and understanding of dangerous weapons, we'd be better off. But people who wander around saying, "I don't want the government to decide what I can and can't do with my gun!" and then also say, "Oh, but I want the government to tell a woman, or a couple, what they can and can't do with their bodies!" seems ridiculous to me.
I know it's not an identical situation, but the impact is the same. You're still dealing with life and death.
I have no desire to have children currently. Sure, I'm married, but I can't afford a child, and, I don't want to go through pregnancy. The government has no right to say, "well, looks like it's abstinence for you two!" 'Scuse me? Get out of my bedroom.
Now, now, get this.
There is a faction of these Pro-Lifers who don't believe in granting women pregnancy leave.
This is another one I couldn't believe when I heard it espoused. There are people who believe that pregnancy leave is unnecessary and that a woman who can't come in to her job because she is pregnant should be fired. Her job should not be held, she should not be compensated. "She chose to have the child."
And then I've seen these same people turn around and say they're Pro-Life! So, a woman chose to have a child because she chose to have sex? I do not think this is what the Bible meant when it talks about Eve's penance.
I can't believe there are people out there so backwater they genuinely believe that a woman's place is solely in the home, preferably barefoot and pregnant.
I hate to say it, but it makes the "Jesus Rode the Dinosaurs" crowd look almost logical.
Certainly this is not everyone's opinion, and I assume that others have more responsible views, but the Palin "no abortions and no contraception" twofer is certifiable. If she wants to raise her little girl that way (and it appears she has), fine. But let me choose not to raise one if I want.
Do Mr. and Mrs. Joe Six Pack really exist? I've always sort of assumed that these "hard working, gun totin', bin Laden chasing, right to lifers and prayer in public schools" didn't really exist, in the same way that country songs are a myth. Country songs are, by and large, false nostalgia- a longing for something that never existed in the first place. I assumed that the Republican Party was using false nostalgia, appealing to this ideal candidate that their voters wished they were, and now I'm sitting down and taking a look at who that person is, and I'm a bit scared. It's a bit like reading the opening of Gone with the Wind.
From that point of view, I suppose it's comforting to know who won that one, and why, but, not much.
OK, politics aside, I've read other insane things lately.
Thirdly: Native Americans protest the celebration of Columbus Day.
I heard this one today from a friend who, on my explaining why didn't need to check the mail, railed against Christopher Columbus and said that the Native Americans were right to protest a guy who got lost and killed off an Indian population!
"Wait a minute," I said, "you're half right. Yes, he got lost. He wound up in, like Cuba. What has that got to do with the Native Americans?"
He gave them diseases!
No, he didn't. The native peoples of the Bahamas and Cuba, and wherever else he ended up that he thought was India, sure, maybe they got smallpox. I'll give you that.
Christopher Columbus didn't even make it to Florida, so what do the Native Americans, the people who live in what we now refer to as the continental United States, who are probably only very distantly related to the peoples of the regions he actually landed in: what is their problem with Columbus Day? Are they equally pissed at Cortez for what he did to the Aztecs?
Anyway, from what I've read, Columbus day was first celebrated once in the 1700s, and then again in the 1800s. Italian immigrants attached themselves to the holiday after the 1800's celebration and began celebrating it in NYC. It moved out West as the Italians moved west and was celebrated as we played more Manifest Destiny across the rest of the country. It was made a federal holiday by FDR. Italians were behind the holiday to remind people from what country Columbus was from as an attempt to fight the blatant racism against Italians in this country at that time.
Pretty much any culture that ever invented long distance boats capable of extended journeys is a suspect, so it would've happened eventually. In fact, the list of people who probably made it before Columbus is as long as your arm: in addition to the Vikings, we have the Irish, the Welsh, the Polynesians, the Chinese, the Egyptians, the freaking Israelites. The difference is that Columbus went back and said, "Hey check this shit out!" And people went, "Dude, awesome! We want in on this."
You want to get pissed at somebody for settling in the United States, try Ponce de Leon (French for Lion-Pimp), who ended up in Florida founding Saint Augustine twenty years later. Or curse Sir Walter Raleigh (he was such a stupid git) for founding Roanoke in Virginia. But that was almost 95 years later, and I think we all remember that didn't end well for the Europeans.
I mean, I know everyone I know got the same education I got. I sort of assumed that everyone else picked things up anyway, that even the hopeless ones managed to pick up enough that in spite of all the crap they learned in high school, they still can, sort of, think. I mean, we've got computers on the Internet now. We've got Google. We've even got Wikipedia. There's a bit more than porn here, folks.
The Columbus thing bothers me because the reason I think people must be irritated about this is 'cause when they're in elementary school, they're still taught that Columbus was proving the earth was round and looking for America, hooray! Well, of course, this is wrong, and I think when people find that out, they still never learn the truth of the matter, so they just decide that he was an idiot on the seas who happened to wind up in what's now Boston or something.
Don't be mad at Columbus, or the government, be mad at your crappy elementary education and yourself for refusing to think for yourself.