Saturday, March 10, 2012

Kathleen Parker Wrote Something Pro-Women? Gasp.



Kathleen Parker usually carries the anti-feminist bucket for the wingnut boyz but this time she has written a pretty critical piece about the misogyny of the Republican Party base. She gets hate-mail from woman-haters, too, I guess.

Still, at the end of her piece she tries to salvage her party:
But Republicans are waging war on women only if you believe that the morality of abortion should never be questioned or if you believe the federal government can order people to pay for something that violates their conscience. These issues are not so simple, nor are Republicans simpletons for trying to protect the unborn or challenging what they view as government overreach.
Duh and duh.

First, the government orders people All The Time to pay for something that violates their conscience! I pay taxes and taxes are used to finance wars and killings I do not support. I pay taxes and Rush Limbaugh gets paid to ship his crappy opinions to the US armed forces abroad. I have no say over that.

Second, the Republicans, wherever they dominate the states, are not just "questioning" the morality of abortion! They are inventing more and more humiliating ways to turn pregnant women into mere aquaria for egg-Americans.

The Republican pundits are not having erudite and thoughtful conversations about abortion, women in powerful positions and so on. They are all like Rush Limbaugh, albeit in somewhat diluted or disguised forms.

Indeed, being a sexist is a job requirement in the right-wing media. There are sexists on both sides of the aisle and I have criticized them in the past and will again in the future. And yes, Bill Maher is a major league level sexist.

But the liberal pundits are not required to be anti-feminist, for instance. The conservative pundits are, and the Republican Party itself is dedicated to making sure that women cannot gain equality. Thus, however bad the Democrats are when it comes to women's rights (and they are bad enough), they win these kinds of fights without even trying, simply because the alternative is Taliban American Style.