It's been nagging me for days: Charles Krauthammer, on Fox News, claims to be perplexed as to why feminists hate Sarah Palin, and offers his own explanation: "[It's] her decision at her age with four other children to have a down syndrome child," he declares. "They look at her as sort of a back room — a backwater hick, who, for religious reasons, went ahead and had a child that they would never have. . . . it’s a self-loathing on the part of these feminists, knowing that what she did is virtuous and a generous act that they would have never have undertaken. And her having undertaken it is an affront to them, a silent rebuke."
I understand his confusion. The conservative wing of the Republican Party has increasingly shown itself to be without principles, so how could anyone take a principled stand against anything, especially something so benign as this fine woman from Alaska?
But I submit there's a better, Occam's razor-like interpretation of feminists' rejection of Palin ("hatred," I believe, is too strong a word). And it has nothing to do with the children.
Here, then, is my feminist manifesto on the rejection of Sarah Palin as a symbol of women's progress. Please feel free to improve upon it.
Read More
