I'm a guy, and probably more tone deaf than I should be on issues of sexism. The primary season and some of the treatment of Hillary Clinton revealed to me that sexism is still very prevalent in our society. As someone who believes in equality, I feel that any discrimination is uncalled for and should be called out. Now having said that, McCain's campaign spokespeople are going WAY overboard in their charges of sexism towards Gov. Palin. I know there have been diaries on this site imploring people to treat Palin respectfully and not use sexist terms in referring to her and many of those diaries have validity, but that's not what the McCain camp is referring to. They have turned ANY questioning of Palin's experience into a sexist attack. WTF? Does that make their mocking of Obama's experience racist?
On Larry King Live, James Carville, after defending Palin by calling the story involving her daughter's pregnancy irrelevant to the election and having no bearing on Palin as parent much less a governor, was accused of belittling women for saying that Palin was not ready to be a heartbeat away from being president of the United States. Carville didn't just make that charge unsupported, but backed up his statement with facts from her resume, mentioning that she didn't have a passport until she became governor and showing the picture of the townhall where she was part time mayor for six years. The republican congresswoman that was on the panel, Michele Bachmann, somehow found this offensive to women (or at least pretended to). Apparently, according to her, stating that Palin hasn't accomplished enough to be vice-president of the United States is demeaning her accomplishments and belittling the fact that didn't ride anyone's coattails into power (a subtle dig at Hillary Clinton). Carville, as you remember was (and still is) an ardent Hillary supporter. Poor Carville was left to try and prove he wasn't being sexist, always difficult to do especially when the charge is coming from a woman.
The McCain campaign is clearly making a run for women based not on policy, but identity politics. They are trying to draw the sympathy of any woman who has been belittled or demeaned, using not actual examples of Palin being belittled, but using faux controversy manufactured from Obama supporters making valid points. I find this extremely insulting and I would imagine that women would find it more so. Even worse, these tactics are coming from the campaign that will jump all over Obama if he makes any reference to racism, and has already accused him of playing the race card from the bottom of the deck.
The actions of the McCain campaign take the focus away from actual incidences of sexism, and do little to make actual progress on this important issue. Anyone truly interested in gender equality and in eliminating sexism has to deplore these horrible tactics and call the McCain camp out for them.
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Here's a video containing most of the exchange: