This has been an eye opening campaign. I'm not sure how much of it is due to the scales falling from my eyes in my growing decrepitude or how much is from the situation allowing what was once hidden to blossom forth like the stench from my son's gym bag.
Geraldine Ferraro was a hero to me. I was so excited as a young wife, a working gal, to see a woman on the Democratic ticket.
She was smart, elegant, poised, and bold. It seemed as though, finally, those who had fought for women's rights had a champion to hold high.
While we all know how that election turned out, she remained in my high esteem, an amazing role model for young women, going on to be a UN Ambassador for the Committee on Human Rights.
(someone has already replaced her picture on wikipedia with Esther Rolle's.)
Now, her comments regarding Barrack Obama's bid for the Presidency are making headlines and topping newscasts.
First she said he was only in the race because he was black.
If Obama was a white man, he would not be in this position. And if he was a woman (of any color) he would not be in this position. He happens to be very lucky to be who he is. And the country is caught up in the concept.
She defended herself on FOX. Yet in doing so, she only dug the hole deeper. I saw a side of her that not only offended me, but left me deeply saddened. "Don't antagonize me!", she tells Senator Obama.
"Clarifying" for Daily Breeze, she removed all doubt.
"Any time anybody does anything that in any way pulls this campaign down and says let's address reality and the problems we're facing in this world, you're accused of being racist, so you have to shut up," Ferraro said. "Racism works in two different directions. I really think they're attacking me because I'm white. How's that?"
She said she was merely stating "an obvious truth." Where have I heard that before?
Oh. Yeah. The anti-Semites who avow their claims of Jews' cunning, greediness, or ugly nature cannot be based on bigotry if it's the Truth™.
I knew something was going on in Feminist Land when I had my son and decided to be a stay-at-home Mom.
I was derided to the point when a woman would ask me what I "did", I would make up something. I would get looks if I admitted to my apparently lesser lifestyle ranging from pity to horror. Entire rooms would go silent.
Never, not once, did any of them ever bother to ask me, "why?"
Suddenly it seemed that "choice" was not an all encompassing concept. If you "chose" to take on a more traditional type of role, then something was "wrong" with you. You were brainwashed by the patriarchal archetype or, worse, only seemingly willing to live a frugal lifestyle but probably kept in chains by your husband.
Speaking of chains, when I did go back to work and it was as a modern day Betty Page, I again was castigated for my choice. I was not only hurting myself, I was hurting the very cause of feminism. I was told I was a traitor who probably had very low self esteem.
And here I thought I was parting men from their money in a rather fun way.
So here I am, looking at Hillary Clinton and watching yet another icon fall into the dustbin.
I was an enthusiastic supporter of Bill. I was a state delegate for him.
I defended both the Clintons through the worst of the disgraceful right wing attacks on them.
I became an Obama supporter because I did not like Hillary's politics, specific votes, and the advisors she was surrounding herself with. I wanted a non DLC candidate. But she still personified female strength, power, energy, and will to me.
Hillary's campaign has destroyed that place I held in my political heart for them. Where I once proclaimed her a fabulous role model, I now cringe with every half-assed statement, mutterings from Bill, or crazed carping from her demonic velociraptor "surrogates".
She is hurting the Democratic Party. She is doing so with malice aforethought. As I said in kos' diatribe about Ferraro, if the party elders and movers/shakers don't stand up NOW and put an end to this divisive, anachronistic, soul depleting bullshit, they are going to deserve the fall out.
She's turning the Democratic Party into the karmic equivalent of a toxic waste dump.
I feel like I am watching icons fall.