Et Tu, Human Events?
By L. Russell Allen - Sep 8th, 2008 at 10:41 amI spend a lot of time reading conservative material on the Internet. Michelle Malkin and Powerline are daily reads for me. And then there’s the mother of conservative publlishing: Human Events. The Human Events website is a daily refresher on extreme conservative thought. They publish some real doozies.
Like this article implying that feminists who are opposed to Governor Sarah Palin’s vice presidential candidacy are not true feminists.
That argument is ridiculous on its face. You can agree or disagree that anti-choice women and candidates can be “true feminists.” The article’s no-holds-barred take on “single issue [abortion] feminists” is really just a smokescreen. My problem with the argument is that it implies that self-designated feminists who vote against the McCain-Palin ticket are not truly interested in the advancement of women. This despite Sarah Palin sharing a ticket with a man who refuses to support the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act! Sarah Palin shares a ticket with a man who wants to make it harder for women to access prescription birth control!
So implying that women who want to control their own bodies (with or without the use of abortion) and who want to be paid equal to what men earn are bad feminists is outrageous. And calling those who oppose McCain-Palin “single issue feminists” is even more galling. Between cheap and accessible birth control (which of course prevents abortions), fair pay, and abortion, I’ve named three issues in this paragraph!
But what really outrages me is that the Vice President of Americans United for Life, Denise M. Burke, is making the same argument that conservatives are so paranoid about. Claiming that feminists voting against McCain-Palin aren’t true feminists is in the same ballpark as claims that voting against Obama-Biden is inherently racist. The difference is that the latter is a straw man erected by conservatives on sites like Michelle Malkin’s to whip up some moral indignation. No liberal or progressive publication would ever make such an outrageous claim. If they did, it would be denounced immediately. But now an influential conservative publication is using the very same debate tactic that conservatives have been calling out of bounds for months!
One needs no further proof that the conservative ideology is inherently weak than their desperation. There is no ideological vision or thought process at work here. If they don’t like an argument, even an argument of their paranoid invention, they claim they’re being somehow attacked. But that same argument is fine if it can be manipulated to work in their favor. It’s detestable. Thankfully, it’s obvious. Human Events reeks of that kind of desperation and should be seen as further proof that their more ideologically honest progressive foes are on the right side of the debate and on the right side of history.
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