Tracee Hutchinson is a well-known and respected journalist in Australia. Today she wrote an opinion piece on the way America has treated Sarah Palin.
Now, Hutchinson is not a fan of Sarah Palins, which makes it even more striking that she can see the double standard in America when it comes to the way we treat women politicians.
Hutchinson writes:
Palin is not the first ill-experienced or ill-equipped person to run for high political office. The big difference is that these people are usually men and they are never — repeat never — subjected to the same scrutiny or reduced to the same kind of personal attacks as women.
The hullaballoo over her $150,000 clothing allowance is a classic example. Has anyone writing this stuff actually been shopping for women's clothes? Do any of them know how much hair and make-up costs? The woman is running for vice-president of the United States. Not secretary of Wasilla hockey club. If I were Sarah Palin I'd have a personal hair and make-up person too. Can you imagine the carry-on if she appeared onstage or on the telly looking as if she'd been caught in a wind-tunnel? Or if she stepped out in something that looked a little too hokey?
Why aren't we similarly learning about the price of Barack Obama's suits? Or what it cost to deck out Michelle and the kids in those colour-toned matching outfits at the nomination acceptance? I'd estimate $25,000 for the four of them on that night alone — minimum.
It is plainly absurd, but the stories of Palin's clothing extravagances squeezed her and Cindy McCain back into jeans this week as a counter-blow while Obama spent millions of dollars on a single ad.
And just why has Palin become such juicy fodder for comedians when comment on Obama's race and colour are completely off limits? Clearly it's OK to pillory women but it's not OK to pillory people of colour. Why? I'm not sure. America, after all, has a proud history of burning white women at the stake so it's not as though discrimination and recrimination have been exclusive to colour.
You can read the full text here.
6 comments:
Take a break and listen to a conservative friendly song titled SARAH-FREAKIN-PALIN at www.myspace.com/jayspeight
the author evidently hasn't been paying very close attention, either to current or "ancient" American history.
to begin with, we never actually really burned white women for anything- not even witchcraft. in America, witches (male or female) were hung. of course, hanging is no nicer than burning, and no sane person could possibly be proud of this, but it would be a breath of fresh air if just one writer out of a thousand could get this simple fact straight (while we're on the subject, however: ever hear of lynching? it happened almost exclusively to black Americans, and frequently did involve setting them on fire).
as for male politicians never being subjected to the level of scrutiny which Sarah Palin is presently enduring: i suppose the author (along with virtually every conservative American commentator out there) simply failed to notice when Edwards and Kerry were, to use her word, pilloried for their expensive haircuts. it may, of course, be argued that a woman's haircut must necessarily cost three times more than a man's, as women do tend to have more hair, but even taking this into consideration, if so many people think 400 dollars is excessive, i for one really can't blame them for feeling similarly about 1500.
and as for Barack Obama's race: it's been off limits? really? i guess we Americans must simply have imagined all these months of hysteria over the simple fact that Obama's name is Arabic and African. and the conservative campaigner who called him "uppity" during an interview. and the constant insinuations from both Hillary Clinton and John McCain's campaigns that he is too different, too foreign (although he's been American all his life)- and that he cannot be trusted because he is "the other". to assume that none of these attacks can have anything to do with Obama's race is, to put it charitably, naive. and yet, if Obama or any member of his campaign staff should dare to broach the subject, they are accused of "playing the race card". how, then, are Sarah Palin's supporters not "playing the gender card" with their constant cries of sexism- for which, by the way, Hillary Clinton was mercilessly derided by many of the same people, including Palin herself, during the Democratic primaries?
could it be that playing the victim simply doesn't work as well these days?
Since when does a Republican backer advocate listening to anyone who isn't a TRUE BLUE AMERICAN!
Typical hypocrite using whatever suits her...meaning YOU, not the columnist.
You all can toss that useless cunt back into her cage. Keep her; America has no need for her.
In fact, bring ME Sarah''s severed leg, and I'll pay you $2,000.
So now that Sarah LOST, there won't be a wedding or legal parenthood for that little bastard that Bristol will pop out of her previously traveled (we all know that SHE gave birth to Trig, NOT Sarah) cunt?
Alaskans: All this proves is that one does not have to be black to be a nigger.
This cunt will only succeed in overexposing herself until we find out the REAL DIRT on the bitch, and send her flat and flabby ass packing back to her inbred idiotic hellspawn.
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