Columnist for Newsweek Proclaims Hypocrisy

Anna Quindlen has a syndicated column that is purchased by Newsweek. My cousin Ellen kindly sent me a link to a column in the Sept 15 issue in which Quindlen accuses somebody of hypocrisy regarding the selection of Governor Palin as VP candidate,

".... This would all have been entertaining if it [I think she means the criticism of anti Palin opinion as sexist but I'm not entirely sure] were not such rank hypocrisy. These are people who have inveighed against affirmative action, a version of which undoubtedly played a part in this selection. These are people who inveighed against personal attacks on their new nominee when the wingnuts of their own party elevated such attacks to a fine art by accusing Hillary Rodham Clinton of fictitious misdeeds ranging from treason to murder. To try to suggest Sarah Palin might garner the Hillary Clinton vote, that one woman is just the same as another, that biology trumps ideology, is the ultimate evidence of true sexism, and I hope Senator Clinton will travel the country and say so."

Here's a major problem. Not only do I not know the exact criticism of anti Palin opinion. Not only do I not know the previous allegedly sexist comments; Quindlen doesn't even say the specific person who she considers sexist and hypocritical (if she did, maybe I could find these comments).

What I think Quindlen may be thinking is that there is something I'm going to call a 'composite conservative' who has made 'sexist' comments in the past and now this 'composite' conservative is criticizing all anti-Palin opinion as sexist. This is just a theory because Quindlen gives no examples of any specific 'sexist' comment by anyone (conservative or otherwise).

Since there are millions of conservatives, I'm sure at least some of them have made sexist comments in the past and I'm sure at least some of them have criticized anti-Palin opinion as sexist but I'm not entirely sure that any given conservative has done both because Quindlen certainly has the time and resources to have named someone and given the time/date/place of both the sexist and the criticism of anti-Palin remark if she could find it.

Thus the charge of hypocrisy is completely unsupported.

Near the end of the Quindlen column is the following,

"... John McCain has been no advocate for women; when asked during the primaries, on the subject of Senator Clinton, "How do we beat the bitch?" he responded, "Excellent question." (Note to the GOP: that IS sexist.)"

There is an apparently uncut video of the incident to which Quindlen refers at youtube. In the video Senator McCain is a bit troubled by the question turns away from the person who asked the question, thinks and then asks to 'give the translation' (he finds this 'give the translation' response self amusing) before saying it is an excellent question and in his answer says clearly that he respects Senator Clinton (who presumably was the subject of the question). Probably he should have gone on to reprimand the questioner, however, notwithstanding this, Quindlen's version of this is clearly slanted. I hope I would have done better when being asked to answer such a question but I'm not sure I would.

While browsing this subject I have become convinced that the attacks against Gov Sarah Palin are maintaining a high level of viciousness. As an example, Comedienne Sandra Bernhard evidently has a comedy skit about Palin full of obscenity (I don't understand the humor). The actual video of Bernhard is here (warning- very obscene). Subsequent to some complaints, Ms Bernhard justified her remarks based on a webposting and some email that Sarah Palin had billed rape victims for 'rape kits' provided to such victims. This webposting and email has now been thoroughly debunked.

A less obscene type attack on Sarah Palin by US Representative Rangel.

A paranoid attack on Sarah Palin by Naomi Wolf (who famously advised Al Gore to wear earth tones) is on the HPost (Ms Wolf says Palin will replace McCain soon after the election and institute a fascist state; Ms. Wolf also says her mail is being stolen, etc.).

U.S. Representative (from FL) Alcee Hastings (who is also one of only 6 Federal Judges ever to be impeached) said at an event that Palin's moose hunting would make her a danger to Jews (the audience was largely Jewish).

U.S. Representative Wexler charged Palin with being a pro-Pat Buchanan supportor and therefore anti Israel. However, Palin is apparently a supporter of Israel and had an flag of Israel in her office before she was selected as VP nominee.

Professor Doniger Accuses Palin of a Triple Hypocrisy

Professor Doniger has an endowed chair at the University of Chicago Divinity School.

She has a column or op ed in Newsweek.

Here is the accusation:

"... the hypocrisy of her outing her pregnant daughter in front of millions of people, hard on the heels of her concealing her own pregnancy (her faith in abstinence applying, apparently, only to non-Palins), is nicely balanced by her hypocrisy in gushing with loving support of her teenage daughter after using a line-item veto to cut funding for a transitional home for teenage mothers in Alaska. Her greatest hypocrisy is in her pretense that she is a woman."

There may be something about professors. I can't figure out what the hypocrisies actually are (did Palin say "don't let anyone know if your daughter is pregnant). I am unable to determine anything out of Doniger's column other than the fact that she obviously doesn't care for Gov Palin.

As for the "greatest hypocrisy", this seems pretty close to insanity (except if you believe in the most extreme side of postmodernism, i.e., that all 'truth' is just a 'construct').

One interesting item is the line item comment. The Alaska legislature had allocated $5M for a capital improvement to charitable facility that, among other things, provided the transitional home. Palin used her veto power to cut it to $3.9M. The organization itself indicates that this will have no impact on the operation side of the facilty.

Palin a Hypocrite?

A few posts earlier (Aug 8 date), a Slate writer accused John McCain of being a hypocrite for one of his advertisements.

Today, a different Slater writer accuses Sarah Palin of being a hypocrite for taking federal funds while decrying pork projects (the image is from the Slate article).

The Slate writer, Tim Noah, brings this as evidence,

"The woman who made this complaint about big government taking your money is the governor of Alaska. Please take a moment to look at this U.S. Census chart showing federal-government expenditures, per capita, in the 50 states. You will observe that Alaska receives about $14,000 per citizen from the federal government. That's more than any other state, and a good $4,000 more than every other state except Virginia, Maryland, New Mexico, and North Dakota. The chart is from the Census Bureau's Consolidated Federal Funds Report for Fiscal Year 2005. I skipped over the 2006 report, the most recent one available, because Hurricane Katrina put Louisiana and Mississippi ahead of Alaska that year."

Mr. Noah doesn't seem to understand that Governor Palin was not elected Governor until November 2006 and didn't take office until 2007. It will not be until many years in the future that decent information will be available to analyze Palin's influence on 'pork projects', and even then, this analysis will have to be based on information beyond the Census numbers on federal expenditures because, for one thing, expenditures in, say the year, 2008, may well be based on authorizations many years earlier.

My cousin asked me if Palin should be considered a hypocrite because, while running for Governor in 2006, she supported the 'bridge to nowhere' (actually a bridge to connect Ketchikan with an island to Gravina Island to its west which has the municipal airport) . I consider this an example of someone changing their mind.

If she said, "Everyone should be against the bridge to nowhere" at the same time she was for it, that would be hypocrisy.