Posted on 10/03/2008 1:45:03 PM PDT by nickcarraway
As much of the nation was preparing to watch a fortysomething working woman, governor and mother debate a gray-haired male senator for the vice presidency, feminist icon Gloria Steinem ridiculed John McCain’s choice of Sarah Palin as a running mate.
“The reason we have Sarah Palin as the vice presidential candidate for Sen. McCain is because he couldn’t have the competent woman vice president he wanted … because the Christian right wing would not allow it,” Steinem told a standing-room-only crowd of about 450 mostly women packing an auditorium at the State University of New York at Cobleskill.
Steinem cited Maine Sen. Olympia Snowe among other Republicans she said McCain passed over because they were not conservative enough.
Most of Steinem’s 80 minutes at the lectern focused on reproductive rights and the strides toward equality that women have made in the 58 years since Steinem, 74, was in high school in Toledo, Ohio.
Occasionally, however, the co-founder of Ms. magazine leveled pointed blasts at Palin and the Alaska governor’s own claim to be a feminist while being against abortion rights.
“She declares herself to be a feminist … in order to declare the movement over,” Steinem said. “When they’re on your side, you’re winning. I take it as a tribute.”
About a quarter of the crowd stayed to watch the live broadcast of Palin’s debate with Sen. Joe Biden on a giant screen in Bouck Theater.
“It’s going to be a double-feature,” Steinem said as she began her lecture on 50 years of the feminist movement.
“Who knew when we planned this we would have the vice presidential debate afterward,” she said.
“I’m not here to tell you who you should vote for,” Steinem said. But without directly singling out Barack Obama, she cited a Congress of mostly white men and a patriarchal culture, noting that forecasts are that “before 2050 ... it is inevitable that European Americans will be in the minority” in the United States.
“We have been given the perfect presidential candidate to help us make this transition ... to a country that looks more like the world,” Steinem said.
Based on a show of hands, roughly 90 percent of those in the audience were not alive when Steinem was in an east Toledo high school where boys planned to work in the factories and “girls had to be virgins or pretend they were virgins” or face rape or sexual assault. “Anything could happen to you and it would be your fault,” she said.
“Thanks to the women’s rights movements ... many of the lives there have changed,” she said.
Going back for a visit, Steinem said, she was called “the slut from Toledo.
“I’ll put that on my tombstone,” she said. “ ‘Here lies a slut from east Toledo.’ ”
Several younger members of the audience admitted to a reporter that they weren’t too sure who Steinem was before hearing her talk.
“I had no idea who she was,” said Samantha Infante, a 19-year-old sophomore from the Bronx.
Infante, studying the restaurant field, said she took Steinem’s message to be that “women should be out … instead of staying home.”
Several members of the audience were from a Middleburgh High School class in U.S. history seeking extra credit for writing about the lecture, according to junior Taylor Hayes.
Before Steinem came on stage, Hayes acknowledged that she didn’t know much about her.
As a member of a generation that came of age in the 1970s, when Steinem was a noted force in feminist politics, Hayes’ mother, Margaret Hayes, 51, said she urged her daughter to come.
“She needs to know about this,” she said.
The elder Hayes said the feminist movement has helped women move forward in the workplace.
“Look at Hillary [Clinton],” she said, “and Sarah Palin, as well.”
During her talk and in a question-and-answer session afterward, Steinem also localized some of her points by citing the cultural and political control Iroquois Indian women had when they dominated the region in pre-Colonial days. Answering one woman’s question about the role and status of women on rural family farms, Steinem suggested the movement toward locally grown foods as well as anti-pollution efforts and animal rights issues might “be a version of the women’s movement in the land.”
gloria steinem’s early career was
writing propaganda for the c.i.a.
about europe.
I can't see how we should listen to her, and shouldn't listen to a beauty pageant winner who is a current governor.
So glad the younger females don’t know who the hell Gloria is. Now Gloria needs to realize that she never was anybody.....and go quietly off her self-made stage.
The real Gloria Steinem died long ago.
Chuck another dinosaur into the tarpit.
Yeah she work as undercover reporter as Playboy bunny
Going back to her critizm of Sarah what wrong Gloria you realize that your life is empty you didn’t have children you only got marry just recently
You are patheric
[dramatic music]
Steinem has carried the flag of feminism down the field, and when she finally falls, her children will say a quick remembrance over her body, pick up that flag and continue to carry it on down the field for her...
[excuse me... what? oh.......]
nevermind.
It seems that Gloria Steinem had her fifteen minutes of fame some years ago, and, actually, she had quite a bit more than 15 minutes. Now she wants to live it all over again. lol What a sad wreck of a human being!
How come no matter how many people come to see libs talk, it’s always “standing room only”? If 10,000 people come to a Plain rally, there’s no mention of the crowd. If 450 people come to hear Steinem, it’s “standing room only.”
Notes from a former Bunny.
“Answering one woman’s question about the role and status of women on rural family farms, Steinem suggested the movement toward locally grown foods as well as anti-pollution efforts and animal rights issues might ‘be a version of the women’s movement in the land.’”
Oh, for crying out loud! As a proud Rural Farm Wife, I feel I’m qualified to say that this woman doesn’t know sh!t from shineola.
And I know who Gloria Steinem is. Unfortunately.
Gloria is so yesterday. Who cares?
“We have been given the perfect presidential candidate to help us make this transition ... to a country that looks more like the world,” Steinem said.
Much of the rest of the world stinks, Gloria...
More evidence that leftist feminists don’t think women should have a choice.
They should just do what they’re told.
She’s still alive? That repulsive feminazi Steinem has been around longer than I have, and that’s a long time now! Never, I repeat NEVER, have I paid that leftist’s comments one bit of attention.
Unchecked Jealousy is an ugly thing.
Steinem pissed off her base of feminazis when she married Christian Bale (Batman) father a few years ago. Bale and his family are from Wales. Bale’s dad died a few years ago after being married to Steinem for about 5 years.
Bale is a very good actor and I will always be a fan for one reason.
His step-mother was known to pontificate and lecture the family and friends at dinner. Christian was viewed as the meal ticket for his family. He was treated like the little prince by his mum, sister and dad. The parents divorced when he was a teenager. The parents were sort Welsh hippies. The dad remarried to Steinem.
One night Steinem starts pontificating her nonsense at a family dinner. Christian finally has enough and says “will someone please shut this woman up!” I will always be a fan for that reason alone. ;-)
Don’t forget folks - volunteer and contribute to McCain-Palin. We need to get to work.
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