Image Credit: AP photo via state.gov 2007-01-15.
Is Feminism Under Attack or is the GOP Trying to Change the Conversation from Iraq?
BBSNews Commentary 2007-01-16 -- Does Rush Limbaugh consider Condoleeza Rice a "feminazi", one of his favorite terms for strong woman who speak out, who have careers and who are "mildly pro-choice?"
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Secretary Rice and Egyptian Foreign Minister Gheit.
Image Credit: AP photo via state.gov 2007-01-15. |
False bravado from the right wing's leading showman Rush Limbaugh on comments from Senator Barbara Boxer's (CA-D) to Condoleeza Rice during a senate hearing last Thursday provoked the right wing to go into anything but Iraq overdrive with the slicing and dicing and stretching and twisting so over the top it could have been bottled and sold as hot sauce from New York City.
The New York Times reports that Rush Limbaugh jumped into the right wing blog driven fracas saying about the exchange:
"'Here you have a rich white chick with a huge, big mouth, trying to lynch this, an African-American woman, right before Martin Luther King Day, hitting below the ovaries here,' Mr. Limbaugh said on his radio show."
Yet here is the transcript from the same article of what Boxer actually said:
"'Who pays the price? I'm not going to pay a personal price. My kids are too old and my grandchild is too young. You're not going to pay a particular price, as I understand it, with an immediate family. So who pays the price? The American military and their families. And I just want to bring us back to that fact.'"
Okay, so where's the beef? Boxer predicated her assertion to Rice by calling attention to the fact that she herself would not be paying a personal price in terms of family members and neither would Rice. It is the America military that is paying the price and their families according to Boxer's remarks and the facts. It's as if the GOP would like to forget about Charlie Rangel keeping the pressure on with talk about bringing back the draft. It's as if all the talk about military deferments during the 2004 and 2006 elections just never happened. And what about extended deployments and multiple re-deployments?
It's clear that Condoleeza Rice is a career-oriented woman who understands birth control or abstinence and who is not currently being reported as being involved either with a man or a woman, and also according to LifeSite in March 2005 Rice's position on abortion was the following:
"Asked, 'Are you pro-life? Are you pro-choice? What is your thought on abortion?', Rice responded: 'I believe if you go back to 2000, when I helped the president in the campaign, I said that I was, in effect, kind of Libertarian on this issue, and meaning by that that I have been concerned about a government role in this issue. I'm a strong proponent of parental choice, of parental notification. I'm a strong proponent of a ban on late-term abortion. These are all things that I think unite people and I think that that's where we should be. I've called myself at times mildly pro-choice."
Limbaugh would have to admit that Condoleeza Rice has one impressive resume for a man or a woman and she also fits his criteria nicely for what he has termed a "feminazi" that he has established over the years. His stance is well worn and reported on. Campus Progress has a piece dating from 1992 of Limbaugh's stance on feminism:
"At best, Rush dabbles in racist, sexist, homophobic, xenophobic, and, well, heartless commentary. In fact, it seems the only group that he doesn’t have a penchant for offending is his own – the cult of the angry white man. As if it wasn't enough to have coined the derogatory term 'feminazi,' Limbaugh says of feminism generally, 'Feminism was established to allow unattractive women access to the mainstream... (Hartford Courant, 1992)."
The Progress piece is instructive about the Limbaugh strata of Grand Old Party family values and well worth the read, and Media Matters deeply explores Limbaugh's "feminazi" antics over the years starting with an in depth look from May 2004:
"Media Matters for America monitored The Rush Limbaugh Show from March 15 to April 29. During that time, Limbaugh used the term "femi-Nazis" eight times; he suggested that women want to be sexually harassed; he repeatedly equated Democrats with terrorists; he twice resurrected long-discredited right-wing claims that Clinton deputy White House counsel Vince Foster was murdered; he repeatedly called Senator John Kerry a "gigolo"; he called environmentalists "total wackos"; he called Howard Dean "a very sick man"; he said Democrats "hate this country"; he referred several times to Democratic National Committee Chair Terry McAuliffe as a "punk" ... and so on.On March 17, Limbaugh -- referring to remarks made by Senator John Kerry that were picked up by a microphone -- told listeners, "I'm proud to be a member of the lying crook Republican attack machine." One week later, Limbaugh reassured his listeners that his radio program is "a choo-choo train of truth."
This would be the paragon of virtue that is pushing some finely strained kool-aid far outside of anything Barbara Boxer actually said? And of course former Fox News commentator and current presidential press secretary Tony Snow had his say at the presidential podium bully pulpit and regaled America with this in the New York Times political blog:
"'I don't know if she was intentionally that tacky, but I do think it's outrageous. Here you got a professional woman, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, and Barbara Boxer is sort of throwing little jabs because Condi doesn't have children, as if that means that she doesn't understand the concerns of parents. Great leap backward for feminism.'"
Spare us the dramatics please. Iraq is not going away and 20,000 some troops is not going to make a dimes worth of difference. No false bravado or newfound support of feminism on the part of Republican neocon cheerleaders will erase years of anti-feminism and it certainly won't distract a very troubled American public about the state of Iraq and American foreign policy in general.
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