Monday, February 13, 2012

The Radical Chic and Rick Santorum

Rick Santorum and I were born in the same decade in the same town in the same hospital. We were probably christened in the same church and probably shared the same pediatrician. But that's as far as it goes.

During the late Sixties and early Seventies, when I came of age and Rick was probably still in middle school, I actually embraced the feminist movement. I loved that these women were telling me I was the intellectual equal of any man. I liked that I was encouraged to control my sexual life, my professional life and my personal life. Even my mother, who was raised to marry and marry well (and who did so straight from high school), preached the feminist mantra to me, reminding me that women of my generation had many more opportunities than she or her sisters did.

And all of that took place in Virginia. In the South. By which time, Rick Santorum and his folks had moved North.

I suppose Rick grew up more firmly ensconced in the bosom of Holy Mother Church, or I guess my Sicilian grandmother couldn't have been that Catholic or she wouldn't have raised the passel of heathens and atheists, which included my father and his siblings. Because whilst I was raised to look forward, Rick was raised with his head turned so completely around, I'm surprised his mamma didn't call for the Exorcist.

Here we are in the 21st Century, finishing one war and winding down another, and only now does Rick Santorum, running for President, present an antiquated, condescending and, frankly, insulting attitude toward women in the military. Actually, it's kinda sexist. In fact, it's so sexist, that even my governor, Lil'Bob McDonnell - a man with whom I rarely agree - thinks Santorum's whacked on this one; after all, Lil'Bob's got a daughter who served in the military and in frontline combat. Speaking over the weekend at the Klown Konference CPAC, Lil'Bob remarked:-

“I like Rick Santorum a lot. I just disagree with any inference that he might have made that somehow women are not capable of serving in the frontlines and serving in combat positions. And I base that in part on my own daughter’s own experience as a platoon leader in Iraq with 25 men working with her,” McDonnell said on CNN. “She did a great job, was in some risky situations, and yet endured and led and I’m proud of her.”


(snip)

The governor noted that his daughter has “probably experienced some of those kinds of comments in the past, that somehow women in leadership positions in the military aren’t as much up for the job.”
“Look, she doesn’t pay attention to that and I think most women in leadership positions don’t. They go forward and lead and do well and serve our country in its highest tradition. So I don’t think it bothers them anymore,” he said.



Then, there's Rick's somewhat peculiar attitude toward women who are victims of rape. In a nutshell, according to Rick, a woman really needs to "make the most of a bad situation." I guess that means, lie back and think of the Republican Party. Or Jesus. Or making lemonade from the lemon you've just been handed.

And that's not only sexist. That's actually pretty mean.

Finally, he opines that the basic problems the family faces today are down to modern feminism. I guess this means that, in Rick's ideal world, women would be barefoot, pregnant and in the kitchen; but when confronted with his remarks concerning this, Rick punted ... and blamed his wife for writing that particular section of the book from whence it came.

Sexist? Yep. Mean? Certainly. Cowardly? Most definitely.

However, Rick Santorum has an unlikely champion and one who can claim to have been one of the original radical chic present at Leonard Bernstein's infamous dinner party for the Black Panthers all those years ago ... Baba Wawa, AKA Barbara Walters.

In the most recent edition of The View, Walters, who was one of the first women in the news media to front a daily news and information program at a time when most women her age were ... well, barefoot, pregnant and in the kitchen.

You can watch Walters's defence of Saint Rick, the latest darling of the fundamentalist Right (who normally have no truck with Catholics), below.



Me? I'm with Whoopi. If the country goes mad and Santorum ends up at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, he's going to have one "big ol' problem." And so will the country.

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