On the verge of what, you may ask? Why, of of throwing themselves out the window.
Senator McCain's selection of Governor Palin of Alaska as his running mate, which was hailed in some quarters and met with skepticism in others, is sparking intense reactions from some New Yorkers, who report being driven to fits of rage and even all-consuming panic.
"All of my women friends, a week ago Monday, were on the verge of throwing themselves out windows," an author and political activist, Nancy Kricorian of Manhattan, said yesterday. "People were flipping out. ... Every woman I know was in high hysteria over this. Everyone was just beside themselves with terror that this woman could be our president — our potential next president."
The New York Times article doesn't explain what these hysterical (and, yes, that's the right word for it) women are upset about: the fact that a woman of whom they disapprove could make it to the top. You see, they don't believe she's earned the right to be vice president. That's why they spend so much time talking about how unqualified she is, not bothering to hide the hypocrisy of their position that Obama is, somehow, more qualified because he voted present in the legislature while padding his resume and embellishing his accomplishments.
But in a campaign where neither presidential candidate has executive experience, it's hard to countenance that "experience" is what these women are upset about. No, what they are mainly upset about is that Palin doesn't buy into the feminist trifecta: abortion on demand, comparable worth, government handouts based on sex. I mean, at least this guy's honest that it's all about the vagina.
Every white woman I know is positively horrified.
Wait, that's not exactly true. It's more accurate to say that every thoughtful or liberal or intuitive or open-minded white woman I know worth her vagina monologue and her self-determination and two centuries of nonstop striving for equal rights and sexual freedom and exhaustive patriarchal unshackling is right now openly horrified, appalled at what the addition of shrill PTA hockey-mom Sarah Palin seems to have done for the soggy, comatose McCain campaign -- that is, make it not merely remotely interesting and melodramatic, but aggressively hostile to, well, to all intelligent women everywhere.
See, because the only intelligent position to have on abortion is that women should be able to kill their offspring for any or no reason up until after birth (given Obama's position on the subject). And Amanda Marcotte would tell you that those who oppose abortion just want to control women's vaginas. See, it's not that taking human life without conscience or reason is evil and barbaric. Or that you happen to think all life, even inconvenient life, is precious and should be treasured. Nope, it's all about the vaginas.
What leaves me scratching my head in all the P.D.S. is that, as a daughter of the revolution, I was taught that I was no different from men. That sex differences were merely social constructs and that having a vagina made me no more or less human than any man.
But this election has shown that even feminists don't believe that's true.
They hate Sarah Palin because, in her, they see someone who has accomplished everything they've touted women as being capable of without bowing to the abortion god. She became mayor and governor without screaming that the evil, sexist men tried to keep her down. She's gotten to be a vice presidential candidate because she's like millions of American women who work hard and succeed without political ties or money. And worse yet, she's unwilling to at least pay lip service to feminism, as Hillary Clinton has while riding her husband's coattails to political office.
In short, what they hate is that she's accomplished all they say women should do, but she did it without them.
And that's enough to make the shrews jump out the window.
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