John McCain’s selection of Sarah Palin as his running “mate” was both profound and perverse. By selecting a woman who is both unknown and unqualified to serve in national office, John McCain is not asking us to view his choice in terms of her own personal merits or any pre-existing attitudes we may have towards her known accomplishments. McCain’s “message” is that knowledge, experience, even temperament are not necessary qualifications for Presidential office.
The thunderclap of attention that has accompanied Palin’s political ascent is not the admiration appropriate to an accomplished public sector administrator but rather the adulation due a mother-goddess figure. Republican groupies and media sycophants reacted to Palin as an archetype, not as an individual. By suggesting this political liaison, McCain used Palin’s gender to achieve his political ends and in doing so reified age-old practices where women were treated as commodities that are exchanged to balance and confirm the social order.
In his study of pre-modern cultural practices, Structural Anthropology, French anthropologist Claude Lévi-Strauss called the marriage arrangements of pre-literate societies a type of “slow” communication. By defining appropriate liaisons, including attitudes towards incest, preferred marriage partners, required social, economic and religious attributes, and by using women as the medium of exchange, earlier societies ensured their continuation. "By conforming to these rules, a society facilitates certain types of unions or associations and excludes others.” (Structural Anthropology, p. 353)
When we define appropriate marital liaisons, we determine the course of human evolution and complete the transition from nature to culture. By the way, Lévi-Strauss’ characterization of kinship strictures as a type of communication is not totally unfamiliar to Media Ecologists. In The Disappearance of Childhood, Neil Postman wrote that "Children are the message we will send to a time we will never see."
By describing children as a “message,” Postman challenged us to imagine what medium is being used to convey these messages. Though Postman’s focus was on our education systems and how electronic media redefine our notions of childhood, a broader view places children “messages” within the “medium” of kinship systems and matrimonial proscriptions.
Marital restrictions have loosened in our post-industrial society, though they have not disappeared entirely. But clearly, as women approach social equality with men in our era, the archaic limitations placed on women’s aspirations, the so-called glass ceiling, has developed cracks. John McCain’s attitude towards women, as manifested in his partnership with Sarah Palin, is an attempt to cement over those cracks.
Article comments
— go to most recent comments1 - Dave Nalle
If your argument here made any sense at all then it would be equally valid to say that by picking a black man who is as underqualified for his job as Palin is, the Democratic party is essentially returning Obama to slavery and validating the idea that people should be exploited purely for their race. Is that really the kind of argument you meant to make here?
Dave
2 - Baronius
"The thunderclap of attention that has accompanied Palin’s political ascent is not the admiration appropriate to an accomplished public sector administrator but rather the adulation due a mother-goddess figure."
Says who?
For most of the last two years, there has been a campaign going on, with nothing in particular happening. There were a bunch of nearly identical debates, a few interesting primaries, and then the long death scene of the Clinton campaign. The press gave Obama a lot of attention as he was new. Biden, Clinton, McCain, not so much. Then Palin came along and the press corps had someone new to talk about. The coverage of Palin has been more than that of Biden, but it hasn't been especially adulatory.
3 - Robert K. Blechman
Thanks, Dave for your comment. To compare Obama, who earned his nomination through 18 months of hard campaigning, to Palin, who was annointed by a desperate Republican cabal, mistakes my point. Granted we also have racial residues to overcome (how else to explain the fact that the political race is nearly even despite McCain's obvious flip-flops, gaffs and declining abilities?), but the Obama narrative bears little correlation to the Palin one.
Had McCain selected a more qualified running mate, my basic argument would not be valid.
4 - Dave Nalle
But, as has to be said and has been said, again and again, Palin is a VP candidate, not a presidential candidate. VPs are frequently picked because they fit some demographic criteria. The right religion, the right age, the right geographic origin or association with some specific issue where the candidate is perceived as weak. And they don't campaign for the job (well, Biden did), they get picked from the throng by presidential candidate and his advisers.
And don't think you can get away with the ridiculous claim that Obama's campaign is somehow relevant experience for the presidency. It's not. And his qualifications and work experience are barely adequate for the job. Just making good speeches should not be sufficient to get someone elected to that high office, Lincoln not withstanding.
DAve
5 - Cannonshop
Notably, Lincoln was the nominee of a brand-new political party at the time. Obama is the anointed candidate of the oldest political party in the United States, and while the Republicans of Lincoln's day really didn't have an "establishment", the Democrats most certainly ARE the Establishment.
For instance, a certain director of Fannie Mae forced out of office for cooking the books was on Obama's "Search" committee vetting potential VP's.
6 - Robert K Blechman
I don't believe I claimed that Obama's successful campaign constituted his qualifications to be President. I was merely commenting on the various means by which the candidates achieved their nominations.
The experience/inexperience opposition that Republicans like to play loses its validity under current circumstances. First, they can't claim that Obama's inexperience invalidates the Democratic ticket while Sarah Palin's inexperience is of no consequence given she is a heartbeat away from the office.
Second, as this week's financial disasters help illustrate, experience is of no use if it continually leads you to the wrong conclusions, as McCain's has regarding the Iraq occupation, the value of regulation of financial markets and the honor of conducting a political campaign built on continuous lies and political dirty tricks.
7 - Dave Nalle
Again, the way that someone becomes a presidential nominee and the way that someone becomes a VP nominee should not be the same. You seem intent on trying to make this a contest of Obama vs. Palin. It's not.
Second, as this week's financial disasters help illustrate, experience is of no use if it continually leads you to the wrong conclusions,
The current financial mess was at least 40 years in the making and has many guilty parties. It's not the work of any one party or group of individuals. There's blame for all.
as McCain's has regarding the Iraq occupation,
Except that at least in this one area McCain seems to have been proven right.
the value of regulation of financial markets
If you're going to have the government involved in the financial market it needs to be in a regulatory capacity and it needs to actually regulate and not fiddle around other ways.
and the honor of conducting a political campaign built on continuous lies and political dirty tricks.
Hardly something the Obama campaign and their covert supporters are innocent of. At least McCain hasn't got ACORN registering hundreds of thousands of bogus voters in all of the battleground states. Indictments against ACORN are in the works in Michigan, Florida, Ohio, North Carolina, Pennsylvania and a dozen other states. Not good news for Obama considering he used to work for ACORN when he was a community organizer.
My favorite ACORN indictment of all time is still the one in Ohio where they got indicted for paying a registration drive worker in crack cocaine.
Dave
8 - Cannonshop
"Except that at least in this one area McCain seems to have been proven right."
Well...yeah, but it wasn't the abject retreat-in-defeat that Obama endorsed, Dave-so even though it worked, it must've been wrong... Right Robert? Bad old Americans taking down that sweet old Hussein dude, after all, Sean Penn thought he was an excellent dude and all...
9 - Lisa Solod Warren
Nice work, Robert! It's fun to see Levi-Strauss quoted here and your intellectual argument is sound; too bad Dave is so rooted in his own weirdness he can't even appreciate it.
For fun, my women friends and I call Sarah "Caribou Barbie", which shows how seriously women of intellect and women who have something important to offer in addition to their wombs (and I don't denigrate my womb, having offered the world two extraordinary messages to the future myself)take her candidacy, but wish we didn't have to. There are enough of us, I believe, who will refuse to allow men like McCain to get one tiny bit of cement onto that glass ceiling. This will, in the end, be a one off--one of those achingly desperate end-of-an-era political decisions that will go down in history as a huge mistake.
Thank you so much for this article.
10 - Lisa Solod Warren
PS Cannon
Don't you know that a major former lobbyist for Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac is McCain's chief advisor and that he had no fewer than seven MAJOR former lobbyists running his campaign....including a lobbyist for Georgia? (the country, not the state?)
Gimme a break.
11 - Joanne Huspek
As a woman, I find it a completely noxious idea that McCain chose Palin as a "commodity" and ONLY because she is female. If that were the case, there are scores of Republican women out there with similar backgrounds. He could have just as easily chosen one of them.
This is one question I would love to ask McCain, one on one. However, since he's a politician, I'm not sure he could give me a straight answer.
Your theory, while interesting, is conjecture that reduces (in my mind, anyway) the entire male-female relationship (not only in politics, but in all situations) to the caveman days. I would like to believe that civilization may have made a smidgen of progress since then.
12 - cuervodeluna
She was chosen because she is a stereotypical BIMBO--and McCain knows that a lot of those BIMBOS vote.
The fact that until last year's sex change operation in Thailand she was a man didn't stand in McCain's way.
In fact, it made it easier--since the BIMBO isn't even a REAL woman.
13 - Daniel Miller
Here is a link to a very well written and insightful article. At least that's my view. Many will doubtless disagree. However, it seems pretty much "on thread."
Dan(Miller)
14 - Daniel Miller
Cuervodeluna,
Very interesting comment (here and on other threads) about Governor Palin's recent sex change operation. Not that I would dare to question your veracity, but I would appreciate an appropriate link so that I can study the matter. Perhaps the rest of us have been missing something very significant.
Dan(Miller)
15 - cuervodeluna
Dan,
I think what you missed was the humor.
Pitbull with lipstick is fine with me as a label.
Vagina dentada has a certain erudite appeal, too.
16 - Daniel Miller
Cuervodeluna
I did indeed, and my response was rather tongue in cheek as well -- particularly since Governor Palin is generally acknowledged to have given birth to a son some eighteen years ago. But then, her most recent child was claimed by some to have been her daughter's rather than her own. There are many unfounded and unattributed allegations going around, so it is a bit difficult to know which is which and what is what. Some appear intended to be taken seriously.
Incidentally, I too live in (very rural) Latin America and have since 2002. I suspect that, ideology aside, we may conceivably have in common a few perceptions. One of my favorites is that Gringos are (correctly, I think) viewed as having the following notion: "I like, so I want, so I need, so I am entitled to." Haven't seen much of that in our rural area.
Dan(Miller)
17 - troll
Dan - Staneski's article is Horowitzian noise bemoaning the loss of what never was
human nature is social in the first instance - 'natural rights, individual sovereignty, and self responsibility' have meaning only in that context
...Staneski's 'perversions' are the result of contradictions in capitalism working themselves forward - what could be more perverse that wealth amidst poverty - ?
'cultural marxism' as used in the piece is a emotion laden fiction
.....imo
18 - cuervodeluna
Dan,
One never knows who gets something and who doesn't. as there are some spectacularly obtuse folks regularly posting on this site.
[Edited]
A few years back I coined the term Gringo Dance on a blogsite for educators--and it really caught on among posters here. The term, I mean--I doubt that most of them changed their outrageously arrogant and demanding Gringo behavior, as I am sure they all thought the term applied to someone else.
The Gringo Dance is seen in its various volumes and variations at the immigration offices, and the basic version consists of shouting in English and demanding to be served first (although everyone else has a ficha with a number on it), refusing to complete all the requirements for a work permit or to extend a tourist visa, whining and puling about the costs--with comments like mordida and sticking it to the foreigners and other favorite riffs, barging around the office with belligerant body language, and when the non_spanish speaker's frustration reaches its height, yelling: Fuck all you Mexicans!
The same dance can be seen in a number of different locations: banks, post offices, restaurants, BARS.
I am sure you have seen it.
My village is pretty rural in lifestyle, which is one of its attractions; but it is also 10 minutes from a good-sized town (of about 400K people) and is less than 2 hours from the Zócalo of Mexico City--so it is not rural at all in the sense of being isolated.
There are no gringos in my village.
In fact, as we have the reputation of being "matones" (which we foment actively in order to have some privacy), even folks from the big town 6 kilometers away are afraid to enter our municipio.
I don't think there are any gringos left in the town now. either. When I first came here--a little more than 15 years ago--there were 3--one a fugitive from a mental institution who found it easier to live on the streets in Mexico than in Gringolandia and had been here for 15 or 20 years without learning Spanish, one who was married to a Mexican woman and never learned any Spanish either and a third who was hiding out from California arrest warrants for refusing to pay child support--and who DID learn a fair amount of Spanish.
There is one old German guy here who steams around in some kind of lederhosen. Must be hot in those pants....
19 - Lisa Solod Warren
I shall print out the Staneski article and read it. Looks intriguing at the least.
Joanne, while you certainly have a good point, I think Blechman is being reductive in the specific rather than the general.
And Dave, for goodness sake, can you stop beating this Acorn drum? Okay, okay there are some bad apples in that bunch. But they are not Obama's fault. If we could blame the election fraud of 2004 on Bush he would not be in office, now would we? And by the way, if you read something else besides what supports your own point of view you would know that there is voter registration fraud going on among Republicans right now, too!!!!
20 - cuervodeluna
Fraud is traditional in all elections.
Mexican pols have been hiring gringo specialists in election fraud to advise them on their campaigns.
If you look back historically at presidential races in the US, you will see that elections were decided not in the ballot boxes, but in the smoke-filled rooms of the ward bosses.
In 1960, JFK was "elected" by Boss Richard Daley in Chicago--and Joseph Kennedy spent a fortune buying votes in other venues.
In 2000, Bush was "elected" by his brother Jeb Bush and the Miami Mafia.
In 2004 it was Jeb. the Miami Mafia and the Ohio porkbarrelers.
But this time round, there will not even have to be fraud, because Gringos are racist and when the chips are down, in the privacy of the voting booth, they will in a LARGE majority vote against Obama.
True democracy in action.
21 - Daniel Miller
Cuervodeluna,
We live roughly ten-fifteen minutes from a small town of maybe two hundred, and about forty minutes (more or less, depending on road conditions) from the third (? maybe now forth) largest city in the country. There is another town about forty minutes away full of gated communities, big houses and recent Gringo arrivals. Some are pretty good people; others, well I won't get into that. The province has changed dramatically in recent years, and (in my view) not for the better. I hope it doesn't happen where we live.
Out closest neighbor (by road) is about two KM away, and the roads are, well, pretty bad. I like it that way, very much. So, it seems, do our (5) dogs (9) horses and (3) cats, not to mention the chickens and ducks.
I am finally learning enough Spanish to communicate on a basic level, at least about horse stuff. When in Venezuela for a while, off and on for a year or so, I tried to learn a bit of Spanish, but didn't try hard enough to succeed. Most of the Venezuelans I knew spoke English. Ditto Colombia.
It is necessary to have at least basic language competence, and it also makes me feel more welcome. My wife, who spent two of her undergraduate years at the University of Mexico, speaks excellent Spanish (she is often mistaken, based on her accent, for someone from a South American country).
The "Gringo Dance?" Hadn't seen the phrase before, but it is appropriate. It is frequently performed, and I have been guilty of it myself on occasion, particularly before I attained rudimentary if ungrammatical competence in Spanish. Only once here have I seen a bumper sticker "no mas Gringos." I threatened to put one on my car, but was dissuaded from doing so.
When one comes to live in a different country, it is necessary to develop at least a rudimentary appreciation of the culture and to try to become part of the community. Some do, some don't.
At least I am very happy here, more so than ever before in my life.
As to Dave, your and my perceptions are different, as they appear to be on any number of other subjects. Still, it is pleasant to exchange views with another expat.
Dan(Miller)
22 - David Black
"Granted we also have racial residues to overcome (how else to explain the fact that the political race is nearly even despite McCain's obvious flip-flops, gaffs and declining abilities?), but the Obama narrative bears little correlation to the Palin one."
Ah yes, the typical lib manuever of playing the race card to their advantage.
Never in a million years would you admit that your darling messiah Martin Luther Kennedy's present showing is due to a paper thin resume and association with leftist radical creeps like Rev. Wright, William Ayers, and convicted felons like Tony Rezko.
Also, who in their right mind would ever cite another radical loser like Saul Alinsky as a model citizen worthy of emulation?
Ahat I cited just now should be enough to invalidate MLK's candidacy.
23 - Baritone
DB,
Guilt by association.
Let's get down to the details. Tell us all of the specifics regarding Obama's associations. You seem to have the skinny on all that. Again, be specific. Tell us all of the heinous things Obama has done in his associations with Wright, Ayers and Resco. Tell us specifically what it is that "invalidates" Obama's candidacy. Give us the details.
Do it, or leave it alone. All that is a strawman argument and you know it. It's all bullshit!
Despite all the hate and ignorance, Obama is going to kick McCain's tight little ass in November and all of your irrational, mean spirited hopes will die in wretched despair.
B
24 - David Black
A person is judged by the company they keep, at least in the world I live in.
As far as I know, John McCain didn't associate with leftist radicals who cut their evil and rotten little teeth during the Sixties by blowing up government buildings and going on record as saying they were proud of that achievement.
John McCain was not a 20 year member of a radical separatist church where an anti-Semitic pastor said to his congregation "Not God Bless America, but Goddamn America!"
John McCain's children weren't personally baptized by the same pastor, either.
John and Cindy McCain did not have their marriage presided over by the same pastor as well.
Yet, the messiah Martin Luther Kennedy denies that he had a close personal relationship with Wright.
Yea, right.
John McCain's wife did not stand at the podium of their church during the summer of 2004 and say the following about her fellow Americans:
“Once again, the white man keeps us down, what’s up with Whitey, Why’d he attack Iraq, Why’d he let Katrina happen, Why’d he leave millions of children behind. This is the legacy the white man gives us”
Sorry, my friend, many Americans aren't cowed by these leftist black radicals playing the race card to push their agenda on a bunch of weak willed lib cowards consumed by lingering guilt over slavery.
25 - Dave Nalle
I hate to agree with Cuervo even a little bit, but I think she is right that once people go into the voting booth many who say they are going to vote for Obama will not do so.
I don't think it will be primarily because of racism. As I see it we're looking at almost the opposite. In order to make sure no one thinks they are racist, many people - especially democrats - will profess support for Obama just to make themselves look better. But when they get in the voting booth their concerns about his background and lack of qualifications will reassert themselves and they may not actually vote for him, not because they are racist, but because their fear of the appearance of racism will make them lie.
On the way out when exit polled they'll say they voted for him, of course. This will lead to exit polls which bear little resemblance to the actual vote and another round of groundless claims of election fraud.
Dave