I have been tossing up on whether to write anything on Sarah Palin and had been inclined not to.However, I was listening to / watching Fox News Channel (definite right wing biases and pro-GOP, generally speaking) and there was a fella named Howard Gutman making some comments.
Now, Mr. Gutman is a member of the Obama Team, aka the Team professing to be all about change. Obama himself has been on the record saying Sarah Palin's parenting skills and family are off limits. Someone obviously forgot to tell Gutman.
The gist of the Gutman arguments were that with a 17-year-old daughter who is unmarried and pregnant and an infant son who is a special needs child (or in non-politically correct terms a youngster with Down Syndrome) should be spending more time at home caring for her family than seeking fame as the Vice-President on the Republican ticket. I am not a woman and I am old enough to know better than to try and speak for them. So the following comments are my take on this as a man.
The Gutman comments are offensive, they are sexist, and they highlight how out of touch the Obama campaign is on this issue. Gutman's ideas that the woman's place is in the home is just too 19th Century. I figured the barefoot, pregnant, and in the kitchen thing was done. The fact that women have for a long time held down two or more jobs, the one in the home and also another one in an office, a factory, a supermarket, or a bar, should perhaps be seen as the strength of women to do more and achieve more than men while women are never getting full recognition for their efforts.
If Obama is as good as his word then Gutman should get a stinging rebuke and if he is on the payroll then he should see the pink slip. The insanity is that no one is asking whether Obama is fit to lead in light of him having two you children. Does this mean that the assumption is that the wife will be sitting at home in the White House taking care of the child raising duties like all good moms should be?
I do not agree with many of the policies of the GOP and would probably be a Democrat if I was an American citizen and had the right to vote. But sexism of this kind might give me pause to reevaluate. Perhaps this is because I grew up in a family where my mother was both carer and worker and the carer responsibilities were shared with the old man because the old man was a worker too.
The interest for me in the 17-year-old pregnant daughter who is currently unmarried but planning to marry the father of the baby is that the Palin family are having experiences that many ordinary families experience. This probably makes her more qualified to comment from an experience point of view than it does many other pundits throwing in their two pennies worth.
So, that's my two pennies worth!
