Palin is the anti-feminist feminist. Barbara Kay (Updated)

And Barbara Kay is as dishonest as Sarah Palin.

Palin's mockery tickled Obama's worrisome polyps of swollen self-regard (the "styrofoam pillars"), his history of words over action ("two memoirs, but no major bills"), his curious pattern of risk avoidance (unlike community organizers, mayors have "actual responsibilities") and his tendency to solipsism(presidential journeys are not "voyages of personal discovery").

Kay might want to become a reading pundit as well as a writing pundit. The Associated Press dissected Palin's speech quite nicely and called it (politely) a litany of exaggerations and "whoppers". The truth is that the Republicans stood on the stage of their convention and lied.

Then Kay, in an effort to paint the Republicans as the party of equality and enlightenment, tries to portray Palin as some kind of ground-breaking anti-feminist.

But win or lose the election, Sarah Palin has already altered the cultural landscape of America, possibly of the Western world. In years to come, social archeologists will mark her speech as the official beginning of an end to the gender wars, and, one hopes, a return to trust and collaboration between the sexes.

You haven't gone far enough back, baby. Social archeologists will wonder why Kay didn't bother to do a little research and why her column completely missed the accomplishments of Nellie Tayloe Ross and Miriam A. Ferguson, both of whom were Democratic governors of Wyoming and Texas respectively before Sarah Palin's parents were even born.

Because Palin proved you don't need the Sisterhood to pierce the glass ceiling. In her single calculated comment about women, she said, "This is America, and every woman can walk through every door of opportunity."

Really?! Does Palin believe she picked herself for the position on the McCain ticket? The "Sisterhood" to which Kay refers has a longer history than she's willing to admit, as evidenced by her failure to acknowledge the existence of others who have gone before Palin. And perhaps Kay can explain the reason political parties and corporations are overwhelmingly populated by males at the upper levels.

Got that? It wasn't Gloria Steinem that put me on this podium. It was my made-in-small-town-America traditional social values combined with old-fashioned patriotism and Alaska-instilled pioneerism.

Aha! Now Kay decides to name the enemy while giving Palin a nice homey stroke. But then Palin put herself in that frame. What she wasn't counting on was, (since the Republicans didn't do it), a severe vetting by the media. What they're finding isn't what Kay is trying to present.

Ideologybased behaviour of any kind is irrelevant to Palin, and millions of other small-town women -- and always was. Love of family, community, country -- not conspiracy theories -- is what guides their political compass.

Right. She's a real sweetheart. So much so that a judge had to tell her to shut her cakehole.

Having issued forth with the name Gloria Steinem, who Kay apparently doesn't get, her next target is perhaps more familiar and Kay does herself in nicely.

Betty Friedan, author of The Feminist Mystique*, the 1963 book that kicked off the modern feminist movement, was no Adam Smith or Karl Marx. She was a political nobody, a bored, disgruntled housewife who mistook her own tiny world of white, urban, middle-class, university-educated peers as representative of all American women.

In fact, Friedan's true acolytes always were, and remain, "dormitory feminists," a small, but noisily aggrieved iceberg calved from the real female masses Palin so brilliantly champions.

What were Friedan's credentials for changing the world? Friedan studied psychology at Smith College, dabbled in journalism, flirted with communism(it shows in feminism's Marxist stripes), mothered three children and gave domestically violent tit for tat to her husband in a failed marriage before writing her famous book. Some resume.

So, we get it. Kay thinks Friedan is unqualified to "change the world", then goes on to mock Friedan's qualifications by... get ready for this... criticizing her middle-class existence. Not to mention that Kay now identifies feminism with Marxism, without so much as real reference. But that comes with punditry, doesn't it?

Then Kay cuts herself off at the knees. She simply guts her own argument. (Emphasis mine)

And yet she emerged from her utter political obscurity and academic amateurism as the matriarch of an enormously consequential movement. Following the book's landslide success -- one of its direct offshoots was the disruption of the Miss America pageant Mr. Kay details in his column-- Friedan became the guiding force for the National Women's Political Caucus and the National Abortion Rights Action Council (NARAL). Her reign had more impact on American life than the work of any 50 vice-presidents combined.

Landslide success. Now why the fuck do you suppose that happened? Do you think Friedan struck a nerve? Kay didn't like the quality of research, disapproved of Friedan's lifestyle and mocked her motherhood, yet this woman wrote a book which started, in Kay's own words, an enormously consequential movement. In fact, Kay cuts Palin down to 1/50th of Friedan's stature by stating that Friedan has done more than 50 vice-presidents combined. Do you suppose it's because women didn't care about the research but saw themselves in the lines of Friedan's book? Or was it just a good way to spend the extra grocery money? Friedan tore the plastic wrap off an old movement - she didn't start it. The life she was describing was a constructed creation of the last half of the 20th Century and she exposed it for what it was.

Palin, who Kay is obviously trying to hold up in a side-by-side comparison with Friedan, has done nothing similar.

So feminists, enough with the hypocrisy. Show some respect for Sarah Palin, who is far more credentialed to advance America's interests than Friedan was for yours.

Really? Nice try but Kay is short by a country mile. If Palin's only detractors were feminists, (and she means men-hating, hairy feminists), she might have a point. But Palin's critics come from a wide cross-section of society and have nothing to do with either movement or non-movement feminists. Kay is lashing out at a strawman because women are making it clear that they understand what Palin is not.

Palin is not representative of feminists because she is not representative of humanists.

Palin did not shatter the glass ceiling through any action of her own. Someone pushed her through it. And it was done in true Republican fashion.

Befitting the GOP history of running crooks, B movie actors, born-again business failures and draft-deferment specialists, the Republicans have stuck to their old formula. Now they have a religious fundamentalist, runner-up beauty pageant princess, under investigation for abuse of authority.

Yeah. She fits perfectly.

*By the way, Barbara.... If you insist on trashing the authors of books which have become classics you might want to at least provide some evidence that you actually read them, or perhaps even looked at the cover. The title of Betty Friedan's 1963 now-classic book is The Feminine Mystique - not, as you labeled it, The Feminist Mystique. Really. It's been on the shelf for 45 years... still available... title hasn't changed... you've never read it, have you?

Ha! Sadly, No! gives Barbara the "fly" treatment.

Note: I've corrected my spelling errors. Let's see if Barbara does the same.