Motley Moose – Archive

It took me all this time to digest Sarah Palin’s comment at the GOP Convention about community organizers lacking any real responsibilities.  Being a professional organizer myself, the comment left me uncharacteristally mute.  Now finally, I’m ready to, as we say in organizing, “call the question” —

So, tell me, Governor Palin, whom should we hold responsible for the current challenges and debacles facing this country?

My answer?  The American people,

And coincidentally enough that’s what organizers do — they hold the people accountable for the state of their communities, their workplaces, their churches, their organizations and ultimately their country and the world.

An utterly amazing five minutes of slice and dice, and not from the usual cast of Democratic characters.  Note how Donna wisely sits back and basks in the conservative outrage.

I believe what we have happening is a new Big Lifeboat Party as the economic tsunami threatens to swamp all boats and even the George Wills of the world don’t want a mad man at the helm.    

 

From FactCheck  

The sudden rush of feminist rage from the most unlikely of places — the conservative Republican Right — has me sputtering in a way I haven’t in 35 years.

In 1973, I was college freshman on fire for women’s rights and equality.  I had all the talking points at my fingertips, my cherished copy of the first MS. Magazine was still intact and I was known to spoil every family gathering as I did battle with sexist pigs whereever I could find them, which at the time was everyfuckingwhere.

Just as I felt I was gaining a toehold in my personal piece of the war’s turf, in drops Bobby Riggs, Billie Jean King and the “Battle of the Sexes” to set back the kitchen table front of feminist movement at least ten years.

And here we go again — just as women have taken a decisive leap forward, here comes the co-opting of feminism refashioned for the lowest common demoninator into an argument we can’t help but lose.  And her name is Sarah Palin.

My son, a recent Iraq veteran and once conservative Republican, rearranged my head last night with this stunning observation — McCain/Palin was rapidly becoming a more terrifying proposition than four more years of Bush/Cheney.  It took only a moment of consideration to accept the once unfathomable was now real.