Sarah Palin Derangement: Threatening Her With Rape
A supposed “comedienne” named Sandra Bernhard has been rather a hit attacking Sarah Palin.
She warned that Sarah Palin better not come into Manhattan lest she get gang-raped by some of Sandra’s big black brothers.
Her rant continued with a nasty anti-Christian riff.
The audience eats it up.
Nobody seems to have noticed that claiming that “black brothers” would gang-rape Palin plays on one of the nastiest (and historically most dangerous) racial stereotypes.
Which says something important about a large part of the left. They know perfectly well that words like “cunt” and “bitch” are unacceptable ways of referring to a woman, and that stereotyping black men as rapists is incendiary.
But when they think of Palin, the inhibitions disappear.
She warned that Sarah Palin better not come into Manhattan lest she get gang-raped by some of Sandra’s big black brothers.
Her rant continued with a nasty anti-Christian riff.
Now you got Uncle Women, like Sarah Palin, who jumps on the s--t and points her fingers at other women. Turncoat b---h! Don’t you f--kin’ reference Old Testament, bitch! You stay with your new Goyish crappy shiksa funky bulls--t! Don’t you touch my Old Testament, you b---h! Because we have left it open for interpre-ta-tion! It is no longer taken literally! You whore in your f--kin’ cheap New Vision cheap-ass plastic glasses and your [sneering voice] hair up. A Tina Fey-Megan Mullally brokedown bulls--t moment.You can see the bigoted tirade at this link.
The audience eats it up.
Nobody seems to have noticed that claiming that “black brothers” would gang-rape Palin plays on one of the nastiest (and historically most dangerous) racial stereotypes.
Which says something important about a large part of the left. They know perfectly well that words like “cunt” and “bitch” are unacceptable ways of referring to a woman, and that stereotyping black men as rapists is incendiary.
But when they think of Palin, the inhibitions disappear.
Labels: Leftist Intolerance, Liberal Intolerance, Liberal Sexiam, Palin Derangement Syndrome, Sarah Palin
posted by John McAdams at 10:10 PM
9 Comments:
Using one crappy washed up comedienne to generalize about the opinions and behaviors of an entire group of people. Good to see you haven't altered your tactics any since the last election.
I'm also pretty confident that Andrew Dice Clay was awfully popular in the 80s, and it certainly wasn't with liberals or women. Does that make all conservatives sexist? I'd like to think not, but the jury's still out. Let's not forget that a whole mess of people are supporting Palin because she's a "MILF."
jess:
Welcome! Nice to see you've gotten out from underneath the rock. Sandra Bernhard is not the only liberal to joke about it.
Indeed, just last night on SNL, a skit insinuated Todd Palin had an incestuous relationship with his daughter.
Andrew Dice Clay is a creep. But he's nothing - nothing - compared to the rampant hatred directed toward Palin. If nothing else, McCain has forever removed the mask to reveal the ugly, disfigured, family-hating, woman-hating face of liberalism.
It's not a pretty picture, so I can see how you'd want to ignore it. But it's real. And it's not pretty.
And in a year where Obama should have a double-digit lead in the polls, his tied with McCain and may just lose this election.
Why is it that NOBODY CARED when conservatives were running rampant with sexist remarks about Hillary Clinton, but all of a sudden now if anyone even mentions Sarah Palin's name negatively they're labeled a sexist? Don't pretend like conservatives are totally innocent here, because they aren't.
Women hating? Liberals are women hating? Look at Sarah Palin's record. She must have no respect for women whatsoever. Case in point - Her entire tenure as Mayor of Wasilla (until the Alaskan government finally overruled her), she forced rape victims in her town to pay for their own rape kits, a cost of nearly $1000 per test. So you know what happened? Women got raped and didn't report it because they couldn't afford the necessary medical attention to gather evidence to prosecute the rapist. Palin was the ONLY elected official in Alaska who refused to allow the government to pay for these NECESSARY tests. If that's not a slap in the face to women, I don't know what is.
Here's a link to the article, in case you don't believe me. http://www.cnn.com/2008/POLITICS/09/21/palin.rape.exams/index.html
Jess,
The "charging rape victims" story is a little more complex.
Apparently the policy was to recover the money from the victim's insurance company.
Check this.
If you can find a case where a bill was actually sent by cops (rather than hospitals) to a rape victim in Wasilla, by all means tell us about it.
Prof Mccadams--
I saw a little bit of promise in your last response. Was it implicit, or am I just reading too much into this, that you believe that charging rape victims for their own rape kits by sending the bill to their house is something that should never happen? Can liberals and conservatives agree here? Can we agree here?
Also, what if the victim, like too many of our nations' citizens, doesn't have health insurance? The bill would then be sent to her, no? Whether or not this ever occured is besides the point. If it is built into the law as such, there is something horribly wrong... cruel and unusual, in my books.
Was it implicit . . . that you believe that charging rape victims for their own rape kits by sending the bill to their house is something that should never happen?
It would be wrong to do anything to bring more mental distress to a rape victim, and yes, getting a bill in the mail would be very bad.
Whether or not this ever occured is besides the point.
Wrong. If nothing happens to a rape victim beyond being asked to provide an insurance card (if she has one), then no harm, no foul.
You folks have no business trying to spin this as Sarah Palin being terribly heartless, when what actually happened is that the city tried to recover the cost of the kits from the insurance company.
Do really want to formulate your beliefs by accepting uncritically the “citizen’s journalism” of a low-level, right-wing hack like Confederate Yankee? I mean it is one thing to read what he has to say, but it is another to link to these guys as if they are obviously right. But in the interest of not being accused of a simple ad hominem attack, let’s look at his post.
CY’s argument focuses not on Palin’s role in any of this, but only the claim that in Wasilla, rape victims were charged for rape kits. He says this claim is false.
So let’s look at the evidence:
1. CY begins by citing the current Wasilla police chief (not the person who actually was the police chief at the time) as saying that the police department can find no records of victims being billed, and so, since the only other place you might find records is in the Finance Department (which only keeps records for six years and thus cannot be of any help here), it looks like victims must not have been billed.
But it might be relevant what the police chief at the time in question said about whether victims were being billed. And it is quite easy to find quotes by that police chief asserting that they did charge for the rape kits: "In the past, we've charged the cost of exams to the victim's insurance company when possible," then-chief Charlie Fannon told the Mat-Su Valley Frontiersman, the local newspaper. "I just don't want to see any more burden put on the taxpayer."
So the police chief who was actually there at the time says that the police department did charge for the exams, though they charged the victim’s insurance. And in fact he is complaining about a bill that would end this practice. So, what the current police chief says about his inability to find records of billing is really irrelevant.
2. But what about the fact that there is no record in the local police department of any billings of victims?
Well as we have seen, there was some charging going on, even though there is now no record of it. Furthermore, in the minutes of the committee meeting in which the legislation to ban the practice of billing was created (HB 270), minutes to which CY happily links, it is made clear that bills for the rape kit were originally sent from the hospital, not the police department. That may be why there are no bills from the police department on record. (There are of course other reasons there might not be bills even if they once did exist, such as the fact that (as stated by the current police chief) information about billing is not contained in police reports.)
3. Well if the hospital is doing the billing, then why say the police department is charging victims?
It appears from the notes of the above mentioned meeting, again happily cited by CY, that the bill typically gets sent from the hospital to the police department. Now what is relevant is this. Alaskan state troopers and almost all other police departments in the state would simply pay for the cost of the rape kit. But in Wasilla, an attempt was made to get the victims insurance to pay for it.
Now what is amazingly stupefying in all this that CY completely mischaracterizes what is going on in this meeting, and takes quotes completely out of context to support his point. This is a meeting to draft legislation to make illegal what it is that Wasilla has been doing: refusing to pay for rape kits and trying to get insurance companies to pay for them. So I encourage anyone to read the minutes with that in mind and see if they come up with a similar conclusion to the one CY does. He offers for example, this piece of the minutes: “He [Deputy Commissioner of Public Safety for the state of Alaska] commented that he does not think that a victim ought to even see a bill related to sexual assault whether it is on their insurance form or not. He emphasized that a police agency investigating a crime should pay because that is the cost of doing business in the collection of evidence no matter what the crime; he does not know of any police agency that has requested payment.” So the Commissioner is agreeing with the aims of a bill which would make it mandatory that police pay for the rape kits. His last point about his not knowing any police agency that has requested money, could be read in two ways. It may be that he has not heard about this practice. But of course, as we know from the police chief’s remark, that practice existed. The other way to interpret his remarks in this context is to say that what he means is that BESIDES these few small rural police departments which don’t pay, he does not know of any police agency that has requested payment. And the same thing is true of the second quote from the meeting he provides. (I’d be happy to discuss that quote if someone wants to defend CY on that one.)
So what do we know? The bill for the medical exam/rape kit originates from the hospital. Now it sounds like in some cases, the hospital sends directly to insurance and the legislators were concerned with straightening out the procedures to avoid insensitivity. But at the time this legislation was drafted, almost all police departments would pick up the tab when the bill was sent to them. But not Wasilla’s police department. And in fact the police chief argued that they shouldn’t have to pay even when the bill was sent to them; and while all this was happening, Palin was mayor.
One last comment about billing the insurance company: You (JM) may be right about it not being all that traumatic to be asked for an insurance card. But from my experience with insurance companies, it seems clear that showing a card is often just the beginning of ones interaction with an insurance company. I don’t know what kind of insurance poli sci. professors get, but I know that I usually get a copy of bills the insurance company will pay, and sometimes I have to pay a deductible—so I get billed. In many cases, my insurance company, in the interest of saving money, routinely refuses to cover something they are obviously supposed to cover in the hopes I won’t call and complain. They simply keep sending me billing statements until I call. Avoiding having reminders such as these is in the forefront of these legislators' minds as they craft this legislation because they (rightly, I think) see it as adding trauma to the victim. It is also worth noting that this could be much worse if someone does not have insurance at all.
So just to make this explicit: It looks like anyone who actually gives this any thought can see that sending it back to the insurance company is likely going to result in the victim's getting a reminder of some sort from the insurance company, either in the form of a deductible bill or a statement of coverage or a refusal to pay notice. And even you (JM) admit that that would be bad. So at the same time that Palin was mayor, she had a police chief who was more concerned about citizens' having to shoulder the burden of these costs (as they are shouldered everywhere else in the state) than he was about the likelihood that a rape victim would get some sort of bill in the mail reminding her of her ordeal.
Now this not to say anything about Palin's role in all this. But it is worth trying to find out because this is a simple matter of values prioritizing. For this police chief, at least, the protection of a rape victim was less important than the protection of the taxpayers who might have to cover the costs of protecting her.
But the bottom line is this. In order to assess her role (if any), there has to be a real attempt to understand the facts (instead of looking on the internet for someone who says something you want to hear). While you are right that this is a very complex matter, I think it is clear that the complexity is lost on CY. And insofar as you link to him approvingly, by extension, the complexity appears to be lost on you too.
If you want to have a debate or a dialogue about this, you need to do better than simply cite, uncritically, some other right-wing blogger. I am willing to admit that there may be aspects of this story about which I am mistaken. (This is something I would be surprised to ever find you admit about yourself.) But I at least tried to do a little critical work, instead of simply linking to a left-wing blog. I would think that, as a PhD, you would try to do a little homework too.
she forced rape victims in her town to pay for their own rape kits
That is a flat-out lie. It was put out by the same smearmeisters who have started all sorts of other false Palin stories on the Internet. Even al-CNN retracted it.
But you barking, screaming moonbats just keep repeating the meme, hoping Goebbels was right.
Peter,
First, do you have a link to a CNN retraction? All I can find is this from the 21st which seems to be anything but a retraction:
http://www.cnn.com/2008/POLITICS/09/21/palin.rape.exams/index.html?iref=newssearch
I am not saying you're wrong; I just haven't been able to find it.
Second, as McAdams notes, it is a complex matter--probably more complex than you are making it. I can agree with you that it may be putting the point too strongly to say that Palin forced women to pay for their own rape kits. But here are what seem to be the facts: She was the mayor of a very small town that happened to be the only town in Alaska which had a police chief fighting against the legislation. And he fought this legislation, which had unanimous statewide support, for a full six months.
So sure, maybe Palin had no idea that the police chief was fighting this, in which case she was clueless about what was going on in her own town. On the other hand, maybe she knew and chose to not step up and endorse the legislation or tell her police chief to back off, in which case she was tacitly endorsing the chief's fight to continue the policy of charging victims or their insurance companies for rape kits. If it was the latter, then she chose to tacitly endorse a policy that anyone who thinks about it can see would likely lead to rape victims getting reminders in the mail about their attack. And this is something that even McAdams thinks would be wrong.
Third, maybe if you called liberals a few more names it would strengthen your argument even more!(Before you call me a poop-head, let me make clear that I am being sarcastic.)
As I said in my previous comment, I am happy to discuss the facts here. But if you don't give me any evidence or supporting facts, you just sound like someone who spends all his time watching FOX and listening to Rush.
Without any supporting facts or evidence, you're the one who seems to be barking and screaming.
Post a Comment
<< Home