I know this because Wendy Doniger, professor of the history of religions at the University of Chicago Divinity School, tells me so on a Washington Post blog. To wit:
Her greatest hypocrisy is in her pretense that she is a woman. The Republican party's cynical calculation that because she has a womb and makes lots and lots of babies (and drives them to school! wow!) she speaks for the women of America, and will capture their hearts and their votes, has driven thousands of real women to take to their computers in outrage. She does not speak for women; she has no sympathy for the problems of other women, particularly working class women.
Well, useful to get that learnt. If there's anybody I trust to define womanhood and to be sympathetic to the lives of working-class women, it's a divinity school professor in Chicago who has constructed womanhood ideologically. I do hope La Doniger will phone Democrat Willie Brown in San Francisco, and correct him on this point he made in a column the other day reacting to Palin's convention speech:
She didn't have to prove she was "of the people." She really is the people.
Heh.
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Sarah Palin is not a woman, SHE IS GEORGE BUSH, speaking in canned answers that come from knee-jerk machismo.
Lordy, the culture war trolls are out in force today, and it is ugly!
David J. White says: "Are you really saying that you let your friendships founder over politics? I'm sorry to hear that. I agree with the novelist E.M. Forster, who said, "If I had to choose between betraying my country and betraying my friend, I hope I should have the guts to betray my country.""
No, David, that was a tiny anecdote that didn't really reflect the entirety of the sneering and disdain these "friends" had for what our country was going through. Weird that you should seize on that one paragraph and attempt pop psychoanalysis on me using it, and really rather disturbing to be honest. I frankly don't have the stomach to relate the entire tale, which took place over many days, but it would be enough to end anyone's friendship.
And sometimes, yes, one must face up to stark differences in moral values - even with friends. I would disagree with Forster's rather flippant statement. Let's use the old nuke question: What if betraying your friend meant saving millions of lives? Would you "hope" you'd have the guts to stand by your friend then? It seems like the sort of romanticized, somewhat illogical statement a novelist would make.
Of course I didn't have to stop a nuclear attack - nothing quite so dramatic - but most things are rarely so high stakes, are they? It's the small moments that count.
In fact, C.S. Lewis addresses almost the precise scenario I encountered in "The Screwtape Letters" when Wormwood is being instructed on how to keep his "patient" from being troubled by the horrible things his "friends" say and do. I didn't read "The Screwtape Letters" until a few years ago, but I was struck by how closely it tracked with my own saddening episode.
Slight addendum to this, David J. White.
Our friendship didn't end over politics.
It ended over their being incapable of taking seriously one of the greatest tragedies ever to befall this nation.
Thanks for good post keep it up
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