So today I did something I don't normally do. I listened to Dr. Laura Schlessinger, or Dr. Laura for short.
She's the conservative talk-radio show host who often lambasts women who work outside of the home instead of staying in the kitchen and caring for their children. She can also be seen on television blaming working mothers/wives for America's high divorce rate and overall disintegration of marriages.
Dr. Laura was on the O'Reilly Factor hosted by another conservative darling, Fox News Bill O'Reilly. However much I brush aside her feeble attempts at intellectual analysis, Dr. Laura made an interesting observation about the Republican Vice Presidential candidate, Alaska Governor Sarah Palin.
Dr. Laura said Palin, former beauty queen and mother of five, is being vilified by Democrats and liberals much the same way Clarence Thomas was in the early 1980's.
Now, I was pretty young at the time, but I do recall some Democrats - one of them was Sen. Joe Biden who is now the Democratic Vice Presidential nominee - going after Thomas on his inexperience and lack of judicial temperament, something we're all too familiar with now. I also recall many black political elites remained quiet because they very much wanted an African American on the U.S. Supreme Court.
Dr. Laura noted that feminists aren't remaining quiet this time around. Instead, she said, they are vilifying Palin much the same way Thomas was vilified before his ascent to the highest court in the land.
My first reaction was 'get real.'
Clarence Thomas wasn't vilified. I think the court's sole (definitely no pun intended here) black justice created his own problems by showing up an employee's home uninvited and constantly making unwelcome advances.
But the Thomas comparison with Palin still made me pause.
Palin is currently being ridiculed because her unmarried teen daughter is pregnant. My mother, a rabid Sen. Barack Obama supporter, called me to say that Palin needs to be at home raising her children. "As opposed to what," I asked.
My mom, who stayed at home to raise me and my three sisters while my Dad worked, said it is obvious that Palin's priorities aren't in order if her teenager is having unprotected sex and pregnant.
I didn't expect to hear such a thing from my mother and was kinda stunned. After all, she raised me and my sisters to be independent, young women who accept responsiblity - and the consequences - for our own decisions. At the same time, she also drilled in us that we would be unable to bring any babies home for her to raise.
But I digress.
The Thomas-Palin comparison should make Americans think about how Thomas' seat on the U.S. Supreme Court has impacted us in the years since his arrival there; and it also brings to the forefront other issues. The least of which is whether abstinence-only education, which Palin favors, is really working in terms of preventing teen pregnancy and the spread of sexual diseases.
The other question that comes to mind, however, is Sarah Palin to female tokenism what Clarence Thomas was to (his words) a "high-tech lynching."
Are some Democrats and liberals vilifying Palin for not properly raising her children, is it fair to talk about her parenting abilities, and lastly, should that keep her from being the second most powerful person in the country?
I know those are a lot of questions, but I want to hear your thoughts.
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