I'd like to know exactly what McCain means by "liberal feminist agenda," or if he knows exactly what feminism was and has transformed into. He probably means something close to what Kathleen Parker was getting at when she called feminists a "hirsute, Birkenstock-wearing sisterhood." By suggesting that Palin (a self-proclaimed feminist) is a counter to that sisterhood's agenda implicitly suggests that he believes there is a conservative feminist agenda (a combination of words so oxymoronic that makes me feel as if I just woke up in an alien examination room to the realization that life as I know it has been an illusion and my brain is about to be sucked out my ears and used as fuel for the aliens' human brain-powered spaceship). The efficiency and ease with which Sarah Palin has glided onto the Republican ticket tends to convince me that acceptable conservative feminists are anti-intellectual, pretty, and pro-life. They're hams who mug and flirt and wink at the cameras and crowds, and they wear high-heeled black patent leathar boots to political rallies. There is nothing wrong with a woman doing any of these things, especially not with looking feminine. But, as has been pointed out, if a man were behaving similarly, it would appear unprofessional, and he would be labeled a clown, a rube, a stunted thinker.
I'm not about to accuse Sarah Palin of not being a feminist. "Liberal" feminism is already grossly divisive, and the "agendas" from one faction to another differ so greatly as not to be related at all (except for that pesky women-and-men-are-equal thing). Feminists already accuse each other of not being feminists, which is so counter-productive to whatever "agenda" is at hand as to be laughable, and probably contributes to McCain's dirisive attitude towards them. If Sarah Palin is a feminist, however, she is of a new breed. A post-post-Christian, post-profanity, quasi-libertarian, pre-sexual revolution feminist, or what will be known heretofor as a Golly-Gee Feminist.
