Governor Sarah Palin, on Saturday, November 9, 2013, compared the ever increasing national debt to slavery. Palin said:
Our free stuff today is being paid for by taking money from our children and borrowing from China. When that money comes due – and this isn’t racist, but it’ll be like slavery when that note is due. We are going to beholden to the foreign master.
What she said about the mounting national debt being a form of slavery is true, that the bill for all the borrowing will come due, that our children will have to do what foreign masters (the Chinese) say. But Martin Bashir, MSNBC show host, rather than thinking about the meaning of her remark (like “when that note is due”), had the following “knee-jerk” response. Bashir, on Friday, November 15, 2013, in response to Palin’s remark, said:
And we end this week in the way it began – with America’s resident dunce, Sarah Palin, scraping the barrel of her long deceased mind, and using her all-time favorite analogy in an attempt to sound intelligent about the national debt.
Given her well-established reputation as a world class idiot, …[.]
A slave named Darby catched eating canes, had him well flogged and pickled, then made Hector, another slave, s-h-i-t in his mouth. This became known as a “Darby’s dose, a punishment invented by Thistlewood that spoke only of the slave owner’s savagery and inhumanity.”
Flogged Punch well, and then washed and rubbed salt pickle, lime juice and bird pepper; made Negro Joe piss in his eyes and mouth.
She [Palin] confirms that if anyone truly qualified for a dose of discipline from Thomas Thistlewood, then she would be the outstanding candidate.
Bashir made his comments referencing the writings of Thomas Thistlewood, a Jamaican plantation overseer in the 1700s. To say that Bashir’s remarks were “a new low” would be an understatement. Bashir, on the following Monday, apologized for his remarks. But not about the message conveyed by his remarks.
But that’s not the point!
The National Organization for Women (NOW) has not uttered one word concerning Martin Bashir’s misogynous remarks. From the NOW web site, we get this:
NOW is unique in its approach to the issue of violence against women, emphasizing that there are many interrelated aspects to the issue — domestic violence; sexual assault; sexual harassment; violence at abortion clinics; hate crimes across lines of gender, sexuality and race; the gender bias in our judicial system that further victimizes survivors of violence; and the violence of poverty emphasized by the radical right’s attacks on poor women and children — all of which result from society’s attitudes toward women and efforts to “keep women in their place.” [emphases mine]
And, from NOW’s 1966 Statement of Purpose, we get this:
NOW is dedicated to the proposition that women, first and foremost, are human beings, who, like all other people in our society, must have the chance to develop their fullest human potential. We believe that women can achieve such equality only by accepting to the full the challenges and responsibilities they share with all other people in our society, as part of the decision-making mainstream of American political, economic and social life. [emphases mine]
Irony of ironies. Bashir’s “resident dunce” and “world class idiot” and “long deceased mind” and “attempt to sound intelligent” remarks were bad enough. Yet no response from NOW. But his closing remark: “She confirms that if anyone truly qualified for a dose of discipline from Thomas Thistlewood, then she would be the outstanding candidate.”, sure does sound like a threat of violence, something NOW has publicly sworn to fight. Let’s see, is a threat of “s****ing into the mouth” and “p***ing on” violent. It sure seems so to me! But still no response from NOW about violence, threatened or otherwise.
I guess Bashir’s remarks were not designed to “keep women in their place” with regard to Sarah Palin. I must also surmise that NOW is no longer faithful to its own Statement of Purpose, that it deems Sarah Palin to NOT be a “human being” so she cannot “have the chance to develop their fullest human potential.”
Further, not one word about Bashir’s remarks from Chris Jansing, Rachel Maddow, Abby Huntsman, Andrea Mitchell, Savannah Guthrie, Mika Brzezinski, Alex Wagner, Krystal Ball, Alex Witt, or Kelly O’Donnell, all females, and all MSNBC “talent.” I guess Bashir’s apology wipes the slate clean for them, returns everything back to the situation before he made the remarks.
As Frances Martel wrote: “The silence [at MSNBC] is deafening …[.] Those to whom Breitbart News has reached out [MSNBC “talent”] have, in particular, not been hesitant to comment when the offender has been a right-wing pundit rather than someone on the left.”
Even further, Dear Leader Barack Hussein Obama, who quickly stuck his nose into the Zimmerman-Martin affair, has yet to offer any comments about Bashir’s remarks. I guess he has been too busy playing golf.
There are two reasons why we’ve heard nothing from NOW:
First, NOW doesn’t see Sarah Palin as a woman because she doesn’t fit NOW’s mold of what a woman should be – a liberal in need of its services. She, therefore, is not a candidate for any NOW comment.
Second, inserting an “L” for liberal would mess up the “sexy” NOW acronym. After all, “NOLW” may be truthful, but it is not nearly as sexy.
Cross-posted at The Pot Stirrer, my very conservative web site.