Sarah Palin is not a feminist. Or that's what we say in my cackle of rads.

"Crucify"? Did she mean "criticize"? I surely would have recalled if there was a recent crucifixion--I get e-mails from Amnesty International, and they would definitely have complained! Stern letters would get written. HRC, too, would have e-mailed me. They are not down with crucifixions.

When Palin posted this tweet, I was a little surprised at her new vocabulary. "A cackle of rads" I queried. And then I realized that she was being positively Joycean in her new coinings, evoking "a gaggle of geese" or a "murder of crows", for example, but giving us that splendid word--"cackle". And what cackles, ladies and gents? I can think of two things. Chickens and witches. Oh, how clever! That's certainly very funny feminist humor. I will surely recount it at my next radfem meeting.

You know, where we burns the bras and hates the mens, which is not either a passe way of looking at lefty feminism, so stop it!

And then, did she actually mean "single issue" like women who say "I will not vote for anyone who is pro-choice, no matter what other issue we have in common?" Or did she really mean "singular"--such as Sarah Palin's singular support for Dr. Laura Schlessinger, who recently flamed-out in a screed on her radio show, which was laced with the fairly-understood-to-be offensive "n-word." Because she Tweeted ever so recently:



and also:



Wow. Dr. Schlessinger's self-serving whinge that she couldn't enjoy her First Amendment freedoms in this cruel world must have found a buyer!

Laura Schlessinger didn't lose a damn thing. No one hounded her out of the radio business. (Although certainly the FCC has been known to get people taken off the air just for stuff like profanity, or sexual content.) Her contract is up anyway. The point is that what she said was met with outrage not because what she said was offensive to "activists"--it was offensive to many people, and betrayed a mindset where it is not the person who uses the language that's at fault--oh no. It's those darn, over-sensitive people it's used against. She didn't need to say the N-word once for what she was saying to be nonsense.

To quickly re-cap, she had a caller who was an African-American woman in a mixed marriage who was upset when mutual acquaintances said racist things and wanted to know how to handle it. I don't know why she was calling an up-tight, white, physiologist for the answer to this question, but she had a valid issue. She is married to a man., She should not have to apologize for her life. But there are haters in this world who will try to take a bite out of you just for being who you are. But Dr. Laura did not address the concern seriously--she went off. She blamed the caller, implied she shouldn't be in a mixed marriage if she couldn't handle it, and used the N-word eleven times (and if you've heard the clip, the way the word "black" even spits out of her mouth sounds like it's loaded with disdain--or that's how it sounded to me.)

Leaving aside whether it's ever okay to use that word, which is one that does not sit right with me, let's get down to the nitty-gritty--she was unprofessional. She upbraided a caller in a way that was offensive to many of her listeners, not to mention unresponsive to the real issue that woman had. As a radio personality and a person who hangs "Dr." in front of her name, she has some responsibilities. She is representing herself as a professional who gives advice to people and she representing, in a way the markets that air her program. And I am sure a lot of switchboards lit up and a lot of sponsors got called when she said all she said.

That wasn't "activists". I can't imagine what activists Palin thinks swooped in and made this a difficult situation--activists like the common community of people who know you shouldn't slur people on the basis of their color? Activists like anyone who realized this ignorant woman had no idea what she was talking about? There must be a hell of a lot of us activists out here. I actively am not thankful for so much of anything, except that Palin tweets.

They are so immediate, and so unfiltered, and so public, and so dumb. I don't care for Twitter, myself. I don't have 140-character or less thoughts, or if I did, I wouldn't want to necessarily prioritize sharing them. I also don't social network. I'm anti-social. But I am waiting on the day Palin says something so explosively stupid on Twitter that me and "the rads" and "the blacks" and "the activists" I know we will all have to scrape our jaws up off the floor. And then we will blog.........