On that point

Sarah Palin was in Los Angeles last Saturday to drum up more support for the McCain campaign in one of the largest Democratic states and, apparently, to advocate for feminists.

She did not succeed.

At one point in her speech, which was introduced by the National Organization for Women Los Angeles Chapter President Shelly Mandell, Palin said she was reading her Starbucks cup “quote of the day” by former secretary of state Madeline Albright, and she said–with the caveat, “now she said it, I didn’t”–“There’s a place in hell reserved for women who don’t support other women.”

The crowd applauded and frankly it would have been a moving quote, except that Albright didn’t actually say the same words, and the quote wasn’t used in the same context for which it was originally designed. Albright actually said, “There’s a place in hell reserved for women who don’t help other women.”

While she was clearly trying to reach out and seem like a common person who drinks Starbucks, Palin not only proved her deficiency in reading, in case not being able to cite a single news source she reads wasn’t proof enough, she also devastatingly proved her lack of knowledge about Albright’s career, or for that matter, women in general.

Albright responded to Palin’s flippant use of the quote by saying, “Though I am flattered that Governor Palin has chosen to cite me as a source of wisdom, what I said had nothing to do with politics. This is yet another example of McCain and Palin distorting the truth, and all the more reason to remember that this campaign is not about gender, it is about which candidate has an agenda that will improve the lives of all Americans, including women.”

Damn straight. Why is misquoting Albright and a Starbucks cup so harmful to women?

First, she didn’t take full responsibility for it, because it was someone else’s words, therefore she doesn’t have to bear the consequences of saying those words.

And they are powerful words, based on the assumption that a woman is not only supposed to be an advocate for all women all the time, regardless of whether or not they deserve “support,” but also because the use of religious condemnation is a blunt force to those who follow that faith and by those who don’t.

Christians don’t regard the concept of hell casually. It is the cruelest sentence to say to a Christian, and yet on the other hand, the quote may have the ability to disenfranchise people who don’t subscribe to the Christian faith.

One of the many schools of thought in linguistics is that that language cannot, in any case, be understood without context. By removing that quote from context, it’s really not a quote so much as it is Palin saying something and applying a new context to it, which applies a different meaning.

She really wasn’t saying, “support women,” she was saying, “support this woman.”

All of Palin’s stances on gender issues, including abortion and rape, do not support women. Teen pregnancy is seen as a virtue instead of a predicament. Abortion is worse than premeditated murder, even in cases of rape.

The fact is even Palin’s own campaign believes that, as a woman, she needs to be shielded from the press because the media will take advantage of her.

Empowerment is not Palin’s forte. Her hesitancy to use the quote was there for all the wrong reasons. The newspapers the next day didn’t have to distort anything she said. They just repeated the quote and the facts, and she looked like a fool all on her own.