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I’ve always had a soft spot for Gloria Steinem. She is more of my grandmother’s generation than my mother’s, but when I was growing up surrounded by issues of Ms. Magazine, the cover pictures of Gloria reminded me so much of my mom–tall and slender with long, straight blonde hair and glasses–when I was really little, I thought that she was my mom. When I was older, I could almost hear my mother’s voice speaking her words, mercilessly shredding the idiocy that is the patriachy with a cool and incisive intellect. She has always been, to me, the face of the most admirable parts of my mother’s feminism.

With this op piece, she has refanned the flames of my nostalgic fondness into full-blown love. My favorite parts:

Here’s the good news: Women have become so politically powerful that even the anti-feminist right wing — the folks with a headlock on the Republican Party — are trying to appease the gender gap with a first-ever female vice president.

Yeah! You go, ladies!

Feminism has never been about getting a job for one woman. It’s about making life more fair for women everywhere. It’s not about a piece of the existing pie; there are too many of us for that. It’s about baking a new pie.

Translation: PUMAs, suck my ass.

Palin shares nothing but a chromosome with Clinton. Her down-home, divisive and deceptive speech did nothing to cosmeticize a Republican convention that has more than twice as many male delegates as female, a presidential candidate who is owned and operated by the right wing and a platform that opposes pretty much everything Clinton’s candidacy stood for — and that Barack Obama’s still does. To vote in protest for McCain/Palin would be like saying, “Somebody stole my shoes, so I’ll amputate my legs.”

Truer words have never been spoken.

Now she is being praised by McCain’s campaign as a tax cutter, despite the fact that Alaska has no state income or sales tax.

Heh.

McCain could have chosen a woman who knows what a vice president does and who has thought about Iraq; someone like Texas Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison or Sen. Olympia Snowe of Maine.

I still think he tried and they said oh hell no!

Palin’s value to those patriarchs is clear: She opposes just about every issue that women support by a majority or plurality. She believes that creationism should be taught in public schools but disbelieves global warming; she opposes gun control but supports government control of women’s wombs; she opposes stem cell research but approves “abstinence-only” programs, which increase unwanted births, sexually transmitted diseases and abortions; she tried to use taxpayers’ millions for a state program to shoot wolves from the air but didn’t spend enough money to fix a state school system with the lowest high-school graduation rate in the nation

Lay it all OUT, Gloria!

So far, the major new McCain supporter that Palin has attracted is James Dobson of Focus on the Family. Of course, for Dobson, “women are merely waiting for their husbands to assume leadership,” so he may be voting for Palin’s husband.

Heh #2.

Gloria Steinem is an author, feminist organizer and co-founder of the Women’s Media Center. She supported Hillary Clinton and is now supporting Barack Obama.

::hearting:: Gloria.