The Catholic Thing on the Sarah Palin - Caroline Kennedy Double Standard

George Marlin writes at The Catholic Thing to address the feminist (and media) double standard in the treatment of Gov. Sarah Palin and Caroline Kennedy:

... To counter the mounting criticism and ridicule [of Caroline Kennedy], the professional feminists have been working overtime. The acerbic Times columnist, Maureen Dowd, feigned humility saying “I know about ‘you knows,’ I use that verbal crutch myself, a bad habit that develops from shyness and reticence about public speaking.” Outraged that the public wasn’t rushing to embrace Caroline, Dowd complained, “People are suddenly awfully choosy about who gets to go to the former home of Jesse Helms, Strom Thurmond, and Robert Torricelli.”

Kelli Conlin, head of NARAL Pro-Choice N.Y., defending Kennedy’s lackluster public persona said, “I am dismayed at the uneven and entirely predictable treatment of Caroline and too many women who seek political office. Their experience is discounted, their skills ignored, their connections derided and their motives questioned.”

Compare this supportive rhetoric to the vicious, shabby insults feminists hurled at Governor Sarah Palin throughout last fall’s presidential campaign.

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Why is the political neophyte Kennedy treated differently than the political veteran Palin? Answer: Abortion.

Caroline Kennedy carries on her family’s pro-abortion tradition. And nothing pleases the feminists more than a Roe v. Wade fan who is a baptized Catholic. Lest we forget, the Catholic pro-abortion movement was hatched at the Kennedy compound in Hyannis Port. In the summer of 1964, Bobby and Ted Kennedy met at the Cape with the nation’s leading dissident Catholic clerics – Robert Drinan, Richard McCormick, Joseph Fuchs, and Charles Curran – to figure out how Catholic politicians could pander to the growing abortion movement without upsetting their Catholic constituencies. According to one witness, the theologians “concurred on certain basics … that a Catholic politician could in good conscience vote in favor of abortion.” The action plan developed that week in Hyannis Port, in sociologist Anne Hendershott’s judgment, contributed to effectively neutralizing the Catholic laity and “helped build the foundation for the [Democratic] party’s reincarnation as the party of abortion.”

Sarah Palin, on the other hand, was despised by the feminists because she broke their sorority rules: Palin defends life, opposes partial birth abortion, dared to have five children, and refused to terminate the life of her Down syndrome baby...

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(emphasis added)