As Clay Waters underlined over at our Times Watch project, The New York Times website featured a blog post from former reporter Timothy Egan publicly expressing worry over McCain's selection of Gov. Sarah Palin, who would support "removing abortion protections" from the law: "Militantly anti-choice and evangelical, the 44-year-old gave birth to her last child five months ago." To liberals, that birth – to a child with Down syndrome, a diagnosis that in today’s America tragically and routinely leads to abortion – is not a sign of compassion, and a dedication of one’s whole life to raising a disabled child. It is a negative, a sign of frightening religious fervor and conservative extremism.
There was more than just an ideological imbalance in the overall coverage. There was a sense that a real woman doesn’t deny other women the right to abort their babies. Abortion professionals were boiling over with rage. Planned Parenthood boss Cecile Richards sent supporters an E-mail headlined "Truly stunning: a woman who doesn’t trust other women." She insisted the army of abortion advocates should "tell every woman you meet that McCain and Palin are the most anti-choice, anti-women pair imaginable."
Richards concluded by raising the ghost of her mother, the late liberal Gov. Ann Richards of Texas. "Mom would have said, ‘Women voting for this ticket is just like chickens voting for Colonel Sanders.’" Palin is apparently so "fierce" in her conservative views that she wants women to be slaughtered, fried, and eaten out of a cardboard bucket.
Isn’t this bizarre, that the odious CEO of America’s leading provider of abortions is placing someone else at the door of the rhetorical slaughterhouse?
It’s certainly a sign that liberals cannot pose as more civil and tender in their campaign discourse than conservatives. While our media lament that yahoos in the red states believe Barack Obama's part of a secret Muslim conspiracy, they have zero outrage when vicious e-mails from liberal movement stars suggest Sarah Palin is less than human.
