Eve Ensler's thoughts on Palin

Eve Ensler, the American playwright, performer,

feminist and  

activist best known for "The Vagina

Monologues", wrote the  

following about Sarah Palin.

Drill, Drill, Drill

I am having Sarah Palin nightmares. I dreamt last

night that she  

was a member of a club where they rode snowmobiles

and wore the  

claws of drowned and starved polar bears around

their necks. I  

have a particular thing for Polar Bears. Maybe

it's their snowy  

whiteness or their bigness or the fact that they

live in the  

arctic or that I have never seen one in person or

touched one.   

Maybe it is the fact that they live so comfortably

on ice.  

Whatever it is, I need the polar bears.

I don't like raging at women. I am a Feminist

and have spent my  

life trying to build community, help empower women

and stop  

violence against them. It is hard to write about

Sarah Palin. This  

is why the Sarah Palin choice was all the more

insidious and  

cynical. The people who made this choice count on

the goodness and  

solidarity of Feminists.

But everything Sarah Palin believes in and

practices is  

antithetical to Feminism which for me is part of

one story --  

connected to saving the earth, ending racism,

empowering women,  

giving young girls options, opening our minds,

deepening  

tolerance, and ending violence and war.

I believe that the McCain/Palin ticket is one of

the most  

dangerous choices of my lifetime, and should this

country chose  

those candidates the fall-out may be so great, the

destruction so  

vast in so many areas that America may never

recover. But what is  

equally disturbing is the impact that duo would

have on the rest  

of the world.  Unfortunately, this is not a joke.

In my lifetime  

I have seen the clownish, the inept, the bizarre

be elected to the  

presidency with regularity.

Sarah Palin does not believe in evolution. I take

this as a  

metaphor. In her world and the world of

Fundamentalists nothing  

changes or gets better or evolves. She does not

believe in global  

warming. The melting of the arctic, the storms

that are destroying  

our cities, the pollution and rise of cancers, are

all part of  

God's plan.  She is fighting to take the polar

bears off the  

endangered species list. The earth, in Palin's

view, is here to be  

taken and plundered. The wolves and the bears are

here to be shot  

and plundered. The oil is here to be taken and

plundered. Iraq is  

here to be taken and plundered. As she said

herself of the Iraqi  

war, "It was a task from God."

Sarah Palin does not believe in abortion. She does

not believe  

women who are raped and incested and ripped open

against their  

will should have a right to determine whether they

have their  

rapist's baby or not.

She obviously does not believe in sex education or

birth control.  

I imagine her daughter was practicing abstinence

and we know how  

many babies that makes.

Sarah Palin does not much believe in thinking.

From what I gather  

she has tried to ban books from the library, has a

tendency to  

dispense with people who think independently. She

cannot tolerate  

an environment of ambiguity and difference. This

is a woman who  

could and might very well be the next president of

the United  

States . She would govern one of the most diverse

populations on  

the earth.

Sarah believes in guns. She has her own custom

Austrian hunting  

rifle. She has been known to kill 40 caribou at a

clip. She has  

shot hundreds of wolves from the air.

Sarah believes in God. That is of course her

right, her private  

right. But when God and Guns come together in the

public sector,  

when war is declared in God's name, when the

rights of women are  

denied in his name, that is the end of separation

of church and  

state and the undoing of everything America has

ever tried to be.

I write to my sisters. I write because I believe

we hold this  

election in our hands. This vote is a vote that

will determine the  

future not just of the U.S. , but of the planet.

It will determine  

whether we create policies to save the earth or

make it forever  

uninhabitable for humans. It will determine

whether we move  

towards dialogue and diplomacy in the world or

whether we escalate  

violence through invasion, undermining and attack.

It will  

determine whether we go for oil, strip mining,

coal burning or  

invest our money in alternatives that will free us

from dependency  

and destruction. It will determine if money gets

spent on  

education and health care or whether we build more

and more  

methods of killing. It will determine whether

America is a free  

open tolerant society or a closed place of fear,

fundamentalism  

and aggression.

If the Polar Bears don't move you to go and do

everything in your  

power to get Obama elected then consider the chant

that filled the  

hall after Palin spoke at the RNC, "Drill

Drill Drill." I think of  

teeth when I think of drills. I think of rape. I

think of  

destruction. I think of domination. I think of

military exercises  

that force mindless repetition, emptying the brain

of analysis,  

doubt, ambiguity or dissent.  I think of pain.

Do we want a future of drilling? More holes in the

ozone, in the  

floor of the sea, more holes in our thinking, in

the trust between  

nations and peoples, more holes in the fabric of

this precious  

thing we call life?

Eve Ensler

September 5, 2008

Thanks MP for this passing this gem along.