I certainly was procrastinating when I found this article. I am constantly in the hunt for items to write about, and so was able to convince myself that there was real literary merit in reading this, and this certainly has more news bite than a politician in bed with three women.

Full disclosure: I am not a Democrat, and while I’m a registered Republican, I’m considered a fairly lame one at that. I identify myself as a feminist, for one thing, and that identification really fuels my rage at Geraldine Ferraro in this story.

I’ll try to be brief:

When you think you must vote for a candidate because they’re a member of a particular group, with not much regard about how well they share your ideals and values, then something terrible has happened.

There was not one point in that discussion Ferraro had with her daughter where she asked, “Does Hillary’s platform work better or worse with your value system?” NO. She was enraged with her daughter because she didn’t vote for Clinton in the primary, and Ferraro figured she should because it was a female candidate. WHO CARES WHAT CLINTON STANDS FOR? SHE’S A WOMAN!

This is just insulting to everyone involved. We’d revile a voter who voted for a white man only because it was a white man and he/she didn’t want anything but a white man in office. Conversely, I’d vote for a Martian if said Martian espoused what I believe to be right.

Feminism was never about, and never should be about, “Women first, no matter what.” When I got my NOW card, it was about “Don’t exclude women just because they’re women. Exclude them on their own merits as objectively compared to men’s, if you must exclude them at all.”

It’s insulting to Barack Obama if you support him just because he’s black. It’s insulting to Hillary Clinton to support her just because she’s a woman, without a regard for the positions she had carefully constructed. I didn’t agree with them, but I give her credit for working her fanny off.

In short, I don’t want a woman president just to have a woman president. I didn’t want a black president just to have a black president. I want the right president, and I don’t want a qualified candidate overlooked just because she’s a woman. That’s what feminism is about.

More full disclosure: I voted for Mondale BECAUSE a woman was his running mate. My reasoning? He was gonna lose by a mile anyway. I didn’t want it to be so huge a loss that his female running mate would be blamed, thus closing the door for future female candidates. I also wasn’t particularly excited about Reagan, so it wasn’t a hard choice.

Of course, now that I see Ferraro’s brain in action again, I’m kinda wishing I could recast that vote.