Tag: choice

Abortion and Olivia: Prison Has Many Forms and So Does Freedom

We watched Olivia Pope have an abortion right in front of us, with Silent Night playing in the background; it was unsettling, right?  Not just for the irony of the Christmas soundtrack, but also because the song’s “mother and child” were themselves unwelcome.  There’s more to these sorts of moments than pretty, sort of symbolic, Christmas music. As usual with Olivia, the truth is complicated.

“Family is the only thing that has kept you alive here.” Huck tells his captive, Olivia’s father Eli.  But Eli argues that family doesn’t save us, it’s an “antidote to greatness.”  “Family doesn’t complete you, it destroys you” he says.

For Olivia though, destruction is the inevitable outcome of the the stolid White House life, the outfits entombed in the Presidential bedroom, the so-called fairytale life of a First Lady, her very real prison.  We see she manages her performance well; we need to know that for her choice to make sense.  No she wasn’t leaving because she wasn’t good at First Lady-ing.  A bird (even a successful one) in a gilded cage is still locked up.

We always knew (and some of us hoped) that she’d go.  Fitz’s questionable worthiness, not withstanding, she had to get out o there!   Her life, however twisted, said so much to all of us and taught us this – that this is possible:  Olivia Pope doesn’t do shotgun, she drives the car!

Even so, a woman of such stature who had surrendered so much, couldn’t walk away without an amputation – metaphorical – but real too.  Alone, telling no one, she chooses to end a pregnancy that no one knows exists.  It’s hers.  Hers to keep, or not.  Hers to speak about, or not.  And so as she leaves her pregnancy behind her, so too she leaves a life that has been confining almost to the point of trauma.

As fiercely pro-choice but also a baby addict, I find I surprise myself as I write this.  I feel, I see, I know that sometimes choices I’d fight not to have to make myself are life and soul-saving for another.

Eli’s meditation on family is either a counterpoint or a validation of his daughter’s decision.  Like the decision itself, it depends on who’s watching.  From over here where I am, she made the right choice (because, after all, she had a choice) the right way.  Would that every women had the power, and the money, and the access, to do the same.

Oh Sarah! (Palin) But Could She Be (A Little Bit) Right?

Just when we thought it was safe to go back in the water…. there she is again!  This time, though, some of what she says is creepily unsettling.  This loads slowly but is worth the wait – we can talk about it after you watch it.


Here’s the thing: Do you really think people, especially journalists, would have been so cruel to an “unwed mother” whose parents were progressive politicians?  Or to a Rockefeller or even a Bush? Throughout the interview, Palin raises the issue of class, and of the attacks on her kids; we’ll touch on that in a minute.

During the campaign, I wrote about Palin and the class issue, and the sad parallels to Paula Jones.  The fact is that Sarah Palin isn’t sophisticated, that she’ be a popular Girl Scout leader or Women’s Club president in the life that existed when I was a kid – around the Mad Men era.  Maybe that would have been OK if she’d known more, or been less cruel and incendiary in her speeches.  Her inherent lack of sophistication and experience, what William Galston has called “a celebration of ignorance” enabled much of the class snobbery the followed.  But follow it did; not in the “she’s not our kind” sort of way – it was far more subtle than that.  More in the collective realization of the “cool people” that she was a WalMart, polyester lady thrust into a J Crew sort of world.

Now.  Let’s think about the kids.  The family itself was kind of a throwback I guess.  And their omnipresence – thrust onto the stage – was weird.  But when Elizabeth Edwards was criticized for taking the kids on the road during the campaign, feminists and others leapt to her defense.  When Al Gore Jr. was arrested in a DUI it was a “private family matter,”  not a continuing object of ridicule.  Somehow though, the way this pregnancy and relationship has been portrayed has been cruel and tawdry without casting much light on Palin, her tenure or her philosophy.*  And remember the whole “mommy wars” thing – did Palin put her career ahead of her kids?  One person who wrote consistently well about this is PunditMom.  Take a look.

None of what I’m saying here justifies what Palin stood for or did as a candidate.  She was, and is, a scary person hiding behind “adorableness.”  But we need to think about the mainstream coverage of her campaign and how much of it derided matters of class and family, not policy and ideology.  There was certainly enough of that substantial stuff to keep any reporter busy.

What do you think? 

*I am not talking about conversations concerning issues of choice, sex education or contraception but of the less substantial, more visible harumphing.