The actual quotation (from an interview with the International Knowledge Network of Women in Politics): is: “I have this saying that I use quite frequently, which is that there is a special place in hell for women who don’t help each other.”
Sarah Palin got the quotation off of a paper cup from Starbucks; the cup said: “There is a special place in hell for women who don’t help other women.”
Governor Palin used the quotation in the context of an argument for why all women ought to vote for the McCain-Palin ticket.* What Governor Palin said was:
"I'm reading on my Starbucks mocha cup, okay? The quote of the day... It was Madeleine Albright, former Secretary of State and UN ambassador. ... Now she said it, I didn't. She said, ‘There's a place in Hell reserved for women who don't support other women.’"
The cup is a slight misquotation (or perhaps got its line from another source, since Albright acknowledges that she says this often), but the essential meaning of the quotation is unchanged by the substitution of “other women” for “each other.” The nuanced difference is that the original Albright remark suggests a valuing of women working together with positive gains for all; the cup version suggests a slightly different dynamic, in which some women selflessly help other women, though they may not gain anything for themselves.
Former Secretary Albright’s statement was made in a specific context and referred explicitly to women who, having achieved a certain amount of political power, refused to reach out a hand to help other women to transcend their circumstances. I quote at length:
Question: There are various technological tools available now – new cell
phone technology, the Internet, etc. How can women make the best use of these
different technologies? How do we ensure that women who have access to
technology such as cell phones or the Internet or women who become members of
iKNOW Politics share the knowledge they have with other women?
Answer:
Women must get together and share their knowledge, whether it’s over work, or
being with children, or just creating small groups to share various kinds of
information and mutual support. In some villages, for instance, the woman who
has access to the only cell phone around actually rents it out to people. The
phone then becomes a new power tool. It is critical for this woman to share
physical access to her cell phone, teach someone else to use it, or take
information from it and do what women do very naturally -- gather other women
together to talk and share information.
As American women, however, we
need to be careful not to superimpose our image of how to do things on women
from other countries. But, information must be shared. A woman who gets power –
either because she has a particular position in society or government or because
she has a cell phone – can’t become a queen bee! Women must help other women. I
have this saying that I use quite frequently, which is that there is a special
place in hell for women who don’t help each other. A woman with power must
understand that, in actuality, her role is to help others. For a woman who wants
to be at the center of power, she must understand that her power is actually
maximized by encouraging more women to participate in the system.
Ms. Albright, then, was specifically elucidating what appears to be a deeply-held belief that women who have gained positions of power need to work to help other women rise in the world to attain power over their own lives--whether that be in personal, business and/or governmental affairs. (I strongly recommend you go to the interview and read the whole question and answer in the context in which they were made.) What Ms. Albright was doing was exhorting women of power to help those less fortunate than they; what she was NOT doing was suggesting that all women must help any other women to rise up in the world to positions of power simply because she is a woman. I would venture to guess that Former Secretary Albright would point to Ms. Palin's record of using her own positions of power to her own advantage rather than to help others, her track record of opposing women’s right to choose what happens with their bodies and her policy of charging rape victims for the rape kit used to investigate the crime as examples of exactly what she [Ms. Albright] was saying must NOT happen.
The Palin version, on the other hand, substitutes the verb “support” for “help.” That substitution, particularly in the specific context of a political candidate stumping for votes and for donations to her campaign, constitutes a significant alteration in the implications of the pseudo-Albright statement. In the specific context of an election, of course, the verb “support” means something along the lines of “favor over other candidates” and “vote for.” Thus, in the Sarah Palin version, the line comes to mean “There’s a special place in Hell reserved for women who don’t vote for/root for/provide campaign donations for other women.” For “other women,” read: “me, Sarah Palin.” The clear implication, then: "Any woman who doesn’t vote for me will go to hell.” From a person who has shown herself to be a Biblical literalist, who presumably, therefore, believes in a literal hell, her (mis)use of the quotation constitutes a not-so-subtle threat that I find to be incredibly offensive, perhaps the most offensive idea Ms. Palin has publicly espoused to date. [Update 10-9: see note below]
There has been much argument in the comments on various blogs I read today (notably Ta-Nehisi Coates at the Atlantic) about whether offense was intended by this latest Palinism, and whether, therefore, it ought to be taken. Coates himself is outraged, much as—or even more than—I am (his posting is called “The incredible thuggish stupidity of Sarah Palin”), but the views of his readers vary along a continuum from “this is the most obnoxious thing she’s said yet” to “get over it man, it was a harmless little joke!” In considering all of the various views, I find that no matter which interpretation one decides is the most reasonable for what Governor Palin meant, the comment is irredeemably insensitive, foolish, and narrow-minded.
The more outraged voices took the remark as a knowing and possibly semi-serious jibe at people Palin sees as her enemies. Since the governor is an avowed fundamentalist Christian, it is a safe assumption that she believes in a literal Hell, and that she believes that sinners go there. Her history and her public persona have demonstrated a self-confidence that seems far more certain than her actual experience and ability would justify, so it is not difficult to believe that she is arrogant enough to take satisfaction from the idea that God will strike down her opponents, nor is it difficult to believe that she would enjoy a malicious joke at the expense of those who dare to oppose her. This is the Sarah Palin that some people call George Bush in a skirt—the supremely egoistic bully who believes herself incapable of being wrong. If that interpretation is accurate, then the remark was unconscionable. It was a deliberate, malicious, insult. It was mean-spirited and every bit as offensive as Mr. Coates took it to be.
Those less outraged bloggers, on the other hand, argued that to take the remark in that spirit is to overreact significantly. They argue that many people use the phrase “a special place in Hell” without having any specific theological framework, and without literally meaning that they think that there is a room reserved in the hotel of eternal damnation for those people. While this is undeniably true, it is also true that we only use that phrase when talking about someone who has done something so heinous that we consider him or her to have demonstrated something geometrically worse than a misjudgment or a poor choice or a moment of weakness. The use of the phrase “there’s a special place in Hell,” even when uttered by someone who doesn’t believe in Hell as a literal consequence of bad actions, indicates that in the judgment of the speaker, that person has done something irredeemable, something so bad that the speaker wishes to condemn him or her permanently as someone of irreparably flawed character. We use it for women who abuse their children so badly that the children are scarred for life. We use it for men who concoct pyramid schemes and rob elderly people of their life savings. There’s a special place in hell for people who engage in dog-fighting, who sell children into prostitution, who molest five-year-olds, or who burn crosses on the lawns of their neighbors.
Saying that there is a special place in Hell for someone is not a funny joke. It is not something that we use in describing someone who forgot to bring the coffee to the church social, or in chastizing someone for forgetting our birthday; rather, we suggest that there is a special place in Hell for those who behave in a way designed to serve their own interests to an extent that completely disregards the well-being of others, who disdains, scorns, and subjugates others to their own inflated egos. Even the secular use of this phrase signals that the speaker has learned to feel a contempt for the object of the remark that precludes any possibility that the condemned could do anything to restore him or herself to grace, not even the grace of human forgiveness. It doesn’t matter whether the speaker of the phrase means it literally in a theological sense or metaphorically in a secular sense: to say that there is a special place in Hell for someone is to call that person unforgivable.
I disagree with the bloggers who say that Sarah Palin’s use of the phrase with respect (or lack of respect) to any woman who would choose not to vote for her is no big deal. Religious threat or attempt at funny joke: she said something that can only foster resentment and divisiveness because it is astonishingly arrogant and deeply insulting. Palin overtly acknowledged that she knew the remark was in poor taste. She thanked the audience for taking it well since she “didn’t know how well that was gonna go over.” She followed that with a deliberate and provocative jibe at the press—daring them to call her to task for making a joke: “…and now, California let’s see how a comment like I just made, how it gets turned into whatever it gets turned into tomorrow in the newspapers.” The clear implication of that taunt is that Palin believes that the media have no right to challenge anything she says. By throwing down a verbal gauntlet, she was belittling her perceived opponents, suggesting that they might be cowards who would refuse a dare, or posturing fools who will accept one. She was gathering her cronies around her in a united front against those bad guy “gotcha” reporters. The implication is that she is the wounded party; that in taking her to task for the incoherencies, the contradictions, and the untruths for which Palin has recently been held accountable in the press, she has somehow been the victim of an unreasonable, unfair, unkind assault.
I disagree. Sarah Palin, like all politicians, like all people, must be held accountable for her words, and for their implications.
I make a living teaching high school English. In trying to teach both reading (of literature) and writing, I have found for many years now that the greatest challenge I face is teaching the students to understand, respect, and control the power of words. I tell them the first day of school that their first job is to learn that words have meaning—not vague, generalized “in the neighborhood of meaning” meaning, but specific, precise, narrow, limited meaning. The wider the range of words one understands and can use precisely, the more power one has over ideas—whether sending or receiving. I tell my students on the first day of school that my job is to teach them to mean what they say and say what they mean, a goal that is a good deal more difficult than it sounds. The ability to do that depends entirely upon the ability to know words—a lot of words—including all their nuances.
Words are all we have. Words are the primary way we build bridges to each others minds or hearts. Words are the means by which we forge bonds, solve problems, learn anything, invent everything, and transmit culture. There are, of course, other means, but words are the mainstay, the universal method, the essentially human mechanism of connection. Words are also, therefore, the potentially devastating mechanism of division and destruction. I demand that my students learn to respect words, because I want them to have power over the most powerful tool—or weapon—they will ever have. I want them to have power over words because not to have power over words is, in a significant way, not to have power over their lives.
I expect no less from national and international leaders than I do from my 17-year-old students. I don’t think that we should make excuses for Sarah Palin, suggesting that what she said doesn’t matter, and shouldn’t be considered to be offensive, because she didn’t realize what she was saying. We are all responsible for our words; she is responsible for her words, and if she doesn’t know what she is saying, she should say nothing at all.
* I have to take the word of several Internet sources for this, including the previously referenced entry on Huffington Daily, as the video that is available a number of places, including here, does not provide the full context.
NOTE: Since this posting was written, Mrs. Palin has dramatically exceded her previous level of offensiveness with the hate-mongering rhetoric she is dishing out at this week's McCain/Palin rallies. Incitement to riot is unconscionable and may qualify Mrs. Palin to be the target of the bowdlerized Albright quotation she was so recently aiming at others.
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