Here’s Sarah Palin misquoting her coffee cup:
I’m reading on my Starbucks mocha cup, okay? The quote of the day…. It was Madeleine Albright, former Secretary of State [crowd boos] 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.”
It’s a misquote because Albright—and the coffee cup—said “help,” not “support.” But regardless, it’s Palin who’s applying the sentiment to the presidential race. Though she presented the quote in a playful manner, the gist was still clear: Women should support me because I’m a woman.
Remember last year the complaints that Hillary Clinton was “playing the gender card”? I don’t think she ever made a pitch for female support that directly–and yet I don’t know that we’ve seen the same sort of complaints about Palin. From Extra! (5–6/08):
[MSNBC‘s Chris] Matthews echoes [William] Kristol’s theme that Clinton is pandering to women—seemingly by even mentioning the idea of sexism. “What about when she does this sort of awkward, I think, or highly rehearsed, ‘Us girls have to get together and circle the wagons against those men’?” he asked last year (10/18/07). “Is that attractive to women voters or not?”
On a show soon after (11/1/07), he accused Clinton of “playing the woman card.” Referring to a speech she gave at her undergraduate alma mater, an all-women’s college, as “rallying the troops up at Wellesley,” he asked, “Is she going to do a Seven Sisters tour now, a college tour now . . . to rally the women against the men?” The next day (11/2/07) he questioned: “Is Hillary out of line for painting herself as a victimized woman every time her male rivals criticize her? And do we want a president who plays the gender card every time her opponents attack her?”
