Eric Alterman: Networks to women: "Never on Sunday"

  In a column this past Sunday entitled “No Mystique About Feminism,” New York Times conservative columnist Ross Douthat observes, “When historians set out to date the moment when the women’s movement of the 1970s officially consolidated its gains, they could do worse than settle on last Tuesday’s primaries.” Douthat notes that the female victors won largely running as conservative Republicans, and he offers ambivalent support for Sarah Palin’s claim in her now infamous “mama grizzlies” speech that these new candidates were forging an “emerging, conservative, feminist identity.” Douthat argues that “whether or not Palin or Fiorina or Haley can legitimately claim the label feminist, their rise is a testament to the overall triumph of the women’s movement.” In doing so, he could not resist taking a swipe at what he termed “the peculiar left-wing misogyny that greeted Palin’s candidacy.”