ColumnTea Party champion. That’s the title news outlets are bestowing on Sarah Palin, the Alaskan politician who, in our opinion, has questionable opinions.

On Tuesday, January 19, 2016, Palin endorsed Donald Trump for president during an Iowa speech/Trump rally event. Palin’s endorsement isn’t a surprise. The politician has a record of supporting whoever is popular in the party and holds extreme views — that’s her job. But when you really examine Palin’s recent endorsement, it’s hard not to step back and wonder just what the heck is she thinking?

First, let’s look at what has happened through the last few days. According to The New York Times, the 2008 vice-presidential nominee’s endorsement could give Trump a “significant boost just 13 days before the state’s [Iowa] caucuses.”

The Times reports that the former Alaska governor’s endorsement “is the highest-profile backing for a Republican so far.” The February 1st Iowa caucuses are quite important and are currently considered a “must-win” for Senator Ted Cruz, who is considered Trump’s biggest competition in Iowa.

Now, let’s get into Palin’s speech…

While speaking to Trump’s supporters, Palin praised Trump for “going rogue left and right,” and for tearing “the veil off this idea of the system…” Really? Has Trump really torn the veil off the American political process? From where I’m sitting, it appears that Trump is just more of the same: a supposedly angry white man who has a ton of money, which has allowed him to fund the majority of his own campaign, and he uses inflammatory and derogatory words to put down minorities, women, democrats, and people who don’t support him.

Now, Palin is known for her less-than-conventional opinions, political stance, and awkward speeches. And the speech Palin made on Tuesday was no different, Buzzfeed contends.

It was filled with awkward jumps:

“I am here because like you I know that it is now or never. I’m in it to win it because we believe in America, and we love our freedom. And if you love your freedom, thank a vet.”

OK, sure. I’m all for thanking vets, but from what I can gather, Palin is only asking people to “support the vets” to strengthen her case for electing Trump as president because president Obama is weak and left American in disarray, duh:

“I’m in it, because just last week, we’re watching our sailors suffer and be humiliated on a world stage at the hands of Iranian captors in violation of international law, because a weak-kneed, capitulator-in-chief has decided America will lead from behind. And he, who would negotiate deals, kind of with the skills of a community organizer maybe organizing a neighborhood tea, well, he deciding that, no, America would apologize as part of the deal, as the enemy sends a message to the rest of the world that they capture and we kowtow, and we apologize, and then, we bend over and say, thank you, enemy.”

Well, OK.

Palin goes on and says that Trump is the “master of the art of the deal” and that because he is from the private sector and is not a politician, he will make a great  commander in chief. Yes, because what we need is a leader who will yell insults at people rather than negotiate.

If you want to watch the entire speech, here it is.

Sure, Palin may be jumping on the Trump bandwagon because she wants to be in the spotlight. Or maybe it’s because she genuinely thinks Trump has great ideas — who knows. However, what remains is that Palin, a woman with a brain, is actually endorsing a man who outwardly disrespects women and minorities. How can anyone want to help elect someone who doesn’t respect a huge portion of the United States’ population?

So, we get it Palin — you want to be in the political spotlight again. Who could blame you? That’s your job. But it’s also your job to analyze who you give your support to while keeping the greater good and mind. Perhaps it’s time to rethink that endorsement…

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These 10 people have unintentionally hilarious things to say about global warming.

We don’t need to save the planet, because Jesus already did it – or so says Michele Bachmann, current presidential candidate and one of America’s 10 most notorious global warming deniers. Sarah Palin calls the science behind anthropogenic climate change “snake oil,” and Texas Representative Joe Barton contends that carbon dioxide can’t ever be a bad thing, because it’s in Coca-Cola. These, ladies and gentleman, are the politicians, commentators, columnists and businesspeople who most ardently (and hilariously) shout from the mountaintops that global warming just isn’t happening. Their words speak for themselves.

Senator James Inhofe, Oklahoma

According to Republican Senator James Inhofe of Oklahoma, ranking member of the United States Senate Committee on Environment and Public Works, global warming is “the greatest hoax ever perpetrated on the American people.” That’s right, the man who leads a crucial government committee responsible for dealing with matters related to the environment is a staunch global warming denier. Inhofe, who bases many of his views on the writings of Jurassic Park novelist Michael Crichton (more on that later), is primarily responsible for a report claiming that “Over 400 prominent scientists from more than two dozen countries recently voiced significant objections to major aspects of the so-called ‘consensus’ on man-made global warming.” Too bad the majority of those ‘scientists’ turned out to be highly suspect, with many connected to fossil fuel industries and many more possessing no apparent expertise in climate science. That report, still used by climate skeptics to this day as supposed proof that there is no consensus among scientists on climate change, has been thoroughly debunked.

“Above all, the media must roll back this mantra that there is scientific ‘consensus of impending climatic doom as an excuse to ignore recent science,” Inhofe said in a 2006 press release. “After all, there was a so-called scientific ‘consensus’ that there were nine planets in our solar system until Pluto was recently demoted.”

Rep. Michele Bachmann, Minnesota

Current GOP presidential candidate Michele Bachmann, a U.S. Representative from Minnesota, believes that climate change can’t really be happening, because carbon dioxide is natural. Or something. As she remarked on the House floor on Earth Day 2009, “It occurs in Earth. It is a part of the regular life cycle of Earth. In fact, life on planet Earth can’t even exist without carbon dioxide. So necessary is it to human life, to animal life, to plant life, to the oceans, to the vegetation that’s on the Earth, to the, to the fowl that – that flies in the air, we need to have carbon dioxide as part of the fundamental life cycle of Earth.”

That’s not her only argument. Bachmann agrees with Inhofe in that global warming is one big trick orchestrated by greedy environmentalists and scientists who want more grant money. “The big thing we are working on now is the global warming hoax,” she told Minnesota Public Radio. “It’s all voodoo, nonsense, hokum, a hoax.”

Of course, this is the woman who once told Rep. Nancy Pelosi that she might as well give up the fight against climate change, because Jesus has this thing covered. “[Pelosi] is committed to her global warming fanaticism to the point where she has said she’s just trying to save the planet. We all know that someone did that over 2,000 years ago, they saved the planet – we didn’t need Nancy Pelosi to do that.”

Governor Rick Perry, Texas

“The idea that we would put America’s economy at jeopardy based on scientific theory that’s not settled yet to me is just nonsense,” said GOP presidential candidate and Texas governor Rick Perry at a presidential debate in September. “Just because you have a group of scientists who stood up and said here is the fact. Galileo got outvoted for a spell.” Perry is, of course, referring to the Italian Renaissance astronomer who was outcast as a heretic when he disagreed with the consensus that the sun revolves around Earth.

These quotes reaffirmed Perry’s earlier statements, when he told an audience of voters in New Hampshire that global warming is just too expensive to deal with. “I don’t think, from my perspective, that I want America to be engaged in spending that much money on what is still a scientific theory that hasn’t been proven, and from my perspective is more and more being put into question.”

Donald Trump, Businessman

There are few subjects upon which Donald Trump isn’t willing to yell his red-faced, weird-hair-ruffling opinion, whether we asked him or not. So naturally, the reality television star and repeatedly bankrupt businessman has a few things to say about global warming. You see, it’s been snowing in the winter. So, as the billionaire told an audience of 500 at a country club in February 2010, Al Gore – perpetual bullseye for climate change deniers – should be stripped of his Nobel Peace Prize.

“With the coldest winter ever recorded, with snow setting record levels up and down the coast, the Nobel committee should take the Nobel Prize back from Al Gore,” he said, adding “Gore wants us to clean up our factories… when China and other countries couldn’t care less… China, Japan and India are laughing at America’s stupidity.” Indeed, Donald, many people are laughing at America’s stupidity.

Sarah Palin, Former Governor of Alaska

On the rare occasion when the words that come out of former Alaska governor and vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin’s mouth form coherent sentences, they still don’t make much sense. Back in 2008, before she quit her job mid-term, the proud moose hunter led the state of Alaska in a lawsuit against the federal government, stating that the listing of polar bears as a threatened species would cripple oil and gas development.

Speaking about the federal government’s decision to a group of loggers in 2010, Palin said, “We knew the bottom line… was ultimately to shut down our development. And it didn’t make sense because it was based on these global warming studies that we’re now seeing (is) a bunch of snake oil science.” The one-time Fox News talking head did not specify the studies that led her to this conclusion, probably because very few credible ones exist.

Michael Crichton, Author

He has one of the most recognizable names in the history of American fiction, responsible for such mega-hits as the TV medical drama ER. But what you might not know about Michael Crichton is that he was an ardent denier of global warming, writing a seriously misleading techno-thriller called State of Fear that attacks climate science and even advising former President George W. Bush not to address global warming.

Though Crichton studied medicine as a student at Harvard, the author had no experience in climate science. This didn’t stop him from claiming that State of Fear was written “on a firm foundation of actual research challenging common assumptions about global warming.” The book argues that the environmental and scientific communities totally fabricated the threat, portraying all environmentalists in a consistently negative light and using the story to smear real-life scientist James Hansen. This work of fiction remains a major influence on the thinking of many prominent climate change skeptics.

Steve Milloy, Fox News Commentator

He’s a Fox News commentator, founder of a website called JunkScience.com and author of a book called Green Hell: How Environmentalists Plan to Control Your Life and What You Can Do to Stop Them. So you can probably already imagine the kinds of comments that Steve Milloy has to make about global warming. Milloy, a former lobbyist for fossil fuel and nuclear energy, pesticides and the National Mining Association, recently offered a $500,000 prize to anyone who can “prove, in a scientific manner, that humans are causing harmful global warming.” What’s the catch? “JunkScience.com, at its sole discretion, will determine the winner, if any.”

As reported by DeSmogBlog, Milloy proclaims himself to be a pioneer fighting against “faulty scientific data used to advance special, and often hidden, agendas.” Funny that Milloy doesn’t mention his own special interests and connections, including years of funding from major tobacco companies like Philip Morris. Milloy is also an adjunct analyst for the conservative thinktank CEI, Competitive Enterprise Intitute, a global warming disinformation machine that is partially funded by Exxon Mobil.

Rep. Joe Barton, Texas

Known as “Smokey Joe” for his opposition to the Clean Air Act and his efforts on behalf of polluters, Texas Representative Joe Barton famously argued against wind power because harnessing the wind would “slow the winds down,” effectively causing “the temperature to go up.” But that doesn’t mean he supports efforts to fight global warming, which he calls “a triumph over good sense and science.” Climate change is natural, he says, and in response, we should just “get shade.”

In fact, Barton argues, carbon dioxide is obviously harmless since it carbonates beverages. In opposition to the Waxman-Markey bill that aimed to cap CO2 emissions, Barton stated, “I’m creating it as I talk to you. It’s in your Coca-Cola, your Dr. Pepper and your Perrier water. It’s necessary for human life. It’s odorless, colorless, tasteless, doesn’t cause cancer, doesn’t cause asthma. There’s nobody that’s ever been admitted to a hospital because of CO2 poisoning.”

George Will, Columnist at the Washington Post

Among the most reliable sources of global warming disinformation is Washington Post columnist George Will, who regularly rails against “global warming alarmism” armed with misleading quotes selected from 1970’s newspaper articles about global cooling. Criticizing a 2010 error by the U.N. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) on the retreat of Himalayan glaciers, Will himself offered a number of incorrect statements and misrepresented data as supposed proof that there is no scientific consensus on glacial retreat. Even after his distortions were revealed, Will continued to claim that he “accurately reported” the contents on an Arctic Climate Research Center document on declining sea ice, ignoring widespread calls for better fact-checking. These supposed facts are then repeated ad nauseam by climate change skeptics, entering the vast mythology of supposed scientific data supporting their views.

Glenn Beck, Radio Host

“Al Gore’s not going to be rounding up Jews and exterminating them. It is the same tactic, however. The goal is different. The goal is globalization… and you must silence all dissenting voices. That’s what Hitler did. That’s what Al Gore, the U.N., and everybody on the global warming bandwagon [are doing].”

Would you expect anything less from Glenn Beck, the chalk-wielding, sobbing former Fox television personality? The weird thing is, after years of making claims like these, repeating the popular refrain among his conservative buddies that global warming is “the biggest scam in history,” Beck went and gave an interview to USA Weekend in which he said “You’d be an idiot not to notice the temperature change,” admitting that there’s a legitimate case that global warming has been caused, at least in part, by mankind. Then again, Beck himself says “If you take what I say as gospel, you’re an idiot.”

Photos: dawn, wikimedia commons 1, 2, gage skidmore 1 2 3 4 5, lifeisaprayer, junkscience.com, scott ableman

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ColumnAn upcoming reality show may signal the end of all that is good and holy.

I  am not one of those people who sees every little thing as a sign of the apocalypse. Inevitably, when someone says “this is the end of civilization as we know it,” they are not talking about Darfur, or even the recent economic decline. They are usually referring to something relatively minor –the cancellation of “Friday Night Lights” for example, or a pop singer who has inexplicably named her son “Bronx.” Referring to something as Armageddon is a big deal and I try to stay away from that kind of hyperbole, but I don’t know what else, besides God’s final fury, can explain “Big Hair Alaska” – a reality show about Sarah Palin’s hair salon.

A two-part series about The Beehive, the beauty shop responsible for Palin’s famous updo,  has somehow landed on the fall TV schedule and I confess, this causes me great concern for the state of American culture.

I do not say this as someone who is snootily opposed to reality television, since it happens to be my guilty pleasure. I’m reluctant to admit that, since I don’t want people to jump to the conclusion that I’m a slack-jawed idiot (a fairly common and perhaps  not entirely undeserved assumption made about people who confess to an affection for such programming.) But I got hooked on the genre in 1973, as I sat glued to the couch in my shag-carpeted living room, ignoring my algebra homework as I watched  “An American Family,” the precursor to today’s reality shows. This 12 part series (they were still calling them documentaries in those days), showed a nuclear family disintegrating in real time, and it gave me my first heady taste of voyeurism.

This shameful urge to peep into the lives of others would never entirely go away, although it would be many years before the airwaves would become glutted with reality programming. Some of these shows, including “Top Chef” and “Project Runway,” would become my favorites. While others, like “The Bachelorette” and “The Jersey Shore,” would leave me queasy with self-loathing. Hovering between these extremes are “The Real Housewives of New Jersey,” a show I am always quick to explain that I only watch with my daughter. What I’ve discovered is that you can admit to watching public hangings, but if it’s a mother/daughter activity people will still look at you approvingly and say positive things about “quality time.”

I had very little interest in Palin’s own reality show, “Sarah Palin’s Alaska,” in which she proved that her much-vaunted belief in the sanctity of life did not extend to halibut and caribou. But Big Hair Alaska, a show that takes an unflinching look at Wasilla coiffures, has given me the welcome realization that I do, in fact, have some standards; because here, finally, is a reality show so vapid and so venial that I would not watch a minute of it, not for any amount of money. Unless Tim Gunn makes an appearance as a guest mentor – then I can’t make any promises.

Image: JaciXIII

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ColumnWhere celebrity goes conscious.

Many of us have long lived off the grid. We grew up chasing prairie dogs through tall grass, wading in creek beds teasing giant crabs, and feasting on vanity cakes on special occasions. We learned to sew a patchwork quilt, play with a pig’s bladder, walk barefoot to school, make a button lamp, and turn blackbirds destroying our crops into vengeful blackbird pies. Sure, this living happened over a century ago. But to us, it’s real. This is because many of us grew up inside the books of Laura Ingalls Wilder’s Little House series.

From Little House in the Big Woods to These Happy, Golden Years, Wilder (1967-1957) captured her pioneer girl experiences throughout the American Midwest. Accordingly, many of her young readers have grown up as post-modern Lauras. How does this play out? We tap away on our laptops, sitting under ceiling fans going at full blast in 90 degree weather. Every other minute, we’re checking the news, taking a sip of cool, filtered, BPA-free water, and writing ourselves notes to remember to put out the recycling. Ten emails into the day, we might romanticize a time when our only connection to society required a three-mile walk into town for a sociable.

A post-modern Laura to the core, I love the idea of living off the grid, late 19th century style. To a point. Like, a fun point. I’ll diligently scrub my existence to make it as carbon-footprint-less as I can. I’ll use an outhouse despite a totally rational fear of errant raccoons. Urban homesteading and gardening are right up my alley. But Wilder’s “simple life” also involved near death from malaria, scarlet fever, and Native American massacres, with some bone-crippling poverty thrown in. It’s not so fun to confront an angry (and rightly so) Native American after you’ve illegally settled on his land because of your Pa’s addiction to Manifest Destiny.

Laura Ingalls Wilder

And then there are the politics of Little House. Wilder’s daughter, Rose Wilder Lane, was a highly successful writer and political theorist operating as an early 20th century proto-feminist. Lane, who died in 1968, traveled around the world as a freelance writer and was the first biographer of Herbert Hoover. Alongside Ayn Rand, Laura’s only child is considered one of the mothers of the Libertarian movement. Lane is said to have had a heavy hand in helping her mother craft the Little House series. This is particularly true with the writing of Little House on the Prairie, which captures the Ingalls expulsion by the government off the Osage’s land.

So was Laura Ingalls Wilder really the first green girl heroine of American literature? Or was she more a proto-politico espousing the rights of man’s dominance over the land? Would she secretly laugh at our green inclinations or embrace them like a bone-lined corset under poplin?

Wendy McClure

We contacted expert Wendy McClure to get some answers. McClure is the author of The Wilder Life: My Adventures in the Lost World of Little House on the Prairie. McClure takes us through her utterly delightful journey to recapture her childhood image of “Laura World” and what it meant and means to be a true pioneer woman. She travels through several Wilder landmarks and museums across the Midwest, sharing adventures with butter churning, hay twisting, and wheat grinding. McClure spoke with us about Wilder’s “off the grid” living, her possible Sarah Palinesque politics, and who would win in a cage match – Michael Landon or Charles Ingalls.

EcoSalon: A lot of people might romanticize Wilder’s “off the grid” living without really understanding the downsides of late 19th century frontier living, which included scarlet fever, locusts, and/or near starvation by endless winter blizzards. What do you think Laura Ingalls Wilder would have thought of urban homesteaders or urban gardeners?

McClure: I think she would have appreciated the trend. When she wrote Little House in the Big Woods in the 1930s and described all the self-sufficient things her family did—making cheese and butter and maple sugar, butchering hogs—it was with the recognition that those ways of living and making food were disappearing. You can even see the difference in the family’s lifestyle by the end of the series, by the time they’re living in South Dakota, 15 years later, they’re much more dependent on the railroad and store-bought meat. Today’s urban chicken coops and beehives would probably remind her more of the kind of farming she did as an adult more than her pioneer childhood. She was actually an expert at raising chickens and it helped launch her writing career as a columnist for a farm paper, The Missouri Ruralist, so I imagine she’d be thrilled to see people farming in new ways.

EcoSalon: Environmental issues are more politicized than ever. Considering daughter Rose Wilder Lane is one of the mothers of the Libertarian movement, do you think Laura Ingalls Wilder might have eschewed the modern green movement as “too liberal”?

McClure: I suppose it’s possible that with Rose’s influence, Laura would have a Sarah Palinesque sort of viewpoint, full of contradictions, appreciating the natural world while objecting to regulations that would protect it. Then again, she sure loved her trees—all those years of living on South Dakota prairie had to have helped her appreciate them, and when she was older she wrote Missouri Ruralist columns about the need to restore forests and find clean energy sources. Living on the frontier would have given her a firsthand knowledge of the effects of dwindling resources, so maybe she’d have a different perspective.

EcoSalon: Blizzards, tornadoes, and flooding creeks, as well as swarms of crop-destroying locust and blackbirds were common in Wilder’s books. And yet, when you read them, there’s a clear acknowledgment and love of the beauty of her surroundings. What advice, if any, do you think Wilder would give today to environmentalists trying to preserve this beauty?

McClure: I think the best advice she could give would have to come from more than a century of beyond-the-grave observation. It’s clear from the Little House books that she and her family tended to accept the natural world on its own terms, but like other pioneers, they sometimes misunderstood it, too. In South Dakota they tried to farm the land the same way they did back east, and they hoped that homestead claims dedicated to tree-planting would turn the prairie into a forest. Not sure whether Laura would have recognized the futility of these things during her lifetime, but I’d like to think she’d have plenty of wisdom in the longer run.

EcoSalon: You touch on the latent racism that runs through the books, with Caroline Ingalls’ terror of Native Americans to Charles Ingalls donning blackface for a minstrel show. And yet, in your recent interview with WYNC’s Brian Lerher, African Americans and Latinas called in to share how much they related to Laura Ingalls. Why do you think that is?

McClure: The books were written in a time that wasn’t as enlightened as ours, and the era they portray was even less so, so there are a few dismaying moments in the series. But they’re by far outweighed by the extraordinarily relatability of Laura Ingalls and her family. There’s something so vivid and immediate about the narrative that invites readers to really identify with Laura and inhabit her world.

EcoSalon: And finally, in a cage match, who do you think would win? Charles Ingalls or Michael Landon?

McClure: Charles Ingalls, definitely. Michael Landon was too much of a pretty boy, but the real Pa seems like he’d be scrappy.

The TV cast of Little House on the Prairie (1974-1983)

This is the latest installment in Katherine Butler’s column, Shade Grown Hollywood, where celebrity becomes conscious. “Shade grown” refers literally to shade grown coffee, a farming method that “incorporates principles of natural ecology to promote natural ecological relationships.” Shade Grown is our sustainable twist on Hollywood.

Author photo courtesy of Wendy McClure

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Why won’t feminists call themselves feminists? I am a feminist. This is because I think women are the superior gender. Men are nothing but boorish flanks of meat, flogging about our planet trashing everything. War, pollution, hunger, disease, and nail polish can all be blamed on men. Now someone get me a can of Schlitz so this author can relax into her anger.

Yes, I’m exaggerating – but I’m still a feminist. I also enjoy nail polish and men, both in non-toxic forms. And yet for my entire adult life, I have had to defend calling myself a feminist. I want to know – why is feminism considered such a dirty word?

Feminism is the idea that men and women should be treated equally by society and in the eyes of the law. And if people see you differently because you’re a woman, rise above it and make them see who you are as a person. Never take for granted that as Western women, we enjoy more rights than many of our sisters across the planet. Poke fun at yourself whenever possible. And repeat. Now, is that really so bad?

I officially became a feminist my sophomore year in college. I was attending a small, liberal-arts school that was a fish bowl of traditional values. (How traditional? My sophomore year we were rumored to be named the most homophobic school in the nation by the Princeton Review. I never saw this in print but suffice to say, it didn’t seem like a wild, off-point accusation.) I decided to join the women’s group. Unfortunately, the entire women’s group had graduated out the year before and no one had bothered to replace it. Luckily, the administration was on board to help us get it up and running. So a friend and I decided to go for it.

This proved interesting. A common conversation I had in college, usually with a lacrosse player over a keg of beer, was to talk about what it meant to be a feminist. “No, no, we’re not anti-men. We just don’t want to be judged first on our gender,” I’d insist, drinking bad beer I didn’t yet know was bad. In response, I’d often get “That’s cool. You just don’t look like a lesbian.” Then everyone did shots. End scene.

Sure, some feminists are lesbians. Probably just as many are not. And yet, feminists have a reputation for being so anti-men (and since when are lesbians anti-men?) that it bleeds into their sex lives. And there’s more. Amy Siskind is the co-founder of The New Agenda, a non-partisan group devoted to women’s rights. As she wrote, “The [feminist] movement had devolved and morphed into a clique instead. And this clique only allowed members with certain rites of entry: liberal Democratic women who were pro-choice.” A result of this perception? As Siskind reports, only “20 percent of women are willing to use the term feminist about themselves and 17 percent would welcome their daughters using that label.”

But feminism isn’t a term just bandied about by the far left. Sarah Palin recently invoked iconic suffragist Susan B. Anthony, who opposed birth control. According to Ms. Palin, “More young women agree with these feminist foremothers [on abortion] than ever before…And believe in that culture of life, empowering women by offering them a real choice.” Susan B. Anthony opposed abortion primarily because, at the time, it was an extremely dangerous medical procedure. This time was 1869, before antibiotics.

But does Ms. Palin consider herself a feminist, despite riding the shoulders of Betty Friedan to a vice presidential nomination and subsequent multiple podiums? It’s hard to tell. Consider her recent Tweet: “Who hijacked term: ‘feminist’? A cackle of rads who want 2 crucify other women w/whom they disagree on a singular issue: it’s ironic (& passé).” No word on what Palin considers a cackle. Did she mean a gaggle of geese? The cackling of hyena-like women?

Certainly, the fact that feminism is a term ripe with political connotation makes it more problematic for some. So it’s time to clear the haze. If you are a working woman who is grateful for a society which allows her to embrace her career, aren’t you a feminist? If you’re a woman staying home to raise your boys and girls to respect one another on the basis of character and not gender, aren’t you a feminist? If you are a man who believes people should be judged first for their character, not their reproductive parts, then are you not a feminist?

You are a feminist. Even if you shave your legs. Even if you wear lipstick. Even if you are a man.

So let’s all embrace the term. Let’s be proud of the work of our feminist foremothers and keep the movement going. While women have made great strides towards equality, there is still work to be done. In the United States, women make 78 cents for every dollar a man earns in the United States. The wage gap is alive and well. Of all women, one out of four will experience domestic violence in her lifetime. So, men and women of the world, let’s take back feminism and make it our own again.

I’ll bring the keg of beer.

Image: Janine

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For Thanksgiving I found myself staying in a yurt near Jackson Hole, Wyoming. There was a small propane stove and no running water, but Thanksgiving is Thanksgiving and so we made a concerted effort to eat well.

The stuffing used locally baked pumpkin bread, the sweet potatoes were organic and made without a Cuisinart in sight, and I hand-chopped a cranberry relish. After not finding anything but absurdly cheap, huge frozen birds that surely came from the mass farms of nightmares, we accepted the fact that we would be without the Thanksgiving staple. Fine in our books, as no one was interested in eating “a depressed, fake bird,” as one friend put it. Fortunately, an organic, free-range, local bird was scored at the last minute.

Sitting in our woodstove-outfitted yurt filling ourselves with the bounty of a day of cooking felt perfectly normal. We were, after all, celebrating the most traditional of American holidays.

But apparently the scene was far from normal. In a weekend op-ed piece in The Washington Post, Brent Cunningham and Jane Black pose that the latest of culture wars is being fought in the culinary world, and that “many in this country who have access to good food and can afford it simply don’t think it’s important.” In other words, canned cranberry sauce over orange-infused reductions and Butterball turkeys over hand-plucked birds from the fair the next county over aren’t what the general population is making sure to put on the platter.

If you’ve determined that you’re concerned with good, healthy food it turns out that only might you be criticized for sticking your nose in the air, but you might just be plain old abnormal.

Even the queen of conventional tradition, Mrs. Sarah Palin herself, has taken it upon herself to give the finger to campaigns that would provide for healthier school food policies. If you don’t want your kids eating sweets at school you’re clearly bonkers.

In response to First Lady Michelle Obama’s Let’s Move program, which aims to reduce childhood obesity, Palin put it simply:

“Just leave us alone, get off our back and allow us as individuals to exercise our own God-given rights to make our own decisions and then our country gets back on the right track.”

I, too, like to make my own choices. Fresh over processed, local over trucked across a country, small farms over agribusiness. In other words, against the current cultural norm. However, when a large percentage of the population uses Palin’s self-described “rights” to buy government-subsidized food products predominantly made with high fructose corn syrup and proven to cause weight gain, maybe the idea of being “abnormal” isn’t so bad at all.

As Cunningham points out in his op-ed, “access to and the cost of ‘elite’ food isn’t beyond the budgets of many, perhaps most, Americans.”

So what will it take to make a cultural shift towards better food? Start by accepting the fact that abnormal isn’t necessarily a bad thing. And make sure your kids know it, too.

Editor’s note: This is the latest installment of Anna Brones’s column at EcoSalon, Foodie Underground. Each week, Anna will be taking a look at something new and different that’s taking place in the underground food movement, from supper clubs to mini markets to culinary avant garde.

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