UPDATE from Bookworm: Poor Enrico’s. Because its name features prominently on the building, people are assuming it posted the sign. It did not. From Enrico’s facebook page:

You may have received an email about a sign that says “FU (spelled out) Meg Whitman and Carly Fiorina” asking you to call Enrico’s Restaurant to complain. Enrico’s is not responsible for the sign. It was put there by the Law offices of Tony Serra who has offices above Enrico’s. Enrico’s,like most businesses, doesn’t take political stands and is not responsible for the sign.

And now back to Ms. GW’s original post:

San Francisco sign threatens Fiorina and Whitman

This vulgar sign, spotted in San Francisco above a prominent restaurant at the corner of Kearney and Broadway, raises the same question one more time:

Why must the Left continue to demean female conservative candidates? How desperate is the Left?

To help answer the question, here’s some insight from a licensed psychotherapist who wrote on this very topic after observing the Left’s attacks on Sarah Palin two years ago:

As every woman knows, leering looks, lurid words, and veiled threats are intended to evoke terror. Sexual violence is a form of terrorism. In the wilding of Sarah Palin, the Left shows its true colors. Rather than shield the vulnerable, Leftists will mow down any man, woman, or child who gets in their way.

So: Leftists are bullies, plain and simple. The Left has been in power for two years, but apparently that’s not enough. Using vulgar language is a simple, common tactic to intimidate, repress and silence others. A “f*** you!” says plenty, and its recipient is instantly diminished. Words hurt and vulgar ones stop any conversation cold and do nothing to advance civilization. As our moms used to tell us, “People use bad words when they want attention or lack the language or creativity to express themselves.”

Interestingly, although it doesn’t show up clearly in this photograph, the sign bears the name of J. Tony Serra, a well-known San Francisco criminal defense attorney who has defended Huey Newton and the Black Panthers, Chol Soo Lee, Ellie Nesler, and other “society outcasts,” according to Serra’s website. Notably, Serra’s own website says, “Tony Serra has always known how to express the poetry of the law, while fighting in the ditches and dark alleys of legal practice.”

Poetry of the law, huh? Fighting in the ditches and dark alleys? If Serra did authorize this sign, most civilized folks will find nothing poetic or courageous in the threat of sexual violence against Meg Whitman and Carly Fiorina. Let’s hope Tony Serra and the restaurant are not behind this sign . . . talk about desperately wanting attention.

And by the way, where’s the outrage from San Francisco’s politically correct women? Where’s the outrage from the San Francisco’s politically correct media? Where’s the National Organization for Women when we need them?

Ms. GW is a long-time Bay Area resident and woman who is appalled and offended by the Left’s attacks on any female candidate, conservative or  liberal.

UPDATE II from Bookworm: Please also check out the article on this subject that Ms. GW wrote for American Thinker’s blog. It’s similar, but raises some slightly different points you may find interesting.

With the trigger being Obama’s obsession with niqabs and hijabs, I did a lengthy post about my belief that Obama fundamentally does not like women.  He depends on strong women (his wife, Valerie Jarrett), but he doesn’t like them.  In fact, I’m willing to bet that his dependence on them only increases that dislike.  I’ll add here that male narcissists are often the product of genuinely unloving mothers and that a strong dislike for women is an intregral part of their make-up.  (And consider how frequently Obama’s mother abandoned him throughout his young life, when she wasn’t dragging him around like an old anchor.)

Others are catching on to Obama’s fraught relationship with women.  The trigger isn’t anything so deep as his desire to see women veiled.  Instead, it’s those all male golf courses.  Obama’s desire to get his recreation in all male environments (golf, basketball, etc.) has Bonnie Erbe, at U.S. News and World Reports, thinking:

Whether it was his treatment of Hillary Clinton on the campaign trail (as in his condescending remark that she was “likeable enough”) or his clearly career-oriented mate who has been toned down and remorphed into a Stepford Wife, I just don’t get the impression this man is comfortable with women. Nor do I believe he cares about them beyond needing women’s votes. It’s an act and a thoroughly see-through, amateur one at that.

As you know, I was all over that condescending remark to Hillary, but I saw it more as a sign of the man’s arrogance, than his innate misogyny.  Put it together with the other stuff, though, and Erbe may well be on to something.

One more thing:  Erbe can’t resist in her post being nasty about the old Southern politician Jesse Helms.  But I think there’s a difference between, on the one hand, old guys who never got it with women’s lib, but who still fundamentally liked women (and I don’t think Helms ever showed dislike for women) and, on the other hand, a true misogynist, who really hates women at a fundamental level that goes far beyond societal beliefs about women’s roles.

I need help from you guys developing a thought.  The thought started with this picture of Michelle Obama in a deep-veed, fluffy blouse; a saggy sweater; a bondage belt; and the gypsy skirt from hell:

Aside from the fact that the picture pretty much puts the lie forever to the media’s desparate attempt to liken Michelle to Jacquie O, I think Michelle’s completely bewildered clothing speaks to something deeper about what society’s Leftist grip does to women’s self image.

I’m thinking about the difference between elegance and femininity, as opposed to a sort of trashy, hard-edged “feminism” that equates female sexuality, which can be beautiful and graceful, with Hustler-esque sex.  There’s definitely been a trend in the past years that cheapens, rather than elevates, women, and this trend has marched hand-in-hand with the radicalization of feminism.

Recall, if you will, that feminism was originally sold as a way to ensure that women got equal rights under the law and equal opportunities.  It’s now morphed into some shrill Leftist monster that says women should have sex like a porn star, be able to cry rape at will, get opportunities denied to men, ignore the plight of their truly oppressed sisters around the world, forgive rapists as long as they’re “good” presidents, get more than equal pay for unequal work, etc.  At precisely the same time women stopped being women and started being these weird Frankenstein monsters, the concept of attractiveness and feminity in clothing vanished — something I’ve bemoaned my entire adult life.

In other words, I think this picture speaks to something larger about the way women, for all their greater earning power and societal presence, have lost something over the last 30 years.

I know I’m old-fashioned, and getting more so with every passing day, but I’m pretty sure “viva la difference” didn’t mean you guys look like effete metrosexuals and we gals look like bondage vixens.

There is no bliss inherent in the ignorance displayed by one judge in England:

A judge lambasted a rapist for claiming his victim was a liar – then commended him for becoming a muslim.

Judge Anthony Goldstaub QC sentenced Stuart Wood for seven years for the attack, then told him: ‘You have turned to Islam and this promises well for your future, particularly as you are now an adherent of a religion which respects women and self-discipline.’

Apparently Goldstaub has never heard of honor killings, burkhas, systematic rapes of non-Muslim women, the whole Saudi/Taliban package (unveiled girls being forced to die in burning buildings, chronic house arrest, being beaten on the street for showing any flesh), etc.  To characterize Islam as a religion that respects women, when 90% of Islam’s energy is directed to the subjugation of women is such a travesty that it defies words.  It’s impossible to tell if the judge was motivated by ignorance or malice in making that kind of statement.

I’ll close this short post with a quote from my cousin, the prison chaplain, with his take on prison conversions to Islam:

It is not a contradiction to be a Muslim and a murderer, even a mass murderer. That is one reason why criminals “convert” to Islam in prison. They don’t convert at all; they similarly remain the angry judgmental vicious beings they always have been. They simply add “religious” diatribes to their personal invective. Islam does not inspire a crisis of conscience, just inspirations to outrage.

I’m noticing an interesting pattern in Obama’s Muslim speeches.  He thinks it’s a very good thing for women to cover up.  In his Cairo speech, he made that point, not once, not twice, but three times.  As I caught in the post I wrote at the time, he said:

Moreover, freedom in America is indivisible from the freedom to practice one’s religion. That is why there is a mosque in every state in our union, and over 1,200 mosques within our borders. That’s why the United States government has gone to court to protect the right of women and girls to wear the hijab and to punish those who would deny it. (Applause.)

[snip]

Likewise, it is important for Western countries to avoid impeding Muslim citizens from practicing religion as they see fit — for instance, by dictating what clothes a Muslim woman should wear. We can’t disguise hostility towards any religion behind the pretence of liberalism.

[snip]

The sixth issue — the sixth issue that I want to address is women’s rights. (Applause.) I know –- I know — and you can tell from this audience, that there is a healthy debate about this issue. I reject the view of some in the West that a woman who chooses to cover her hair is somehow less equal, but I do believe that a woman who is denied an education is denied equality.

That obsession with women’s attire might have been aberrant but for the fact that, at tonight’s White House Ramadan celebration, Obama brought it up again (emphasis mine):

The president paid special tribute to Kareem Khan, who “made the ultimate sacrifice” when he died serving in Iraq, Nashala Hearn, who won the right to wear a hijab in school, Bilqis Abdul-Qaadir, who holds the record for the most points scored by a high school basketball player in Massachusetts, and Muhammad Ali, who – though he couldn’t attend – is “a man of quiet dignity and grace and continues to fight for what he believes.”

Why, oh why, is Obama so impressed with Muslim women wrapping their heads?  His he just part of the same trendy Left wing cadre that thinks head coverings are a cool fashion statement by which enlightened Islamic feminists thumb their nose at men?  Naomi Wolf, American “feminist” and nutcase, believes this to be so:

The West interprets veiling as repression of women and suppression of their sexuality. But when I travelled in Muslim countries and was invited to join a discussion in women-only settings within Muslim homes, I learned that Muslim attitudes toward women’s appearance and sexuality are not rooted in repression, but in a strong sense of public versus private, of what is due to God and what is due to one’s husband. It is not that Islam suppresses sexuality, but that it embodies a strongly developed sense of its appropriate channelling – toward marriage, the bonds that sustain family life, and the attachment that secures a home.

Outside the walls of the typical Muslim households that I visited in Morocco, Jordan, and Egypt, all was demureness and propriety. But inside, women were as interested in allure, seduction and pleasure as women anywhere in the world.

At home, in the context of marital intimacy, Victoria’s Secret, elegant fashion and skin care lotions abounded. The bridal videos that I was shown, with the sensuous dancing that the bride learns as part of what makes her a wonderful wife, and which she proudly displays for her bridegroom, suggested that sensuality was not alien to Muslim women. Rather, pleasure and sexuality, both male and female, should not be displayed promiscuously – and possibly destructively – for all to see.

Wolf would benefit from reading Phyllis Chesler’s response to her inane article, in which Chesler emphasizes the reality for the vast majority of those Muslim woman wrapped up in movable tents:

Most Muslim girls and women are not given a choice about wearing the chador, burqa, abaya, niqab, jilbab, or hijab (headscarf), and those who resist are beaten, threatened with death, arrested, caned or lashed, jailed, or honor murdered by their own families. Is Wolfe thoroughly unfamiliar with the news coming out of Afghanistan, Pakistan, Iran, Saudi Arabia, and Sudan on these very subjects? Has she forgotten the tragic, fiery deaths of those schoolgirls in Saudi Arabia who, in trying to flee their burning schoolhouse, were improperly veiled and who were beaten back by the all-powerful Saudi Morality Police?

Most Muslim girls and women are impoverished and wear rags, not expensive Western clothing beneath their coverings. Only the pampered, super-controlled, often isolated, and uber-materialistic daughters of wealth, mainly in the Gulf states, but also among the ruling classes in the Islamic world, match Wolf’s portrait of well kept courtesan-wives.

Being veiled and obedient does not save a Muslim girl or woman from being incested, battered, stalked, gang-raped, or maritally raped nor does it stop her husband from taking multiple wives and girlfriends or from frequenting brothels. A fully “covered” girl-child, anywhere between the ages of 10-15, may still be forced into an arranged marriage, perhaps with her first cousin, perhaps with a man old enough to be her grandfather, and she is not allowed to leave him, not even if he beats her black and blue every single day.

So does Obama side with Wolf or does he understand the reality that Chesler articulates?

Or are we looking in the wrong place altogether when it comes to Obama’s hijab obsession.  Maybe he’s just dreaming that, one day, he can replace this angry face:

With this, all signs of anger neatly hidden away:

UPDATE: To those who I’m mocking Michelle for being ugly, I’m not.   I don’t think she’s the raving beauty the MSM would have us believe, but there’s nothing wrong with how she looks. It’s the anger that’s in her face whenever she’s not actively smiling. That is one very, very angry woman.  That can’t be a nice thing in a marriage.  A burqa wouldn’t make the anger go away, but you wouldn’t have to see it all the time.  I’ve updated the captions for the photos a bit to show that my emphasis is on personality, not looks.

A young British woman, raised in the North of England, escaped her abusive Muslim father and converted to Christianity, a fact that saw her father lead an axe wielding mob clamoring for her death.  She wrote a book about her experience.  When the Times interviewer asked why she didn’t seek help from the authorities, the woman explains how political correctness creates a straight jacket as tight as fundamentalist Islam itself:

When, at school, she had finally summoned the courage to tell a teacher that her father had been beating her (she couldn’t bring herself to reveal the sexual abuse), the social services sent out a social worker from her own community. He chose not to believe Hannah and, in effect, shopped her to her father, who gave her the most brutal beating of her life. When she later confronted the social worker, he said: “It’s not right to betray your community.”

Hannah blames what is sometimes called political correctness for this debacle: “My teachers had thought they were doing the right thing, they thought it showed ‘cultural sensitivity’ by bringing in someone from my own community to ‘help’, but it was the worst thing they could have done to me. This happens a lot.

“When I’ve been working with girls who were trying to get out of an arranged marriage, or want to convert to Christianity, and they have contacted social services as they need to get out of their homes, the reaction has been ‘we’ll send someone from your community to talk to your parents’. I know why they are doing this, they are trying to be understanding, but it’s the last thing that the authorities should do in such situations.”

This is the sort of cultural sensitivity displayed by Rowan Williams, the Archbishop of Canterbury, last year when he suggested that problems within the British Muslim community such as financial or marital disputes could be dealt with under sharia, Islamic law, rather than British civil law. What did Hannah, now an Anglican, think on hearing these remarks?

“I was horrified.” If you could speak to him now, what would you say to the archbishop? “I would say: have you actually spoken to any ordinary Muslim women about the situation that they live in, in their communities? By putting in place these Muslim arbitration tribunals, where a woman’s witness is half that of a man, you are silencing women even more.”

She believes the British government is making exactly the same mistake as Rowan Williams: “It says it talks to the Muslim community, but it’s not speaking to the women. I mean, you are always hearing Muslim men speaking out, the representatives of the big federations, but the government is not listening to Muslim women. With the sharia law situation and the Muslim arbitration tribunals, have they thought about what effect these tribunals have on Muslim women? I don’t think so.”

Hat tip: Hot Air

American feminists, who have done quite a number on Palin, are remarkably silent about the mind-boggling restrictions placed upon, and indignities visited upon, their sisters in Saudi Arabia:

A new prohibition may be added to the long list of those placed on women in Saudi Arabia: A new sentence according to Islamic law (fatwa) determines that women exiting the doorways of their homes must cover one of their eyes.

The array of prohibitions currently placed upon Saudi women includes forbiddance to leave home without a familial “patron,” fraternize with men in public, drive a car, put makeup on and wear high heels.

The modesty squad on the streets of Saudi Arabia follows women whose abaya (long cloak) is too tight and likely to reveal their curves or those whose hair is visible through their veils.

A senior religious cleric in the country, Sheikh Muhammad al-Habadan demands that the rules of modesty be further enhanced.

In the new Islamic legal sentence, al-Habadan announced that when leaving their homes, women must keep only one eye revealed.

According to the sheikh, “revelation of both eyes behind the veil is likely to encourage women to put make-up on and accentuate their eyes. This is corrupt behavior which conflicts with Islamic principles.”

Read the rest here.

I know I’ve said this before, but I’ll say it again: A prescient friend of mine told me before 9/11 that the Muslim hatred of the Western world is grounded in the fear Muslim men have of female sexuality. Everything else — alcohol prohibitions, dog prohibitions, etc. — is just static. In apocalyptic fight between Islam and the West, it’s all about sex.  And in that regard, keep in mind that the incentive for Muslim men to commit suicide/mass murder is, yes, sex with those 70 luscious virgins (or, possibly, which will be a surprise to them, grapes).

I found fascinating the fact that, even in San Francisco, the most liberal, diverse, open to everything (except conservatism and religion) city in the whole US (except for Berkeley), women are not making headway in politics:

In a year when gender has played a significant role in the presidential campaign – 18 million people voted for Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton, and the Republican base is enthused by Gov. Sarah Palin – women in San Francisco politics aren’t gaining nearly as much traction.

In fact, they have been losing ground for decades in this famously open-minded, diverse city. In the 1980s and 1990s, several configurations of the 11-member Board of Supervisors had female majorities of six or seven members. Now, the board has three.

It doesn’t seem to occur to anyone that the fault, Dear Brutus, might not lie with the voters, but may lie with the women — or, to be more accurate, with the children.  In my neighborhood, all of the women started out in their 20s as high achieving professionals.  With children, all of those who don’t have to work have stopped.  And all of those who do have to work try to keep it part-time.

I believe all opportunities should be available to woman.  (That would be the famous equality of opportunity that true feminists desire.)  However, it’s worth noting that all women may not wish to take advantage of those opportunities.  (Putting the lie to the Leftist belief that government can force equality of outcome, that which NOW feminists desire.)

In the past couple of days, I’ve read more than a few articles in which liberal women express incendiary anger about Sarah Palin. I blogged yesterday about Michelle Cottle’s screed, and today read equally over-the-top material from Judith Warner (h/t The Anchoress) and Heather Malick (h/t Small Dead Animals).  In each of these articles, women complain that those who play by feminism’s rules are kicked in the teeth and that Quislings like Sarah Palin get rewarded with perks and praise.  Never mind that their feminine ideal, Hillary, got ahead the old-fashioned way, by marriage.  It was her rhetoric, not her conduct, that appealed.

I find the attitude these women express interesting, because I understand it so well.  When I worked at my first law firm, I was a horrible employee because I had all these ideas that, as a woman who paid full (and sincere) lip service to feminism’s principles, I was entitled to special treatment.  I couldn’t understand why the men who started the same year as I did were treated better and liked more — overlooking completely the fact that they worked harder, complained less, and contributed more.  I was a woman!  Didn’t “they” understand that?

Incidentally, I didn’t arrive at this self-serving, egotistical hubristic attitude on my own.  My year was the year the law firm decided to embrace diversity and hired a large group of whiny women, African-Americans and gays.*  We knew we were affirmative action hires but, instead of being grateful, we felt we were owed more than just a job.  We expected to be coddled and given opportunities notwithstanding our failure to earn them.

As the years went by, we were horrified by how obvious it was that the firm powers didn’t like us.  It never occurred to us that we were neither likable nor beneficial to the firm’s business.  Eventually, I jumped ship for a different firm where, with a clean slate, I started to learn to be a lawyer and not a feminist.  The rest of the malcontents with whom I’d worked were all fired summarily a short time later as part of a — ahem — “cost cutting” move.

Reading the articles to which I’ve linked, it’s apparent that many American women still live in the “you owe me” bubble.  Worse, since they seldom get what they feel they’re owed, they find themselves embittered — and, sadly, without even having the countervailing consolation of guns and God.

______________________

*This is not to imply that women, gays and African-Americans are whiny.  It is to say that this particular group of women, gays and African-Americans, all of whom believed they were entitled to special treatment because of their non-white male status, were in fact whiny.

I don’t know how much difference this will make, but it’s a petition to show that the media is wrong — women will and do support Sarah Palin.

Hat tip:  Bloggers for John McCain