I can barely manage going 35 days, forget over 300. This commercial parody was the best part of the Saturday Night Live’s return since the writer’s strike ended.

My husband and I are Saturday Night Live fans from way back and while some nights aren’t as good as others, we remain loyal fans and a couple of times a season we reap the rewards of our loyalty. This past Saturday was the first show back since the end of the Writer’s Strike and Tina Fey hosted with Carrie Underwood as the musical guest. We were anxious to see what the SNL writers would bring to the table after the long strike.

We were excited to see the cold opener featured a debate between Hillary Clinton and Barak Obama, knowing how much political fodder the writers would have to work with. However, we were a bit disappointed. While Amy Poehler’s Hillary Clinton was spot on perfect and funny as hell, Fred Armison’s Barak Obama just wasn’t doing it for me. I think SNL has a big job ahead of them finding someone that can do a good Barak Obama impression and do it with humor. Don’t get me wrong. Armison is great. But he’s not a great Obama on SNL.

The rest of the show was a bit of a dud. The highlight of Weekend Update was Governor Mike Huckabee’s appearance.

I adore Tina Fey and Amy Poehler both, and I knew they would bring Fey back to the Weekend Update desk that she anchored for so long and so well. But Fey turned me off when she made her own political agenda extremely clear from the Weekend Update desk, taking a stab at women for not voting for Clinton,

“We have our first serious female presidential candidate in Hillary Clinton. And yet women have come so as far as feminists that they don’t feel obligated to vote for a candidate just because she is a woman. Women today feel perfectly free to make whatever choice Oprah tells them to. Which raises the question, why are people abandoning Hillary for Obama? Some say that they are put off by the fact that Hillary can’t control her husband and that we would end up with co-presidents. Cuz that would be terrible, having two intelligent qualified people working together to solve problems. Bleuk!”

Then Fey goes on to poke fun at the more ridiculous reasons that people might vote against Clinton for president, before wrapping up her comments with this:

TINA FEY: Maybe what bothers me the most is that people say that Hillary is a bitch. Let me say something about that: Yeah, she is. So am I and so is this one. (*Points to Amy Poehler*)

AMY POEHLER: Yeah, deal with it.

TINA FEY: You know what, bitches get stuff done. That’s why Catholic schools use nuns as teachers and not priests. Those nuns are mean old clams and they sleep on cots and they’re allowed to hit you. And at the end of the school year you hated those bitches but you knew the capital of Vermont. So, I’m saying it’s not too late Texas and Ohio, get on board, bitch is the new black!

Where do I even start?

In studying Women’s history I have finally come to understand that the struggle for women’s equal rights has not always been the same thing as feminism. In The Grounding of Modern Feminism, Nancy F. Cott explains that feminism is a fluid concept that has changed over time and includes a variety of ideas and a modern interpretation of feminism includes the opposition of ranking one sex as “inferior or superior”. Another aspect of feminism is the understanding that women’s status is the product of a social construct (usually by men) and not a biologically or divinely pre-determined state of being. Third, “feminism posits that women perceive themselves not only as a biological sex but (perhaps even more importantly) as a social grouping” (5).

It is this third point that I take issue with, because women have never been unified into a collective group that could refer to themselves as “we” in the same way that racial minorities have. Women’s experiences and points of view are so diverse that it makes that kind of unity impossible. Not all women think of themselves in terms of being a “woman” first with that as her primary point of identity. Women’s identities and beliefs develop from our experiences and the priorities emerging from those experiences.

So in Fey’s own words, “maybe what bothers me most is,” if I must unify with every individual of my sex and vote with them on the basis of my gender in order to call myself a feminist then I guess I am not a true feminist at all. So yes, Tina. I think we have come so far–at least where women’s rights and equality are concerned–that many strong, intelligent, independent, open-minded women do NOT feel obligated to vote for Clinton “just because she is a woman”. I’m not voting for Clinton because a group of women say I should in order to be a good feminist. And I’m not voting for Obama because Oprah told me to either. I find that the most insulting part of the entire commentary.

This election is about the future of this country. Not about the election of an individual based on the advancement of one gender or another. Nor is it about the advancement of one race or another. It is about issues. It is about healing a nation that is so divided by race, gender, political factions and parties that I fear how much longer it can withstand the stress of so many divisions.

So no. I won’t vote for anyone based solely upon their gender, race, OR their political affiliation. This nation transcends all of these issues and my vote will never be determined by such divisions.

Popularity: 25% [?]