By Debbie Schlussel

The mainstream news media and many Americans are remembering Sally Ride, who died today at age 61, as though she were some sort of American hero for being the first female astronaut. She was not. Not even close. Instead, she was the beneficiary of militant feminism, in whose ranks she was proudly present, along with blatant gender-based affirmative action. Many male astronauts and astronauts-in-waiting were far more qualified, had more experience, and had been waiting much longer for a ticket to ride on the space shuttle. But they were passed over because NASA had just instituted affirmative action and wanted to please feminists. This isn’t just me guessing about this or my opinion. It’s fact, and it’s well known and NASA bragged about it, passing over a Black astronaut, Lt. Col. Guion Bluford, who was far more qualified and had trained as an astronaut long before her. Bluford eventually went to space on the next ride, but many others never got to go because they were displaced by Ride and other women who filled the affirmative action quota seat on each major space flight thereafter.

The feminist movement pushed for a chick in the space shuttle and, with Ride, they got it. It’s simply not usual for someone to join NASA and five years later be on the way to outer space . . unless that someone has a vagina. That’s why, at age 32, she was the youngest astronaut at that time ever to go to space–not because she was any sort of wunderkind, but because she was a woman. And she was a pioneer . . . for politically correct incompetence. Since NASA began its affirmative action program for females and put Ride into space in 1983, there has usually been at least one female on the flight crew on every single major NASA mission (which is how she went into space twice, when more qualified men never even got to go once). And in every single case, the woman has less experience and fewer qualifications than any one of the men on board. While America recently scrapped the space program, and no one will be going into space under the auspices of the U.S. government anytime soon, it’s important to recognize this and to note that Sally Ride made no history because she never went into space in her own right and without a gender-based advantage. The feminists turned her into a faux-hero and her mission into faux-history. But there was nothing historic about it. It was a concession to NOW and the other hags of feminism, who knew a woman could not beat most of the men who’d been waiting for years to go to space, many of whom never got the chance. Thousands wanted to go to space, few were chosen. It was an elite crew, except if you were the chick (or the Saudi prince who paid his way on board, courtesy of Ronald Reagan, who was also big behind the Sally Ride/woman in space push and also picked uber-liberal disaster Sandra Day O’Connor for the Supreme Court–he was into disastrous PC “firsts”). Those were always the “gimmes” to political correctness.

Valerie Neal, the Shuttle-era human spaceflight curator in the National Air and Space Museum’s Space History Division, wrote about Ride and other female astronauts who were aggressively recruited because of their gender:

They came of age as the civil rights, equal rights, and women’s movements stimulated changes in American society and opened new career possibilities. They were poised to step through the door opened by NASA’s affirmative action policy and its aggressive recruitment of women and minorities for the astronaut corps.

In one biography of Ride, it gushes that she was the first female astronaut to use the robotic arm to retrieve a satellite. Big whoop (or as I was thinking, B-F-D, “Big F Deal”). A man did it first, so it’s not history. It was done. She was also the first woman to go to the bathroom on a space shuttle. Again, a dude did it first. And he was still more qualified and earned his trip.

And since a man did everything Sally Ride did first–and men who were always more qualified and worthy were passed over for anything she did–she and her career are of no consequence.

Some may say that she allowed girls to dream of going into space. But that’s bunk. Girls can have males as heroes. None of mine were women. To say a girl can’t identify with someone merely because she has different plumbing–well, that’s the very definition of sexism. And sexism is the shaky stuff on which the whole feminist movement–and all of Sally Ride’s notoriety–is built.

Sally Ride’s open lesbianism is the other reason she became the false hero she is. Much of the top echelons of the feminist movement then were lesbians–people like Eleanor Smeal and others. And lesbians were especially loved and promoted. It’s no accident that the first woman to go into space was a lesbian. They didn’t pick her lightly. Sally Ride wasn’t just a woman and a lesbian. She was a NOW activist, speaking at their conventions.

So while I feel for Sally Ride’s family and loved ones for her painful, relatively young loss from pancreatic cancer, which is tragic for all of its victims, including close family members of mine, I don’t remember her today. I remember the many nameless, faceless men who dedicated their lives to go to space–a calling which many answered but for which few were chosen. I remember those men whose names we never heard because they were passed over so that Sally Ride could steal their place not once, but twice, and even more times, as she set the precedent for a gender-based female affirmative action seat set aside on each major trip to space.

I got attacked by liberals (and faux-conservatives) for tweeting it on Twitter (follow me on Twitter), but I’ll say it again:

Thousands of more qualified men were passed over so that Sally Ride’s vagina could fly into space.

I make no apologies for telling the truth, no matter how blunt. If you can’t handle it, tough. Facts are stubborn things. Even more tough: morons who won’t face them.

Oh, and in case, you were wondering, Sally Ride endorsed Barack Obama for President in 2008. Birds of a feather: She got her job because of her vagina. He got his because of his skin color . . . and his vagina.