Sobre Sarah Palin

Pela blogger Kathy G.:

Sarah Palin -- Mother of the Year, or Mommie Dearest?

To my surprise, some of the people who think Sarah Palin's mothering is an appropriate subject for public debate have been liberal feminists. Some of my listserv buddies have said that lots of people they've spoken to have been harshly critical of Palin as a mother, and that this might prove to be a promising line of attack against her. We liberals shouldn't be afraid to "go there," because it will help our side. And besides, she puts her family "out there," and practically uses her kids as props, so shouldn't we have the right to ask some tough questions about her family life?

Here's what I have to say about all this: stop the attacks on how Sarah Palin organizes her family life. Just. Stop. It.

Honestly, I loathe this woman, but the attacks on her based on how she chooses to balance her career and family infuriate me. No man would be asked these questions, ever. How she chooses to parent her children is her own and her family's business, and nobody else's, period.

Some people on our side are, unfortunately, being completely hypocritical about this issue. We liberals are the ones who strongly believe in the right to privacy concerning our families and our sex and reproductive lives, aren't we? We were the ones who were disgusted and appalled at the right's grotesque invasion of family privacy during the Terri Schiavo circus. And we rightfully railed against the wingnuts and the media for being panty-sniffers with an unhealthy obsession with the most intimate details of the Clintons' marriage. But the concern trolling about what kind of mother Sarah Palin is -- call it diaper-sniffing -- is not much different. In a way, it's worse, because it's so explicitly antifeminist.

Sarah Palin -- the right's latest kulturkampf gambit

The more I think about it, the more I realize that choosing Palin was McCain's shot-across-the-bow in the neverending culture wars.

I think one reason many blue state types (myself included) have had such a strong negative reaction to her is that she's the embodiment of red state culture. Let's start with the five kids. Does anyone on this list have any friends who have five kids? Large families like that seem to be largely a Republican, red state phenomenon. We wine trackers worry far too much about getting our kids into good schools and paying those tuition bills than about having large families. Two kids seems to be the norm with most of the people I know -- three is the absolute limit. So -- five. Wow!

Then there's the jocks vs. the nerds thing. Palin is also a jock who went to a state school, whereas many of us professional middle class types have never exactly been athletic competitors. We worried more about having the grades to get into exclusive schools than about making the basketball team. But I noticed during her speech today when she mentioned something about sports -- maybe it was about having been a high school athlete -- it got a big cheer from the crowd.

Don't misunderestimate Sarah Palin

A lot of elites have been awfully quick to size Palin up and blast her for being a lightweight without actually knowing much at all about her. This is dangerous, especially for our side. Liberals have had an unfortunate tendency to often underestimate conservatives -- both as a movement and in terms of individual conservative leaders.

Maybe Palin will indeed turn out to be a gaffe-machine like Dan Quayle was. I sure hope so! But I don't know -- as we've seen, the woman has charisma to spare and can give a very good speech. When she was running for governor, she apparently acquitted herself well in the debates. Her approval ratings in Alaska are sky-high, in spite of the fact that that state has a culture that's reputed to be extremely sexist. And also in spite of the fact that, unlike the state's other leading female politician, Lisa Murkowski, Palin is not the beneficiary of daddy's political machine. She made it on her own. Unlike Bush, she wasn't born into money, and unlike McCain, she didn't marry it. She comes from an ordinary middle class family -- her dad was a schoolteacher and her mom was a secretary. Given her talent for expressing scary, extremist ideas in a personable and nonthreatening manner, she could end up being a powerful weapon for the G.O.P.

And hey -- we gleefully bashed Ronald Reagan for being a lightweight. Dubya also. But the joke, of course, ended up being on us. Both of those SOBs managed to be extremely successful (Bush, though massively unpopular, has managed to get re-elected and to get a lot of his agenda through, after all).