Like the previous post, this post began as an email discussion with one of my friends, this time a female friend from Alabama. We are having a discussion about how intelligent, college-educated, otherwise articulate women descend into an inarticulate rage, eyes narrow into slits, breathing becomes ragged, and a dirge of insults begin to spew of which "moron" is the one most frequently used...all whenever the name Sarah Palin is mentioned. Allow me to explain why.
First, it's not just because she's not qualified. Palin initially declined the offer to be Vice President. Why? Because she didn't know what the job involved and hadn't been preparing for it. Most professional women and candidates for office, male or female, have been preparing since they were in college at the very least. You don't accept the job of running the country as an afterthought. But we don't hate her for that. After all who in their career hasn't done that? It is a commonly known fact that in order to be successful and climb the ladder you have to accept positions that (a) are slightly uncomfortable and feel perhaps a little over your head and (b) you know you were chosen because someone likes you (or your influential friend or relative) and (c) someone asked you out of the blue.
But what kind of woman shamelesly and scrupulously benefits from the hard work and long, long years of preparation of another woman and, more importantly, from her failure? It's as if Hillary Clinton was in a wedding and when the preacher asked if anyone had a reason this woman and man shouldn't be joined please speak now, and when the American people spoke and Hillary was out, Palin stepped up, linked arms with the groom and said "I'll marry ya!!" Palin doesn't seem to feel any remorse for hopping into a bed that Hillary Clinton spent years making. That brings me to the third point. She is allowing herself to be used as a political tool.
McCain picked her to create the illusion that the Republicans were having a historical election of their own. That reason alone makes her selection a slap in the face to every highly qualified woman in the country.
But someone's gotta be first and isn't it true that the best way to change an establishment is to first become part of it and then change it from the inside out? That brings me to my fourth point.
She's using her newfound celebrity status to promote the idea that Barack Obama is a terrorist, a muslim, dangerous to the country and all sorts of other negative and irresponsible claims. I'm surprised that so many people don't understand how she evokes such emotional responses. I understand it and so does every woman who's ever used her beauty, feminity and sunny, outgoing personality to win friends and influence people. In the south for centuries the surest way to get a black man in trouble was to have a white woman accuse him of something. But I'm sure she doesn't know anything about that. Which leads me to my fifth and final point.
She's out of touch and not just because Alaska is so far away it could be another country. She actually believes that America is full of "hockey moms" and "Joe sixpacks". She's running for the American people, not as the diverse, multi-ethnic, multi-talented, religiously tolerant melting pot that we are and that our founding fathers intended us to be, but as the American public that she'd like for us to be. As a consequence she's not going to be president of the people who live in the housing projects or of the people who live in upscale condos downtown in large cities because she's never done that and she doesn't know them. She will take an oath of office to serve only the kinds of people she's seen and lived with and whom she thinks represent the entire country.
Until this election she hasn't given a thought to anyone beyond Alaska and people like her. And who can blame her? She seems well prepared for the job she was aspiring to, governer of Alaska. She just wasn't preparing for this job.
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