Lipstick on a Wing Nut
by Katha Pollitt


John McCain chose the supremely under-qualified Sarah Palin as his
running mate partly because she is a woman. If you have a problem with
that, you're a sexist. She talks incessantly about being a mother of
five and uses her newborn, Trig, who has Down syndrome, as a campaign
prop. If you wonder how she'll handle all those kids and the Veep job
too, you're a super-sexist. "When do they ever ask a man that question?"
charges that fiery feminist Rudy Giuliani. Indeed, Palin, who went back
to work when Trig was three days old, gets nothing but praise from
Phyllis Schlafly, James Dobson and the folks at National Review,
who usually blame all the ills of modern America on those neurotic,
harried, selfish, frustrated, child-neglecting, husband-castrating
working mothers. Even stranger, her five-months-pregnant 17-year-old,
Bristol, gets nothing but compassion and respect from Bill O'Reilly,
Rush Limbaugh and others who have spent their careers slut-shaming teens
for having sex--and blaming their parents for letting it happen.

If there were an Olympics for hypocrisy, the Republican Party would have
more gold medals than Michael Phelps. And Palin would be wearing quite a
few of them. It takes chutzpah for a mother to thrust her pregnant teen
into the world's harshest spotlight and then demand the world respect
the girl's privacy. But then it takes chutzpah to support criminalizing
abortion and then praise Bristol's "decision" to have the baby. The
right to decide, and privacy, after all, are two of the things Palin
wants to deny every other woman, and every other family, in America.
Palin's even said she would "choose life" if her daughter was pregnant
from rape. Can't you just hear Bristol groaning, "Mo-om...!"

The Republicans bashed Barack Obama as a "celebrity," but now they've
got a star of their own, so naturally the rules have changed. Nothing
would suit them better than for the media to spend the next two months
spellbound by the wacky carnival on ice that is the Palin family: Todd,
aka the First Dude, the kids, Levi the hunky bad-boy
dad-to-be--well, maybe not him so much after his expletive-adorned
MySpace page briefly came to light ("I'm a ****in' redneck"; "I don't
want kids"--whoops). The snowmobiles, the moose burgers, the guns, the
hair, the glasses that are flying off America's shelves (starting at
$375 a pair, and she has seven). Fretting over the work/family issue
alone should take up enough column inches to employ all the female
journalists in America from now to next Mother's Day. And don't forget
that op-ed staple, What Does This Mean for Feminism?

Well, I'm not playing. I don't care about Sarah Palin's family. I don't
care if she's a good mother. I don't care if she's happily married, or
who shops and who vacuums, or who takes care of the kids while both
parents are at work. I don't want her recipe for caribou hot dogs,
either. Life chez Sarah and Todd might make an adorable sitcom
(Leave It to Jesus?) or a scathing tell-all a decade or so down
the road (Governor Dearest?). Either way, so what? This is an
election, not The View. As for feminism's meaning, what can you
say after you've said that her career shows that even right-wing
fundamentalist women have taken in feminism's message of empowerment and
that's good, but that Palin's example suggests women can do it
all without support from society and that's bad?

Count me as a feminist who never believed that being PTA president meant
you could be, well, President. The more time we spend on dippy
ruminations--how does she do it? Queen Bee on steroids or the hockey mom
next door? how hot is Todd, anyway?--the less focus there will be on the
kind of queries that should come first with any vice presidential
candidate, and certainly would if Palin were a man. Questions like:

§ Suppose your 14-year-old daughter Willow is brutally raped
in her bedroom by an intruder. She becomes pregnant and wants an
abortion. Could you tell the parents of America why you think your child
and their children should be forced by law to have their rapists'
babies?

§ You say you don't believe global warming is man-made. Could
you tell us what scientists you've spoken with or read who have led you
to that conclusion? What do you think the 2,500 scientists of the
Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change are getting wrong?

§ If you didn't try to fire Wasilla librarian Mary Ellen Baker
over her refusal to consider censoring books, why did you try to
fire her?

§ What is the European Union, and how does it function?

§ Forty-seven million Americans lack health insurance. John
Goodman, who has advised McCain on healthcare, has proposed redefining
them as covered because, he says, anyone can get care at an ER. Do you
agree with him?

§ What is the function of the Federal Reserve?

§ Cindy and John McCain say you have experience in foreign
affairs because Alaska is next to Russia. When did you last speak with
Prime Minister Putin, and what did you talk about?

§ Approximately how old is the earth? Five thousand years?
10,000? 5 billion?

§ You are a big fan of President Bush, so why didn't you
mention him even once in your convention speech?

§ McCain says cutting earmarks and waste will make up for
revenues lost by making the tax cuts permanent. Experts say that won't
wash. Balancing the Bush tax cuts plus new ones proposed by McCain would
most likely mean cutting Medicare, Medicaid or Social Security. Which
would you cut?

§ You're suing the federal government to have polar bears
removed from the endangered species list, even as Alaska's northern
coastal ice is melting and falling into the sea. Can you explain the
science behind your decision?

§ You've suggested that God approves of the Iraq War and the
Alaska pipeline. How do you know?



This article can be found on the web at:

http://www.thenation.com/doc/20080929/pollitt

sounds like someone needs to go back to school and learn some more

these questions can be asked of anyone.

I love this one and will not let it disappear yet

I agree the extreme right have shown what hypocrites they all are by embracing, excusing and celebrating Palin.

It's not like we haven't seen this sort of thing from pundits on the right though. Remember Rush saying drug abusers should be locked up for life no excuses? Till it came to light he was one himself.

With Palin though there are so many issues that the hypocrisy is hard to overlook.

Still, there are some prominent right wing pundits that are not in love with or making excuses for Palin. I know I have posted a few articles on these forums from some of them. Even over at the solidly conservative NRO there are those that are questioning her fitness.

When I see people like Phyllis Schlafly, James Dobson, Bill O'Reilly and Rush Limbaugh singing her praises I do shake my head. I guess that a woman is only doing injury to her family by working if she is a liberal. Maybe it has something to do with her spitting out five kids?

Conservative independent women cannot be fema-nazi's I guess either. Abstinence is all you should teach about sex right? Pregnant at 17...why that's fine if you marry the daddy and we can use you as a prop all the while telling people it's a private matter? Private? These are the people that want to tell people what they can and cannot do with their bodies and even what their doctor can discuss with them.

I could go on but I won't. The whole damned thing makes me ill.

OBAMA makes me ill...

No nothing OPRAH propping empty suit = OBAMA!

that is good he makes you ill cause you need to do some purging. Hard to deal with reality sometimes. It was so easy for you when we kept quiet and let you spew your dogma. See how you like it when the shoe is on the other foot.

Hater.

She's a "W" in lipstick