Posted on 09/05/2008 9:56:29 PM PDT by Lorianne
I called my husband hours before the Vice Presidential Nominee Sarah Palin was to speak before the Republican convention. I asked him how many kids she had. Five, he said without missing a beat. How many does McCain have? No clue, he said. Romney? He caught on quick (he's used to these pop-quiz phone calls).
He said, well, wait, Palin's been in the news, blah blah, and I said, save your breath. I had no clue either just how many kids John McCain had, and I had absolutely no excuse: I had written TV news for a decade when four of his kids were still quite young.
I probably wrote about the candidate, oh, a hundred times, ranging from tiny mentions to longer stories. And why didn't I know how many kids he has? Because, of course, he is a man. And no one asks those questions of a man.
If you are wondering, he has a total of seven kids, and the four youngest were born during his early days in the Senate. How did he ever manage to "do it all"?
Consider this my open apology to the Alaska Governor for reacting like a Victorian prig on word of her selection as McCain's running mate. Truly, my first thought was "doesn't she have a baby? And one with Down's Syndrome?" Then I thought, "wait, she has four other kids TOO?"
After that came the next wave of pernicious speculating, after it was revealed that her teenaged daughter is pregnant. "Isn't she going to have to clean up that mess too?"
Now, granted, I do have one mitigating factor for this incredibly sexist line of interrogation for the VP nominee. Palin has aggressively billed herself as a mom, and so thinking of her in that role is inevitable.
But that is no excuse. Questions about who's doing drop-off and pick-up, who is changing the diapers, who is in charge of the kids are ones that never enter my mind with a male politician. I call myself a feminist or something like it, but who am I kidding?
think I would have been less inclined to internally grill Palin before I had kids. Now that I'm a parent, my sexist attitudes spring not just from preconceived notions, but from the reality that I see day in, day out.
It's not just some ill-founded impression we all have about women and their double burden of home-life responsibility. It is the reality. The women on average are quite literally cleaning up the messes, even if they are working just as much as the man.
And I am complicit in this inequity all the time, because I enable the fathers. As a room parent at my son's school last year, did I demand the fathers' email addresses along with the mothers'? Nope. When I recently wanted to set up a play-date with my son's friend, did I get in touch with Dad, even though Mom works just as hard, if not harder? Nope. If some child has his shirt on inside out, or has grimy fingernails, do I ever secretly tsk tsk Dad? Nope.
And who do I blame in my own home if clothes remain unwashed, or toddler teeth unbrushed? I blame myself, of course, even when my highly-evolved husband insists that he dropped the ball too.
So I congratulate Governor Palin, and the fact that as a working mom she didn't tsk tsk herself out of her own ambitions. She doesn't need another finger wagging in her face. And from now on, this finger-wagger will be sitting on her hands.
Linda Keenan is a contributing writer at Burbia. Linda worked 7 years as a head writer/senior producer for various programs on CNN. Before that she worked as a writer/producer for Bloomberg TV. She now writes satire, primarily about parenting culture, at Thoroughly Modern Mommy ...
Wait just a second. I was alive and my eyes were open during the JFK presidency. The press was agog over Caroline and John John, reporting each and every visit they made to the oval office. Dad always found time to entertain them, and even have them photographed.
To a democrat an asset can be described as anything that would be a liability to a republican.
LOL
And now the brilliant and omnipotent Obama is dispatching a horde of liberal has-been nags to do his fighting for him in battleground states.
What a pimp. What a wuss. What a total fake.
What I wouldn’t give to see Sarah Palin walk up to him on live TV and make him cringe. Not hit him, or even speak to him. Just give him that steely, moose hunting, look. A look that says, “Hold still, I’m sighting you in my cross hairs.”
Just the mental image of him averting his gaze and mumbling something incoherent does my soul good. The man is such a punk, I can’t believe that anyone still takes him seriously.
Don’t kid yourself. They’re trying to redeem themselves simply so they can attack. They aren’t objective and they’ll never be objective.
It's my belief that within 2-3 weeks Hillary will be at the top of their ticket and Obami on the bottom. The wispers among the party elders are going on now.
My experience is that the Sergeants will make sure that problem is taken care of.
Well, yes, there are always dinosaurs roaming about aren't there? Not much they can do but grumble, so I don't worry about them. Dinosaurs have small brains and can't think strategically, poor dears :)
Ha ha! Great Coulter quote!
Exactly, Olivia! Every family makes their own choice. If she becomes vice president, the younger kids have Daddy as well as whoever else will be available. I am sure there is room for Granny or a Nanny as well to help Dad in the VP mansion.
Nice to see you.
I did the math. As a original Reagan Democrat, I think this new generation of crossovers are going to tower over us Reagan Dems in numbers. Big Time!
Think about it. They got the web, we didn't, They have a way to communicate with each other, we didn't. They have talk radio, we didn't.
if Sarah were a leftist woman they’d never have said diddly
it’s not just because she’s a woman
it’s because she’s a conservative woman
how strongly white women vote generally determines an election
married white women with children have favored GOP for decades
it’s when you toss in those unmarried w/o kids where it gets dicey
Excellent points!
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