Posted on 09/09/2008 11:13:39 AM PDT by nickcarraway
Sarah Palin may be today’s Elvis, but that doesn’t mean she’ll be the Queen. Vice presidential nominees rarely change the course of presidential politics, and despite last week’s Google records, Palin may well take her place in the nation’s large pantheon of would-be veeps whose names history has forgotten. Still, beware of underestimating Palinsanity, as blogger Ann Althouse has described the storm of comment that the Alaskan governor has aroused. Whatever Palin’s political impact, her cultural significance is profound. For better and for worse, she introduces a new and likely long-running cultural type to the national stage—the red-state feminist.
Of course, the feminist commentariat, primarily coastal and upper-middle-class, has been quick to deny that Palin is any sort of feminist at all. Yes, Palin can boast political success, activism, authority, and self-confidence in front of an audience of 37 million, and, though less widely discussed (perhaps because so profoundly envied), an egalitarian marriage of the sort that has become the foundational principle of feminist utopia. But in most other respects, especially her position on abortion, she has struck female media types as something more like the Anti-Feminist. She is a “humiliation for America’s women” (Judith Warner for the New York Times) and a tool of the “patriarchs” (Gloria Steinem for the Los Angeles Times).
But the crucial point here is that Palin never wanted to be part of Steinem’s club, and in that respect she speaks for many of her sex. The large majority of women—surveys have put the number at somewhere around 75 percent—shy away from calling themselves feminists, even while supporting some movement goals like equal pay. The primary reason for their coyness: feminism’s ambivalence at best, and hostility at worst, toward motherhood and marriage. The refuseniks may or may not remember that Betty Friedan described full-time motherhood as a “waste of human self” and home as a “comfortable concentration camp.” They may or may not be able to quote Steinem on fish and bicycles. But on some level they understand that the framework of establishment feminism has motherhood, and often marriage, as the menacing 300-pound security guard whom men have hired to stand in the way of women’s achievement.
Palin represents a red-state version of feminism that completely deconstructs this framework. Sure, part of the red staters’ identification with Palin is a matter of lifestyle. Blue-state feminists live in big cities and suburbs; Palin lives in South Podunk. Blue staters’ kids play soccer; Palin’s play hockey. They have WAR IS NOT THE ANSWER bumper stickers; she’s a member of the NRA. They dine on sushi; she eats salmon that she caught and gutted. If you’re an Iowa toll collector married to a refrigerator repairman, Palin may well be your gal by reason of her origin and leisure activities alone.
But central to Palin’s red-state appeal is her earthy embrace of motherhood. She differs from mainstream feminists in that her sexuality and fecundity are not in tension with her achievement and power. If anything, they rise out of them. Instead of holding her back, her five children embody her energy, competence, authority, and optimism. Maybe she’s annoyed at the way the First Dude, as her husband calls himself, forgets to fold the laundry or call the pediatrician, but she’s not going to make a federal case—make that an Alaskan state case—out of it. “She’s a real woman, she’s a real feminist but she’s not strident—she’s like us,” Cheryl Hauswirth, a middle-aged mother from Wisconsin, told Politico writer Jonathan Martin. “She’s strong, powerful and opinionated, all the things a woman should be, while still retaining her femininity, her womanhood.”
The contrast with Hillary Clinton couldn’t be starker. For much of her career, though less so since she became a senator, Clinton was in a defensive crouch vis à vis her sex—a tendency symbolized by her frequent changes in hairstyle, which often seemed as though planned by the Committee to Elect HRC. (Palin’s hair usually looks like she was putting it up with her left hand while spreading mayo on the kids’ school sandwiches with her right.) In fact, Clinton’s persona in general struck many as forced, a product manufactured for public consumption and driven by a combination of ambition and wariness of those who might question her life choices. When during the 1992 presidential campaign she snarked about not being the type to bake chocolate-chip cookies, she revealed a contempt for women primarily focused on their husband and children. It was a comment that red-state types never forgot.
To be fair, some of Clinton’s defensiveness was generational. She clearly adored her own daughter. But during the emergence of Second Wave feminism, women were either wearing aprons or reading briefs; the two identities seemed at war with another. Palin grew up in a generation more at ease with the idea that women could bring the class cupcakes and still run a spreadsheet. The larger problem was that Clinton’s ambition—not to mention its tie to her marriage—seemed grasping and calculated. Red staters love the fact that Palin’s activism grew out of her motherhood. She wasn’t looking to be a big shot; she didn’t even seem to aspire to “have a career.” In their eyes, she’s simply a mother who wanted to make life better for her kids, her neighbors, and as it followed naturally, even organically, her fellow Alaskans.
Still, whatever the appeal of red-state feminism, it should bring no comfort to anyone in favor of a more mature political culture. Red staters share with their blue-state counterparts a tendency to sentimentalize and trivialize politics. They heighten the salience of Lifetime Television–style personal stories and gossip. They reduce candidates to personalities, lifestyles, and gonads. Some blue staters got behind Clinton because she was a woman; red staters want to vote for Palin because she’s a mom. Both positions are misguided. Multitasking your kids’ homework and dinner is nothing like weighing contradictory advice from your advisors for a decision that will change world history, and estrogen levels do not correlate with experience, judgment, and wisdom. In the long run, the blurring of celebrity and politics hurts everyone, women and men.
Kay S. Hymowitz is a contributing editor of City Journal and the William E. Simon Fellow at the Manhattan Institute. Her latest book is Marriage and Caste in America.
They better be careful. The American people might just canonize Gov. Palin. Saint Sarah.........kinda has a good ring to it....don’t ya think?
I don't think this is true at all.
I'll vote for her because of her ideas.
But it is true that the blue staters hate her because she's a mom.
My advice to you is not to underestimate just how fed up many of us ‘out here’ are with Washington and politics in general. Many of us are at the point of desperation. We are ready for change, the kind of change that will assure our great nation of another 200 years of leading the the world.
Like Rumsfeld said, you fight the war with the army you got. Well, we've gotta fight this war with what we've got, and right now in large part that Sarah! Sarah! Sarah!. I (literally) thank God for sending us this bright area on the horizon. I doubt you media types realize just how dark the horizon was for us conservative before that bright flash and her sudden appearance.
Yes, we are very prone to over doing it and making her to us what liberals have made Obama to them. But I think we're working with a much better seed stock!
BIG difference between Hillery and Sarah.
Todd (supporter of his wife and his family) VS. Bill (supporter of Bill).
Yeah, not so much. This lady has made a permanent impact. She's here to stay. After veep, she's going to make it to the White House. It's going to be Palin/Pence 2016 & 2020, Pence/Jindal 2024 & 2028, Jindal/? 2032.............
I think the blogger is essentially correct in the sense that Women who weren’t really political now will be due to Sarah Palin’s presence on the ticket.
Should be interesting to see how this manifests itself politically, if the massive turnout for Sarah Palin happens in the manner I suspect, a new political force will emerge..
What that will mean no one can say right now.
You wish, Kay. Millions of women believe just the opposite because they've "multitasked" family, work, church, and community just fine. It doesn't mean they wouldn't like a day alone in a bubble bath, but they know it can be done. And that snarky comment about estrogen levels doesn't work either - there are many thousands of women who own and operate their own businesses and don't consider their "estrogen levels" to be a liability. Bitter old feminist hag.
Piper is simply adorable. :)
I know some guys who were talking about her the other day because (they said) “She’s a babe.”
This probably wouldn’t have happened with Hillary or her running mate, Helen Thomas.
I guess every man has his reason. :>)
My partner (and wife of 35 years) and I discuss all the major decisions. We each seek out the other's point of view. It has created a powerful team. Where one is stronger, the other becomes the supporting actor. It works. After I retired, my partner decided that she wanted to fulfill her dream of getting into law enforcement. I fully supported her. she went through the Federal law Enforcement Training Center at age 55 and finished despite being seriously injured in training. She has the HEART OF A LION. Her only handicap is that she's very petite. She even overcomes that by doing things differently than say I would. What a woman!!! I smile every time I think of her.
That's how I see Sarah Palin. She must truly terrify those who stake everything on "feminism" the way Gloria Steinem would describe it.
Andrea Dworkin 
Betty Friedan
Robin Morgan
and lest I forget, Helen Thomas 
Would I be right to say Robin Morgan takes the trophy for beauty queen ?
She certainly performed one bona fide miracle—not only will I vote for McCain, I even donated to him.
The disruptive powers of excessive national fecundity may have played a greater part in bursting the bonds of convention than either the power of ideas or the errors of autocracy.
- John Maynard Keynes (1883–1946)
Politics. Never say never and There’s a first time for
everything. THIS is the year McCain’s VP will sweep the
GOP into the White House ... again.
What ignorance this statement displays!
The Sarah Palins in the red states absolutely do not have "a tendency to sentimentalize and trivialize politics." Rather, they tend to give great significance to politics by, in many cases, taking on the home schooling of their children in order to teach them the ideas of freedom embodied in their Declaration of Independence and Constitution; they serve in PTA's, on school boards, City Councils, Boards of County Commissioners, and they treasure the underlying idea of their nation's liberty by understanding it is the idea of Creator-endowed life and liberty that makes rights "unalienable" for each citizen.
This writer displays an amazingly naive and condescending attitude in her reference to "a more mature political culture."
She should read Alexis de Tocqueville's 1830's treatise on "Democracy in America." His observations about the citizens of the American backwoods possessing more intellectual abiliity than could be observed in all of the "mature political culture" (as she calls it) of France might enlighten her small, provincial worldview.
Yeah, Rush called her a babe back in February.
And I agree completely with Rush and with the guys you know.
But her composure, speaking ability and her conservative common sense are gifts we need to celebrate.
Go Sarah!
Guess he must have met someone from a small village like Wasilla!
BUMP
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