What Drives the Fear and Loathing of Sarah Palin?

Pajamas Media ^ | Nov. 19 | Victor Davis Hanson

[AJKauf]

The AP supposedly hired 11 fact-checkers to discredit Ms. Palin’s memoir (Did Fox News hire 11 to question the very questionable things found in the two Obama memoirs?)

Bloggers post on Palin’s live interviews minute by minute; few, if any, opponents of Barack Obama do the same.

Every statement she makes is parsed, to prove she is ignorant or parochial—though most of her so-called lapses are the sort of things Biden and Obama are accustomed to committing weekly.

So what?

The list could go on, but two fundamental questions arise:

1) What drives this fear and loathing?

2) How does one, then, assess the Palin phenomenon?

Question one is easy, and we can be systematic in our exegeses:

1. Why does she create hysteria?

i). Feminists are enraged that her can-do, have a Down’s Syndrome child in her 40s, shoot-moose persona will be used as a paradigm of a liberated women. She is quite attractive, fertile, and married to a Jack-Armstrong 19th-century man.

Her success as an independent female, who was an up-from-the-bootstraps small-town council member, mayor, state regulator and governor, is antithetical to doctrinaire feminism.....

[Doogle]

conservatism ..period

[RC2]

Basically...........voters on the left have gotten to the point that they don’t trust honesty.

[Carley]

The only way the left can make themselves greater is if they diminish Sarah.

[AngelesCrestHighway]

What drives the Fear and Loathing of Sarah Palin?....This:

[BunnySlippers]

From my experience, I find that Liberals think that all women [one of their constituencies] have to be Liberal. They do the same thing with blacks.

As to why they do it ith such ferocity I do not know. Perhaps it has to do with the fact that she is so attractive.

[FES0844]

Envy.

[GunningForTheBuddha]

lots of bad ghey

[NeoCaveman]

They are scared of her.

[Daisyjane69]

Loss of institutional control.

This goes for BOTH parties. The Dems don’t want a conservative. And the Repubs don’t want a conservative they don’t control.

Her decade long career in Alaska proves that no one “owns” Palin and that no one can buy her, either.

She ran over Democrats that didn’t work with her; and she jailed corrupt Repubs.

Both sides have a lot to fear from her.

[tgusa]

I think VDH has over-thought this one. In a nutshell, the left sees Sarah as fully ready and capable to be the next RWR, and that spells D-O-O-M to them.

[tiki]

Fear that she will disrupt their communistic agenda.

[Racer1]

Well lets start with the question. What Drives the Fear and Loathing of Sarah Palin?
IMO It seems that no body owns her. That even bothers the dems terribly and some republicans too. To many of the dems and rinos are owned by some org or someone.

[Carl LaFong]

Because she’s everything the left claimed to be about and they’re not.She’s a towering icon mocking their empty philosophy.

[Petronski]

What Drives the Fear and Loathing of Sarah Palin?

Well, in David Frum's case, he's jealous of her shoes.

[The Toll]

It’s simple. They see everything in terms of demographics. EVERYTHING is about race, gender, sexual orientation etc.

They know that white women are the reason Democrats hold any offices at all. They see her as someone that may pull away from their #1 voter base.

[pieceofthepuzzle]

There are clearly a variety of things that drive what borders on hatred for Palin.. One that should not be dismissed is that she is an attractive woman. If she were not attractive there would be much less anger from women on the left. Clearly that's only a part of it, and the biggest issue is that she is a successful woman who dared be successful without adhering to the standard feminist blueprint for being a ‘strong’ woman.

I have to say that as a guy I'm very confused. I've heard women talk about how guys don't like ‘strong’ women, but clearly Palin is one that lots of guys do like. On the other hand, many of the same women who criticize men for not liking ‘strong’ women don't like Palin. This really begs the question of what ‘strong’ means, and what exactly does it mean to be a ‘strong’ woman. Some women that I've discussed this with have pointed to the women on Sex and the City as an example of ‘strong’ self-determining women. I couldn't disagree more. Like I said. I'm confused.

[flash2368]

“Loss of institutional control.”

You nailed it!

I think she is the wooden stake to drive through the hearts of the vampires in both parties and they know it and are in mortal fear.

[AngelesCrestHighway]

also, she can handle a gun better than John Kerry....

[LostInBayport]

1) What drives this fear and loathing?

Fear and jealousy. Liberals fear Palin because she is one of those dreaded "average people" who got where she did in life without using the nepotism, victim or diversity cards. She did not attend an Ivy League school and did not kiss the appropriate rings within the GOP party machine. She is not part of the incestuous politics/media/money club...and doesn't need to be part of it.

Liberals are jealous of Palin --- primarily liberal women --- because she has achieved the goals they sought for themselves and could not achieve: family, career, self-confidence. The fact that she is a Christian (which undoubtedly helped her accomplish all of that) is just salt in their wounds. As for liberal men, they hate Palin because their liberal women tell them to...