What is it about Sarah Palin?
She causes far more irrational hatred on the left than she does any sort of love, rational or irrational, on the right.
In 2008, we had two candidates for national office who were a little shy in the experience department. One, a candidate for President, had never served in any executive position, had never authored any significant legislation and had never bucked the corrupt political machine to which he had been a loyal servant. He was famous for ducking the hard issues and his only achievement had been a pair of narcissistic autobiographies.
The other, a Vice Presidential candidate, had spent her entire adult life in executive positions, in the private sector and in local and state government. In her short time in public service, she took on Big Oil and won and she stood up to a corrupt political machine in her own party and defeated it.
Guess who the media attacked for inexperience?
The most intriguing thing is that this visceral hatred comes from women on the left, not the men. Liberal men will generally make a crack about her intellect, or more frequently, about her physical attributes (Michelle Bachman suffers from this leftwing sexism, too), but they seem amused more than anything else. On the right, men and women alike seem to admire her (not least, in some cases, because she knows her way around a rifle and a helicopter simultaneously), but they don’t surrender to the disturbing fanaticism to which so many people on the left succumbed about Candidate Obama in 2008.
But get a woman on the left talking about Sarah Palin and you get blind, irrational hatred, hatred so intense that her opponents do and say truly stupid things. For instance, Jill Abramson became the first female editor of The New York Times in history. What was her first decision in that role? Why, it was to bestow the Times’ shrinking readership with Junior Joe McCarthy badges and send them trolling through 25,000 pages of official Alaska State documents to look for any dirt on Mrs. Palin they can find. “Mrs. Palin, are you now or were you ever a card carrying member of the NRA?”
Ask a woman on the left what she objects to about Mrs. Palin and, if you get any sort of a coherent answer, it is usually an attack on her intellect, Granted that Mrs. Palin can sometimes provide supporting evidence to that effect, but much less so than Barbara Boxer, Nancy Pelosi, Barrack Obama or, especially, Joe Biden (you can always tell if the Administration isn’t serious about a subject because it will put Joe in charge; here is a guy who got punished in college for plagiarism and is so incapable of learning from his mistakes that he spent years in public office plagiarizing other politicians’ speeches; if memory serves, he was caught out on this because of a speech he gave about working in the Welsh coalmines which he stole from a British MP).
One would think that Mrs. Palin would get a break from feminists. She is, after all, one of the very few female politicians who didn’t get into office on the strength of her husband, either by riding on his coat tails like Mrs. Clinton or by being bankrolled by him (and don’t look too carefully into his business practices) like Mrs. Pelosi. Mrs. Palin shows that she can think for herself and doesn’t want membership at the Old Boy’s Club. She rose from an underprivileged background and showed that she can operate in a man’s world without giving up her femininity, her principles or her independence.
And that may be part of the problem. Modern feminism is perfectly content to be the Ladies’ Auxiliary of the Democratic Party. Sometimes they are kamikaze pilots for the Party, willing to sacrifice Sisterhood and their own reputations to provide cover for deviant Democratic politicians with woman problems.
Feminism wasn’t about changing the world or making it a kinder gentler place, after all. It was about getting yourself a seat at the table to get your share of the spoils and to preserve the new status quo as fiercely as any reactionary. It has been reported that 20% of the Obamacare waivers were given to employers in Nancy Pelosi’s Congressional District (when she pushed through an increase in minimum wages in 2007, the bill also mysteriously exempted the largest employer in her District). The idea that Mrs. Palin would actually stand up to Big Oil and try to undermine a corrupt political machine to change the status quo is therefore anathema to them. Like the flower children of the 60’s with their faux revolutionary rhetoric and their eye on the main chance, the elites on the left use their populism to make themselves rich. Upsetting the apple cart is the last thing on their minds.
There is also an aspect of jealousy. Imagine Libby, the Liberal Lawyer, with an Ivy League law degree and a job at a big law firm, growing old before her time as a result of twenty years of long office hours and short term relationships. She has elbowed her way to the table, but where is the Hollywood glamor? It’s all just chicken salad sandwiches around the conference room table at 10 o’clock at night, proofreading documents until she can’t see straight. Suddenly, here comes this lively, happy outdoorsy woman your age (but looking half it) – from the University of Idaho! – Governor of a State, with a good looking and loyal husband straight out of a “chick lit” movie. It’s bad enough to discover in middle age that you’re just another working schlub, but it’s absolutely humiliating to find that someone way ahead of you who took the route you didn’t take.
Personally, Mrs. Palin’s resignation discouraged me from supporting her for further public office. In a classic “The Empire Strikes Back” gambit, the corrupt Republican machine of Alaska filed bogus ethics charge after bogus ethics charge against her. The media, as always the poodle for the rich, powerful and corrupt, treated these charges with a seriousness they did not deserve. Mrs. Palin, forced to hire lawyers out of her own funds to defend herself, resigned. The bogus charges miraculously evaporated and the crooks regained power.
One can sympathize with Mrs. Palin. It is hard enough to stand up to a powerful group of corrupt men, but it is almost impossible to do so with the media against you. Almost, but not entirely, impossible and like an old fashioned showdown, she owed it to the country, her beliefs, her constituents and herself to fight back. She should have used her conservative supporters to organize a defense fund like Democrats always do when they’re caught with their pants down. Once she defeated one or two of these ethics charges, she should have appointed special prosecutors to hound these crooks to the end of the earth. There were plenty of grounds: malicious prosecution, conspiracy, interference with a public official, filing false charges and so forth. The fake charges against her would have been withdrawn faster than they did when she had resigned. Better yet, the machine would never have been able to stage a comeback. Ultimately, Mrs. Palin proved herself to be just another country club Republican, bringing a tennis racket to a gunfight.
As always, however, the media shot itself in the foot. The early returns from the witchhunt show a hard working Governor with a firm grasp of energy issues whose strongest language is “sheesh!” Worse yet, they show her to be willing to work with Democrats, going so far as to praise a speech on energy policy by then-Presidential candidate Barrack Obama. Does that mean the media will concede the high ground to her? Of course not. The Atlantic recently published a story expressing surprise that such an effective and bipartisan executive became such a partisan after she ran for Vice President. The new party line among the media has picked up The Atlantic’s thesis and that will be the New Truth.
Why doesn’t it occur to these dunderheads with press cards that they discourage bipartisanship by being intensely partisan themselves?
And they think Sarah Palin is dumb.
Thomas F. Berner
www.WeThePeopleBlog.net
comments@wethepeopleblog.net
