I think by now it’s been well established that Sarah Palin was a brilliant choice for the vice presidency, if the criteria for “brilliance” was to appeal to die-hard conservatives just obtuse enough to forget that, darn it, they generally haven’t been defenders of women, especially mothers of small children, in leadership. Pretty women with a lot of charisma can muddle the mind, I suppose, even of the most stalwart GOP patriarch.
But if the criteria for the Palin choice was something like demonstrating John McCain’s judgment, or choosing an able and worthy successor to him, or even establishing GOP concern for equality and diversity, it was an irredeemable failure. So, too, is the Republican’s newfound concern about sexism, a societal horror that evidently has reached its historical apex in the questioning by anyone of Palin’s record, competence, views on domestic and foreign policy, experience, and ability to lead the most powerful nation in the world.
It’s “disappointing,” the Right says, that the “liberal” media would treat Palin this way, raising questions about her experience as governor of a small state and mayor of a town 1/20th the size of Barack Obama’s state senate district in Illinois. It’s “shocking” that her family’s lives should be put under a media microscope, as if Palin herself were unaware that she had these kids or that husband until the folks at MSNBC reunited them. It’s “a sad day in America” when a woman who’s been handed her position on the GOP ticket because she’s a woman — does anyone seriously question that? — has to defend her qualifications? Or, conversely, it’s a great day in America, now that the first woman president may well be Sarah Palin, a woman whose politics do very little to uphold and enhance the status of women?
This newfound commitment to women’s progress, this nascent hatred of sexism, is a little like the ex-Socialist who, after winning a few million in the lottery, plunges into wealth and materialism with an enthusiasm unabated by his prior condemnation thereof. And who would blame him? The difference is that our hypothetical wealthy former Marxist is a small, singular voice — and even then, decent enough to recognize the hypocrisy of it all. The GOP, on the other hand, is acting like the newly rich lottery winner, gaudily and shamelessly hawking the virtue of a new lifestyle, unearned and undeserved, with nary a concern for the inconsistencies around him. It’s their moment in the spotlight, and I suppose that if I were tasked with having to defend the Palin nomination, I’d search frantically for cover, too.
But I’m not about to defend her nomination, and, as a feminist — for all of my life, even when it hasn’t gone well for me because of it — I condemn it wholeheartedly. It does “the cause” no good whatsoever when an unqualified woman is handed a position or opportunity she doesn’t deserve, and it brings about in me not even a little bit of pride that a sister is so close to making history. Sarah Palin is not my sister, except in the ecclesiastical church culture we evidently share, and her success on the ticket represents nothing to me but defeat — defeat for the cause of women’s equality, defeat for the struggling seedling of common sense and intelligence in this nation, and defeat for the thousands of women who remain mired in inequality and oppression yet are told to celebrate that “one of us” has made it.
Make no mistake here. Sarah Palin “made it” as Governor of Alaska, certainly, regardless of the wisdom or lack thereof of the electorate. But she’s not “making it” here. She’s being made to be a trick pony, a cheerleader, a symbol of vacuity and vituperation, and a fool. The only thing her nomination says is that John McCain is a man of naked cynicism and horrendous judgment, and I find that hard to celebrate.
Next up . . . a country under judgment and the Presidency of George W. Bush