The XX Factor: What women really think.

A Cokehead?

So Sarah Palin's oldest son, Track, was mainlining OxyContin, reports the National Enquirer, and ingesting many other illegal substances. His tour of duty was meant to get him away from all the partying, according to a string of anonymous friends. Some national hero. If Sarah Palin were anyone else, conservatives would be saying the obvious: pregnant teenage daughter, coke-sniffing son—well, what do you expect, when their mother works so much?

Actually, the Palin family is a psychological study in the impermeability of information. When someone has so deeply penetrated the national psyche, even our dreams, as my own husband confesses, no amount of fact-finding will change our impressions. Affairs, incest, dead grandmother in the closet. You get the impression it won't make a whit of difference. For some large portion of white women (including, apparently, Camille Paglia), Sarah Palin is the next American folk hero. It's like trying to truth-squad Daniel Boone. Who cares about the details?  

One of my many depressed Obama-supporting friends suggests a tidy solution: Repeal the 19th Amendment.