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Thank God our country now has bigger and better things to think about than calculating the precise degree of Sarah Palin’s venality, ignorance, and greed. Did she bilk the RNC of $150,000 in her shopping sprees, or was it tens of thousands more? (The paper trail will eventually emerge on that one, now that lawyers are descending on Alaska to confiscate the gladrags.) Is she so dim she doesn’t know Africa is a continent, or only so dim she can’t name a single newspaper or magazine she’s ever read? Did she violate ethics laws in pursuing the firing of her ex-brother-in-law, or did her petty, nepotistic despotism remain within perfectly legal bounds? Guess what: We no longer have to care! To paraphrase Jon Stewart talking about Karl Rove the other night: Sarah Palin can’t hurt me anymore.
Unless … can’t you see Palin emerging as the leader of a splinter hard-right group, possibly even a third party? A perverse part of me—the part that enjoyed this endless campaign’s operatic grotesquerie–sort of wishes she would run in ’12, because if she did manage to get the nomination (which, as Anne observes, good friggin’ luck), she would have to debate Barack Obama, which would make for one of the most entertaining spectacles American politics has ever seen.
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Anne and Emily: I was as riveted as you by Carl Cameron’s breathless dishing—as well as by O’Reilly's almost palpable desire to smash him in the face on live television—but I couldn’t help but balk a little at the substance of the McCain campaign's criticisms: Palin is described as colossally stupid. And a diva (prone to tantrums and throwing things). And someone who opens her hotel room door in just a bathrobe (inappropriately sexual) and also a shopaholic who already had far too many clothes to begin with. Just wondering if the sexism threaded through all that doesn’t make it a little less juicy and a lot more worrisome?
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I agree, Anne, that the gleeful details being spread by McCain’s staff about Sarah Palin’s Ali G-like geographical bewilderment, her temper tantrums, and refusal to accept interview preparation are particularly juicy. Let's accept all this is true—aren't McCain’s own people making the argument for why McCain deserved to lose? Their guy, who is 72 and has had melanoma almost as many times as Larry King has been married, picked Palin after a couple of brief conversations. The staff's “now it can be told” eviscerating of her actually makes the campaign look as if it was trying to perpetrate a fraud on the public.
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Dana, I also noticed the lack of any mention of Hillary in Barack's speech. There was another notable absence, too. Early in the speech, Barack spoke about how last night's results were an "answer" to those who doubted America's democracy. He then said: "It's the answer spoken by young and old, rich and poor, Democrat and Republican, black, white, Hispanic, Asian, Native American, gay, straight, disabled and not disabled." Well, hello. How odd not to mention "women and men" in this list, since that division speaks to the only other historically significant part of this election year: Namely, a woman almost became the presidential nominee. Granted, Obama later spoke about Ann Nixon Cooper's having borne witness to not only the advent of civil rights but the suffrage of women. Still, I wished that he had given a nod to women in that early part of the speech—especially since his message all along has been about unity and healing.
That's the only kvetching I'll do. Last night, I stood in Grant Park with hundreds of thousands of other Americans and found myself experiencing a wave of patriotism and pride as never before. When CNN announced Obama had won, strangers hugged and kissed; black men and white men shook hands; and when the speech was over the crowd rolled down Michigan Avenue, slightly dazed and narcotized with joy. Spontaneous cheers broke out ever few minutes, whenever an El train went by, with the energetic unity Whitman described in his healing paean to democracy, Song of Myself, a poem written at a moment of cultural divisiveness rivaling the one we just lived through.
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This whole debate about Lafferty's piece in the Daily Beast raises a question for me: Does it matter whether Palin is a feminist or not? Isn't it possible that she could be a net benefit for feminism without being one? I, too, am bothered by Palin's politics on a number of women-related issues, from abortion to abstinence-only sex ed. But before I go to the "she's terrible for feminism" place, I think of two 9-year-old girls I know, and I try to see this from their perspective. This is the first election they're really going to remember. And what they'll remember is that Hillary Clinton very nearly was the Democratic presidential candidate and that Sarah Palin was a dynamic, funny, personable VP candidate. Hopefully, they'll come of age thinking such an accomplishment for women is, if not normal, at least possible. Hopefully, they WON'T remember this campaign as the moment they realized there's a profound double standard for women--namely, that female candidates are criticized with more vigor than male candidates.
The problem that Lafferty doesn't acknowledge, alas, is that all these issues are tied together. It has to be fair for liberal feminists to criticize Palin on the basis of her positions, as Emily points out. At the same time, though, there's plenty of latent sexism tinging the discourse. Lafferty lumps all this together, which doesn't help further the debate. No doubt Palin is smart; but what troubles a lot of voters is whether she's intellectually curious and whether she's open to debate and advice. And as Ann pointed out, deeming a woman a "brainiac" after one plane ride smacks of overcompensation.
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Last week I asked XX Factor's male readers to weigh in with thoughts about the suit Joe Biden wore to the VP debate. I was trying to see if we could redirect our dissection of Sarah Palin's wardrobe—to see whether men pay as much attention to male candidates' clothes as we were paying to Palin's. The unscientific answer is: yes. (Of course, this has nothing to do with what one feels about the sticker price of Palin's wardrobe. Not to mention the cost of her makeup artist.) Most of you thought Biden's suit probably cost about $1,000, observing that it was not a "bespoke" suit and that similar suits at Brooks Brothers cost a grand or so. But many of you pointed out, too, that it could easily be in the upper end of that range, costing as much as $5,000.
Some pointed observations along the way: One reader wrote that he found the cost of Palin's wardrobe shocking because he "expected that, as governor, she would already have some clothes that were acceptable for the campaign trail." Another thought the fuss over Palin wasn't particularly gendered; just think of the hoopla over John Edwards' $400 haircut. (Great comparison: He noted that if you got a $400 haircut every day for a year you'd still be about two weeks shy of spending $150,000. It sure can cost a lot to dress yourself as a woman—but sheesh, you gotta work to spend $150,000.)
A third reader said he didn't think that we'd ever spend this much time thinking about a man's wardrobe because we're "culturally conditioned to almost instinctively believe certain things about people based on their gender." And we pay more attention to women's clothes: Even places like Target and so on have more big-label names designing down-market fashion for women than they have for men. Yet another reader took this point even further, noting that men can wear a suit over and over where women can't. He calculated that Biden's outfit would cost $2,500 or so from Hickey Freeman (where Biden has said he likes to shop). But he noted that it can be worn over and over as a "uniform," where Palin's dresses can't. Ah, well. Did Hillary solve this all with the pantsuit, yet another wondered. What seemed frumpy now looks pragmatic.
Many thanks to all who wrote in. I know much more about men's clothes than I did five days ago.
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Now wait a second. Just because that poster (in which cute hipster girls threaten to withhold sex unless their prospective partners vote Obama) has its roots in classical literature doesn’t mean that its vision of women's political power isn’t retrograde and sexist. Last I heard, women in ancient Greece had the same social status as slaves. Maybe this is a generational division, which I guess would put me, at 42, in the frowny-old-crone camp. But this idea of women as the coy vestal guardians of their own, er, temples, which will be tendered only in exchange for some sufficiently valuable transaction? Whether the object accepted in exchange is a vote for Obama, an end to the Peloponnesian wars, or a Fifth Avenue penthouse from Mr. Big, isn’t that vision of male-female relations just a little depressing?
To the extent I care about this poster at all (and really, I don’t—it seems like any neighborhood where its aesthetic would go over is already solidly pro-Obama anyway), I’d have to say, along with Salon’s (wonderful) Rebecca Traister, that it kind of makes me want to drown myself. Anyone care to toss me a lifesaver and drag me to shore?
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