Dartblog

Both Camile Paglia and Anne Kornblut published pieces today that make no mention whatever of lipstick or barnyard fauna. They both have substantially the same thesis: Golly, isn’t Sarah Palin something? (That’s a sketchy translation, from their more learned cants.)

One wants to appreciate both pieces. But is she indeed “something?” It should occur to Dartblog readers that Sarah Palin is not to be marveled at. Far from a firecracker, or a phoenix, satyress, lipsticked cochon—far from these things, Sarah Palin is the election’s great jug of Pepto Bismol. She has soothed the bruised parts of our minds that have been assaulted, mostly by Hillary Clinton and her fakirs, on the subject of sexism. Employed skillfully by universities and ink-stained wretches the nation over, sexism, n., is a very bad thing which posits the utter inferiority of womankind. But that’s the dictionary definition, the prescription. The description of sexism, of course, is the act of wantonly disagreeing with far leftists on one or more public policy matters.

Sarah Palin, bless her woman’s heart, has merely by being herself had the effect of defusing a lot of the tripe (old, stinking tripe!) surrounding sexism and ‘gender.’ Why? Precisely because she looks, thinks, speaks, and behaves a lot more like the average feminist than the fulminating martinets at the helm of the Gender Studies departments. Barack Obama is miles removed from being the post-partisan politico, and Hillary Clinton is, when it comes to feminism, about as on-the-nose, as crudely obvious about it as possible. But Sarah Palin lives feminism in the way that John McCain lives patriotism. It’s a genuine, bona fide ticket the G.O.P. is offering this year, apple pie to the Democrats’ crème fraîche. And that is why, per The Washington Post and Anne Kornblut, “Palin [Is] Energizing Women From All Walks of Life.”

May I add just one quotation, to prove the point? Quoted by Kornblut, here is Amy Klobuchar, Democrat Senator from Minnesota, explaining how the ordinary center-right Palin feminists must be dealt with: “I think it’s our job to show the truth. They are more focused on an agenda than a gender.”

More focused on an agenda than on ‘a gender.’ I think American women will take that happily.

P.S. In City Journal, Kay Hymowitz insists that Sarah Palin is neither pretender feminist nor post-feminist, but rather a red-state feminist.