Sunday Palin

I am a student of history and politics, which is for me, a fascinating study for many reasons.

I can think of no other political figure that has inspired so much hate and vitriol as Sarah Palin.

 

 

From the moment that she was announced to be the running mate of John McCain, the outcry began.  I don’t need to recap it all here.  If you’re reading this and not swearing at me, you know what was said.  And if you are reading this and swearing at me, you’re probably repeating it as fast as your lips will allow.

Never mind the fact that many of the complaints were shallow, untrue, or didn’t reflect what the complainer’s real problem with her was, they were said anyway, and repeated ad nauseam, especially by people who had the public’s ear, even if they didn’t have the public’s mind.  And it didn’t stop there.

A media that never spares the horses when it feels obliged to lecture others about their lack of tolerance couldn’t wait to rush to make targets of her family too.

In a campaign where a stern-faced, left leaning object of worship lectured the press about leaving his family alone after his wife made provocative remarks while campaigning for him, the media happily turned and redoubled its scrutiny on Palin’s children, happily reporting rumors that the latest addition to the family was not her’s, finding fault with her daughter Bristol, who had unprotected sex with a publicity seeking, self-centered douchebag, and becoming pregnant in the process (marking one of the rare instances where liberals have considered it bad in recent memory for a teenager to become pregnant out of wedlock…perhaps the real crime was that she didn’t rush to her local Planned Murderhood™ Center to snuff her child in her womb?), and cracking wise with creepy sex jokes about her daughters, a la David Letterman. At least when noted dignitaries and cultural icons like Sandra Bernhard wasn’t on stage talking about how they’d like to see Palin gang-raped by a bunch of black men, showing that nuanced and brilliant wit and tolerance that the left is always telling the rest of us we should have…just like them.

And McCain’s loss in that election didn’t silence these critics.

Think about that. First, I cannot recall a single instance when there has been a single outpouring of sheer, unrefined hatred for a Vice Presidential candidate. From the ferocity of the attacks, if you had just crawled out from under a rock in the last few weeks of the campaign, you’d swear that the ticket had been reversed, based on the reporting that was going on. And then to have it continue after the election had ended? Unprecedented.

Seriously. Between the everlasting meme that “Sarah Palin is Stupid” that was the Left’s default position that has fed the myth of her unelectability repeated in some quarters on the right, you’d think that there would be no need to repeat her name ever again, and that if never given another line of print by the media, she would simply become a footnote in the history of Presidential politics, like Geraldine Ferraro. But if anything, the attacks intensified and continued. No attack too stupid, and no dismissal spoken from one of “ours” too illogical (like Michael Medved’s recent “The only reason she’s a national political figure at all is because she is kind of pretty. If she looked like Olympia Snowe or Susan Collins, do you think anyone would pay attention to her?”) The NYT’s recent “Help us data-mine all of Governor Palin’s emails because the dirt HAS to be there” campaign is only the most recent example that she cannot possibly be as easily dismissed as some want so desperately for us to believe. Why?

Because she turns every single lie the left has tried to enshrine as truth in the last 40 years on its ear.

1. Women can’t be mothers and be fulfilled. Children are an impediment to having a career.

Except when this isn’t true. Which then lead to the contradiction of a few feminists criticizing her mothering skills, and suggesting that she shouldn’t be governor since Bristol managed to get pregnant, and Trig was born. To this, I say, parents would love it if their children would always reflect the wisdom we try to impart upon them, and not do things that we have counseled them against. I know of no account of Bristol’s pregnancy that boiled down to Palin saying to her daughter “Has that ne’er do well knocked you up yet? No? Well drag his ass down to the bedroom! Todd and I can’t wait to be grandparents! C’mon ya little tramp. Start gettin’ busy!”

I didn’t have to be a parent to know two things. First is that no matter how smart your kid may be, or how much might have told them not to do something because of the impact it might have on their life, kids are rebellious. Just ask Billy and Franklin Graham. Second, if teenagers want to have sex, they will find a way, and they will manage to pull it off right under your nose. I used to be a teenager long ago. I know this to be true. And at some point, no matter what you say, or how often you say it, your kids will make their own choices. And that is what happened here. Instead of making lame attempts to berate the Governor, people ought to be noting that she didn’t ramble on in front of an open mic about her grandchild being a punishment to her daughter. As much as the word “Hypocrisy” was tossed around in relation to the matter, very few people in the media took note of the consistency that didn’t have Bristol killing her child, like Barry Sotero would have insisted on for his own children.

2. Sarah Palin exposes the myth of feminist solidarity.

The Governor ran against her own party to get elected to the governorship of her state. You’d think that such a feat would be a victory for women. And you’d be correct. But Sarah Palin also did it not just with the help of her family, which in fact, did not hold her back, but with the help of her husband, who she has remained married to for many, many years. This was in contravention to the declarations of feminists over the past decades, the conventional wisdom of which boiled down to “Children are a burden, and men degrade and demoralize women.” This was the reason for the knee-jerk attacks from the word “Go!”, and why they haven’t let up since. It is the reason why this

was not decried in the strongest terms by women regarded by the left to be leadership figures, and when not applauded by them, at least greeted with the stony silence of tacit approval.

This is the reason why the usual suspects HAVE to destroy her. And this is why they will look the other way when attack dogs like Bernhardt say things that reveal a less-than favorable perception of black men (which would have been denounced as RACISM! thirty seconds after uttered if said by a conservative). That is why they pounce on any remark that strikes them as wrong, such as the Governor’s recent remarks about Paul Revere warning the British about us, even if it is in fact correct, which causes the party to straighten up, and act as if all the cool kids have chosen to wear egg on their face in the same fashion that they are. (And frankly, I like her take on it. It was a time when the world was about to change, in no small part because of the way that we do things here, and ordinary people defied conventional wisdom by standing up to the world’s most powerful military power and saying that things were going to be different. It reveals the thinking of a person who has a fire in their belly that has been long absent in the federal government, and a willingness to take a fresh look at something that hadn’t been seen that way in well…ever.) It’s why pseudo-intellectuals like the insufferable Martin Bashir can wax poetic about how Palin having a flag on the front of her tour bus might possibly be a violation of the US Flag Code without a trace of irony, or reflection on the Obama campaign’s out-and-out defacement of the flag by placing Dear Leader’s countenance on it in the last election.

I don’t know if Sarah Palin is going to run for President. I don’t know if she would. I do know that we owe her a debt of gratitude for first changing the game, and second for making the Left gleefully expose its own inconsistencies and hatreds. The best part is that they still cannot even see it, but the message is most definitely out. And it is spreading.