Sarah Palin’s New Clothes
Hopefully this will be the first, last, and only time I write about Clothinggate. But strangely, this latest episode in the continuing "As Alaska Turns" soap opera has made me feel a surprising twinge of maternal instinct for Sarah Palin. She's so miserably out of her league that her pathetic rant against McCain-Palin campaign operatives who spilled the beans about her profligate clothing expenditures and other bizarre behavior--whether accurate reports or not-- filled me with an unusual desire to help her out with a little advice from Mom.So, first of all, Sarah, Honey, you gotta understand that when you lie down with dogs, you'll get up with fleas. And those particular political dogs in the party of your choice don't care a whit about you. They didn't allow you to speak when McCain conceded? Why would you have expected otherwise? Silencing women has been part of your party's platform for years now, since they banished Mary Crisp and jettisoned their groundbreaking support for the Equal Rights Amendment. Just like the expensive clothes they bought you, you were window dressing for the Republicans' desperate atempt to hold onto their power, Joe or Jane the Plumber and all the rest of us, including you, be damned. Second, realize that the mouths that roared about you are one of three types: **Those who thought putting you on the ticket was a mistake from the start **Those who have their own political future to promote and don't want you in the way **Those who are just the run of the mill embittered, angry losers and lash out at you because you're convenient: the most obvious of many wrong decisions John McCain made, the best media-bait, and frankly because you've made yourself a highly visible target.Or maybe it's all of the above--and also as you would say in your imitable way of sucking up airtime when you have no idea what the answer to the question is. Perhaps now that you have time, Alaska being a fairly small state to govern, you'll read the many comments of feminists and former Clinton supporters here on Heartfeldt. Talk to them. Learn why your future will be better served by becoming aligned with the more progressive and pro-woman part of your own party, or perhaps even the Democrats. Because just possibly you can see now all that drivel you've been fed about how women have full equality and equal treatment already wasn't exactly true. Face it. You've hitched your political wagon to the wrong horse. Those guys just wanted you when it was useful to them to have a fresh faced red-meat anti-choice woman shilling to and for their patriarchal base. Do you get that now? I hope you've learned a few other lessons from the experience too. Like maybe greater empathy for all us other women whose rights and choices you've opposed. You're young, smart, and power hungry. You'll do fine in the future either as a politician or talk show host. Katha Pollitt has written this "sayonara" that will really annoy you, but you and I know this isn't good-bye. But, listen to me, Sarah. Think about it. And don't let yourself get caught again up on your high horse like the emperor, with or without your towel.
GLORIA FELDT is the New York Times bestselling author of several books including No Excuses: 9 Ways Women Can Change How We Think About Power, a sought-after speaker and frequent contributor to major news outlets, and the Co-Founder and President of Take The Lead. People has called her “the voice of experience,” and among the many honors she has been given, Vanity Fair called her one of America’s “Top 200 Women Legends, Leaders, and Trailblazers,” and Glamour chose her as a “Woman of the Year.”
As co-founder and president of Take The Lead, a leading women’s leadership nonprofit, her mission is to achieve gender parity by 2025 through innovative training programs, workshops, a groundbreaking 50 Women Can Change The World immersive, online courses, a free weekly newsletter, and events including a monthly Virtual Happy Hour program and a Take The Lead Day symposium that reached over 400,000 women globally in 2017.
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HA! This is some of the best advice I’ve heard for SP yet. GO GLORIA – YOU TELL HER!
Debbie-
Palin’s Today Show interview and aggressive positioning of herself at the Republican Governors’ conference signals that she isn’t going to back off. MY guess is part of it is that she’s so angry about the damage done to her reputation and wants revenge, but the other part is simply she is a politically ambitious woman. I wonder about the source of her ambition, and what she wants to accomplish.
What do you or others think?