Vol. 73/No. 28      July 27, 2009

In fact, Palin was a businesswoman before she became governor, and later nominated as the Republican 2008 vice-presidential nominee. Her policies are no more pro-working-class than those of the Democrats.

The barrage of sexist attacks on Palin comes just weeks after “Late Night” show host David Letterman told a series of antiwoman “jokes” about her recent visit to New York. In his June 8 comedy routine he said, “One awkward moment for Sarah Palin at the Yankee game during the seventh inning. Her daughter was knocked up by Alex Rodriguez.” (See June 29 Militant)

In a July 5 issue of the New York Times, Op-Ed columnist Maureen Dowd characterized Palin’s resignation speech as “girlish burbling.” Dowd likened Palin to a Barbie doll and portrayed her decision to resign as one of her “country-music melodramas.”

The August 2009 issue of Vanity Fair magazine contains a feature article on Palin that objectifies her in the lead sentence, stating she “is still the sexiest brand in Republican politics.” The article asserts that Palin is “by far the best-looking woman ever to rise to such heights in national politics, the first indisputably fertile female to dare to dance with the big dogs.”

Then on July 8 Sally Quinn, a liberal columnist for the Washington Post, wrote a piece headlined “Palin’s peculiar family values,” which denounces Palin’s decision to get involved in politics rather than “put her family first.”

“This is a woman who accepted the nomination for vice president with a three-months-old special needs child and an unwed 17-year-old daughter pregnant by another high-schooler,” wrote Quinn. “This is a woman who then spent two months on the road, relentlessly campaigning, dragging the baby around with her.” Palin’s son Trig, who has Down syndrome, was born a few months before she accepted the nomination as Republican vice-presidential candidate.

Quinn’s article epitomizes liberals’ contempt for young people who choose to bring a pregnancy to term rather than go to school or pursue a “career.” “When her extended dysfunctional family, including the father of her daughter’s baby, began to surface,” Quinn wrote, “she blew that up into a major media event instead of keeping her silence.”

The article rationalizes the sexist comments made by Letterman, arguing that he was not referring to 14-year-old Willow Palin, but to 18-year-old Bristol, who Quinn says is a “legitimate target for public criticism” because of her decision to go on tour to promote teen abstinence.

On June 9 Letterman again attacked Palin, saying the hardest part of the New York trip was “keeping Eliot Spitzer away from her daughter.”

Letterman also did a “Ten Top Highlights of Sarah Palin’s Trip to New York.” Highlight number two was: “Bought makeup at Bloomingdale’s to update her ‘slutty flight attendant’ look.”

Palin responded in an interview with Matt Lauer on the “Today Show” June 12. “My first thought was, ‘Hey, don’t disparage flight attendants. They work hard—we love them,’” she said.

The Wall Street Journal ran an opinion piece July 11 written by Peggy Noonan, personal assistant to former U.S. president Ronald Reagan and chief speechwriter for George H. Bush. The article accuses Palin of stupidity, saying that she “was out of her depth in a shallow pool,” and that she doesn’t read anything.

Noonan’s article takes issue with the claim that Palin is working class, not because of Palin’s reactionary politics, but because her family is made up of “middle-class figures of respect, stability, and local status.” She continues, “I think intellectuals call her working-class because they see the makeup, the hair, the heels and the sleds and think they’re working class ‘tropes.’”  
 
 
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