The Mary Poppins Syndrome

I always suspected the first woman to achieve high office in the United States would come from the right not the left. Like Margaret Thatcher, Sarah Palin calls up memories of tough nannies, nurses, governesses and mommies. This flank of Momism doesn't threaten like Hillary Clinton or Gloria Steinem. The populace loves Mommy squared.

There's a photo of Sarah Palin in a stars and stripes bikini, toting an automatic weapon. It says more than any Op-Ed or blog. Hot broad with cool weapon. Every school shooter's dream of womanhood. Alas, the photo is photoshopped, but true in spirit.

Liberal women might change our country from a teenage boy's dream to an adult republic of laws. Aw, no fair. If you think the real America means guns and motorcycles, snowmobiles and beauty contests, this pistol-packin' Momma's for you.

Irving Berlin was wrong: you can get a man with a gun.

Not that I think Sarah Palin will make it to VP. But given the repugnicans' habit of caging votes, it's certainly one horrid possibility.

White trash America certainly has allure for voters. Some people think rednecks are more American than Harvard educated intellectuals of mixed race. God help us in the next election. The NRA and the oil industry sure won't.

Comments

[TampabayDem]

In Heather Mallick's review of Jong's " No fear of whining" she cites Jong's statement, "Uncle Tom" women often curry favor with misogynist bosses (women included) by attacking other women. Their vituperation often has the kind of nasty, personal edge that men are simply too busy to develop"--
Mallick and Jong deserve each other and Mallick foretold Jong's future.
http://www.heathermallick.ca/newspaper-pieces/no-fear-of-whining--review.html

[beadfulheart]

I am saddened, disappointed and ashamed... to see women, that have been the 'voice for women' for decades, slagging and attacking another woman; women that I've respected for decades, turning into partisan shills against another hard-working, successful woman. They don't have to agree with her on every issue (I don't either) but to simply attack her personally is beyond the pale. =(

Attacks like this make me wonder if I was stupid or just wrong in my respect for some of them all these years.

[mrabstract]

Sarah Palin in herself is not the problem. The problem is she's being used, the way Dan Quayle was being used, as much to their own detriment as everyone else's.

[presto]

White trash and fake photo? Total class. Are you being paid to get Republicans to the polls?

[christy21]

Racism against White people is apparently all the rage with elitists.

Who cares if the "rednecks" have less education if they have ALL of the heart. What is with this horrific attitude? If people didn't go to Harvard, they just aren't in the same league?? I guess if one is just a lowly worker, then one shouldn't even get to vote, right? Lord know elitists from Harvard sitting in their Ivory Towers are so important and better than everyone else.

[dahpunkster]

God help us if, mccain and this woman wins. (Glad some people see her for who she is.) .I can't honestly vote someone who would selfishly stick her pregnant daughter into the spotlight. 17 should be the best time of your life.You shouldn't be spending it pregnant and engaged to a guy you barely know.

[dahpunkster]

Thank you Ms Erica,
God help us if she and Mccain win, don't let her fool you, she is a card carrying member of the radical right, and obviously isn't pro choice. I can't vote for anyone who selfishly puts their 17 yr old pregnant daughter in the limelight like that.. Poor girl looks miserable. Seventeen should the best time of your life.You shouldn't be spending it pregnant .That just is how I feel. This is coming from a small town girl from Ohio.
Punky

[antaeus]

"White trash"?

You have lost all credibility.

[snarkopolitan]

Yes, what is trashy is snidely dismissing great swaths of people with a stereotype! I lived in North Carolina for a few years, where I found all sorts of people no demographer ever dreamed of, including redneck drag queens and dixie hippies.
Snidely dismissing great swaths of people with a stereotype is what Palin did last night.

[antaeus]

We have come to expect insulting rhetoric from politicians; we are shocked to find it coming from the pen of a purportedly thoughtful writer and then given publication on this site, especially when that rhetoric crossed the line from "snide" into racist.

[presto]

Amen to that.

[beadfulheart]

Seconded..­. I'm sadly ashamed and disappointed. =(

[tlintx]

I agree, take a look in the mirror.

[BlackJAC]

So does this mean the average conservative is a mama's boy with Oedipal tendencies?

[writeaway]

Sarah Palin for VP, a real life Angelina Jolie.

[BlackJAC]

Both Sarah and Angelina are poseurs.

[darthmaul]

While both Palin and Thatcher could be grouped under the common label of conservative the resemblance and similarity between the two ends there. Thatcher has degrees in Chemistry and Law. Thatcher had decades of experience before becoming England's prime minister. Palin by contrast is relatively unsophisticated and scientifically ignorant. A fact that's easily seen by her embrace of Creationism and global warming skeptic. Palin is what she is, and what she claims to be, a "Hockey mom."

[DarthVector]

Hello Sith!

Not only that, but Thatcher drove environmental policy into the mainstream during her last couple years as Prime Minister.

From her Royal Society speech 1988
(full text at http://www.margaretthatcher.org/speeches/displaydocument.asp?docid=107346 )

"...the increase in the greenhouse gases...ha­s led some to fear that we are creating a global heat trap which could lead to climatic instability. We are told that a warming effect of 1°C per decade would greatly exceed the capacity of our natural habitat... Such warming could cause accelerated melting of glacial ice and a consequent increase in the sea level of several feet over the next century...­.

"In studying the system of the earth and its atmosphere we have no laboratory­... We have to rely on observations of natural systems. We need to identify particular areas of research which will help to establish cause and effect. We need to consider..­. precise timescales. And to consider the wider implications for policy... This is no small task, for the annual increase in atmospheric carbon dioxide alone is of the order of three billion tonnes... half the carbon emitted since the Industrial Revolution remains in the atmosphere­...

"...the health of the economy and the health of our environment are totally dependent upon each other.

"Protecting this balance of nature is therefore one of the great challenges of the late Twentieth Century...­"

(God it pains me to have to point out Maggie's pros, but the times demand action).

[Luca]

HuffPost's Pick

Well, if Sarah Palin does get to be VP, at least Cheney will have a hunting partner. This whole thing is a developing nightmare.

[GhiaccioPronto]

Mary Poppins does take on the male establishment, but I missed the part where she gets half-naked and totes a gun. although I probably could find a photoshopped picture of it,

[research]

http://urbanlegends.about.com/library/bl_sarah_palin_bikini_pic.htm

[coffeeyogurt]

Mommy squared - that's good. And you make such a valid point -- Palin is palatable to the right because she's SUCH a mommy. And she joins in her husband's rough outdoorsmany activities. Too bad she doesn't have national sized credentials.

One of the supreme ironies of the RNC - whooping and hollering and applause in support of Palin's down home, moose shooting, gun toting redneck ways - from a country club crowd dressed in suits and ties.

The never ending hypocrisy train that is the GOP.

[navy62802]

What I want to know is when it became more American to be less educated and more ignorant.

[StephJH]

navy62802 has captured in about 18 words both the cynical neocon strategy and what's really wrong in America today.

Anit-intel­lectualism­, established and growing faster than ever, is the tool of the right wing. If they can keep Americans both un-schooled and un-educated, they have both votes for their fanatical agenda and cannon fodder for their misguided wars.

Think of the brilliance of their cynicism, they get people, proud to be ignorant, to vote against their own best interests! It happened on '04 and could happen again in '08. Don't underestimate the Right!

[LibraMan]

That is a damn good question. We have gone from being able to put a man on the moon to a point where it is rare to find a native born mathematic or science professor in just forty years. And please don't consider me xenophobic or racist. I just think diversity also means that every once in a while you should be able find a redneck teaching calculus.

[wagadog]

Nurse Fang from... Been Down So Long, It looks Like Up To Me

And McCain is Alonso Oeuf.

[Rondo]

As if this country hasn't been traumatized enough.

Is this the best Alaska has to offer?

[tellner]

I'm a Democrat. I own guns. I wish the Democratic Party would change its (politically suicidal) policies and dump the extreme hoplophobia. If we had more pictures of good-looking male and female gun owners with Obama t-shirts the world would be a better place, and the GOP (Greedy Old Plutocrats) would lose their wedge issue.

[coffeeyogurt]

I used to be a handgun owner, two in fact. One I sold, the other stolen by burglars. Love skeet and clay pigeon shooting (was pretty damned good at it, too). But I'm fully in favor of the Democrat's moderate gun control stance. It's not the all-or-nothing NRA perspective. It's about sensible, safe regulation.

[ESerafina42]

Yet, coffeeyogurt, despite your sane and sensible position (and I say that completely seriously), that stolen gun is out on the streets now doing who knows what mischief. Imagine if you'd had an arsenal like some of these people.