American women in our 40s, unite against Sarah Palin!
A specter's on the loose: the woman from Wasilla may be the way we are remembered and represented in the nation's history: a scary thought for Halloween.
We're not the only ones spooked and sobered. Suffragette spirits are stirring, whispering in the wind to say they did not march to the White House and get force-fed in jail so this one could rap-dance like a weird sister in Macbeth. Wearing her best new black costume on Saturday Night Live, Sarah Palin cast a midnight spell across the Lower 48.
The woman who would be Vice President is also loving every moment she spends onstage in the lights of the Lower 48. The Republican's quest to become a "first" has now broadened in scope, if she can emerge as a winner out of a wreckage of losers.
And what about her lack of book-learnin' ? She's like the member of your book club who swans in, utterly undaunted in conversation by the fact she has rarely read the book.
Truly the last time history played such a cruel joke for the jack-o'-lanterns was when Clarence Thomas was nominated to the U.S. Supreme Court seat held by the great civil rights lawyer and Justice Thurgood Marshall. The appointment was an affront, as Thomas is ideologically opposed to Marshall's legacy.
Palin is alarmingly ahistorical. She's said zero on the long struggle and road to citizenship women walked and marched. With the opening of doors at Ivy Leagues universities, the military and their academies, and then the professions, we in our generation became the first females to grow up thinking we could do pretty much as we pleased. But when we were born in the 1960s, the only woman Senator of note was Maine's Margaret Chase Smith.
Ask Palin what three major American heroines are depicted in one statue in the U.S. Capitol Rotunda. (Only three woman are portrayed in the Rotunda, the gallery of Founding Fathers and other leading men in the American story.)
Palin has not sent any thank you notes to history. She seems to think progress by our foremothers was all about Title IX -- funding for girls and women's athletics. Let it not be forgot she was a beauty queen and basketball star, highlights in a biography made of thin gruel.
Men, even Democratic men who are "my friends," tell me Sarah Palin has bewitched them with her coy winks and winsome country cousin ways. Her wind-chime pipes enchant listeners until they realize what a mean punch she packs.
Columnist Kathleen Parker wrote in the Washington Post that John McCain chose Palin after becoming smitten with her over an hour-long coffee klatch under a sycamore tree where he lives. Just the two of them. Palin is nothing if not persuasive in person, blessed with the political talents of charisma and confidence.
Ironically, McCain bet she'd bring him a wave of women supporters. More than half the electorate views her unfavorably, and men like her better than women. We're shocked, shocked.
My friends also say Palin will be leader of the Republican party as of Nov. 5th and clearly has her sights set on conquering Washington. Heck, she could take convicted felon Ted Steven's Senate seat in a heartbeat with a magic trick of appointing herself if he resigns. Then she could get seriously ready for her desire to be "in charge" of that august body. (Good luck with that; a loaded-for-bear Hillary Clinton will be right across the aisle.)
No, we surely haven't seen the last of this small-town governor who wants to "drill, baby, drill" in the pristine Arctic wilderness of her state of Alaska. Over the years, the U.S. Senate has held the line on protecting that precious environmental inheritance. But all we can do is wait until Mrs. Palin comes to Washington.
Even more to blame than McCain is the wily pundit, William Kristol, former adviser to Vice President Dan Quayle and a Washington denizen. "Conservative " is too good a word, given how much he likes radical game-changers. But this time he crossed a bridge into snowy and unknown terrain: Sarah Palin makes Dan Quayle look like Henry Kissinger.
On a cruise last year with like-minded men of the pen and their families, Kristol paid a call on the fetching governor of Alaska. The group was wined and dined in the mansion. He obfuscated his friendly ties in a recent New York Times Op-Ed column, only disclosing they had met before under "far more relaxed" circumstances. Jane Mayer reported the delicious scene in an excellent New Yorker article.
Kristol promoted Palin for the pick publicly and privately. Palin, he said this summer, is "my heartthrob."
Tell that to Lucretia Mott, Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Susan B. Anthony in thunder, lightening and rain. They will not suffer Sarah Palin gladly.
Jamie Stiehm is a political journalist in Washington.