Tuesday, November 30, 2010

Sarah Palin, Riot Grrrl-- The Atlantic

To paraphrase Mary McCarthy on Lillian Hellman, I don't agree with a word that Sarah Palin says, including "and" and "the." And as a liberal feminist, it drives me absolutely bonkers that Palin is the most visible working mother and female politician in America, that she is the best exemplar of a woman with an equal marriage, that she has put up with less crap from fewer men than those of us who have read The Second Sex and marched in pro-abortion rallies and pretty much been on the right side of all the issues that Palin is wrong about.

So I suppose I should confess: I like Sarah Palin. I like her because she is such a problem for all these political men, Republicans and Democrats alike, with their polls, and their Walter Dean Burnham theories of transformative elections, and their economy this and their values that--and here comes Palin, and logic just doesn't apply. She speaks in spoonerisms, she raises wretched children, she's a quitter, she's a refudiater, she shoots moose and beats halibut, she has a dumb accent that doesn't have the charm of Charleston or the Brahmin of Boston--really, she is just a lot of quirks.

But it doesn't matter. It will never matter and I bet it never has mattered, because Sarah Palin is hot. She has sex appeal. That's why people like her. That's the whole story. Everyone has to stop trying to deconstruct and decode it, because there is no accounting for chemistry, and Sarah Palin has lots of it going on with her public. I don't think anyone knows or cares what in particular she stands for, other than some general conservative cache of principles, because they are in love with her.

For full article by Elizabeth Wurtzel visit The Atlantic.