Beauties: Sarah Palin

I don't "get" Obama, even though I may well vote for him. I'm not even talking about the politics, just the phenomenon of the personality cult. I see others digging him so soulfully, and I find their belief credible, but he holds no magnetism for me. I don't hate but also don't get Elizabeth Taylor either, the Beatles or Star Wars (give me Marilyn, the Beach Boys and Battlestar Gallactica).

But I get Sarah Palin. I will, I am sure, come to like her either less or more as I learn more about her, but based on what I have read about her record, and on her performance at the RNC, I now think of her as a fine example of her type: she's a natural, so comfortable in a position of leadership as to be quite organically fearless. Setting aside the specifics of her positions, or her party's positions, some of which I agree with and some of which I don't, even setting aside the words and phrases that she did or didn't write in her speech, I saw in her demeanor what I took for the rarest brand of fearlessness, the kind that comes of complete immersion in a calling, from being in that flow state that I myself have only felt a few times here and there (in my case while writing a novel or editing a newspaper). She was in her element, and it was a thing to see.

There are different forms of fearlessness. Psychopaths are fearless, and you want to avoid putting those in office. Stupid people can be fearless when they don't know any better, and stubborn people sometimes seem to have Novocaine in their veins. Then there's the kind of fearlessness that is acquired through repetitive risk taking, met with repetitive success. That's the kind I saw in Palin last night, and that I read in her record as a reformer who isn't afraid to be hated.

There's a down side to this kind of fearlessness; it can become rote and insensitive--the fight can become habitual and knee-jerk. It can lead to premature judgments--a history of triumph naturally leading one to think of oneself as being right all the time, of trusting one's instincts over facts. It can be messy, as reformers can't reform without stepping on toes and leaving a trail of disgruntled bureaucrats and outright enemies. And what happens when the natural reformer has reformed everything, do they just keep stirring the pot disruptively? Sometimes they do.

This is a woman who probably learned what it felt like to lead on a high school basketball team. Her next stop was the PTA, and from there, the City Council. I used to be a small town journalist, and I've met politicians just like her.  There are a surprising number of them out there, people who step up and put one foot in front of the other and do the one right thing at a time, for one right reason at a time; in whom the necessity of ambition unfurls slowly, naturally, indistinguishably from the issues themselves. They are rarely partisan. I've also met the incumbents, cronies, gadflies and critics who take up an awful lot of space in local politics, infusing them with incompetence, apathy, the most pedestrian forms of corruption, and even a taint of actual lunacy. Challenge them and you will get a lot of grief.

Palin puts me in mind a bit of Kevin Johnson, the NBA star and community activist who is now running for mayor of Sacramento. He too is a controversial figure, with as many detractors as champions, and he is being turned inside out publicly while taking on an incumbent mayor whose main shortcoming seems to be that she's no Kevin Johnson, ie, she is a mediocrity.

I admire Palin's purported aggressiveness when she took the reins in Wasilla, where she asked several key officials for their resignation letters as a show of support, and her later willingness to fire early and fire often in Anchorage. In running for mayor and later governor, each time she picked off an incumbent and rode into office with a mandate to reform. And unlike Mayor Carcetti on HBO's The Wire, that quintessential callow compromiser, she followed through. There is also a longstanding tradition of leaders asking for mass resignations. San Francisco mayor Gavin Newsom asked hundreds of city officials for resignation letters in 2007.

The willingness to be disliked is one of the only clear signals that a politician is sincere. And according to Matt Welch, on Reason Hit and Run, Sarah Palin is roundly despised by close to 100% of Alaska's Republican establishment. She also has something like an 80% approval rating with Alaskans. Taken together, those are about the best numbers any politician could have.

If the election were taking place today, I would cast for Obama (can't say for sure until I'm in the booth) in part due to Welch's McCain debunking, but of all the humans on the ticket, Palin is the one I'd vote for to be my mayor, or governor.

I also admire the good people at Hillary Green Mountain (linked by Tammy Bruce, another fearless individual), who have come out in support of Palin's candidacy (as opposed to supporting the candidate), out of sheer disgust at the shrill, vulgar attacks on her, and the silly clamoring to condemn her for being either a bad mommy, a scary churchgoer, or an incorrect feminist. I'm not bothered by Palin's anti-abortion stance, and I say this as a staunchly pro-choice woman who has exercised her rights in this arena. I believe in real choice, which means that I have as much respect for law-abiding pro-lifers as I have for the people who run planned parenthood-you can be a good and honorable person and embrace either position. I find a great deal of consistency and integrity in Palin's backing up these beliefs with actions, both in her support of her pregnant daughter and her decision to carry her disabled son to term.

As a parent of a teen myself, I am angered and saddened by cries that her daughter's pregnancy reflects badly on Palin's parenting--these things do happen, and they can happen to anyone. Obama is absolutely right on that score; it is a personal matter, involving human beings with entirely private motivations and feelings. When Al Gore's 6 year-old son was hit by a car after running into the street right in front of his parents, did we viciously attack Gore for being a bad parent? Of course not, because he isn't. And neither is Palin, that we actually know of. For some emotional intelligence on the issue of reining ourselves in on this front, try Megan at Jezebel.com. I share most of her sentiments.

I haven't said anything yet about Palin's beauty. I love her Elizabeth Hurley hair, and she carries herself like the marathon runner that she is. She is a charismatic person, comparable in that regard, as I mentioned in a comment on Nancy's blog, to Bill Clinton. Or Ronald Reagan. Or Barack Obama. An Obama/Palin ticket, now that would interest me a great deal...

Comments

[Brett]

Perceptive piece. Maybe Matt Welch can expose Obama's weaknesses as well as McCain's. You might find yourself right back in the McCain camp. McCain's choice for V.P. has encouraged me that he can make excellent decisions. This is one of them.

[Beth McLean]

Great read. I totally agree with most of what you said.

[Cate]

This used to be a beauty blog. I won't be visiting any more since most of the post these days are used for voicing your political views that I neither want to read nor nor care about. Maybe you should change the blog to a political blog so you can get all your crap out there.

[Esme]

I don't think Sarah Palin is a beauty. Oh, she may be kinda good-looking, but she is a woman who hates women - in my opinion, from what I've read about her so far - and that is never beautiful.

Whilst I wouldn't phrase things the same way Cate did above, I have to agree with her sentiments that if I were looking for political opinion pieces, this wouldn't be the first place I'd look for them!

Being a blog owner myself, I do understand that blogs change with the times, and the interests of the writers, which is all fine and good, and, indeed necessary for the sanity of the correspondents, but this blog has moved some way away from what I loved about it initially, and I'm mainly a disappointed reader these days.

I'm especially disappointed as this was the first beauty blog I ever got really interested in and I've spent many a happy hour digging through the archives in the past. I still log on every day to see what's been written, but this post may just be the last straw for me.

I wish everyone associated with this blog well, but I genuinely think that my days as a dedicated reader are over. Thanks for introducing me to the world of beauty blogs though, you were the original, but to me, you're no longer the best.

[Wendy]

Stick to the superficiality of makeup; it's what you know best. Palin is a freak, and you're off my blog list.

[Janet C]

Please continue to blog about beauty, politics, and any other thing. I may not agree or hold the point of view of the bloggers, but that is why this blog is interesting to read.

Carry on!

[Kit Stolz]

Yes, she was fearless, but what if -- as you hinted -- that fearlessness is part of a not-so-beautiful pattern? What if it goes with a total ruthlessness (for example, enabling aerial hunting, which even hunter-friendly Alaskans have twice rejected by large margins as unfair to animals?) And what if it goes with a complete disdain for the truth?

"Judging from his public statements shortly after he announced Sarah Palin as his running mate, John McCain thought she had opposed the Bridge to Nowhere. She hadn't. He thought she had sold the state's executive jet on eBay and made a profit on it. On both counts, she didn't. He thought she had cut taxes as both mayor and governor. She hadn't. He apparently thought she had fully explained her part in pressuring the state police chief to fire her ex-brother-in-law. She hasn't. He thought she was an enemy of earmarks and federal pork. In fact, she was a pioneer of both. And now Marc Ambinder confirms that Palin is being kept deeply under wraps:

A senior McCain campaign official advises that, despite the gaggle of requests and pressure from the media, Gov. Sarah Palin won't submit to a formal interview anytime soon. She may take some questions from local news entities in Alaska, but until she's ready — and until she's comfortable — which might not be for a long while — the media will have to wait. The campaign believes it can effectively deal with the media's complaints, and their on-the-record response to all this will be: "Sarah Palin needs to spend time with the voters."

The McCain campaign is scared to death. They knew nothing about Palin before they announced her, they relied on a cursory vetting process that has turned out to be shot full of holes, they realize now that she has no settled views on any issue of national importance and could blurt out anything at any time, and they're terrified about what might crop up next. So they're keeping her in the deep freeze.

Will it work? I guess it's possible. If she does one or two friendly interviews it will prevent reporters from saying flatly that she "refuses to meet with the press," and the slightly more complicated explanation may be just complicated enough to keep voters from noticing what's going on. In a way, it's sort of a test of just how gullible the American public really is. Are they actually willing to vote for someone who's afraid to meet with Foreign Affairs, the New York Times, and Meet the Press? Will they accept a tissue-thin excuse about what big meanies they all are? We're about to find out."

I suspect as a reporter you might have a different perspective on a candidate who misled but refused answers questions.

[quoted passage from Kevin Drum at http://www.motherjones.com/kevin-drum/2008/09/palin_and_the_press.html]

[Maggie]

She is in favor of banning books--and tried to fire a librarian who refused to do so.
She is in favor of taking away our right to choose (and don't kid yourself, the agenda here includes birth control as well).
As recently as a month ago, she claimed to have no idea what a vice president's duties were.
She got her first passport a year ago, and knows almost nothing of world affairs at a time when the world is in crisis.

I see no beauty. I see ignorance and small-mindedness given a seat at the table. And I see a nightmare waiting to happen.

[Helena Handbasket]

Go Hillary! Don't let the commenters get you down: this is a first-rate post.

On the beauty angle, I'd love to know what shade of lipstick she was wearing as she made the now-famous "hockey mom/pitbull" comment at the convention.

[Alisha]

Perhaps if this post was about Palin's highlights or her lipstick then it would be relevant. I come here to get away from politics which is what I work in all day long. I agree with the poster above that this blog has opened me up to many blogs, and I've enjoyed it thoroughly. But if I wanted a political opinion I'd go somewhere else, and that is what I'll be doing for fun and entertaining beauty reads from now on.

[Jackie]

You know, I've stopped reading a lot of blogs in my time, but I've never felt that my decision to do so was so significant that I had to leave a stern, admonishing comment for the blog author. What's up with that?

What scares me is the intimation from the commenters that this blog - and women - are only allowed to be one-dimensional. How very conservative.

As the co-creator and co-editor of this blog, I want to go on the record as saying: Any person who feels that they do not wish to read this blog anymore is free to click away. This blog is not written for you.

[Jane]

Palin believes...

1. Abortion is wrong under all circumstances, including incest and rape.

2. Creationism should be taught in schools.

3. Only abstinence-based sexual education should be permitted.

I agree with you, Palin is likable and seems to exude an everyday, down-to-earth sensibility. But her standing on certain issues are so extreme... and not unlike Bush.

Some of the attacks on Palin are inappropriate (daughter's pregnancy) but that is the nature of politics. The media always feeds off the sensational over substance... and I think most intelligent people can see past the hype surrounding her pregnancy.

Other attacks, such as her involvment w/ troopergate, the fired librarian, the secessionist party... the flip-flopping on the Bridge to Nowhere... that's ALL fair game. As Kit mentioned, McCain's people have been shielding her, but I think it's our fundamental right as voters to know who we are electing into government.

[Esme]

I just want to make clear that I did actually agree with some of the points that Hillary made in her post.

And I read this blog because I am interested in the points made in it, I don't always agree with the writers, but that's the beauty of it, I don't have to.

But, you know what, readers have opinions too, that's what the comments section is FOR. If you don't want to know what your readers are thinking about what you've written, don't have comments available.

You won't always like what people have to say about what you've posted, but you have comments open for a reason, one assumes. If you only want people to say how much they love you, well, you've gone down in my estimation, Jackie, you really have.

I won't be reading any more, as your misreading of my comments is risible.

[Shannon Bach]

Thank you Jackie-

A couple of the comments are just out right scary. I consider myself a moderate, but some women to the left of center frighten me more than conservatives.

I disagree with most of Obama's fiscal policy and he is far far left on social issues. However I would never reduce myself to calling him a "freak." So sad that we have come to this.

[kady]

I am a non scary left leaning female who will not visit this blog anymore. I appreciate my 'right to choose' and as an artist am horrified by Palin's track record of slashing funds to the arts in alaska. Not to mention her wish to teach creationism in schools,
how much science and knowledge of the natural world is needed to make cosmetics? How many of our beloved fashion designers are gay and would be shunned by Palin?

I wish you luck, and I understand this is time when people need to voice their opinions. But I will not visit this blog anymore.

Best, Kady

[Mary Spotts]

The comments here are indeed scary, because a. this is an exceptionally well-written and original piece, and b. the word beauty is being defined in such a limited way. Carry on, Hillary. Rock your blue eyeshadow and platinum locks AND create these knock-out posts (best thing I've seen written about Palin in any outlet, btw). That's beauty.

[Midwest Mom]

Hillary,

You have written about a political candidate in a way that neither endorses nor bashes them. I don't understand this and I'm afraid that I won't be able to engage with you at this level of discourse.

Further more, it is wrong of you to try to make me think about politicians as multi-faceted people. What if I discover that the person is interesting, or even likeable, even though I disagree with their politics? This is all too much for me, and I won't be reading this blog anymore.

MM

[Jessica]

Wow, I had no idea you were so uninformed. Guess I'll stop coming to the blog.

If anyone here actually believes this piece, visit http://www.coupbymemo.com and check out the right-hand column.

[Jackie]

If you only want people to say how much they love you, well, you've gone down in my estimation, Jackie, you really have.

I have no idea how you arrived at this conclusion, Esme. Please re-read my comment. Really, this blog is not written for anyone but me and Hillary. Anyone who doesn't want to read...well, is free not to read. We're not making money off of this; it's for us. It's our medium.

Indeed, to the contrary of what you suggest, I am thrilled if people hate what we write so much that they continue to read. I have much more time for those people than for the childish sort who throw a tantrum and demand that changes are made to suit their own wishes.

BTW, I think it's worth pointing out that we didn't get these "don't get political" comments when Hillary blogged so adoringly about the artist who supposedly had a bunch of abortions as performance art. (She may or may not have faked them, it later emerged, but Hillary wrote that post based on the assumption that she did indeed have the abortions.) There was plenty of interesting debate, but not babyish demands that we stick to eye shadow. Quite telling.

Again, very conservative reaction from some readers. This is not a conservative blog, so probably not the best place for you if you are seeking a reflection of your own backward attitudes toward women and life.

[Juliet]

As an Aussie, my only comment from what I have seen in our media is-
Why is it that women in politics tend to sway towards the "ball breaker" ideal. That isn't beautiful in my opinion. Maybe she really is like that and is being true to herself, but it appears that she feels the need to wear this attitude to suceed. Too Sad

[mary]

How dare you call people who are chastising the author "one-dimensional" and compare them to conservatives?

I'm all for open debate, but come on, this author has no clue what she is talking about. She needs to go educate herself about what a liar, flip-flopper and hypocrite Sarah Palin is, then decide whether she "gets" her. Yes, she's fearless-- she is not afraid to lie to the American people. I'm not sure the author of this post even knows what she means when she talks of Obama's "personality cult," but anything is better than McCain and Palin at this point.

I agree with Jessica-- go to CoupByMemo.com to "get" Palin.

[Brett]

Jackie - I wish you would stop making reference to the thought police like comments on this post as acting "conservative". Conservatives are far more likely to engage in thoughtful debate and less likely to attack others personally for differences of opinion. Amy Alkon is just now learning how the wrath of "progressives" can come down if one dare disagree.

http://www.advicegoddess.com/archives/2008/08/20/am_i_right_or_w.html#comments

[Brett]

I went to the above reference blog to "get" Palin. They are trying to get her alright. With rumors, inuendo, and out right lies.

In the interest of fair play; if commenters are going to put out left wing attack blogs as where to learn the "truth" about Palin readers should be skeptical.

This article highlights some of lies going around in order to slander and discredit Palin. The hate filled reaction to Palin just underscores the left's fear of her.

http://elections.foxnews.com/2008/09/05/top-7-myths-lies-and-untruths-about-sarah-palin/

Some of lies about Palin in just the last week, many of which were found at Coup by Memo blog, include:

1. The false claim that is really the Grandmother of Trig.

2. The false claim that Palin called Obama Sambo. http://michellemalkin.com/2008/09/06/latest-smear-palin-called-obama-a-sambo/

3. The false claim that Palin wants to teach creationism in schools. Not true. She only wants it to be part of the discussion, the debate. But the left can't stand the thought of alternate viewpoints being discussed here.

The smears and hate speech being leveled at Palin simply underscore the left's inability to take her on over issues.

[Ashley]

I went to Coup by Memo, too, didn't see anything false or hateful.

I think it's funny that this guy rails against smears and hate speech but then links to Michelle Malkin-- one of the most hateful smear merchants I have ever seen.

To respond to Brett's list of lies:
1. Coup by Memo has nothing about Palin's son, trig.
2. Palin has been heard by a number of people making a number of racist comments. I grew up in a town not even as small as Palin's, and believe me, everyone knows who the racists are.
3. She does want to teach creationism in science classrooms. True, she wants to teach it alongside evolution, but that still doesn't make it fit for science class, since it is simply not science. You can teach about the debate in social studies.

You'll notice that Brett glosses over some of the more important stuff, like the fact that Palin and McCain are lying about her "opposition" to the Bridge to Nowhere and pork barrel spending. Like the fact that she loves big oil. Like the fact that she said the Iraq War is a "task from God."

She is disgusting-- far from any definition of "beautiful."

[Brett]

I am not glossing over anything. I was highlighting some of the most obvious lies against Palin. The point you make about Palin lying about her recored on opposing the bridge to nowhere may be valid. I need to look into it further as I can't trust the main stream media on anything relating to conservative politics. Some of the other points you make are not valid (ie, in the pocket of big oil). However, I am sensitive to concerns of others regarding the main purpose of this site and do not wish to monopolize the discussion with a long post on topics that can't be resovled with one liners. Although you appear to resolve your points in such a manner.

Ashley, if you wish to discuss some of your false allegations on another site, one geared more toward politics, please let me no and we can form a dialogue there.

I'll leave it alone at that. I do want Hillary to know that I thouroughly enjoyed her insights. And Midwest Mom said it best with grace and humor. This piece was not an endorsement of Palin, simply an observation.

I just don't "get" the vitriolic reaction to Hillary's insightful post.