The American Spectator

Political Hay

Bashing God by Dissing Sarah

By Jeffrey Lord on 9.16.08 @ 12:08AM

(Page 2 of 2)

They may say they are opposing Sarah Palin. What they really want to defeat is the idea of God.

The Governor also quite vibrantly exemplifies something else, a something else that rattles the American left to its very core. She is indeed a feminist. In the words of Obama supporter and feminist Camille Paglia, Palin represents "an explosion of a brand new style of muscular American feminism. At her startling debut on that day [of her selection by McCain], she was combining male and female qualities in ways that I have never seen before. And she was somehow able to seem simultaneously reassuringly traditional and gung-ho futurist. In terms of redefining the persona for female authority and leadership, Palin has made the biggest step forward in feminism since Madonna channeled the dominatrix persona of high-glam Marlene Dietrich and rammed pro-sex, pro-beauty feminism down the throats of the prissy, victim-mongering, philistine feminist establishment."

This is another way of saying that Palin terrifies the left precisely because her election to the vice-presidency -- and potential later elevation to the presidency -- would not simply shatter the glass ceiling but redefine feminism itself as the glass explodes. Gone for good would be the image of the pant-suited, pro-abortion, secular-centered Powerful Woman. In her place would be a skirt-wearing, vibrantly pro-life, God-centered woman who is neither afraid of her own femininity or, importantly, ashamed of her working class roots and the religious values that come with them. She loves her husband, is thrilled by her kids and is not in the least intimidated by the pretensions of those who hilariously presume to be her betters, whether that be intellectually, socially or politically. Most dramatically, she enthusiastically loves and worships God.

THE LIBERALS WHO have gone on record with the kind of quotes listed above are relentlessly secular. Which is to say, in the struggle that William F. Buckley noted so many years ago, were a line to be drawn in the sand they would instinctively jump to the atheist/collectivist side of the line, gaping in horror at the crowd of people they believe to be the Christian/religious/individualist primitives standing on the other side.

Come to think of it, a line has been drawn, and it isn't in the sand. The line comes by a variety of different names. Roe v. Wade, abortion and partial-birth abortion, same-sex marriage, military service, American exceptionalism, pacifism, isolationism, community organizing and entrepreneurship are just a few of the ways this line is drawn. It is reflected daily in cultural choices: talk radio over NPR, hockey or windsurfing, Fox over NBC, Reese Witherspoon in the hugely successful Legally Blonde instead of Reese Witherspoon in the bomb that was Rendition.

Since the advent of the Culture War conservatives have known instinctively that there are millions of American women who share Sarah Palin's views and values. As no less than Geraldine Ferraro has noted, her own 1984 rallies as the first woman on a Democratic ticket drew lots of enthusiastic women. But come election day the majority of women voted for Ronald Reagan. The ranks of the Right, from the trenches of the Republican Party and the conservative movement to the so-called Religious Right to the world of business to the waitress in the local diner have always been filled with Right Thinking women. Yet it has been, for the most part, liberal women who have captured the headlines. From Gloria Steinem to Hillary to a seemingly endless parade of media stars, the message was always that "woman equals liberal." Worse, it defined "woman" as economically well-to-do professionals with a fistful of graduate degrees all obtained from some elite East or Left coast university. It was a massive untruth, a political conceit that liberal politicians in particular came to believe at their own eventual peril.

Sarah Palin's threat to the left is that she has shattered more than one glass ceiling. She has taken a shotgun to the glass ceiling that kept God-fearing, child-rearing, gun-owning, non-Ivy League, pro-life, working women from so visibly rising to the top rungs of American society. This is why the vitriol that pours forth to be dumped over her political head. Palin is a personal threat to the very core image liberal Democrats have of women, of feminism itself. The idea that Hillary Clinton can work her much proclaimed 35 years for liberal feminist causes only to find at the last moment that the first woman to walk through the doors of the White House on her own is a wildly popular conservative Christian hockey mother of five from Alaska who got elected on her own without benefit of marriage to another liberal politician -- is something that will take Clinton and her immediate circle of liberal feminist friends more than a shot and a beer to recover from.

THERE'S SOMETHING ELSE at work here as well. Let us not leave out of the Palin phenomenon the real world masculinity of the "First Dude," Palin's husband Todd. This is a guy who works with his hands as a "sloper" in the oil business and as a commercial fisherman. A union member not of, say, the elite Writers Guild but the gritty United Steelworkers. He is a champion snowmobiler...er...snowmachiner (as they say in Alaska.) Matt Damon is a man's man -- in the movies. Andrew Sullivan couldn't and presumably wouldn't carry Todd Palin's backpack even if it were filled with every elite magazine for which Sullivan writes. Glutted with Hollywood pate' Al Gore would have a coronary trying to keep up with Palin, who probably wouldn't be bringing along any seriously good wine as he races through the backwoods. Once off the basketball court, Obama would be clueless on snowshoes with a gun and a charging moose. And Keith Olbermann? Beyond laughter at the image, enough said. The combination here -- the womanly woman who unabashedly worships God at the same time she's a chief executive and a Mom AND has a hot time with the working man's man who has fathered her five kids -- is truly terrifying for the world of non-churchgoing metrosexuals for whom the idea of "God" means Simon Cowell.

Make no mistake. The vociferous attacks on Sarah Palin -- on her views of abortion, family, work, the environment, science, the role of women and all the rest -- are about much, much more than they seem. A lot of them aren't even about Sarah Palin at all.

Their real target doesn't even have His name on the ballot.

Jeffrey Lord is an author and former Reagan White House political director. He writes from Pennsylvania.

Letter to the Editor

topics:
John McCain, Sarah Palin, Hillary Clinton, Business, Abortion, Environment, Global Warming, Books, Hollywood, Movies, Military, Alaska, Oil