MODERN FAMILY

Kathleen Deveny

Confessions of a Secret Sarah Admirer

Maybe I'm a sucker for a frontier myth, the narrative of a person who rises up in a frozen, faraway place by making her own rules.

Published Sep 6, 2008

From the magazine issue dated Sep 15, 2008

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I have a dirty little secret.

I really like Sarah Palin. It's kind of embarrassing, because I was a strong supporter of Hillary Clinton and because I live in a liberal bubble in Brooklyn, N.Y. I'm not sure what's wrong with me, but the more my friends and media colleagues attack Palin for being a lightweight or a hick or a lunatic, the more I like her.

I liked her the first time I saw a picture of her, nearly a year ago in this magazine. It illustrated a story about how women leaders like Palin and Arizona Gov. Janet Napolitano were gaining power at the state level. Palin, BlackBerry in one hand, Red Bull in the other, checked her messages as she crossed the street, seemingly oblivious to her youngest daughter, Piper, who trailed along behind her, jumping rope in the crosswalk. Now that's my kind of working mom, I thought.

I liked her even more after her speech at the Republican convention, and not just because she gave a masterful performance. I am riveted by her family and struck by what appears to be her complete confidence in the choices she's made. Women both liberal and conservative may be locked in combat about whether she went back to work too soon after Trig's birth or whether she should be making a run for national office when her teenage daughter is pregnant. But if Palin is agonizing about her decisions, it doesn't show.

Which does not mean that I would do what she did—or that I will vote for the McCain-Palin ticket, because like many former Hillary supporters, I would not step over Roe v. Wade to vote for anyone. I took a six-month maternity leave and I doubt I would run for national office if my daughter were pregnant. But as I watched Palin and her family on that stage, the way she embraced daughter Bristol and called Trig a perfectly beautiful boy, I liked what I saw. I found her lack of defensiveness admirable. And if I were nominated for the vice presidency, I would probably let my kids stay up way past their bedtimes, too.

I am aware that I am responding to carefully crafted political images. I actually know very little about Sarah Palin's ideology, and what I do know I don't like: the extreme anti-abortion stand, her belief that creationism should be taught in schools alongside evolution. In the next eight weeks any number of things could emerge that will turn me off completely.

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Posted By: citizen Jane @ 10/23/2008 1:48:30 PM

Sorry to say I cannot agree with you on Sarah Palin, although I am all for the advancement of women in politics and business. I am an educated woman and a working mom and my opinion of Sarah is not based on "all things uterine" as you put it, but on "all things human" - truth, honesty, an open heart, an open mind, tolerance, acceptance, and forgiveness. I have been a lobbyist at the state level and I can empathize with Sarah's position. She is being used by the Republican Party to try to "win" the election. What I object to is the campain, and Sarah, using the slogan "Country First" when they are actually putting "Winning First" and at any cost to the county. Sarah has a choice. And like John McCain she has chosen to carry the party line, regardless of her personal values. Respecting Sarah because she is willing to put her job before her family sound pretty old school; the type of respect that male dominated business environments have tried to sell to working women since they entered the workforce. Women have worked hard to educate the business community on the value of putting family first and work second. The value of supporting each other at home, the value to society in doing your best at the difficult job of raising a child to be a decent contributing adult. Sarah is eroding that work. Sarah is a bully. I have met many women like her who have fought their way into power by ridiculing and intimidating anyone who disagrees with them, and surrounding themselves with "friends" with brown noses. I don't respect men who bully their way into power either. I would like to see a genderless condemnation of this approach. Intimidation and fear are harmful to our future.
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Posted By: TruthForward @ 10/17/2008 8:09:13 PM

McCain is connected to Nazi supporters and Central American death squads.. so says
FoxNews and Washington Post (two Republican news publishers)

http://elections.foxnews.com/2008/10/07/attention-ayers-renew-focus-mccains-iran-contra-connection/

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/10/07/AR2008100700025.html

The old guy has a long infamous past.
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Posted By: Jim Johnson @ 10/16/2008 7:58:14 PM

Obama's view of the future of America - Socialism which is the next step to Communism!!

Under socialism a ruling class of intellectuals, bureaucrats and social planners decide what people want or what is good for society and then use the coercive power of the State to regulate, tax, and redistribute the wealth of those who work for a living. In other words, socialism is a form of legalized theft.

The morality of socialism can be summed-up in two words: envy and self-sacrifice. Envy is the desire to not only possess another's wealth but also the desire to see another's wealth lowered to the level of one's own. Socialism's teaching on self-sacrifice was nicely summarized by two of its greatest defenders, Hermann Goering and Bennito Mussolini. The highest principle of Nazism (National Socialism), said Goering, is: "Common good comes before private good." Fascism, said
Mussolini, is "a life in which the individual, through the sacrifice of his own private interests??realizes that completely spiritual existence in which his value as a man lies."

Socialism is the social system which institutionalizes envy and self-sacrifice: It is the social system which uses compulsion and the organized violence of the State to expropriate wealth from the producer class for its redistribution to the parasitical class.

Despite the intellectuals' psychotic hatred of capitalism, it is the only moral and just social system.

Capitalism is the only moral system because it requires human beings to deal with one another as traders--that is, as free moral agents trading and selling goods and services on the basis of mutual consent.

Capitalism is the only just system because the sole criterion that determines the value of thing exchanged is the free, voluntary, universal judgement of the consumer. Coercion and fraud are anathema to the free-market system.

It is both moral and just because the degree to which man rises or falls in society is determined by the degree to which he uses his mind. Capitalism is the only social system that rewards merit, ability and achievement, regardless of one's birth or station in life.

Yes, there are winners and losers in capitalism. The winners are those who are honest, industrious, thoughtful, prudent, frugal, responsible, disciplined, and efficient. The losers are those who are shiftless, lazy, imprudent, extravagant, negligent, impractical, and inefficient. [What about the role of luckbeing in the right place at the right time or the wrong place at the wrong time? R. R. Pope}

Capitalism is the only social system that rewards virtue and punishes vice. This applies to both the business executive and the carpenter, the lawyer and the factory worker.