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A balanced take: Jennifer L. Posner on Sarah Palin's resignation

I recently posted on my Facebook profile a brief comment on this Wall Street Journal editorial heavily criticizing resigning governor Sarah Palin. The severeness of this newspaper's piece centered on Palin's wisdom for such a move and whether it helps her chances at challeging President Barack Obama in 2012 (conservatives seem to be up in arms already for this event still three and a half years away, which tells you a lot about how much they care for America's well being).

The editorial also centers on Palin's competence and capacity to handle tremendous amounts of political and media pressure. Something which, judging by her resignation, is evident.

I want to direct your attention towards this other opinion piece in NPR from Women in Media and News' (also, check out WIMN's blog) Jennifer L. Posner titled 'Hot And Bothering: Media Treatment Of Sarah Palin'. In it Posner criticizes the highly sexist remarks directed at Palin from various media outlets, much of it with smug and condescending overtones. I saw the piece from Vanity Fair, it was particularly nasty.

To be fair, save the sexist remarks much of the critique directed at Sarah Palin was not undeserved. I remember distinctly the offensive and demeaning suggestions she shot at Obama, which I will not utter here. She awoke the scaterred ugly Americans that exist in this country; that was not a pretty sight, not by a long shot. The accusations of socialist and hidden muslim showed a side of America that, though always there, came in full and disturbing force during the presidential campaign. What Palin did discursively was bring the lunatic Limbaugh-listening, Hannity-watching, O'Reilly-responsive, Coulter-adulating, fanatical and reactionary masses further into the mainstream and told them that their provincial, narrow and excluding-everyone-else-who-doesn't-think-like-them point of view was all right.

This is not something you'd be proud of to show a foreigner, but at least we know it's much more out in the open. Now that the forces of right-wing reaction and bad-faith politics decided to wander further into the public sphere we can combat decisively the divisive forces that threaten to tear apart the Republic. For that at least, we should thank the ugly American that is Sarah Palin; Sarah the reactionary, Sarah the incompetent Vice-presidential candidate, Sarah the brief and innefective governor, and now Sarah the lucrative, willing to abandon public service in exchange for millions of dollars in a book deal and the conference circuit. That should pretty much tell you where a person's principles stand.

I would urge to read Posner's piece. It is fair and balanced with regards to Sarah Palin, the human being that she still is. Which is more than I can say for outlets like Fox and Palin's behavior towards her political opponents.

Tell me what you think...

http://www.npr.org/templates/text/s.php?sId=106384060&m=1


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Comments

Yarivette Rosado said…
To some extent, the news networks said what was on my mind when Palin began to speak out : “She’s a bimbo!”. But then again, that’s exactly the kind of sexist comment I learned not to say, or even think, when I took my first and only sociology course in college. The fact that Pozner said the things she said in her article about so many journalists, reporters, and (I would include) political comedians crossing the line towards sexist territory shows that we have a serious social problem. I get the impression that with female politicians like Hillary Clinton and Condoleezza Rice, the media doesn't cross the line so often by paying too much attention to who designed their clothes and how much time they spend with their families; in their minds, Clinton and Rice seem to have an abnormal level of “big-dogness” that allows them “to dare to dance with the big dogs”, as Vanity Fair’s editor, Todd Purdum puts it, even though they’re not quite “big dogs” yet. But then, Palin enters the 2008 presidential race, and she’s no Condoleezza. She’s evidently out of her league in political terms and she happens to be attractive. Unfortunately, due to our society’s ignorance, this was the perfect equation to begin an empty fascination with a politician who had nothing to say in the first place. When asked why he thought Republicans liked Sarah Palin, comedian Dana Gould gave the best and, in my opinion, the funniest description of the Sarah Palin phenomenon : “She comes across as an Evangelical dominatrix”. That pretty much says it all.
2:13 AM
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