Dreher on Palin, July 6

Fearful Rod has another column on Palin... Well, only tangentially on Palin.

http://blog.beliefnet.com/crunchycon/2009/07/sarah-palins-poisoned-chali...
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Sarah Palin's poisoned chalice
Monday July 6, 2009
Categories: Republicans
In his best Times column yet, Ross Douthat -- who, like me, was an early Palin enthusiast, but was later disillusioned and disappointed -- reflects on how Palin ruined her national political career by accepting John McCain's bid to join his ticket. Excerpt:

Sarah Palin represents the democratic ideal -- that anyone can grow up to be a great success story without graduating from Columbia and Harvard.
This ideal has had a tough 10 months. It's been tarnished by Palin herself, obviously. With her missteps, scandals, dreadful interviews and self-pitying monologues, she's botched an essential democratic role -- the ordinary citizen who takes on the elites, the up-by-your-bootstraps role embodied by politicians from Andrew Jackson down to Harry Truman.

But it's also been tarnished by the elites themselves, in the way that the media and political establishments have treated her.

Here are lessons of the Sarah Palin experience, for any aspiring politician who shares her background and her sex. Your children will go through the tabloid wringer. Your religion will be mocked and misrepresented. Your political record will be distorted, to better parody your family and your faith. (And no, gentle reader, Palin did not insist on abstinence-only sex education, slash funds for special-needs children or inject creationism into public schools.)

Male commentators will attack you for parading your children. Female commentators will attack you for not staying home with them. You'll be sneered at for how you talk and how many colleges you attended. You'll endure gibes about your "slutty" looks and your "white trash concupiscence," while a prominent female academic declares that your "greatest hypocrisy" is the "pretense" that you're a woman. And eight months after the election, the professionals who pressed you into the service of a gimmicky, dreary, idea-free campaign will still be blaming you for their defeat.

All of this had something to do with ordinary partisan politics. But it had everything to do with Palin's gender and her social class.

Someone -- maybe Booker T. Washington, I can't recall -- once said that because of prejudice, black Americans who wanted to get ahead in America would have to be better than good enough to withstand the things thrown at them in their ascent to the top. The Palin experience suggests the same thing for a woman politician of Palin's background and beliefs.

UPDATE: Radley Balko, sympathizing with Ross. Excerpt:

Here's all I want to say: It is possible that Sarah Palin was both unfairly mistreated and personally attacked by the media and many on the left, and that her family was rather ruthlessly and mercilessly run through the ringer . . . and that she's a not particularly bright, not particularly curious, once libertarian-leaning governor who sadly devolved into a predictable, buzzword spouting culture warrior when she was prematurely picked for national office by John McCain.
These two scenarios can coexist.

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My response...

I've read this through 3 times, and let it stew for a while, because each time I read it, my gut says something is wrong. I found it.

"All of this had something to do with ordinary partisan politics. But it had everything to do with Palin's gender and her social class."

I disagree.

Her gender only colored the details. And to a degree, it also is true of the "social class" aspect. I believe the real root of the issue revolves around culture.

What aspects? Her lack of pretense. Being plain spoken. Speaking in everyday terms that relate to the vast everyday population. And, above all, ignoring the culturally loaded media environment.

Remember the question about what she read? And she just said "all of them"? To a small subset of the population, that's "important". After all, you have be "in on" the latest greatest and most trendy and progressive of publications. I even recall Rod's commentary about how one could not possibly be fit for DC until they'd read a certain subset of publications for some time. It matters to the Beltway crowd which ones you read. That's part of how you are judged. I could not care less. Neither does Palin. Score one for having some sense.

But, oh my, the flap that generated here and elsewhere. Why, one cannot be "intellectually curious" and not know that there's specific publications you have to telegraph that you read so that others "know" the depth of your intellect. What effete snobbery.

YOu see, there's a common culture... and the culture of DC and certain other "metropolitan" centers. A rarified air of self delusional perception of intellectual superiority.

And anyone, be they atheist or Christian, male or female, black or white, rich or pauper, regardless of level of education, will be treated with precisely the same level of contempt and snobbery as Palin was for having the gall to intrude themselves into the rarified air where the "betters" know they have the right to govern, or at least be the doorkeepers to the reigns of power.