It is a fact universally acknowledged that Governor Palin’s every action and pronouncement over the next three years will be scrutinized with the assumption that she’s going to run in the 2012 primaries:
“It was so recent, yet it feels so foreign,” she said of the time before women had the right to vote, standing in front of pictures of Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Lucretia Mott.
Palin also remarked with pleasure on a black-and-white photograph of four women aiming pistols, and passed in silence under another of a woman holding aloft a sign reading, “Black lesbian feminist.”
She then toured the National Women’s Hall of Fame a block away, concluding with a handshake for the town’s mayor, Diana Smith, and a word of cheer for “mommy mayors and girl governors.”
Admittedly, as a target for mockery, that’s just about irresistable. But it also makes my stomach hurt, because dismissing women elected to public office as ‘mommy mayors and girl governors’ has been the standard misogynist trope going back to at least Samuel Johnson. (“A woman preaching is like a dog walking on its hind legs; it is not done well, but you are astonished to see it done at all.”)
So, I would like to petition the good thoughtful progressive men and women here — maybe especially the men — to try a thought experiment in regard to mocking Sarah Palin. Your zingers may be both justified and delicious, but would you repeat them in front of your Black Best Friend if Alan Keyes were your target?