The Palin offensive

This summer was an unusually dry one in NYC, and also quite barren on the blogging front. My brain cells were most unfortunately occupied with radicals, and not the fun kind. No, there is most certainly nothing radical about taking square roots, or any other element of 8th grade math that you apparently need to know in order to go to graduate school. Like the LSAT, the GRE exists purely to filter out everyone too lazy (or smart) to spend the better part of their summer studying interior angles and esoteric vocabulary words. It has absolutely nothing to do with how smart you are, how good you are at math, reading, or writing, or how likely you are to succeed in graduate school.

It has a lot to do, however, with the limited number of advanced degrees offered and the need for some kind of filter to keep the numbers of applicants down to a somewhat reasonable number. When you receive 300 applications each year, and admit only 30 students, you need an expedient method for weeding some of them out. Enter ETS, an organization devoted to finding new and devious ways to make smart people look dumb. As evidenced by an entire test preparation industry, the key to succeeding on the GRE, or any similar standardized test, has nothing to do with intelligence or prior knowledge. All it takes is weeks and weeks of mental drudgery as you unlearn whatever you previously knew about writing and math, and re-learn the tactics required to outsmart ETS. It can hardly be called “studying”; it’s more of a mental retrofitting process.

Perhaps the most frustrating aspect of the exam was the so-called “analytical writing” portion, in which you are given a choice of two prompts and asked to compose an essay presenting your own perspective on the topic. In comparison to the multiple-choice verbal and quantitative sections, this part of the exam seems like it might actually hold some relevance for graduate school. After all, it seems likely that most graduate fields would require this type of analytical writing. Most graduate fields, however, do not require timed essay exams on topics so inane that it is difficult to take them seriously. My exam topic was:

"Those who treat politics and morality as though they were separate realms fail to understand either the one or the other."

Ironically, since Sarah Palin was named as McCain’s running mate, this topic has become more relevant than I could have imagined. In just one week the unlikely vice presidential candidate has eclipsed both Obama and McCain in the media, which is understandably transfixed by the idea of a moose-hunting, Jesus-loving, oil-drilling hockey mom in the White House.

It seems completely absurd, and originally I saw McCain’s pick as an act of desperation, an acknowledgment of his own failure to compete with the rising tide of Obama. And the fact that the Republican party was forced to put a woman on the ticket is a strong indication that this election marks a turning point in American politics. For the first time, being an old white man has become somewhat of a liability, rather than an advantage.

This is due in large part of course to the efforts of Hillary Clinton, whose epic bid for the presidency, though unsuccessful, did in fact succeed in cracking the white woman’s glass ceiling (women of color, I’m afraid, usually face a ceiling made of concrete and reinforced with steel). And the irony of ironies is that now Hillary, who was the battering ram against that ceiling (and has the scars to prove it), must stand aside and watch Miss Congeniality happily ascend to the level she herself failed to attain.

And here’s a lesson to all you ambitious young women: the path to the presidency is marked not by how many times you have defended children’s rights, but by how many children you have. It is marked not by your commitment to national health care reform, but by your commitment to driving your kids to hockey practice. In other words, if you want to reach the White House, don’t bother running for US Senate, just join your local PTA! Oh and by the way, you should probably trade in your pantsuit for a cute skirt and heels.

This is a man’s world, after all, and it turns out that men don’t like women who act like men. Hillary was punished because she wasn’t content to play by the (gender) rules. Instead of politely waiting to be offered second place on the ticket, she aggressively pursued the highest office in the land. Rather than tending to her wifely duties, she let her adulterous husband disgrace her. Hillary was trying out for quarterback but it turned out the only position available to her was on the cheer squad.

So now Hillary is back on the sidelines and we have a new head cheerleader in town. And despite our collective instinct to laugh her off the field, I believe that underestimating Sarah Palin is one of the most dangerous things we can do right now. As she said in her knockout speech at the RNC, “What’s the difference between a hockey mom and a pit bull? Lipstick.” We didn’t have hockey where I grew up but as the daughter of a former PTA president (who went on to run for public office), I am all too familiar with this breed of rabid supermom to take that joke lightly.

Some analyses have suggested that Palin isn’t going to last, that she will be undercut by her own administrative missteps and her daughter’s scandalicious behavior. Something tells me, however, that if a teen pregnancy out of wedlock can’t stop her, there’s not much that will. Rather, I agree with Adele Sten’s suggestion that Palin is the Christian right’s new “culture warrior,” who dresses up hardcore conservatism with a fresh face and a sassy personality. It’s true, she has single-handedly revitalized John McCain’s moribund campaign, giving him the grounds on which to claim his own agenda for change and providing a solid basis of conservative family values to counter his “maverick” forays away from the party.

For this reason, she is a formidable opponent and we should be very wary of the pit bull underneath the lipstick. And much as we may be tempted, it would be highly unwise to succumb to the desire to belittle her as nothing more than a ditzy beauty queen. Showing contempt for her policy positions is one thing, showing contempt for her background, her career, or her choice to have kids is quite another. If we stoop to this level, not only do we risk alienating the soccer mom constituency, we also come uncomfortably close to reproducing a patriarchal devaluation of women and motherhood. And although her daughter’s pregnancy seems like a perfect excuse to pillory Palin with her own conservative Christian hypocrisy, nominating Bristol Palin for slut of the year is hardly a feminist tactic.

Furthermore, focusing on these kinds of details distracts us from the real issue, which is that Palin is positioned to assume a very, very powerful role, in which she is likely to bring the full force of her pit bull personality to bear on a mission to destroy many of the freedoms we currently enjoy.

The fact of the matter is that Palin is a born-again evangelical Christian who believes that the war in Iraq is a mission from God. She believes in teaching creationism in schools. She opposes abortion unilaterally, even in cases of rape or incest. She opposes any form of sex-ed except abstinence-only programs. One of her top three stated goals as governor of Alaska was “Preserving the definition of “marriage” as defined in our constitution.” (source)

Indeed, it is precisely these ultra-conservative values that won her a place on the ticket, because the Republicans needed someone to appeal to their core constituency on the Christian right. McCain was far too liberal for this group, and without Palin they might have stayed home on election day. Yet Palin’s views are in fact far more conservative than most Americans, and so the Republican party is also working to mask some of her more extreme views in order to make her palatable to a wide group of swing voters, not least of which are some of Hillary’s followers.

That would explain why the article from the Eagle Forum Alaska that quoted Palin’s position on the topics above was removed from the internet. The task at hand, then, is to bring these issues to light, to demonstrate conclusively that Sarah Palin is most emphatically NOT your typical soccer mom, but rather a conservative extremist who poses a grave threat to the freedoms we cherish. It is on an ideological basis, rather than a personal one, that she must be attacked.