How you should be tough (right after Hillary says what she's supposed to)

Now that Sarah Palin and, consequently, Alaska is in the spotlight, I can observe~~unfortunately~~more clearly than ever how a political figure gets plastered with everyone's causes. It's as though the whole country is "putting on" their stuff all over her and all over Alaska.

This article appeared in Newsweek and demonstrates what I'm talking about. It is written as a letter to Hillary Clinton~~"What she should say." That alone makes me raise an eyebrow. Hillary, apparently, is not having the right thoughts or saying the right things, so Patti Davis is going to tell her what she should say, as a Woman Who Knows Women. Part of what Hillary should say apparently is as follows:

There are many definitions of toughness. Most women would probably define it as meeting the daily challenges of raising a family in an increasingly treacherous world. They would think about the nights with no sleep sitting up with a sick child, or a race to the emergency room with a child in pain. Most would not define toughness as the ability and willingness to shoot and kill an animal. Nor are they impressed by seeing a woman brandishing an assault weapon, or sitting on her couch with the skin and head of a dead grizzly bear behind her.

I found this paragraph very telling. It implies that the second part of the paragraph about shooting animals is the part that describes Sarah Palin's demonstration of toughness...not the rest of the paragraph, which of course are issues she also deals with, and rather obviously at that. She gets up in the night to pump breastmilk and has most likely accompanied her child to the emergency room and done any myriad number of things mothers do. She also has a career, with all of its challenges of balancing work with family. She also happens to hunt. And do other stuff.

Here is a double-standard which is all over the media about Sarah. It goes something like "Sarah doesn't represent my view of toughness and therefore has no worth as a public figure or government representative." In other words, don't accept all of Sarah's practices, viewpoints, and lifestyle as "Sarah." Rather, it is up for grabs as okay or not, and since it isn't how I live (and it's kind of weird and icky) she can't possibly represent the Real Woman. Nevermind that most women in America go to the supermarket to buy cow, chicken, turkey, and various other animals, as well as their byproducts like milk and cheese. Sarah literally brings home the moosemeat and this is the vast divide between her and every other. Are we really like this with each other?

I'm weary with the implications of a phrase such as "willingness to shoot and kill an animal." Yes, it's far easier to buy it in the grocery store, but to actually kill and eat a moose! Lord forbid! WE women don't buy that definition of toughness.

Hunting is a fact of life here, as you may have gathered. People here are not [insert disparaging terminology that some use to refer to country folk] who like to kill stuff for the sake of something to do, right before tipping the weird cows that graze in the residential neighborhoods of Palmer. I can think of four or five people I know right now who are hunting for a big year-long stash of meat in their chest freezer. Most of the state is off the road system. Food costs a lot here and subsistence living is not just a posh hobby but a way of life. Even if someone can go to the store, like Sarah Palin and all of us people on the road system, does that mean we have to go to the store? Are we only able to be "green" in an acceptable way if we use a cloth shopping bag and go to some overpriced store where the food is registered organic?

If only Sarah Palin was ugly. If only she wore a suit of reasonable proportions and didn't look like a bombshell. If only she would tell us all in the first five minutes of her campaign exactly how she feels about every single issue known to man. Then we might be able to accept her. But until then, we will label her with every term in the book and make endless assumptions that may or may not pan out. Because she used a teleprompter during her speech (like every other politician at either convention) she must not have any original thoughts or have a brain in her head. The political cartoons are killing me. They are so sexist I can barely stand it.

Now, in fairness, it's reasonable to expect her to start doing interviews soon because we as Americans with a candidate on the ballot have the right to learn more about them, straight from their own mouths. And maybe she will clearly be the wrong woman for the job...or maybe she will continue to excite people with a new possibility in politics. But I fear that it will not matter what she says or what she does in her life~~it has already been observed through the lenses of either political party and she can no longer be simply herself. And it makes me wonder how often this happens with anybody.