Sarah Palin has become a giant inkblot test in American
politics.
This is neither her fault nor her virtue.
I cannot help but admire Gov. Palin's resolute capacity to
remain herself -- confident, eloquent, relentlessly optimistic --
in the face of a national campaign of hate and ridicule the likes
of which I cannot recall seeing. Ever.
Gov. Palin's appearance on "Saturday Night Live" this week was
remarkably good-humored under the circumstances. But Sarah Palin
has, whether she likes it or not, transcended the status of an
actual human being to become a symbol in American politics and
culture.
A symbol of what, exactly, is still being contested.
Sarah Palin means different things to different people. "I'd
rather be a symbol of sex than a lot of other things people have
symbols for," Marilyn Monroe once said. And the Democrats' insane
hatred of Gov. Palin has to do with the way she rebuts their
deepest assumptions -- that all that is young, cool, beautiful,
hip and groundbreaking must advance the cause of abortion rights,
gay marriage and liberal progressivism. How dare a woman be
young, attractive, glass-ceiling-shattering -- and conservative!
So they have responded in the crudest fashion, with relentless
personal invective and ridicule.
The New Republic suggests that Gov. Palin is seething with
resentment at her treatment by the urbane best and brightest of
Wasilla. As Sam Schulman noted in this week's Standard, "(Norm)
Scheiber spoke to various people from Gov. Palin's past, all of
whom have two things in common: Every one of them is smarter than
Palin and none of them has been heard of since their encounter
with her."
But Gov. Palin has also become a symbol of discontent in
certain intellectual quarters on the right. David Brooks, David
Frum, Kathleen Parker, George Will and the latest, the beloved
Peggy Noonan -- sweetheart of Reagan conservatives -- have joined
a chorus of concern about Gov. Palin.
Substantively, these critiques of her leave me cold. Why? Continued... |