Misery, Thy Name is Sarah Palin

Sarah Palin...governor to a backwater state, mayor to a backwater town, lover of lipstick-smeared dogs on ice, hater of polar bears, one-time media darling and scourge of America. As a voter, my penultimate question to Palin (after asking first, "Why are you here?") is "Why do you hate women, and especially mothers?" Actually, this is more of a question I would put to the Republican Party. Palin claims she can balance her newborn special needs baby with first a cross-country no-holds-barred presidential campaign and then one of the most demanding positions in the world (and possibly the most demanding if McCain's 72 year-old body does not hold out). According to an aide, Palin fuses mothering with governing:

“She’ll be with Piper or Trig, then she’s got a press conference or negotiations about the natural gas pipeline or a bill to sign, and it’s all business,” Ms. Burney, who works across the hall, said. “She just says, ‘Mommy’s got to do this press conference.’ ”

By holding herself up as both the paragon of motherhood and the ideal state executive, Sarah Palin is essentially saying that both are not full-time jobs. She is insulting stay-at-home mothers, some of whom have sacrificed career and money to care for their own children, day in and day out, twenty-four hours a day. She is also insulting working mothers, who must daily battle exhaustion, guilt, and separation anxiety in an uneasy compromise between two jobs. And finally, she is insulting women who have forgone motherhood for careers, a great sacrifice in its own right (Condoleeza Rice comes to mind as an example).  Take it from someone who tries to do some piddly consulting work here and there and take care of a perfectly healthy and wonderful eighteen-month old - you cannot work and take care of a baby at the same time without the assistance of another caregiver.  You cannot balance the baby on one knee while you balance the budget.  You cannot breastfeed while composing important legislation.  You cannot resolve the Georgia-Russia crisis during naptime.  You cannot take care of baby at the very same time you are doing something else, because caring for a baby is full-time employment.
Please somebody tell Sarah Palin to stop holding up her position as a working mother as a qualification for the highest office in the land.  Whether it's her knocked-up teen daughter or giving a speech while her water breaks and then waiting to fly back to Alaska to seek medical treatment, or her plundering of tiny Wasilla's budget or trying to use her clout to get her sister's ex fired (and then getting caught), aka Troopergate, she's not doing well at either the mother or the governor thing.  Maybe there is a woman out there that can manage a family of five with one still in diapers, and learn how to lead an entire nation with a complex bureaucracy, a squabbling Congress of an opposing party, a multi-front war, an economic crisis of deep and scary proportions, and many rogue nations itching for a fight.  But the woman who could balance these monumental tasks is not Sarah Palin. To say that this feat of the imagination is even possible for her is a grotesque lie and an affront to women everywhere.
The pig has lipstick and the lipstick is a really ugly color.