Time Immortal

At least, I think that’s the gist of what George Jonas is getting at in his latest article. And not just establishment feminists either, who are obviously threatened that a woman who has risen as high, and as quickly, as Sarah Palin has could possibly have had five kids along the way, and who are disgusted and vexed by the thought that any woman of achievement could possibly espouse a pro-life viewpoint.

The word “insult” recurs, and not only on my phone messages. As noted by The Weekly Standard’s Noemie Emery, “insulting” is the word of choice for The New Republic’s Michelle Cottle, the Newsweek/Washington Post blog’s Sally Quinn, as well as for The Baltimore Sun’s Susan Reimer and The Washington Post’s Ruth Marcus. Why “insulting”? Here’s one obvious reason. The sickening speed with which the moose-hunting ex-mayor of Wasilla passed everyone in the queue for Queen Bee made a mockery of any woman who wore out her contact lenses reading books that essentially bored her; or who gave up a sweet guy who wasn’t going places for a nerd or a windbag who was; or who planned her parenthood because a person couldn’t have it all; or one who had it all and could no longer fit into her Dolce & Gabbana.

“Why did I plan all those hideous dinner parties?” cry the subtext of my phone messages. “Why did I read all that Proust and Joyce? Why did I pretend that I had an interest in the Seychelles? Does she even know where the Seychelles are? I bet she doesn’t.

“Why did I make nice to that wet noodle from Yale? Why was I nasty to that great guy from Alaska? From Alaska, no less! Look where it got me. Three diplomas on the wall, and I’m not even on the A-list. No children — she has five — five! — and can still fit into her Ermenegildo Zegna, even if she can’t pronounce it.”

Dear ladies, thanks for calling. What can I say to ease your hurt? Not much. Remember, you can only prepare yourself for small things. Big ones are usually gifts. You can study business, but not how to be a captain of industry. Resign yourselves to the next inhabitant of the White House having an atrocious hairdo.

There is something in all this “she’s not the right kind of woman” commentary being levelled at Palin that, I think, is quite revealing. It is revealing of the inherent insecurities of many women who have, to one degree or another, bought into modern feminist myths. It is also revealing of just how empty a life modern feminism proposes to reward women with, and the way it has distorted the perceptions of many people about even something so normal and so essential as the propagation of the species to the next generation.

Update: Welcome, Steynians!

A Rasmussen poll ranks her popularity highter than that of Obama — but let’s remember what’s happening here. Barrack Hussein Obama is running for President, while Sarah Palin is not: if John McCain wins the election, she will be Vice President.

The Republican VP pick, then, is more popular than the Democrat front-runner. Politics is not my field, but it seems to me that for Obama, that’s not a good place to be. Hard-core lefties are beginning to realize this, and some are even, as is traditional, threatening to leave the country should McCain and Palin prevail in the election.

And let’s be honest: a week ago, most of us had no idea who this woman was, if we were even aware of her existence.

To say that this has inspired fear and rage among the Left would be a vast understatement. I can’t recall a time when I’ve seen such a broad spectrum of liberal-minded folk come So. Completely. UNHINGED. This website, a heartless mockery of Trig Palin’s Down’s syndrome is probably the most extreme example I’ve come across, but it’s hardly the only one.

Consider: Oprah Winfrey refuses to allow Palin on her show. The woman who introduced Obama to millions of American women, and who is ostensibly a champion of women’s rights and the advancement of women in all areas of the job market, including the political arena, will not allow the first woman on the Republican ticket to speak on her show. Even more egregiously, she will not allow the woman who will probably the first woman to hold the Vice Presidential (if not the Presidential) office in the U.S. on her show.

Indeed, supposed feminists have been forming ranks against Palin with a ferocity that makes no sense whatsoever. In an excellent column for the Wall Street Journal, Barbara Amiel (Lady Black) makes an excellent point (and not just when she compares Palin to Margaret Thatcher):

American feminists have always had a tough sell to make. To the rest of the world, no females on earth have ever had it as easy as middle-class American women. Cosseted, surrounded by labor-saving devices, easily available contraception and supermarkets groaning with food, their complaints have always seemed to have no relationship to reality.

Education was there for the taking. Marriages were not arranged. Going against social mores had no serious consequences. Postwar American women (excluding those mired in poverty or the odious restrictions of race) have always had the choice of what they wanted to be. They simply didn’t decide to exercise it until it became more fashionable to get out of the home than to run it.

Sarah Palin has put the flim-flam nature of America feminism sharply into focus, revealing the not-so-secret hypocrisy of its code and, whatever her future, this alone is an accomplishment. As she emerged into the nation’s consciousness, a shudder went through the feminist left — a political movement not restricted to females. She is a mother refusing to stay at home (good) who had made a success out in the workplace (excellent) whose marriage nevertheless is a rip-roaring success and whose views are unspeakable—those of a red-blooded, right-wing principled pragmatist.

The metaphorical hair stood up on the back of every licensed member of the feminist movement who could immediately see she was a monster out of a nightmare landscape by Hieronymus Bosch. Pro-life. Pro-oil exploration in Alaska, home of the nation’s polar bears for heaven’s sake. Smaller government. Lower taxes. And that family of hers: Next to the Clintons with their dysfunctional marriage, her fertility and sexually robust life could only emphasize the shriveled nature of the one-child family of the former Queen Bee of political female accomplishment.

Mrs. Palin’s emergence caused a spasm in American feminism. Caste and class have always been ammunition in the very Eastern seaboard women’s movement, and now they were (so to speak) loading for bear. Sally Quinn felt a mother of five had no business being vice president. Andrea Mitchell remarked that “only the uneducated” would vote for Mrs. Palin. “Choose a woman but this woman?” wrote Baltimore Sun columnist Susan Reimer, accusing Sen. McCain of using a Down’s syndrome child as qualification for the VP spot.

The hypocrisy was breathtaking. Only nanoseconds before the choice of Mrs. Palin as VP put her a geriatric heartbeat away from the presidency, a woman’s right to have a career and children was a shibboleth of feminism. One always knew that women with views that opposed those of official feminism were to be treated as nonwomen. To see it now out in the open was the real shocker.

Other left-wing commentators haven’t displayed even as little restraint in their open contempt as the likes of Sally Quinn have. Indeed, Mark Steyn correctly notes that based on their responses to Palin, feminists and progressives — supposed champions of working mothers and of shattering “glass ceilings” wherever they can be found — seem to have “as narrow and proscriptive a view of what women are permitted to be as any old 1950s sitcom dad,” and all because Palin is openly Christian and ardently pro-life.

And when those criticisms ring hollow, Palin’s detractors turn instead to her “downscale” appeal, noting that she’ll certainly make the Republicals more popular with “the lower class” voters, while simultaneously alienating “the upper class” voters.

Leave it to Mark Steyn to note that one would “be surprised how crowded it is down at the “downscale” end.”

And remember: all this rage and animosity has emerged within the last week, and then in response to a woman John McCain picked at his presidential running mate, who was — prior to that point — all but unknown to most Americans, and who was enjoying an 80+% approval rate with the Alaska electorate as their governor.

John who? That’s almost what this campaign has become. And the Left are soiling their pants over it.