Revoke my feminist card -- I like Palin
September 16, 2008
BY MICHAEL SNEED Sun-Times Columnist
Hmmm. Maybe . . . I am not a feminist after all.
Maybe . . . working in a man's world for 42 years and busting my butt to beat them up the ladder deletes me from the feminist category.
Perhaps . . . struggling to be a good single mom in a very married world -- yet meeting my five-day-a-week column deadline -- doesn't earn me a feminist handle either.
Certainly . . . because I'm not appalled or sickened or shocked by Sarah Palin's stealing the thunder from Obama the orator, I am not a feminist.
Give me a break.
I'm tired of women working hard for a hammer that never breaks the glass ceiling; disgusted when Hillary Clinton, an incredibly capable, brilliant woman, lost the fight of her life; disheartened by other countries throughout the free world being led by formidable women before America is.
Only this time, it was an amazing orator named Barack Obama who was stealing our thunder . . . and I was . . . well, you know. Pissed.
And then along came Palin, a woman of the tundra who could be America's next best frontier story -- and I was pleasantly surprised.
Hell, I was delighted.
So what if she's a Republican? I tend to vote for Republican presidents.
So what if she didn't know the definition of the Bush Doctrine? Her performance was a Western draw. Bravery in tact. But no one shot.
So I asked myself -- what fault is there in admiring a woman who is against abortion -- even though I believe in freedom of choice?
What's wrong with huge respect for a woman who chose to give birth to a Down syndrome child knowing full well what was in store for her and her family?
And if appreciating a woman who chose a husband who supports her ladder-climbing skill puts me in the non-feminist category, well maybe that's where I belong.
To be blunt, Palin is like a zephyr blowing across the prairie with a retro hairdo tied back like a sheaf of wheat.
She is real. She is rural. She may not be a brilliant tactician, but she's got street sense. Palin is so unlike the very controlled Hillary Clinton, who would never be caught dead in red heels.
Thus, it now appears Palin has emerged as "everywoman" to a huge portion of our female population; a woman never really identified with what we thought was our quintessential role model -- a highly educated woman who wears tailored suits, whose voice is never shrill and who has a husband who makes more than she does.
I don't know what perfume Palin wears, but to me she smells of the soil.
Our huge land once had the call of the frontier for a new start -- and Alaska became the last of it.
Palin's kind of grit and savvy is akin to a frontier story: a young woman who was raised in a land of big sky and the midnight sun, a metaphor of sorts for being able to spot trouble a long way away.
In the next two months, Palin may be able to forge a hammer big enough to crack the glass ceiling. Maybe not.
And no Palin moose gun may be powerful enough to pursue critics of John McCain, who -- rightly or wrongly -- may be tarnished by our economy.
But McCain did choose a tough and savvy woman as his running mate . . . and it is refreshing to think, at least for a while, a little air from the Alaskan aerie wafted through America.
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