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Politics : The Next President 2008 -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: calgal who wrote (3132)	9/12/2008 2:03:43 PM
From: calgal	Respond to of 3215

Return of the Mommy Wars Democrats v. Palin by Henry Payne 09/12/2008 12:00:00 AM Detroit "I am shocked," says Rep. Cathy McMorris Rodgers (R-Wash.), after learning of top Democrats' remarks that Republican vice presidential nominee Sarah Palin is selfishly seeking office at the same time she is mother to a Down syndrome baby. "Their comments are contrary to what women have fought for," continued McMorris Rodgers who 16 months ago gave birth to a son, Cole, diagnosed with Down syndrome. Of all the attacks against Sarah Palin since John McCain named her his running mate August 29, the most vicious have been accusations that Palin is sacrificing family for career--remarks that conjure not signs of change but the reactionary language of a bygone era. The accusations have been all the more extraordinary because they have come from Democrats and media allies closely identified with women's independence. Republicans have angrily responded that the Democratic offensive is sexist. Fearful of a backlash from women voters, the Obama campaign and others distanced themselves from such remarks--even as Democratic surrogates continued to plant the poisonous seed in the media. The question of whether a woman must choose between career and family has been taboo in politics. Not one of the politicians interviewed for this article has encountered the question in their own campaigns, or any other for that matter. Indeed, the Democratic veep nominee, Joe Biden, has been praised for heroically raising his two young children as a single father after the death of his first wife, even as he kept his Senate seat and commuted 3 hours every day to his Delaware home. "The rule in the office was if the boys called, he was to be interrupted no matter what he was doing or who he was talking to," an approving Los Angeles Times story quotes a close friend as saying about Biden's dual roles as parent and politician. "He was never out of communication with them." But the taboo has been shattered since McCain named Palin. True, the Obama campaign officially declared the Palin family off limits. The candidate himself, at a Monroe, Mich., campaign stop, said that "if I ever thought it was somebody in the campaign that was involved in something like that they would be fired." But that promise has sounded increasingly hollow. North of Monroe in Lansing, Mich., Dan Mulhern--the husband of Michigan Democratic Governor Jennifer Granholm--ripped into Palin on Detroit talk radio the morning of Palin's convention speech. "She's got a five-month-old Down syndrome baby and a 17-year-old daughter who's pregnant. This girl is going to go through a lot and does she know what she's putting her family through?" Mulhern said to incredulous host Frank Beckmann, who noted that Mulhern's own wife had three young children when she first ran for governor just seven years ago. Through a spokesman, Governor Granholm confirmed that the issue of managing family and career had never come up in her campaigns for office. Ironically, she thanks her husband, who scaled back his own career, for helping take care of their children, saying being a working mother "requires a partnership." Like Obama, Granholm says "family is off limits" when it comes to assessing Palin, yet she would not criticize her own husband's assault on her fellow female governor. CONTINUED 1 2 Next > Print This Article 527 Airing Jeremiah Wright Ad in Michigan Today, 1:33 PM State of the Left: Angry and Desperate Today, 1:11 PM Palin Losing the Vital PETA Vote in Toledo? Today, 12:29 PM Whoopi to McCain: 'Should I worry about a return to slavery in a McCain administration?' Today, 11:59 AM

To: calgal who wrote (3132)	9/12/2008 2:17:03 PM
From: calgal	Respond to of 3215

McCain Finds the Right Wingman And she's a woman. by Stephen F. Hayes 09/15/2008, Volume 014, Issue 01 Increase Font Size \| Printer-Friendly \| Email a Friend \| Respond to this article Minneapolis Last Tuesday, as the hordes of media that had begun to dissect every moment of her political career and personal life were distracted by speeches from Fred Thompson and Joe Lieberman in nearby St. Paul, Sarah Palin sat quietly with her family for an hourlong dinner in the Skywater restaurant of the Minneapolis Hilton. It was a rare respite from the intense scrutiny she was subjected to over the first week of her new life in the national spotlight. Over the previous several days she had been portrayed as a naïf, a rube, and a bad mother. Journalists had peppered the McCain campaign with legitimate questions about her experience and her record as governor. But these same news organizations--including some of the world's most prestigious--devoted much of their time to exploring irrelevant aspects of her personal and family life. One television network showed a family picture of the Palins with the belly of Palin's pregnant daughter Bristol spotlighted. Another showed several high school pictures of Bristol Palin's boyfriend, Levi. In the fourth paragraph of a front-page New York Times story we learned that Palin's husband, Todd, had been arrested on DUI charges in 1986. A writer for the Atlantic Monthly hyped an unfounded Desperate Housewives-type rumor that Palin's last child, Trig, was actually her daughter's. A major U.S. newspaper demanded the McCain campaign share medical records relating to Palin's amniotic fluid. There were erroneous reports that Palin had supported Pat Buchanan's presidential campaign (she supported Steve Forbes), that she had been a