Nice column Joan Walsh.

one way to think about it is that there are many, many candidates that are exactly like Palin - know-nothings, bushies, whatever you want to call them. But none of them are savaged like this. If she were a man she would be given a pass on most of this stuff. but as it is people openly call her things a bit worse than "veepzilla."

At the same time it is amazing that she IS getting a pass on some things that would automatically disqualify a man. if a male candidate were under indictment for multiple ethics violations and abuse of power scandals, the story would dominate the news until the candidate had to withdraw from the race. but somehow all that is just a sidebar to her fashion choices and her scientific reasoning about the value of fruit fly research.

So there is certainly a double standard. it works both in Palin's favor and also against her.

well i disagree with almost everything paglia says in this column. also, i am a strong supporter of obama who disagrees with palin's politics and dislikes her rhetorical style.

BUT

it is true that she is relentlessly attacked, lampooned, and then dismissed as a matter of course and with great display of vicious glee. many of the things that are offered up as evidence of her awfulness are absolutely standard fare in our political world and go unremarked elsewhere.

example yesterday: in response to a question about her political future plans, she said that if there is an opportunity, if there is an open door, she will plough on through. she will take advantage of future political opportunities. people reacted to this comment (which was an answer to a direct question) with both outrage and fear. it was thought to reveal some deep character defect. what a terrible woman! endless jokes about 'ploughing' sarah palin immediately ensue.

i submit that if those statements had been made by a male politician - by romney, for example, no one would think twice. is it unseemly for a man to be an opportunist and a career politician? or is it in fact a GOOD character trait if it is held by a man?

in evaluating statements like this, as yourself whether they would be received the same way if spoken by a man.

you wrote:

@j.nice

You're missing the point. It wasn't about her being aggressive. It was about her citing her god as the one who called her to action. That she doesn't want to miss an open door if her god opens it up.

It's not at all about gender. It's about a secular society versus a theocracy. Her religious views, especially about the End of Days are scary.

If someone believes in the End of Days literally, and if they actually look forward to it and want it to happen . . . to me, that should disqualify them from being president. I wouldn't make that a legal test, of course. They are welcome to run, obviously. It's a free country. But thinking people should be appalled at the idea of someone who actually wants the mother of all genocides to occur. As in, all non-Christians being slaughtered.

That's not the kind of person who should be president.

-- Cuchulain2007

first, thanks for the reply and i agree with much of it.

second, let me say i'm suitably embarrassed about not spelling 'plow' correctly ('plough'? what the heck is that?!)

third, i believe you are missing my point, not the reverse.

MOST politicians will affirm a belief in the end-times or whatever nonsense. but most of them are not held to account for that belief. in fact, most of them are praised for it. in fact, every president since carter has been a born-again christian. further, speaking of future possibilities and plans by saying something like "god willing" is absolutely standard and idiomatic in most political discourse. so what accounts the difference in public perception?

believe me i agree with you that she should not be president! and i am not gallantly defending her, either. i am simply one the 'thinking people' i keep hearing so much about on threads like this one.

well the stuff on self-organizing systems is interesting enough. dynamic models are gaining ground in neurobiology, and they do seem to be a kind of mechanism that the mechanistic conception of nature did not anticipate. the brain and other dynamic systems do seem to be 'continuously active' and 'spontaneous' in ways that contrast with the fundamentally passive picture of the physical world that emerged from the scientific revolution.

the *new* thing in Kauffman's interview is the way he appealed to self-organizing systems to distinguish his view from Spinozism. he seems to be saying most of nature is NOT sacred or creative, but in fact lifeless and passive. only the dynamic, self-organizing aspects of the world are sacred. admittedly, that is not Spinozism. But it is also not very convincing. it is only the theme of the 'sanctity of life' that gives it a plausible and familiar ring. One can be all for self-organizing systems (and even quantum consciousness if you care to) without holding forth on anything about spirituality whatsoever.

And if he is hoping to cultivate an environmental ethic on the basis of the sanctity of life, he is barking up the wrong tree. by far the strongest and most broadly appealing arguments for environmental ethics are strictly UTILITARIAN. We should curb global warming and convert to a sustainable lifestyle strictly because the consequences of not doing so are disastrous for theist, deist, spinozist, pagan, and atheist alike.