I won't of course. But that is nasty and humiliating.

Walk around so observers can check out their form, like livestock at a state fair? It's so offensive.

Do women really still do this? Walk around so observers can check out their form, like livestock at a state fair? It's so offensive.

Livestock don't know any better. Apparently neither does Palin.

Like most people, she actually looks better with her clothes on.

If title 9 had been in full effect in 1984 she'd have gone to college on a sports scholarship. Instead she had to enter a beauty competition because it was one of the very few options for women at the time to get into college if they were from poor families. Now we are going to spend the next news cycle skewering Sarah Palin for doing what she needed to do to pay for college.

Blaming women for the compromises they make to get ahead is the hallmark of the backlash against feminism.

No blame to Palin for participating. She may have had a good reason.

But I'd really like to know...are women today still parading around on stages in bathing suits as part of these annual pageants?

I know it's not PC, but she's smoking in that old clip!

Variable,

She may have needed to enter beauty contests to get through college, but if "Blaming women for the compromises they make to get ahead is the hallmark of the backlash against feminism," as you say, then cutting off options that would help the other women who come after you is a hallmark of the kind of Queen Bee, me first, you last Republican attitude to any kind of helping hand for anyone who actually needs it. Blow off loser children who couldn't make it into college unless the family buys the campus a building are the exception.

Like so many of the "sex bombshell" arguments, it simply has nothing to do with Palin as a candidate. It falls into the category of attempts to involve a candidate in some sort of scandal. Indeed, it would be better to concentrate on why Palin is not a good VP candidate. This is not fair play.

She did this to pay for college when there were very few options for women.

Uh, variable - this isn't 1903 we're talking about, it was 1984. Maybe that sounds like a long time ago to you, but today's 40-somethings were not attending college in the days before suffrage. I started college in 1983 and there were plenty of options for women, just as many as there were for men. It was called get a job and get a loan. Lots of people go to college without a sports scholarship, then and now. In fact, college tuition was much less inflated back then. You could go to a state university for $2000 a semester "way back in the olden days".

It's an embarrassment to women that this is the female candidate closest to the White House. Is this really the best we can do to represent our gender? Someone who can't speak to the press, can't formulate a thought on foreign policy, has none of the experience needed to be in the White House. But she got herself through college by strutting around in a bathing suit. That's one of her strong points? I'd rather be represented by Hillary. She may have her flaws, but at least she's not an empty suit held up to placate the female voters.

Huzzah!

when the due diligence would have been done on a VP candidate to dig up stuff like this. Had it emerged, that VP would have taken a short ride on the fast train to the 'no way' pile.

What the hell is happening in this country that a former beauty pagent queen is now running for the 2nd highest office in the US?

Surely, we can do better than this?

The rest of the world howls with glee at every new low.

I'd like to this is the bottom, but if McCain/Palin make it into office, I fear it is not.

VOTE WITH YOUR BRAINS, NOT YOUR FEAR, PEOPLE!

Dear God,

Please let there be an interview portion of the event on tape................. I can see it now....

My one wish this year, is that all the children of the world would join hands and sing in peace.

And if I had two wishes this year.......

oh, and yes they still have pagents

It is all very well to say that she shouldn't have done it, and, maybe in retrospect she regrets it. However, sometimes I think I would have taken off every stitch of my clothes never to have to deal with those dreadful student loan people. However, I was a Mom by the time I was able to attend college full time and moms must be circumspect.

How did Hillary pay for college? Her father wrote a check for the tuition. It's in her autobiograpy, although she did work for spending money. Hillary was a worker and has been working at one thing or another since she was 14. I do admire her. However, I concede that she had plenty of advantages that working class girls don't have.

I don't blame women for what they have to do to get ahead -- as long as they aren't stealing or don't become hit women for the mob. From a position of privilege, it is easy to criticize. There is plenty to criticize about Palin without dredging up decisions made when she was in her twenties. I for one would like to see criticism for all decisions made before 25 pretty much suspended. I got married at 19 and have beaten myself up plenty for that, but I have known few people under 25 who had really good judgment.

You are wrong. This was an empowerment moment for Ms. Palin.

In charge of her sexuality and not afraid to flaunt it in front of the Patriarchy, which would prefer her veiled and burkha'd.

An historic feminist moment was made in that video. n h