We would not have elected her. She would not be famous. We would not have dug her out of Alaska to be next in line for the president. I get chills when I think of it. Sarah Palin could have been president due to the republican need to cobble together groups of disparate political groups into a voting bloc.
I wish she would go on Celebrity Jeopardy.
Again, should she have turned down the nomination, assuming she was being picked because she wasn’t an old man? And if so, how attractive must a woman be, and how little must she think of her own capabilities, to do the same? I know she’s an idiot, you may know, but what evidence is there that she knew? Or even if she did see herself as a token, why wouldn’t she use that to her advantage? And why should she be blamed for this over McCain, his people, the GOP and voters apparently dumb enough to go for beauty over brains?
It’s weird to critique someone for using their looks to get what they want. Instead of looking down on whatever dolt hopes his penis might get played with in exchange for a high-level job, they criticize the person who managed to get that job without the necessary schooling or track record. It’s shitty, they don’t deserve it as much as other people do, but why on Earth would they turn down opportunities that might not otherwise be present (say, through family connections or golf partners)?
No, she should have turned it down because she wasn’t qualified.
Can’t we criticize both the person who picked her for being a hot woman, and the dumb hot person?
Nobody would have turned it down. Her mistake was trying to remain a prominent national figure after the election, when it was already clear that she was batting out of her league.
I’m glad you made that connection. The stripper has reasons to be working to give them that feeling, and is probably not doing it by accident. Needless to say, this is well over and above how all but a few women are acting in their everyday lives.
WTF? Are you suggesting that a lot of women strut around like a stripper, and do the things a stripper might do to make the guys in the room think she’s got the hots for them?
Stripper behavior in no way resembles normative female behavior in the workplace, on the street, whatever. What you appear to be saying is that guys are reading Palin’s presentation of herself in a way that is like the way they’d read a stripper - and that somehow suggests that we read everyday women in everyday situations that way.
That’s just plain dumb.
Nonsense. Many people would and have turned it down. Anyone with a savvy sense of strategy who really wants to vie for national office during their career would avoid trying for office too early and consequently appearing, and developing a reputation for being, unsuited for office.
Dan Quayle was dogged by his initial appearance of being a goofball at the moment that George H. W. Bush introduced him for the rest of his career. Of course, his apparent unsuitability throughout that time did not help him to undo that first impression.
This. I utilize my genetic assets to win a popularity contest and that’s okay…you utilize my genetic assets to sell a magazine and it’s sexism.
Shades of gray.
Exactly - straight men are. The ‘starbursts,’ to use Rich Lowry’s word, are aimed at us.
This may surprise you, but I wasn’t paying that close attention to the 2000 race until very late in the going. I thought that Gore would win, and even if he didn’t, I thought that the country was in good enough shape that even Bush couldn’t fuck it up too badly.
So much for my talent as a prognosticator, huh? 
Good question, and beyond my ability to discern. All I can really say is that, of all the women I’ve ever known personally, I can’t think of any who made me feel that way, other than in one-on-one situations well away from work and the like.
Between that, and the fact that a lot of other men seem to pick up this same vibe from her that I essentially never pick up from other women, I have to assume it’s her.
I can’t say I find idiocy very endearing; I find it frustrating.
No, you don’t have to assume that. A lot of men think if a woman wears a form fitting sweater, that means she is asking to be stared at. A lot of men think that if a woman doesn’t practically club them over the head with a rejection, that means they are just playing coy and hard to get. A lot of men also think that it’s a given that an attractive woman uses her looks to manipulate people and get away with crappy behavior (I’ve seen the sentiment expressed many a time on this board). As a woman, I can tell you that men very often reach the wrong conclusions about women. Particularly if it’s an attractive woman. So no, you don’t have to assume anything like that.
No offense, but if you can’t point to something more concrete than just your inner feelings, perhaps you shouldn’t be so sure that Palin is consciously pulling your sexual puppet strings. I can usually tell when a woman is flirting (being a woman kinda gives one that insight…women learn from each other), and she doesn’t seem to be doing anything differently that a man does. It may be a feminized version of what her male counterparts do (a man wouldn’t shimmy his shoulders [because “that’s so gay!”] as was mentioned earlier, but he’d probably pump his fist or do some other macho move), but that doesn’t make it sexual. And that’s the thing that I’m trying to get yall to see.
Feminine does not equal sexual.
For all we know, it could be one person choosing the photo. And maybe, like you, they hate Palin more than they care about sexism. Perhaps that the photo could be/is sexist didn’t pop up in their minds because of another agenda.
Are you going to lump McCain in with the KKK because of his unintended racist comment while correcting the accusation that Obama was a Muslim?
You seem to be hell bent on making everything a black or white, yes or no issue. Not a shade of grey, resulting in ludicrous statements, such as that one is necessarily a misogynist if one is sexist. Or that in order for Newsweek to publish a sexist photo on their cover there must be a unanimous sexist conspiracy amongst the entire staff. Perhaps there is some area in between that you should acknowledge.
I don’t think it makes much sense to equate how a woman acts in a bar dealing with being hit on with how one acts during a VP debate or through a campaign. I would hope that there’s a lot more thought given to appearance, behavior and overall stagecraft for the latter than the former. If not, Palin’s team needs a good talking to.
But do you really think she’d have gotten where she was if she were an overweight, ugly woman? If she were dumb AND unattractive, I doubt McCain would have dug her up. Sexual or not, she got picked for being eye candy. Are we supposed to just shrug? If beloved bimbo Carrie Prejean decided to run for public office several years down the road, would it be wrong to portray her as someone capitalizing off her looks with nothing to back it up?
This is starting to remind me of the debate about the Ethicist column with the “Hot wife getting freebies.” Some people found it wrong to criticize the woman for taking free stuff when we should be blaming the system that rewards attractiveness. It’s a fucked up situation, I agree. But I think Sarah Palin’s an adult here–we can call her out for being an empty headed pretty bobble head with nothing to say.
Personally I think the only reason Newsweek was wrong to run that picture was that it’s giving fodder to people who want to think she’s so persecuted when I’m sure deep down she’s cackling with glee over it. And she must be having the biggest laugh of all that the feminists she normally decries are also defending her. She’s got wily PR people, I’ll give her that.
Well, if I’d never run into another woman outside of intimate one-on-one settings or strip clubs who I felt was asking to be stared at, there’d have to be something very different about that particular woman wearing that particular sweater, wouldn’t there?
Because that qualifier is the game-changer. If I’m seeing something unique across the thousands of women I’ve known in the four decades since my mid-teens, that’s a bit different from a guy who thinks a woman wearing a tight sweater is asking to be stared at. Because he obviously thinks a lot of women want to be stared at; the fact that he thinks one more woman wants to be stared at is kinda meaningless.
No offense, but conflating the unique with the routine isn’t going to lead to a productive conversation.
Calling the cover sexist IS a categorical, “black and white” statement. If there was no sexist intent, there was no sexism. You can’t have it both ways.
Despite my stripper patron comparison, I think it makes much more sense to keep the comparisons to other, male politicians. So when people say she should have turned down the position because she was underqualified or being chosen for her looks or as a token, they have to believe any man of substance would do the same (and be self-aware enough to think he could never be VP). If they think she shouldn’t be posing in ‘revealing’ clothes in an athletic magazine, that goes for all male politicians (and someone’s got to decide what’s revealing for a man or attractive to many women). They’ve got to distinguish between Palin’s hokey language and winks and inexperience and people like Dubya’s. And they’ve got to come up with comparable *Newsweek * covers.
Why do we have to believe that? I don’t think an equivalent, vacuous male would turn it down either.
No one has said she shouldn’t pose however she wants, but she then has no right to complain about how her own self-contstucted image is used sunbsequently, and no one is saying it should be any different for a man.
Dubya didn’t try to use ham-handed pageant flirting techniques in debates, so that’s an easy distinction.
Um…no…you’ve got to come up with comparable photos first. Newsweek can’t run cover photos that don’t exist.
There’s no point in comparing Palin’s winking to G.W. Bush’s in the first place, since the same gesture made by a man and a woman often means something completely different. Bush clearly wasn’t banking on his looks like Palin is because he isn’t attractive; his resemblance to a monkey was pointed out frequently. We also saw lots of goofy-looking pictures of Bush taken out of context to make him look stupid.
Also, pretty much everyone in this thread has invited the introduction of male politicians who have posed for pictures similar to the one in question. That there aren’t any just demonstrates further the unusual degree to which Palin is trading off her looks and then crying about it when someone uses a ridiculous picture she posed for to imply that she’s a bimbo.
No, but I also don’t think she’d be getting attacked in the particular manner that she’s being attacked if she were unattractive. My whole argument is that both her fan and detractors are inordinately focused on her looks.
I’m not sure you understand my point. I’m not denying that some if not most of her popularity comes from being pretty. But I take issue with saying 1) she’s actively exploiting her sexuality in order to get ahead and 2) that’s why it’s fair to criticize her on this basis. If point 2) follows from point 1), then point 1) needs to be strongly supported. And yet when I ask people exactly how they come to arrive at the conclusion that Palin is being sexually manipulative, there’s nothing but weak evidence cited. Just about everything offered as proof is routinely demonstrated by male politicians who are not villified in the manner that she’s been. And everything else mentioned falls in the category of “my feelings say it’s so, therefore it’s so”.
It’s supported to whatever degree it’s objectively true by the picture itself. If the picture is not at all sexual, then how can it be inappropriate or sexist to use it?