Gender and Questioning

A possibly not-so-subversive reason Gibson and Hannity will be Palin's first two "interviewers"-- a man is never going to ask substantive, direct questions to Palin concerning her position on sex education and its relation to the pregnancy of her daughter, the role Palin directly played in charging rape victims for their own rape kits, her radical views on a limiting a woman's reproductive choices or her position on equal pay for equal work in America. It would seem a female interviewer would have a modicum of leeway to press Palin on her answers to such topics. But a male interviewer simply has no such leeway, definitely not with a woman so new on the national scene (my reflex is to add, "and rightfully so" but tell me female readers, is that progress? I honestly can't tell...).

Exhibit A: Charlie Gibson undoubtedly let Palin off the hook on the choice/abortion issue, allowing her to simply say she has a "personal opinion" and respects others that may disagree with her when it comes to permitting abortions in the horrific circumstances of rape or incest. Palin draws the line at the life of the mother, and nothing more.

"My personal opinion is that abortion [should be] allowed if the life of the mother is endangered. Please understand me on this. I do understand McCain's position on this. I do understand others who are very passionate about this issue who have a differing opinion," she said.

Perhaps a sensible follow-up might be: "So you are comfortable forcing a rape victim to not only pay for her rape kit, but then also to force her to carry the child, conceived by rape, to term?"

Can you imagine a man asking that? No way. Although, I doubt even a woman journalist in America would ask such a thing. And that is wrong. Right? Or am I wrong?

Update: No more Caribou Barbie after this, prometa. But how about this interchange: GIBSON: Homosexuality, genetic or learned? PALIN: Oh, I don't -- I don't know, but I'm not one to judge and, you know, I'm from a family and from a community with many, many members of many diverse backgrounds and I'm not going to judge someone on whether they believe that homosexuality is a choice or genetic. I'm not going to judge them.

Like the abortion and taxes questions from Gibson, absolutely no follow-up. Palin's non-answer is left there to wither and die. She won't judge those who decide homosexuality is not a choice? Well how gracious of the Governor. However, as a voter who isn't, oh, 100% comfortable with Palin's "no judgment" stance on deciding if you choose your sexuality, perhaps Gibson could have asked any of these easy follow-ups:

• "So do you support an Amendment to the Constitution to ban gay marriage?"


• "Do you support civil unions?"


• "Do you support domestic partnership rights, and if not, how is preventing one partner from seeing the other in a hospital room, not judgment?"

But such issues only impact people's daily lives. And I'm sure Sean Hannity will ask them.

The GOP will swoon over how mean Uncle Charlie was to the isolated Ice Queen from the North. But in reality, Charlie (yes, Governor, we all see you know his name) asked a few good starter questions and then wandered away from them. Palin's answers were generic and entirely expected. Having some follow-ups wouldn't have been a miracle feat. But perhaps because Charlie was pressed for time (only a few minutes with the Queen, sir!) he wanted to zip through as much ground as possible. The political Iditarod for l'idiot. Bring your mushers.

In the end, that an untested candidate for Vice President can waltz so unchallenged through a soft focus chat with Charlie is not only an injustice to political journalism, it's an injustice to the voting public of this, yes... for now at least... democracy.