Princess of Tides

This evening I was watching last Friday's episode of the Bill Maher show, Real Time on HBO. John Fund, one of those muppet-like conservative men in a suit and tie, who start out pink-faced and progressively get redder as they get more defensive, was warning Bill and the room to "watch out" at the coming backlash in America in response to how horribly the media was treating Sarah Palin. He lamented how mean Charlie Gibson was, and demanded the election get back to issues, ignoring the fact that Palin can't exactly speak to any issues, since she's truly a political preemie on the national stage.

What kills me, using a week's hindsight, is how the conservative movement uses trumped up object lessons to shame anyone into questioning the legitimacy of their claims. As we all now know, no true backlash came. None was coming. Ever. In fact, yesterday's CBS/New York Times poll shows that Senator Obama has gained ground with female voters, all over America, since the cynical Palin selection. But the threat of a backlash, of angry masses demanding the Media cease it's cruel practice of asking questions in the quest for answers, well, it was supposed to assuage us all into perfect silence.

In a sense, conservatism has always used it's female representatives as twisted Cassandras of cynical convenience. Jeanne Kirkpatrick was distinctly used as a pawn to commence the "Blame America First" strain of Republican cultural warfare in the 1980s, lamenting "San Francisco Democrats" and their evil agenda, all while her Party re-nominated a former Governor from California against a public servant from the upper Midwest. Recall Condi Rice as a pawn for the Iraq occupation with her "we don't want the smoking gun to be a mushroom cloud" mantra. Harriet Miers was a lazy, accidental ruse, but then she too was used, after the fact (for fun) by Republicans to shame the media and Americans for elite legal preferences and disdain for small universities. I'm sure there are even more examples (and perhaps I can flush this thesis out further-- it plays into my previous post about the myths the GOP bestows upon it's women).

But for now we have Ms. Sarah Palin. Don't question her at all, because deep down, any question you ask is an affront to her small town values and her hockey mom ways. No questions please. Please be deferential to this woman.

And the backlash is coming, I suspect.

Just from the other direction.