The XX Factor: What women really think.

Palin: It's Us vs. Them

Dahlia, you've put your finger on the reason my initial enthusiasm for Sarah Palin evaporated the minute she opened her mouth; it isn't her conservatism that rankles, but her bile. (Today, for example, she accused Obama of "palling around with terrorists who would target their own country'' because he happened to serve on a charity board on education reform with a '60s radical whose views he has denounced. According to the New York Times story Palin was referencing—and deliberately misrepresenting—"[t]he two men do not appear to have been close. Nor has Mr. Obama ever expressed sympathy for the radical views and actions of [William] Ayers, whom he has called 'somebody who engaged in detestable acts 40 years ago, when I was 8.' ")

We could have disagreed on every issue in the multiverse, and I would still have applauded John McCain's choice of a strong, conservative, pro-life feminist—yes!—who actually walked the walk. But Palin's whole up-your-nose-with-a-rubber-hose presentation—it's us-vs.-them on steroids, really—gives the lie to her talk of bipartisanship. She sells herself as a can-do frontierswoman, but also as the poor-me victim of reporters so mean that they dared ask her what she believes. And her overt contempt for difference makes a joke of her promise to bring all Americans together; her loudest shout-out at the debate wasn't to third graders, but to haters. She bragged that she's such a tolerant person that "I have a very diverse family and group of friends and even within that group you would see some who may not agree with me on this issue, some very dear friends who don't agree with me on this issue'' of gay marriage. But people who really are tolerant of other viewpoints are not quite so painfully aware of their own saintly forbearance; that she finds it worth reporting that she has friends who have friends who might be gay—at least, I think that's what she said—in fact suggests a lack of respect. And except for killing her own meat, she has nothing in common with my grandma.