Wednesday, September 24, 2008 - Posts
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When I'd read that Wasilla, during Sarah Palin's mayoral tenure, had a practice of charging victims for their "rape kits"—the forensic examination required to gather evidence against the perpetrator—I was as horrified as anyone else. The explanation that it was the policy of the local police chief doing the billing, and even a quote by a Democratic member of the state legislature that Palin probably knew nothing about the policy, brought little comfort. At the same time, it just didn't make any sense, so I tempered my horror with skepticism.
Fortunately, it turns out that skepticism wins the day. Thanks to very thorough debunkings by bloggers Charlie Martin of Explorations and Bob Owens of Confederate Yankee, we can put this bit of nastiness to rest.
First off, the Wasilla police chief, Charlie Fannon, is on record as having tried to bill victims' insurance companies, not the victims themselves, for the rape kits. In other towns in Alaska, hospitals were trying to bill victims, prompting an Alaska state law forbidding the practice. If this practice still seems creepy or exclusive to macho, rough-and-tumble Alaska, well, it happens to be the practice in other states, too, like North Carolina (until recently) and ... Illinois.
Some conservative bloggers are trying to play "gotcha" and point out that Barack Obama co-sponsored a bill in the Illinois state senate that provides state money to cover services provided to victims who have neither state aid or insurance, meaning that Illinois also tries to get insurance companies to pay up, just like little ol' Wasilla. Best I can tell from my rudimentary reading of the Illinois code, Obama co-sponsored an amendment to existing legislation that already had the insurance clause in there, and the amendment had nothing to do with rape kits. So, I'm not going to engage in gotcha-ism. We could play that game all day long.
What bothers me is that, while the media has been quick to investigate and shoot down every claim that Sarah Palin makes—that she stopped the Bridge to Nowhere, that she opposes earmarks—the nasty rumors are taken at face value. It takes bloggers, working on their own time and with tools no fancier than Google, to figure out that she's not personally sending bills for $1,200 to traumatized rape victims and that no, she did NOT cut funding for teen mothers, unless you define "cut" as not providing as much of a budget increase as had been had asked for (same with funding "cuts" for Catholic Charities and the Special Olympics).
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At the risk of violating landlord-tenant confidentiality, Dahlia, I want to tell a story that may make you trust Campbell Brown on this.
I once had a new tenant moving into a small Adams Morgan apartment my husband and I owned as an investment. The painter had been a bit sloppy about spattering, and the new renter asked me to have him come back and clean up the now-hardened paint along the baseboard floor. I knew he would drag his feet on completing this chore, so I told the new tenant I preferred not to bother him. She looked at me straight in the eye and asked, "Is this how it's going to be, Bonnie?" My considered answer was, "No, I’ll come personally this Sunday and wash your floor," which I did. After that, Campbell Brown, then a young campaign reporter at NBC, was an ideal tenant, and she and I never had another problem.
I now picture Campbell looking Sarah Palin in the eye with a similar expression and asking her the same question, Gov. Palin, is this how it's going to be? and understand why the McCain campaign is trying so hard to keep them apart.
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Dahlia, my suspicion is that the McCain campaign doesn't really know what to do with her. They are afraid not that she'll say something stupid and embarrassing but that she'll say something too street-smart, or wicked, or aggressive. A woman with her reckless confidence might be appealing to conservative women but not necessarily to men. Based on nothing but my intuition, I'm guessing part of the reason the Palin effect is fading so fast is that they've tried so hard to turn her into a pet—adorable, as you say, but mute. So now she's fetching but useless. And who else could we blame but her male handlers? It can't possibly be her choice. One suspects she would love to take the liberal media on, given the chance.
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Campbell Brown is not the first commentator to claim that the McCain campaign’s monthlong muzzling of Sarah Palin represents “sexism” although she’s probably the most forceful. Andrew Sullivan has also railed against the sexism of the McCain campaign—which has more or less treated Gov. Palin like the Bush twins were treated—adorable but off-limits.
Not sure what I think about the tactic of blaming the boys for this, though. On the one hand it’s a clever response to the Palin trick of turning every quirk of every eyebrow into “sexism.” On the other, I can’t help but respond to it the same way Nayeli reacts to the grotesque “Declare Yourself” ads. Is this really about someone else’s choice to sew Palin’s mouth shut? Yuck. Why do we keep talking about women as though they lack any agency? Are we really going to condemn the McCain campaign for treating her as an object, with demands that they “free” her? I understand why smart women in the media are enraged with Palin’s refusal to engage them. It’s appalling. But I don’t think it’s good for women to direct that rage at her male keepers, handlers, or advisers, either.
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There is an amazing photo spread across this morning's Washington Times of Sarah Palin, shot from behind the head of Colombian President Alvaro Uribe. (Sadly, I can't find it online). Palin, radiating confidence, looks like she wants to ravish him, if not suck his blood. Now we got absolutely no actual information out of this foreign affairs speed dating. ("It was fine," said Hamid Karzai. And: "We talked a lot about a lot of things.") So we are not insulting her to say it was just an image building exercise. And the image conveyed by this photo, featured in a friendly conservative paper is: That is one MANSLAYING v.p. candidate we got.
This, plus the "Hottest VP" buttons, plus the action figure in a miniskirt, makes one suspect that conservatives are promoting the sexy Christian girl image rather than offended by it, as they claim to be.
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