POLITICS
Calculating 'Baby Bumps' and Other Inanities of the Blogosphere
F WE NEVER HEAR ANOTHER WORD ABOUT ALASKA'S GOVERNOR SARAH PALIN, IF SHE FALLS OFF THE FACE OF THE EARTH TODAY, HISTORY will record her as the only would-be VP accused of faking the birth of her daughter's Down Syndrome baby.
Surely this is the most ludicrous slander that any candidate has ever faced? This abysmal excuse for political engagement is even more ridiculous than news stories about Oprah crying her fake eyelashes off during Barack Obama's powerful speech at the Democratic National Convention.
But what we've learned during this presidential campaign is that female candidates engender a particularly virulent strain of evil from some males who labor in the new and old media. Most recent case in point: someone with the nom de plume "ArcXIX" wrote on the Daily Kos, the left-wing's looney response to Matt Drudge: "Sarah, I'm calling you a liar....Trig Paxson Van Palin is not your son. He is your grandson. The sooner you come forward with this revelation to the public, the better."
The rationale for the accusation that Palin was pretending her daughter's illegitimate child was her own? Palin only announced seven months into her pregnancy that she was expecting and those around her were shocked, shocked! because of her size. (Palin revealed over the weekend that her 17-year-old daughter Bristol is in fact five months pregnant, making it unlikely that mother delivered her love child last April.)
Speculating on the innards of wombs has become a favorite pastime among bloggers and low-brow media during the last two years. What looks an awful lot like bloating to the rest of America passes as "baby bump" when it shows up on the frames of Paris Hilton, Kate Moss, Jessica Biel, Lindsay Lohan and Jessica Simpson. And many might consider this a mindless, sinless distraction.
But I'm betting that the ideologues at the Kos might have done more damage than good with their bizarre conspiracy theory.
Any politically astute person can see that while Palin is a conservative Republican, she is the only populist on the presidential political scene, and that archetype holds great appeal in the public's imagination. She is smart, charming and from the "salt-of-the-earth" ilk. In addition, she challenges Obama for the "charisma" vote.
I doubt that a McCain-Palin ticket threatens Obama's ascension to president. But the ideologues at Kos have tread on dangerous ground. Many women rightly feel that Hillary Clinton was forced out of the race by sexism in the media. If some of these women, particularly those Reagan Democrats who reside in the western hills of Pennsylvania, decide that one of their kind has been dissed again, it's possible that there'll be hell to pay in November for Democrats' who made the same mistake twice.
Posted September 2, 2008
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