(Written 5 October 2008)
Here is how Richard Cohen begins a recent column:
Thank God for Sarah Palin. Without her jibes, her sarcasm, her exaggerations, her smug provincialism, her hypocrisy about family and government, her exploitation of mommyhood and her personal attacks on Barack Obama, the Democratic base might never be consolidated. This much is certain: Obama could never do it.
This is more evidence of the delusional drift of the Leftist mind. Sarcasm? It appears to be foreign to Palin's nature. She is too perky and upbeat, too much the slightly naive eager beaver. I won't hold it against the tired sophisticates of the Left that they are put off by her wide-eyed girlish enthusiasm. But 'sarcasm' is a thoroughly inapt descriptor.
If you are from the provinces, does that make you a smug provincialist?
Her "hypocrisy about family and government?" That is on a level with Wendy Doniger's bizarre and by now infamous remark that "Her [Palin's] greatest hypocrisy is in her pretense that she is a woman." That is quite a thought. Palin pretends to be a woman, and in so pretending she is a hypocrite! Just as leftists cannot stand conservative blacks, who they tar with such epithets as 'Uncle Tom' and 'oreo,' they cannot stand powerful, successful conservative women who have achieved what equity feminists demanded. Doniger is implying that Palin is a traitor to her sex and thus not 'really' a woman. Thus her "pretense that she is a woman." Since Palin is quite obviously and stunningly female, with living proof of the fact, Doniger's suggestion is that Palin is a traitor to her sex in the way that 'oreos' and 'Uncle Toms' are traitors to their race.
It would require a separate post to explain the leftist obsession with what they perceive as 'hypocrisy' in conservatives.
"Exploitation of mommyhood?" The Dems are sometimes polemically referred to as the 'the abortion party' or the 'party of death.' There is undoubtedly an element of truth in these labels. Sarah Palin, by contrast, quite obviously celebrates human life, even to the point of carrying to term a Downs Syndrome child. And this is what leftists, ever teetering on the brink of nihilism, cannot stand. How dare she celebrate human life! Raging as they do, leftists must read her obviously sincere stance as a cynical exploitation of "mommyhood" — who is being sarcastic now? — for the sake of political gain.