Judith Warner on Sarah Palin

You know I've been trying not to judge . . . I've been trying oh so hard, but I cannot resist sharing this paragraph from Judith Warner's latest post on Domestic Disturbances:

Why does this woman – who to some of us seems as fake as they can come, with her delicate infant son hauled out night after night under the klieg lights and her pregnant teenage daughter shamelessly instrumentalized for political purposes — deserve, to a unique extent among political women, to rank as so “real”?

Read the rest here.

The difference between Judith Warner and me is that I don't think Sarah Palin is a fake -- or that she seems particularly fake. For her, these decisions to have her children in the public eye are as genuine as they can possibly be. I just happen to be put off by them. But Warner's right. Palin and others like her don't deserve to be seen as uniquely real. What about the rest of us?

Among Warner's other excellent points:

• Putting Palin forward as his running mate is a "thoroughgoing humiliation for America's women" and is disrespectful of them. I would certainly agree that it is disrespectful of a great many of them.
  

• Palin seems "real" because she makes it clear that she is not intimidating and "makes it clear that she's subordinate to a great man."

• The media condescension in response to Palin's speech, the damning with faint praise by marveling that she could speak and smile at the same time.