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Today's Faves: Pondering Palin from across the Pacific

Categories: Oceania, Australia, Republican Party, Gender, International Relations

Voices without Votes continuously aggregates interesting links about the election from world bloggers. Our authors take turns picking their top 3 personal favorites every weekday.

Although Sarah Palin’s star is no longer in the ascendancy, I decided to feature three Australian bloggers’ latest posts which touch on the aspiring Vice President. The fascination with her has continued unabated in the U.S. but many bloggers over here are having trouble taking her seriously. It's much easy to laugh or dismiss her as inept. My blog has been besieged by Americans looking for the send-up website palinaspresident.com.

However, the first blogger brings a whole new dimension to  Palin's impact on feminist politics. Thinking about Andrea Dworkin’s book Right Wing Women has brought a guest post about Palin at Hoyden about Town:

It’s very easy to identify her anti-woman policies, and it’s very easy to see the way that she’s put on a pedestal for these things. A nice shiny pedestal in a glass case where no one can really talk to her. It’s easy to see the many of the ways that, in spite of this pedestal (or perhaps because of it) sexism is used as a weapon against Palin—she’s reduced to a pretty face, a fuckbot, a caribou Barbie—play the game, make the deal, and we’ll let you stay on your pedestal (at least for now).

At a level far removed from the oft repeated political clichés, Palin challenges her feminism in unexpected ways, and her self image.

I laugh at her, because I’m scared of the deal she’s made with the patriarchal world she lives in. I’m more vociferous in my laughter, because I know that, every day, I make deals too, and Sarah Palin reminds me of this and makes me uncomfortable.

Palin, to me, represents a part of myself that I’m afraid of, a part of myself that I don’t like admitting exists. She represents what I might have been, had I grown up in a conservative family, and she represents the person that I am anyway, every time I smile when I’d prefer to frown, every time I giggle when what I really mean is, “Get the fuck away from me,” and every time I close my mouth when I have the right—and sometimes the obligation—to speak out.

Feminism Friday: Right Wing Women, Sarah Palin, and Me [1]

This is a far cry from the jokes about Palin’s clothes bill or her pit-bull persona.

On a totally different tack, Kim speculates about Palin’s future if the Republican ticket loses:

But, while the possibility that the Republicans could win can’t absolutely be excluded, it certainly is worthwhile posing the question of what happens if they do in fact lose.

Jonathan Freedland is one who has been thinking about where the GOP goes under an Obama presidency, and he makes quite an interesting case that Sarah Palin could position herself as a potential 2012 frontrunner. This is interesting for at least two reasons. First, Palin’s selection – among all the other obvious reasons – was a reflection of the failure of the “conservative movement” to produce a convincing Presidential candidate in the first place. One of the real stories of the swing away from the Republicans is the exhaustion and fracturing of many of the activist factions that were on a roll from the late 90s until just a few years ago. Secondly, it might explain some of the stories about friction between McCain himself and Palin over her tactics in this race recently.

Palin forever? [2]

The idea of Sarah Palin as a continuing political phenomenon is a frightening one for many of us.

Duckpond has used Biden’s test for presidency to look at the candidates’ fitness for office.

Joe Biden created a stir by suggesting that the newly elected president would face an international test within six months of his election.

I am not sure about the Cuban Missile Crisis analogy, but in essence he is right, and the likely challenges are good measures to assess the candidates for president and vice president.

It is a thoughtful piece but dismisses Palin, seeing her as a creation of the media rather than a real contender.

Colin Powell has dealt with the question of Sarah Palin’s unfitness for the office of president, so we can forget her. We have this luxury because we are not crazy television stations hawking for advertising revenue.

TESTING THE PRESIDENT [3]

I wonder if that will be history’s judgment.