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Sarah Palin: the thrilla from Wasilla
By Dorothy Cummings McLean
September 26, 2008
Dorothy Cummings McLean
When I was an undergraduate, I went to the March for Life Conference in Washington, D.C. The welcome my friends and I received there astonished me. We received letters of welcome from the president of the United States. A famous United States senator addressed us at dinner. Other well-known American political figures gave workshops, ate dinner, hung out.
There was an air of sophistication and confidence I had never breathed at a Canadian pro-life event. It dawned on me that in the United States being pro-life does not make you an automatic pariah. In the United States you don’t have to leave your pro-life activities off your resume. Your pro-life activities can get you a good job. Your pro-life activities can get you elected.
There was an air of sophistication and confidence I had never breathed at a Canadian pro-life event. It dawned on me that in the United States being pro-life does not make you an automatic pariah. In the United States you don’t have to leave your pro-life activities off your resume. Your pro-life activities can get you a good job. Your pro-life activities can get you elected.
But there was one little thing. I noticed that most of the speakers were Republicans. One of the speakers, charged with teaching the young folk how to set up college pro-life clubs, kept calling them “Young Republicans” clubs by mistake. And I began to wonder how many of these successful pro-life people were really pro-life. How many Americans who win high office because of their supposed pro-life beliefs are the real deal?
Republican Vice-Presidential nominee Governor Sarah Palin, mother of five, appears to be the real deal.
Sarah Palin! When she appeared, the media freaked. The U.S. presidential election had looked like a walkover for Democrat Senator Barack Obama. American politics is so much about image, and despite his funny friends, Obama had an image that was hard to beat. He was young, he was black, he went to Harvard Law (all kneel), he had a pretty Princeton-educated (all kneel) wife and two pretty daughters. (“If they make a mistake,” said the pro-choice senator, “I don’t want them punished with a baby.”)Â And he was much better looking than his Republican opponent, Senator John McCain.
Thanks to a five-year imprisonment in a Viet Cong prison, old soldier McCain didn’t look as good. He had an unpopular divorce. And worse, conservative Republicans didn’t like him. They didn’t think he was conservative enough. They didn’t think he was pro-life enough.
But then the governor of Alaska, who is younger, prettier and more populist than Obama, not to mention more conservative than McCain, was nominated as McCain’s running mate. The Democrats, their journalists and their bloggers howled with rage and fear. The presidential election isn’t going to be a walkover for Obama after all.
Sarah Palin. Conservative women danced for joy. Liberal women went ballistic. Canadian journalist Heather Mallick became instantly notorious in the United States for saying of Palin, “She isn’t female, really.” And this did not surprise me, for Canadian feminists like CBC blogger Mallick are long used to denying that women like Palin exist. But they do exist. They exist in Canada, too, but in contemporary Canada no pro-life Christian woman with five children would ever be elected to high office.
The pro-abortion forces of Canada have managed to make belief in the right to life embarrassing, career suicide, box office poison. We can’t even get desperately wanted unborn babies protected.
Palin didn’t go to Harvard. She didn’t go to Princeton. She went to the University of Idaho. You know, like an ordinary person. She worked as a sports reporter and helped with her husband’s family business. She was a homemaker who had five kids. (Frankly, the Palins’ fruitful marriage is a refreshing sight after years and years of the Clintons’ marital horror show.)
She also showed talent in the political game as mayor of the small town of Wasilla and was eventually elected the governor of Alaska. Apparently, no one in Alaska cares where you went to university or how many kids you have. And now she might be elected the vice-president of the United States.
(“Say, Mum,” I said to the lady knitting a baby sweater. Like Palin, she has five kids. “Would you like to have been governor of Alaska?” “No,” said my mother. “Their winters are even colder.”)
But Governor Palin’s life isn’t charmed. Her fifth child was born with Down’s syndrome. And her teenage daughter got pregnant. The press went berserk over these misfortunes, as if ordinary people don’t face these trials every day. But I looked at Baby Trig and I looked at Daughter Bristol, and I knew that Palin was the real deal. She walks the pro-life talk.
This is, of course, why feminists like Mallick hate Palin. The Democrats could run a convicted rapist for president, and the National Organization of Women would probably still support him. Feminists stuck with Bill Clinton, whose sexual use of women is well documented, because they knew he would fight for their abortion rights. Abortion: it’s the feminist sacrament.
And to be an ordinary woman, a woman who pitches for her husband’s family, and welcomes many children lovingly from God, and believes that the right of babies to live supersedes her “right” to kill them, is a despicable heretic to the liberal feminist sisterhood.
Republican Vice-Presidential nominee Governor Sarah Palin, mother of five, appears to be the real deal.
Sarah Palin! When she appeared, the media freaked. The U.S. presidential election had looked like a walkover for Democrat Senator Barack Obama. American politics is so much about image, and despite his funny friends, Obama had an image that was hard to beat. He was young, he was black, he went to Harvard Law (all kneel), he had a pretty Princeton-educated (all kneel) wife and two pretty daughters. (“If they make a mistake,” said the pro-choice senator, “I don’t want them punished with a baby.”)Â And he was much better looking than his Republican opponent, Senator John McCain.
Thanks to a five-year imprisonment in a Viet Cong prison, old soldier McCain didn’t look as good. He had an unpopular divorce. And worse, conservative Republicans didn’t like him. They didn’t think he was conservative enough. They didn’t think he was pro-life enough.
But then the governor of Alaska, who is younger, prettier and more populist than Obama, not to mention more conservative than McCain, was nominated as McCain’s running mate. The Democrats, their journalists and their bloggers howled with rage and fear. The presidential election isn’t going to be a walkover for Obama after all.
Sarah Palin. Conservative women danced for joy. Liberal women went ballistic. Canadian journalist Heather Mallick became instantly notorious in the United States for saying of Palin, “She isn’t female, really.” And this did not surprise me, for Canadian feminists like CBC blogger Mallick are long used to denying that women like Palin exist. But they do exist. They exist in Canada, too, but in contemporary Canada no pro-life Christian woman with five children would ever be elected to high office.
The pro-abortion forces of Canada have managed to make belief in the right to life embarrassing, career suicide, box office poison. We can’t even get desperately wanted unborn babies protected.
Palin didn’t go to Harvard. She didn’t go to Princeton. She went to the University of Idaho. You know, like an ordinary person. She worked as a sports reporter and helped with her husband’s family business. She was a homemaker who had five kids. (Frankly, the Palins’ fruitful marriage is a refreshing sight after years and years of the Clintons’ marital horror show.)
She also showed talent in the political game as mayor of the small town of Wasilla and was eventually elected the governor of Alaska. Apparently, no one in Alaska cares where you went to university or how many kids you have. And now she might be elected the vice-president of the United States.
(“Say, Mum,” I said to the lady knitting a baby sweater. Like Palin, she has five kids. “Would you like to have been governor of Alaska?” “No,” said my mother. “Their winters are even colder.”)
But Governor Palin’s life isn’t charmed. Her fifth child was born with Down’s syndrome. And her teenage daughter got pregnant. The press went berserk over these misfortunes, as if ordinary people don’t face these trials every day. But I looked at Baby Trig and I looked at Daughter Bristol, and I knew that Palin was the real deal. She walks the pro-life talk.
This is, of course, why feminists like Mallick hate Palin. The Democrats could run a convicted rapist for president, and the National Organization of Women would probably still support him. Feminists stuck with Bill Clinton, whose sexual use of women is well documented, because they knew he would fight for their abortion rights. Abortion: it’s the feminist sacrament.
And to be an ordinary woman, a woman who pitches for her husband’s family, and welcomes many children lovingly from God, and believes that the right of babies to live supersedes her “right” to kill them, is a despicable heretic to the liberal feminist sisterhood.
Dorothy Cummings McLean