Slate's The XX Factor blog (women blog about politics, etc): Mainstreaming the Mean Girl

[Pirate Smile]

Mainstreaming the Mean Girl (This is in response to the blog below titled "I'm Depressed Now)
Posted Thursday, September 04, 2008 9:16 AM By Dahlia Lithwick


Rosa, I couldn't agree more about the nastiness. What we saw last night was the mainstreaming of Ann Coulter, the normalization of the principle that it isn't bile when it's spoken by a pretty woman. Coulter has gloated, "I am emboldened by my looks to say things Republican men wouldn't." And even though the Post reports today that Palin's was a "masculine" speech—written before the final candidate was selected—it bore so very many hallmarks of a vintage Coulter/Ingraham performance. Susan Estrich describes the Coulter approach as a play "to the lowest common denominator of derision, labeling the hero a coward, her opponent a traitor ... she is about suspicion and exclusion," and anyone who pushes back is a member of the "liberal media elite" and a sexist.

Filed under: Palin's convention speech, Sarah Palin


I'm Depressed Now
Posted Thursday, September 04, 2008 8:38 AM By Rosa Brooks


I'm not surprised that Sarah Palin can deliver a good speech. In my opinion, anyone capable of handling five kids and ANY job and not ending up in the loony bin presumptively has at least the raw smarts and managerial skills to run the Oval Office. So take a smart, tough, capable, ambitious woman, put her together for a week with the smartest, toughest, most capable and ambitious Republican political consultants, and it's a pretty good bet you're gonna come out with a woman who delivers a powerful speech.

But what an unbelievably vicious speech! The nastiness level was just sky-high (or gutter low). And though Palin certainly didn't write the words she spoke, she sure looked like she enjoyed every second of delivering those zingers. That speech wasn't meant to inspire—it wasn't about our better selves or what we might be able to accomplish, as a nation—it was all about rage, sarcasm, resentment, mockery. And the crowd just lapped it up.

Should I be surprised by this? Probably not; it's the meat and potatoes of the conservative culture wars and standard fare at Republican powwows of the past couple of decades. But all the same, I expected better of John McCain, a man I've often liked and admired over the years precisely for his resistance to using that Us-vs.-Them playbook. This year, with Obama's message of inclusion and hope, and McCain at the top of the Republican ticket, I thought we might at last break free of that kind of nastiness—that politics of smallness, of diminishment and suspicion and resentment.

Silly me.

http://www.slate.com/blogs/blogs/xxfactor/default.aspx

[Pirate Smile]

1. kick

[AuntPatsy]

2. They lost the ability to steal the race with last nights presentation...