Meghan Cox Gurdon
On the ‘Mao-Maoing’ of Gov. Sarah Palin
By: Meghan Cox Gurdon
Examiner Columnist
September 4, 2008
When the news came that Sarah Palin was John McCain’s pick as his running mate, a shout of jubilation rang through our house.
I was just as surprised as the people around me, and immediately clapped my hand to my mouth.
Until that moment, I hadn’t realized how much I was hoping this smart, daring, conservative woman would be on the GOP ticket.
And what a dame! She’s beautiful, accomplished, decisive, a proven scourge of corrupt insiders — better yet, she’s a dynamic American who clearly loves life and knows how to live it.
No wonder people immediately began making comparisons to Teddy Roosevelt: A hunter with a passel of children, a zest for life, and a gift for running things.
Furthermore, Sarah Palin has risen the way the best citizen-politicians have throughout our country’s history: First she did things in the real world, like running a commercial fishing business and starting a family, and then she ran for office. That’s how Margaret Thatcher did it, too — minus the fish, and with only two children.
Sarah Palin was bound to frighten Democrats, but still it’s been stunning to see the urgent ferocity with which the left and the press have tried to mau-mau the Alaskan governor.
Actually, it’s more accurate to say they’re trying to Mao-Mao her. That’s a far better term for the spectacle of Washington’s sneering mandarin classes rushing to rip apart this fecund upstart from the provinces.
They had to do it quickly, don’t you see? Americans in the other 49 states met Sarah Palin on the weekend, and would hear from her at the Republican convention only a few days later.
If voters were allowed to form their own opinions of the northern wonder-girl, they might take to her. Those of us who’d been rooting for her already did like her, as do Alaskans, among whom she is hugely popular. Democrats and their media gargoyles reckoned they had to be swift — and ruthless.
So the race was on to re-frame Sarah Palin, to shrivel her, to turn what is most appealing about her into a kind of creepy, female menace.
First, there was the deliberate avoidance of any mention that she is the sitting governor of an American state who’s been in office longer than Barack Obama has been running for president, which is the Democratic nominee’s chief claim to “executive experience.”
Then came the attacks on her mothering — not the fact that she and her husband raised a warrior son who’s on his way to Iraq, mind you. No, we heard insinuations that a woman with a “special needs” child was reckless to remain in her post as governor, and irresponsible to seek higher office.
Vulgar, baseless rumors about Palin’s infant son got new life on the Internet, and suddenly a national press corps that could not bring itself to investigate the sexual dalliances and possible corruption of a Democratic presidential candidate (see “Edwards, John”) was in full bay for a high-schooler no one had heard of a week ago.
Meanwhile, hip media types who see nothing reprehensible in Barack Obama’s use of cocaine were gleefully passing on the juicy news that Todd Palin once had a DUI — well, what do you expect from a bunch of low-life, white trash, snow-machining rednecks?
It’s been sickening. The Democrats have been dragging this woman and her family into every bit of stinking mud they can find. The one grace note has come from Barack Obama, bless him.
He had the decency to say that candidate’s families ought to be beyond partisan cruelties. His own mother, he reminded us, was as unmarried and pregnant when she was 17 as Bristol Palin is now.
Human lives don’t always run according to an ideal schedule (see also: “Johnston, Levi”). Yet being betrothed to the child of a politician, or being the child of a politician (see “Clinton, Chelsea”) doesn’t have to be a hideous ordeal if adult journalists will restrain themselves.
Right now, they don’t seem able to.
“Babies, Lies and Scandal,” shrieks the cover of the latest US Magazine, beneath a picture of smiling, lovely Sarah Palin cradling her young son. That’s a pretty tidy summary of the mandarin attacks — the scandal of media lies about a family’s babies.
This year, Sarah Palin has the chance to make history — not by getting to the White House, though I hope she does. But by surviving and triumphing over one of the most brazen, shameless Mao-Maoings in the modern era.
Examiner Columnist Meghan Cox Gurdon is a former foreign correspondent and a regular contributor to the books pages of The Wall Street Journal. Her Examiner column appears on Thursdays.
I was just as surprised as the people around me, and immediately clapped my hand to my mouth.
Until that moment, I hadn’t realized how much I was hoping this smart, daring, conservative woman would be on the GOP ticket.
And what a dame! She’s beautiful, accomplished, decisive, a proven scourge of corrupt insiders — better yet, she’s a dynamic American who clearly loves life and knows how to live it.
No wonder people immediately began making comparisons to Teddy Roosevelt: A hunter with a passel of children, a zest for life, and a gift for running things.
Furthermore, Sarah Palin has risen the way the best citizen-politicians have throughout our country’s history: First she did things in the real world, like running a commercial fishing business and starting a family, and then she ran for office. That’s how Margaret Thatcher did it, too — minus the fish, and with only two children.
Sarah Palin was bound to frighten Democrats, but still it’s been stunning to see the urgent ferocity with which the left and the press have tried to mau-mau the Alaskan governor.
Actually, it’s more accurate to say they’re trying to Mao-Mao her. That’s a far better term for the spectacle of Washington’s sneering mandarin classes rushing to rip apart this fecund upstart from the provinces.
They had to do it quickly, don’t you see? Americans in the other 49 states met Sarah Palin on the weekend, and would hear from her at the Republican convention only a few days later.
If voters were allowed to form their own opinions of the northern wonder-girl, they might take to her. Those of us who’d been rooting for her already did like her, as do Alaskans, among whom she is hugely popular. Democrats and their media gargoyles reckoned they had to be swift — and ruthless.
So the race was on to re-frame Sarah Palin, to shrivel her, to turn what is most appealing about her into a kind of creepy, female menace.
First, there was the deliberate avoidance of any mention that she is the sitting governor of an American state who’s been in office longer than Barack Obama has been running for president, which is the Democratic nominee’s chief claim to “executive experience.”
Then came the attacks on her mothering — not the fact that she and her husband raised a warrior son who’s on his way to Iraq, mind you. No, we heard insinuations that a woman with a “special needs” child was reckless to remain in her post as governor, and irresponsible to seek higher office.
Vulgar, baseless rumors about Palin’s infant son got new life on the Internet, and suddenly a national press corps that could not bring itself to investigate the sexual dalliances and possible corruption of a Democratic presidential candidate (see “Edwards, John”) was in full bay for a high-schooler no one had heard of a week ago.
Meanwhile, hip media types who see nothing reprehensible in Barack Obama’s use of cocaine were gleefully passing on the juicy news that Todd Palin once had a DUI — well, what do you expect from a bunch of low-life, white trash, snow-machining rednecks?
It’s been sickening. The Democrats have been dragging this woman and her family into every bit of stinking mud they can find. The one grace note has come from Barack Obama, bless him.
He had the decency to say that candidate’s families ought to be beyond partisan cruelties. His own mother, he reminded us, was as unmarried and pregnant when she was 17 as Bristol Palin is now.
Human lives don’t always run according to an ideal schedule (see also: “Johnston, Levi”). Yet being betrothed to the child of a politician, or being the child of a politician (see “Clinton, Chelsea”) doesn’t have to be a hideous ordeal if adult journalists will restrain themselves.
Right now, they don’t seem able to.
“Babies, Lies and Scandal,” shrieks the cover of the latest US Magazine, beneath a picture of smiling, lovely Sarah Palin cradling her young son. That’s a pretty tidy summary of the mandarin attacks — the scandal of media lies about a family’s babies.
This year, Sarah Palin has the chance to make history — not by getting to the White House, though I hope she does. But by surviving and triumphing over one of the most brazen, shameless Mao-Maoings in the modern era.
Examiner Columnist Meghan Cox Gurdon is a former foreign correspondent and a regular contributor to the books pages of The Wall Street Journal. Her Examiner column appears on Thursdays.
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