Hatin' on Sarah Palin

I love being a woman. I equally love having a brain. And I love to use both to my advantage when the need arises. I have no problem being cutesy too, should the situation call for me to do so, but I refuse to play dumb or silly at any time, not the least during those crucial moments in my life--e.g., applying for graduate studies, or for a job, or moot court, or real court room drama...

...which is why Sarah Palin's facetiousness disgusts me. "In her world", apparently, winking, beaming into the camera, giving a semi-pout and looking pretty, constitute the basic ingredients of competence. Nevermind that she cannot, for the life of her, seem capable of stringing coherent sentences together, especially when being interviewed by another woman of obviously superior intelligence like Katie Couric.

I mean, anyone who has ever watched those Couric interviews, especially of my gender, must have cringed and squirmed in their chairs while listening to Palin's long-winded, but empty, attempts at answering questions like -- which other Supreme Court decision apart from Roe v. Wade does she disagree with; or what periodicals or newspapers she reads. But, like some bad movies, we just can't get enough of Palin. It's as if we want to torture ourselves, and wait for another gaffe, another stupid remark, another blunder, that our dear Sarah will commit. When just yesterday, Palin said that Couric "annoyed" her because the latter asked irrelevant questions, I wanted to throw a hissy fit! Some people just cannot accept that they're out of their league! Which is why I loved it when Madeline Albright put her in her place :)

Having been brought up to believe that men and women are equal, for a time I tried to make sense of Hillary's tactic during the primaries -- basically, to act like a man and ignore her womanhood because it was perceived as a distraction. I didn't appreciate Hillary for it. I thought, if she's fighting for equality, then why did she readily morph into a man and seem ashamed of her gender? But looking back now, I could see why Hillary had to do that. Because ultimately, she knew that she first needed to be taken seriously. Because the reality is that women have to try much harder to break the glass ceiling. In stark contrast to Hillary, Sarah Palin is turning on the womanly charm--she's bursting to the seams with it in fact, flaunting her being a woman to her full advantage--but woefully lacking is the intelligence and common sense that are the most important prerequisites for public office (apart from integrity of course, but that's another story). I hate that Palin has the audacity to even think that people will swallow her moronic antics hook, line and sinker, but what I hate even more is that there are a few out there who actually fall for her stratagems and accept her mostly undecipherable rhetoric as gospel truth.

I wish that there will come a day that someone like Hillary, with her competence, experience and intelligence, can be taken seriously by the electorate solely through the quality of her arguments, and the inherent value of her vision, so that she will be free to express herself in the only way she ought, as a woman. But Sarah Palin?, Vacuous Barbie? She sickens me. I am deeply offended by her presence as a woman, but more so as a person. But I thank Palin for one thing... for bringing Tina Fey back to SNL. Now that Tina Fey--she is amazing.