Matt Yglesias blasts the bulls-eye on the pistol-packin ex-Governor.
Yglesias was working off a column by Ross Douthat, the New York Times’ new house conservative (and a gargantuan improvement over the last one, Bill Kristol). Douthat makes the point that Palin was worked over unfairly because of her class and gender:
Male commentators will attack you for parading your children. Female commentators will attack you for not staying home with them. You’ll be sneered at for how you talk and how many colleges you attended. You’ll endure gibes about your “slutty” looks and your “white trash concupiscence,” while a prominent female academic declares that your “greatest hypocrisy” is the “pretense” that you’re a woman. And eight months after the election, the professionals who pressed you into the service of a gimmicky, dreary, idea-free campaign will still be blaming you for their defeat.
Fair enough. That last sentence is capital-T Truth. But it’s also true, happily, that people will coal-rake you for being clueless, which Douthat press much admits Palin is (”She needs to bone up on the issues.”). Which is Yglesias’ key point:
… And that is the key to people’s complaint with Palin; not that she attended North Idaho College but that she ran for Vice President and spoke out on a range of issues without seeming to understand any of them. That’s a big deal, and it’s not mere snobbery to point out that it’s a big deal.
Precisely. The time to “bone up on the issues,” is before, not after, you decide to run for national office. Yes, there is a portion of the media (and the public) that turned up its collective nose at Palin for the wrong reasons. But there’s also a portion that did it for exactly the right ones.
