Hm. Media Matters points out that in addition to Sarah Palin’s running shorts, that Newsweek cover features a headline - “How do you solve a problem like Sarah?” - that’s actually pinched from Sound of Music, “in which nuns fret about ‘how’ to ’solve a problem like Maria,’ a ‘girl’ who ‘climbs trees’ and whose ‘dress has a tear.’ “

OK, so maybe there’s something to the right-wing whinging this time around after all.

Of course, given their opposition to women’s reproductive freedom - and their penchant for doing things like this - Republican complaints about sexism tend to ring just a tad hollow. Add to this something Sullivan wrote yesterday, after noting an ABC News/Washington Post poll showing Palin had a higher approval rating among men than women:

Because they are not blinded by starbursts. Women always saw through Palin in ways that men didn’t. That was most evident in the vice-presidential debate. Because many (straight) men found it hard to see past the b**bs. Let’s face it: if Palin looked like Golda Meir, there’s no chance McCain would have picked her. And no one would currently give a damn. She is the Carrie Prejean of politics; and like the Ailes-tested fembots on Fox News. Women are not so dumb as to buy it. Men: well we all know what our weak spot is. We do not always think with our heads.

Emphasis added. But hardly necessary.

Palin’s appeal is both visual and cultural. It isn’t intellectual. It isn’t in her grasp of policy. It isn’t in her vision for the country. She exhibits no real leadership skills. But she likes the celebrity aspect of politics; and, as Christopher Hitchens writes in that dodgy Newsweek, she’s the ultimate empty vessel:

But the problem with populism is not just that it stirs prejudice against the “big cities” where most Americans actually live, or against the academies where many of them would like to send their children. No, the difficulty with populism is that it exploits the very “people” to whose grievances it claims to give vent.  …

<snip>

If she were ever to get herself to the nation’s capital, the teabaggers would be just as much on the outside as they are now, and would simply have been the instruments that helped get her elected. In my own not-all-that-humble opinion, duping the hicks is a degree or two worse than condescending to them. It’s also much more dangerous, because it meanwhile involves giving a sort of respectability to ideas that were discredited when William Jennings Bryan was last on the stump. The Weekly Standard (itself not exactly a prairie-based publication) might want to think twice before flirting with popular delusions and resentments that are as impossible to satisfy as the demand for a silver standard or a ban on the teaching of Darwin, and are for that very reason hard to tamp down. Many of Palin’s admirers seem to expect that, on receipt of the Republican Party nomination, she would immediately embark on a crusade against Wall Street and the banks. This notion is stupid to much the same degree that it is irresponsible.

Disagree with the last few sentences - from what I’ve been able to see, Palin’s supporters really don’t care about the banks; in fact, they’d give the banks more power by scrapping government regulation of them. What they want is to stick it to the liberals - in the same sense that the kid in high school who gets picked on wants to stick it to the bullies. It’s this fervent, cherished dream; but what does it mean? How would Sarah Palin “stick it” to the liberals?

And the answer, as Hitchens notes, is - however the Weekly Standard and Wall Street Journal, and Bill Kristol and maybe Karl Rove - want her to.

And guess what: That doesn’t improve her supporters’ lot in life. But at this point, I suspect they’re willing to trade lower incomes and less job security if they’d just get the chance to plant their flag of cultural hegemony.