The British reaction to Sarah Palin

I’m back in Britain now, and had not prepared myself for the reaction to Sarah Palin. The Guardian has a piece softly sneering at her Christianity (Headline: “This person loves Jesus”) and questioning her experience. In America, the feminists have kept quiet, knowing they can’t question her experience and not Obama’s. Why demand that a woman going for VP needs a longer CV than a man going for the presidency? By the end of her first day as Mayor of Wasilla she had more executive experience than Barack Obama or Joe Biden put together. Yet here, the gloves are off. I’ve just listened to Any Questions with women getting stuck into her. One question – from a woman – was “does being a ‘soccer mom’ qualify you to be vice president?” Erm, she’s Governor of Alaska with a robust record on reform, plus a former Mayor. Why focus only on her maternal status? And why not raise similar concerns about Obama and Biden who have not run anything larger than their personal staff of 30?
 
The replies from the women on the panel – Dame Liz Fogan and Bea Campbell – were similarly dismissive of Palin. One, I think Campbell, admitted she has no rational explanation. She just despises Palin for a raft of reasons, including presentational ones. And for her “creationism” – this is code for objecting to her religion. You can bet she wouldn’t have made the same objection of a Muslim or a Jew. On Any Answers, there were similar complaints, including ones about the way she wears her hair. A mother of five shouldn’t do a demanding job, a women caller said. As we were told in Denver, Joe Biden’s wife was killed in 1972 yet he still was sworn in as a senator and was a single father to his two sons, commuting 90 minutes each way every day. Because he was a man, you can bet no one asked if he could discharge both duties together.
 
While I was in the States, I tried hard to listen to a broad range of American media and talk shows. Perhaps I didn’t listen to the right shows because I didn’t hear anything approaching this level of woman-on-woman bile.
 
In Minneapolis last week I went to hear Kellyanne Conway who co-wrote a book called “What women really want” about polling data. Interestingly, it describes how “gender wars” means those between women. One example that struck me is the treatment of Ruth Kelly. She’s always been shunned by Labour’s sisterhood, as she does not sign up to their entire litany and opposes abortion. It appears the feminists do not believe women should have a plurality of views on this subject.
 
Sarah Palin seems to provoke bigotry from people who spend most of their life railing against bigotry, and I think this spectacle will be more apparent in Britain than in America. A friend of mine is the human resources director of a FTSE100 company and once told me that the worst sexism she has to deal with is exercised by women, against other women. Today, I know what she means.