Wednesday, July 8, 2009

Hanson on Palin Hatred

Victor Davis Hanson has a great article that concludes with an analysis of why Palin so enrages the progressive elites:

Let us count the ways in which Palin enrages:

False Consciousness

1) The sophisticated elite “sees” the real world behind the middle-American façade-how the mob is led, fooled, mesmerized-exploited and manipulated through addiction to idiotic things like Wal-Mart, wall-to-wall carpeting, tract houses, Yukons, etc. Can’t smart people see that Palin’s naugahyde family is a reification of all this middle-class, mindless consumerism, without style, erudition, nuance and skepticism? How infuriating to sit here in New York and think that a winking tart could ever be elected, when seasoned sophisticates like Joe Biden and cosmopolitan metrosexuals like Barack Obama, who see it all, might not have been.

Powermen-Not Powerful Men

2) Twenty-first century power women do not marry men like Todd Palin. Looks, physicality, practicality, courage even-all these are nineteenth-century virtues that now mean nothing in a post-modern, post-industrial society. The fixer in finance, law, academia, politics, or the media-geek, nerd, wimp, who cares?-is the new Alpha male. He has three things that we are all supposed to crave-power, capital, and influence. If one were simply to draw up a list of the fiercest female critics of Palin and trace their own lineages, one would discover that they either are married to powerful insiders, dated powerful insiders, or are the daughters of powerful insiders. (some feminists these!) Who do this Wasilla PTA mom and her broken-arm, snow-mobiling wannabe think they are?

Too Many Rug Rats

3) Smart women do not get pregnant when it is inconvenient, especially when it interferes with one’s cursus honorum. Palin foolishly had a baby as governor, and waddled around with it the entire time-with other snotty kids in tow (just like those trashy folk at the mall who pile out of the Tahoe, in the way just as you are parking your Volvo)! And worse, in the age of sonograms and abortion, she delivered a mentally-challenged child. And worse still, the mom of five encouraged her daughter to deliver an out-of-wedlock child. (Is it in Oklahoma or Arkansas where moms and daughters have children about the same time?) And which is worse, to have a kid at 17 or one after 40? And worse, worse yet, she does not support abortion! Here is Hell in Sarah Palin’s world: I am up for a promotion at CNN, foolishly become pregnant at 42, and discover “it” has chromosomal “issues”. Am I supposed to deliver this thing? I don’t think so (nor would my daughter, should she become pregnant by her boyfriend the summer before starting off at Vassar [all that SAT camp for nothing?]).

The Alaskan Clampetts

4) Taste, taste, taste. Sara gushes and talks like she works at Supercuts (cannot someone teach Sarah to drone through her nose?). She shops like she walked out of Wal-Mart. She winks, and gestures as if she’s running a raffle stand at a PTA carnival and flirting with the local State Farm insurance agent. These Palins and their extended family, are, well, like the Clampetts who descend on Beverly Hills. (cf. “Trig”, “Piper” and “Bristol”-the Alaskan equivalents of “Jethro Bodine”, “Jed”, and “Granny”). And if you are to have scandals in your trailer-park family, let them be elegant ones-cf. Ted Kennedy, Ted, Kennedy, Jr., Michael Kennedy, William Kennedy Smith, David Kennedy, Bobby Kennedy, Jr. and their assorted sins such as drug convictions, drug overdoses, serial sexual predations, loss of life, etc-At least sin and quote Niebuhr, or discuss alleviation of the sin in Palm Beach or Hyannis Port.

Elly May, Not Jackie

5) There are looks and then there are looks. Brainless men without taste think Palin is “hot.” And she is in a sort of unsophisticated Carny way. But looks are really defined by an Audrey Hepburn/Jackie O understated grace, a slightly emaciated look with a grimace now and then. Or through race and gender prisms-a Michelle Obama or a model that is half-Asian, a quarter-Native American, three-quarters African-American. But a pink woman with curves that delivers kids about every two years? Come on!-in the old days, who would have preferred an Ann Margaret to a Candice Bergen? A Raquel Welch to a Mia Farrow? In our postmodern DC-NY nexus, women who are highly educated, with Ivy-League degrees, with some sort of exoticism-a French name, a trace of Indonesian ancestry, a first husband who was Nigerian-a good title such as Senior Editor at Knopf, or Executive Producer at CNN-are, by definition, sexy. And then along comes “It Came From Wasilla”, who excited these Neanderthal males at NASCAR who know nothing of classical understated, real beauty, of real pillow talk.

Hah! As if it was only the "brainless men without taste" who think Palin is “hot.” I think he missed a huge part of the reason the elite women are so upset. A lot of elite men have acknowledged that they think Palin is "hot", too.

(Hmmm,or maybe that was in there in a a subtle way.)

1 comment:

Andy said...

Thank you for sharing Mr. Hanson's musings. I see his column out on Town Hall from time to time.
I believe that the visceral, seething rage of of the uber-links towards Gov. Palin is fueled by the twin flames of self-loathing and raging envy. It has a great deal in common with the rage that fueled Cain to slay his borther Abel.

Mrs. Palin, unlike the emotionally-arrested females who're still striving for daddy's attention, is fully empowered, highly intelligent, and gracious. A proverbs 31 woman, she holds the very thing that the left's shrieking harridans have ached for since burning their bustenhalters back in the 60's.

A note to her friends and foes alike; we've not seen the last of Mrs. Sarah Palin.