Envision a snarling, snapping pitbull with blazing red, bee-stung lips in a slinky evening gown with a sash that reads "Miss Wasilla," a rhinestone tiara, and an armload of roses.
The image just cries out for a cartoonist to set it in stone.
Not a pretty sight, I have to say. Particularly considering her past behavior, which is likely to haunt her as the campaign continues. This is, to borrow a phrase from Lynne Cheney, another Doberman in Dior, not a nice woman. She'll make a great Fox commentator someday.
I think people really did expect Sarah Palin to be all deer-in-the-headlights, and then they were stunned when she wasn't. Of course she can read a speech. Of course she has claws. She didn't get to be governor of Alaska by just batting her eyelashes, although that was probably a huge part of her appeal.
But the era of the conservative queen bee, of Ann Coulter, Dr. Laura, and Barbara Bush, is coming to an end, and Palin, the last heiress to that legacy, is a bit late to the party.
I await the charges of sexism, or of cattiness (I am, after all, myself female). But the truth is that these are the kinds of female figures who hold women back, and they need to be called out. Not the women who voted for Obama instead of Hillary (I was one of those, though it was a hard choice). They're the ones who enforce traditional female roles while at the same time managing to skillfully avoid them for themselves. They are, in the end, an enormous danger to real women, who are juggling work and marriage and children and trying to survive with dignity. Sarah Palin's a former beauty queen, and you know about beauty queens--they're pretty from a distance, and maybe they even manage to appear talented, but up close they're all duct tape and Vaseline on the teeth. Underneath that pancake makeup and gleaming smile is the Bush-Cheney-McCain complex's snarling, slobbering attack dog, ready to tear our country's hopes to pieces.