Need a convenient way to evaluate any charge of sexism? Pull out the “If It Were A Man” defense. Here’s what you do: Isolate an instance of sexist behavior against a woman. Now, imagine a man is the target of the allegedly sexist scenario. Would the man be treated any differently? If yes, it is sexist! If no, it is not sexist!

This theory was recently tested out on a particularly incendiary Sarah Palin Newsweek cover. The magazine ran a photo of Palin posing in short shorts alongside the cover line: “How do you solve a problem like Sarah? She’s bad news for the GOP—and for everybody else, too.” Charges of sexism were instantly refuted by the “If It Were A Man” defense: It can’t be sexist because it happened to Barack Obama:

“Was This Magazine Cover of Obama ‘Sexist?’” Andy Ostroy of the Huffington Post asks of Washingtonian’s May 2009 cover, which featured President Obama walking shirtless on the beach. Answer: Nope, it wasn’t sexist. Therefore, no other cover image can ever be sexist:

To the Republicans who’ve been critical of Palin’s mistreatment by the big bad liberal media, I say, stop your whining. Nothing’s more unflattering than a thin-skinned conservative. The Newsweek shot is no more “sexist” than the May Washingtonian cover of a bare chested beefcake President Obama, who the publication called its “hot new neighbor.”

Sorry folks, but that’s not how sexism works. Ostroy is right, of course: The Washingtonian cover was criticized for a variety of reasons—from photo-shopping a public official to selling sex for page-views—but nobody accused the magazine of sexism. But Ostroy ignores two major distinctions between the Palin and Obama covers. One, Washingtonian used an ab-tastic photo of Obama to illustrate how hot he is, whereas Newsweek used a leggy photo of Palin to illustrate how bad she is. Second, Palin is a woman and Obama is a man. And the second distinction has everything to do with the first one.

First, perhaps we should do a little bit of a primer on what “sexism” actually is. Let’s turn to the Gender Bender Blog for a reminder:

There is no such thing as reverse sexism. . . . Just like how racism = power + prejudice based on skin color, sexism = power + prejudice based on gender. When talking about the various forms of oppression, many people often confuse prejudice with the ism. . . . Therefore, a person who does not exist with the necessary institutionalized power and privilege of belonging to a dominant in-group, cannot be racist, sexist, ableist, etc. Women can certainly be prejudiced or discriminatory against men (which is not acceptable either) but they cannot be sexist or “reverse sexist” simply because they lack the institutional power to systematize their prejudice against men.

Why is it different for a publication to run a photo of Obama’s hot bod and Palin’s hot bod? Because male and female bodies signify different things to the people who publicize and consume them. These magazines applied explicit value judgments to the Palin and Obama bodies—hot Obama is just “hot,” while hot Palin is “bad.”

Women’s bodies aren’t just their bodies: They’re also a reflection of their value as a person. This is why underage Taylor Lautner can prance around wearing next to nothing and be praised as “hot,” while underage Miley Cyrus shows a bit of back skin and is condemned as a “disappointment.” This is why male political commentators don’t resort to insulting each other for being old and/or fat, like Meghan McCain and Laura Ingraham famously did earlier this year—because a man’s looks aren’t seen as a reflection of his worth, whereas women in the public eye are routinely judged on age and weight.

Sexism is not a copy-and-paste sort of thing—it can’t be applied to males and female equally in all situations. Sexism is a structure. And particularly when it comes to appearances, that structure is stacked against women. Yes, men are criticized for their looks. But the “suitably male appearance” is far more forgiving than the “suitable female appearance,” which must strike that delicate (almost impossible) balance between too sexy and not sexy enough. That’s not to say that sexism exclusively functions through people conflating women’s legs with their brains. But it is helpful to put these body issues in some context: This is a country where the images of George W. Bush and Barack Obama are both considered fit for the White House. I don’t have to remind you that we’ve yet to deem a female body suitable for that position.

Last week, everyone’s brain exploded over a couple of Newsweek Sarah Palin covers. One cover, which ran last week, was criticized for depicting the former Alaskan governor as too sexy (left). Another, which ran last year, was criticized for depicting the Republican vice-presidential candidate as not sexy enough (right).

The indignation accompanying the covers—”How dare Newsweek present Palin as overly sexy!” and “How dare Newsweek present Palin as having stray lip hairs!” respectively—miss the point. The problem doesn’t lie in Palin’s looks, people. The problem is Newsweek using Palin’s looks as a stand-in for her political failures.

Take the headline tagged to last week’s cover: “How do you solve a problem like Sarah? She’s bad news for the GOP—and for everyone else too.” Placed alongside a photo of Palin posing saucily in running shorts, the treatment implies that Palin’s “problem” has got something to do with her killer bod. I think it has more to do with her radical right-wing political beliefs.

Last year’s Palin cover contained a similar treatment: “She’s one of the folks (and that’s the problem),” the cover announced, next to a zoomed-in close-up of Palin’s face. Some criticized Newsweek for unnecessarily exposing Palin’s lip hairs, blemishes, pancake make-up, and fine lines to the world. The real trouble with the cover is that Newsweek, again, used Palin’s physical appearance to represent her politics—this time, to illustrate that her “realness” is a “problem.” Lacking political experience? That’s a problem. Lip hairs? Not so much.

The comments sections on the stories produced such helpful commentary as “NEWS WEAK HA; SARAH PALIN HAS A VERY NICE FACE SHE IS NOT A PHONY NEWSWEAK HA” and “Only un-evolved Neanderthals find her attractive. She looks and acts like a $20 coke-head hooker on a Seattle street.” Despite the deluge of body-snarking comments, I did find a bit of constructive commentary hidden between the cries of “hot!” and “not!”:

Jennifer, on Newsweek’s zoomed-in Palin face, writes:

I honestly think the response to the cover is more sexist than the cover itself.

There have been plenty of closeups of older men with skin full or wrinkles on the cover and no one claimed them to be ‘flaws’ that should have been hidden in order to somehow help him maintain his integrity. The fact that the people crying wolf attribute a woman’s looks to something that can ultimately be a ‘flaw’ in her and her overall appeal in, not a beauty contest, but a political election, shows you a lot about their view of women.

We are all humans, and what happens to humans when they get older is that their skin wrinkles. There is nothing ‘flawed’ about that.

Katie, on Newsweek’s running-short body shot, writes:

I’m not sure calling her an ugly hooker is any vast improvement over whatever winking sexual antics she’s responsible for in the past. The whole point, as far as I’m concerned, is that her looks have nothing to do with anything. Or they shouldn’t. I really don’t think she has “baited” sexist behavior. She’s gotten it because she’s a woman. She absolutely deserves criticism for being a ridiculous joke of a candidate, a recklessly misleading author, and a general nutcase.

. . . she doesn’t deserve criticism for being a woman who has legs and long hair and posed for a running magazine picture…in runner’s clothes. I’m not saying that’s what you’re going for. But I don’t think the answer to unnecessarily glorifying Sarah Palin is unnecessarily denigrating her.

That first point makes sense—feminist women were thrown under the bus in order to pass the health care bill, and they’re right to be pissed about it. But what’s this business about forcing us to vote for lady politicians? “A major element in our battle for equality is getting women into positions of power,” Siskind explains. “The hope is that these leaders, once in place, would promote women’s issues and encourage the next generation of women leaders. Speaker Pelosi reveals a flaw in feminist thinking: There are exceptions. A powerful woman can in fact be an enemy to women.”

Speaker Pelosi has taught Siskind a very important lesson: Supporting female politicians is not the same as supporting women. If only Siskind had figured that out sooner, before she wrote a big ‘ol article entitled “Should Women Back Palin in 2012?”

The obvious answer to that piece’s titular question, of course, is “fuck no.” Sarah Palin is, officially, the worst. But Siskind defies feminist conventional wisdom by throwing out this compelling argument: “Here’s the difference: Sarah Palin played women’s basketball.”

Barring the possibility Siskind believes that sinking sweet jump shots is now a requirement for President of the United States (at this point, I wouldn’t put anything past her)—I’m going to guess that Siskind supports Palin for President because she is a lady. Siskind is willing to support a woman who definitely opposes abortion rights, is totally a firm believer in teen abstinence, and is most certainly opposed to sensible rape policy—but is a lady. Why, again? Oh yeah: Because “the hope is that these leaders, once in place, would promote women’s issues and encourage the next generation of women leaders.”

That is a really dumb thing to hope, Amy Siskind. And that false hope becomes—forgive me for borrowing the terminology here—a nightmare when you learn of the wide variety of women Siskind is willing to support as her leader, just because they are women:

We should embrace what the current Newsmax cover describes as The Newer Feminism, which has a home for leaders regardless of political affiliation: Hillary Clinton, Sarah Palin, Suzy Welch, and Kathy Ireland, among others.

So, in the next presidential election, I’m going to vote for Sarah Palin and hope she suddenly starts caring about women’s issues. I’m going to vote for Kathy Ireland and hope she suddenly turns into someone qualified to lead the nation in more than just underwear sales. And I’m going to vote for Hillary Clinton and hope she turns into a hippopotamus.

I kid. But just in case you weren’t convinced that Siskind doesn’t base her faith in female politicians on blind hope, consider this argument: “I know I’ll hear from critics who claim that Palin would not share my policy views,” Siskind writes. “But what makes them so sure?”

We aren’t stuck with Stupak because we have lifted an anti-woman woman to the Speaker of the House. We’re stuck with Stupak because we have elected plenty of representatives—male and female—who are really, actually anti-women in their policies. I’ll take a pro-woman man over Siskind’s theory of spontaneous feminist conversion any day. Besides, women are not the only group who need more representation in the U.S. government. It’s worth noting that Siskind converted from a lifelong Democrat to a McCain supporter because he chose a woman as his running-mate. On the one hand, that says a lot about Siskind’s eagerness to support women in government. On the other hand, I guess that means she doesn’t think it’s important for African-Americans to gain representation.

The most troubling thing about Siskind’s aggressive campaign to put more women in office—even if their policy positions directly oppose women—is its one caveat. Why support Palin and not Pelosi? To Siskind, we must always support female politicians, no matter what—unless that female politician does not aggressively campaign to put more women in office. Keep in mind—we don’t even know if Sarah Palin would support more women in government—that’s just another of Siskind’s “hopes.” If representation is going to be our one-and-only issue, we should all be supporting Amy Siskind for president. And that’s a very scary thought indeed.

How condescending is this photo? It’s not the fabled (and fake) American-flag-wearin’, gun-totin’  bikini photo that surfaced on the Internet shortly after Palin reached national fame, but it’s about as close as Newsweek could get to the real thing.

I am generally in agreement with Palin supporters when they accuse the media of hurling sexism toward the former Governor. David Letterman’s joke about Palin’s underage daughter fucking Alex Rodriguez? Inappropriate. Ridiculing Bristol Palin for getting knocked up, while laughing it up with Levi? Sexist.

And I tend to agree with Palin’s response here, too: Yesterday, Palin took to Facebook to denounce the cover’s sexism. “The out-of-context Newsweek approach is sexist and oh-so-expected by now,” she wrote. “If anyone can learn anything from it: it shows why you shouldn’t judge a book by its cover, gender, or color of skin. The media will do anything to draw attention—even if out of context.”

Is the Newsweek cover sexist? Yes. But let’s put the photo back into context for a minute: Sarah Palin’s entire existence is sexist.

Let’s try to imagine, for a moment, the thought process that went into creating this Newsweek cover image : “We need to convey that Palin sucks really bad! Let’s take some photo of Palin lookin’ sexy, slap it on the cover of Newsweek, and then use her sexuality in attempt to draw attention to all the terrible things this woman has brought upon us.”

Hey! That sounds kind of like what John McCain did when he chose Palin as his VP: Found an attractive lady, slapped her on to his campaign, and used her image as a sexy lady in order to distract people from her scant qualifications, her total lack of concern for women’s issues, and her complete suckiness as a candidate.

Sarah Palin’s very existence as a national figure depends upon people being sexist. It’s not just the bad things that have happened to her that are a result of sexism—the mud-slinging about her daughters, the circulated upskirt photos, the intense scrutiny over her appearance and her clothes. But sexism tends to help individual women, too, and it has certainly helped Palin. Sexism allows women to earn insane amounts of money for simply taking their clothes off, and it allows women to earn an insane amount of political power for simply being a hot conservative lady with no particular skill at public speaking, reading comprehension, telling the truth, or articulating a single political view that makes any sense, ever.

At that point, can we really get bent out of shape every time we see the media reflecting the reality that Palin is a product of sexism in their coverage of her? We have crossed the Rubicon, people. Everything about Palin is sexist. When it comes to sexism, I’m a big advocate of hating the game, and not the player. But the game works both ways. And I am sick and tired of only having to care about it when that sexism means something bad for Sarah Palin.

When Laura Ingraham covered hosting duties for Bill O’Reilly on the O’Reilly Factor last week, she sought out to answer the age-old question: Why do feminists hate Sarah Palin so much? Hmm—I can think of a few reasons. The resulting discussion between Ingraham, Washington Post columnist Sally Quinn, and Republican pollster KellyAnne Conway produced some pretty interesting theories. Let’s check them out:

Theory #1: We hate her because we’re childless spinsters.

CONWAY: I think of some of the spinster childless columnists who have attacked this woman for her right to choose . . .

INGRAHAM: Can you name names?

CONWAY: . . . and have five children. There are too many to name and then it would make them relevant on such a great show.

INGRAHAM: Spinster columnists, OK.

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Theory #2: We hate her because Todd is cute.

CONWAY: . . . I think she makes some women feel inadequate because she has five children, no household help. Not only is she not anti-man, but she has, as we could tell, a supportive husband and father.

INGRAHAM: And cute, too. He’s real cute.

CONWAY: . . . the extended family. He’s cute to go.

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Theory #3: We hate her because Palin lost weight after having the 5th baby we never had because we were too busy being childless spinster abortionists without cute husbands:

CONWAY: . . . And look, she lost all her baby weight. It makes some women crazy. They’ve got 1.3 children and a Pilates schedule they have to keep, and it makes some of them crazy.

QUINN: . . . Well, let me just say first that she has a point about people being jealous about her losing her baby weight. I have to say.

NGRAHAM: OK, we’ve gotten that out of the way.

CONWAY: But you did too, Sally.

INGRAHAM: I got that.

QUINN: No, I’m crazed about that.

INGRAHAM: Right.

QUINN: And I have to admit it right here.

INGRAHAM: You’ve always been fit.

QUINN: Yeah.

INGRAHAM: So we’re not going to hear that from you.

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Theory #4: We hate her because she’s a woman:

CONWAY: And look, I just want to say this, that with Palin, she looks so feminine. She acts like a woman, but governed like a man.

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Theory #5: We hate her because we’re jealous that she’s pro-life:

INGRAHAM: Admit it right now. Palin is hot. She is pro-life. She shoots. She hunts. She has a big family. And all these feminists are like just seething with jealousy about it.

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Theory #6: We hate her because she is against everything that we stand for:

QUINN: . . . I have to say that of all the people I know, I don’t know a single person who feels jealous about her. I think that most of the people I know who are not Sarah Palin fans just don’t like what she has to say.

Photo by lifeisaprayer, Creative Commons Attribution License 2.0

Still looking for that sexy Halloween costume? If you’ve been dreaming of dressing as former Alaska governor Sarah Palin, except naked and horny for other high-profile female politicians, you are so in luck!

Hustler has produced a promotional cardboard mask in the likeness of Lisa Ann, the adult film star who portrayed everyone’s favorite VILF in the Hustler-produced picture “Who’s Nailin’ Paylin?” (featuring porny Hilary Clinton and porny Condoleezza Rice) and its spell-checked follow-up, “You’re Nailin’ Palin: Interactive!” (co-starring porny Carrie Prejean).

Ladies, I’d really love to tell you to strap on Hustler’s “Parody Mask of Lisa Ann” this Halloween. But according to the instructions on the back, the mask is actually produced for men to slap on to you. Presumably in the boudoir. It reads:

PLACE ON FACE OF:

• Wife
• Girlfriend
• Mistress
• Significant Other

Doesn’t every man deserve to pretend to fuck a dead-eyed porn star who is pretending to be an absurd Republican politician? Just shut up and take the mask, Mistress.

Listen up, teens: Guess what happens when you get teen pregnant, you’re not allowed to have a smushmortion, and you can’t figure out how to secretly swap your fetus into your mother’s aging but willing womb. Umm . . . you get rewarded with an eccentric celebrity handler and sexy undies shots in Vanity Fair? Oh ho no, honey, that’s what’s happens to the dude. What happens to you is you get to hold the dang thing throughout a couple of tortured appearances on a crazy middle-aged lady’s FOX News program, and then everyone makes fun of you for being a hypocrite because GOD, YOU WISH YOU HAD NEVER EVEN HAD SEX. And then you have to raise it.

Did I mention your babby’s daddy got to do Tyra?

In this edition of Sexist Beatdown: Why Sady of Tiger Beatdown and I think that’s kind of fucked up, actually? BONUS: what to expect next in the SARAH PALYN SNOMOBLOWJOB TODD PALYN BAREBACK LEVI JOHNSON porn saga of the Palin family story, after the jump.

AMANDA: Hi!

SADY: WHY HELLO. are you ready to discuss THE TERRIBLE REVELATIONS OF LEVI JOHNSTON???? because there are a few, apparently.

AMANDA: Yeah. Apparently Sarah Palin attempted to engineer the EXACT SAME LEFT-WING BABY-SWITCHING CONSPIRACY that liberal bloggers speculated about after photos of pregnant Bristol surfaced during the campaign.

SADY: ha ha, yes. but the version of Sarah Palin in this article is capable of all trickery.

AMANDA: but not of cooking.

SADY: yes. it’s the intimate revelations of terribleness that are really special. she apparently often walked in on Levi and Tripp (?) and tried to trade him for Trig (??) saying, “I don’t want the retarded baby — I want the other one.” did you get a chance to read the full article?

AMANDA: No! That’s fucking insane! I just watched a video of Levi Johnston posing in men’s formalwear. I think I missed the good stuff.

SADY: well: one gets the sense that mr. johnston may be, let us say, playing up the anti-palinry a bit. it is a really, really anti-palin article. also, there’s some thing in there with meghan mccain throwing a fit because no-one will do her hair, which her rep calls a “naive mischaracterization.” NO-ONE COMES OFF WELL, i am telling you. only LEVI JOHNSTON, sole bastion of integrity among the corrupt palin clan. which: i kind of doubt it. but speaking of poses, you may soon have the opportunity to see levi himself in his underthings!

AMANDA: Yes, but at the same time, I think that Levi Johnston may be the only person who really gets it. First of all, Levi Johnston is hot. Like Sarah Palin

SADY: Ah, true. They have so much in common! Like Darth Vader and Luke Skywalker, really. But with more snowmobiling involved.

AMANDA: yeah, but Levi Johnston is willing to settle for that. By which I mean hot photo-shoots and tabloid-y tell alls, and a personal handler named Tank. And from my perspective, that’s a pretty good life!

SADY: Right? There was Trip and Trig and Tank… lots of T-names. I’m surprised he can keep them all straight. I can’t, really.

AMANDA: yeah. but the point is, he’s not trying to ruin the lives of a whole country of humans! i know: low standard

SADY: it’s true, it’s true! Sarah Palin does set an imposing standard for any young douchebucket. like, i guess i’m fine with the whole self-serving tabloid expose thingy as long as he’s not trying to make Jurassic Park illegal for promoting evolution. or something.

AMANDA: yeah. Also, if he keeps along this path, my election season prediction of him becoming a porn performer may come true!

SADY: ah, so now we see what this is about. your GAMBLING ADDICTION. i plan to tell all to vanity fair.

AMANDA: yeah. I wonder how easy it is, though, just to make up an absurd lie about sarah palin’s home life? Because at this point, i think people will really believe anything, they hate her so much. still, I wonder: could any mind have invented the “I don’t want the retarded baby” story?

SADY: it’s true! that is kind of unmatchable, all things considered. i automatically distrust anyone who tells these kinds of “and then I stood around and was awesome and watched everyone else in the world suck” stories. but, on the other hand, the idea that sarah palin, at home, “would literally say things that did not make any sense.” that is sensical.

AMANDA: I don’t know. I can’t hate him. he doesn’t seem like a liar to me, and any overblown statements i just have to attribute to him enduring media scrutiny for having the grandson of a famous crazy lady while in high school. i didn’t have to endure any of that shit in high school, and i was still kinda bratty

SADY: yeah, exactly. he does, all things told, come across as a regular dumb dude that you’d maybe make out with in high school. who is maybe still a little bitter that sarah palin made him cut off his mullet (the mullet plays a crucial role!) and threatened to spray-tan him.

AMANDA: dude, NO

SADY: i don’t MIND levi johnston so much as i mind the media creation of “Levi Johnston: Totally Admirable Guy! Who is Cute! And Also Sexy!” like, one thing i have learned from the levi johnston thing, as a whole, is that if you accidentally get someone pregnant in high school you can end up a sex symbol. and if you accidentally GET pregnant in high school, you end up a tragedy.

AMANDA: bummer. you’re totally right. imagine a bristol palin interview treatment that was super fun and sexy like this one!

SADY: I KNOWWWWWWWW.

AMANDA: i think the closest bristol could get to that would be doing an US Weekly How I Got My Body Back.

SADY: and yet? i think if one could give bristol a year or two and get her away from the whole family dynamic? she would be a far better storyteller. SHE WAS FORCED TO MARRY THE GENTLEMAN WHO STOLE HER VIRTUE. AS IN YE OLDEN DAYS. if you want dirt, that lady is the one to get dirt from. should she ever be in a position to reveal it.

AMANDA: and her options were: have the baby, or have the baby and have your mom steal your baby. although i would bet that bristol and levi’s porn performance options are roughly equal.

SADY: um, yeah. i’m kind of surprised that there’s no bristol “paylin” porn on the market already. maybe they’re waiting until they can get levi?

AMANDA: oh man—mind went slightly insane imagining all the creepy options available. “trig palin isn’t the only thing sarah wanted to trade”

SADY: you know. every now and again i realize what life would be like if i had no scruples. and i imagine myself rolling around on a bed of pure gold with a mattress stuffed with $1,000 bills.

AMANDA: and a handler named Tank!

SADY: and all i would have to do is to invent some scenario whereby levi “johnson” and todd “paylin” bond – WITH TANK, TANK’S NAME COULD STAY – over snowmobiles and enthusiastic outdoor sexual escapades.

AMANDA: what does it say about society that one political family’s story translates so easily to pornographic storylines?

SADY: power corrupts. and power within a tiny little town in the middle of nowhere where the kids have nothing to do but make out to conserve their bodily heat and their mom is better suited to image-making than rational thought corrupts absolutely. or something.

Martin, to her credit, stays pretty upbeat on Palin’s aftermath, striking three positive notes on Palin’s political ascension: she’s taught us that “women across the country are hungry for their strength to be acknowledged, without sacrificing their femininity”; that “defending women against sexism means defending all women against sexism”; and that “we’ve succeeded in so many ways!”

I, too, believe that feminists have learned a lot from the rise of Palin. But since I’m kind of a downer, I think it’s important to point out the less-than-positive flip-sides of Palin’s Feminist Primer:

Lesson #1: Women across the country are hungry for their strength to be acknowledged, without sacrificing their femininity A Female Politician’s Image is Always More Important Than A Man’s.

Martin finds an interesting silver lining in Palin’s lasting contribution to “American electoral rhetoric”—the pit-bull with lipstick. The phrase, Martin argues, was a rallying cry for the powerful woman who refuses to be underestimated because of her feminine identity.

“Feminists need to get better at explaining that, in fact, feminism is opposed to anything that narrows human beings’ choices around gender identity and expression,” writes Martin. “Whether you are Sarah Palin and you want to wear a perky ponytail while standing by your ‘dude,’ or you’re Rachel Maddow and want to wear thick black glasses while standing by your partner, we defend your right to do so.”

The shade of one’s lipstick and the style of one’s glasses should never have any bearing on a woman’s political career. But while this election cycle exposed many liberal commenters eager to ridicule Palin for her perky ponytail or productive womb, it also produced rampant sexism among Palin supporters. For many of her conservative backers, Palin’s femininity wasn’t just tolerated—it was magnified, obsessed over, and valued above her qualifications. Palin’s femininity wasn’t respected as a personal choice—it was practically a prerequisite for her position.

The feminist lesson we can learn from Palin isn’t so much that ponytails are as valid as Maddow’s black-framed glasses or Hillary Clinton’s pantsuits—it’s that no matter what flavor of female political figure you are, your looks matter.

Even in extremely visible careers like politics and cable news, strict standards of appearance have relaxed a bit for female employees. But the expectation of femininity has far from disappeared, as any side-by-side comparison of Palin and Clinton will make clear. Even Maddow, Martin’s example of the anti-Palin, is a smoking hot babe—a smoking hot babe who doesn’t wear those signature glasses on the air.

—

Lesson #2: Defending women against sexism means defending all women against sexism.

Actually, I totally agree with this point. Awesome!

—

Lesson #3: We’ve succeeded in so many ways! Palin’s Failure Is Not A Feminist Success.

Martin takes a time-out here to detail How Far We’ve Come—and she’s right to remind feminists to soak up their successes once in a while. “Sarah Palin doesn’t represent feminists, but she surely represents the success of feminism’s long, hard-fought battle to get women leading roles on the political stage,” writes Martin. “It may have made feminists squirm to see that the movement’s fight produced a moment ripe for a soldier like Sarah Palin, but from another vantage point, her candidacy (and more importantly, Hillary Clinton’s) prove we’ve won certain battles. Women are taken seriously as political candidates. Plain and simple.”

Well, I have to disagree there. Sarah Palin was not taken seriously as a political candidate—she ranks up there with The Economy in helping to totally derail John McCain’s presidential campaign. Since November 4, we’ve learned enough about Palin’s uninformed, inexperienced, and dubiously ethical approach to politics to know that she shouldn’t be taken seriously as a political candidate in the future. I’m not sure why Sarah Palin has risen to the forefront of the Republican Party, but it’s not because she’s the best and the brightest the party’s got to offer. Unfortunately, I’ve gotta think it has a lot more to do with image (see Lesson #1).

*BONUS* Lesson #4: Let’s Get Our Shit Together.

Though Martin doesn’t headline it as such, she does touch on Palin’s most lasting feminist lesson at the end of her essay. “I feel thankful that she inadvertently pushed feminists out of complacency,” writes Martin. “No matter who she claims to be, we need to keep pushing ourselves to clarify who we are.” This is Palin’s real contribution to feminism: Her frustrating combination of power, femininity, destructive reproductive health positions, and incessant winking presented a puzzle for feminists to hash out at every Palin public appearance. In other words: Hey! She gave us something to blog about.

Why pay journalists to write about Sarah Palin when Sarah Palin is perfectly willing to pay people to write as if they were Sarah Palin? It’s almost too easy.

Hopefully the above photo, published on the cover of the New York Times today, has some sort of innocuous explanation whereby Sarah Palin has not kicked off her resignation victory tour with a bizarre twist on the sexy rock star pastime: Signing the chest of a crying child, what the fuck. Okay, she actually appears to be signing the area of the onesie covering the child’s chest. Better?

On July 3, Alaska Gov. Sara Palin announced her impending resignation from the Governor’s seat, citing “a higher calling.” In the wake of the announcement, Palin hasn’t demonstrated much interest in unsolicited advice from newspapers, bloggers, and Tweeters. But with all of the contiguous United States now at her fingertips, Palin could use our help more than ever. As Anne Applebaum wrote in today’s Washington Post: “what is that higher calling? If you don’t tell us, we have to guess—or make jokes about it.”

Weighing the pros, cons, and probabilities of our best guesses for Palin’s next steps, after the jump.

MAKE A RUN IN 2012.

Pros: May manage to successfully run all the raging feminists out of this country for good.

Cons: Couldn’t handle the job if she somehow, miraculously snagged it; couldn’t handle the campaign trail, either; with all the feminists gone, no one left to defend Palin and family from rape jokes.

Odds: 5 to 1

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MOVE TO LOS ANGELES.

Pros: Inevitable, just get it over with.

Cons: Will be lost in sea of naive fame-seekers.

Odds: 10 to 1.

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POSE FOR PLAYBOY.

Pros: Heff’s already interested; anything to erase the memory of her resignation speech performance (above); Runner’s World spread confirms knack for full-body modeling. Plus, money.

Cons: Icky; too obvious; would help print media, which she hates, stay afloat another month; move would lower Palin’s stock to below that of reality TV show rejects.

Odds: 500 to 1 (Maxim is a different story).

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STAR IN A REALITY SHOW.

Pros: Would allow First Dude Todd Palin’s star to rise along with hers; money; helpful transition into posing for Playboy; punning opportunities for name of reality show endless (”Pallin’ Around With The Palins”; “The Beverly ‘Fuckin’ Rednecks,’” for chronical of relocation to L.A.)

Cons: Constant camera access to Palin family would only confirm fucked-up-edness of Palin’s life and world-view; would allow First Dude Todd Palin’s star to rise along with hers.

Odds: 10 to 1

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GET A FOX NEWS TALK SHOW.

Pros: Finally, a venue where Palin’s mixed metaphors, folksy aphorisms, and refusal to listen to anything are encouraged; no one would be able to look away; would improve Palin’s improvisational skills while greatly inflating her ego; could really mine a Democrat-bashing “Politics as Usual” segment.

Cons: N/A

Odds: 3 to 1

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RETREAT FROM THE LIMELIGHT.

Pros: Hates media; already undergoing public nervous breakdown; retreating from celebrity would make process less public

Cons: Loves media.

Odds: 1,000 to 1

“Sarah Palin, in spandex, discusses her ‘throbbing thighs,’” is the classic ladymag linkbait-and-switch:

A. Write about an issue of great interest to the American public. Ex. Sarah Palin; tight-fitting clothing; throbbing body parts; the portion of a woman’s leg nearest to the vagina.

B. Present the story as a feminist critique on the political ramifications of said topic; in other words, issues of lesser interest to the American public. Ex. “Anyone who still thinks Sarah Palin isn’t trying to use her enviable physique to her political advantage should read this Runner’s World profile in which Palin says, ‘I knew my thighs were going to just throb.’ The throbbing thighs are accompanied by a slew of cheesecake shots of Palin in close-fitting running gear” (courtesy of DoubleXer Jessica Grose)

C. Write headlines and teasers for the story that are indistinguishable from the T&A treatment. Hey, I clicked on it!

I happen to disagree with Grose’s post. I see nothing particularly exploitative about Palin discussing her running techniques and wearing running gear in a magazine photo. On Runner’s World’s end, you could say that the full slideshow was overkill—though this short-shorts photo of David Paterson shows that Palin isn’t the only victim of the magazine’s political cheesecake.

That being said, I understand why the the piece was packaged in the strange way that it was—pull in the readers interested in Palin’s “throbbing thighs,” only to criticize Palin for showing them off.

DoubleX has needs. We all do. It’s no secret why my critique of local media sex writing, “Teen Sex Scandal!,” is consistently one of the most-clicked blog posts on the Sexist. Sure, I could have titled it something a little more to the point—and a lot less sexier—but that would have meant sacrificing the slew of impulse google clicks from readers that are certainly more interested in porn than whatever feminist critique I have to offer.

Are these ladymag link tactics any better than Web sites which deal in fleshy linkbait, only to offer real flesh on display, and not a feminist critique of the same? Probably not. But there is one upside to the T&A bait-and-switch: The pleasure in knowing that Web surfers searching for Sarah Palin cameltoe are unsuspectingly clicking through to a big dose of feminist theory. Sometimes they even stick around to write long-winded negative comments—another reliable source of linkbait!

Last week on the Sexist:

1. How Sarah Palin Confuses Liberals Into Arguing About Feminism in which Sarah Palin is wrong, but still manages to drag us all down with her.

2. Huffington Post: Liberal Politics, Sexist Entertainment in which a commenter argues for Arianna-approved “testicle slips.”

3. Don’t Blame Glenn Beck’s Hot Mormon Wife in which Tanya’s insistence upon Mormonism “grounds” him.

4. Teen Sex Scandal! in which all the people searching Google for “teen sex” and “teensex” are sorely disappointed.

5. The 10 Creepiest Paul Rudd Stalking Tweets in which I, too, do my part.

Protesters—15 of ‘em!—who gathered outside a Late Show With David Letterman taping yesterday had a hard time finding a consistent message.

One responded to Letterman’s jokes about Sarah Palin’s daughters by suggesting that Letterman’s son, who “was born out of wedlock,” was fair game for mockery. “I believe there’s a term for that,” the protester hinted.

Another responding to Letterman’s joke about Palin dressing like a “slutty flight attendant” by suggesting that Letterman himself had “a slut for a wife.”

Yet another responded to I don’t know what by suggesting that David Letterman will “rape you with his mouth.”

Others expressed more creative gripes with the late-night comedian, or “the general sentiment that Jay Leno is a better host than Letterman.”

Also, one of them thinks Alex Rodriguez plays basketball.

Methinks these protesters may need a refresher course on how not to fight hypocrisy with hypocrisy. And also, maybe, American professional sports.

David Letterman apologized to Sarah Palin and her family last night for telling that joke. Palin accepted, saying:

Of course it’s accepted on behalf of young women, like my daughters, who hope men who ‘joke’ about public displays of sexual exploitation of girls will soon evolve.

Letterman certainly has the right to ‘joke’ about whatever he wants to, and thankfully we have the right to express our reaction,” Palin said. “This is all thanks to our U.S. Military women and men putting their lives on the line for us to secure America’s Right to Free Speech—in this case, may that right be used to promote equality and respect.

Hey, minus the military-protecting-our-right-to-get-mad-at-rape-jokes stuff,  they both sounds pretty reasonable to me.

It is a simple formula for both comedy and political commentary:

Take a public figure (Sarah Palin) who holds disagreeable views (abstinence-only education). Zero in on an aspect of her personal life counter to those views (her own teen daughter, Bristol Palin, becoming pregnant). Reveal the comedic irony and/or hypocrisy of the public/private contrast. Repeat ad nauseam on blogs, 24-hour news channels, and late night talk shows.

We should all beware this construction. Though very easy to pull off—and often journalistically and comedically sound—it is a trap. And it will render us all hypocrites. Three lessons from history, after the jump.

SARAH PALIN

DISAGREEABLE VIEW: Too many to count, but in this case, it’s the abstinence thing.

HYPOCRITICAL MOVE: When Palin’s 17-year-old daughter Bristol became pregnant months before Palin rose to political fame as John McCain’s running mate in the 2008 presidential election, political commentators and comedians held up Bristol’s pregnancy as evidence that abstinence is futile—even under the roof of your state’s no-sex-before-marriage Governor.

IT’S A TRAP! The revelation came at the height of election season fervor, and liberal commentators ate Bristol’s sexual activity up with a spoon. The term “knocked up” became par for the course. When the baby’s father, Levi Johnston, told Tyra Banks that he and Bristol had practiced safe sex, Tyra et. al dismissed him as a liar. The late-night comedy cycle feasted on the Bristol-is-a-slut jokes. Even Palin family cheerleader Greta Van Susteren asked Bristol if she had been “lazy.”

We forgot that even the most responsible of 17-year-old condom users don’t put it on right every time. We forgot that condoms break. And we forgot that, when you’re the governor’s daughter in the small town of Wasilla, requesting birth control from your family doctor, seeking Plan B at a local pharmacy, or even buying condoms—anywhere—could cause such a shit-storm for you, your boyfriend, and your family, that it would have been hard to mount the courage to even approach the counter.

At some point, we forgot about why Bristol having sex was funny to begin with. The insane glee that we all derived from a teenage girl having sex before marriage became counter-intuitive—and downright creepy. We had crossed the hypocrisy bridge. We were no longer making a point about how young women should be free to choose to be sexually active. We no longer joked to show how bogus abstinence was. We joked to show that Bristol Palin was slutty, and that was enough to make it funny.

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CARRIE PREJEAN

DISAGREEABLE VIEW: During the Q-and-A section of  the 2009 Miss USA pageant, Miss USA California Carrie Prejean described her views on same-sex marriage this way:

“I think it’s great that americans are able to choose one or the other. We live in a land where you can choose same-sex marriage or opposite marriage, and in my country, and my family, I think that I believe that marriage should be a man or a woman. No offense to anyone out there, but that was how I was raised, and that’s how I think it should be. Between a man and a woman. Thank you.”

HYPOCRITICAL MOVE: After rising to blogosphere infamy—with the help of question-asker Perez Hilton’s videoblog declaring her a “bitch”—Prejean’s past modeling career caught up to her. When topless photos of the 21-year-old Prejean surfaced on the Web, Prejean was accused of both violating her pageant contract and preaching inconsistent moral views. Who is she to preach good Christian values when she’s flaunting her assets for cash?

IT’S A TRAP! Wait a second—since when did we start caring about women upholding the contractual obligations of beauty pageants? Pageants are among the most sexist and anti-feminist of American traditions. They encourage patriarchal views about the traditional roles women and men should hold in society. And guess what—gays don’t have a place there.

But the patriarchy is also responsible for one of the most damaging of all hypocrisy constructions: the virgin-whore dichotomy. Shaming Carrie Prejean—a woman we’ve elevated through beauty pageants—for taking topless modeling photos is a very short leap for shaming gays and lesbians for expressing their sexuality. That’s why this whole thing was hypocritical in the first place—but perhaps we’re all too distracted by Carrie Prejean’s boobs to remember. We may keep posting them in the interest of “revealing hypocrisy.” But we all know the real reason they’re on the Web: It’s not hypocrisy anymore; it’s hotness.

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LARRY CRAIG

DISAGREEABLE VIEW: As a Republican Senator from Idaho, Craig often championed conservative moral values. William Saletan got specific in 2007, pointing out that Craig “helped to enact the military’s ‘don’t ask, don’t tell’ policy,” revealing his “anti-gay hypocrisy.”

HYPOCRITICAL MOVE: In June of 2007, Craig was arrested for soliciting sex from a male undercover cop in the Minneapolis airport:

According to the report filed by the officer who arrested Craig at the Minneapolis airport in June, Craig stood outside the officer’s bathroom stall for two minutes, repeatedly looked at the officer “through the crack in the door,” sat in the stall next to the officer, tapped his foot, and gradually “moved his right foot so that it touched the side of my left foot … within my stall area.” Craig proceeded to “swipe his hand under the stall divider for a few seconds” three times, palm up, using the hand farthest from that side of Craig’s stall. Most of these gestures, the officer explained, were known pickup signals in a room known (and hence under surveillance for) public sex. When the officer took Craig outside and told him so, Craig claimed he had been reaching down with his hand to retrieve a piece of paper from the floor. The officer wrote that no such paper had been on the floor.

IT’S A TRAP! I’ll admit it—this is rich, fertile ground for the hypocrisy construction. Craig blows Palin and Prejean out of the water with this Perfect 10 hypocritical move: enacting anti-gay policies in law, and being gay in private. Jokes at Craig’s expense were easy, valid, and very popular.

Conservatives, when not denying that any of this happened, joined in the shit-throwing. After all, this is the stuff homophobes’ nightmares are made of—strange gay men attempting to have sex with them while they’re taking care of business in a public restroom. For them, Craig reinforced the idea that homosexuals are sick and disgusting individuals just waiting to pounce on your unsuspecting bare penis. In other words, gays can pose a very real threat to their heterosexuality, and Craig proved it.

And yet, those who railed against Craig’s institutionalized homophobia were the ones who took the most immense joy in the gay jokes. So—again—reveling in jokes about Larry Craig being gay began to lose their hypocritical anchor. On some level, the hypocritical construction allows people with pro-gay political views to indulge in some homophobic ribbing of their own. They see a rare window where making fun of gay sex is politically acceptable, and they sieze it. It’s the same tale with Sarah Palin: People who support progressive sexual health policies, like comprehensive sex education, sieze the opportunity to make jokes about sluts. It’s the same tale with Carrie Prejean: People who rail against patriarchal values, like “opposite marriage” and beauty pageants, sieze the opportunity to make sexist jokes.

So, let’s all try not to descend too deeply into the hypocrisy construction’s rabbit hole. Fall too far, and we become ripe for ironic commentary ourselves.

Moore’s point here is that “Sarah Palin’s “Outrage” is Misplaced and A Little Late,” since she’s seemingly ignored a host of inappropriate sexual jokes about her family (and other political families) before finally speaking out against Letterman. To me, Moore’s list proves that the outrage has been a long time coming.

Moore writes:

The National Organization for Women named David Letterman to their Hall of Shame. Will Letterman be joining Jay Leno? Conan O’Brien? Craig Ferguson? Seth Myers? Rush Limbaugh? Or John McCain? Of course not! I guess N.O.W. didn’t bother checking Sarah Palin’s “feminist” credentials.

Actually, Limbaugh is a repeat offender in NOW’s media Hall of Shame. As for other notable sexists who have so far escaped direct criticism from the Palin camp in the past: Sexism in comedy and politics is so wide-spread that it would take up all of NOW’s—and Palin’s—resources to dutifully record every instance of it. Imagine if Palin responded to every sexist attack hurled at her from anyone ever—it would be a debilitating task, one which would totally derail her life, her family, and probably the entire state of Alaska.

That being said, Palin happened to hear a joke that was particularly inappropriate, Matt Lauer asked her about it, and she responded. Palin’s lack of public reaction to these past jokes does not rob her of her right to react now. There are too many sexist jokes. Palin’s acceptance of the Republican vice presidential nomination does not rob her of the right to speak out against sexism. There are too many sexist politicians.

And when Rush Limbaugh or John McCain or yes—Sarah Palin—makes their next sexist comment or enacts their next sexist policy, I hope that liberal commentators don’t hold back just because they chose not to defend Sarah Palin now.

Moore thinks Palin’s outrage is “late.” Better late than never.

Visit msnbc.com for Breaking News, World News, and News about the Economy

I don’t think much of Sarah Palin as a feminist, but the Alaska Governor has emerged as an interesting figure in the movement for one reason: she has encouraged conservatives to unwittingly defend women’s rights, and liberals to deny them. This MSNBC clip, featuring the Huffington Post’s Katharine Zaleski and the Washington Times‘ Amanda Carpenter, is a perfect example.

Let’s find out how easily women’s issues fall to the side in the interest of ideological posturing. The stage is set: you’ve got your liberal pundit, courtesy of HuffPo; your conservative pundit, courtesy of WaTi; and your encouragement for the two to disagree on everything no matter what, courtesy of MSNBC. Let’s throw a feminist issue in there—making light of rape—and see what happens.

Here, Zaleski and Carpenter are asked to face off on David Letterman’s recent Late Show joke. Letterman said this about Palin and her 14-year-old daughter Willow’s recent Yankees game outing: “During the seventh inning, her daughter was knocked up by Alex Rodriguez.” Letterman later took the statement back in a joke-filled apology claiming that he had meant to make the comment about 18-year-old Bristol Palin, not Willow.

Here’s what Palin had to say about it: “I found out later the comment that was made about the statutory rape of my 14-year-old daughter Willow … that crossed the line. Then others, chiming in on other comments Letterman has made. It’s quite a sad commentary on where we are as a culture and a society … He doesn’t have to apologize to me. I would like to see him apologize to young women across the country for contributing to that thread that is throughout our culture that makes it sound like it’s okay to talk about young girls in that way.”

Carpenter, of course, took Palin’s side, arguing that the comment was unacceptable, and further, that Sarah Palin had bolstered her women’s issues cred by taking a stand over the comments. “It’s hard for women in general when accusations like this are made, dirty jokes and things. There’s always a conflict of—do you turn your head, or do you make a statement about it and push back? And even when you make a statement, you’re accused of manufacturing outrage,” Carpenter said. “She took that risk. She said, this isn’t acceptable. And I think women are happy to hear that message. I’m certainly one of them.”

Zaleski, of course, took the anti-Palin side. Let’s check out her argument here:

“Sarah Palin basically ran the hate-speak express during the campaign. She stood there and watched people as they screamed ‘kill him’ at Obama and ‘terrorist.’ If she really wants to rise above this, she’ll talk about irresponsible speech in general, irresponsible speech that many of her cohorts on national networks are using, irresponsible speech that’s leading to things like what happened on Wednesday at the Holocaust Museum. If she really wants to make this an issue, she won’t make this about herself and her family all the time, her family who she persistently trots out there, and her daughter who she made a statement about on Thursday. . . . I challenge people like Sarah Palin, like people you talk to on Fox News, to really condemn the language that’s greater, this really reprehensible language, that’s not just about Bristol Palin but that’s about hate speech that’s basically leading to actions which happened on Wednesday. That’s what’s disgusting.

Again, I don’t buy Palin as a feminist figure. I, too, think she too often uses her personal life—growing up fishing and hunting with the boys, and then finding great personal success in the Republican Party—as a stand-in for female empowerment, while simultaneously ignoring women’s issues as candidate and Governor.

Still, there’s something about Zaleski’s arguments here that I find particularly anti-feminist. Let’s break them down:

1. Obama’s girls are off-limits, but Palin’s are fair game: “If she really wants to make this an issue, she won’t make this about herself and her family all the time, her family who she persistently trots out there, and her daughter who she made a statement about on Thursday.”

Read: “Some girls deserve it.”

2. Palin started it by making comments about Barack Obama (who is also off-limits), which is why her daughter especially deserves it. “She stood there and watched people as they screamed ‘kill him’ at Obama and ‘terrorist.’”

Read: “She was asking for it.”

3. “I challenge people like Sarah Palin, like people you talk to on Fox News, to really condemn the language that’s greater, this really reprehensible language, that’s not just about Bristol Palin but that’s about hate speech that’s basically leading to actions which happened on Wednesday. That’s what’s disgusting.”

Read: “Rape is not a real problem. You’re exaggerating.”

4. Letterman claims he had intended to make the joke about Bristol Palin, and we take Letterman at his word.

Read: “Officer, I didn’t know she was under 18.”

I’ve been mulling over whether to attend this week’s Rock & Roll Hotel “Air Sex championship” for a few days now—ever since Metromix announced its intention to supply its very own D.C. competitor. Since I’m not much of an exhibitionist, I’m afraid I may not be able to add much to the coverage. It’s Air Guitar, but with fucking. What more is there to say?

But after enduring a Sarah Palin Air Sex Routine, a George Bush Air Sex Routine, a Magician Air Sex Routine, a Swedish Air Sex Routine, and yes—a fucking Chris Kattan Air Sex Routine—I was hit with a terrible feeling of foreboding. All the obvious Air Sex Routines have already been performed, leaving only one Ripped from the Headlines Air Sex yet un-done.

This is my terrible fear: This Wednesday, some brave soul will reach the Air Sex stage, perform some brief Air Kung Fu, crawl into a Thai Air Closet, pull out an Air Penis Noose, and attempt an Air Auto-Erotic Asphyxiation.

If anyone actually goes through with the forbidden David Carradine Lack of Air Sex Routine, I’m really, really hoping it’s the Metromix employee.

I couldn’t find any Carradine Air Sex in Youtube’s arsenal, but if you want to watch people pretending to be Palin, Bush, and “Bjorn to Fuck” pretend to do it, be my guest:

Sarah Palin Air Sex:

George W. Bush Air Sex:

Magic Air Sex:

Swedish Air Sex:

While placing a simple rape joke in a pop song won’t derail your music career, it could haunt you for decades and prevent you from becoming president, or anything else great ever. Below, five rape jokes that politicians wish they had never said—or, more likely, wish nobody ever heard.

5. In 1995, New York Magazine sat in on a “Saturday Night Live” sketch writing session with Al Franken, Norm MacDonald, and Jim Downey as they riffed on “60 Minutes”—and rape. Republicans dredged up the session again in 2008, during Franken’s extended bid for a Minnesota Senate seat (still pending). From an Associated Press story:

Franken and fellow writers Norm MacDonald and Jim Downey kick around fictional Rooney responses to the discovery of the bottle. . . . The article quotes Franken putting an edgy twist on the discussion: “And ‘I give the pills to Lesley Stahl. Then when Lesley’s passed out, I take her to the closet and rape her.’ Or ‘That’s why you never see Lesley until February.’ Or, ‘When she passes out I put her in various positions and take pictures of her.”

MacDonald takes it a step further, suggesting that the Rooney rape comment be directed at other “60 Minutes” icons Mike Wallace and Ed Bradley. Franken chimes in: “What about ‘I drag Mike into my office and rape him. Right here! I guess that makes me bad.’”

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4. In 1990, Texas Republican gubernatorial nominee Clayton Williams opened a traditional campaign photo-op non-traditionally: with a rape joke. He later lost the seat to Democrat Ann Richards, who condemned the joke. According to the New York Times:

Mr. Williams made the remark on Saturday while preparing for a cattle roundup at his West Texas ranch. He compared the cold, foggy weather spoiling the event to a rape, telling ranch hands, campaign workers and reporters around a campfire, ”If it’s inevitable, just relax and enjoy it.”

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3. Sarah Palin’s nominee for Alaska Attorney General, Wayne Anthony Ross, failed to pass the state legislature’s stink test after allegations of Ross’s past rape joke went public. Voted down 35-23, Ross was the first Alaskan AG not to be confirmed. I wonder why:

Another woman who had been a citizen lobbyist on behalf of families and children in Alaska with regard to child support, custody, abuse, abandonment and neglect spoke before the House Judiciary Committee the following day about statements she heard at a meeting of Dads Against Discrimination. “Numerous comments were made that were appalling, not the least of which were remarks by Mr. Ross which included the following; “If a guy can’t rape his wife…who’s he gonna rape?” and “There wouldn’t be an issue with domestic violence if women would learn to keep their mouths shut.”

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2. Last year, Palin running-mate John McCain was forced to cancel a fund raising event with fellow rape-joker Clayton Williams after his own long-buried rape joke resurfaced. Oh, the tangled web rape joke-tellers weave! After floating this one in a 1986 National League of Cities and Towns address, McCain went on to enjoy a long political career—stopping just short of the presidency:

Did you hear the one about the woman who is attacked on the street by a gorilla, beaten senseless, raped repeatedly and left to die? When she finally regains consciousness and tries to speak, her doctor leans over to hear her sigh contently and to feebly ask, “Where is that marvelous ape?”

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1. American politicians have got nothing on Japanese lawmakers Seichi Ota and Yasuo Fukuda, whose rape jokes aren’t just deeply unsettling and inappropriate—they actually explicitly condone rape. And are told in the context of an actual rape cases:

“Gang rapists are somewhat better (than other men) because they have vigor.”

Liberal Democratic Party lawmaker Seichi Ota made the remark in late June, in front of a large audience during a debate—as it so happened—on falling birthrates.

He was responding to the recent arrest and widespread media coverage of five male students from three elite private Tokyo universities who were at the time being charged by a 20-year-old woman for raping her in a bar after a social get-together for students. Ota went on to shrug off the case as a sign of “virility” on the part of the young men and to characterize their actions as being “almost normal.”

Meanwhile, as the case was in the media limelight in late June, Chief Cabinet Secretary Yasuo Fukuda told the weekly Shukan Bunshun that given the provocative style of contemporary fashion, “there is room for leniency.” The minister, in charge of a gender-equality panel run by the prime minister’s office, was quoted as saying: “Some women really dress as if to say, ‘Please do it,’ don’t they?”

When a journalist parried that women who dressed more modestly in old Japan were also raped, Fukuda is reported to have replied jokingly, that he “doesn’t know about what really happened those days.”

Photo by sonoazure

That’s what Ruth Marcus claims in today’s Washington Post, quoting Sarah Palin’s remarks from a—what else—a pro-life fundraiser. At the dinner, Palin discussed her “choice” to have a child with Down syndrome  at the age of 44—a choice that, as Marcus points out, Palin wants to deny other women. Marcus is miffed that right-to-lifers like Palin routinely justify their anti-choice positions by describing their own “correct” “decisions” to have children. This isn’t the fist time Palin has used choice to explain why women shouldn’t chose—who could forget Palin’s election-season classic, “We’re proud of Bristol’s decision to have her baby”?

Palin’s pro-”choice” comments—where she describes twice considering abortion before deciding to carry her pregnancy to term—after the jump.

“I had found out that I was pregnant while out of state first, at an oil and gas conference. While out of state, there just for a fleeting moment, wow, I knew, nobody knows me here, nobody would ever know. I thought, wow, it is easy, could be easy to think, maybe, of trying to change the circumstances. No one would know. No one would ever know.

“Then when my amniocentesis results came back, showing what they called abnormalities. Oh, dear God, I knew, I had instantly an understanding for that fleeting moment why someone would believe it could seem possible to change those circumstances. Just make it all go away and get some normalcy back in life. Just take care of it. Because at the time only my doctor knew the results, Todd didn’t even know. No one would know. But I would know. First, I thought how in the world could we manage a change of this magnitude. I was a very busy governor with four busy kids and a husband with a job hundreds of miles away up on the North Slope oil fields. And, oh, the criticism that I knew was coming. Plus, I was old . . .

“So we went through some things a year ago that now lets me understand a woman’s, a girl’s temptation to maybe try to make it all go away if she has been influenced by society to believe that she’s not strong enough or smart enough or equipped enough or convenienced enough to make the choice to let the child live. I do understand what these women, what these girls go through in that thought process.”

Photo by √oхέƒx™

Sarah Seltzer for Reproductive Health Reality Check wonders if Levi is a “victim” in the Palin spotlight. “The Internet is buzzing over Levi Johnston’s appearance on Tyra yesterday to ‘break his silence,’ and providing us all with a reminder that patriarchal policies like abstinence-only education hurt young men, too,” writes Seltzer.

I couldn’t agree more: We’re all victims here: Levi, Bristol, Tripp, and Palin herself all suffered at the hands of her ridiculous abstinence (with a teenage pregnancy backup) method. Everyone, that is, except Tyra, who pulls a fierce Katie Couric to get the daytime interview of the post-pregnancy season.

There are no words. [Via].

Last week, “Bonnie Fuller Media” founder Bonnie Fuller wrote an essay for the Huffington Post declaring, “It’s official! Age is irrelevant… when it comes to women and beauty that is.” Fuller then proceeds to write 700 words proving that age is still very much relevant when it comes to women and beauty.

How does Fuller manage to both disprove her own thesis while simultaneously marginalizing women of all ages? Let me count the ways!

1. All younger women are “bland,” regardless of their accomplishments. Not hot to Fuller are the following “bland 20-somethings”: “Megan Fox, Jessica Alba, Heidi Montag, Natalie Portman, Anne Hathaway, Blake Lively, Audrina Patridge, Jessica Biel, and even Kim Kardashian.”

Fuller groups two Oscar-nominated actresses with a “slew” of Maxim coverladies, reality show inhabitants, and amateur porn stars. Why? Because they happen to have been born in the same decade. She then asserts that all these women are dumb and uninteresting by posing the inexpliable rhetorical: “Do they honestly have even the depth of deep hotness and complexity as our 40-somethings?”

Did Fuller honestly just write “depth of deep hotness”?

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2. Older women are hot, and boring, too! In Fuller’s world, 20-somethings are bland because they’re young. But older women aren’t hotter because they’re more experienced, accomplished, worldy, intelligent, or wise. No, Fuller continues to judge older women on the same criteria as the younger ones: how thin and young they look. Valerie Bertinelli gains Fuller’s appreciation for having “THE HOTTEST bikini-clad hard body” on the cover of People, while Demi Moore scores for having “un-plastic-surgery-looking looks”—the product of very extensive plastic surgery.

Most insulting of all is Fuller’s pick for “astounding evidence of our national love affair with the 40-plus woman”: Sarah Palin, who could also serve as “astounding evidence of our national love affair with the ditz.”

—

3. She judges a woman’s hotness by the age of the men she’s with. Hotness! It knows no age, unless you are a man. Fuller holds up Moore and Madonna as examples of the most deepestly hot older ladies—the ones who can snag younger men:

Demi, for her sexy, un-plastic-surgery-looking looks and devoted 15 years-younger, GORGEOUS husband, Ashton Kutcher, 31 . . . and Madonna for her rock hard body and years younger lovers, A-Rod, 33, and Jesus Luz, 22.

Calista Flockhart, on the other hand, is congratulated for “finally bringing Harrison Ford to his knees” in marriage. Demi Moore is hot because her husband is 15 years younger than she; the 44-year-old Flockhart is still considered an old-timer, even though her husband is 20 years her senior.

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4. She extends the objectification of women to 40, 50, 60 and beyond! The terms Fuller employs, like “cougar” and “MILF,” aren’t empowering—they’re helping to further objectify women of all ages. Women don’t only need to live up to a physical standard through their 20s—they also need to look like they’re in their 20s when they’re in their 30s, 40s, and 50s. Fuller is pleased that middle-aged TV star Courtney Cox is prepared to stage her comeback in a new show titled “Cougarville.” I think it’s sad. Celebrating those older women who look like younger women isn’t a sign of greater acceptance in Hollywood—it’s just a new way to marginalize women based on their appearance. I hope that 20 years from now, I’ve accomplished more than just managing to look the same.

Photo via Wikipedia

NUMBER 24: The Daily Mail reports on a poll ranking the world’s most beautiful lady politicians. The poll was conducted by Spain’s ” 20 Minutos” newspaper, so, whatever. Peruvian congresswoman Luciana Leon is the most beautiful. Of the 54 women on the list, Palin currently ranks 24th, with 3,173 votes. At 61, Hillary Clinton is the oldest lady politician to make the list, coming in at 34th place with 2485 votes.

On the one hand, ranking the attractiveness of female politicians is extremely sexist. On the other, readers of “20 Minutos” are collectively aware of 54 female politicians internationally! That’s progress!

CATHOLICS: BRISTOL EVIDENCE AGAINST EVANGELICAL “SHOTGUN” MARRIAGE: Upon hearing that Bristol & Levi’s Palin-promised union would be no more, WaPo Catholic America blogger writes:

So much for what used to be called a “shotgun marriage.” Evangelicals are of another faith and are entitled to believe as they might about the power of grace to heal and transform human inclinations. In Catholic America today, however, priests often counsel against shotgun marriages. “The chances for such a marriage enduring are very low,” I was told by a pastor whose judgment I respect. “Better to wait and see if the marriage will endure beyond the birth of the child before celebrating the Sacrament of Marriage. Let them marry in a civil ceremony for legal appearances, if they want, but not in church.”

So, I guess Levi and Bristol ended up doing the Catholic thing.

HOW MUCH MONEY DID SHE TURN AWAY? Palin rejected $288 million in stimulus money. I’m with Arnold here—hell, I’ll take that money!

LET’S WATCH THIS STUPID VIDEO AGAIN ABOUT WHY TRIG ISN’T SARAH’S BABY:

PALIN COMPLAINS MORE ABOUT “JOURNALISM TODAY,” reports Politico’s Ben Smith:

“Some in the media actually participated in not so much the ‘who-what-where-when-why’ objective reporting on candidates and positions, those five W’s that I learned when I had a journalism degree so many years ago in college, when the world of journalism was quite different than it is today,” she said.

“No, things have changed,” she continued. “But complaining? Or whining? Absolutely not. But I am going to call it like I see it. It doesn’t do any good to whine about any of this. But I can call it like I see it. Sometimes it gets me in a lot of trouble when I speak candidly, and I speak from the heart and I do such a thing. But I am going to.”

Let us pray.

“So I’m looking around for somebody to pray with, I just need maybe a little help, maybe a little extra,” she said. “And the McCain campaign, love ‘em, you know, they’re a lot of people around me, but nobody I could find that I wanted to hold hands with and pray.” As the crowd laughed, Palin grinned and said she meant no disrespect to the McCain campaign. She said she ultimately prayed with her daughter Piper.

Photo by NationalGovernorsAssociation

UT OH:Anchorage blogger Linda Kellen Biegel, who goes by the name Celtic Diva has filed an ethics complaint with the state’s Attorney General, alleging that Palin promoted First Dude Iron Dog sponsor “Arctic Cat Inc.” while representing the state of Alaska by covering herself in head-to-toe Arctic Cat gear at the start of this year’s snowmachine race.

PALIN STRIKES BACK:

“Are Alaskans outraged, or at least tired of this yet—another frivolous ethics charge by a political blogger? This would be hilarious if it weren’t so expensive for the state to process these accusations and for me to defend against these bogus harassments. Yes, I wore Arctic Cat snow gear at an outdoor event, because it was cold outside, and by the way, today, I am wearing clothes bearing the names of Alaska artists, and a Glennallen Panthers basketball hoodie. I am a walking billboard for the team’s fundraiser! Should I expect to see an ethics charge for wearing these, or the Carhartts I wear to many public events? How much will this blogger’s asinine political grandstanding cost all of us in time and money?”

HOW MUCH MONEY? RedState claims Palin has racked up $500,000 in debt “defending herself against fake/false/frivolous ethics charges” since September. Public scrutiny’s a bitch.

SENATOR STATES OBVIOUS: U.S. Senator Mark Begich (D—Alaska) disagrees with Palin’s refusal of some federal stimulus package funds. “I worry when we throw money back to the federal government that’s designed to help our state,” said Begich. “It sends the wrong message that maybe we don’t need the money. We do need the help.”

VIDEO THROWBACK: Palin and fam moving into the Governor’s mansion for the first time (cute).

Photo via Celtic Diva

O’REILLY & GRETA & BRISTOL, OH MY! O’Reilly weighs in on the Bristol Palin / Levi Johnston fallout: MSNBC “incredibly viscious”; “disturbed individuals egged on by . . . the Air America on the radio.”

BONUS: Greta downplays O’Reilly’s characterization that she is “close to the Palin family,” sayinh, “The only way that I’ve met them is by interviewing them. I don’t socialize with them or spend a lot of time with them.”

Greta goes on to chastize journalists who are “gushing with glee” to her at the news; O’Reilly says, “nobody would do that to me.”

PALIN POLLIN’ IOWA? The Mudflats heard tell of some peculiar robocalls fielded in Iowa and New Hampshire. The recording went a little something like this:

I wanted to let you know that I just received an interesting phone call.  It was an automated poll and it asked the following questions:

1. Do you have a favorable opinion of Sarah Palin?

2. Gov. Palin thinks A, B, C, D & E do you agree with Gov. Palin?

3. Do you feel it is important that Gov. Palin is reelected as Gov. of Alaska?

The Iowa Independent weighs in on the premature polling:

Notably, some of the governors whose names are mentioned as possible candidates will have to decide whether to run for reelection in 2010.  Put Minnesota Gov. Tim Pawlenty and Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal into that category with Palin.  The three of them might find it awkward to run for reelection as governor with all of their state’s voters asking whether they still even want the job.

WHO COMMISSIONED THE POLL? It’s not clear yet, but the Independent ventures it ain’t Palin:

This far out from an election, polling is very difficult, and anybody who is considering running for president might find the results of a poll about Palin more useful than a poll about themselves.  If a recorded voice called you up and started asking whether you thought Pawlenty should run for reelection as governor, would you even know whom it was talking about?

SUCK IT, JINDAL: Alaska’s Mount Redoubt erupts, “spews ash and steam to 50,000 feet”; ash cloud possibly heading toward Anchorage.

CONSERVATIVE PAPE NAILS PALIN: The Alaska Standard reviews Palin’s Anchorage Lincoln Dinner speech, wherein the Governor complains about media criticism during the election (again) and compares herself to Abraham Lincoln (for possibly the first time):

[Palin] spent the bulk of her speech talking about tearing down and critics, but nothing about the economic future of the state. She announced what the personal financial cost of her “open and transparent” has cost her to avoid being open and transparent. As a matter of fact, only one person spoke of issues greater than self with any conviction and clarity, and that person is the clear face of the Alaska Republican Party: Lisa Murkowski.

PALIN RESPONDS to Barry Obama’s quip that he bowls like he belongs in the Special Olympics.

“This was a degrading remark about our world’s most precious and unique people, coming from the most powerful position in the world,” said Palin, whose son Trig has Down syndrome. “These athletes overcome more challenges, discrimination and adversity than most of us ever will.”

Kolan McConiughey, a 35-year-old Special Olympics bowler “who has bowled five perfect games since 2005,” was more forgiving: “He’s a cool guy. He’s an awesome President and he has a very nice wife.”

MORE ON SARAH VS. BARACK: Palin calls the stimulus money offered to Alaska “a bribe” and turns down 45 percent of the funds, some of which would go toward special education in the state. (Huh?)

Asks Alaska Dispatch: “What does that make stimulus money she took, and all the other federal money woven into the state?  What does it make the energy relief money Alaskans received last year? How does this name calling make federal leaders more likely to help Alaska in the future? In these unusually trying circumstances, the governor was wrong not to accept the stimulus money, and she compounded her mistake by injecting divisive inflammatory rhetoric into the discussion.”

OTHER ALASKANS would prefer to keep the cash: They staged a rally in Anchorage over the weekend.

COMPETITION FOR SARAH? “Conservatives size up Sanford for 2012.”

ARE THE PALINS KEEPING BRISTOL AND LEVI APART? Who cares, but maybe, writes Immortal Majority: “I have confirmation that Todd Palin and Levi Johnston had a HUGE argument in Wasilla after Bristol snuck out of the house to see Levi after being told not to. This directly contradicts everything the Palins said about Bristol and Levi’s relationship.”

MORE ON WOLVES: Todd Palmer and Rob Pringle at Huffington Post write long, boring, only tangentially Palin-related defense of wolves. HuffPo tags it “Sarah Palin Killing Wolves.” Spicy!

Photo by aka Kath

According to “The Truth About Scientology,” which tracks public Scientology records (there are public scientology records?), Coale has completed 15 courses, from a 1989 “Not Drugs Rundown” course to a 2005 training in how to “detect and handle suppressive persons.” Coale, apparently, has reached Scientology’s second-highest operating thetan level (or whatever). If you think this news will only diminish the Sarah PAC brand, note Coale’s completed “Route to Infinity” course. This guy is not going away easily.

IF SHE DID RUN, HE WOULD CRUSH HER, a new poll finds [PDF]. “A new national [Public Policy Polling] poll finds that nominating Palin could be a death wish for the party, with Barack Obama leading Palin 55-35 in a hypothetical contest. The key reason Palin would lose to Obama by so much is that even though she might be the top choice for a certain segment of voters within her party, there’s also a number of Republicans who say they would vote for Obama if their party nominated Palin.” [via ThunderPig].

ALASKANS STILL LOVE HER: Palin enjoys a high approval rating in her state:

Very positive 40.5
Somewhat positive 20.8 percent
Somewhat negative 12.5 percent
Very negative 20.2 percent
Don’t know/Didn’t answer 6 percent

Her staff still sucks, though.

WHY IS GRETA V.S. SARAH PALIN’S OFFICIAL JOURNO? Greta Van Susteren has bombarded the populace with interviews with Palins big and small. The Washington Post’s Chris Cillizza knows why: Her husband, John Coale, is a friend of the governor:

Coale, a well-known Washington lawyer and the husband of Fox News Channel’s Greta Van Susteren, drew national media attention when he endorsed Sen. John McCain’s presidential bid in protest of the way in which Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton, who he backed in the primary, was treated. Coale, in an interview with the Fix, described himself simply as a “friend” of the Alaska governor but acknowledged that he suggested she start a leadership PAC and helped her navigate through some of the questions surrounding her family that lingered after the campaign. Others familiar with Palin’s political team insist that Coale has far more power than he is letting on—essentially helping to run Sarah PAC. Coale demurred on that front, noting only that he talks to Palin regularly and that she is a “fascinating person” who is “definitely not what the right thinks or the left thinks.”

GRETA ON WHY SHE’S A NEUTRAL PALIN REPORTER:

[via ThinkProgress]

PALIN HEADLINE OF THE DAY, from Politico’s Ben Smith: “Palin Clashes With Feds on Wolves”

MADONNA is to Hillary Clinton as Britney Spears is to Sarah Palin: “Britney is not Madonna,” writes  Spears tour reviewer Jed Gottlieb. “She just ain’t. Madonna is Hillary Clinton. She’s whip smart and survives, even thrives by adapting. And Lord knows she wants it more than anyone. Britney is Sarah Palin. Baby drama headlines. Podunk back story and a massive industry machine behind her. She’s a manufactured star aimed at the lowest common denominator.”

Photo by Kurisu

PALIN PORN LIVES ON: The Fairfield Weekly reviews a local appearance by “Lisa Ann, famous in the adult-film world for portraying the Alaska governor in the spoof film Who’s Nailin Paylin: Adventures of a Hockey MILF.” And she ain’t nothing like the real thing:

The real-life Sarah Palin is a hot mother of five who shoots hoops as easily as a rifle and sports flag pins as easily as a beauty-pageant sash. . . . The porno Paylin, however, is just a blow-up doll. After 18 minutes of watching her drill-baby-drill routine, you’ve completely forgotten who she’s supposed to be channeling or why it was sexy.

COVER GIRL PALIN: Sarah Palin will appear on the cover of Portfolio next month. HuffPo has a copy of the cover shot: Palin, defiant in the snow, wearing fluffy black boots on her feet and an unidentified animal wrapped around her neck (a green coat has the midsection covered).

. . . SO SOME AT “PORTFOLIO” ARE PISSED: Some of the magazine’s staff are upset with Portfolio editor-in-chief Joanne Lipman, who put Palin on the cover even though she “didn’t offer any exclusive quotes, nor did she participate in a photo shoot.”

BUY THIS ON EBAY: That’s Palin in Rush Limbaugh’s jaws; Michael Steele takes up the rear.

FIRST DUDE WINTER SPORTS CORNER: Sports Illustrated honors snomachine racer Todd Palin with three-page online spread: CHECK OUT THIS KILLER SNOWMACHINE REPORTING:

Behold Todd Palin’s snow machine, dangling from a truck’s winch in the icy gray murk of an Alaskan winter morning. The machine is gleaming, new, scarcely ridden. It is ­orange and black and pointy-nosed, with thin, tensile orange steel suspension arms jutting from its sides like the wings on a menacing insect. This is, no doubt, a machine that could inflict a nasty sting, but right now its engine is stilled, and a certain awed quietude prevails on Big Lake, outside Anchor­age, at the start of the 2009 Tesoro Iron Dog, a 2,000-mile snow-machine odys­sey that crashes through the Alaskan backcountry, northwest to Nome and then east to Fairbanks.

You had me at “behold,” then you lost me a little bit at “its engine is stilled,” but then you picked me up again at “certain awed quietude,” and then you lost me again after this paragraph that I copy-pasted into my blog and read no further.

SHE WAS LIKE, “NO”: Yesterday, congressional Republicans announced some exciting news: Hot mom Alaskan Governor Sarah Palin would be headlining their fancy fundraising dinner in June. Turns out they told everybody except for Palin, CNN reports:

“I communicated with the governor directly and she did not know anything about it,” [Palin spokesman Bill] McAllister told the Anchorage Daily News in a story published Tuesday. “I pointed out the (National Republican Senatorial Committee) press release and she was like, ‘No.’”

The possibility of an appearance is still “under review” by Palin.

CAN SARAH PALIN SEE THIS WOMAN FROM HER HOUSE? Some are hailing this leggy blond Livejournal blogger as the future “Russian Sarah Palin” (or at the very least, the Russian Ann Coulter). She’s 24, hates immigrants, and has been photographed “drunk, wrapped in a Cuban flag” (right). An excerpt from her blog:

“Думаю, заметку про меня в Дейли Мейл нужно как-нибудь откомментить. Поскольку журналисты иногда стесняются спрашивать и предпочитают додумывать:)”

Incendiary!

Her name is Maria Sergeyeva. Know it.

THE LEVI VIDEO: Hunky redneck expounds on “maturity” from truck:

Aww.

SHE WORKS HARD FOR THE MONEY: Republicans hope for the Palin draw: “Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin will serve as the keynote speaker at the GOP congressional committees’ annual fundraising dinner in June, helping the party boost its coffers in an otherwise tough climate for collecting cash,” WaPo reports. The gala will be held June 8.

IN OTHER FORMER CANDIDATE KID SPOTLIGHT NEWS: McCain spawn and Daily Beast contributer Meghan McCain thinks women who call her fat can kiss her “fat ass.”

NEXT UP: GAY IS THE NEW TEEN PREGNANCY: New Majority’s David Frum says Bristol proves the GOP can’t win on morality alone. Anti-gay attitudes still make the cut; traditional family values, not so much. “Many conservatives carry in their heads a mental image of American society that’s a generation out of date. They imagine the existence of a huge class of socially conservative downscale voters, ready to vote Republican because of abortion and gay marriage. The story of Bristol Palin should help puncture this illusion.”

FIRST DUDE WINTER SPORTS CORNER: This anonymous Internet commenter has found a new sport for Todd:
“Run, Levi, run. Sarah and Todd will give you five minutes head start. If you hear a helicopter, try to hide.”

FINALLY, SOMEBODY MAKES SENSE: Levi Johnston, 19-year-old ex-fiancee of Bristol Palin, told Good Morning America that he’s not yet mature enough to get married. “It’s just us not—me not—being mature enough,” he said. “We were in a fight. And trying to see if we can make things work. But this is what it kind of ended up turning into. But we’ll see what happens.”

Johnston said he and Bristol broke up “about two months” after the birth of their son, Tripp. The two are open to reconciliation—when they’re more mature.

COMMENCE THE SHAMING PROCESS! “Excuse me?” writes Kevin D. of Dean’s World. “You’re mature enough to have sex with her, father a child by her, but you’re not mature enough to marry her? . . . And this is why abstinence only education is the only sex education that makes sense.”

Hmm, okay, not the conclusion to which I would immediately jump. Let’s find out where Bristol and Levi really fall on the maturity scale, shall we?

[ x ] MATURE ENOUGH to have sex
[   ] MATURE ENOUGH to be allowed to decide how to handle the results of that sex
[ x ] MATURE ENOUGH to be allowed to decide whether or not to get married (finally).

Looks like they’re improving!

BRISTOL JUUUUUST GREAT: “Bristol is doing great, just great!,” Palin told reporters over the weekend.

BRISTOL PALIN SPRING SPORTS CORNER: Bristol missed out on the Girl Scout cookie sales because she was out performing other adolescent activities repackaged as “state business.” “Oh, Bristol is over at the state capitol building golfing in a miniature golf tournament,” Palin told People. “It’s a fundraiser and she’s up there taking my place while I’m here.” Also—oh, my God—some poor People reporter has probably been stationed in Alaska, following the Palins, since the Republican National Convention. Our hearts go out to your loved ones.

BRISTOL “UNCOOL”: HuffPo’s Bonnie Fuller thinks that “the Palin women take public trashing to a whole new and totally uncool level.” Fuller gets most of her insight on this topic from an interview Johnston’s sister, Mercede, gave to Star magazine, so she’s working from pretty solid academic ground here. The story alleged that Bristol refused to allow Johnston to see their baby and that she called his family “white trash.”

Writes Fuller: “Now, the reason I don’t doubt Mercede’s version of the story—Bristol trashing her ex and his family—is because of the very public trashing and more, that her mom has been tied to, which also involves an ex-in-law: Sarah’s brother-in-law.”

Let’s put aside for a moment the fact that all the Star interview proves is that Johnston’s sister publicly outed her brother’s personal problems while smearing his ex-fiancee’s character. Both Bristol and Johnston have since said the report was riddled with errors.

Still, Fuller uses the evidence to prove that Bristol is a Troopergate-level bitch, just like her mother: “You better not mess with those Palin women when romance goes awry,” writes Fuller. “Slicing and dicing exes appears to be in the family genes.”

Photo by aburt

FINALLY: FIANCEE TURNS BABYDADDY, says Sharon Cobb, who thinks the whole blessed holy matrimony schtick Palin paraded the kids around for was just some racist bullshit to begin with:

Why is it that when a white teenage woman gets pregnant out of wedlock it’s a ‘blessed event’ and the father is the ‘fiancé,’ but a person of color is someone we think of as someone on welfare and the man is just the baby daddy? . . . Racism. Alive and sick in America. That’s the difference, and had the Obamas had an 18 year old daughter who was pregnant during the election, you know damn well the stereotypes would have run rampant.

Cobb ends her smack-down by sending Bristol some well-wishes: “Hopefully, her baby daddy former flame will participate as a father.”

LEVI SEES TRIP, Bristol says and AP reports: “Levi sees the baby whenever he wants, the family sees the baby whenever they want,” family spokeswoman Meghan Stapleton told the news org. “Bristol is not preventing anybody from seeing Tripp at any point in time.”

AP IS ALL OVER THIS BRISVI SHIT: The motives of Mercede Johnston, or “Sadie” to Stapleton, have come into question. Stapleton “speculated money was involved in the tabloid interview,” saying that “the fact that it is a tabloid and a soft interview, there could be an incentive to say things. . . . We don’t even know if Sadie said that.” Martin Gould, senior executive editor for Star, the magazine that published the Sadie interview, “declined to say if Mercede Johnston was paid to speak to the Star. But he said the report was accurate.”

WHAT WILL LEVI DO WITH HIS “BRISTOL” RING TATTOO? No, really, what is this dude going to do about that. Cover it with a real wedding ring?

COULD BRISTOL’S SPLIT HELP PALIN’S FUTURE? “These are not the kind of news stories that Palin might hope for, adding to earlier controversies over her fondness for expensive clothes and use of public money for family holidays that have consistently dogged her. Yet once again she is back in the news, and in media-saturated America that gives her an enormous strength that few within the flailing and defeated Republican party can emulate.”

BRISTOL AND LEVI WERE DOOMED, Chicago Tribune reports. Dooooomed, I tell you!:

“Despite high expectations, less than 8 percent of teen mothers marry the baby’s father within one year of the birth,” said Bill Albert, chief program officer for the National Campaign to Prevent Teen and Unplanned Pregnancy. “That is magical thinking. It almost never happens.”

Steve Waldman over at Beliefnet wonders if Bristol should have put Tripp up for adoption. Along the way, he actually admits that he thinks a former Vice Presidential candidate’s seventeen years old indignation over fictional unwed mother Murphy Brown was spot-on. “I dunno. I was with Dan Quayle on that one,” he writes. Awesome.

LEVI ON THE BREAK-UP: Nineteen-year-old Levi Johnston is single, ladies! His coming out party was held in front of his Wasilla home and was attended by a horde of bloodthirsty reporters. He told the AP that the decision to end things with 18-year-old Bristol was mutual and decided “a while ago.” According to the AP, “He also said some details of the breakup, rumors of which had been swirling on the Internet, were inaccurate.”

THE PAPES REACT: Freedom Eden compiles the worst of the worst:

Chicago Tribune: “No one saw this coming, right?”

Politico: “It’s true. You probably don’t believe it.”

Los Angeles Times: “Bristol Palin, fiance Levi Johnston split. Surprised?”

Boston Herald: “Isn’t this the same Bristol Palin who told Fox News Channel’s Greta Van Susteren last month that her fiancee was a hands-on dad to their son, Tripp, and they hoped to marry after finishing their education?”

And my personal favorite (drumroll please) Christian Science Monitor: “Not even the Love Boat had a happy ending every time. . . . Remember when Charo had a crush on Capitan Stubing and they didn’t end up together? Although we were all heartbroken, Charo moved on. So will Bristol Palin. For all we know, she may be the Charo of the 21st century.”

PILE IT ON: Rabbi Ben Kamin, “Spiritual Life Examiner,” also has something to say!:

It’s impossible not to think of Tripp, the 2½ month-old innocent baby boy who will now not have his father as husband to his mother and whose life will be stamped with the history of an out-of-wedlock pregnancy and the failure of a couple to keep their much-ballyhooed public promise to wed and raise their son as a family.

Oh yeah, two teenagers who were only engaged because some lady who wanted to be the most powerful Vice President in United States History made them do it, should probably just stay together “for the kids.” That always works out.

HUFFPO’S SNARK: Isn’t just insensitive—it’s incorrect. Writes Michael Shaw on an “award-winning image by photographer Melina Mara” from Election 2008 that clearly takes on a richer meaning now that Brisvi are over:

I mean, it’s all there: the smirk; the fact sister Willow was mostly the one schlepping Trig; and the irony—since Bristol’s since had her own baby—of being left holding the bottle. (And then, contributing to the family values, remember First Dude’s tendency—out of the spotlight—to put all kinds of distance between himself and little Trig?)

Except that Bristol’s the one holding Trig. Willow’s holding the bottle. The smirk is all hers. And I don’t remember seeing First Dude outside of the spotlight.

FIRST DUDE WINTER SPORTS CORNER: Not a good day for sporting, dudes.

Photo by Emily from Wikipedia Commons

LEVI & BRISTOL: DUNZO? Radar reports that the forthcoming Palin and Johnston union has been scratched. All the deets, courtesy of Star magazine:

But in a new interview with Star Magazine, Levi’s sister Mercede Johnston says Bristol actually broke up with Levi more than a month ago, is not attending school and rarely lets her baby daddy see their young son. Mercede also says Bristol even told him that she hates him and, when she learned she was pregnant, wished the baby wasn’t his.

Mercede told Star: “Bristol’s just crazy. That’s the nicest way I can put it. She and Levi actually broke up a while ago!”

Apparently, Levi is also far from being a hands-on dad. Said Mercede: “Levi tries to visit Tripp every single day, but Bristol makes it nearly impossible for him. She tells him he can’t take the baby to our house because she doesn’t want him around ‘white trash.’ She treats him so badly!”

NEW WAYS TO KILL BEARS! Palin’s “Board of Game” (yes!) has outlined “new guidelines in a predator control program that now allows the use of paw snares to catch and kill bears, and helicopters for access. . . . Under the new guidelines, hunters can use snares to trap black bears in a specific area and can access the area via private helicopters. As for wolves, state employees are now authorized to use poison gas to kill wolf pups, orphaned after aerial hunting, in their dens.”

Orphaned wolf pups? That’s not good for publicity!

COURIC HONORED FOR PWNING PALIN: She received a Cronkite award for “Special Achievement for National Impact on the 2008 Campaign,” or: totally throwing down.

FIRST DUDE WINTER SPORTS CORNER: What do you do when the snowmachine races have ended? Throw some back with Joe Six Pack. What’s Todd’s best bet for scoring a free beer? A Wasilla joint known as the Mug Shot:

Mug Shot is the biggest pro-palin spot in the valley. People wondered why she (when she was mayor) agreed that valley bars could be open until 5:00 am. Because the owner contributed big time to her campaign. It’s weird – back in the 80’s the Mug Shot was the place to score coke. Everyone knew. But hey – campaign contributions trump everything! It’s just funny how things turn out. And Alaska is a small town (not to mention Wasilla).

OK: MORE BRISTOL AND LEVI: “The worst part, Mercede continues, is that the former vice presidential candidate supports Bristol’s treatment of Levi, 19. ‘I used to love Sarah,’ Mercede says sadly. ‘But I’ve lost lots of respect for her.’”

MORE LATER: “For more photos and details, including the hate-filled text message

Bristol sent Levi, the cheating rumors, the lies about Bristol’s schooling, the Johnston family’s plan to win back Tripp and exclusive photos of the baby boy, pick up the March 23 issue of Star, on stands now!”

Photo by bpende

REMEMBER THAT DUDE: Who supposedly hacked into Sarah Palin’s Yahoo! e-mail account last fall with only an easily guessed password hint and a dream? Well, he’s David Kernell, “the son of a Democratic Tennessee legislator,” and he pleaded not guilty yesterday to counts of “fraud, unlawful electronic transmission of material outside Tennessee and attempts to conceal records to impede an FBI investigation.” Is it really fraud if it’s almost too easy?

FIRST DUDE WINTER SPORTS CORNER: Did Todd Palin grow up in a rural Alaskan village or a boutique rural Alaskan village engineered by the hotel industry? You decide.

MIDDLE-AGED MORMON LADY UNEARTHS SECRET TO SAVING DYING MEDIA: Anne Cannon, the woman who yesterday unsuspectingly used “Sarah Palin” and “stripper boots” in the same blog post, has figured out how to save us all. “In just a few hours there have been over 30 comments posted,” Cannon wrote on her personal blog. “For me this is unusual. Usually I only pull in a couple of public comments a week. The difference? I mentioned ‘Sarah Palin’ and ’stripper boots’ in my piece.” If a self-described “middle-age Mormon lady” can rake in the hits by simply evoking Palin and sexual imagery—and if we can all then ride her coattails by linking to her blog posts evoking Palin and sexual imagery—perhaps this whole crazy media industry can stay afloat.

WANT TO SERVE IN THE ALASKAN SENATE? Palin is taking applications.

CALLING OUT PIPER: “And what is the deal with Piper?” writes the Immortal Majority in its inexplicable obsession with all things Palin (hey, wait a minute . . . ). “Is that child never more then a few feet from Governor Palin at any given time? By my calculations that little girl has not attended school regularly since 2006.” My theory: Piper is just preparing to cover for another unexpected Bristol Palin pregnancy.

SARAH PALIN ADDRESSES THE SPECIAL OLYMPICS:

Look at Trig’s little glasses!!!1

Photo by Material Boy

DUR: GOP needs to get smart, says The Young Turks.  “Obama won because he’s smart. . . . I enjoy having a beer with my brother in-law, but I wouldn’t want him running the country. He’s an idiot! Sure, people like a candidate they can relate to, but when it comes down to the crunch, Americans want smart leaders, not drinking buddies.” Joe Six Pack, we hardly knew ye.

TROOPERGATE CONTINUES: Somebody doesn’t like Kim Elton. And it’s not Sarah Palin! Oh, it is just some blogger. “Surprise. Surprise.  President Barack Obama has done a nationwide search and appointed the Chairman of the Troopergate investigation as Director of Alaskan Affairs at the Interior Department.  Is this a case of political payback for a smear job well done on Governor Sarah Palin???  Yes!”

FIRST DUDE WINTER SPORTS CORNER: Todd Palin’s legacy: ushering the contiguous U.S. into the awesome world of the Tesoro Iron Dog. “at 1,971 miles (3,172 km), it is the longest snowmobile race in the world. The 2008 event featured a record forty teams competing for a $100,000 purse, with $25,000 awarded to the winners and attracted worldwide attention when 4-time winner Todd Palin’s wife, Sarah, campaigned for vice presidency of the United States.

THE TRIG-AIN’T-HER-BABY RUMORS CONTINUE. The Immortal Majority parses Lorenzo Benet’s Trailblazer and suggests (as reported previously by rumermongering liberal bloggers): Trig ain’t her baby. Could page 185 finally reveal the truth?

A few minutes before leaving work on March 5, Sarah held a press conference in her Juneau office and finally announced her pregnancy. She said. “Expect a new member of the first family,” and then she headed out to a reception at the Baranof Hotel with her family to dine on king crab. reporters stood there in disbelief. In fact, Sarah had to announce the pregnancy in three different ways before anyone knew what she was talking about. “That the pregnancy is so advanced astonished all who heard the news,” the Daily News reported, “The governor, a runner who’s always trim, simply doesn’t look pregnant.” Not even her staff was aware until the same day, “I thought it was becoming obvious,” Sarah said, “Clothes getting snugger and snugger.” (Emphasis mine, pg. 185)

So, Bristol Palin pulled a Britney and got pregnant twice in a row? Does this make her more or less qualified to be a teen pregnancy spokesmom? Discuss.

STRIPPER BOOTS: YEA OR NAY? The Mormon Times, for some reason, speculates as to whether or not men actually like women who wear “stripper boots.” Sarah Palin is involved, somehow.

Ann Cannon on her favorite boots: “They’re soft and brown and dressy, and whenever I wear them I feel exactly like Posh Spice—that is if Posh Spice was a size-12 middle-age Mormon lady, who bought all her clothes at Target.”

I love Ann Cannon and her stripper boots. But Cannon’s teenage son does not like her stripper boots, which has totally thrown Cannon’s Palin theory for a loop. Cannon writes” “I thought that was one of the reasons men liked Sarah Palin so much—because she always had those sexy stripper boots on whenever she and Todd got off the airplane.”

My God, Cannon, you’ve cracked the code!

Photo by Bright Meadow

OKAY, NOT 2012: 2016 is Palin’s number, says Palin biographer Lorenzo Benet, whose name delightfully continues to appear in my Google Alerts! Perhaps, one day, Lorenzo Benet, you will earn your own Google Alert in my RSS feed. Never give up on the dreams that I project upon you, Lorenzo Benet.

NO LITMUS TEST? Palin has selected former Planned Parenthood board member Morgan Christen as the next Alaskan Supreme Court justice. Reports the Alaska Daily News:

Christen’s application included her membership in several charitable groups, including some from her past, but did not mention that she was on the board of Planned Parenthood in the mid-1990s. The organization, which didn’t provide abortions in Alaska until 2003, is now on the opposite side of a Palin-supported bill to require girls under 17 to get parental consent for an abortion.

The appointment was protested by conservative Christians in the state.

PALIN MAKES COMIC BOOK DEBUT: The “Female Force” series, penned by Florida artist Vinnie Tartamella, features Michelle Obama, Hillary Clinton, Caroline Kennedy and Sarah Palin, superwomen who “are popular and influential, regardless of political affiliation.” The first issue will feature Palin and Clinton, together at last!

FIRST DUDE WINTER SPORTS CORNER: No Todd Palin sporting advice this morning. Somebody get this man to a snow machine, stat!

TOO HOT TO HANDLE? Science has proven that Sarah Palin’s attractiveness broke the Republican party. ““It wasn’t her appearance per se,” psychologist Nathan Heflick said. “It was the effect her appearance had on their perception of her competence and humanity. Those variables made people less likely to vote for her.” But who are we to take science at face value? Still waiting on the nation’s religious leaders to weigh in on whether Palin is too hot, or just hot enough.

BRISTOL PALIN: MOOSEBURGER FUNNIES! Via The Immortal Minority, via Alaska Ear:

Let’s talk about Bristol, who appears to have inherited her mother’s sense of humor.

It seems that people wanting to support the efforts of the World Wildlife Fund against Alaska’s hunting and predator control policies have been making donations and directing the fund to send the fuzzy stuffed animals one gets in return to Gov. Palin.

An earwig in a position to actually know something once in a while says Bristol called her mom last week to report three more stuffed wolves had shown up at the house.

Mom wondered (perhaps not sincerely?) what they might send the WWF fans as a thank-you for the stuffed wolves.

Bristol suggested packages of moose meat might be just the thing.

Photo by Mike Licht

Welcome back to “Daily Palin,” in which we detail Sarah Palin’s refusal to go away—every day. The morning news from the biased, liberal, gay, mainstream media:

* WHO WAS THE MEANEST TO SARAH OF ALL THE PEOPLE WHO WERE MEAN TO SARAH? Andrew Sullivan takes the cake, says John Ziegler. Sez Zieg: “Andrew Sullivan is a guy who should never be allowed back in any remnant of the conservative movement after what he did, just on the Trig ‘trutherism’ issue. It’s just scandalous. I mean, this guy is still invited on major TV shows after coming forward with, and continuing, the theory that Gov. Palin faked a pregnancy of a Downs Syndrome child even after we found out that the daughter she was allegedly protecting was also pregnant, in a way made it absolutely biologically impossible.”

BUMMER: Curt Menard, mayor of Alaska’s “Mat-Su Borough”(?), has died. You can thank Dr. Menard, who was also a dentist, for Sarah Palin’s teeth, if you like them. Which is what she says at the end of this long, sprawling tribute to the man:

WHY LIBERALS REALLY HATE SARAH PALIN: Clarence Thomas redux. “What’s happening to Michael Steele is what always happens to any conservative who happens to be a minority. Whether it was Clarence Thomas or Sarah Palin, Bobby Jindal and now Michael Steele, the liberal establishment simply cannot sit by while minority faces espouse a conservative belief.  It is the most threatening prospect to left wing power: the possibility that women, African Americans, Hispanics, and others would begin to embrace individual liberty rather than government dependency.”

FIRST DUDE WINTER SPORTS CORNER: Todd Palin gets some advice from Bubba, via Palin family offical news conduit Greta Van Susteren:

“When you break these gender roles there are all these subconscious expectations,” [Clinton] said.

“I think the trick is, if you’re a husband and the woman is in the political role traditionally identified with men,” said Clinton, “the trick is to give support that is unambiguous and clear and to also be there with advice privately, but to do it in a way that doesn’t, in a funny way, make her look weak.”

. . . “Whenever you start changing the deck chairs and gender roles and family roles,” said Clinton, “you have to be prepared for psychological as well as political sparks to fly, and my advice to [Todd Palin] is to keep that smile, don’t get defensive.”

SARAH PALIN: PLEEEEASE BE THE NEXT BLAGO. Now that Kim Elton has been whisked away on a standard-issue Obama administration unicorn to go serve his state in the liberal hell hole of Washington, D.C., Sarah Palin has to find a replacement for him: “Gov. Sarah Palin will make the appointment within 30 days, according to state law. Her appointment must be of a Democrat, and must be approved by the Senate’s Democrats.” My best wishes go out to the Governor that her appointment will be marred by profanity-filled wire-tapping tapes, or at least involve a protracted and reportedly callous consideration of Caroline Kennedy. Thanks.

Photo by Infrogmation.

* PALIN 2012 SIGNS: IMPRACTICAL. Writes Jennifer Berry Hawes, who finds Palin too perfect, her supporters less so: “We drive past our neighbor’s house, which has a Sarah Palin 2012 sign in the yard that for some reason always annoys me. I keep hoping they’ll realize the election is an awful long way off for a poor sign to endure, but there it sits, rain or shine.”

* WHAT IS THE MEANING OF SARAH PALIN? Sarah Palin means something!, Yuval Levin says:

the Palin moment shed a powerful light on the power, the potential, and the ultimate inadequacy of a conservatism grounded solely in cultural populism. It also exposed the vulnerability of the Left to a challenge to its most cherished claims—as the sole representative of the interests of the working class and the only legitimate path to political power for an ambitious woman.

Shit, I was hoping for something a lot spookier.

* ME-OW. Obama has appointed Alaskan State Senator Kim Elton as the director of Alaskan affairs in the Department of the Interior. How nice. Well, everyone thinks that Palin’s farewell speech was really bitchy. Here it is:

Senator Elton pledged his allegiance to President Obama last summer. We wish him well as he moves on and hope that he uses this job for Alaska’s benefit—to advance the state’s oil and gas issues, including the natural gas pipeline, and to work diligently to remove the barriers imposed upon all states that want to open up their shores to off-shore drilling. I hope he can represent Alaskans by opening ANWR, conveying the importance of responsible mining development, and building roads—all issues crucial to the future of our state.

* FIRST DUDE WINTER SPORTS CORNER: The new posterchild of the state soverignty movement? Writes Bernie Quigley for the Hill: “I think I found the answer yesterday while eagles soared over Lake Morey in Vermont where dozen of snowmobilers from all over the north country and Canada were doing test runs on the ice at up to 140 miles an hour: Todd Palin.” Quigley says the cause has been bolstered by the image of T.Palin, “champion snowmobile racer . . . real man . . . superior man.”

* INSIDE PALIN’S CPAC APPEARANCE: Palin sat in front of a room of people, watching clips from the 2008 election and yelling at the television.

On why she didn’t answer Katie Couric’s newspaper question: “Because, Katie, you’re not the center of everybody’s universe.”

On Tina Fey’s impression: “The mama grizzly rises up in me, hearin’ things like that!”

* MEDIA SHOULD HAVE HAD THE BALLS TO LET PALIN FAIL LIVE. Says John Ziegler, mainstream-media-killed-Sarah-Palin-theorist: “The worst mistake the McCain campaign made,” said Ziegler, “was not making sure that every interview Sarah Palin did was live. Having her do taped interviews was the worst mistake. It gave the enemy the opportunity to edit her words, and it let them ask questions they wouldn’t have dared ask her on live TV, because if she got them right they’d look like morons.” The campaign should have booked Palin on Larry King Live. “Larry would have been slobbering over himself, as usual, but with a beautiful woman in front of him he would have been helpless. And she would have looked spectacular.”

Photo by SliceofNYC

* OMFG. Some dude posits: “While the mainstream media continues to ridicule the Alaskan Governor I continue to insist she has a lock on the rank and file base and far-fetched as it seems, Rush Limbaugh on a Palin ticket would be a potent political marriage of populists.” He goes on to write: “I have never actually listened to his program.”

* SARAH PALIN IS CALLING YOUR MOM: Last week, the Governor “voiced support for legislation (H.B. 35, S.B. 6) that would require parental consent for a minor to receive an abortion in the state.” Alaska passed another parental consent act in 1997, which was subsequently overturned by the Alaska Supreme Court ten years later. In 2007, “The court said the parental consent requirement was unconstitutional because it infringed on pregnant teenagers’ right to reproductive freedom.” Since then, a Palin appointee has been ushered in who might tip the balance.

* AWWW. Palin used to be shy! (according to some dudes). “She wanted to be a good girl and play by the rules. She wasn’t someone who was trying to break new ground or argue about things or voice an opinion. In a way she was almost a wallflower type.” Even the lady who did Sarah’s hair for the Miss Alaska pageant in 1984 weighs in on this one. “I kind of worried about how she would do up there on stage. . . You have to have a certain go-get-’em to get up there and stand up for yourself, and she came across as such a shy, sweet girl.”

* FIRST DUDE WINTER SPORTS CORNER: Some lady is recording for posterity, through her “Blogger” account, “Why Mommy Is a Republican.” This edition shows of “Why Mommy Is a Republican” shows photos of Todd Palin on a snow machine and Sarah Palin speaking into a microphone, near snow machines. Hot people near cold machinery: This is why mommy is a Republican, today.

* DUH. Dude who wrote entire biography on Sarah Palin reportedly “impressed” with her. DOUBLE DUH: Lorenzo Benet “suggests” that “If the economy hadn’t tanked, this election probably would have been a bit closer.”

* HOT LEVI JOHNSTON SITE!!!1 I thought that this blog, titled “I’d Get With Levi Johnston,” would be a lighthearted chronicle of how Bristol Palin made a bad move with the right dude. Instead it’s just re-posts of that John McCain photo where his tongue is sticking out and he looks like he’s about to grab Obama’s ass, last updated in October. Bummer.

* PALIN SUPPORTERS PRE-SMEARING JINDAL? Dan Gilgoff on US News, says it’s so: Some pro-Palin commenters, who never ever come off as extremists, are already begining to run the old the-other-guy-is-Muslim play on Catholic volcano denier and possible 2012 rival Gov. Bobby Jindal:

I’m surprised that a few comments on my post about Bobby Jindal as the new face of Christian conservatism allege that he’s got ancestral Muslim roots, in addition to the acknowledged Hinduism of his Indian born parents. Remind you of any other recent rumor campaigns against promising young minority politicians?

What’s surprising is that some of the comments appear to be from pro-Sarah Palin conservatives. They’re a likely preview of what a Jindal primary faceoff with Palin or another Christian conservative might look like, with both vying for conservative Christian support.

Photo by Eddie~S

Welcome back to “Daily Palin,” in which we detail Sarah Palin’s refusal to go away—every day. The morning news from backstage at the Alaskan-funded “Curves” ribbon-cutting ceremony, below:

FIRST DUDE WINTER SPORTS CORNER: Above: Todd Palin’s yearbook photo from Wasilla High. A-woo-ga! HOWEVER: does that mean Sarah was lying when she told reporters, “Todd grew up in Dillingham… after high school he realised that he had to leave that village… capitalised on an opportunity upon the North Slope… using the skills he learned growing up in rural Alaska…Todd left the village, he has been working upon the slope… it was a win win situation for him… he would come back to the village… blah blah…” ? (rough transcription courtesy of Palingates).

SOME DUDE: Asks if Levi Johnson can be arrested for statutory rape for doin’ Bristol when she was 17 and he was 18. NOPE: The age of consent in Alaska is 16, says some other dude.

CAUGHT READING BOOK: Palin Confusion spots this photo of Sarah holding a book (!!) A quick zoom reveals the tome to be The Dangerous Days of Daniel by James Patterson and Michael Ledwidge. A quick trip to the local library reveals The Dangerous Days of Daniel to be “a Young Adult book, looks like Sci-fi adventure.” Nice work team!

PALIN PAYING: Sarah will cough up $6,800 to cover nine family trips she had originally billed to Alaska.

WHERE DID SARAH GO? Let’s count ‘em!

NINE. “The state paid about $13 for Palin’s daughter Bristol to go to opening night of ‘Beauty and the Beast’ at the Valley Performing Arts Center, according Palin’s lawyer, Thomas Van Flein. A travel form filed by Palin says the governor was scheduled to attend the show too, as a narrator.”

EIGHT. “Willow Palin flew round-trip [to] an Alaska Moose Federation banquet with the governor.”

SEVEN. “Palin’s three daughters joined the governor in the Southeast town of Skagway for a potluck dinner.”

SIX. “Willow and Piper flew with the governor round-trip to Cordova on a state-owned King Air propeller plane for the taping of a documentary on shorebirds.”

FIVE.  “Bristol traveled with Palin to New York for Newsweek’s Third Annual Women and Leadership Conference. Her airfare cost $1,385, plus $38 for a meal. Travel forms say she stayed at the $707-a-night Jumeirah Essex House with the governor.”

FOUR. “Willow and Piper flew to Juneau for the governor’s state of the state speech on the state’s King Air.” [Come on, give 'em this one! -ed]

THREE. “The state paid $540 for Piper to fly round-trip from Juneau to Anchorage . . . She went to the start of the Tesoro Iron Dog race, where Todd Palin was a competitor.”

TWO. “Piper flew commercially from Juneau to Anchorage at a cost of $276 for a Curves ribbon-cutting ceremony and a bill signing.”

ONE. “Bristol and Piper fly with the governor to the National Governors Association meeting in Philadelphia, at a cost of $1,449.”

RECORD-STOP: “Piper flew commercially from Juneau to Anchorage at a cost of $276 for a Curves ribbon-cutting ceremony and a bill signing.”

I don’t know how I missed this, but in her unending pursuit of pissing off Ashley Judd / discovering new chili ingredients / proving her own brand of feminism, Sarah Palin has it out for the Alaskan belugas. According to a Salon piece:

But for all the amazing ways that the Cook Inlet belugas cope with their stark environment, there’s one imminent threat for which they have no adaptation: Gov. Sarah Palin.

Chilling.

On Jan. 14, 2009, the Alaska governor announced that the state had filed a 60-day notice of intent to sue the federal government for protecting the whales, arguing that Alaska is already doing enough for the whales in the Inlet. Palin’s chief of staff published an Op-Ed in the Anchorage Daily News on Jan. 28 titled “Protection Requirements for Cook Inlet Belugas Are Silly.”

Yeah, Sarah Palin is suing the federal government because protecting whales is “silly.” I can’t wait until this plays out in the courts.

Photo by steews4

BE LIKE BRISTOL: Because they are sexist and/or simply completely inane, U.S. News and World Report asked readers who they’d rather have run their kids’ daycare center: Michelle Obama, Sarah Palin, Hillary Clinton, or Nancy Pelosi. Guess who’s winning?

BECAUSE, WHY NOT: Question of the day: “Has Bristol Palin weighed in on the Octomom?”

FIRST DUDE WINTER SPORTS CORNER: Todd Palin’s snow machine of choice: Revealed! Dude drives a He “two stroke engine Arctic Cat snowmobile.” What can that baby do? Dump “the same number of some pollutants into the environment as driving a Chevy Malibu 28 times around the earth at the equator.” Wicked.

HONOR BRISTOL: Choice Matters sayeth: “The temptation is to be glib, to say “duh! You think after getting pregnant and having the baby, while a teenager in high school…” but that would be an easy shot and a meaningless one.” Instead, send her a fucking t-shirt. Click here to view Choice Matters’ choices, including the “Oops . . . Plan B” Spaghetti Tank.

SARAH PALIN: HERO. Obama is first. Jesus is second. Sarah Palin came in 21st. Hey, she beat Bill Gates.

BLAME/COMMEND The Miss America Foundation for getting Sarah Palin through college—all four of them!

IN DEFENSE OF THE MEDIA: Matt Lauer “never called Palin a moron.”

PALIN 2012 WATCH: Since we all know Palin will clinch the Republican nomination anyway, let’s start speculating on running-mates. How about this guy? Sure, whatever.

DRINK THE SAND (SARAH PALIN IS THE SAND): “The people who criticize Sarah Palin, occasionally have valid arguments, but they’re missing the point. If perhaps some of Sarah Palin is sand, or muddied water, she’s at least something and she knows it; the Republican Party is practically nothing and it doesn’t.” [Via]

Welcome back to “Daily Palin,” in which we detail Sarah Palin’s refusal to go away—every day. In this edition: Everything I need to know (about Sarah, journalism, and myself) I learned from my commenters.

—

SARAH PALIN: REVEALED!

COOL. “SARAH PALIN IS SO COOL AND BEAUTIFUL–AND HONEST TOO—AND FROM THE NORTH A STAR IS HERE” – “navy”

BROKE ALL HER FINGERS. “I’d like to see you take a 1,000 pound moose, field dress it and bring it home — at 3 in the morning in *actual* temperatures down to -45F; or maybe you might try gill netting thousands of pounds of salmon — with all your fingers broken — the day after breaking them — like Sarah has so she could earn some money.” – “Ron Devito”

CUTE OR WHAT. “IS SARAH CUTE OR WHAT–ALSO SMART,HONEST, AND FOR HUMAN RIGHTS…” – “ERIC”

FACT. “Sarah Palin is the best thing to happen to Alaska politics. Fact.” – “vidsweet”

“GO SARHA!!!!!!” – “sharon”

—

AMANDA HESS: REVEALED!

DUMB AS A MUD FENCE. “you are really as dumb as a mud fence.” – “Gary”

DUMB AS AN OX. “That everyone has now exposed you to be dumb as an OX? And you claim to be a journalist? Sounds as if you’re suffering from Venus envy.” – “linda”

DUMB COW. “Oh, and the “back taxes”, nice try….It was Governor Palin herself who asked for the review, you dumb cow” – “Gary”

GRETA VAN SUSTEREN WILL EAT ME FOR LUNCH. “Greta van susteren will eat you for lunch.” – “Thomas McMahan”

SILLY WOMAN. “And silly woman, he doesn’t race DOGS, he races snowmobiles, or as they call them in Alaska, snow machines. How can anybody believe a damned thing you say, when you are too stupid to even get THAT right! I have an idea for you. You sound like a frustrated girl. How about you go find someone to hook up with and get over it!” – “Gary”

PROB A GUY. “it is scary to see so many dumb-stupid-mean people in this country. Who raised these people-what home did they come from? who is this “Amanda”? prob a guy trying to write as a woman–mentally deranged–personality disorder–go get some serious help.” – “sissy”

CONSTANTLY CONFUSING WITH WOLVES. “And Todd races ’snowmachines’ NOT dogs…Dogs are those 4 legged-furry critters that you liberals are constantly confusing with wolves (Ashley Judd anyone?)…But,hey,don’t let the truth get in way of slamming Palin right Amanda?..Good gosh! You either know you’re lying or dumber than a bag of rocks” – “KenFromAlaska”

BRAIN MUST BE ON STAND-BY. “OMG, This is not writting this is just stupidity at its best, Where did you learn to write, how do you get your FACT’s? Stop lying and try something else? I just wonder if you even care what you write, guess not brain must be on stand-By, swoopppppppppppppppzzzzz,POP (show hitting Amanda on the head)” – “Eagle eye”

SORE LOOSER. “Game over, you loose.” – “jim3r”

READ BETWEEN THE LINES. “PS:I’m driving up to Denali NATIONAL Park 2 hours north of here to do some snow-machining this week-end…Will have my Remington 870 along..GREAT shotgun..Accurate and dependable..
Watch that ‘casual drinking’ problem you’ve got,eh?” – “KenfromAlaska”

—

JOURNALISM: REVEALED!

SUBJECT-VERB AGREEMENT. “Your journalistic imagination if you want to call it that are based on lies and confusion. Maybe you should concentrate on Obama and the mess he is causing our country. I don’t know who gave your degree in journalism but I think their credentials should be checked.” -alaskan10

GOOGLE. “utter ignorance on display in this post is mind boggling . mistakes galore, even about fact that can be checked with a simple google search.” – sfernando

SLOOPY DONE. “Just using Governor Palin to be sensational, but offer no truth in this sloopy done you call reporting.” – “Joyfulcardinal”

FAILED ATTEMPST. “Amanda needs to go read some educational material before she attempst to write.” – “sissy”

—

URBAN HUNTERS: REVEALED!

URBAN HUNTERS. “Obviously, urban hunters are those who live in urban areas, but hunt for their own food, like many in Alaska. Now, was that so hard to figure out?” – “Greg”

URBAN HUNTERS. “As Greg said, urban hunters are just that.” – “Gary”

Photo by davekentuk

* UNSURPRISINGLY: Sarah Palin supports regulations allowing “concealed weapons in national parks and wildlife refuges,” reports the News-Miner. In a letter, Palin’s office stated that “the possession and use of firearms are critical to urban and rural hunters in Alaska.” Urban hunters? I think we have some of those in Washington, D.C., too!

* YOUR FRIDAY BUMMER: “Gov. Palin cuts funding for state veterans cemetery.” Sen. Joe Thomas says “he was troubled to see funding still in place for warm storage buildings and other projects instead.” What would you have her do, Joe—pry the warm storage buildings from the cold dead hands of Alaskan veterans?

* $18,000: Amount of back-taxes owned by Palin for per diems claimed while living in her own home: “Gov. Sarah Palin must pay back taxes on nearly $18,000 in expenses she charged the state for living in her home outside Anchorage instead of at the state capital, officials said Wednesday.” Palin: Now just like the Dems!

* NOW: GIVING FREE FOOD TO OTHERS, TOO? “Governor Sarah Palin is heading to western Alaska tomorrow, to help deliver food to families in Marshall and Russian Mission. The trip is being organized by the faith-based nonprofit Samaritan’s Purse.”

* POST-BRISTOL, Greta Van Susteren follows-up with another completely inane interview, this time with Bill Clinton. WJC and GVS talked “stimulus and Hillary’s singing, and about Clinton’s just-announced initiative to fight childhood obesity, which dovetails with his own experience as a chubby kid.” Greta Van Susteren: I cannot watch but I cannot look away!

* PALIN HITS 1600 PENN! She’ll be hosted at the White House for the first time since the administration change-over this Sunday for the 2009 Governor’s Dinner.

* FIRST DUDE WINTER SPORTS CORNER: The Palins’ tax returns reveal the financial deets on Todd Palin’s snowmachine “business.” According to ABC, “His snow machine racing business grossed $17,000 but home office expenses meant that he claimed a net loss of $10,000.” Hey, Todd, I have a “business” I lose money on, too: Casual drinking.

RUINING YOUR PALIN SEX FANTASY: The First Dude. “But even if that unlikely scenario were to occur, it would very quickly be destroyed by the entrance of flannel-wearing, oil-drilling, dog-racing, salmon-fishing testosterone-pumping Northern Man that is Todd Palin. He’d throw his burly frame right through the door without even bothering to check if it’s locked and proceed to kick seven kinds of shit out of me, Alaska-style. So there’s really no good that can come from a night with Palin.”

Photo by bryanwright5@rocketmail.com

MEDIA NOT TO BLAME, REPORTS MEDIA: Greg Mitchell, author of Why Obama Won, feels some need to defend “the media” against claims that it caused Sarah Palin’s downfall. I’d quote from it, but it’s all super boring.

OKAY: NOW BACK TO BRISTOL!

MEANWHILE, DEBBIE SCHLUSSEL IS NOT AMUSED. Commenting on some blog, Debbie writes:

Not only does she not believe in abstinence, but she doesn’t believe in marriage either, apparently, since it’s been almost a year since she learned she was pregnant and almost two months since she had the kid. And yet, she’s still a baby mama. Hilarious that people call her mother– who enabled this baby mamahood and continues to put a roof over it– the “conservative of the year.” Simply hilarious. Not only has America become socialist under Obama, but conservatives have abandoned any sense of family values. In this one family– the new template for America’s conservative movement– you have a Mr. Mom, teenage pregnancy, single motherhood, and opposition to abstinence teaching. Awesome.

COMMENTER OL-DIRTY-/B/TARD RESPONDS: “Debbie Schlussel is a stupid whore.”

FIRST DUDE WINTER SPORTS CORNER: Big ups to Toddy’s body from the National Ledger: But the ladies can attest that one of the biggest draws of Sarah Palin was sexy, help around the house, husband, Todd Palin, better known as Alaska’s First Dude.”

MORE BRISTOL: Can Greta Van Susteren ask a fucking question? I’m not convinced. Let’s review:

“I don’t want to pry too personally, but I mean, actually, contraception is an issue here. Is that something that you were just lazy about or not interested, or do you have a philosophical or religious opposition to it or…”

“So it’s not just an issue of abstinence. That’s one issue. But once we get beyond that — you know, because when you have the discussion of abstinence, it’s almost — I always sort of feel badly because there’s a wonderful child here and talking abstinence sounds — I mean, it sounds…”

“You know, the bigger topic is, OK, now the situation—the bigger question is, like, now—you know, how to make it go right.”

THE FAIRBANKS DAILY NEWS-MINER LAST WORD: My very favorite Alaskan newspaper writes that as oil prices fall, so does Palin’s cred in the “lower 48″: “‘Given these bad times, she’s going to have a much more difficult time traveling outside Alaska,’ said Larry Sabato, director of the University of Virginia’s Center for Politics. ‘When times are good, people will let their governor roam. In bad times, citizens expect their governor to stay home and work on solving the problems.’”

Bristol Palin appeared on Greta Van Susteren’s show last night, and Van Susteren actually asked her if she was “lazy about or not interested in” contraception. Palin replied, “I don’t want to get into detail about that,” which probably means, “The condom broke, and you can’t buy emergency contraception from the Wasilla pharmacist if you’re the teenage daughter of the Alaskan governor who doesn’t even support emergency contraception for victims of rape, or yeah, maybe I’m just fucking lazy, Greta.”

She also says abstinence doesn’t work, which is pretty awesome.

The full transcript after the jump.

GRETA VAN SUSTEREN: “I don’t want to pry too personally, but i mean, obviously contraception is an issue here. Is that something you’re just uh, lazy about or not interested in, or do you have a philosophical or religious opposition to it, or?”

BRISTOL PALIN: “No, I don’t want to get into detail about that, but i think abstinence is like, like the—I don’t know how to put it—like, the main—everybody should be abstinent or whatever but it’s not realistic at all.”

GVS: “Why?”

BP: “Because—I don’t want to get into detail about it.”

GVS: “Well, without you being personal, just big picture, not an essay about you.”

BP: “Because it’s more accepted now.”

Introducing “Daily Palin,” in which we detail Sarah Palin’s refusal to go away—every day. The morning news from behind Palin’s fake, nonprescription lenses:

DEFENDING SARAH: DraftPalin2012 has crafted this handy guide to fielding Palin criticisms from friends, lovers, feminists, etc:

STEP ONE: BLAME THE BLOGS. “In answering criticisms about Sarah we need to be very brief and direct. When something is a lie, such as ‘Bristol is really Trig’s mother,’ we need to say: ‘That is a lie spread by the Obama Campaign through its loyal servants at The Daily Kos.’ Period.”

STEP TWO: KNOW YOUR HISTORY. “When a feminist says, ‘Sarah wears clear glasses to make her look intellectual,’ we should say: ‘Sarah has been near-sighted since childhood, like her daughter Piper, and she’s worn glasses since she was 10.’ Period.”

STEP THREE: DENY. “When someone says, ‘Well, Sarah implied they sold [former Alaska Governor] Murkowski’s jet on E-Bay,’ we reply: ‘She never said it. She never implied it. They tried to sell it on E-Bay and, when they didn’t get the offers they wanted, they sold it through a broker. It was sold—period—and Sarah never used it.’”

PERIOD.

ON THE RECORD: Palin appeared on Greta Van Sustren’s show last night, revealing many things! In other news, I do not have a television.

BUY LIKE PALIN: Sarah Palin’s favorite store, an Anchorage thrift store called ”Out of the Closet,” has changed its name after complaints from the AIDS Healthcare Foundation, which owns the name (and its own chain of charity shops). According to the L.A. Times, “The shop’s new name is ‘Second Run.’ With a name like that, it can still be Sarah Palin’s favorite store. She can buy her 2012 campaign wardrobe there. With her own money.”

LEVI AND BRISTOL: SEPARATED BEFORE MARRIAGE? Trailblazer author Lorenzo Benet has the deets: “Bristol lived in Anchorage with her aunt and uncle while she was pregnant. She worked at two espresso shops and remained a full time student at West High School. Levi was 40 miles away in Wasilla, but he would still drive to Anchorage to take Bristol out.”

FIRST DUDE WINTER SPORTS CORNER: One lucky Alaskan snapped a photo with 1D after his Iron Dog dismount. “Todd Palin after 2000 miles on a snow machine (that’s a snow mobile for all of us in the Outside) without a shower is still one hot dude! Don’t you agree?” she writes. I don’t not agree!

QUICK PALIN QUOTE FROM SOMEONE WHOSE OPINION DOESN’T MATTER: Janeane Garofalo on Palin: “An asshole is an asshole regardless of gender.”

ADD IT TO THE BLOGROLL: There’s a Blogspot dedicated to “Praying for the Palin Family.” Sample prayer:

Good morning Father,

Today is the first day of February and I pray that as we move about our business of worshiping you, we will remember to pray for others. Lord, I pray that this month you will work in our hearts. I ask that you soften them so we will be more loving and compassionate towards all people. Lord, help us to love those who hate us.

Lord, I know that many would love to see Sarah and her family fail but Lord I pray that you will protect her an keep her shielded from harm. Lord, give her the strength to love those who desire her harm and ill will. Lord, keep her heart and ours soft and ready to love at all times.

Lord, keep us tender in the name of Jesus

Amen.

Photo by fimoculous