The nomination of Sarah Palin for Vice President is, of course, fascinating. The political left is now in the position of attacking a ticket as historic as its own. How to do this?
There is the temptation to denigrate her with sexism. (This might seem ironic, except leftist cannibalization is ubiqiutious.) I am seeing, however, more efforts to denigrate her with classism. That is, leftist commentators suggest that, because she is from a small town and a largely rural state, she is backward and stupid. Consider this clip from The Daily Show:
According to this clip, rural people drink too much, are stupid, have multiple unintended pregnancies, wreck cars because they drive too fast, eat mayonnaise out of the jar, huff paint, are illiterate, gamble to the point of crippling debt, and have six toes.
Nice.
Of course, because of the way that sexism interacts with classism, the denigration works by marking Palin as an inappropriate woman: one who fishes and hunts; one who knows how to dress a moose and shoot a machine gun. And, thus, it’s anti-feminist in either case.
