Mark noted this earlier, but it's worth a deeper look. In Saturday's Wall Street Journal, ABC reporter Claire Shipman and BBC anchor Katty Kay insisted that Sarah Palin's acceptance of the GOP vice-presidential nomination pushes her ambitions "beyond" working moms, since the vice-presidency offers zero flexibility. Oddly, they claim "it's not sexist to have this conversation. It's sexist not to," and add "She's not necessarily a role model" for working women who want more flexibility:
It's important to understand why, then, Mrs. Palin has hit a nerve. It's not because she's a woman with children trying to do a man's job. It's because she's actually pushing the combination of professional and personal ambitions beyond the sensibilities of this generation of working moms. As women, we may be awed by her, but she's not necessarily a role model for so many professional women who now say they want to do it differently, that they don't want to do 150% of everything all of the time.
So what you are hearing is less condemnation than a collective gasp of amazement -- and exhaustion -- at the thought of juggling five children, one of them an infant, and the most extreme example of a job with little or no flexibility. It would make supermom feel feeble. And we should celebrate the fact that all of this can now be discussed openly.
It is not sexist to have this conversation. It is sexist not to.
There is no doubt that the vice-presidency could be a demanding job, especially campaigning for it. But Shipman and Kay don't note that three of those kids are 19, almost 18, and 14 -- all older than Chelsea Clinton was when Hillary Clinton took over remaking the American health care system.
Shipman and Kay were trying to create an intellectual rationale not only to plug a forthcoming book on "Womenomics," but a rationale for supposed feminists to question Palin's commitment to her children:
What Sarah Palin did not do, however, is put an end to the latest national conversation about "trying to have it all." Because the question we're all asking isn't can she do it, but why is she doing it? Mrs. Palin, you see, happens to be bucking a new national trend. Even as most mothers across America chuckle appreciatively about pit bulls and lipstick and applaud her bravado, they are making choices that look very un-Palinesque.
This week we've heard our feminist foremothers argue that any sentence mixing the words woman, kids and work is inappropriate -- heretical even. "A man wouldn't face this sort of scrutiny," they grumble darkly.
But Mrs. Palin and her career aspirations are not falling victim to a secret cabal of men trying, once again, to impose an impossible standard on women.
No. The Palin-bashing "cabal" is full of feminists (including media feminists) who are abandoning their principles for partisan ends.
