Camille Paglia invents Sarah Palin

Camille Paglia on Sarah Palin

We have heard the rattling rhetoric bleating from the rafters. Sarah Palin is a womb-terrorist who hates women and all that they feel, do, say, and are. I myself fell into this trap of thinking I knew the thoughts and reasoning of this particular woman. In fact, I recently wrote that she despises poor, disenfranchised and broken women who find themselves tyrannized by a choice that no woman truly wants to have to make. I am still sorting out my honest feelings about Mrs. Palin. I don't necessarily believe I will ever have any. Yet I react vehemently based on a primal need to be recognized as progressive, empathic, and understanding. Ergo, I oppose abortion because I believe, along with Paglia, that no government entity should invade the privacy of its citizens by imposing draconian laws forbidding any behavior. The question Paglia raises, is essentially, how does one justify the murder? And it is murder however we look at it. It is an impossible dilemma that is rarely acknowledged let alone faced with courage and understanding. Sarah Palin seems to comprehend the nuances of this problem and I now feel, rather shamefacedly after reading Paglia's take on her, that I no longer can justify leveling this particular attack at her. A simple decisive essay by the only feminist for which I have any affection for has broadened my view and allowed me the courtesy of closer scrutiny. It's not so cut and dry that there isn't any common ground between Sarah Palin and those urban women for whom an unwanted pregnancy is something icky to be discarded like a gorgeous gown being sold at auction.

Sarah Palin represents a brand new realm of possibility in that she is emphatically both pro-life and a feminist. Paglia points this out with her usual clarity and elucidation. The standard tripe that passes for fanatical left-wing feminism holds that only a woman capable and willing to eliminate the fetus-virus can be considered a feminist. Only those women who can remorselessly kill are truly worthy of wearing the pet label that so unceremoniously defines them, controls them, blinds them to any other possibility that might cling more tenaciously to the broken and hopelessly mangled concept of life at all costs. Somehow a clearly accomplished woman, who has demonstrated a firm hand and an audacity to rule fairly and without pretense, is not fit to walk among the anointed and be accepted as a familiar sister.

Still, it's impossibe to remotely consider voting for McCain/Palin at this time if as Paglia states she would inject her personal convictions into the remotest consideration of legislation. But, that does not diminish the fantasy of a jacked-up, thigh-high boot wearing, whip wielding super-vixen drunk on power and pleasure railing through perfectly accentuated feminine wiles all of those men who have been afforded the luxury of ruling states. Mrs. Palin's obvious physical grace and attractiveness might go a long way toward diplomancy because who can say no to a pretty lady with her finger on the trigger?