Three reasons to like the thrilla from Wasilla—even if you’d never vote for her
Call me an un-fan. I watched Sarah Palin give her speech at the 2008 Republican National Convention and although I am not a Republican, or even an Independent, I was impressed. After years of watching women politicians who were models of good deportment and bad wardrobe, seemingly afraid of getting kicked out of the boys' club for any sort of "governing while female" infraction, Palin combined high heels and a fiery delivery with (in the words of more.com and trueslant.com blogger Susan Toepfer) the confidence of a beauty queen. No, she didn't go to Wellesley or any of the Ivies--but then, neither did I, and more to the point, neither did such Congressional powerhouses as Olympia Snowe (University of Maine in Orono), Barbara Boxer (Brooklyn College in, you know, Brooklyn) or Barbara Mikulski (Mount Saint Agnes College in Maryland).Sadly, however, it was downhill from there for my girl crush. From her shockingly demagogic behavior on the campaign trail to her astonishingly weak performance in the famous Katie Couric interview, Palin was turning into my crazy girlfriend, an embarrassment who's just possibly dangerous, a woman one stockpot short of being a bunny boiler. But now she's back and she's everywhere--addressing the National Tea Party Convention in Nashville this past weekend and then appearing the next day on Sunday morning TV--and I'm getting that old feeling. I can't imagine Palin would ever get my vote, but I am definitely getting her vibe. Here are three reasons why.
(1) She has amazing hair. Always a plus for Palin, it now seems longer, with movie-star fullness. Maybe she’s found the world’s greatest volumizer. Maybe she finally has the time and money to give her hair the attention and expensive products we all know our hair deserves. Or maybe she’s the first former vice-presidential candidate to have extensions. However she got there, it looks goo-ood.
(2) She really is a mom. While being interviewed post-speech by tea-party convention organizer Judson Phillips, she answered a question about her son in the military while noting that Track didn’t want her to talk about him and now he might hear about her doing exactly that. The interviewer said, “Maybe he’s watching right now.” Her response must have drawn a smile from the mother of every twentysomething in America (except the ones who are grad students at the Georgetown School of Foreign Service): She smiled fondly and said she didn’t think her son had ever, “in his young life,” turned on C-Span. (And the way she said it even made me think, against all Couric evidence to the contrary, that perhaps Palin herself actually had.)
