OK, I am an American. But when casting about for a suitable pop-song title for a post about Palin’s expressed desire to meet her “political heroine,” the Iron Lady herself, Margaret Thatcher, this one just struck me as genius.
For some reason, the mental picture I have of this meeting is a tiny, frail Thatcher being wheeled or led in to a room where an eager Palin sits, and Thatcher looking up at whomever her attendants are (come on, you know she has attendants, she’s Margaret Effing Thatcher) and says “HER?”
Sarah Palin is sort of my doom as a writer. I can’t stand the sound of her voice, but I keep pitching articles about her, writing commentaries and blog posts and returning to the subject again and again. She’s link bait, she refuses to go away, and on one hand I agree with the expressed desire of Katha Pollitt and about half the people I follow on Twitter that we should just stop giving her press. On the other hand, well, she’s Sarah Palin. She won’t go away whether we like her or not, right?
And after the recent primaries, we’ve seen a lot more conservative women coming to prominence, some of whom have political views at least as outlandish–and abhorrent–as Palin. So clearly ignoring them isn’t helping.
Margaret Thatcher was the archetype we had for a conservative woman in power–hell, for a woman in power, period, for a while. And while she stood for pretty much everything I loathe in politics, from union-busting to privatizing, even I have a grudging respect for the woman’s work ethic, intellect, and “iron” control.
But we’ve seen plenty of women leaders in the Thatcher mode now (Nancy Pelosi, for one, though she doesn’t play the self-made woman card like Thatcher did).
Sarah Palin is a different sort, and I maintain still that plenty of the criticism directed at her from the left and the right and even from feminists is sexist and deserved–often at the same time. Palin embodies so many of the cliches about women politicians: frivolous, trading on her looks, winking and smiling, using double entendres like “Drill, baby, drill,” trotting out her family as props, etc.
But I don’t want a world where all women have to emulate Margaret Thatcher to be “serious” either. I dress pretty ridiculously at times, and my sense of humor borders on horribly offensive. I have tattoos and wear red lipstick and generally don’t fit a lot of people’s idea of what a “serious” person looks like. Certainly Thatcher would probably be horrified by me as well, and not just my politics.
So Sarah Palin meeting Margaret Thatcher: probably not a passing of the torch, so to speak. Still, an interesting moment and photo op.
What do you think, Feministers? (And let’s keep it civil–I’ve joked many times that “Sarah Palin kills feminism” because arguments about her tend to get beyond heated.)