Emily, I agree with you that Sarah Palin just needs to go away. But I think that it's oversimplifying the case to say her womanhood explains the fascination with her, though that is part of it. Palin's political career is almost surely over, but that doesn't mean she's going away or that she's been neutered. I don't think Palin intends to fill a political hole in the Republican party. This book and book tour incline me to think she instead wants to challenge the Rush Limbaughs and Glenn Becks of the world as America's Next Top Crazy Right-Wing Nut Pundit. And that will make her way more dangerous than she'd be impotently running for office.

Sarah Palin isn't a smart person, or a curious person, or a kind person, but she is a master at channeling the hatred and resentment of the folks I like to call the "25 percent-ers"—cranky white people who live in a perpetual state of paranoia, feeling hemmed in by hippies, women's libbers, and immigrants. And yes, they're still fighting the culture wars of the '60s, an era that Palin herself barely remembers.

Palin plays these fools like a fiddle. She makes them feel superior to people they don't care to understand, coddles them with sentimental nonsense, flatters their desire to believe that willful ignorance is a virtue, and distracts them from sticky policy questions while feeding their belief that all politics is culture wars. Last year during the election, a neighbor of mine put out an aggressively stupid yard display in support of McCain/Palin, complete with Confederate flags and signs with misspellings like "Mavrik" and "Socialest," and while taking that picture, I asked the man who put up the display about his support for McCain. He announced that McCain was all right, but it was Palin for whom he really wanted to vote. It was then that I realized how dangerous this woman really is, and we wave that off at our own peril.

Tags: right wing pundits, Sarah Palin

Emily Y., Emily B., Hanna, and Jessica: You’re all so on point with your observations of Sarah Palin. Like Emily Y., I would like to see her go away, but not before I add my voice to the chorus of why I believe she is a fraud.

I watched Palin on Oprah yesterday afternoon. I wanted to hear what she had to say, since I have no intention of reading, let alone buying, her book. There are enough published excerpts of Going Rogue that I’ve already gotten my fill.

Although there were no major new revelations, the Oprah interview was interesting because it showcased Palin’s depth of intellectual dishonesty. When Oprah brought up Palin's embarrassing, cringe-worthy interview with Katie Couric and asked Palin why she simply didn’t cite a few of the many newspapers and magazines that she claimed to read regularly, Palin said she could have but didn’t because she was “annoyed” with Couric’s badgering line of questioning.

She said Couric approached the interview as if she was talking about “a nomadic tribe” of out-of-touch Alaskans who didn’t read. “I’m a lover of books,” Palin insisted.

Palin also said that Couric had a political agenda and treated Joe Biden with kid gloves when she interviewed him. “Joe Biden made mistakes,” but Couric didn’t bore in on him or ask him the same questions repeatedly, Palin said. “She moved on to substantial issues.” Palin neglected to add that these same substantial issues tripped her up and revealed her to be seriously uninformed, reinforcing public perceptions that she was unqualified to be vice president.

“Do you think that was a seminal, defining moment for you, that interview?" Winfrey asked.

"I did not," Palin responded. "And neither did the campaign ... .The campaign said, right on. Good. You're showing your independence."

"No sentient person would look at that and say that," one former senior McCain campaign official told the Washington Post. (Check out this fact-check of things Palin said in her book: Lies, lies and more lies.)

I love that Palin also offers up some armchair psychoanalysis in her book and diagnoses Couric as suffering from low self-esteem. That’s priceless, given that Palin could just as easily be accused of suffering from delusions of grandeur.

And Rachael, while you may find Palin’s “energy and ambition” admirable, and have every right to, a lot of folks find her ambition shameless and self-serving. From the first day she appeared on the national stage, it was not about serving the country, it was about serving Sarah Palin and turning herself into a bankable brand. And that “thick-as-hell-skin” you speak of sure seems to be absent in the I-am-a-victim-of the-meanie-members-of-the-media-who-dared-to-ask-me-tough-questions narrative displayed in the published excerpts of the book. And when she’s not blaming the media, she’s blaming the McCain camp for every mistake she made, which is curious because she paints herself as a helpless puppet whose strings were pulled by McCain operatives yet at the same time wants us to believe she is a smart, strong, independent thinker who would make a fine vice president, maybe even president.

If “the sneering condescension she encounters from liberals” drives you right into Palin’s arms, what do you say of the Republicans and conservatives—David Brooks, Peggy Noonan, Kathleen Parker, just to name a few—who have also justly criticized her? And what do you say of the 44 percent of Republicans who don’t support her and don’t find her as infinitely admirable as you do? Are they sneering haters too?

You write:

It's as if people can't disagree with her on the issues and yet acknowledge that she made an incredible journey from “hockey mom” to small-town mayor to vice-presidential nominee. At least not without mocking her kids' names or the clothes she wore before the infamous convention makeover.

Come on. The criticisms of Palin were not that overly simplistic. People also objected to her hyprocritical stance on sex education, her cluelessness about foreign and domestic policy, her inability to articulate her stand on the issues in one-on-one interviews? That's what made her journey from hockey mom to vice-presidential nominee so incredible. And let’s not forget how she fired up those angry crowds during the presidential campaign and worked them up into a lather by using racial code words. Remember her more recent comments about death panels? So very responsible.

So I agree, Rachael, that your support of Palin does not “project cool-headed logic.” It suggests selective memory and a bit of Palin-like revisionism.

Richard Cohen rightly calls Palin an irresponsible “demagogue” in his colum today. “The Palin Movement is fueled by high-octane bile, and it is worth watching and studying for these reasons alone,” he says.

Unfortunately, he's right. The very thing that makes Palin so repellent to people like me is what drives the public's fascination with her and guarantees that she will not be exiting the stage she loves any time soon.

Tags: going rogue, sarah palin's book

Emily, I think Palin means this as one of her folksy nuggets of wisdom, and you are supposed to chuckle as you imagine her mediating toddler disputes over frozen moose pops. And of course it's not that. But you have to admit that this is a thoroughly radical and maybe even weirdly feminist notion, particularly coming from a conservative woman.

Palin is part of a movement of Christian-mom types who emerged during the Gingrich years. The Republicans were on a mission to feminize then and recruited women who had been stay-at-home moms or involved in schools. Andrea Seastrand was an elementary-school teacher elected to Congress in California in those years. Linda Smith, of Washington state, kept a blown-up picture of her granddaughters in her congressional office.

They were the party’s much-needed symbols of traditional values. Only no one much thought about what life as a symbol would actually do to their personal lives. I interviewed Smith back then while her husband, Vern, sat in a hard chair in a corner: "One of the reasons we got into politics, we wanted to preserve some of the traditional lifestyle we'd grown up with," Vern told me. "It's funny, with Linda away, we end up sacrificing some of that traditional family life to pass some of that heritage to our children."

Here’s how I explained it in Slate when Palin was chosen:

If a conservative Christian mother chose to pursue a full-time career in, say, landscape gardening or the law, she was abandoning her family. But if she chose public service, she was furthering the godly cause. No one discussed the sticky domestic details: Did she have a (gasp!) nanny? Did her husband really rule the roost anymore? Who said prayers with the kids every night? As long as she was seen now and again with her children, she could get away with any amount of power.

We all remember Palin’s quote about how only a Neanderthal thinks a woman “can’t think and work and carry a baby at the same time.” But in every way she’s behaved as if she is more conflicted. She hid her pregnancy with Trig until the very end, continued a press conference after her water was leaking, and took three days of maternity leave. All that suggests a woman who is defensive about appearing as if motherhood is stealing time from her work. It’s hard to imagine she’s spent her life in evangelical churches without internalizing some guilt about being a working mother.

There’s one other possible interpretation of her quote. Palin could be expressing the feeling that motherhood is difficult, unnatural, and full of unpleasant surprises. One day you’re the vice presidential candidate and the next day you’re at the center of political scandal. One day you’re a proud matriarch and the next day you’re sheltering your pregnant teenage daughter and wondering why her ex-boyfriend is posing for Playgirl.

This notion is a great departure from the usual Christian conservative line that motherhood is a woman’s natural duty and the hallowed opposite of the man’s tainted world of politics. If that’s what she meant, then it’s equally radical. But it is at least approaching honest.

Tags: going rogue, Sarah Palin

I would really like to drive a stake in the heart of the argument, repeated once again by Sarah Palin in her book, that “there’s no better training ground for politics than motherhood." At first glance, it’s oh-so unobjectionable. Sure, let’s recognize that all the planning that goes into running a household translates into marketable and professional skills. One day you mastermind a school auction with umpteen moving parts and egos, the next you shepherd through a state budget. Right, except that in Palin's hands, the demands of motherhood aren’t a form of preparation that complements other kinds, like learning about the rest of the globe before you run for vice-president. Nope, the motherhood version of the can-do ethic makes it OK to have a know-nothing ethic as well. Hell, if you've got enough mommy moxie you can celebrate your lack of intellectual know-how. And you can spit on feminism every step of the way.

In her review of Gail Collins' new book, Ariel Levy recounts that when Cindy McCain asked Palin how she'd handle joining the McCain ticket, Palin “looked me square in the eye,” Mrs. McCain recounted, “and she said, ‘You know something? I’m a mother. I can do it.’ ” Levy continues:

It used to be that conservatives thought motherhood disqualified women for full-time careers; now they’ve decided that it’s a credential for higher office. All of this raises a question: why has feminism, which managed to win so many battles—the notion of a woman with a career has become perfectly unexceptionable—remained anathema to millions of women who are the beneficiaries of its success?

Why? Because women like Palin raid feminism for all the benefits it’s given us without for one second acknowledging the debt. And this is honey for their conservative base. Which brings me to another question: Why oh why did Hillary Clinton say on TV on Sunday that Palin is a person she looks forward to sitting down and talking with? I know, I know, she was being magnanimous. And maybe she’s truly curious. But honestly, why should the Secretary of State waste her time?

Photograph of Sarah Palin by David McNew/Getty Images.

Tags: ariel levy, going rogue, Hillary Clinton, sarah palin's book

Emily, I think you are spot-on in saying that there is “more than rubbernecking in our continuing fascination” with Sarah Palin. Even a year after the election, I’m not sure what to make of her. She can be dazzling or she can be cringe-worthy. She can make me uneasy or she can make me want to have her and the whole fam over for Sunday dinner.

But here is what I like about her: I love her energy and ambition. I admire her thick-as-hell skin. And yeah, we’re both Republicans, so she and I would probably agree on a lot of policy issues. And while this might not project cool-headed logic on my part, the sneering condescension she encounters from liberals drives me right into her arms. It's as if people can't disagree with her on the issues and yet acknowledge that she made an incredible journey from “hockey mom” to small-town mayor to vice-presidential nominee. At least not without mocking her kids' names or the clothes she wore before the infamous convention makeover. Look, I laughed as much as anyone at this Saturday Night Live skit in which Amy Poehler, as Hillary, struggles to maintain her composure while sharing a podium with Tina Fey as the upstart Sarah Palin. We owe respect and gratitude to the women who spent years getting ahead at a frustratingly slow pace. But I love that we live in a country where someone like Sarah Palin can emerge, where not everyone who ends up in political office got there via the same path of prep school to Ivy League to law school. I might not want her to be president. But I’m damn glad she’s in my party.

Tags: going rogue, Sarah Palin, sarah palin's book

Emily, I too have been reading the dribbles emerging from the soon-to-be-published Palin memoir. You're right that we mine her for insight on sexual politics, and I was particularly intrigued with the information that the AP published about Palin's reaction to Bristol's pregnancy and the McCain campaign's treatment of that pregnancy. According to the AP article, Palin felt that the statement prepared by McCain's team about Bristol "glamorized and endorsed her daughter's situation." As opposed to what? Debasing and shaming her daughter's situation? Making her into a cautionary tale? The attempt at making Bristol an abstinence spokeswoman who appeared on multiple national morning shows was far more glamorizing than any statements the McCain campaign made on her behalf.

I know how inconvenient a teenage daughter's pregnancy must have been for an anti-choice candidate who supports abstinence-only education. Perhaps public "endorsement" of Bristol's pregnancy would have seemed hypocritical for someone who espouses such socially conservative views. But humanity should win out over hypocrisy any day. Palin's already disputing the AP's summary of her book, so it will be interesting to read the full story on her reaction to the public handling of babygate when it emerges.