More seriously he invites attacks from people who think his notion that Palin is "the first indisputably fertile female to dare to dance with the big dogs" is fairly ridiculous. Indisputable to who? The underlying argument holds that anyone whom the author doesn't deem attractive, is somehow disputably fertile....is an erroneous reading of Purdum. I stand by the broader conclusion, but that particular claim, on reflection, doesn't hold up. More likely, Purdum was (as many commenters have pointed out) simply alluding to Trig's recent birth.
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I really don't see that at all. Here are other passages from the same paragraph:
"she is by far the best-looking woman ever to rise to such heights in national politics"
"This pheromonal reality...."
"...if Palin had looked like Susan Boyle."
"...she looks like a beauty queen."
And you're telling me that, in the middle of that, he's referring to the fact that she recently gave birth? I really think your initial reading was right, that "indisputably fertile" is a code for "totally fuckable." Anything else, to me, doesn't make sense in context.
I think he brought it up as evidence that she was sexually active. If you think about it that way, it's a lot more coherent. Like I said, I stand by larger point. But I don't think he meant fertile the way I put it in the original post.
And she's sexually active because she's hot enough for someone to want to fuck her. It's like that hacky old bit where the comedian parades his pregnant wife around so everyone can look at her and think, yep, he got laid.
In any case, we can all agree that, on the whole, that paragraph is embarrassing and reductive and does no favors to either the author or to Sarah Palin (not that I'm going to complain too much about the latter).
Maybe you're right about being wrong, but it seems really bizarre to just bring up the ability to have kids as a factor in her political career. Her attractiveness seems like a valid point; conversely, let's be honest Kucinich never had a chance in the primary for other reason's than his politics.
I think his politics were enough. If he were a Michelangelo sculpture come to life, his politics still would have sunk him. And I say this as someone who voted for him in the primary.
Well that's probably true. But he never even had a shot because of his veganism, the UFO incident, and looks.
And he's like an actual *liberal*. A to-the-left-of-Al Gore liberal.
Nancy Pelosi, mother to 5 or so, is not dancing with the big dogs?
As for Kucinich--great scot, people, he had Elizabeth! Who the hell cares what he looks like if Elizabeth Kucinich could fill the WH press corps' camera lenses? In retrospect I'm surprised they didn't talk up his chances more.
:)
Don't call that birth "indisputable" in front of Andrew Sullivan; he'll cut you. No lie.
With his bare hands and/or vicious rhetoric.
Or an ampersand.
I take the comment as meaning "pre-menopausal." It's a comment on her relative youth, and perhaps on the fact that she's a woman in a high position while her kids are still young. Most politicians don't hit the big leagues much before 50, so people comment when someone in his or her forties becomes prominent. This particular comment could have been phrased more delicately, but it's not all that strange an idea. There are loads of comments about how gorgeous the Obamas are. (Michelle is the same age as Palin.)
I've been known to comment before that it's just fine to be an old lady, and to look like one. Nancy Pelosi and Hillary Clinton are, and do. If that means some men don't find them bedable (I won't use the F word), then it's the men's loss. Particularly men of comparable years. Do they really think younger women are just panting for them?
That's how I interpreted it as well. That it was an all too cute way of saying that she's young.
Yeah, the whole sense of the paragraph is how good looking she is, so I'm not really buying it. There are some alternate readings, though.
First, her 5 kids were played as a plus, and the decision to keep the Downs syndrome kid. Indisputably fertile could refer to that.
Or it could refer to the fact that she is not yet "post-menopausal" -- in other words, younger. Geraldine Ferraro turned 49 while running for VP. Palin was 44, so she wins by a good 5 years. Pelosi and Clinton were considerably older when they hit the national stage.
The whole thing's a bit of a muddle.
Purdum, I think, was being literal with the concept of "fertility." His point was that unlike HRC and Ferraro, Palin is a "reproductively viable female" (to completely make up a science-soundy phrase).
But I don't know how that's relevant to the point he was really making: Every man would hit that.
I'm not sure I go so far as TNC to say that more than half the population would lie down with Hilary Clinton, but I've never heard of menopause, per se, being a barrier to sexual interest. Angela Bassett and the girl from CSI are both 50, for God's sakes.
This is all about the right's notion of female goodness. Palin is a mother many times over, married to a Real Man and is an unabashed conservative. This is what Real Woman do.
Also, she's pretty. This is a big deal to the right in at least two different areas.
It's a constant trope on the right that conservative woman are the pretty ones and that the liberal ones are all ugly.
Additionally, the words of pretty women seem to carry extra weight on the right. Or at least the right is extra eager to fly to the defense of an attractive damsel.
Seriously. Children are the ones that assume good equals pretty. And the fantasy of coming to thee rescue of a pretty lady beset on all sides is just as childlike.
But that is where we are with the rump party that once was the Republicans.
You guys should see my friend's collection of Sarah Palin porn! Its hilarious. Straight guys love Governor Palin because she is the hot librarian type. Anyway, the porn star that plays her is featured in the new Eminem video and its pretty funny.
hmmm . . ., TNC, if you're really all het up about what exactly that 'fertile' bit meant, why not just ask the author?
Because most authors won't say, 'Oh, I guess I was being sexist there after all'? Just a thought.
The thread is pretty quiet, so I'm going to hijack it for a personal pet peeve of mine. Could men please, please stop referring to wanting sex with a particular woman as wanting to "hit that"? It's vastly more sexist that the comment that started the discussion, and the implication of violence (along with the use of "that" instead of "her") really bothers me.
It's undoubtedly objectifying. I'm not sure the implication is violence, though. Couldn't "hit" simply imply patronage? Expressions like "I want to hit the gym later today," "Let's hit the mall and then the beach" don't carry an implication of violence, I don't think. And then there's usages derived from drugs, gambling, sports . . .
Yeah, that's my thought. And I've heard it used for guys too.
"Hit that" or "hit it" is a short form of "hit the skins" which could either refer to "bumping uglies" to quote a crude and older slang term, or some kind of amalgam of "hitting the sheets" and being "skin to skin."
I think it applies aggression more than violence, falling just short of the even more obnoxious "beat it up" or "blow her back out" terms.
At the risk of being controversial, even a hardcore feminist might enjoy (or even long for) a little aggression with a loving, mutually respectful partner at times. I refer you back to Sandra Tsing Loh's recently quoted piece (around here) on how liberated 21st century women, in both Europe and the US, with domestically adept husbands are looking back fondly on the pre-Betty Friedan era of Mad Men manhood figures as "real men".
Kind of complicates the whole "ewww men are sexist chauvinist pigs" jab, no?
the link http://www.theatlantic.com/doc/200907/divorce
Let's get past the metaphor and the euphemism, and consider the act of coitus itself, maybe? Not gonna get graphic, but if things aren't hitting against each other, you're probably not doing it right.
Somebody brought up Kucinich earlier, and it brought up two tangential questions:
If John Kerry had been as good-looking as, say, Matt Mcconaughey, and had a slightly more attractive voice, would he have won in 2004?
If Sarah Palin were a man with John Kerry's looks, where would s/he be relative to where she is now, politically speaking?
Silly questions, yes, but these two threads boil down to attractiveness as a factor in politics. Why not spin it again?
Yeah, I think people give too much credit to Swiftboating in Kerry's defeat. Honestly, I think people were eager to believe those stories because they played into his overall image. He didn't look like a leader, or someone who'd rush into combat to save his fellow soldiers. Of course that's unfair, but I guess its personal identity politics.
And I think you can stop at "if Sarah Palin was a man." Not trying to argue reverse discrimination, but her selection was clearly to go after the PUMAs. It was never going to work, of course, but I think her looks distracted the McCain campaign. If I were Kay Bailey Hutchinson, I'd never forgive McCain
Barack Obama has a winning smile; he is certainly as handsome as Palin is attractive.
Palin, although denying it, plays on her good looks; can anyone imagine Dick Cheney winking his way through a debate? She even tried to flirt with the camera out of the disaster that was the first Couric interview. I don't have a link to them, but there were plenty of stories about how she orchestrated her way into the Veep nomination via Kristol and the neocons, and her early political career reads like the plays of the leader of the popular girls in middle school.
Finally, maybe I am wrong about this, but I believe evolution and the biological nature of life has hardwired into us the idea that feminine fertility is sexually attractive. The woman has eggs, just as when we speak of men the size of their testicles while usually that's metaphorical often referring to a kind of audacity is testimony to their attractive virility.
Barack Obama has a winning smile; he is certainly as handsome as Palin is attractive.
Granted, but that's why I used Kerry as an example. I find BHO's politics very compelling, JK's only marginally so. Perhaps a better way of saying it - if JK had BHO's looks and charisma but JK's politics in the 2004 arena, would he have still lost? I know this is almost pointlessly speculative, but I'm looking for some insight on just how superficial we are as an electorate.
Balls=power, which is a chief asset for male attractiveness. I was always amazed when I heard women gush over James Gandolfini's character Tony Soprano, a fat, bald, abusive and awful person. In a word, it was balls that made him attractive.
Yeah, attractiveness means something different for male and female politicians. Women tend to lose a lot more attractiveness in their 40s and especially 50s than men, but it's pretty hard to get into most positions of power until you've got a few gray hairs. Palin is on the low end of age for someone would be considered for a VP candidate, and this shows in her relative lack of experience. But she won't be so striking in 8 years, even though she's likely to be a much stronger candidate in other ways.
Women who are fertile in the literal sense (that is, they have lots of kids) are at a bigger disadvantage here. Having a large family makes a bunch of extra demands on both parents, but especially on the mom, who's spending a lot of time pregnant or recovering from giving birth, who may end up on bedrest for the last month of a difficult pregnancy or unable to keep much food down for the first month, etc.
Granholm - MI Governor is way hotter