Being Sarah

Feminine Genius puts her finger on, perhaps, the source of Sarah Palin's "poise" in Simply. Fascinating.

I've never heard of Will Wilkinson, but this piece has some "primal" thoughts that have to be reckoned with. He's scathingly honest, finding Sarah, well, sexy. I find it refreshing, actually, that thinking men don't get [too] distracted by bimbos and other brain-dead offerings of the female persuasion. But consider this:

Palin exudes sexual confidence and maternal authority, which in a relatively conservative culture like ours is the most recognizable and viscerally comprehensible form of female power. It makes a lot of men uncomfortable, but that’s because it’s the kind of female power they are most often subject to, and most often fail to successfully resist. I spent much of my life taking orders from women a lot like Sarah Palin — women like my mother and my Iowa public school teachers. Indeed, it makes a lot more emotional sense for me to feel led by by a woman like that than by some hotshot Air Force pilot. When a guy with a buzzcut says “jump,” I say “screw you.” When a woman like Sarah Palin says “jump,” I am inclined to deferentially inquire into the requirements of this jump.

Now I could quibble about the words "power" and "authority" which are not interchangeable, but I understand what he's saying. Is this what sets Sarah apart? Is it so primal that it has gone undefined thus far? It fits with our Catholic paradigm of authority coming top-down from God through the "great chain of being."

Ontologically, I think she's onto something about Sarah.