As Palins go,

I prefer Michael. In my view, he’s cuter. But then I’m decidely hetero. I would hazard to guess that he’s also funnier.

Sarah Palin embraces all the wrong issues.

Still there are ways and ways to oppose her, as Melissa McEwan points out in here Sarah Palin Sexism Watch #1

Well, that took�what?�an hour? Petulant just emailed me to say he heard someone on the Stephanie Miller Show calling Palin a “bimbo.” (Presumably because she’s a former beauty queen.) And I’m already reading indictments of “her” that include information like “her husband works for an oil company.”

…

For the record, there is plenty about which to criticize Palin that has absolutely fuck-all to do with her sex. She’s anti-choice, against marriage equality, pro-death penalty, pro-guns, and loves Big Business. (In other words, she’s a Republican.) There’s no goddamned reason to criticize her for anything but her policies.

And I’ll go ahead and put it right in the fucking inaugural post in this series: I will defend Sarah Palin against misogynist smears not because I like or support her, but because that’s how feminism works.

Time to see, I guess, whether all the attacks on Hillary were pure Clinton Derangement Syndrome or whether it was just plain old-fashioned sexism.

Oh, and to the list of Palin’s bad policy positions, she’s gung-ho for drilling in Alaska.

Oh, and, via Susie, she’s under investigation for an ethics violation.

Added: More on the sexism front.

Added August 31: I don’t always agree with Gail Collins but I think she has this one right:

However, I do feel kind of ticked off at the assumptions that the Republicans seem to be making about female voters. It�s a tad reminiscent of the Dan Quayle selection, when the first George Bush�s advisers decided they could close the gender gap with a cute running mate.

The idea that women are going to race off to vote for any candidate with the same internal plumbing is both offensive and historically wrong. When the sexes have parted company in modern elections, it�s generally been because women are more likely to be Democrats, and more concerned about protecting the social safety net. �The gender gap traditionally has been determined by party preference, not by the gender of the candidate,� said Ruth Mandel of the Eagleton Institute of Politics.

Over the last week, we have heard over and over and over that Tuesday was the anniversary of the day women got the right to vote. (They got it when a state representative in Tennessee, where the House was split on the ratification issue, changed his vote because his mother wrote him a letter telling him to shape up. That�s a story that I would love to get into, but, unfortunately, right now we have Sarah Palin to deal with.)

After that big moment of enfranchisement, women went through a long period in the desert where they had the vote but not much else. Then came the great revolutions of the 1970s, when all the assumptions about the natural divisions between the sexes were challenged. During that era, women could be excited and moved by symbolic candidacies that promised a better, more inclusive future, like Shirley Chisholm�s presidential race and Geraldine Ferraro�s presence on the Democratic national ticket.

This year, Hillary Clinton took things to a whole new level. She didn�t run for president as a symbol but as the best-prepared candidate in the Democratic pack. Whether you liked her or not, she convinced the nation that women could be qualified to both run the country and be commander in chief. That was an enormous breakthrough, and Palin�s nomination feels, in comparison, like a step back.

If she�s only on the ticket to try to get disaffected Clinton supporters to cross over, it�s a bad choice. Joe Biden may already be practicing his drop-dead line for the vice-presidential debate: �I know Hillary Clinton. Hillary Clinton is a friend of mine, and governor, you�re no Hillary Clinton.�

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