Here's an unusual event in the political blogosphere - a request to remember the humanity of a political opponent. Peter Daou considers the reaction across the spectrum to Sarah Palin and compares it to what his former boss, Hillary Clinton, faced throughout her career:
Sarah Palin, like Hillary Clinton, is a person, a human being, a mom, a wife, a daughter, once a little girl.
Vulnerable, like all of us.
Self-centered, like all of us.
Fragile, like all of us.
Opinionated, like all of us.
Defensive, like all of us.
Deceptive, like all of us...
Unlike Clinton, Palin didn't have time to develop the layers of thick skin required to handle the withering glare of the national celeb/politico spotlight, a glare that for some reason shines much more harshly on women like Palin and Clinton.
There have been a lot of accusations of sexism with regard to the treatment both Palin and Clinton have received, and it's been taken as an indictment of the progressive blogs in particular, because they're supposed to be above such things, or something like that. But since other prominent female politicians haven't gotten that kind of treatment (think Olympia Snowe, Claire McCaskill, Kathleen Sibelius, even widely despised ones like Liddy Dole and dumbass Michele Bachmann) I think that analysis is not true.
What I think it is is that some people, both male and female, just inspire a visceral reaction, love them or hate them, and that when the reaction is so strong, and so negative, with women it too often takes a direction of attacking them as women.
As a woman, that bothers me when I see it happening. I don't think it ends up good for anyone. Similar visceral attacks on male politicians attack their morals, their character, their competence, their intelligence, their dignity, but rarely attack them as men, or as sexual beings, unless they've transgressed in a clearly sexual way.
Back to Peter Daou:
For three years I lived the gulf between Hillary Clinton's image as an inhuman, Borg-like ambition-machine eager to destroy or assimilate everything in her path and the all-too-human, funny, considerate person her friends have the privilege of knowing....[I]t was stark illustration (and there were many) of the chasm between the public image and the private person.
With Palin, we should also keep the public/private distinction in mind....
Granted, you ask for scrutiny when you enter public service, but not this much, not so quickly. ...[I]t behooves us to avoid outright viciousness and mockery on a level that few of us could handle.
This would be nice in an ideal world. But it's not an ideal world. Politics (and political blogging) is war by other means. You can't tie one hand behind your back and fight nice. At least not if you expect to win. The political is personal, and the personal is political.
Americans have been deprived of proper political, ideological, and economic education by their media and their education system, so all that's left is celebrity and personal characteristics to guide much of what passes for electoral decision making. So the politics of personal destruction is necessary, at least until Americans understand things like who exactly it is that across-the-board tax cuts really hurt and why the government offering subsidized and guaranteed health care insurance will benefit rather than harm 99+ percent of them.
I could live quite happily without that politics of personal destruction going in a sexist direction though.