Malkin ally denounces Palinites’ “victimization pageant”

Here’s another sign that mainstream conservatives are starting to resist the Palinite delirium. AllahPundit at HotAir, who is connected with Michelle Malkin (isn’t HotAir part of her website?), makes it clear that he’s had it with the conservatives’ unprincipled, leftist-style charge of “sexism” against the Obama camp over the latter’s attacks on Sarah Palin. But Malkin herself, as in this disgraceful video, has been in the forefront of those making the sexism charge. AllahPundit even references Heather Mac Donald, one of the handful of writers on (or at least aligned with) the right who have been criticizing the Palin nomination.

He writes:

Looks like we’re holding the victimization pageant over for a second exciting week.

A top aide to John McCain said Monday she thought comedian Tina Fey’s impersonation of Republican VP candidate Sarah Palin on NBC’s Saturday Night Live over the weekend was sexist because it portrayed the Alaska governor as lacking in substance…

“The portrait was very dismissive of the substance of Sarah Palin, and so in that sense, they were defining Hillary Clinton as very substantive, and Sarah Palin as totally superficial,” Fiorina told MSNBC earlier Monday. “I think that continues the line of argument that is disrespectful in the extreme, and yes, I would say, sexist in the sense that just because Sarah Palin has different views than Hillary Clinton does not mean that she lacks substance.”

Please. This is the same show that used a kid to play Dan Quayle. If a joke about the two of them being lightweights magically becomes sexist because she’s a woman, then the perennial GOP argument that Democrats are elitist must magically become racist as applied to Obama since now it can be misinterpreted as code for “uppity.” The writers aren’t calling her a bucket of fluff because she’s a woman or even because she’s a Republican (McCain isn’t portrayed that way on the show); they’re calling her that because she seemed to the left—and to some conservatives—as ill informed in the Gibson interview. Which brings us to our exit question, via Patterico fave Jan Crawford Greenburg: Is Team Maverick guilty of reverse sexism, i.e. demanding a lower standard for Palin than they’d demand for a male politician? “Between Fiorina’s lame bit of demagoguery and McCain himself insisting that Obama’s lipstick comment was “the wrong thing to say” without being able to say why, they’re certainly doing nothing lately to ease Heather MacDonald’s worries.”

Alex K., who sent the HotAir item, comments:

Maybe, just maybe, the GOP’s shameless cries of sexism will actually seem too far for a few mainstream conservatives and will actually push some toward following Heather Mac Donald and the others in their dissent from all this. Especially after the election is over and the campaign fever passes. I guess that will require McCain/Palin losing because otherwise it will be a permanent campaign and permanent cries of sexism and defenses of the Palin family situation.

I started this grasping at some thread of hope, but now I realize I’ve just reinforced the need for McCain to lose, since a McCain victory means mainstream conservatives rallying around Palin and crying sexism at all criticisms.

Posted by Lawrence Auster at September 16, 2008 10:30 AM | Send