It's rare that I agree with the Globe and Mail's Margaret Wente on pretty much anything, but her critiques of the Republican vice-presidential nominee, Sarah Palin, seem dead-on. Palin stakes a lot of her reputation on her relation to Family Values and to invoke Family Values is, naturally, to expose yourself to loads of criticism when you start to look hypocritical. Wente notes, and I agree, that the hypocrisy isn't in the way that she's proposing to juggle five children, one a baby, and this job* or in Palin's failure to properly educate her pregnant teenage daughter**, but rather in the way that Palin "couldn't bear to say no to her country when it needs her - even if it meant sacrificing the privacy of her 17-year-old daughter to the global media machine." Her daughter, Bristol, at this point, is probably hoping that the Republicans lose - it's the only way she'll escape constant scrutiny and a marriage that we can't possibly be sure she wants***.
* Sincerely, if she can be governor of Alaska - whether that involves chops for foreign policy or not - then she can juggle both commitments.
** Snarkily, I should add that I think this is more of a failure to govern than to parent - Palin instituted "abstinence only" sex ed in Alaska, and her daughter is the beneficiary of that 'education'.
*** Neither Bristol nor the baby-daddy have been interviewed, so we'll have to take simply accept that Palin is being wholly truthful when she says they want to get married. Though it doesn't really matter whether they do or not - for her mom's sake, they have to get married. (Or at least say as much until she loses. Assuming she loses.) Nothing says Family Values like a Shotgun Wedding.
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