Get back into the kitchen, little lady

Apparently, Governor Palin has her opponents on the run.’,’So far, there’s been nothing but ad hominem attacks, like this piece by Judith Warner in The New York Times. Read it over – looks like Judith doesn’t like people who talk funny.

And here I thought it was us educated folks who were supposed to be so accepting and non-judgmental….

Real people, the kind of people who will like and identify with Palin, they clearly believe, are smart, but not too smart, and don’t talk too well, dropping their “g”s, for example, and putting tough concepts like “vice president” in quotation marks.

“As for that ‘V.P.’ talk all the time … I tell ya, I still can’t answer that question until somebody answers for me, What is it exactly that the ‘VP’ does every day?” Palin asked host Lawrence Kudlow on CNBC sometime before her nomination.

“I’m used to bein’ very productive and workin’ real hard in an administration and we want to make sure that that ‘V.P.’ slot would be a fruitful type of position.”

Slate offers a great example of the so-called concerns about Governor Palin. (Be sure to note the link to the NYT piece that replaces substance with quotes and concerns even from anonymous women.)

Rather than raise real questions, those opposed to the governor raise tired concerns, saying that she can’t be successful in her professional life if she’s not successful in her private life.

Hmmmm….not so long ago, it didn’t matter to self-identified feminists that the President of the US was a womanizer. All that mattered was that he got the job done.

Now, we have a woman who’s a candidate for Vice President, but she doesn’t fit their box of what she should be; so they start to attack her personal life.

The questions start with whether she should have even got pregnant with her fifth child. Way back when, I recall hearing something about privacy and birth control. I would hope that people who choose not to use birth control would enjoy the same privacy as those who do. It’s hard to imagine that we’d be questioning a liberal woman who had a Down Syndrome baby at age 44, or any age for that matter.

As for flying eight months into the pregnancy and then traveling back after her water broke, whatever happened to health matters being between a woman and her doctor? Most women might not want to experience the same circumstances eight months pregnant, but there should still be some freedom to act according to one’s own judgment. It was not her first pregnancy and she was in communication with her doctor. She gave birth to a beautiful, healthy baby. (He may have Down Syndrome, but that doesn’t mean he isn’t healthy.)

The governor’s family has been hauled out into the limelight by malicious wagging tongues. Now that they’re out there, the same tongues criticize her for being public about her family. To my mind, she’s being very transparent, although she has every right to want to protect them from the limelight. (Kudos to Senator Obama for telling the public to leave her family alone.)

It’s not enough to go after her family and the decisions that she and her husband have made about their children. She’s also criticized for not having a nanny. People forget that she doesn’t have 5 children age 8 and under. Her children are spread apart in ages, they are big enough to help around the home, and she lives close to extended family.  I’m sure that offsets the needs for household help. Only two of her children might need a babysitter and it sounds like the baby is with her a lot. So Piper (the youngest) can be taken care of by siblings, by her father, by family, friends, etc.

The governor was clear in her speech Wednesday night that she fired the cook that came with the job because the cook was paid by the state and she doesn’t see that as a justifiable expense. More fodder for attack – she doesn’t have a cook! Get back into the kitchen, little lady.

My guess is that the governor is probably extremely smart, efficient, and not wasteful. That means that she’ll get things done well at a minimal cost. As I’ve been told, “If you want something done, ask someone who’s busy.”

While I can appreciate that most of us are not cut out to balance a family with a demanding job, there are some who can. When we attack them, we suggest that we’re embarrassed or ashamed that we aren’t accomplishing more.

Maybe we should stop complaining and read one of the many excellent books on time management – of which I admittedly own a few and haven’t had “time” to read. Or we could just be happy with our accomplishments and the accomplishments of others, even if they were executed differently than we would have done.

At the end of the day, it’s up to families to figure out how they’re going to make things work. They may not work the way we’d want them to, but that’s the beauty of having your own family. That’s where you can try to make it work the way you want it to. The important thing is that it works.

As for the campaign, I can’t wait to see the governor get the tough questions and go unscripted. That’s when we’ll know whether we want her in office and that’s why we have campaigns – to find out about our candidates. No one has yet to ask Senators McCain, Obama, or Biden any questions about how they take care of their homes and their children….

This is the time to find out what the candidates have done and what they’ll do, not whether their floors are clean.