Sarah Palin: The First Politician Ever to Be Criticized In Less Than Fully Rational Ways!
By See Adam, Steve, Jill and Steve for the obvious rejoinder to Douthat’s claim that it’s only politicians of Palin’s gender and class background who can expect that their “children will go through the tabloid wringer” and their “religion will be mocked and misrepresented.” Even leaving aside the press’ longstanding war on Clinton and Gore, as Adam notes we have an excellent ongoing example of an Ivy League meritocrat being subjected to all kinds of race-and-gender driven attacks in Sonia Sotomayor. Palin was indeed subjected to some attacks based on her gender and class (as well as many more perfectly legitimate and substantive ones), but this ongoing conservative meme that there’s something unusual about the vitriol directed at Palin is absurd.
Roy has more on winger reactions to the Palin resignation here.