True Colors

On the Saturday before Election Day last year, I volunteered at an early voting site in the northern part of the county. Being that we were there for three hours or so, the volunteer from the county Republican Party and I got to chatting. He was a pleasant elderly man, and I enjoyed talking with him despite our differences. At one point, he asked me why I didn’t support the McCain/Palin ticket since I was a woman myself.

He wasn’t being snarky; he genuinely didn’t understand why progressive women – feminists – weren’t falling in line behind then-Governor Palin. I told him that her gender was irrelevant to me, and that her stated positions were pretty much the polar opposite of mine. But I don’t think he really got it – how I could separate a candidate’s identity from her issues.

I was reminded of that conversation today when I heard this segment from Glenn Beck’s radio program, where the popular Beck jokes about the impossibility of a Palin/Beck ticket in 2012. Beck/Palin would be okay, he says, but:

"I was just thinking, what, I'm going to take a back seat to a chick?" Beck quipped, to laughter from the studio. "Go shoot a bear, make some stew, I'm hungry in here."

"So while she's considering it ... I just want her to know, I'm ruling it out. A Palin-Beck ticket, I'm absolutely ruling it out… I'm just saying, Beck-Palin, I'll consider. But Palin-Beck -- can you imagine what an administration with the two of us would be like? She'd be yapping or something, I'd say, 'I'm sorry, why am I hearing your voice? I'm not in the kitchen.' I mean, you'd have to live up to the evil conservative stereotypes, you'd have no choice but to do so."

Wow. I mean… wow. Before making this statement, Beck had made fun of Palin’s speech (the same folksiness that conservative pundits keep insisting to me is part of her charm). Then there’s the “make me a sammitch” BS, followed by some weak attempt to say that he doesn’t really think that about Palin, but those crazy liberals just think he thinks that.

Except that, before today, I never would’ve thought that of Beck. I would’ve assumed that, as the standard-bearer for the tea-party wing of the conservative party, that Beck would have an affinity for the politician who’s hugely popular among that contingent. It was surprising, and disturbing, to see that Beck apparently sees Palin as a “chick” first (a stereotyped one at that), and a political figure second. Given recent complaints from conservative talking heads that it’s the left wing who unfairly targets female conservatives, Beck’s comments are that much more bizarre. Whether Beck’s view represents a larger problem with tokenism in the Republican Party – rather than treating women and minorities as human beings – I can’t say.

Look, I disagree with Palin’s politics and worldview in nearly every way, and I think she needs to do some serious work before she’s qualified to hold national office. But she deserves far better than this. I hope she field-dresses that whiny little weasel.