![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
walkitoutI won't mention her name here.
Post-election day, she's been _everywhere_. Judging from the snippets appearing on Countdown, Rachel Maddow and elsewhere, her kitchen in Wasilla has served up an incredible amount of food to reporters over the last weekish. And that's exactly what I want to talk about here, once I get through a little of the setup, viz. all those people quoted during the campaign as saying they identified with her. I think I blogged about how mystified I was by the number of women willing to be quoted on air as identifying with a woman from Alaska, mother of five, etc.
Mother of _five_. The childless-for-life rate is still climbing and we've got a meaningful number of women identifying with the mother of _five_? Really?
On Beat the Press (this is a Boston area show that recaps the media's coverage of the previous week's news), Niwa (slightly annoying guy from Emerson College) commented that if _he_ tried to chop carrots and talk about energy policy at the same time there'd better be medical assistance nearby because he'd wind up cutting a finger off. And at this point, I had a huge epiphany: the Phenom from Alaska Actually Participates in Her Domestic Life. And this is an absolute novelty and Revelation to politicians and punditry at the national level. Those people don't cook daily (much less more than one meal a day for people including children). I don't know about the Phenom, but I'm perfectly prepared to believe she swishes a brush around her toilets every once in a while -- or at least she has in the last decade or so. Most people active at the national level have outsourced their entire home life: people to care for the kids, people to care for the house, take out, restaurant and prepared meals, blah, blah, bleeping, blah. If they haven't, they're desperately concealing their domestic life because Failing to Outsource the Chores is a Serious Social Faux Pas. Remember the old definition of the middle class (having at least one servant)? As near as I can tell, it's now the definition of the political class.
Let me be really clear here: I don't have a problem with outsourcing one's domestic life. Okay, I do -- I think you should participate in your children's lives. I do -- I think you have a responsibility not to mention you're the worst kind of fool if you miss participating in their lives. We don't want the Worst Kinds of Fools making decisions for us all, now do we? But I also believe that more than just the parents should be involved in raising the kiddies, so child care is fine by me. And if you can get someone to cook the kind of food you like, and clean your house and etc., more power to you just try to treat them decently. And pay them well.
But a _lot_ of people in this country cannot afford to outsource their domestic life. Quite a lot of this country is doing the domestic work for the other people. I strongly suspect that when the phenom appeared on the horizon, a lot of people went, _finally_ someone who really knows the cost of a gallon of milk and a loaf of bread and _not_ because it appeared in that morning's briefing. When I run across folk like Niwa who are amazed that someone can chop carrots and speak intelligently about energy policy, I want to push the carrots aside and start gesturing with the knife to make an entirely different set of points (pun intended) about how women in general and non-rich people as well _have_ to be able to multi-task in the home and that doesn't mean our voices shouldn't be heard when policy is being made.
That said, I've heard the phenom on energy policy and I'm not that impressed. The episode also included footage of the phenom on Cessnas (compared to a tin can -- that explains why she doesn't commute several days a week by plane from Wasilla to the capital). I suspect that if the phenom manages to make the transition to a national-level political career (she won't, so don't lose sleep over it), either elected, appointed, or as a pundit on TV (actually, that's remotely possible -- literally. If they set up a studio in her home, I'm sure she'd love to do it), she'll be outsourcing her domestic life just like her competitors and colleagues and over time, her appeal on that basis will erode. Whether she can replace that appeal with anything else is an open question. I kinda doubt it, but you never know.
Post-election day, she's been _everywhere_. Judging from the snippets appearing on Countdown, Rachel Maddow and elsewhere, her kitchen in Wasilla has served up an incredible amount of food to reporters over the last weekish. And that's exactly what I want to talk about here, once I get through a little of the setup, viz. all those people quoted during the campaign as saying they identified with her. I think I blogged about how mystified I was by the number of women willing to be quoted on air as identifying with a woman from Alaska, mother of five, etc.
Mother of _five_. The childless-for-life rate is still climbing and we've got a meaningful number of women identifying with the mother of _five_? Really?
On Beat the Press (this is a Boston area show that recaps the media's coverage of the previous week's news), Niwa (slightly annoying guy from Emerson College) commented that if _he_ tried to chop carrots and talk about energy policy at the same time there'd better be medical assistance nearby because he'd wind up cutting a finger off. And at this point, I had a huge epiphany: the Phenom from Alaska Actually Participates in Her Domestic Life. And this is an absolute novelty and Revelation to politicians and punditry at the national level. Those people don't cook daily (much less more than one meal a day for people including children). I don't know about the Phenom, but I'm perfectly prepared to believe she swishes a brush around her toilets every once in a while -- or at least she has in the last decade or so. Most people active at the national level have outsourced their entire home life: people to care for the kids, people to care for the house, take out, restaurant and prepared meals, blah, blah, bleeping, blah. If they haven't, they're desperately concealing their domestic life because Failing to Outsource the Chores is a Serious Social Faux Pas. Remember the old definition of the middle class (having at least one servant)? As near as I can tell, it's now the definition of the political class.
Let me be really clear here: I don't have a problem with outsourcing one's domestic life. Okay, I do -- I think you should participate in your children's lives. I do -- I think you have a responsibility not to mention you're the worst kind of fool if you miss participating in their lives. We don't want the Worst Kinds of Fools making decisions for us all, now do we? But I also believe that more than just the parents should be involved in raising the kiddies, so child care is fine by me. And if you can get someone to cook the kind of food you like, and clean your house and etc., more power to you just try to treat them decently. And pay them well.
But a _lot_ of people in this country cannot afford to outsource their domestic life. Quite a lot of this country is doing the domestic work for the other people. I strongly suspect that when the phenom appeared on the horizon, a lot of people went, _finally_ someone who really knows the cost of a gallon of milk and a loaf of bread and _not_ because it appeared in that morning's briefing. When I run across folk like Niwa who are amazed that someone can chop carrots and speak intelligently about energy policy, I want to push the carrots aside and start gesturing with the knife to make an entirely different set of points (pun intended) about how women in general and non-rich people as well _have_ to be able to multi-task in the home and that doesn't mean our voices shouldn't be heard when policy is being made.
That said, I've heard the phenom on energy policy and I'm not that impressed. The episode also included footage of the phenom on Cessnas (compared to a tin can -- that explains why she doesn't commute several days a week by plane from Wasilla to the capital). I suspect that if the phenom manages to make the transition to a national-level political career (she won't, so don't lose sleep over it), either elected, appointed, or as a pundit on TV (actually, that's remotely possible -- literally. If they set up a studio in her home, I'm sure she'd love to do it), she'll be outsourcing her domestic life just like her competitors and colleagues and over time, her appeal on that basis will erode. Whether she can replace that appeal with anything else is an open question. I kinda doubt it, but you never know.
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
transition to national level
Date: 2008-11-18 10:25 pm (UTC)Re: transition to national level
Date: 2008-11-19 03:22 am (UTC)With Democrats at the top, she's not going to be appointed to anything and because of Alaska law she can't appoint herself to anything. Begich won Stevens' seat, so she doesn't get to run in a special election for that.
A Murkowski holds the other Senate seat, in play at the midterm. That could go a couple of ways. (1) Dude, it's a Murkowsky, of course she'll get re-elected, or, (2) Too Much Scandal for Us, we're electing a Democrat. I have a very hard time imagining a scenario in which one Republican woman with some amount of scandal replaces another Republican woman with some amount of scandal. But anything is possible and if that looks more likely, we'll all be watching it avidly because it'll be the most fun going in 2010.
A distant second choice would be to run as a representative. Alaska is tiny, so it only has one Rep: Don Young. He's a Republican and he got re-elected this time around for his 19th term according to Wikipedia. Do you see _him_ going anywhere? I don't. Then again, he'll be 77 in 2010 so maybe he'll retire. If he does, and the Phenom wants the job, I suppose she might get it, proving me wrong.
Would you worry a lot about a freshman Rep? I wouldn't. Sure, it'd be a national career, but I don't think it's one of the ones you were concerned about.
What is getting all the chatter going is the idea of the Phenom as GOP candidate in 2012. Is this likely? Given the current disorderly state of the GOP, there won't be a sole-candidate field the way there was with Jr. in 2000. The Republicans tend to wind up with the most senior guy who wants it as their nominee. Needless to say, if the Phenom were the most senior, she wouldn't be a Phenom. She would have _been_ a Phenom in the distant past. I would expect she'd have to go through Romney and Huckabee at a minimum and depending on what the party decides is its ongoing base, some unknown number of other people, possibly including Meg Whitman.
Given what Katie Couric did to the Phenom (and what the View did to the McCains), I, personally, would not want to be the Phenom lining up against Meg Whitman. I would go home and chop carrots in my kitchen and offer up my husband to take members of the friendly newsmedia out for rides on the snow machine.
ETA: Whups. Meant to add. Let's say God shows her a door and she plows through it, winning the GOP nomination in 2012. How, precisely, this does her any good at all is unclear to me. Massive scandal and probably deaths would be required for the incumbent to lose re-election -- the financial and economic situation is so dire and so clearly attributable to Republican deregulation that the Republican nominee will have to do something really fantastic to get the country on her side. So fantastic that it is currently unimaginable to me. However, I'm always up for a good yarn, so if anyone has a theory, I'll read it and contemplate. I think that's what all those Where Should the Party Go Now summits are engaging in post-election day.
Re: transition to national level
Date: 2008-11-21 11:26 pm (UTC)