What it Means to be a Woman

Posted by LM Stansbury on Thursday, September 04, 2008 12:00:00 AM

Not since Brittany Spears’ not so pleasant bald-phase have we seen the media come together in so overt a fashion as has been the case with the Palin smear campaign. It’s too bad too. They were having such a good time playing offensive with their obsessive coverage of Obama and Biden(yawn), that it is now almost painful to watch them struggle In their effort to determine whether to use their precious and limited sound bites to praise and worship Obama or to lambast and liable Palin. How pleasant this election has become.

My husband falls much more to the center of the political spectrum than myself yet as we sat together last night and watched the delivery of two of the best speeches thus far in the 2008 Election, both of us were equally enthusiastic and how refreshing, after the painful and incessant subjection to the DNC’s nuanced references to hope and change.

We Republicans are a more particular bunch. Most of us read. We do our research so fluffy, transcending speeches just don’t cut it for long. Unfortunately for our conservative leaders, this makes their job considerably more difficult. More interested in the bottom line than pretty words, we demand candid speech and specific examples. After all, we don’t have a lot of free time to sit around and watch our politicians bloviate. There’s work to be done and typically, we are the ones doing most of it.

It is for precisely these reasons that so many of us were elated after last night’s RNC speech. We got the straight talk we have been waiting for. And from whom did we get it? That’s right, a woman! It’s about time we women got a noble role model in this country. This is not to minimize the efforts of Hillary Clinton. There have indeed been certain aspects of Senator Clinton about which we have been impressed but I personally claim no membership with the “Sisterhood of the Traveling Pant Suits.”

Who ever said a woman needed to put on pants in order to play with the big boys? Sarah Palin personifies the female in her best form, the female example most of us women have been waiting for. She carries herself with grace but reminds us that the strength of a mother can be a fearsome thing. She has stood up to some of the toughest of the old guard and she has worn a skirt while doing it. Her hair is long because choosing to play in a predominantly male profession doesn’t mean for one minute, that she’s ashamed to be a woman. She isn’t bitter, she isn’t spiteful and men are not her enemy. Though intensely independent, she is a woman who is proud to stand alongside her husband as their children gather round, proudly acknowledging that her roles as wife and mother are her greatest sources of pride. As we move toward November, I look forward to watching Governor Palin take on her appointment. I imagine he’s petrified after last night’s speech. Should our GOP candidates take this election, how proud we can be to show the world what a true American Woman looks like!