The Pirate Queen

The Pirate Queen:

So, via Dr. Althouse, some fellow has gone to a lot of trouble to photoshop Mrs. Palin to remove everything he calls 'glamorous' about her.

Result? It demonstrates that her loveliness, which is genuine, is not a result of the make-up or hairstyle. If anything, several of the retouches make her beauty clearer by removing distractions. (I always took the beehive hairdo as a way of playing down her beauty, since it's not normally associated with beauty. And since when is taking off the glassess supposed to be the way that you make a woman less glamorous? That runs counter to every movie Hollywood ever made. She really has these people spinning.)

My suspicion, however, is that you could photoshop her with a pirate hat, a scar across her face, and an eyepatch without changing anyone's mind.

Dr. Althouse says, "This is an effort at defeminizing Sarah — like drawing a mustache on her." Given her sense of humor, I won't be surprised if she turns up soon on a FOX broadcast wearing a fake moustache. If she did, it would only increase my sense of admiration.

What do people like about her? It's as if no one has understood. It's not just that she went to small, state schools; it's not just that she did local news and beauty pagents before she became a small-town mayor. It's very much that she does things like write notes on her hand because she still gets nervous in interviews and forgets even the most basic things she wanted to say. Yes, she does; and everyone who has ever had to speak in front of a group can relate to the pressure, while imagining how much worse it must be for someone the media longs to destroy and humiliate. What is amazing is that she doesn't let it stop her: she writes a note on her hand, and goes right ahead.

She's ordinary, yet has managed -- through discipline, through these little tricks, and through the strength of the family she and her husband have built -- to succeed at what she has set out to do. When she hits a wall, she finds a way to climb it.

Of course people admire her. She happens also to be lovely. Good that she is; why shouldn't she be?