Over the past several weeks, feminist writers across the media have worked valiantly to describe what about Sarah Palin’s selection as vice presidential candidate is so offensive and frightening to progressive women. In the face of giddy Republicans cross-dressing as women’s libbers, striking poses of outrage over “lipstick” colloquialisms and questions about Palin’s parenthood — staples of GOP attacks for the past thirty years — and taking Rosie the Riveter signs to McCain-Palin rallies, feminist journalists and bloggers have reminded readers that anatomy aside, Palin presided over a town that forced its rape victims to pay $200 to $1,300 for the cost of their own rape kits, cut funding for a shelter for pregnant teens, opposes abortion in all instances except to save the mother’s life, and has joined the ticket with McCain, a man who has opposed efforts to institute wage equality, saying instead that women need more education and training.

This twisting of feminist history and rhetoric to protect a champion of anti-feminist causes, traditionalism and sex-kitten objectification, is particularly unnerving for exactly the reasons that Palin’s biggest supporters claim it is: for its elevation of antifeminist “real women” as icons of rebellion against a supposedly powerful and elite feminist status quo (however depressing it is to begin untangling that premise) Sex Icon or Feminist - Kathryn Joyce

For those with ears to hear: Sarah Palin American - Jeff Sharlet

Last week, religion writers listened to Sarah Palin’s convention address expecting heavy religious code, the scriptural allusions that have come to be standard fare in speeches by Republicans and Barack Obama. There wasn’t much — “a servant’s heart,” a prayer for her son sent off to war. But there was, for those with ears to hear it, a far more disturbing allusion: to Westbrook Pegler, a mid-century Rush Limbaugh, and then some. At the height of his popularity, he was more powerful; as he faded, he fell back on such rank anti-Semitism that even anti-Semites considered him tacky. One conservative paper begged him to come up with fresh material and lay off “1) New Deal and Roosevelts; 2) Kennedys; 3) Jews.” He was a homophobe, too — he once described a critic who’d crossed him as “the bull butterfly of the literary teas” — but he expressed his hatred of homosexuality in such queeny terms that even those who shared his bile turned a blind eye to their man’s evident relish for a certain campy rhetorical style.