Sunday, April 19, 2009

The Temptation of Sarah Palin

She has become a stereotypical figure--loved or reviled, depending on the beholder's politics--but the other day, for a brief moment, Sarah Palin let herself be seen as a human being with complicated emotions.

The Alaska governor made news by telling a right-to-life meeting that, after learning of abnormalities in the child she was bearing last year, she had for "a fleeting moment" considered abortion.

Palin was emphasizing that she had decided to have the baby, but her description of the inner turmoil in making up her mind had none of the usual pit-bull-with-lipstick comedy of her public persona.

The results of the amniocentesis, she said, "blew me away, rocked my world" and helped her understand "the complexities of what a woman goes through."

Palin went on to explain that no one, not even her husband knew ("I was out-state, nobody knows") and it would have been "easy to make it all go away, take care of it."

The disclosure of such feelings answers a pathologist's question of why, given her convictions, Palin would have undergone amniocentesis, in which "more normal fetuses would be aborted by the procedure than would abnormal ones be detected."

Clearly, as a 44-year-old career woman with four children, Palin was worried about the pregnancy--as most people in her position would be--and it is touching to hear her describe the inner turmoil over it in human terms, even if only to make a political point.

By the end of this excursion into reality, the governor was back to her usual breeziness, telling the audience she had thought, "I was old. Very funny, God. My name is Sarah, but my husband is not Abraham."

But it was nice to see, if only for "a fleeting moment," a real person behind the improbable public figure.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Glad your picture is on this blog so that I can say this with conviction.
Ugly old white men with an attitude-DUDE.
How many children did YOU give birth to and what state are you governor of?
Your post is ignorant and YOU are repulsive.
Get a life-
What are YOUR qualifications?
I guess you just have a blogspot and a keyboard.

Do YOU have any children or grandchildren- or GREAT grandchildren with Down's Syndrome?
Pray that you don't.

Be gone! Before someone drops a house on you -JERK.
Leave Sarah Palin alone.
She is intelligent, kind and a WOMAN who has achieved much.

Can you say the same for YOURSELF?
I doubt it!

Anonymous said...

You can't just be mean to people for say what is on their minds. Yes, she has acheived alot but she isn't ready to handle any office at this time she has to much going on in here personal life.

Have you seen her in her interviews? She never gives a straight answer and she talks all around the question itself.

I don't know bout you but I don't want anyone like Bush in office again! And that is who she reminds me of.