Katha Pollitt’s latest, on (what else?) Sarah Palin:

John McCain chose the supremely under-qualified Sarah Palin as his running mate partly because she is a woman. If you have a problem with that, you’re a sexist. She talks incessantly about being a mother of five and uses her newborn, Trig, who has Down syndrome, as a campaign prop. If you wonder how she’ll handle all those kids and the Veep job too, you’re a super-sexist. “When do they ever ask a man that question?” charges that fiery feminist Rudy Giuliani. Indeed, Palin, who went back to work when Trig was three days old, gets nothing but praise from Phyllis Schlafly, James Dobson and the folks at National Review, who usually blame all the ills of modern America on those neurotic, harried, selfish, frustrated, child-neglecting, husband-castrating working mothers. Even stranger, her five-months-pregnant 17-year-old, Bristol, gets nothing but compassion and respect from Bill O’Reilly, Rush Limbaugh and others who have spent their careers slut-shaming teens for having sex–and blaming their parents for letting it happen. [...]

The Republicans bashed Barack Obama as a “celebrity,” but now they’ve got a star of their own, so naturally the rules have changed. Nothing would suit them better than for the media to spend the next two months spellbound by the wacky carnival on ice that is the Palin family….  Fretting over the work/family issue alone should take up enough column inches to employ all the female journalists in America from now to next Mother’s Day. And don’t forget that op-ed staple, What Does This Mean for Feminism?

Well, I’m not playing. I don’t care about Sarah Palin’s family. I don’t care if she’s a good mother. I don’t care if she’s happily married, or who shops and who vacuums, or who takes care of the kids while both parents are at work. I don’t want her recipe for caribou hot dogs, either. Life chez Sarah and Todd might make an adorable sitcom (Leave It to Jesus?) or a scathing tell-all a decade or so down the road (Governor Dearest?). Either way, so what? This is an election, not The View. As for feminism’s meaning, what can you say after you’ve said that her career shows that even right-wing fundamentalist women have taken in feminism’s message of empowerment and that’s good, but that Palin’s example suggests women can do it all without support from society and that’s bad?

She closes with a few questions any reasonable journalist covering, you know, a presidential election campaign should ask.  Speaking of which, Diane Rehm offered Palin the opportunity to come on her very civilized, very smart NPR call-in show, on the air the other day.  I wish there was even the slightest chance the governor would take her up on it.

On this week’s Friday News Roundup on the Diane Rehm Show, the panelists talk a bit about McCain’s strategy to campaign primarily with Palin from now on.  Apparently this is (a) so that his staff can babysit her, and (b) so that she doesn’t embarrass him by drawing larger crowds than he can alone.  The obvious downside is that they’ll cover much less geography this way.  It will be interesting to see, when all is said and done, whether Palin was a net positive or a net negative for the ticket.

The hour-long show, if you’d like to listen, is available in Windows Media and Real Audio.

A few points on the post-convention bounces for Obama and McCain, from Pollster.com. I’m trying not to panic despite the good news for McCain.  Palin just had a killer night and came off as not only tough but personable.  Once voters get to know her policy positions, and hear more about all those scandals in Alaska, that bounce will fade.

One note on the CBS poll: I heard John Zogby say on the Diane Rehm show that CBS buries their “horse race” question (i.e., who do you plan to vote for?) in the middle of their survey.  That sort of thing can prime respondents one way or another, depending on the preceding questions, and is almost never done because it can bias the results.  He didn’t have any explanation for why CBS does this, but it’s worth keeping in mind if their numbers ever seem out of line with other polls.