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If you rely on the Reich-wing, Tea-tard propaganda machine for your information, you probably missed the news about the sexually suggestive gift Sarah Palin received from Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio last week: pink panties!

But no worries, the unimpeachable left-wing blogosphere will bring you up to speed on all the relevant facts. Er, “facts.”

Under the headline “Sarah Palin Gets Pink Panties From Creepy Arizona Sheriff,” The Frisky‘s Jessica Wakeman shared the details of Sheriff Arpaio’s lecherous overture:

Great moments in “ewwww”: at a Tea Party rally in Phoenix, Arizona, on Friday, infamous anti-immigration Maricopa County sheriff Joe Arpaio handed Sarah Palin a pair of pink panties. Yes, panties!

Other left-wing bloggers piled on, delivering the incisive commentary we’ve come to expect:

Reporting on “the panty package,” a TPM blogger joked, “No word on how Todd Palin reacted to the news.”

“You know your attraction to women’s underwear is a little out of control when you do things like this,” admitted explained apparent panty fetish expert Charles Johnson.

Ed Brayton, a self-identified “journalist” at ScienceBlogs wrote, “Strange women flying about from Alaska receiving pink panties is no basis for a system of government.”

“This is SO messed up…please tell me this is a joke,” said Pam Spaulding.

Name It Change It, a project of the Women’s Media Center that tracks sexist incidents in the media, called Arpaio “really damn sexist,” adding that the Sheriff’s “use of a national female politician to delploy [sic] sexism as a publicity stunt is deplorable.”

John Cole at Balloon Juice described the sheriff’s gift as “just creepy and weird” (right after posting the creepy and weird panty pic above).

And the ever classy Gawker offered this Photoshop of the governor’s meeting with Sheriff Arpaio:

So why haven’t more of us heard about the sheriff’s inappropriate, sexually charged gesture? Hmm … maybe because it never happened.

After meeting Governor Palin, Sheriff Arpaio tweeted:

Just got done welcoming Sarah Palin to our County. Had a nice chat and gave her a pair of pink underwear.

Add “pink underwear” to the moonbat mixer, blend until frothy, and BAM!: the sheriff has a creepy panty fetish.

Hey, lefties: learn to Read the Freakin’ Google (and not just when it suits your political goals). The oh-so risqué pink undergarments Arpaio hands out as souvenirs are the same ones he’s famous for selling via his charity Web site, PinkUnderwear.com, and they look an awful lot like novelty boxers (pictured on the next page):

His site explains:

When Sheriff Joe learned that Maricopa County Inmates were stealing their jailhouse whites, he had all the boxers dyed pink. Inventory control improved, so the undershirts followed – then the sheets, socks, towels, and everything down to the handcuffs.

The boxer shorts are now sold online and at charity events to raise funds for youth mentoring programs in Maricopa County.

But of course, at the mere mention of unmentionables by a conservative politician, left-wing bloggers began to work their knickers into knots, praying to the Flying Spaghetti Monster that Arpaio really did sexually harass Palin with a gift of pink lingerie. Hopes and prayers morphed into truth and facts, as often happens with this crowd, and the pink panty meme was born.

Writing at the fetid intellectual wasteland called Pandagon, Jesse Taylor delighted in using the sheriff’s tweet to analyze the psychosexual motives of the entire Tea Party Movement:

Not that I’m saying that the Tea Party may contain an incredibly disturbing psychosexual undercurrent focused on fetishizing powerful women that are still ideologically beholden to them, but f–k it, I am.

This is the sexually demeaning brand of “feminism” found at Pandagon and other left-wing feminist blogs. Souvenir boxers are an opportunity to sexualize and degrade politicians. Ideological opponents are smeared as sexual oppressors working to keep womenfolk enslaved and beholden. And the pleasure of sadism is the driving force behind conservatism.

But it’s the Tea Party Movement that contains a “disturbing psychosexual undercurrent”?

Oh, if only Tea Party women could be as enlightened as Jesse Taylor and his fellow bloggers on the Left. When will those dumb Tea Party broads get it through their thick, sexually fetishized skulls that Jesse knows what’s best for them. And he only hits because he loves.

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“That’s not Sarah Palin. It’s a man, baby!”

Is there a new Austin Powers film hitting the theaters? No, that’s just the catty sentiment in Eleanor Clift’s oh so magnanimous Newsweek column welcoming conservative women into the “feminist” fold. And Sarah Palin isn’t just any man: she’s anti-Semitic Holocaust revisionist Pat Buchanan. In drag.

Desperate to contribute something new to the earthshakingly important national conversation on whether Palin and her “mama grizzlies” are allowed to call themselves feminists, Clift offers conservative women a grudging olive branch slathered in sneering contempt:

Thirty years late to the battle for women’s rights, they’re claiming the mantle of feminism.

It’s nice they’re embracing feminism after demonizing the term for so long, and I welcome them to the arena. Let’s see if they can do for women what their sisters on the left have done since the ’70s, breaking down the barriers for women in all areas of American life including politics.

I think we know where Clift can stick that olive branch.

Clift’s phony magnanimity doesn’t begin to mask the true purpose of her column: to continue the Left’s mission to destroy Palin with hateful smears and weaponized misogyny. Using an unnamed Republican as her mouthpiece, Clift opts for a bizarre twist on the tired “Bush in a skirt” attack:

A Republican source says Palin is nothing new, she’s really Pat Buchanan in drag—the same issues except that her reality show is a lot more gripping. The media went overboard for Buchanan in 1996 when he won the New Hampshire primary, defeating establishment favorite Bob Dole. But the insurgent campaign of a former Nixon speechwriter can’t compare with the ongoing soap opera of the Palins. Bristol and Levi together again!

When I ran the Palin-as-Buchanan theory past another Republican, a woman this time, she said that was an insult to Buchanan, who is deeply serious and has thought about these issues. She doesn’t agree with his conclusions, but he rode the rocket at a moment in time, just as Palin is poised to do.

When Pat Buchanan is stuck for a column idea, he regurgitates al-Qaeda propaganda or spews Holocaust revisionism and calls it a day. Sarah Palin is a tireless supporter of Israel. Buchanan compared the “Free Gaza” flotilla passengers to civil rights protesters. Palin denounced the “vicious thugs” for their staged provocation of our ally.

Pat Buchanan’s name is nearly synonymous with Nazi apologia. He defends Nazi war criminals, lauds Hitler’s “genius,” and rants about Jewish conspiracies. His vile, anti-Semitic columns are an embarrassment to the Right. (Is it any wonder MSNBC keeps him around?)

Anyone else having trouble seeing the similarity between Palin and Buchanan?

There’s no comparison. Eleanor Clift is simply playing the Left’s Mad Libs-style smear game:

[conservative woman we hate] is [nasty conservative man] in [something that confers faux femininity]

The blanks were there; Clift just filled them in:

[Sarah Palin] is [Pat Buchanan] in [drag]

This is an insult used time and again to delegitimize women on the Right by turning them into mannish faux women. Nikki Haley is “little more than Mark Sanford in drag,” Carly Fiorina is “Dick Cheney in a skirt,” and Sarah Palin is all of the above and more: George Bush in a skirt, Dan Quayle with an up-do, and of course, Dick Cheney in lipstick.

See the pattern?

Only “progressive” women qualify as Real Women; Palin, Haley, and other “mama grizzlies” are merely masquerading as female by decorating themselves with skirts, up-dos, lipstick and other trappings of womanhood. The goal of this misogynist attack is to dehumanize the target by casting her out of her very gender.

Clift takes this strategy one step further by smearing Palin as a sub par transvestite version of one of the most detestable men on the American Right. She pretends to welcome Palin into the leftist sisterhood, hoping Palin will take the bait and subject herself to a good ol’ fashioned hazing.

Not. Gonna. Happen.

Sarah Palin and the nation’s conservative women aren’t looking for Eleanor Clift’s approval. We don’t need permission to use the feminist label that’s been trampled and abused by the Left during their multi-decade assault on women via Big Daddy Government. And we’re not fooled by thinly veiled contempt couched in condescending acceptance of mama grizzlies.

So, Ms. Clift, forgive us if we don’t accept a slimy little olive branch from the person who once named Cindy Sheehan “Woman of the Year.” We’re doing just fine without you.

Update: Doug Brady at Conservatives4Palin.com reminds us, “This isn’t the first time the Palin-obsessed Clift has tried to tie her to Buchanan.” Read the whole thing at C4P.

Mark Morford, misogynist Obama worshipper

Mark Morford’s San Francisco Chronicle column is what a leftist’s diary might look like — if that leftist was a horny 14-year-old with a man-sized crush on Obama and a predilection for verbally abusing conservative women. Hmm. Scratch that. Morford’s column is exactly what a leftist’s diary would look like.

You might recognize Morford as the drooling Obama fetishist who proclaimed candidate Obama a “rare kind of attuned being” and a “Lightworker.” Or perhaps you remember his enlightened progressive description of “docile doormat” Laura Bush as “the ideal Republican wife: Prim, sexless, nearly useless, lets the men do the real thinkin.”

So really, who better to appoint himself this week’s Grand Arbiter of True Feminism?

Finding few reasons to gush about the Obama presidency, Morford’s current mission is to expose the “perverted kind of new womanhood” of Sarah Palin, Meg Whitman, and Nikki Haley. Ladies of the Left beware! warns Morford. The success of these “largely insufferable” conservative women comes packaged with a “s–bag of downsides, drawbacks, jackals and bitches.”

You kiss your mama with that mouth, Mark?

After a handful of slobbering sentences about progressive men with “perfectly sculpted genitalia” (no, I’m not kidding) and several more about their fat and sweaty Republican counterparts, Morford uses his column to explain that conservative women aren’t allowed to be feminists and don’t actually qualify as women anyway:

Witness, won’t you, the zeitgeist’s nightmare trifecta of largely insufferable women, the Sarah Palin/Carly Fiorina/Michele Bachmann hydra-headed hellbeast of pseudo-women, one part huge cash reserves, one part evil grammar-abusing ditzball psychopath, one part sassy misinformed moxie, overlaid with wonky ideas of motherhood, love of guns and ignorance of sex and reproductive rights.

These, along with Meg “I’m a Billionaire!” Whitman and Nikki “Sarah Palin hugged me!” Haley, et al, are the apparent “champions” of a perverted kind of new womanhood, some sort of mutant breed who claim it’s entirely possible, even desirable to be “pro-life and pro-feminist,” which is a bit like saying you’re “pro-oil spill and pro-environment.”

In other words: Sorry, no. No f–ing way. This is the rule: You do not ever get to say you’re any kind of feminist or champion of women and mothers everywhere, and in the same breath add that you also believe no woman should have control over her reproductive powers and, by the way, poor immigrant women should be sent back to Mexico and guns should be legal for all.

Another day, another tiresome attempt to dehumanize conservative women and belittle their accomplishments with absurd caricatures, vicious insults, and largely insufferable prose.

But at least Morford’s portrayal of successful conservative women as “some sort of mutant breed” of “pseudo-women” was condemned by the feminist Left, wasn’t it? No, as usual a man who calls himself progressive gets a free pass on misogyny as leftist women lap up puddles of his hateful venom.

A Jezebel writer calls his piece “a thoughtful column.” “Love this thoughtful and insightful rant,” writes Caitlin Kelly at True/Slant. British journalist Alison Clarke thinks Morford is “just plain wrong,” but only because he fails to acknowledge that enlightened feminists like her already know that conservative women are “a whole delightful s–bag of downsides.”

Men on the Left have had it affirmed for them time and again that misogyny is perfectly acceptable – even desirable – as long as women on the Right are the targets. Even public rape fantasies about conservative women are excused. As long as these men are good little lefty foot soldiers, they’re welcome to direct all manner of misogyny toward women who fail to toe the line on abortion, gun control, and illegal immigration.

So, Mark. As long as we’re making up rules, here’s one for you: You do not ever get to create feminist litmus tests, and in the same breath call Sarah Palin, Nikki Haley, and others pseudo-women and bitches.

I think it’s clear who the real anti-feminist is.

Update: Sister Toldjah also has a few choice words for Mark Morford.

Masquerading as a news organization, WND peddles conspiracy theory as fact.  The company has sponsored Where’s the Birth Certificate? billboards and published hundreds of articles questioning Barack Obama’s constitutional eligibility to serve as president.

WND founder and editor-in-chief Joseph Farah is essentially a cult leader, encouraging his followers in their crazy-eyed obsession with President Obama’s birth certificate and furnishing them with whatever tinder he can manufacture to fuel the birther fire.  Farah’s nagging demands for Obama to produce his “long-form” birth certificate have destroyed any credibility he may have once had.

Friday night, Farah serenaded his cult of birthers during a dinnertime speech at the Tea Party Convention in Nashville.

Farah started fine — heaping praise on the constitution, and urging America’s leaders to be faithful to it. He ended well, too, with a stirring exhortation to “take the offence in this struggle.”

But these flourishes were merely the bread in a lunacy sandwich — the filling of which were 10 solid minutes implicitly questioning whether Barack Obama is an American citizen. In 2012, he declared, every single election lawn sign should say: Show me the birth certificate.

Seen in the best possible light (and I’m being very generous), birthers are a group of people who simply cannot reconcile Barack Obama’s American citizenship with policies and beliefs they perceive as fundamentally un-American.  The cognitive dissonance is too much to bear, causing them to become unhinged eligibility truthers.

Or they’re guano crazy. Take your pick.

Either way, the culture of conspiracy promoted by the birthers should be unequivocally rejected by every mainstream conservative.  And right now, the best woman for the job is Sarah Palin.

Palin is delivering the keynote address at the Tea Party Convention Saturday night.   This is a perfect opportunity to put principle before politics. With just a few carefully chosen words, she can distance herself and the tea party movement from Joseph Farah’s distracting cult of birtherism, once and for all.

A chance like this won’t come again. Will she take it?

This is only the second time in its nearly ten-year history that the Dish has gone silent. The reason now is the same as the reason then.

The reason is Sarah Palin.

Citing his obsessive need to comb through every crevice of Palin’s womb, I mean, book, prolific blogger and renowned investigative gynecologist Andrew Sullivan has suspended his usual daily emesis of misogynistic rants, Palin-related conspiracy theories, and hermit photography.  There has been just one Daily Dish post today as Andy the Hysterical and his co-bloggers apply sophisticated content analysis to every page of Going Rogue. Sully explains:

When dealing with a delusional fantasist like Sarah Palin, it takes time to absorb and make sense of the various competing narratives that she tells about her life. There are so many fabrications and delusions in the book, mixed in with facts, that just making sense of it – and comparing it with objective reality as we know it, and the subjective reality she has previously provided – is a bewildering task.

But make no mistake. Sully is providing a public service, and his “process of deconstruction” will be nothing but “fair.”

We take this seriously as we always have. We want to be fair to her, and to her family, and to the innocent people she has brought into the spotlight. And we are not reporters. We are merely analysts trying to make sense of evidence already in the public domain, evidence that points in all sorts of directions, only one of which can be true.

Since the Dish has tried to be rigorous and careful in analyzing Palin’s unhinged grip on reality from the very beginning – specifically her fantastic story of her fifth pregnancy -  we feel it’s vital that we grapple with this new data as fairly and as rigorously as possible. That takes time to get right. And it is so complicated we simply cannot focus on anything else.

There are only three of us.

And we have had the book for less than a day. We feel we owe it to you to get it right – or as right as we can – until we post or publish anything. As readers know, we also differ on some key issues and intend to air them and thrash this out until we are confident that whatever we publish is as fair as possible.

At some point, we will also go back and make sure we have not missed all the evidence of the other lies that Palin is now peddling. We won’t miss anything. But we ask for your patience.

There is a possibility here of such a huge scandal that we would be crazy not to take our time either to debunk it or move it forward for further examination.

We have only one commitment: to get this right. Please bear with us as we do the best we can.

Blah, blah, blah. More fantastic accusations and bizarre conclusions are on the way, and ever brave and righteous, Andrew Sullivan will bring them to you without concern for his credibility or reputation.

Mostly because he has neither.

Stacy McCain quips, “We look forward to Andrew Sullivan’s next book, Inside Sarah Palin’s Uterus: The Most Shocking Scandal Ever.”

In other Sullivan news, the excitable blogger told POLITICO’s Michael Calderone:

I never aired any conspiracy stories. It’s all on the record and, unlike Palin, I don’t lie about things that can easily be checked.

…

In fact, my blog never stated anything about Palin’s pregnancy and took her at her word. That’s why she decided not to sue me. She had no basis for any kind of suit. I simply asked her and the campaign to provide easily available proof that she indeed was the biological mother of Trig after her bizarre and incredible stories about her pregnancy and labor. She has failed to produce any such evidence. And she clearly never will.

I now return you to a temporarily Sullivan-free reality, courtesy of Sarah Palin.

Do we really live in a country where a resignation is an act of political suicide, but serving as Klan kleagle is acceptable training for decades in the Senate?

Robert Byrd (D-KKK) cut his teeth as a recruiter for the Klan before becoming the longest serving member of the United States Senate.

Ted Kennedy (D-MA) drove his car off a Chappaquiddick bridge and failed to notify authorities, abandoning his 28-year-old passenger to death by drowning.  He is currently serving his ninth Senate term.

Unlike these men, Alaska Governor Sarah Palin has no blood on her hands.  She doesn’t even have dirt on her cuffs, having beaten every charge in the litany of frivolous ethics complaints flung in her direction by the liberal attack machine. If men like Byrd and Kennedy remain successful in national politics, how can Sarah Palin’s resignation possibly be considered political suicide?

As mayor of Wasilla, chair and ethics officer of the Alaska Oil and Gas Conservation Commission, and governor of Alaska, Sarah Palin never cleaved to conventional political strategy. Why should she start now?  As The Other McCain observes, “Just because you don’t know what Sarah Palin is doing doesn’t mean that she doesn’t know what she’s doing.”

Sarah Palin is not a tragic case of political seppuku or a casualty of the liberal war on conservative women.  She is a success story unfolding before our eyes.  Assured that a competent lieutenant governor is on hand to take her place, Sarah Palin doesn’t have to sit back helplessly and allow the liberal obsession with her uterus and her daughters to impede the agenda she set forth when she became governor.

Palin is finally responding to the rallying cry heard from her supporters during the 2008 campaign: Free Sarah!

At the end of the month, the shackles will slide off, and with them, the gloves.  Sarahcuda will be unleashed, unbound, and free to speak her mind, unencumbered by the concern that Alaskans are paying for the pulsating red target affixed to her back by the chattering classes.  She’ll be free to take speaking gigs, campaign for conservative candidates, join a policy institute, or start a foundation of her own.

The talking heads have speculated that Palin’s resignation is an implicit victory for the politics of personal destruction, proof that relentless attacks are indeed the way to bring a politician to her knees.  Quite the contrary, Palin has ensured that savvy political strategists and pundits will think twice before working feverishly to intimidate a popular politician into resigning.  Liberal strategists aren’t shaking in their Uggs yet, but they will be once they experience Sarah Palin unrestrained by the formality of office and the boundaries of Alaska.

Amy Siskind, president of The New Agenda, called Palin’s announcement a “dark moment for our country.”  A stalwart Palin defender, Amy saw the announcement as evidence that sexism and the politics of personal destruction had triumphed yet again.  “What am I going to tell my daughter?” Amy wondered.

While Sarah Palin’s resignation may be a reminder of the misogyny and classism that plagued the last election season, it is also a vindication of her resilience and adaptability.  Palin did what all women find themselves wanting to do at some point in their lives: she opted out of playing the game on everyone else’s terms.  She decided to thumb her nose at the critics, plow through the obstacles, and shape her own destiny.

Amy can assure her 11-year-old daughter that Sarah Palin remains the very embodiment of choice and self-determination.  She can explain that a true leader goes where she’s needed most, and right now, Sarah Palin can accomplish far more for our country outside of the Alaska governor’s office.

This is not a day to write Sarah Palin’s political obituary.  Her vitals are strong.  She’s no one’s marionette and conservatives have a newly minted activist to lead their cause.  Sarah Palin will be free to be Sarah Palin.

He’s entitled to use spew crude, sexually degrading invective to portray a teenage girl as a sexual object.

Maybe you saw it on one of the highlight reels, one awkward moment for Sarah Palin at the Yankee game. During the seventh inning, her daughter was knocked up by Alex Rodriguez.

The hardest part of her visit [to New York] was keeping Eliot Spitzer away from her daughter

He’s entitled to use a class and gender based slur to demean the most popular sitting governor in the United States.

[Sarah Palin] bought makeup from Bloomingdale’s to update her “slutty flight attendant” look

And he’s entitled to smugly repeat his rank insults while delivering a non-apology to Sarah Palin in painstakingly choreographed deadpan, milking each sexist remark one more time to the delight of a fawning audience.

What gives Dave Letterman license to repeatedly troll the gutter without ever dirtying his Worldwide Pants?

Liberalism.

Didn’t you realize?  He can’t be sexist, he’s a liberal.  He’s no misogynist – he votes Democrat.  Like all liberals, Dave will tell you he loves women.  He respects them.  Isn’t he pro-choice?  Isn’t he sufficiently appalled by breast cancer? Doesn’t he joke all the time about those brutish southerners who beat their wives with Confederate flags? Haven’t you heard?  He’s a card carrying liberal. Liberal, I tell you.  Liberal!

Among his liberal buddies, Letterman can get away with pretending that he intended to insult Sarah Palin’s 18-year-old daughter Bristol, not her younger child Willow.  But Willow was at the ballgame, Bristol was thousands of miles away, and Letterman is the skeevy guy in dress shoes and a tan trench coat who bares it all to a 14-year-old girl on the subway, then swears to the cops, “But I thought she was 18,” as he’s being hauled off to jail.

“Look at my record,” Dave told his audience as he clarified his remarks about Willow.  What he means is he’s on record as being liberal.  He knows the secret handshake and everything!  And as we all know, liberal men are inherently sensitive to sexism in our society.

You see, liberal identity is a bubble that protects those inside from accusations of sexism, racism, and other forms of bigotry. It’s considered a nearly unassailable defense against the indefensible.  It’s a free pass, a blind eye, and a Get Out of Jail Free card all rolled into one.

Racially and sexually charged jabs are still acceptable in liberal circles because it’s mutually acknowledged that they know better.  It’s not like they’re conservatives – you know, the real sexists – so they can say and do as they please without inviting the same consequences a conservative would incur.

And if the target is a conservative woman, well, even better because there’s no chance those pesky feminists will get their panties in a collective bunch.  Melissa Clouthier explains why:

Women on the Right, are not considered women. Period. They are considered gender traitors. There simply can be no honest disagreement. This is thought policing and fascistic thinking at it’s worst.

David Letterman is also no stranger to bigoted, elitist one-liners about the Palin family’s middle class roots, and by extension, all people of average means.  In addition to the “slutty flight attendant” slur, Michelle Malkin dug up the following examples of Letterman’s oh so enlightened commentary about Sarah Palin:

“You know, she reminds me, she looks like the flight attendant who won’t give you a second can of Pepsi. No, you’ve had enough. We’re landing. Looks like the waitress at the coffee shop who draws a little smiley face on your check. Have a nice day.”

“She looks like the dip sample lady at Safeway. She looks like the nurse who weighs you and then makes you sit alone in your underwear for 20 minutes. She looks like the Olive Garden hostess who says, ‘I’m sorry, your table isn’t ready yet.” She looks like infomercial lady who says she made $64,000 a month flipping condos.”

“[S]he looks like the lady at the bakery who yells out ‘44! 45!’ She looks like a real estate agent whose picture you see on the bus stop bench. That’s who she looks like. She looks like the lady who has a chain of cupcake stores…”

But don’t forget, liberalism absolves Dave from responsibility for the classism he perpetuates when he derides Sarah Palin by comparing her to working class people.  Everyone knows liberals are sensitive and open-minded, and that entitles him to say what he wants without ever expecting to be raked over the coals.

As many writers have observed, the feminist silence on Letterman’s sexually inappropriate remarks about Sarah and Willow Palin is predictably deafening.  The unwritten rule is that feminism stands for liberal women – authentic women – not conservative women who are, by virtue of their conservatism, anti-woman.

The National Organization for Women (NOW) and Ms. Magazine both declined to send representatives to be interviewed for an On The Record segment about Letterman’s sexually derogatory treatment of the governor and her daughter.  Instead, NOW opted to release a statement as critical of conservatives as it was of Dave Letterman.

NOW hopes that all the conservatives who are fired up about sexism in the media lately will join us in calling out sexism when it is directed at women who aren’t professed conservatives.”

NOW also managed to miss the real thrust of Letterman’s remarks about Sarah Palin:

Letterman also joked about what he called Palin’s “slutty flight attendant look” — yet another example of how the media love to focus on a woman politician’s appearance, especially as it relates to her sexual appeal to men.

Yes, the media focus on Sarah Palin’s appearance often delves into sexist territory.  But what about the use of the word “slutty,” NOW?  Slutty doesn’t speak to “her sexual appeal to men.” It reinforces the belief that by being attractive and fertile, Sarah Palin invites attacks on her virtue as a woman.  It says, you can’t be a beautiful woman, a good wife, a loving mother, and a career politician.  Pick one.

The response that NOW should have given was instead delivered by a fledgling feminist organization called The New Agenda.

“Letterman’s apology talk last night was cheap,” said The New Agenda co-founder and President Amy Siskind. “True contrition would not invite the Palin’s on his show after publicly humiliating them and their 14-year old daughter. If Letterman’s apology is authentic, he should show it by devoting part of his show to address the national crisis of the sexualization of our teenage daughters.”

The New Agenda was also happy to publish my recent piece on Playboy’s conservative rape fantasy article.

Feminists, that is how it’s done.

Amy Siskind, founder of The New Agenda, took her message to The Huffington Post yesterday in a piece called, “Sexism Against Conservative Women Is Still Sexism.”  Think it would be hard to argue with that simple concept?  You’d be wrong.  Here’s a tiny selection of what the HuffPo commenters had to say about Sarah Palin and sexism:

propitiousmoment: ” She wants to use her sexuality to advance her agenda … might I say, the classic definition of a bimbo.”

andyboy: “To defend a woman from a sexist attack simply because she is a woman is actually the essence of sexism.”

voltaireinexile: “She played the pretty-sexy-mama card all along, undermining what many women have fought so hard against –the objectification of women”

arnray: “Palin and the rest use their sexuality to numb the senses of the dullards and then cry foul when someone throws it back at them.”

Gainsbourg69: “When a woman wants to be considered more than just a sex object she should take steps necessary to avoid being labeled a sex object. Simple.”

Wilson201: “Palin marginalizes her own opinions by dressing the way she does just as Prejeans opinion is by posing barely clothed. If they wish to be taken seriously, then they should dress and behave properly.

Amy’s piece also attracted a host of comments insisting there’s nothing sexist about calling Palin a “slutty flight attendant” if the shoe fits.  Right.  Palin was practically begging for Dave’s insults just like Michelle Malkin invited the Playboy rape fantasy.  Is it any wonder where conservative writers like Kathleen Parker, trying to curry favor with the media elite, pick up ideas like this:

I also think it’s out of line for a woman to sexualize her candidacy, which Palin did. Just ask Rich Lowry, who wrote that he had to sit up a little straighter when she winked during the vp debate. So, maybe when you play the flirt and invite males to see starbursts bouncing off the walls (Lowry again), then maybe you invite the sexual punchline.

It’s clear that sexually demeaning the women with whom we disagree is more mainstream than ever.  It’s a cancer that’s metastasized throughout media, politics, and entertainment, rubber stamped by the liberal sentiment that calling oneself a feminist makes it so.  And conservative women aren’t the only targets.  Just ask Hillary Clinton, who discovered liberal-approved sexism firsthand during her campaign for the Democratic nomination.

Sexism, racism, and all the other -isms aren’t any more acceptable if you happen to dislike or disagree with the target.  This shouldn’t need to be said.  And it doesn’t matter if you’re a comedian or a liberal.  Sexism always matters.  And no political affiliation gives you license to hurl sexually inappropriate insults at women and girls without fear of consequences.

Click here to view the embedded video.

And here’s some further proof that Elisabeth Hasselbeck is a force to be reckoned with: feminists are blaming the speech for filling their minds with violent thoughts and driving them to hit the bottle. Seriously, read the comments at Jezebel.

Do I want more Elisabeth unleashed?  Hell yeah, but let’s skip the usual side order of tiresome clucking hens doing their damnedest to drown out Elisabeth’s sharp and sassy wit.

Let Elisabeth be Elisabeth.

Hat tip: Weekly Standard Blog

Let’s just hope that unlike Barack Obama, Alec can restrain himself from calling Sarah a “pig.” Nah, that’s a term of endearment he reserves for his daughter.

Warning: don’t take a sip of your drink before reading this next part.

The Branchflower report also finds that Sarah Palin “abused her power” by not keeping a short enough leash on her husband, Todd Palin. “She had the authority and power to require Mr. Palin to cease contacting subordinates, but she failed to act,” Branchflower contends on page 66 of the 263 page behemoth. He also asserts that her inaction constituted “official action.”

Apparently Mr. Branchflower, who was paid $100,000 for his inquiry, thinks conversations in the Palin household should go more like this:

Sarah: Honey, I need you to stop trying to get Mike Wooten fired even though he tased our nephew, drove his official vehicle under the influence of alcohol, and threatened to put a bullet in my dad’s skull.

Todd: Screw that, I’m trying to protect my family and everyone else around here from a child abusing douchebag. Who cares if I make a few phone calls to express my opinion?

Sarah: I’m the freakin’ governor of the great state of Alaska and I demand that you show respect for my authority and power, so you shut your piehole and you keep it shut if you know what’s good for you.

Todd: Huh?

Sarah: You’ll be hearing from my lawyers.

If you think that’s fiction, read the Branchflower report (PDF) and check out the AP smear that charges Sarah Palin “unlawfully abused her power.” How exactly does one “unlawfully” abuse power while exercising authority in “a proper and lawful” way?

For detailed analysis of all the report’s flaws, see Beldar’s guest post on Hugh Hewitt’s Townhall blog and the official response from Sarah Palin’s legal team (PDF).