Do you hate Sarah Palin? I hear this question repeatedly. It’s the topic of countless talk radio-shows. I know some Sarah Palin haters and have witnessed firsthand the emotion that is fueling the fire.

I don’t hate Sarah but there is a large pool of women who do, that seem unable to tap into why. Educated women can cite political reasons and back up their feelings with valid reasons. Other woman, (like myself) non-political, still feel strong feelings though, and one has to wonder why?

I think women’s disdane for Sarah is more complex, and runs deeper, into a nerve that many cannot understand. Ironically, women voters in 1984 were closer to the truth when they questioned their feelings about candidate Geraldine Ferraro. She posed a threat to American women everywhere; she made being a homemaker look weak. She made businesswomen, women who were fighting to climb the corporate ladder weak, because most were not as strong and savvy as she was; here was a woman in 1984, who presumably knew enough to run the country.

It was not every woman in 1984 that was up to date on the Iran-Iraq war.  Female voters quickly turned the other way and protectively said “She cannot possibly be good for the country.  She cannot possibly know enough.  Because if she does, it make the rest of us look bad.”

Currently, I think Sarah Palin brings up feelings of inadequacy for women on every level. Sarah Palin has raised the bar for women, and many don’t like that.  I have to defend my choice to be a stay at home mother.  That’s sad.  The height of the bar today, especially in The Left-Coast is you have kids, you put them in daycare and you work. It’s a competitive world and Sarah just laid down a full house. If you do less, well, you are taking the easy way out.  Working mothers are smarter stronger and all around better than stay at home moms.  This leads one to reason then that the more power a woman has in her position, the more she opens herself up to be a target, due to envy and jealousy;Palin does especially because she makes it look so damn easy.  Just today on the raido I heard a Palin supporter say  "Palin is every woman."    Basically she encompases everything that every woman stands for.  well I am here to say sorry but that is not true and that angers those people on the other side of the fence.

She is portrayed as an amazing a sort of Energizer Bunny-Mom. Someone who somehow runs a state, a devout Christian, has a special needs child, goes to her children’s Hockey Games, and goes to her husband’s snowmobile races. She said she cooks dinner at home.  Wow, she is a miracle woman.  But to a woman who supports womans rights to abortion, she is a let down.  Not a woman for womens rights.  To hear a woman on the raido say that Sarah Palin is Everything to everyone, well, I have to say, if I was on the other side, that would tick me off too.  In fact, it is that quality about Obama that I cannot stand.  The way people portray him as a saint, a savior, a guy who is a miracle.

The inherent problem in this viewor Palin as "Everywoman All the time" is that anyone with kids knows.  You cannot be all places at all times.  I am sorry but Sarah Palin cannot be Governor and room-mom at her kids’ school also.  I highly doubt that she leaves the office at 3:00 to pick her kids up from school. Todd Palin quit his job to do the things she cannot do, because she cannot be the Supermom, that everyone is painting her out to be.  Yes, I am sure she was at one time active in the PTA and hockey games, but she has adult children.  Is she an active PTA member right now? I highly doubt it, because she is busy with bigger issues, she is leading her state!

The point here is that you cannot group all of Sarah Palin's “accomplishments” as a mother, businesswoman, and politician, into the same time frame.  It makes her look too saintly, and people just don’t like that.  It is so easy to pick too saintly people apart. If you look at what she has done, and spread it over 18 or 20 years, you see a more realistic view.  She must make sacrifices as a mother to be Governor, but so does every businesswoman and businessman who has children.  She must also make priorities, as all parents of large families do. As long as her children have a parent at home stepping up to the plate, I do not see anything morally wrong with her choice to accept the nomination as Vice President.

I believe the hatred for Sarah Palin stems from the mistaken tendency to lump her life into a fishbowl and then judge her and their insecurity of people who misunderstand who and what she is.  If people stop comparing themselves and their own productivity to her, and look at what she has done over an appropriate time frame, they will see that she is not some monster in a red suit, with a shotgun and a baby.