Ten Things Smart Women Can Learn From Sarah Palin

Yesterday, Sarah Palin boarded a plane that took her home to Alaska. It’s what I had hoped for, dreamed about, and was all too afraid would not happen. However, now that she has left the lower forty-eight, I don’t feel all that satisfied about it. I do have a great deal of satisfaction and pride about the outcome of the election. I have great hope and enthusiasm about Barack Obama’s pending Presidency. However, Palin continues to nag at me.

Part of this feeling comes from the certainty that we have not seen the last of her. My money is on her somehow ending up in Ted Stevens’ U.S. Senate seat. I can see the comparison now of Palin launching a Presidential bid with exactly the same amount of U.S. Senate experience as Obama had when he launched his successful bid. The other thing continuing to nag at me about Palin are the many lessons she left for smart working women during her sixty-eight days on the National stage. Here are the top ten things concerning Palin that I will be teaching my daughter:

1. Know your limitations.
Seriously. I can write, I cannot sing. So, I write and I don’t sing. If my daughter wants to be a singer, I’ll check out her singing voice prior to driving her down to the American Idol auditions and letting Simon Cowell crush her spirit on National Television.

2. Appearance matters, but you can achieve it on a lot less than the price of a single family home.
It is important to look your best, but you do not need to spend a fortune to do so. A lot of my professional clothing actually comes from Target. Anything else I own was bought on sale. I will occasionally splurge on a pair of expensive jeans, because, well, cheap jeans don’t make my ass look as good as the expensive ones. However, this is the exception, not the rule.

3. Enunciate, enunciate, enunciate.
The first semester of my freshman year in college, I was fresh out of small town East Texas when I landed in a Speech Communications class. The very first feedback I received went something like, “You have the potential to communicate effectively, but you will have to lose the accent first. No one will ever take you seriously if you continue to enunciate your words as if you were unintelligent.” I immediately dropped all “y’alls” and “dangs” from my vocabulary and began paying attention to how I formed words before they left my mouth. It is one of the most valuable lessons I learned in college. Why Palin was unable to pick up on this when her major was Journalism is an enormous mystery to me. We have a rule in my house that goes like this “Thou shalt not speak like a Redneck.”

4. Your children are not accessories.
If you are a mother, be a good mother. If you are a good one, no one ever needs to see you doing it. They will just know.

5. There is no substitute for an education.
Hard work can get you a long way and without hard work, you probably won’t get far. However, an education teaches you about the world at large. This is not something that you can obtain from on-the-job training. My biggest fear is that Palin will return to Alaska and actually attend a university for the next four years.

6. Confidence is a good thing, but over-confidence can be deadly.
Think about when you first learned to drive a car. You had to have enough confidence not to get run over by other drivers. However, it would be a very bad thing to get in the car and pretend to be Dale Earnhardt, Jr. There is a big difference between being confident in your abilities and over-confident in abilities you do not possess.

7. If you want to be taken seriously, drop the giggle.
C’mon girls. We know this, right? Men may like it because it signals something to them about your intentions, but if this is not the message you’re trying to send to the President of France, don’t do it.

8. Work to find your own voice so as to no end up as a caricature of who you’re trying to be.
Authenticity takes time and a certain maturity.

9. There is a middle ground between Caribou Barbie and a snarling Pit Bull.
Everything in moderation.

10. Hurtful words matter.
And, in my experience, hurtful words are the ones you typically end up having to eat. Speak thoughtfully.

Election Day Letter to My Stepford Children

To my beautiful children,

I know we’ve talked a lot about what today will mean in the context of our lives, your future, and the future of your children. I’ve tried to impress upon you that today you will be a witness to history. I want to put my very personal feelings about this day in writing so that when you are adults you can look back and better understand, through grown up eyes, your mother’s intensity about this day.

I know at the ages of eight and eleven, it is still hard for you to comprehend that I lived a very long time before you were here … thirty years, in fact. Those thirty years to me are like an old black and white film, my life not turning to color until I became your mother. And now that I am your mother, I love you more than any heart has a right to love. The two of you, each unique and yet so similar, are indeed the very air I breathe. Every beat of my heart is for you.

What you really need to understand started long before I was born. Your grandpa who picks you up from school each day, guides you through your homework, and plays video games with you was born in 1945 on a small farm in East Texas. You have no reference point in your lives for how poor Grandpa’s family was. Your grandpa went to work in the fields on the family farm when he was just six years old. He grew up in a two-room shack that had no running water, insulation, central heating or air conditioning, or a toilet. These conditions had not changed when he left the farm against his father’s wishes in 1965 to go to Jr. College. Your grandpa worked and went to college part-time all through the 1970s and 1980s while I was growing up. He finally obtained his Bachelor’s degree in 1988 and five years later he obtained a Master’s degree in Applied Cognition and Neuroscience. He is one dissertation short of a PhD. You, my precious children, are but two generations away from abject poverty. Your grandpa’s drive for an education changed not only his life, but mine and therefore yours.

I’ve chosen to raise you in Stepford because I want you to live in a safe neighborhood and have the best public education I can provide. I want you to live in a nice home and have nice things. I’ve brought you up in a church because I want you to have an extended church family to love and care for you spiritually. However, I need you to understand that these things are blessings that have been bestowed upon you, not because you have earned them, but because of the sacrifices of those who lived before you. You are not entitled to any of your blessings. Everything you have has all been given freely out of love. You each have bright, limitless futures ahead of you, you much choose to make the most of them.

With any blessing, comes responsibility. Your blessings are great and, therefore, your responsibilities are as well. You must never forget that there are those less fortunate than you. You must always lend a helping hand where you can, sacrifice for the greater good, stay informed and engaged with the world at large, and set an example for others to follow. You must constantly monitor those who have been elected to lead our Nation. If you feel our Nation has drifted off course, you must speak up and say so. You each have a voice inside you. Work very hard to find it, listen to it and act upon it.

Today we elect a new leader for our Country. You came with your dad and me ten days ago and watched as we cast our votes for the first person of color to ever be nominated on a major party ticket. This morning you watched Barack and Michelle Obama as they cast their ballots live on television. I believe it is not the fact that Barack Obama is black that is of importance today. But rather the fact that we have been privileged enough to watch a man transcend his race while so many expected him to fail. He has done all that I have asked of you in the paragraphs above. When you remember this day, I pray you remember a man who lived up to the responsibilities of his blessings and then changed the world. I expect nothing less of each of you in whatever way, large or small, you are able.

I Love You Always,
Mom

Trick or Treat? Stepford Style

Halloween in Stepford was, um, let’s say … interesting. My husband seriously “frowned” upon my planned Sarah Palin costume. I mean seriously frowned. I haven’t been happily married for over twenty years because I make a habit of doing things he seriously frowns upon. I’ve drawn the line a few times, but he’s a pretty reasonable guy so I acquiesced ... within reason.

My husband called from the car to tell me he was twenty minutes out just as my daughter—the Devil—and I were leaving the house. I told him “no worries,” that we would still be only a few houses down when he arrived, because I knew we’d spend at least some time chatting with the neighbors who had gathered out in front of their homes at the end of our street. Since my Palin costume was vetoed, I decided I would go as an understated Yellow Dog Democrat. I wore my new chocolate brown Obama ’08 t-shirt, my husband’s favorite jeans that might, truth be told, be a half size too small, and of course, I put our beautiful yellow lab on his leash to take him with us.

We stopped at our next-door neighbor’s house first. I like these people. They are kind and friendly and sweet to my kids. I view them as “Good Republicans.” I stopped to speak to the man while the Devil skipped up the sidewalk to get candy from the wife. The man says, very kindly, “Well, I had been wondering if you were the one who took your Obama sign down because you had come to your senses, but I can see that may not be the case.” I laughed and said, “No, my Obama sign was taken from me and I am, indeed, still an Obama girl.” He laughed and we moved on. Just as we were crossing the street, my husband’s mid-life convertible sports car pulled up in front of our house. Our eyes met and he gave me his “Seriously?” look. I beamed. He smiled a bit, in spite of himself.

Things were going well when two streets and fifteen minutes later, who does the Devil spy with her little eyes, but Sarah Palin. Not my version of Palin either ... the “I seriously want to be Sarah Palin” version. The Stepford Wife version. The Devil, bless her little soul, ran right up to Sarah and said, “Sarah! Look at my mom!” My husband shot me a look that needed no words. I was to play nice for the Devil. Sometimes having kids is very damned inconvenient.

So Sarah looks at me and I can see it in her eyes—she thinks I’m not for real. How stupid can you be? I knew immediately she was not a Tina Fey version of Palin. So Sarah grabs her dad, who has a very expensive looking camera, and says “Hey dad, get a picture of me and the Obama supporter,” and when she says “Obama supporter,” she uses air quotes. Yes, air quotes. You know the very same air quotes McCain used in the third debate when he mocked the health of the mother when discussing a woman’s right to choose?

At this point, I’m just trying to breathe. Sarah bounces over to me and purposely places herself on my right side while saying something to the effect of “I’ll let you stand on the left.” Sarah’s dad says, “Smile! This may be in the paper tomorrow!” Sarah says, “Wait! Let’s hold up peace signs together in a show unity.” I said as quietly and seriously as I could, “I don’t think I can do that.” The camera flashed and Sarah looked at me and said, “You’re for real?” I said, avoiding my husband’s eyes “Yes. Are you?” She said in a cheerleady voice, “Yes! Vote McCain!” And off she bounced. Good Lord. Even in Stepford this was almost too much.

The Devil was highly amused by the whole exchange, so at least I had apparently done my motherly duty. However, my husband indicated that I had been subtly “rude.” I let him know that I had all but been assaulted by Sarah, and that under the circumstances, he should be at least relieved, if not happy with my behavior. I brooded over this for the next two streets. Pouted about it actually. Thought about throwing a full-blown temper tantrum about it once the Devil was tucked into bed. And then something happened that made it all okay. As we neared the end of our trick or treating route, we came upon a home with an Obama ’08 sign in the yard.

The Devil all but danced to the doorway to ring the bell while my husband, the dog, and I waited on the sidewalk. When the lady opened the door, the Devil yelled, “TRICK OR TREAT! YOUR OBAMA SIGN ROCKS!” The lady looked up from the Devil and saw me. She smiled, waved, and held up the peace sign. I returned the favor.

I think my little Devil rocks as well.