She scares me just knowing there is the rare possibility she could become President.

Imagine a Democrat willing to brag about breaking the glass ceiling at the explosive beginning, not the safe end, of her campaign.

I don't know what rock these two authors were sleeping under during the '08 primary, but Hillary's first campaign stop was a Wellesley college, where she did just that.  I'll never forget Chris Matthews smug look of disapproval that she dare bring up her womanhood on the campaign trail.  Obama was questioned about it by some other talking head and said something extremely dismissive.  In other words, the Democrats and the media pushed back hard against Hillary making any mention of her own history making campaign.  She didn't wait until the safe end of her campaign to address the issue as these two dolts suggest.  Indeed, one of her campaign slogans was "let's make history".

Women in politics have never been able to own their virility, and sexual prowess, imo.

Palin also has attempted to do, with Feminism, what GOP does best, claim the she represents the center. Of course she is reactionary when it comes to Feminism, but she represents the "family values" type of feminism with not only a wild side (sexuality) but a side that models a powerful woman who hunts and can compete with men.

Her gender is being used as the passport to credibility for a host of beliefs that are not just contrary to women's interests, but to the interests of people in general.

Please note that I am not saying that women have to believe only one way on every issue; they absolutely don't.  I firmly believe in people - not just women - having the right of self-determination, and that includes the right to act in accordance with their best interests, free of attempts to legislate religious beliefs - which I think is at the root of much of Palin's message.  She may believe that God wants the same things she does, but when she and others like her start trying to weave that message - however subtle and coded that message is - into the fabric of government such that it might impose those beliefs on me, I can see her as no less than a symbol of betrayal - not just of women, but of all people.

I hate the Mama Grizzly thing more than you know, perhaps because I don't want to think of myself as one of her "cubs," but maybe also because she seems to have to invoke symbols of motherhood in order to make her message at all credible.

Hillary Clinton is so much a better symbol of self-actualization and -determination than Palin that it's ridiculous.  She expresses her beliefs and her passions in terms that all people can identify with - and doesn't condescend to us as the Mother Bear who knows what's best for her babies.  We're not cubs or babies or property, and treating us as such is offensive.

If Palin is a symbol of 21st century symbol of American women in politics, all I can say is, she's not MY symbol of that in any way, shape or form.

But here's the most controversial part, and it's just as rich as any other aspect of her candidacy: we finally have an image of a powerful, fertile, virile woman on the national stage. And it's a female image that's been almost entirely absent from America's pop culture. When you think of women who've been in the news, two kinds come to mind. One we'll call the Paris Hilton model -- or Lindsay Lohan, or Britney Spears -- this illiterate, anorexic, or drug-addicted pop tart. "She's so rich. Everybody wants to f*ck her. She's so special." This, as many mothers wring their hands saying "This is the role model for our daughters? This is who they see as someone they should look up to?" It's been a travesty.

The other kind of strong woman on a national stage has been an older woman like Hillary Clinton. In some ways, you can say that's how sexism worked against her. Every time she got a little ballsy, a little rip-roaring -- every time she showed her fierceness and her strength -- she was bound to be called a Wellesley lesbian, that somehow she wasn't enough for Bill Clinton, that all those girls she went to college with she was secretly f*cking.

Now all of this has just been a big pile of right-wing baloney, but it's what happened to Hillary Clinton. She has never allowed herself, or been encouraged to show her sexual side, because it's been considered something that would get her in trouble -- like there was no positive way to show it. She had to refrain from being a ball-buster for fear of being dyke-baited.
So here comes Sarah Palin, who apparently is not in menopause at all. She just had a baby a few months ago, so her heterosexuality is just bleeding out all over the place. She's just rolled out of bed! That's the impression we get from this woman. They can't get her on the dyke thing. She's up in Alaska, shooting guns and taking names! So she's gotten a pass on this. And she is irresistible!

We simply haven't had an overtly fecund, butch, straight-woman sex symbol in so long. She's like Annie Oakley with her six-shooters and her polar bears, her caribou dressing and her moose stew. She's got five kids hanging off of her, and you're like "Hells bells, that woman can f*ck in the morning, go out for a long hike on the Arctic tundra, take down a polar bear or two, and be back in time to pass some new creationist legislation." She just kicks a$$. I mean, she's just so -- mmm. So like a powerful woman.

oh dear god.