And as long as I'm talking politics

I think Governor Palin is a poor VP pick for a couple of reasons. Leaving aside the fact that I simply don't agree with her on a lot of the issues, I don't think that she's qualified to be next in line for the presidency. (Being able to see Russia on a clear day just doesn't cut it for me.) And I'm quite insulted at the idea that as a woman, they think that I'm going to go vote for the McCain-Palin ticket simply because Palin has a uterus. Please. To use a phrase from my formative decade, gag me with spoon.  If they wanted a female candidate in an attempt to get more of the female vote -- and honestly, I have problems with that approach; I don't care about a candidate's gender, I simply want the best person for the job -- there were other, more qualified politicians who could have and should have been selected (Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and Texas Senator Kay Bailey Hutchison come immediately to mind).

(Sidenote that will become relevant in just a moment: why was it that it was seemingly OK for someone to ask McCain, "So how do we beat that bitch?" re: Senator Clinton -- if he did have a problem with the word "bitch" and its connotations, he stayed pretty quiet about it -- but any criticism of Palin results in cries of "Sexism!" from both the McCain camp and other Republicans?)   

That said, one sentence in Judith Warner's column today in the New York Times stopped me dead in the middle of reading:

They know she can't possibly do it all -- the kids, the special-needs baby, the big job, the big conversations with foreign leaders.

Imagine this sentence being written about a male candidate. 

They know he can't do it all -- the kids, the special-needs baby, the big job, the big conversations with foreign leaders. 

It would never get written! This is a standard that is *never* applied to a male candidate, no matter his party affiliation, no matter how strong or weak his qualifications are, no matter what his home life is like. And it disgusts me. Like I said above, I don't care for Palin as a VP pick, and I think the Republicans who let sexist attacks on Clinton slide but now scream when it happens to Palin are a bunch of hypocrites. But that doesn't mean that this blatant, stupid sexism is OK. Because it IS sexism, no question about it.  

I don't know what it's going to take to change this kind of thinking, to level the playing field so that both men and women in politics, business, academics, all fields, are held to the same standards, but I sure am sick of it. I'd love to think that this will no longer be an issue by the time my daughters are adults, but alas. I fear that's wishful and deluded thinking.