Sarah Palin makes gender assumptions at her own peril

I'M A mama grizzly. There are lots of others. Sarah Palin described us in a campaign video. She's one smart cookie, that Sarah. Pegged us perfectly as women with fierce power to unleash if provoked.

The right-wing starlet cleverly tapped into every mama's passion about protecting her cubs. "You don't wanna mess with Mama Grizzlies" she chortles in the scene before an all-female audience. Her devout fans applaud wildly.

The former Republican vice presidential candidate is on a roll. She coaxes all-knowing nods among the sisterhood with her homey assertion that moms "kinda just know when something is wrong."

Oh, you betcha. That maternal instinct kicks in automatically, especially when it comes to a child's welfare. And mammas have been known to move mountains to save their children from anything that gets in the way of their life, liberty, and pursuit of happiness.

Clearly a force with that kind of determination is precisely what Ms. Palin aims to harness this election year. If she can woo more women and mobilize more moms with inflated fears about the future, who knows what mountains she can move in politics?

The celebrity conservative is already batting around .500 with endorsed wins from South Carolina to a huge upset in Alaska. But the Senate battle in California to unseat Democrat Barbara Boxer with Ms. Palin's candidate, former Hewlett- Packard executive Carly Fiorina, will be the key test of her influence.

To succeed she needs women - now the majority of registered voters in the United States - to join her Tea Party brigade. Her tactic is to convince women, whose political value has either been taken for granted or dismissed, that she's one of them.

She's just a regular type traversing the country getting rich on speeches, appearances, and TV gigs. No, seriously. She's a mamma grizzly, with kid problems, just like her supporters.

She's big on old-fashioned, small-town values and isn't ashamed to say so, just like them. She's more real than professorial, more simple than complex, more ordinary than intellectual, and a mother of five, to boot.

She's a gutsy gal who quit her day job as governor of Alaska to save America and doggone it, people like her. Women either relate to her as one of them and embrace her as a godsend or see right through her as a calculating female plotting career advancement.

She empowers the coffee klatch crowd, of largely overlooked opinionated women, to stand up for their Christian principles and be heard. She exhorts them to "take back" the country and restore commonsense female bearing in a nation gone astray.

Finally, she speaks directly to her audience. With the deft touch of a skilled performer going for gold, she urges them to protect what threatens their families and join the crusade against those who would fundamentally transform America. It is a clarion call to action for conservative women to reclaim what was lost when godless liberals assumed power.

This is quintessential political theater where emotion holds sway over reflection and rational discourse. In the Palin show, popular sentiment utterly obscures policy fixes. It's a feel-good, coming together, political revival some women wouldn't miss.

To other women, mamma grizzlies all, the Palin sermon is a shallow affront to substance. It's a pom-pom cheer to rally the like-minded, not a thoughtful outlook at problems and solutions.

Grizzlies, who rage at the mindlessness of movements fueled by vague insecurities and meaningless slogans, are equally determined to stand up and be heard. That Sarah Palin is enjoying anything but irrelevance for her repeated displays of ignorance is a mystery to even moms with old fashioned, small town values.

They, too, are adamant about protecting their young from those who would fundamentally reverse progress in America. To them, Sarah Palin preaches a regressive gospel of fear and loathing in a self-serving bid for power and profit.

Not surprisingly, women are as polarized as the rest of the population when it comes to the Palin brand of politics. Just because the sisterhood shares common experiences and natural proclivities doesn't preclude a split among those embracing the conservative camp or the liberal-progressive bloc.

To be fair, Sarah Palin is a woman who made the most of an unexpected vice-presidential nomination. Good for her. Far be it for any mamma grizzly to raise her manicured claws against another for taking care of her own.

But make broad assumptions about gender in a political move and watch out for women loaded for bear.

Marilou Johanek is a Blade commentary writer.

Contact her at: mjohanek@theblade.com