As most of you know, I feel a deep and abiding cultural kinship with Sarah Palin, seeing as how we're both regular hick gals who hail from small town America. And even as Palin's cutesy, winky, nose-wrinkly shtick nauseates me, I must admit that the governor's slash-and-burn stump performances are prompting a ripple of nostalgia. When I was growing up, girls almost never got into public brawls; for better or for worse, they left that largely to the boys. But every once in a while, a couple of redneck princesses would go at it--and not in the naughty slap-and-tickle catfights of men's fantasies. We're talking nose-smashing, eye-gouging, elbow-to-the-breast, earrings-ripped-from-flesh bloodsport of the type that would make most guys cringe. Forget Queensbury rules. There were no rules period. If there had been balls to knee, these gals would have kneed them.
This is precisely what I think of these days whenever Palin moves to whip the GOP base into a frenzy with some vicious smear about Obama's palling around with terrorists or disrespecting our troops.
I'm just relieved Obama doesn't wear earrings.
--Michelle Cottle