Will the minivan reach the White House?

I usually choose not to blog about politics, mostly because I don't want to offend anyone. But I can hold it no longer. I've been in a pretty angry mood this week and it's for one reason: Sarah Palin.

Yes, you've heard all the commentary and heard all the speeches. The debate swirling around her is centered on a number of issues- inexperience, gender, privacy of family. I had to really sort out what I disliked most about her. Was it the sarcastic one-liners, the parading of the baby around stage, the joke about the pit bull, the fact that she has no idea what a VP actually does? The feeling that I got as I watched her speak that I was in the middle of "Mean Girls- 20th Reunion"? That this woman could possibly be elected as second in command of our armed forces and nuclear arsenals when she just received her passport in 2006 and has visited just 4 countries? (I wonder if Canada was one of them.)

And I realized that I am a sexist. I dislike her because she is a woman. An underqualified woman that takes the feminist movement back 30 years. A woman that undermines everything that well-qualified, intelligent, educated women have fought so hard to achieve. That her inexperience and lack of knowledge about everything that one in her position should know make women in power out to be laughable. And that is a disgrace.

Women in this country have worked too hard to allow someone as inexperienced as Palin into the White House. To think that Hillary voters will be won over is offensive. I can barely believe that she had the audacity to reference Hillary, as if she had something in common with her besides X chromosomes. Hillary's battle was long and courageous, and those 18 million cracks in the glass ceiling were a result of her tenacity and determination and not from being hand-picked by her party to be its personal cheerleader. But to have Palin come along and claim that she will be the one to shatter the ceiling when she possesses zilch of Hillary's education and experience makes me sad beyond belief.

And that's where we see how hard it is even today to be a woman in leadership. We put all of our political leaders under scrutiny. But if you are a minority or a woman, you still have to work twice as hard to get to the level of authority that white men have had in our country for over 200 years. If you are going to help run our country, show me that you know anything about the issues that matter- the economy, health care, the housing crisis, foreign policy. Being the closest state to Russia is a pathetic excuse for foreign policy experience. And being the governor of a small state that has requested nearly $750 million in special spending from Washington during her two years in office while keeping state taxes low for residents is an easy way to win popularity.

I believe that one of those 18 million cracks was for me, and I will keep working as hard as I can to shatter the ceiling in my own way. But thanks to Sarah Palin, women will need to work doubly hard all over again to prove that we can be chosen for positions of leadership because we are qualified, hard-working, educated people, and not just because we are women. Palin's candidacy is the result of foolish political strategy and the GOP's desparate attempt to reach evangelical and small-town voters. Thanks Karl Rove, but no thanks.

I refuse to vote for a candidate that is unqualified to run our country, even if she is a woman, a Christian, a mother, pro-life, or the president of the PTA. The thought that Palin could be next in line to the most powerful job in the world makes me scared beyond belief. Hope that sports journalism experience will come in handy when you're sitting down with Ahmadinejad.

I also can't believe that people at the RNC were wearing "My VP is a Hottie!" buttons. Who in the world decided that it would be a good idea to duplicate those? Who ARE these people?

Vote Obama.