Going "rouge" with Sarah Palin

Salon's Rebecca Traister goes on GRITtv to talk sex, politics and the former vice presidential candidate

Published November 17, 2009 6:12PM (EST)

I know, we're all experiencing some degree of Sarah Palin fatigue -- but we can never get enough of Salon's very own Rebecca Traister, who went on GRITtv with Laura Flanders on Monday to chat about the former vice presidential candidate. Along with Richard Kim, Max Blumenthal and Shannyn Moore, fellow contributors to the cheekily titled anthology "Going Rouge: Sarah Palin, An American Nightmare," Traister talked about sexism, sex appeal and the ex-governor's particular brand of feminism. It's worth watching the video below of the entire show, but here's a standout comment from Traister, who is currently working on a book about the role of women in the 2008 presidential election:

One of the crucial things to remember about the existence of Sarah Palin on the national scene is that she exists only because there had been this long and very controversial run by Hillary Clinton for the presidency. There was a rupture within the Democratic party after Clinton's concession in which a lot of women were feeling distanced from their own party; they were feeling as though their history had not been recognized, acknowledged appreciated, as though there had been unacknowledged sexism. And in came McCain to capitalize on that segregation between women and the party that had traditionally been associated with fighting for their rights and their progress. ... And that's something that's being played out in headlines this week and last week as we listen to conversations about Stupak-Pitts.


By Tracy Clark-Flory

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