Signs of the times

It is very difficult to read a book when current events are so compelling.

You won't know this because no one cared and no one voted and nothing changed but Canada had its own attempt at an election. But off course the real extravaganza is the American one.

Here we have America choosing its prejudice as much as its president, selecting between a white woman of girlish affectation and gargantuan ambition and a black(ish) man who felt glorious enough himself to pen not one but as I count it three memoirs already at the ripe old age of 47.

Though this choice would seem to suggest that America will be forced to take a step forward toward enlightenment regardless of who becomes president, one half of the choice is a big step back.

Sarah Palin is no modern woman; rather she is All About Eve, the duplicitous bitch from high school, that catty Joan Collins character in a TV show, an archetype we'd hoped had disappeared.

She has spent $150,000 since August on clothes and make-up and why not, it's showtime. The self-described hockey mom is running her campaign exactly as she ran them as a would-be beauty queen -- all cute winks and charming "you betcha"'s, answering those tough questions about foreign and economic policy as cleverly as any Miss America contestant who is required to be prepped for that sort of thing to show dimension, to show that she is not merely just another pretty face. And Palin, as vice presidential candidate for a man The Lancet suggests is medically fragile, is sitting in that cat-bird seat -- as any beauty pageant watcher knows, first runner up will ascend to Queen should the winner be unable to complete her rein.

For we women raised to assume the radical feminists just before us had strafed the chauvinistic world so we could live without having to turn the world on with our smile, it is disconcerting to see a woman succeed on the basis of a wink and a prayer. She uses all the wiles we thought, or hoped, would have no further resonance anywhere but a dinner party. Like so many Cassandras we say that such tactics don't really work anymore but we are wrong, they do work, we still live in a world that likes its women perky and cute -- and substance, well, that's great for people doing the boring stuff like foreign secretary work or something. What we have here is someone doing Sexy Secretary, up-do, glasses and pencil skirt included. She exhibits a calculating, raw ambition and for all her claimed affection for Joe Six-pack seems about as warm as her native state.

That "cute" works is depressing. But it works all over the show -- in a recent article, Kate Moss describes her relationship with her boss as one where she has merely to wheedle "please Uncle Phil" and her wish is his command. To connect a model with a presidential candidate may seem crazy but look at it -- Moss is supposedly one of the most successful entrepreneurs in history, a self-made success story, cleverly turning her stylishness into money by partnering with Topshop. Sadly she is a business woman who gets by on cute as much as acumen but perhaps it is excusable if not laudable -- she does get by on her looks. It makes you appreciate Madonna more, another savvy businesswoman who would bust a ball as much as play it. Thank heaven for her, one of the few girl-powerhouses who, we suspect, never wheedles.

It's a troubling time to be female. I would say it is a troubling time to be American, but sadly, the significance is larger than that. Imagine Palin, defender of the free world, in discussions with Putin. Let's hope he has a kid in hockey or we're toast.