“Tea with Mother: Sarah Palin and the Discourse of Motherhood As a Political Ideal” Janet Mccabe November 12, 2013
Total Page：16
File Type：pdf, Size：1020Kb
REVUE D’ÉTUDES INTERCULTURELLES DE L’IMAGE JOURNAL OF CROSS-CULTURAL IMAGE STUDIES IMAGINATIONS JOURNAL OF CROSS_CULTURAL IMAGE STUDIES | REVUE D’ÉTUDES INTERCULTURELLES DE L’IMAGE Publication details, including open access policy and instructions for contributors: http://imaginations.csj.ualberta.ca “Tea with Mother: Sarah Palin and the Discourse of Motherhood as a Political Ideal” Janet McCabe November 12, 2013 To Cite this Article: McCabe, Janet. “Tea with Mother: Sarah Palin and the Discourse of Motherhood as a Political Ideal” Imaginations 4:2 (2013): Web (date accessed) 70-90. DOI: 10.17742/IM- AGE.mother.4-2.4 To Link to this article: http://dx.doi.org/10.17742/IMAGE. mother.4-2.4 The copyright for each article belongs to the author and has been published in this journal under a Creative Commons Attribution NonCommercial NoDerivatives 3.0 license that allows others to share for non-commercial purposes the work with an acknowledgement of the work’s authorship and initial publication in this journal. The content of this article represents the author’s original work and any third-party content, either image or text, has been included under the Fair Dealing exception in the Canadian Copyright Act, or the author has provided the required publication permissions. TEA WITH MOTHER TEA WITH MOTHER SARAH PALIN AND THE DISCOURSE OF MOTHERHOOD AS A POLITICAL IDEAL JANET MCCABE, BIRKBECK, UNIVERSITY OF LONDON Seldom has someone emerged so Très peu d’individus ont fait une unexpectedly and sensationally on apparition aussi inattendue et to the American political scene as spectaculaire que celle de Sarah Palin Sarah Palin. With Palin came what sur la scène politique américaine. Avec had rarely, if ever, been seen before elle ont surgi des traits inédits dans on a presidential trail: hockey moms, une campagnes présidentielle : ceux Caribou-hunting, pitbulls in lipstick de la hockey mom, de la chasse au parcelled as political weaponry. And let’s caribou, de la femme pugnace mais not forget those five children, including fardée utilisés comme des arguments Track 19, set to deploy to Iraq, Bristol, partisans. Cela sans oublier les enfants and her unplanned pregnancy at 17, Palin mis à contribution : Track, 19 and Trig, a six-month-old infant with ans, attendant son affectation militaire Down’s syndrome. Never before had en Irak, Bristol, fille-mère à 17 ans, et motherhood been so finely balanced Trig, un bébé trisomique de six mois. with US presidential politics. Biological Une image si orientée de la maternité vigour translated into political energy, n’avait jamais auparavant été impliquée motherhood transformed into an dans une campagne politique aux intoxicating political ideal. This article États-Unis. La vigueur génétique s’y est focuses on Sarah Palin and how her vue transformée en énergie politique, brand of “rugged Alaskan motherhood” et la maternité en un idéal politique (PunditMom 2008) became central to intoxicant. Cet article se concentre sur her media image, as well as what this la façon dont l’image d’une « rugged representation has to tell us about the Alaskan motherhood » (PunditMon relationship between mothering as 2008) est devenue si cruciale dans la a political ideal, US politics, and the personnalité médiatique de Sarah Palin, media. et sur ce qu’une telle image peut nous apprendre quant aux relations entre la maternité comme idéal, la politique américaine, et les média. IMAGINATIONS • ISSUE 4 - 2, 2013 • 70 MCCABE Rarely has anyone emerged so As a Christian, social conservative, unexpectedly and sensationally on to the anti-abortionist, and patriot preparing American political scene as Sarah Palin. to see her eldest son deployed to Iraq It is August 2008, and the Republican (on September 11, 2008, no less), this nominee John McCain, the moderate “middle youth” mother from America’s senator from Arizona, took his most last frontier seemed a shrewd (if audacious campaign gamble when he unexpected) choice to shore up the vote named the 44-year-old mother-of-five among the party’s staunchly right-wing governor of Alaska as his running mate. evangelical base. Still, it was the more Everything about her looked different. subtle tangled ways in which Sarah “She’s not—she’s not from these parts Palin politicised mothering and her and she’s not from Washington, but role as a mother that ignited passions when you get to know her, you’re going across the political spectrum—and had to be as impressed as I am,” McCain feminists like me (McCabe, “States of told Republicans assembled in Dayton, Confusion”; “In the Feminine Ideal”) Ohio, shortly before Palin strode onto tied in theoretical knots. Palin translated the political platform with husband the postfeminist “have it all” culture Todd, a native Yup’ik who worked for into potent, if uneasy, political currency, BP, and four of her five children with making history as the first woman on the uncommon names including Bristol, Republican ticket and only the second in unmarried and pregnant at 17, and Trig US presidential history to become a vice- Paxson Van, a six-month-old infant with Down’s syndrome. Fig. 1 71 • ISSUE 4 - 2, 2013 • IMAGINATIONS TEA WITH MOTHER presidential nominee. What interests me turning] maternity into a war weapon,” however, and the subject of this article, the vice-presidential nominee “is is how the discourse of motherhood, pretending to be all women at once, turned into a political ideal, was made and yet perfectly mundane.” useful—qualified and disqualified— and linked to an intensification of the Never before had motherhood feminine body. Palin’s well crafted been so finely paraded as political image was imbued, through and accomplishment. Biological vigour through, with tactical function and translated into constitutional ambition, political calculation. It is discourse of and mothering transformed into an the Mother and mothering, imagined intoxicating political ideal. As she in and through her image, which cradled Trig in her arms, a “living transmits and produces a formidable [testament] to herself as the model pro- power; it reinforces a moral, social, life mother” (Raban), she wowed the and economic order, but it also reveals party faithful and secured her political fragilities and the limits of that power, celebrity almost overnight. Palin was particularly centred on sex, sexuality, everywhere. Her ubiquitous image was and the biological female body. featured in magazines and newspapers the length and breadth of America and With Palin came what had rarely if ever beyond: “A Mother’s Painful Choice” been seen before in politics, let alone ran the poignant OK! headline, but the a presidential trail. Hockey moms, glossy media image of her cradling Trig mama grizzlies in killer heels, and told another, more compelling story of pitbulls in lipstick parcelled as political maternal pride, domestic bliss, and pro- weaponry. Such a staged spectacle of life principles. We may know that the female agency and power led Lacanian political image is highly choreographed psychoanalyst and writer Jacques- (in which both the media and politicians Alain Miller to conclude, “Sarah Palin are inextricably entangled), however on puts forward no lack: she fears nothing, seeing Palin holding her handicapped churns out children all [the] while baby son on stage at the GOP national holding a shotgun … [and] presents convention, few could have failed herself as an unstoppable force.” This not to be affected by the sight as a apparent defiance of easy definition groundbreaking moment for women— and absolute refusal to sacrifice neither or as Nancy Gibb saw it, “you felt the career nor children saw the disorienting shattered glass raining gently down.” collapse of what Nina Power calls the “old female dichotomies—mother/ politician, attractive/successful, passive/ go-getting.” Everything about Palin appeared limitless and omnipotent, argues Power: “Both fiercely maternal and politically aggressive, … [and IMAGINATIONS • ISSUE 4 - 2, 2013 • 72 MCCABE partner,” McCain identified Palin (unnamed and un-gendered at this point) as someone able to challenge power and willing to dispute privilege, before saying “proudly” that in the week “we celebrate the anniversary of female suffrage” his running mate is “a devoted wife and mother of five.” Her legitimacy to rule is vouched for by reference to the commonweal (matrimonial allegiance, parental obligations), and her role as presidential helpmate is authenticated by these traditional forms of alliance that Palin seemed obliged to endlessly pronounce about herself. But at the same time, the mother is also playing the role of adversary to power. It did in fact seem, at first glance at least, that her candidacy represented the triumph of the personal over the political. Palin wasted no time in acknowledging this historic moment for women. As an ordinary working mother, she was the legacy of feminism in America—a country that emphasized equal voting rights and individual women empowering themselves (rather than through collective activism). Standing Fig. 2 on the political stage in 2008, Palin made sense of that neoliberal feminist Nowhere is the paradox presented by ideal, namely: women had made Palin more self evident than in how unprecedented gains. her image represents so seductively the personal is political. Michel Foucault To serve as vice president beside alerts us to how dominant norms such a man would be the privilege (institutions, culture) are perpetually of a lifetime. And it’s fitting that being resisted and reconstituted by this trust has been given to me 88 knowledge that has developed and years almost to the day after the gained momentum from elsewhere women of America first gained the “in the power network” (95). Almost right to vote. … I think—I think immediately, in introducing “the right as well today of two other women 73 • ISSUE 4 - 2, 2013 • IMAGINATIONS TEA WITH MOTHER who came before me in national women and bringing that constituency elections.