While this question may have a different meaning for students here at Ole Miss, this same question seems to be the theme of the article “Call of the Wild” recently published as the cover story in Time Magazine. While there is no doubt that Sarah Palin has proved herself to be a politically strong woman, rising to the top of the political stars in such a short period of time, her nomination as right hand woman to John McCain has been nothing short of a wildfire throughout the media. Stopping at nothing to gain every bit of knowledge they could about this new celebrity, the media has gone Palin-wild so to speak, plucking out every juicy detail of her life they could muster, such as the pregnancy of her seventeen-year-old daughter. While her strength as a political figure and a woman political figure at that, is quite impressive, will Sarah Palin be able to continue her strong front while the media persists in analyzing her and her family’s lives? As a mother of five, I imagine it would be extremely difficult to juggle the responsibilities of Vice President of the United States with the responsibilities of her role as mother. I wonder if the present obsession with Palin and her family, which is reflected in the media, will eventually cause too much pressure on her and her family to continue on this political journey.
The media has also managed to discover an incident in Palin’s career when, according to John Stein, “she asked the library how she could go about banning books,” due to the dislike of some people of the language used in them. Striving to please the people is one thing, but censorship is a whole new ball game.
While Americans are constantly speaking of their desire for change, is Sarah Palin truly the change we have all been looking for? Is her strength really all it seems or merely a front to impress her voters? While you have to applaud her for making it this far and enduring the spectacle the print has made of her daughter’s pregnancy, you also have to wonder will her role as a mother of five be more important to her than her role as Vice President, and will her strength be enough to last her through the trials that come with a high congressional title?