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Janet McCabe | Birkbeck, University of London<\/p>\n
Tea with Mother:
\nSarah Palin and the Discourse of Motherhood as a Political Ideal<\/h4>\n
Rarely has anyone emerged so unexpectedly and sensationally on to the American political scene as Sarah Palin. It is August 2008, and the Republican nominee John McCain, the moderate senator from Arizona, took his most audacious campaign gamble when he named the 44-year-old mother-of-five governor of Alaska as his running mate. Everything about her looked<\/em> different. \u201cShe\u2019s not\u2014she\u2019s not from these parts and she\u2019s not from Washington, but when you get to know her, you\u2019re going to be as impressed as I am,\u201d McCain told Republicans assembled in Dayton, Ohio, shortly before Palin strode onto the political platform with husband Todd, a native Yup\u2019ik who worked for BP, and four of her five children with uncommon names including Bristol, unmarried and pregnant at 17, and Trig Paxson Van, a six-month-old infant with Down\u2019s syndrome.<\/p>\n As a Christian, social conservative, anti-abortionist, and patriot preparing to see her eldest son deployed to Iraq (on September 11, 2008, no less), this \u201cmiddle youth\u201d mother from America\u2019s last frontier seemed a shrewd (if unexpected) choice to shore up the vote among the party\u2019s staunchly right-wing evangelical base. Still, it was the more subtle tangled ways in which Sarah Palin politicised mothering and her role as a mother that ignited passions across the political spectrum\u2014and had feminists like me (McCabe, \u201cStates of Confusion\u201d; \u201cIn the Feminine Ideal\u201d) tied in theoretical knots. Palin translated the postfeminist \u201chave it all\u201d culture into potent, if uneasy, political currency, making history as the first woman on the Republican ticket and only the second in US presidential history to become a vice-presidential nominee. What interests me however, and the subject of this article, is how the discourse of motherhood, turned into a political ideal, was made useful\u2014qualified and disqualified\u2014and linked to an intensification of the feminine body. Palin\u2019s well crafted image was imbued, through and through, with tactical function and political calculation. It is discourse of the Mother and mothering, imagined in<\/em> and through<\/em> her image, which transmits and produces<\/em> a formidable power; it reinforces a moral, social, and economic order, but it also reveals fragilities and the limits of that power, particularly centred on sex, sexuality, and the biological female body.<\/p>\n With Palin came what had rarely if ever been seen before in politics, let alone a presidential trail. Hockey moms, mama grizzlies in killer heels, and pitbulls in lipstick parcelled as political weaponry. Such a staged spectacle of female agency and power led Lacanian psychoanalyst and writer Jacques-Alain Miller to conclude, \u201cSarah Palin puts forward no lack: she fears nothing, churns out children all [the] while holding a shotgun \u2026 [and] presents herself as an unstoppable force.\u201d This apparent defiance of easy definition and absolute refusal to sacrifice neither career nor children saw the disorienting collapse of what Nina Power calls the \u201cold female dichotomies\u2014mother\/politician, attractive\/successful, passive\/go-getting.\u201d Everything about Palin appeared limitless and omnipotent, argues Power: \u201cBoth fiercely maternal and politically aggressive, \u2026 [and turning] maternity into a war weapon,\u201d the vice-presidential nominee \u201cis pretending to be all women at once, and yet perfectly mundane.\u201d<\/p>\n Never before had motherhood been so finely paraded as political accomplishment. Biological vigour translated into constitutional ambition, and mothering transformed into an intoxicating political ideal. As she cradled Trig in her arms, a \u201cliving [testament] to herself as the model pro-life mother\u201d (Raban), she wowed the party faithful and secured her political celebrity almost overnight. Palin was everywhere. Her ubiquitous image was featured in magazines and newspapers the length and breadth of America and beyond: \u201cA Mother\u2019s Painful Choice\u201d ran the poignant OK<\/em>! headline, but the glossy media image of her cradling Trig told another, more compelling story of maternal pride, domestic bliss, and pro-life principles. We may know<\/em> that the political image is highly choreographed (in which both the media and politicians are inextricably entangled), however on seeing Palin holding her handicapped baby son on stage at the GOP national convention, few could have failed not to be affected by the sight as a groundbreaking moment for women\u2014or as Nancy Gibb saw it, \u201cyou felt the shattered glass raining gently down.\u201d<\/p>\n Nowhere is the paradox presented by Palin more self evident than in how her image represents so seductively the personal is<\/em> political. Michel Foucault alerts us to how dominant norms (institutions, culture) are perpetually being resisted and reconstituted by knowledge that has developed and gained momentum from elsewhere \u201cin the power network\u201d (95). Almost immediately, in introducing \u201cthe right partner,\u201d McCain identified Palin (unnamed and un-gendered at this point) as someone able to challenge power and willing to dispute privilege, before saying \u201cproudly\u201d that in the week \u201cwe celebrate the anniversary of female suffrage\u201d his running mate is \u201ca devoted wife and mother of five.\u201d 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<\/em> the political.<\/p>\n Palin wasted no time in acknowledging this historic moment for women. As an ordinary working mother, she was the legacy of feminism in America\u2014a country that emphasized equal voting rights and individual women empowering themselves (rather than through collective activism). Standing on the political stage in 2008, Palin made sense of that neoliberal feminist ideal, namely: women had<\/em> made unprecedented gains.<\/p>\n To serve as vice president beside such a man would be the privilege of a lifetime. And it\u2019s fitting that this trust has been given to me 88 years almost to the day after the women of America first gained the right to vote. \u2026 I think\u2014I think as well today of two other women who came before me in national elections. I can’t begin this great effort without honoring the achievements of Geraldine Ferraro in 1984 … and of course Senator Hillary Clinton, who showed such determination and grace in her presidential campaign … It was rightly noted in Denver this week that Hillary left 18 million cracks in the highest, hardest glass ceiling in America … but it turns out the women of America aren’t finished yet and we can shatter that glass ceiling once and for all. (Palin, \u201cTranscript McCain\u201d)<\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n No doubt these words were designed to win over the disaffected Hillary Rodham Clinton supporters, as if biology was all that mattered. Initially, Palin did what was expected of her, and opinion polls suggested that her candidacy appealed to a large section of female (mostly white) voters the Obama camp had either disregarded or simply assumed would shift allegiance once Clinton dropped out of the Democrat race (Goldenberg, \u201cMcCain Forced into Supporting Role\u201d 20). Palin also rejuvenated McCain\u2019s sliding political fortunes, with one wavering Republican female voter saying: \u201cShe has brought youth, the female factor, the younger generation, she has brought, most importantly to me, a lot of women who were sitting on the fence\u201d (qtd. in Goldenberg, \u201cMcCain Forced into Supporting Role\u201d 20 ). Her candidacy was about visibility, of making representation on behalf of women and bringing that constituency into the political conversation.<\/p>\n Feminism had arrived in the American heartland. Even so, this pro-woman tableau painted by Palin was rife with deep ambivalence and profound contradiction. Clinton may have put 18 million cracks into the glass ceiling, but did the last push really mean shattering that which protected Roe vs. Wade<\/em> as well? Furthermore, what did it say about women in power when the first to potentially occupy the vice presidency in the history of the United States was a self-declared \u201caverage hockey mom\u201d who \u201cnever really set out to be involved in public affairs, much less to run for this office\u201d (Palin, \u201cTranscript McCain\u201d)? Palin is saturated in the political meanings of her personal life. She makes visible the \u201cFeminists for Life\u201d mantra with her resolute refusal to choose between women and children. She mangles the vocabularies of social conservatism (anti-abortion, abstinence education) with feminism (equal rights, balancing parenting with an ambitious career). She combines aspects of \u201cpower feminism\u201d (Wolf), where women are in control of their destiny, with what Elizabeth Fox-Genovese terms \u201cfamily feminist,\u201d which involves women able to set their own agendas based on personal concerns rather than elitist ideology and communal logic. Palin is an example of the postfeminist \u201chave it all\u201d rationale defined by self-determinism and enterprise (linked to free market economics), a legacy of the Reagan era; she is someone who grew up \u201cfeeling\u201d empowered and internalizing the message of women\u2019s progress (\u201cStanding on the shoulders of women who had won hard-fought battles for things like equal pay and equal access\u201d [Palin, \u201cTranscript McCain\u201d 28]), but disconnected from the political philosophies which had created those opportunities in the first place. \u201cI didn\u2019t subscribe to all the radical mantras of that early feminist era,\u201d Palin has said (\u201cTranscript McCain\u201d 28), a movement she regards as irrelevant at best and suspiciously socialist at worst. Feminism is about self-reliance and personal responsibility rather than collective agendas and legal edicts, \u201ca matter not of ideology but of simple fairness\u201d (Palin, \u201cTranscript McCain\u201d 28).<\/p>\n Her representation, \u201cliving comfortably with paradox\u201d (Siegel 141), in many ways enters into dialogue with contemporary feminism and its politics of ambiguity\u2014only to stoke the flames of disagreement over how exactly to define our terms and push us to the limits of language when we talk about women and power. Here then lies one of the most complex, if unnerving ironies of Palin. She may rhetorically imitate feminism, but distorts, resists, even reverses its logic, as she translates it into a populist conversation about equality and a refusal to compromise. Social problems are no longer communal requiring collective action, but personal ones demanding individual solutions. It is an (ironically) apolitical postfeminist brand, described by Deborah L. Siegel as \u201cabout propelling oneself forward in stiletto heels\u201d (124).<\/p>\n But in this feminist paradox a crucial point has gone awry. Never mind how Palin raids feminism for its rhetoric and semiotics of empowerment, her image operates inside meticulous codes\u2014of marriage sanctified by church and State, of motherhood integral to the bourgeois order, and of family extolled by popular media and political rhetoric. It is a lesson in unseen power whereby biological fecundity translates into political leverage. Power comes not from partisan politics (as such), but from \u201cthat [which] we no longer perceive \u2026 as the effect of power that constrains us\u201d (Foucault 60). No wonder we cannot help but become entranced and exasperated by her in equal measure. \u201cShe is a fresh voice\u201d with a \u201cnew vocabulary\u201d declared veteran Republican Pat Buchanan (\u201cA Post-Mortem of the Debate Post-Mortem\u201d), but she is speaking in<\/em> and through<\/em> a representation (the fertile mother, the faithful wife, the [re]productive female body) beset by intricate rules and intrinsic to the mechanisms of social power and control. So imbibed are we in this vital image of the feminine represented by Palin that to critique this script is almost impossible. Disclosing what should not be said, to denounce that ideal of American motherhood which discourse (institutions, culture, politics, society, the media) works so hard to promote and, as Foucault put it, \u201cenforce[s] the norm<\/em>\u201d (3; emphasis mine), cannot be done.<\/p>\n Family, faith, and flag define her political celebrity. Palin has always made considerable capital of her role as a mother. She has, in fact, politicised motherhood as never before, not only translating mothering into a political creed, but also using it to legitimatise her identify and affirm herself. \u201cOn April 20, 1989,\u201d Palin declares in her bestselling political memoir, Going Rogue: An American Life<\/em>, \u201cmy life truly began. I became a mom. \u2026 The world went away, and in a crystallizing instant, I knew my purpose\u201d (51, 53). Her credo is clear: In becoming<\/em> a mother her subjectivity is<\/em> defined and qualified. It is the way in which she conceives of power\u2014the feminine body, the socio-political body, \u201cby virtue of a biologico-moral responsibility\u201d (Foucault 104). Akin to an evangelical conversion, \u201cher\u201d tone also authenticates what Stephanie Coontz describes as \u201ca sentimental, almost sacred, domestic sphere whose long-term commitments and nurturing balanced the pursuit of self interest in the public arena\u201d (43).<\/p>\n Presented as a \u201cmom\u2019s-eye view of high-stakes national politics\u201d (or, so the book jacket tells us), Palin\u2019s memoir begins by telling us of a visit to the Right to Life (RTL) booth at the 2008 Alaska State Fair \u201cwhere a poster caught [her] eye, taking [her] breath away\u201d (Going Rogue<\/em> 2). \u201c[Swathed] in pink, pretend angel wings fastened to her soft shoulders\u201d as described by Palin, \u201cthe pro-life poster child at the State Fair<\/em>\u201d (Going Rogue 2;<\/em> emphasis in the original turns out to be her youngest daughter Piper. \u201c\u2018That\u2019s you, baby,\u2019 I whispered to Piper, as I have every year since she smiled for the picture as an infant. She popped another cloud of cotton candy in her mouth and looked nonchalant\u201d (Going Rouge<\/em> 2). This moment of almost breathless, intimate sentimentality inspires her political ambition. \u201cIt reminded me of the preciousness of life,\u201d recalls Palin. \u201cIt also reminded me of how impatient I am with politics\u201d (Going Rogue <\/em>2). Her encounter with \u201cthe gracious ladies who put up with the jeers of those who always protested the display\u201d typified for her \u201cthe difference between principles and politics\u201d (Going Rogue<\/em> 3). In this briefest of sketches\u2014bucolic small-town American life (\u201cI breathed in an autumn bouquet that combined everything small-town America with rugged splashes of the Last Frontier\u201d [Going Rogue <\/em>1]), independent ladies (not<\/em> women) and principled-centred grassroots activism, privately-held faith-based ethics versus East Coast elite government, and politics-as-usual\u2014the Palin folklore about family, motherhood, and patriotism is founded. Not for the first time in that mythology do her children remind Palin of her articles of faith, of who she is, in fact. It is, of course, at this precise moment of political epiphany that her BlackBerry vibrates. \u201cJust this one last call, baby,\u201d she tells Piper. It\u2019s John McCain, \u201casking if I wanted to help him change history\u201d (Going Rogue <\/em>6).<\/p>\n Or, so the story goes.<\/p>\n Personal narratives have long played a crucial role in announcing political ambition. There is no doubt that a good deal of Palin\u2019s appeal relies on her biography and its packaging. She looks like exactly what she says she is: not the usual politico, but a small-town hockey mom, who became involved in politics by running for city council via the parent-teacher association (PTA). Raising babies, nurturing a young frontier town\u2014Palin initially campaigned \u201cdoor-to-door asking for people\u2019s votes, pulling the kids through the snow on a sled\u201d (Going Rogue <\/em>64). In 2008 she told Republicans the following:<\/p>\n Todd and I were] busy raising our kids. I was serving as the team mom and coaching some basketball on the side. I got involved in the PTA and then was elected to the city council, and then elected mayor of my hometown, where my agenda was to stop wasteful spending, and cut property taxes, and put the people first. (Palin, \u201cTranscript McCain\u201d)<\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n True or not, it does not matter. It is how her political brand, run from the kitchen table surrounded by toddlers, taps into an older \u201cdomestic\u201d or \u201csentimental\u201d doctrine of the \u201cfeminine\u201d rooted in American frontier mythologies (Riley 3). The sentimentalization of family life proposed after the American Civil War (1861-65) saw, claims Coontz, \u201cthe triumph of the nuclear family ideal and the spread of private morality \u2026 [in which] family relations became less a preparation ground or supporting structure for civic responsibility than a substitute<\/em> for such responsibility\u201d (97, 98). Palin\u2019s conservative strand of feminism can thus be traced at least as far back as the \u201cturn toward home\u201d of the mid-nineteenth century (Coontz 96-106). Glenda Riley describes this accordingly: \u201cAs defenders of home and hearth, women would protect traditional values, but they should not interfere in any essential way with the developments that were catapulting America toward prosperity and power\u201d (3).<\/p>\n Fast-forward a century and a half and Palin re-imagines this socially conservative, free-market message in the age of austerity. Our latter day frontier\u2019s mom may buy her couture from a consignment store in Anchorage and keep the \u201chome\u2019s freezer stocked with the wild seafood we caught ourselves\u201d (Palin, Going Rogue<\/em> 133), but the idea of woman as an evangelical moral saviour of American capitalism and its values holds as strong as it did when first identified in the late-nineteenth century by the likes of Catharine Beecher.<\/p>\n Core to the Palin message is fiscal policy.<\/p>\n In Juneau, the one thing that\u2019s required during the session is passing a budget, and that one task is the subject of endless hours of discussion, deliberation, bartering, and whining. Again I was thankful for my training grounds as a mom [sic]. (Palin, Going Rogue<\/em> 148)<\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n The economy is an uncomplicated macrocosm of the family accounts. As Jonathan Rabin put it, \u201cWhat is good for the family is good for the nation, and vice versa; and the idea that the family should spend its way out of recession is an affront to common sense, conservative or otherwise.\u201d Palin trades heavily on her experience as a busy working mom trying to make the family budget stretch as far as it can. It is an aspect of her \u201cordinary celebrity\u201d (Ouellette 189) that reinvents the way in which postfeminist popular culture extols female independence and women\u2019s powers expressed through consumption practices. In step with the financial downturn and age of asceticism, there is a revision in thinking, whereby female empowerment is about taking control of the economic well being of the family. Thrift and prudence are central to the Palin image of self-reliance and enterprise. \u201cMy family is frugal,\u201d she writes. \u201cWe clip coupons. We shop at Costco. We buy diapers in bulk and generic peanut butter. We don\u2019t have full-time nannies or housekeepers or drivers\u201d (Going Rogue<\/em> 315). These remarks were made in response to a headline story that the Republican National Committee (RNC) had spent $150,000 \u201cto clothe and accessorize the vice presidential candidate and her family\u201d (Cummings). Palin was quick to set the records straight in order \u201cto defend my ethics and my family,\u201d as she put it (Going Rogue <\/em>317). It is through these subtle relays between familial alliances and the social body, that one arguably sees Palin at her boldest. Late in 2009, covering her three-week book tour of 14 states in the American heartland, Paul Harris reports on how the \u201cdevoted\u201d and \u201centhusiastic\u201d crowds (almost all white) saw Palin as \u201cSt. Sarah of American Capitalism\u201d (2009 32) with her message of fiscal conservatism. It is a discourse on family, modern capitalism, and the social order that \u201cholds up well, owning no doubt to how easy it is to uphold. A solemn historical and political guarantee protects it\u201d (Foucault 5). Palin has neither formulated anything new to say about the financial crisis nor invented any new fiscal solutions; it is about practical commonsense and hard graft. It is about liberating women through entrepreneurship. Her \u201cintimate\u201d staged performances may sit uncomfortably within the conventional political structure, but how her political celebrity deploys systems of alliance (parental and matrimonial) firmly linked to the economy \u201cengenders a continual extension of areas and forms of control\u201d (Foucault 106). In a word, how the Palin (maternal) body produces and consumes makes visible a socio-economic body, which has, in turn, the function of nurturing and perpetuating.<\/p>\n Palin reanimates the spectre of nineteenth-century womanhood as \u201cguardian of morality and virtue\u201d (Riley 3) in her run for public office\u2014with anti-abortion, pro-guns, creationism, and anti-gay marriage stances defining the new \u201cmoral prowess\u201d (Riley 5). Mid-nineteenth-century women\u2019s activism championed equal voting rights and economic freedoms, but temperance and religious faith were also central to the ideas of Susan B. Anthony (1820-1906) and Elizabeth Cady Stanton (1815-1902). The campaigning of these early feminists reveals that it was not about refuting the nuclear family, but shifting power within it. Being a wife and mother equipped women with a superior sense of morality and this echo is heard in Palin. In describing how she navigated the squabbles and machinations of the Republican primary, she wrote, \u201cIt wasn\u2019t the last time I\u2019d find that there\u2019s no better training ground for politics than motherhood\u201d (Going Rogue <\/em>115).<\/p>\n Such philosophy is further witnessed in how Palin weaves seamlessly the duty of family with the obligations of high political office, as if her responsibility to one defines her relation to the other:<\/p>\n Just before I left the hotel room to hit the convention stage, on the evening of September 3, I noticed that Trig needed changing. I also noticed that we had run out of diapers. After a frantic, hotel-wide search, someone found a stack, and the last thing I did before heading down to give the biggest speech of my life [accepting the vice-president nomination] was to change the baby. Such an autobiography of individual ambition combined with domestic routine and parental responsibility not only filters the moral dilemma of a highly competitive, self-serving run for high office, but also represents a technique of modern power relations. No longer are private and public spheres separate, with rigid divisions of gendered labour, but rather, they are deeply entangled, where power is exercised through \u201ca plurality of resistances\u201d (Foucault 96) in the interplay of alliances between the two\u2014private\/public; domestic\/office; mother\/public official.<\/p>\n Making motherhood an explicit part of her appeal, however, inspired less solidarity than genuine confusion, impassioned dispute, and partisan snipping. It was a debate conducted less between the sexes, than one that divided women. Websites like Mommy Tracked (\u201cmanaging the chaos of modern motherhood,\u201d reads its tagline) and MOMocrats, tried desperately to draw lessons from this historic moment. Almost immediately the debate turned away from foreign and domestic policy and into a referendum on working mothers. On the one hand there was a palpable sense of relief that at long last here was a new type of woman in politics, neither the \u201ccoiffed demure stay-at-home wi[fe]\u201d (read: Laura Bush), nor the \u201cangry, conflicted wom[a]n\u201d (read: Hillary Rodham Clinton) (MommyTracked). \u201cSarah Palin\u2019s uncontrollable brood, her zest for work, and her feisty tone resonate with working moms who rely on moxie to get through each and every rockin\u2019 roller coaster day of working motherhood\u201d (read: you and me) (MommyTracked). Stories of her balancing family, work, and the campaign trial became central to any conversation about Palin. Here finally was \u201ca working mom like us who juggles the messy chaos of \u2018having it all\u2019\u201d (MommyTracked).<\/p>\n There was, however, a nagging suspicion that Palin made motherhood look<\/em> far too easy. She apparently returned to work the day after giving birth to her daughter, Piper (\u201cI took her by work when I checked in on City Hall,\u201d [Palin, Going Rogue <\/em>76]). She signed legislation into law at the kitchen table with a child in her lap. She worked 24\/7 while somehow juggling childcare and with a husband often away from home (Todd Palin worked for BP in the North Scope oil fields). With Trig in a sling she sat through meetings, even breastfeeding unseen during conference calls. MommyTracked sensed Republican subterfuge at work:<\/p>\n I can almost hear the new Republican retort to the building blocks of working motherhood: more plentiful, afford quality childcare; healthcare reimbursement for birth control; more generous FMLA [Family and Medical Leave Act] regulations; and incentives for companies to offer extended leaves, part-time positions, and flexible work schedules. What is the big deal, ladies? If Sarah Palin can go without those frills, then can\u2019t all of you? (MommyTracked)<\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n Palin lives<\/em> the Republican message: A woman can make whatever life choices she wants because she has civil and legal equality under the law and is in no need of preferential treatment. It is a flat refusal to see women as \u201cvictims\u201d needing systematic protection. The flipside of not wanting to recognise women as victims, however, is a failure to understand structural causes of disadvantage as well as the collective nature of discrimination. Motherhood functions as the norm. Nothing more is required of it than to define its social value. In short, motherhood constitutes a discourse that is morally useful, socially (re)productive, and politically conservative.<\/p>\n Still, even Palin seems more than aware of the limits between the qualified and disqualified maternal body in politics. As reported on more than one occasion, she went \u201cto extraordinary lengths to ensure [the arrival of Trig] would not compromise her work\u201d (Kantor, Zernike and Einhorn 2008). Few people knew that she was expecting her fifth child until the third trimester. There is always the political to consider, as Palin told People<\/em> magazine, \u201cI didn\u2019t want Alaskans to fear I would not be able to fulfill my duties\u201d (qtd, In Kantor, Zernike and Einhorn 2008). Unfair sexism or fair game\u2014there is no getting away from the spectacle of the maternal body distracting the political. The heavily pregnant body is saturated with sexuality, which Palin hid \u201cwith winter clothes and a few cleverly draped scarves\u201d (Palin, Going Rogue <\/em>191). \u201c[No] one saw my girth or suspected I was pregnant,\u201d she recalls (Going Rogue <\/em>191).<\/em> When she finally decided to announce the pregnancy to the Anchorage press, there was an uneasy slippage between the female body and social one.<\/p>\n \u201cHey guys,\u201d I said with a grin, \u201cI wanted to let you know that the First Family is expanding.\u201d True or not, the story highlights (and bearing in mind it is told in a political memoir) a perceived shift in alliances from the public sphere to the private familial space. \u201cDelivering\u201d for Alaska is not only about fishery policies and economic growth, but also about a female body and its fecundity. Silence shrouds it and speaks of the lingering suspicion that the pregnant woman has no place in public political life. Eyes are no longer focused on the politics, but fall silently on the swelling abdomen. No wonder Palin kept \u201cmum\u201d about leaking amniotic fluids during a keynote address at an oil and gas conference in Dallas (Palin, Going Rogue <\/em>193), but more than willing months later to tell her story of the premature birth and three-days of maternity leave to reporters while installing a travel crib on the campaign bus. The political myth embodied in the maternal ideal has more value than the corporeal reality of bodily discomfort and the difficulties of the flesh.<\/p>\n This intensification on Palin and the (re)productive female body as an object of knowledge and element in power relations exploded further once her candidacy was announced. Forget John McCain. As soon as Palin climbed on stage with her wholesome, hard-working family the media became all<\/em> about Sarah. Figures produced by the Pew Research Center (2008) claim that Palin effectively squeezed out the other stories and dominated US news reports. She featured in 60 per cent of the campaign stories and received far more media attention than McCain. In keeping with Erika Falk\u2019s findings on the media bias toward women in presidential campaigns, much of that coverage focused on feminine traits associated with \u201cmothering, reproduction, and emotion (the private sphere)\u201d (Falk 53). Mother of five and married to her high school sweetheart (who worked on the Alaskan oilfield, commercially fishes, and is the four-time champion of the Iron Dog, a cross-country snow machine race), her fertility and legitimate marriage were endlessly reiterated and recycled whenever Palin got a mention, as if nothing else mattered. Her sexuality took shape, conceived of as a technology of power that was firmly located in familial alliances. This is where she (her body, her fecundity) comes to have value, not only in regulating her sexuality, but also through making it useful as a new tactic of power on the campaign trail.<\/p>\n A central feature of the press coverage focused less on what Palin said (verbal gaffs notwithstanding), but what she looked<\/em> like. This constant surveillance and policing of her image\u2014what she wore, how her hair was styled\u2014corroborates Falk\u2019s research. Stories (and always accompanied by pictures) interminably rehearsed how she had entered a local beauty pageant in her small Alaskan town of Wasilla and won it, including Miss Congeniality. The Miss Wasilla Scholarship paid her college tuition, and in the following year she was crowned runner-up in the Miss Alaska contest, plus Miss Congeniality. Political campaigns are to a large degree a high-stakes image game, but even so: the Palin image holds up remarkably well on the front covers that sell images of what Rebecca Walker calls \u201cimpossible contrivance[s] of perfect womanhood\u201d (xxxiii). It is where her looks can be dissected in infinitesimal detail, her fashions endlessly discussed and critiqued. In a previous article I observed the following:<\/p>\n Intoxicatingly presented, persuasively offered as saying something important about female accomplishment, her [objectification] is embedded in and through dominant norms defining the feminine self, her body (slender, athletic, attractive, youthful\u2014and not forgetting that trademark smile), her lifestyle choices (wife, \u201chockey mom\u201d, working mother). Never mind the lurid headlines, or that she cannot help but polarise the US electorate with her political beliefs, she looked<\/em> perfect. (McCabe, \u201cIn the Feminine Ideal\u201d)<\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n Such intense focus meant that quite soon Palin became subject to another kind of objectification, translating her, as Kira Cochrane astutely observes, into something of a porn star. Images ranged from \u201csexy Sarah Palin\u201d Halloween costumes to a blow-up doll and the now famed doctored picture of Palin in a stars-and-strips bikini toting a rifle (which went viral almost instantly after her nomination). This kind of sexism underlined, for Cochrane at least, \u201cthe fact that any woman entering public life runs the risk of being reduced to the most basic female stereotype that springs to mind\u201d (17). Developing this line of enquiry further still, the fetishistic and mischievously tampered-with images of Palin also represent what often fails to be entirely controlled in relation to the female body and sex. In the way in which her body became \u201cthoroughly saturated with sexuality\u201d (Foucault 104)\u2014beauty contestant, five pregnancies\u2014her sex became at one level detached from its systems of familial alliance and jurisdiction. Instead it passed into the public sphere, which codified her flesh and pathologised her body as fantasy and erotic desire. Opened up unreservedly to endless and unremitting media scrutiny turned her body-as-image into trivial titillation and taboo. The pornification of Palin, and in particular \u2018her\u2019 wearing an American flag bikini brandishing weaponry, reveals how aspects of the Palin image (particularly centered on class and region) escape the alliances which empower her. As Patrick Kinsman wrote: \u201cThe Photoshopped Palin image is not about feminism or equality, but sex objects with weapons\u2014whether it is critique or not.\u201d This ironic image aimed to parody Palin\u2019s \u201cabstinence-only stance and her support of the Iraq war\u201d (Kinsman), but with its purpose no longer given over exclusively to (re)production and familial alliance, her body is deprived of its privilege. It becomes perverse and disqualifies her in the process.<\/p>\n Few however came to her defense: neither Republicans nor Democrats. Columnist Nick Cohen voiced his surprise about how liberal journalists almost unflinchingly and immediately turned her family into \u201can object of sexual disgust: inbred rednecks who had stumbled out of Deliverance<\/em>\u201d (34). Not even feminists could quite muster enough indignation about the misogyny aimed at Palin. She indeed proves a difficult woman to defend. From the story of how she as governor supported law enforcement agencies charging for rape kits to her pro-life values, Palin\u2019s views stand at an alarming distance from any discernible women\u2019s rights agenda. As Jessica Valenti put it, \u201cPalin is alleging sexism \u2026 while simultaneously relying on sexist notions of women in politics.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cA race that began as The West Wing<\/em> now looks alarmingly like Desperate Housewives<\/em>,\u201d declared Jonathan Freedland in the Guardian<\/em>. Rarely has a politician provoked such an avalanche of media and followed so swiftly by scandal and Internet rumour. Speculation quickly gathered momentum of a fake pregnancy and a son that was really her grandson. However, it was not long before another, more prurient media story took its place. In the era of 24-hour cable news and social networking nothing remains secret for long. Only days after Palin was nominated as the Republican vice-presidential choice, news broke that her unwed 17-year-old daughter was five-months pregnant by her high-school boyfriend, Levi Johnson, 18. \u201cWho wants to talk about boring policy when we can talk about teens and sex and pregnancy?\u201d lamented Rebecca Traister (\u201cPalin\u201d). The Republicans immediately turned the unplanned teen pregnancy into a living testament of Palin\u2019s anti-abortion, pro-life stance. But in the heartland of America where puritanical values are the norm and unwed mothers unpopular, the Republican message sallied forth that the young couple were in love, committed to having the baby, and would soon marry. News of the pregnancy registered widely with the public according to the Pew Research Center (2008), which reported that 69 per cent knew about it, therefore making it one of the top campaign stories\u2014and further drowning out the other political messages. It did in fact appear, as Traister rued, that this history-making moment for women had become hijacked by the \u201cuterine activity<\/em>\u201d (\u201cPalin\u201d) of the Palin clan. An image of this Alaskan family as a \u201chotbed of constant sexual incitement\u201d (Foucault 109) thus emerged. It became an object of intense media obsession and (pleasurable) attraction, a site of \u201cdiscovered\u201d sexual secrets, whereby this family had to open itself unreservedly to endless outside scrutiny. In so doing, this process called Palin\u2019s mothering into question in the analysis it made of her.<\/p>\n Such headlines have the potential to torpedo any political campaign. If anything, however, the news that Bristol was expecting her first child initially helped her mother\u2019s campaign. When the pregnancy was first announced it contributed to a 4 per cent Republican lead in the polls. Palin may not have personally approved the official message (according to her memoir), but nonetheless later wrote: \u201cTodd and I were proud of Bristol\u2019s selfless<\/em> decision to have her baby and her determination to deal with difficult circumstances by taking responsibility<\/em> for her actions\u201d (Going Rogue <\/em>234; emphasis mine). Young motherhood thus emerges as a responsible social decision that is preferable to abortion. It is presented as a wholesome alterative to termination, an ethical choice that speaks of kinship and familial values rather than family breakdown. What did emerge with the Bristol pregnancy, however, was a broader cultural attack on women\u2019s rights from both sides of the political spectrum. On the liberal left, the issue was used to highlight the value of a woman\u2019s right to choose, but also stressed the need for proper access to birth control and sex education, budgets for which had been drastically reduced because of the Bush administration policy of funding abstinence-only programmes. On the right, the teen pregnancy was exploited to promote the socially conservative agenda of the strong evangelical base.<\/p>\n No critique of Palin is possible without understanding the culture wars raging in the United States. Throughout the presidential campaign (and beyond), she remained a highly visible public figure with those social conservative Republican values perceptibly inscribed across her maternal body\u2014her handicapped son testimony to her pro-life convictions. She is<\/em>, in fact, her pro-family, pro-life, anti-abortion convictions. So powerful is that maternal image that nothing more needs to be said. Some time ago I wrote about Palin and how her media image almost mesmerizingly represents a \u201cfeminine ideal, which is compelling enough to psychically entangle us and from which we are not entirely able to free ourselves\u201d (McCabe, \u201cIn the Feminine Ideal\u201d). When we talk of Sarah Palin, we cannot seem to stop talking about her gender\u2014her procreative abilities, her pro-life choices and anti-abortion stance, her balancing motherhood with politics. It is for these reasons that she so seductively embodies, what Rebecca Traister describes as, \u201ca form of feminine power that is utterly digestible\u201d (\u201cZombie Feminists\u201d). This power is not merely about partisan party politics (and rarely does it translate into something real), but nonetheless remains profoundly political. It is \u201cutterly digestible\u201d because what she represents exacts a keen normalising hold over us, shaped and \u201cinscribed\u201d as it is with the imprint of prevailing historical and political forms of discursive power that manage and animate our perception and experience of what that might mean.<\/p>\n Between 2008 and the following presidential cycle in 2012 one could not open a newspaper or switch on the television without seeing the many faces of Sarah Palin\u2014politician, celebrity, TV pundit, reality TV star.<\/p>\n Laurie Ouellette observes the following:<\/p>\n More than any political figure to date, Palin translates the traditional voter-political relationship into the logic of fandom and branding. She invites her rightwing political constituents to track and consume her appearances and products across print, electronic, and digital media, and she thus directly profits from their participation in convergence culture. (190)<\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n Palin looks comfortable sitting alongside her two daughters chatting with Oprah Winfrey, or touring the American heartlands in a bus with her family, signing copies of her book in places like Grand Rapids, Michigan, as she tests the waters for a presidential run. She even had her own reality TV show, Sarah Palin\u2019s Alaska<\/em> (TLC, 2010-11), in which fish, family, and faith figured prominently. We may know that the Tea Party refers to the 1773 events in Boston when colonists defied the British over tea taxation, with their direct action (dumping tea into the harbour) effectively igniting the American Revolution. But, with our postmodern historical amnesia we might somehow be fooled. Tea Party gatherings look more like family picnics than political rallies, and it is where Palin reminds her eager audience \u201cthere is no greater service than mothering\u201d (Going Rogue<\/em> 342). Palin may stand as an outsider, a lone voice on the edges of her political party, but she is always \u201cinside\u201d power. Her interchange of sexuality and familial alliance, charged with parental and conjugal obligations, speaks directly to a moral and socio-economic consciousness. Her performance of mothering and motherhood forms \u201ca political ordering of life\u201d (Foucault 123) while affirming the importance of that self in maintaining it. It is a discourse that transmits and is an effect of power, but it is also limited, making it possible to thwart what she represents as a consequence.<\/p>\n When I started writing this paper following the symposium \u201cMedia and Mothers Matters\u201d at the University of Winchester in October 2011 Palin had yet to announce whether or not she was going to run for the presidency. Soon after Palin declared that she would not and another woman was electrifying the radical right of the Republican Party. Michele Bachmann, who announced her run for the White House in June 2011, eclipsed Palin as the new darling of the Tea Party. She was an evangelical, whose husband ran a controversial Christian counselling service. Like Palin, Bachmann also made enormous political capital from her role as mother to a large brood: five biological children and more than 20 foster children. However, Bachmann never embodied the feminine ideal in quite the same way as Palin and she soon dropped out of the race\u2014along with her nonsensical ideas (such as blaming President Barack Obama for swine flu).<\/p>\n Traditional boundaries between political campaign, media event, and celebrity become blurred with Sarah Palin; or, as she would put it: \u201cYou betcha.\u201d Since her surprise nomination in 2008 Palin has consistently confounded pundits and set perceived political wisdom on its head. Yet her particular austerity brand of post feminism does not unite voters and her choice to combine motherhood with a demanding job failed to win the White House. It is a question of the politics of the body, subject to reproductive function, but also an entire machinery that both qualifies and disqualifies the female body dependent on its uses. She may look<\/em> like her socially fiscal conservative agenda, but that does not translate into her looking<\/em> like a leader. Carol Moseley Braun, who ran for president in 2004 but was knocked out in the first round, said it best when she stated: \u201cThe script hasn\u2019t been written yet. The visual don\u2019t exist for a woman in leadership\u201d (qtd. In Goldenberg 43). In looking at how Palin politicized mothering and the mother as an ideal in political life, this article has offered insight into why we are still waiting.<\/p>\n Fig.1 Photograph: Chip Somodevilla\/Getty Images, Sarah Palin and her family at the Republican convention in 2008: Track, Bristol, her then-boyfriend Levi Johnston, Willow, Piper, Todd and Sarah, holding Trig, 2008. http:\/\/www.theguardian.com\/politics\/blog\/2009\/sep\/03\/mckinsey-nhs-sarah-palin<\/a><\/p>\n Fig.2 Photograph: Shannon Stapleton\/Reuters, Sarah Palin hugs her son Trig, who has Down’s syndrome, after her address to the 2008 Republican National Convention, 2008<\/em>. http:\/\/www.dailymail.co.uk\/news\/article-2125458\/Clare-Short-facing-criticism-use-word-mongol-Radio-4-interview-children-Downs-syndrome.html<\/a><\/p>\n Fig. 3 Photograph: Anonymous user \u201cam0n.\u201d\u00a0The Girl and The Gun\u2014Sarah Palin photoshopped<\/em>. http:\/\/www.flickr.com\/photos\/97897149@N00\/2818816914<\/a><\/p>\n Fig. 4. USA Weekend, Cover story: Sarah Palin and Family, <\/em>May 6, 2010<\/em>.\u00a0http:\/\/www.usaweekend.com\/article\/20100507\/HOME\/100507001\/<\/a><\/p>\n Beecher, Catharine. The American Woman\u2019s Home; or Principles of Domestic Science<\/em>. New York: J.B. Ford, 1870.<\/p>\n Cochrane, Kira. \u201cFair Game?\u201d Guardian<\/em> 24 Oct. 2008: G2, 16-17. 20 Sept. 2013 <http:\/\/www.guardian.co.uk\/lifeandstyle\/2008\/oct\/24\/women-sarahpalin<\/a>>.<\/p>\n Cohen, Nick. \u201cWhen Barack\u2019s Berserkers Lost the Plot.\u201d Observer<\/em> 7 Sept. 2008, 34. 20 Sept. 2013<\/p>\n <http:\/\/www.guardian.co.uk\/commentisfree\/2008\/sep\/07\/uselections2008.republicans2008<\/a>>.<\/p>\n Coontz, Stephanie. The Way We Never Were: American Families and the Nostalgia Trap<\/em>. New York: Basic, 1992.<\/p>\n Cummings, Jeanne. \u201cRNC Shells Out $150K for Palin Fashion.\u201d Politico<\/em> 21 Oct. 2008. 20 Sept. 2013 <http:\/\/www.politico.com\/news\/stories\/1008\/14805.html<\/a>>.<\/p>\n Falk, Erika. Women for President: Media Bias in Nine Campaigns<\/em>. Chicago: U of Illinois P, 2010.<\/p>\n Foucault. Michel. The Will of Knowledge: History of Sexuality. <\/em>Vol. 1. London: Penguin, 1998.<\/p>\n Fox-Genovese, Elizabeth. Feminism Is Not the Story of My Life: How Today\u2019s Feminist Elite Has Lost Touch with the Real Concerns of Women<\/em>. New York: Doubleday, 1996.<\/p>\n Freedland, Jonathan. \u201cWho Knows If Palin Will Bring Victory or Defeat? But the Culture Wars Are Back.\u201d Guardian<\/em> 3 Sept. 2008. 20 Sept. 2013<\/p>\n <http:\/\/www.guardian.co.uk\/commentisfree\/2008\/sep\/03\/uselections2008.palin<\/a>>,<\/p>\n Gibb, Nancy. \u201cSarah Palin\u2019s Breakout Night.\u201d Time<\/em> 4 Sept. 2008. 20 Sept 2013 <http:\/\/www.time.com\/time\/politics\/article\/0,8599,1838553,00.html<\/a>>.<\/p>\n Goldenberg, Suzanne. Madam President. Is America Ready to Send Hillary Clinton to the White House?<\/em> London: Guardian, 2007.<\/p>\n ______ \u201cMcCain Forced into Supporting Role on Tour as Republican Crowds Flock to Palin.\u201d Guardian<\/em> 11 Sept. 2008: 20. 3 Dec. 2011 <(http:\/\/www.guardian.co.uk\/world\/2008\/sep\/11\/uselections2008.johnmccain<\/a>>.<\/p>\n Harris, Paul. The Return of St. Sarah.\u201d The Guardian<\/em>, 20 Nov, 2009, 32<\/p>\n Kantor, Jodi, Kate Zernike and Catrin Einhorn, \u201cFusing Politics and Motherhood in a New Way,\u201d The New York Times<\/em>, 8 Sept 2008. 20 Sept. 2013 http:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2008\/09\/08\/us\/politics\/08baby.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0<\/p>\n Kinsman, Patrick. \u201cA Girl and a Gun: Photoshop Fakes Sarah Palin.\u201d Flow<\/em> 8.10.<\/p>\n 20 Oct. 2008. 3 Dec. 2011 <http:\/\/flowtv.org\/2008\/10\/a-girl-and-a-gun-photoshop-fakes-sarah-palinpatrick-kinsman-iupui\/<\/a> >.<\/p>\n Marino, Gordon,\u00a0 \u201cA Post-Mortem of the Debate Post-Mortem: Trying to Refrain from Questioning Pat Buchanan’s Motives.\u201d Huffington Post<\/em>, 8 Oct. 2008, http:\/\/www.huffingtonpost.com\/gordon-marino\/a-post-mortem-of-the-deba_b_131942.html<\/p>\n McCabe, Janet. \u201cStates of Confusion: Sarah Palin and the Politics of US Mothering.\u201d Feminist Media Studies<\/em> 12.1 (2012): 149-53.<\/p>\n ______ \u201cIn the Feminine Ideal, We Trust.\u201d Flow<\/em> 8.10. 20 Oct. 2008. Online. 2 Sept. 2011 <http:\/\/flowtv.org\/2008\/10\/in-the-feminine-ideal-we-trustjanet-mccabe-manchester-metropolitan-university\/<\/a>>.<\/p>\n McCain, John. \u201cTranscript McCain and Palin in Dayton, Ohio.\u201d New York Times<\/em> 29 Aug. 2008. <http:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2008\/08\/29\/us\/politics\/29text-palin.html?pagewanted=all<\/a>>.<\/p>\n Miller, Jacques-Alain. \u201cSarah Palin: Operation \u2018Castration.\u2019\u201d Lacan.com<\/em> (2008).<\/p>\n 12 Mar. 2011 <http:\/\/www.lacan.com\/jampalin.html<\/a>>.<\/p>\n MommyTracked. \u201cMaking Motherhood Look Too Easy.\u201d MommyTracked: Managing the Chaos of Modern Motherhood<\/em>, Oct 2008, 20 Sept. 2013 http:\/\/www.mommytracked.com\/sarah-motherhood-too-easy<\/p>\n Ouellette, Laurie. \u201cBranding the Right: The Affective Economy of Sarah Palin.\u201d Cinema Journal<\/em> 51.4 (Summer 2012): 185-91.<\/p>\n Palin, Sarah. \u201cTranscript McCain and Palin in Dayton, Ohio.\u201d New York Times<\/em> 29 Aug. 2008. 20 Sept. 2013 <http:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2008\/08\/29\/us\/politics\/29text-palin.html?pagewanted=all<\/a>>.<\/p>\n ____. Going Rogue: An American Life<\/em>. New York: HarperCollins, 2009.<\/p>\n Pew Research Center<\/em>. Palin Press Coverage: Fair and Important. \u201cMcCain’s Image Improves: With Big Assist From Palin.\u201d 10 Sept. 2008. 20 Sept. 2013<\/p>\n <http:\/\/www.people-press.org\/2008\/09\/10\/mccains-image-improves-with-big-assist-from-palin\/<\/a>>.<\/p>\n Power, Nina. \u201cSarah Palin: Castration as Plenitude.\u201d Flow<\/em> 8.10. 20 Oct. 2008. 20 Sept. 2013 <http:\/\/flowtv.org\/2008\/10\/sarah-palin-castration-as-plenitude-nina-power-roehampton-university\/<\/a>>.<\/p>\n PunditMom. \u201cMaybe Sarah Palin\u2019s Motherhood is a Plus for Democrats.\u201d MOMcrats<\/em>, 11 Sept. 2008.<\/em> 2 Nov. 2011 <http:\/\/momocrats.typepad.com\/momocrats\/2008\/09\/maybe-sarah-pal.html<\/a>>.<\/p>\n Raban, Jonathan. \u201cSarah and Her Tribe.\u201d The<\/em> New York Review of Books<\/em> 14 Jan, 2010. 20 Sept. 2013 <http:\/\/www.nybooks.com\/articles\/archives\/2010\/jan\/14\/sarah-and-her-tribe\/?pagination=false<\/a>>.<\/p>\n Riley, Glenda. Women and Indians on the Frontier, 1825-1915<\/em>. Albuquerque: U of New Mexico P, 1988.<\/p>\n Siegel, Deborah. Sisterhood Interrupted: From Radical Women to Girls Gone Wild<\/em>, New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2007.<\/p>\n Triaster, Rebecca. \u201cPalin, Pregnancy and the Presidency.\u201d Salon.com<\/em> 1 Sept. 2008. 20 Sept. 2013 <http:\/\/www.salon.com\/2008\/09\/01\/palin_baby\/singleton\/<\/a>>.<\/p>\n _____. \u201cZombie Feminists of the RNC.\u201d Salon.com<\/em> 11 Sept. 2008. 15 Sep. 2008<\/p>\n <http:\/\/www.salon.com\/life\/feature\/2008\/09\/11\/zombie_feminism<\/a>>.<\/p>\n Valenti, Jessica. \u201cHockey Mom or President, Sarah Palin Insults all Women in Politics.\u201d Guardian<\/em> 19 Nov. 2009. 10 Dec. 2009<\/p>\n <http:\/\/www.guardian.co.uk\/commentisfree\/cifamerica\/2009\/nov\/19\/hockey-mom-or-president-palin<\/a>>.<\/p>\n Walker, Rebecca. \u201cBeing Real: An Introduction,\u201d To Be Real: Telling the Truth and Changing the Face of Feminism<\/em>. Ed. Rebecca Walker. New York: Doubleday, 1995, xxix-xl<\/p>\n Wolf, Noami. Fire With Fire: The New Female Power and How It Will Change the 21st<\/sup> Century<\/em>. New York: Random, 1993.<\/p>\n This article is licensed under a \u00a0Creative Commons 3.0 License<\/a> although certain works referenced herein may be separately licensed, or the author has exercised their right to fair dealing\u00a0under the\u00a0Canadian Copyright Act<\/em>.<\/p>\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/imaginations.space\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/11\/McCabe-Fig.-1.jpg\" "\\"McCabe")
<\/a>Fig. 1<\/p>\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/imaginations.space\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/11\/McCabe-Fig.-2.jpg\" "\\"McCabe")
<\/a>Fig. 2<\/p>\n
\nIt\u2019s the kind of thing that keeps you grounded. (Palin, Going Rogue<\/em> 24)<\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n
\nThey all just looked at me. Dead silence.
\nOkay \u2026 let me try something else<\/em>.
\n\u201cRemember when I promised to \u2018deliver\u2019 for Alaska?\u201d
\nNothing \u2026
\nFinally, I gave up on the jokes and went direct: \u201cGuys, I\u2019m pregnant. I\u2019m having a baby in two months!\u201d
\nThree mouths fell open, and three pairs of eyes dropped straight to my stomach. (Palin, Going Rogue <\/em>192)<\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/imaginations.space\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/11\/McCabe-Fig.-3.jpg\" "\\"McCabe")
<\/a>Fig. 3<\/p>\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/imaginations.space\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/11\/McCabe-Fig.-4.jpg\" "\\"McCabe")
<\/a>Fig. 4<\/p>\nImage Notes<\/strong><\/h4>\n
Works Cited<\/strong><\/h4>\n
\n
![\"\"](\"https:\/\/imaginations.space\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/09\/88x31-1.png\" "\\"88x31")
<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"