Carolyn Witte '12 tries to place the Palinites along the current political spectrum

Cody Gault '11 explains why the recent controversy around the proposed Qur'an burning ceremony showed America is a positive light.

For America to heal it self-inflicted wounds, it must stop fighting and love the academy.

These past four years have brought us sorostitutes, chalkings, dubiously racist comments, death panels and f-books. But what does it all mean?

The once-noble Republican John McCain has turned rightward in recent days, tumbling into the open arms of Sarah Palin and her legions of followers.

Cody Gault '11 and Associate Editor Tony Manfred '11 talk Sarah Palin's brilliance, Canadians, and all things Slope Day in the latest Extra! Extra! podcast.

I met her at a rest stop in Blandford, Mass. this past Sunday. I was standing in front of a wall of snack food at the gift shop when I saw her slowly pacing through the adjoining Sbarro’s, squinting through her glasses at the grease-soaked pizzas on display.

I went numb.

I’d caught just a glimpse of her, out of the corner of my eye no less, but I knew it was her instantly. It was a sub-conscious recognition, as if I’d already memorized her every dimension, as if hours of television exposure allowed me to keep a mental blueprint of each of her distinguishing traits.

Beauty queens have put world peace on the back burner. In an interview on MSNBC’s Today Show this week, former Miss California Carrie Prejean said that she has been “Palinized” by the media for voicing her opposition to gay marriage during the Miss USA pageant in April. (To be “Palinized,” she explains, is to be unfairly scrutinized because you are a conservative woman. This is not to be confused with “Palinated,” which is to be propelled to the forefront of conservative politics despite being incompetent because you are a former beauty queen.) Prejean’s assertion that “marriage should be between a man and a woman” certainly attracted heavy scrutiny from gay rights activists and left-wing commentators like Keith Olbermann.

Rogue, the X-Man, has the superpower of sucking the life out of everything she touches. Palin, the ex-governor, can relate.

The first time she unleashed her great power, you’ll recall, she killed John McCain’s 2008 election bid (albeit not an extraordinary feat). Then, mere months after returning to Alaska, she terminated her own governorship amidst mounting ethics complaints — and mounting speculation that her 15 minutes of fame might be up.

The recent State of the Union-type stirring from the Obama camp has led me to ponder the state of something else: feminism. But what are the recent feminist milestones, the ones that will one day be read over in the history books and chuckled about as artifacts from a time when we actually needed something like feminism to fight a thing called “social inequality”? Answering that question proved harder than I expected.