The XX Factor: What women really think.

"Palin's Pals" on Good Morning America

My office is all abuzz about Good Morning America's spot this morning, "Palin's Pals," in which GMA interviews four of her closest friends. My response was: Is this The View-ification of the country? Am I really supposed to care what her friends say about her? Please! What does that have to do with voting record and politics? Would any news show dare such a dumbed-down tactic about a male politician? I suppose the media does do such a thing, when they interview male politicians' wives. I always recoil from those speeches, in which females are the ones designated as the bearers of emotional truth.

Fortunately, three of Palin's laconic crew (is it an Alaskan thing? These women are very, very laid back) refuse to say who they will vote for. (Three of them, interestingly, declare that they are pro-choice.) They have the great sense to say that their friendships don't depend on shared politics. My mom the small-town politician - a Democrat in the heavily Republican Greene County, Ohio - also has an array of friends with whom she does not discuss politics, because it leads to nothing good.

But my female coworkers found the "Pals" lack of enthusiasm for Palin quite shocking. My co-workers' view is this: If the Pals weren't going to rave about Sarah, they shouldn't have gone on television. They concluded that this reticence said something damning about Palin and declared those friendships dead. 

Every now and then I wonder whether I am Spock's long-lost Vulcan sister. Am I unusual in not caring a whit about what her nonpolitical friends think? How does this relate to the price of gas?