The election’s over, but Glamour editor Cindi Leive is already rooting for a Sarah Palin comeback. “Oh, I think she’s got a brilliant future,” said Leive at the election party she hosted with Harvey Weinstein, Jim Nelson, and Georgette Mosbacher the other night. “Personally, I think she is a gifted politician. She’s a great communicator. She’s a magnetic personality. I don’t see how you can discount that.” Leive thinks Palin’s candidacy was “great for women”; she’s even okay with that whole making-women-in-Wasilla-pay-for-their-own-rape-kit thing. “It’s anti-women, if you’re a feminist,” she said. “It doesn’t seem anti-women to her. I don’t know. I’m not any more offended by her having those views than I am by any man holding those same views, and in the end, I think it’s a good thing to have more women out there with alternate political views. I just think that expands our ideas of what women are capable of.” What does offend Leive, however, is “the venom with which some women have reacted to her. She has strong political views, but so do lots of men. The glee with which some women are jumping on her demise kind of turns me off. It reminds me of Martha Stewart,” she went on.
“Back in the day when she first had her TV show, there were a lot of women who just loved to hate on Martha Stewart. And on some level it always seemed like they were feeling put down by her choices. Here’s this woman who’s stenciling her mantle. It makes you as a woman feel like you’re not woman enough if you’re not stenciling your mantle. A man encounters Bob Vila and he doesn’t think, ‘Who is this A-hole rebuilding his deck? I don’t have time to rebuild my deck! How dare he tell me to do that!’ A guy would just turn the channel, you know. And women should be able to do that, too. Why do you feel like that’s a referendum on how you live your life? Women take Sarah Palin’s choices really personally. And I think that real progress for women will be when there’s just enough of us out there that you don’t feel like every woman’s behavior is some kind of referendum on you and your choices.”
Update 11/19/08. Cindi Leive wrote to clarify her comments as follows:
“Hi New York readers — I’d like to correct some statements in the above item. I do think Palin’s run for office was all told good for women, but I am not (and never said I was) ‘rooting for a Palin comeback’ or, more importantly, ‘OK with’ the rape-kit policy. (I’m not. Who is? My point was about the extra venom with which women received her — since plenty of men espouse the same politics she does and don’t engender the same rage.)”
