Time: Why Some Women Hate Sarah Palin

An October 2 article on the Time.com web site offered the opinion of one author, Belinda Luscombe, as to why some women haven't rallied to the Sarah Palin bandwagon.

Luscombe says that women have an incredible ability to tear apart other women. She writes it like this: "Ah, women, the consistently, tragically underestimated constituency. What the Democrats learned during the primaries and the Republicans might now be finding out the hard way, I learned at my very academic, well-regarded all-girls high school: that is never to discount the ability of women to open a robust, committed, well-though-out vat of hatred for another girl."

The fairer sex consists of "weapons-grade haters," Luscombe says. Just ask Hillary, or Sarah Palin. "When women get their hate on, they don't just dislike, or find disfavor with, or sort of not really appreciate. They loathe - deeply, richly, sustainingly."

Luscombe offers readers what she calls the Abbotsleigh Ladies College test, named after her alma mater, to judge why Sarah Palin may be disliked by some women. The test is a three-point pass-fail referendum. The three points are as follows:

First, is she too pretty? "Pretty girls," Luscombe says, "tend to be liked only by other pretty girls. The rest of us, whose looks hover somewhere around underwhelming, resent them and whisper archly of their 'unearned attention.'" Palin is, by most accounts, an attractive woman. And "...if everyone calls your candidate 'hot,' you're in a whole mess of trouble" Luscombe writes.

Second, is she too confident? "Women have self-esteem issues" Luscombe says, in addition to "...other-women's-esteem issues." Timidity can make you a pushover, she says. Be "Too self-aggrandizing and you're a bad word unless it's about a dog, or Project Runway's Kenly." I'll have to ask my wife about that one. I don't watch Project Runway.

Finally, will she embarrass other women? "Every time a woman gets a plum job," Luscombe writes, "be she Hewlett-Packard's ex-boss, Carly Fiorina, or CBS's Katie Couric, there's always that whispery fear that people will think she got the job just because she's a woman." And if things happen to go south? Well, Luscombe says, "...women are the first to turn on her for making it harder for the rest of us to louse up at work."

The bottom line, Luscombe writes, is that "...once a female decides it's over with another female, it's like an end-stage marriage. No matter how seemingly benign, every attribute becomes an affront: the hair, the voice, the husband, the moose-shooting, the glasses, the big family, the making rape victims pay for their own rape test kits."

Of course, that last bit was partisan and unnecessary. I'm sure Ms. Luscombe knows that as Mayor of Wasilla Sarah Palin tried to recoup rape test kit costs from insurance companies, and not victims. But that little tidbit makes for a less bitter ending.