Sarah Palin has a new show in town. No, it’s not “Hot in Cleveland,” it’s called “Mama Grizzlies,” and it’s her (p)action call to conservative women.

Here, treat youself to the dulcet tones of La Belle Sarah: Palin\’s Grizzlies

Okay, first of all, thank god that woman didn’t become Veep, because listening to someone who sounds like an extra from “Fargo”  for four years would send me screaming into the wilderness.  Wait, you’re right, that’s not fair. I shouldn’t disparage her because of her voice. She can’t help that.

Besides, who cares about her voice, when there’s so much other material to work with?

The premise of this video, as near as I can tell, is that women should do what Sarah asks them to because they’re all moms together–moms who don’t seem to think, exactly. They just “kinda know when something is wrong,” and apparently there is a LOT wrong.  I would like to tell you what’s on this very long list of wrong, but Sarah doesn’t do specifics.  We should just believe that stuff is wrong, that the will of the people isn’t being respected; it’s all just bad bad bad! But sparkly Sarah, or friends of sparkly Sarah, will fix it–and then, if you’re lucky, you might get a hug from Sarah or maybe a pretty pink rose.

I don’t know if Palin or her people know this, but her attempts to roust women simply on the basis of their reproductive capabilities echoes attitudes of early 20th century suffragists advocating for the vote. These women (and some men) were threatened, beaten, fined, and imprisoned for having the balls to suggest that women should vote.  They went on hunger strikes, chained themselves to the fence of the White House, staged protests and marches and rallies (one featuring a beautiful suffragist wearing a long white cape, a crown, and riding a white horse. Take that, Lady Gaga!) , trying to combat anti-suffragist arguments that claimed women shouldn’t vote because they were, simultaneously:  too pure, too corrupt, too stupid, too emotional, too parochial, too abstract, too spiritual, too physical.  If women got the vote, reasoning went, they would stop having children and the country would fall apart. Suffragists turned the rhetoric around, arguing that the Nation was “Home,” and so women should be turned loose on the national home in order to sweep the country clean.

So okay, so far, it sounds Palin-ish, right?  Moms are caretakers, and so who better to take care of the country? But suffragists also “kinda knew when something is wrong” and their list of what they wanted to fix was a lot longer than just getting the vote: their “women’s issues” included equal pay for equal work; adequate and affordable childcare; labor protection for immigrants and children; fairer divorce laws; greater representation for women in court…Their list looks a whole lot more progressive than anything Palin would come up with, even though the suffragist list is almost 100 years old (god, that’s depressing).

Generations of women struggled to ensure that women would become full citizens…and you’re telling me that after all that struggle we end up with….Mama Grizzlies? Like some kind of demented  Berenstain Bears story? 

Palin is pissed–and beautiful, there’s no denying it.  The video makes sure we all know that Palin is the prettiest gal in the (Republican) party; she’s the queen of the moms, yessiree.  But are her soccer/hockey/grizzly moms really going to buy into her vague but well-coiffed anger? And then I ask myself, does Palin’s posse of soccer moms agree with right-wing nut personality G. Gordon Liddy, who claims he hates soccer in part because it comes from South American Indians who originally played it with the decapitated head of their enemy? (You think I could make that shit up? Click here)

The whole video is just all very confusing. We’ve got mama grizzlies over here, pretty Sarah with roses over there, and then for the big finale, she threatens Washington with a stampeding herd of pink elephants, who will be taking over on on November 2, 2010.

Eh? Howzzat? She’s calling her would-be supporters pink elephants?

Seriously?

Her writers must be either sleeping or drunk or both. Because correct me if I’m wrong, but aren’t “pink elephants” what you see when you’re shit-faced?  So what’s she saying?  DC residents better batten down the hatches because the GOP Ladies are coming to town on a bender? Gonna be like Fleet Week, but in dress-pinks instead of dress whites? Do conservative women like this image of themselves? Do they know what an elephant looks like in a bathing suit? It’s not pretty, ladies, not pretty at all.

Jeezuz. If this is what it means to have women in politics, we’re screwed. If it would force Sarah to march her mama menagerie back up to the 51st state, I say we just  revoke the 19th amendment, what the hell.

Or maybe it’s all a drunken hallucination and in fact we’ve been watching outtakes from “Fargo” all along?