Sarah Palin: a Doomed Queen?

Here in NYC, we’re basking in the aftermath of an Obama win. No offense to McCain supporters, but the past eight years have proven that the politics of fear and violence only compound global disharmony. McCain’s resounding loss was accompanied by the defeat of Sarah Palin, his running mate. Like her or loathe her, one can’t help but wonder whether Palin is a Doomed Queen.

My answer: Yes, yes, and yes. And I knew Palin was one from the start — though of course, it’s easy to say so in retrospect. Even when Palin’s approval rating was through the roof (ie: pre-Katie Couric interview or Tina Fey’s devastating SNL impersonations), the signs were all there. While women aren’t forced nowadays into dynastic marriages or trapped in the Tower of London as they once were, the cautionary example of the Doomed Queen still lives and thrives, despite Hillary Clinton’s “18 million cracks in the glass ceiling.”

Here are five ways Sarah Palin is a Doomed Queen:

1. Palin is the product of an arranged political marriage; she met only once with John McCain before he popped the question. Many Doomed Queens’ dynastic marriages ended unhappily due to inbreeding, incompatibility, even murder. In the case of Catherine of Aragon, Henry VIII’s starter wife, the demise of their union signaled the start of a new religion in England — one way to dump an unwanted alliance.

2. McCain was in love with someone else. It’s rumored that McCain desired Joe Lieberman as his running mate, but was pushed to accept Palin to protect his claim for the “throne.” McCain’s situation reminds me of Regency England’s George IV, who ruled England after his father George III lost the colonies along with his mind. George Junior was pushed to marry Caroline of Brunswick, his eccentric first cousin, though he was in love with another woman. When George met Caroline just before the wedding, he called for a stiff brandy and stumbled through the ceremony falling-down drunk. I don’t know if John McCain drinks, but one can imagine him in a similar choleric snit after learning that Sarah’s daughter Bristol was five months pregnant (though he claims to have been aware of it).

3. That written, McCain initially embraced his running mate despite the scandale. At first, Palin was more popular than him—just as Princess Diana proved to be after her glittery public wedding to Prince Charles. For Charles and Diana, jealousy became a destructive force in their royal alliance. But now that McCain has lost, the gloves have come off and Palin is being used as a scapegoat. As an unnamed source from his campaign leaked to the press that Palin is a whack job and was the one responsible for burning up the credit cards in Neiman Marcus a la Marie Antoinette.

4. It’s an old story. Like other Doomed Queens through history, Palin was used as a chess piece on another’s game board to woo a target demographic. Only this time, the powers-that-be got more than they bargained for. Palin wasn’t fully vetted, allowing for scandals to surface like poisoned fish in a pond. Federal funds for the Bridge to Nowhere were never refunded. Her friends were rewarded with cushy inappropriate appointments while her enemies were stonewalled. Rumors of book banning, anyone?

5. Biology is destiny. For many Doomed Queens, childbirth and infertility led to their loss of the throne. In the case of Palin, she’s used the fertility of herself and unwed pregnant Bristol to present herself as a pro-life candidate, appealing to the religious right. However in doing so, Palin has thrown her teenage daughter to the media wolves to further her political ambitions — not a sympathetic move. After all, even hard-core conservatives like to see mothers nurture their children, instead of hung out to dry in People magazine.

So is Sarah Palin’s story over? We won’t know for some time, but even if she does run in 2012, I’m sure she won’t be marched like other Doomed Queens to the guillotine. After all, the guillotine was last used by the French in 1977.

Instead, Palin might instead want to follow the path of another powerful Alaskan woman, Sinrock Mary, better known as the Reindeer Queen.

During the Alaskan Gold Rush, Sinrock Mary was an Eskimo who became the richest person in Alaska by raising reindeer for food and pack animals; Sinrock was an outpost of Nome. Gold miners were dependent on Mary for their very survival — and grew covetous of her power. To undermine her, they tried to seduce her with liquor and promises of marriage. When that didn’t work, they threatened violence. Though Mary could have used them to further expand her empire, she was no Doomed Queen.

To avoid the miners, the Reindeer Queen moved from Nome into the wilds of Alaska. She spent the rest of her life there in royal comfort — though no one knows if she owned a tanning bed, like Wasilla Sarah.

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