Do You Think There Are Secret Photos of Margaret Thatcher in a Bikini Somewhere?

I've never been one to be politically correct. It's not my style. Political correctness is an attempt to kill freedom of speech and freedom of thought. "Sexist" in one of those PC words that gets bandied about, and when I hear it I know the PC Police are on patrol and and wagging their fingers at someone who has probably done nothing wrong.

Yet...let's face it. There are times when people, or institutions, or countries, engage in bad, or at the very least, unfair behavior. Sarah Palin says the cover photo Newsweek magazine has of her in a running outfit is sexist. And she's right.

As a heterosexual male, I can appreciate a photo of an attractive woman. And from a merely aesthetic standpoint I'd much rather see a picture of Palin in running shorts than just about any other politician I can think of. If you can remember the vision from the 1990s of Bill Clinton and his pasty white thighs revealed by too-short running shorts as the president jogged from one Washington, DC McDonald's to the next, you can understand what I'm saying here.

But the Newsweek article isn't about Palin the runner, or Palin the MILF, or anything else equally inane and superficial. It is about Palin the political commodity. The photo was taken for a interview Palin did for Runner's World, and Newsweek didn't even have authorization to use it. But use it they did, knowing full well it would cause commotion and get them some much needed attention.

Remember, after the presidential election, Barack Obama and his family went on vacation to Hawaii? There were some photos of a shirtless Obama enjoying the ocean. Granted, he did not pose for these pictures, but they exist nonetheless. Imagine if Newsweek or Time were to do a piece on the Obama White House and used one of those photos on the cover. There would be an uproar of tremendous proportions. Democrats and the liberal Left would be up in arms, decrying the impropriety and the sexism of using flesh to sell a news magazine. Where is the uproar, especially from the so called feminists, now that a conservative Republican is being exploited based on her gender so that a magazine can sell more copies?

Therein lies the hypocrisy in America today. Therein lies the quirkiness of the American mind, a mind that can venerate women at the same times it degrades them, a mind that accepts powerful women in the home or in the schools, or even in the corporate boardrooms but is still manifestly uncomfortable with powerful political women, especially if they happen to be attractive as well.

We may live in a "post-racial" nation, but we are hardly post-sexist, not by a long shot. What else can you say about a country that seems light years from having a female president when other countries, some with fairly male-oriented traditions, have had women become presidents or prime ministers. Great Britain, India, Pakistan, Israel, Indonesia, the Philippines, all have had female heads of state. The US doesn't seem like it's on track to have one for a long, long time.

Perhaps Americans, both male and female, just can't accept, or prefer not to, a woman who is both attractive and successful. Don't give the beautiful too much power, they're not that bright you know. Once upon a time, at least in the world of tv commercials, we lauded the woman who could bring home the bacon and fry it up in the pan. That doesn't seem to be the case anymore.