GUILT-TRIPPED NEW YORK TIMES REPORTER TAKES SWIPE AT PALINITES' STRAW WOMAN

Kim Severson of The New York Times went to Wasilla, Alaska, to meet female Palin supporters and clearly got guilt-tripped:

These are women who dip in and out of the work force, believe in prayer and spend their days trying to keep the crayon off the walls. They feel they have been looked down on by Clinton feminists....

So Severson gives us their version of Palin -- and the brave, PC-defying act that defines her (emphasis mine):

Like many women in the valley where Ms. Palin comes from, her appeal here, and in recent days across the country, is more about who she is -- that is, a devout Christian with a husband who supports her career, but a person who is not afraid to show up in public with a baby on her hip.

What is Severson saying? That secular-humanist liberal non-rural women are "afraid to show up in public" with babies on their hips?

I live on the Upper West Side in Manhattan -- the antithesis of Wasilla in every way -- and on most days you can't walk ten steps without encountering a mother with a stroller. And it's probably a mother who has, had, or had and will soon resume a significant career.

That's true of every gentrified neighborhood in this city -- hell, Williamsburg in Brooklyn, the former alt-culture mecca that's become increasingly yuppified, is sneered at by hipper residents and visitors as "Babyburg." Guess what? The moms don't care.

At my office, there's no shame in motherhood -- far from it. On odd days when there's no school or camp, it's not at all unusual to see little kids -- the children of women in significant positions -- stomping down the hall. There's certainly no fear of being seen as a mother.

"Liberal media" reporters, please. When you go to strange and exotic lands and are told that you, as a hated sophisticate, don't understand the locals, remember: they don't understand you and your peers, either. Don't automatically assume that their stereotypes of you are accurate.