Martin Kettle: The Perfect Match of Sarah Palin and Margaret Thatcher
[Martin Kettle is an associate editor of the Guardian and writes on British, European and American politics, as well as the media, law and music.]
...If it's true that Sarah Palin is trying to arrange an audience with Mrs T, then it is not exactly hard to see why. Rightwing female icons don't grow on trees, so a Palin-Thatcher meeting has a sort of marketing inevitability – although the ignorance of the one and the infirmity of the other mean that two public figures with a shakier grip on what is going on the world would be hard to find.
It's a reminder, too, that while Thatcher is world-famous, she is no longer politically a global brand. Americans have always revered her far more than Europeans or Africans, for example – or Irish, or Scots. And many Americans (like Russians of a certain era) are blissfully unaware of how unpopular she always was, and still is, with many British people....
So let Palin take her chance. We shouldn't take her so seriously. But we should still take Thatcher seriously. She is a historic figure, as a woman as a prime minister and as an economic liberal. Just because she is controversial, it doesn't mean she isn't important....
Read entire article at Guardian (UK)
...If it's true that Sarah Palin is trying to arrange an audience with Mrs T, then it is not exactly hard to see why. Rightwing female icons don't grow on trees, so a Palin-Thatcher meeting has a sort of marketing inevitability – although the ignorance of the one and the infirmity of the other mean that two public figures with a shakier grip on what is going on the world would be hard to find.
It's a reminder, too, that while Thatcher is world-famous, she is no longer politically a global brand. Americans have always revered her far more than Europeans or Africans, for example – or Irish, or Scots. And many Americans (like Russians of a certain era) are blissfully unaware of how unpopular she always was, and still is, with many British people....
So let Palin take her chance. We shouldn't take her so seriously. But we should still take Thatcher seriously. She is a historic figure, as a woman as a prime minister and as an economic liberal. Just because she is controversial, it doesn't mean she isn't important....