Someone at Memeorandum really has an agenda for the fairer sex to get back in the kitchen and go back to baking pies. Two headlines leap off the page there:

Hillary Clinton leaves flowers for Our Lady of Guadalupe, asks ‘Who painted it?’
Staff infection: Allies rip Palin team

It’s interesting to me that, having just read the headlines, we’re aware down to the most excruciating detail exactly what Hillary did that falls short of our expectations for someone invested in that most austere among cabinet positions, Secretary of State — and we haven’t got the slightest clue how this applies to the Governor of Alaska.

If you click on the Palin article, that situation continues. The definition of Palin’s failin’, is vague, substandard, and the sourcing…the sourcing is really something else. It’s pure tabloid shit. “…said one former aide and loyalist.” “…added a national Republican operative who has worked with Palin.” “…said a CPAC source.” “…said a Republican operative…” The only people named, so far as I can see, are spokesmen for Palin who are disputing the accounts from these unnamed, anonymous, nattering nabobs — who might very well exist, who knows? It comes from Politico, which should be above this kind of ritual astrology-tabloid-celeb-sourcing, but I guess sometimes you can’t let journalistic standards get in the way of an agenda.

The upshot is: Palin has friends, and there are also some people somewhere chattering away with some ugly things about her. Um…I notice, those are the two characteristics that apply to all effective people.

Hillary, on the other hand, committed a gaffe in the mold of “Isn’t it an amazing coincidence the natural elements could put four of our Presidents on Mount Rushmore?” Except it was the other way around…

Msgr. Monroy took Mrs. Clinton to the famous image of Our Lady of Guadalupe, which had been previously lowered from its usual altar for the occasion.

After observing it for a while, Mrs. Clinton asked “who painted it?” to which Msgr. Monroy responded “God!”

Well, I’m no more Catholic than Hillary is. I could’ve made this mistake easily. I’m not a chick. So there’s no incrimination here, either.

What I find to be substandard performance on Clinton’s part, has nothing to do with the “who painted it” thing and nothing at all to do with being female:

Leaving the basilica half an hour later, Mrs. Clinton told some of the Mexicans gathered outside to greet her, “you have a marvelous virgin!”

This evening Secretary of State Hillary Clinton is set to receive the highest award given by Planned Parenthood Federation of America — the Margaret Sanger Award, named for the organization’s founder, a noted eugenicist. The award will be presented at a gala event in Houston, Texas.

Dis-gust-ing.

Look: Gals can do things gentlemen cannot do. As a dude, I am the successor to the first caveman to dig a hole in the ground to catch a tiger; the first Egyptian guy to invent beer (yay!); the Knights of the Round Table; the first guy to lay his fine cape across a mud puddle so a lady of stature and position could walk across it. We labor under a different set of rules. I get that.

But the line is drawn — I should think — here. Progress this far, and no further.

You can’t kowtow to the Catholics, and then in the space of a few hours, hobnob with the baby-harvesting crowd. Palin never did anything like this. Women, and men even more often, in the democrat party do this routinely. They get away with it routinely. Many of them are Catholic…or call themselves Catholic…and mention it, often, right before declaring the when-does-life-begin question to be “complicated” and mumbling some nonsensical stuff about supporting a woman’s right to choose even though it is, in their “personal” opinion, wrong.

So they’re good Catholics because they don’t abort, as individuals. Nobody in their family aborts. They cherish the belief that their Creator looks down upon this with disdain, as a Creator naturally would. But they’ll provide taxpayer funds so other women can abort. Whoopsee, all of a sudden there’s nothing wrong with it…if it’s a “choice.”

This is tolerated.

Once a Republican talks about “family values” he can’t even so much as look at another woman, if she happens to be pretty — the desperate, bellicose cries of “HYPOCRISY!” rise up like flames around gasoline.

As I said at Cassy’s place when she highlighted this story…

In my opinion, this is just scratching the surface, and by itself it is plenty enough to completely turn things around. YES I said all by itself: This juxtaposition on the left side of the aisle, between Catholic and Catholic-wannabe stuff, and…well, let’s call it what it is. Baby-body-parts-harvesting.

Republicans talk about familee-valyooz and then get caught cheating on their wives — they have to take it on the chin for that stuff. And they do. And they should. But this is oh so much more disturbing, this wooing of the Catholic vote followed by playing to the Doctor Frankensteins. It is utterly irreconcilable.

I’d think the successor to Thomas Jefferson would be savvy enough to not place these highly public displays right next to each other. Shouldn’t she be? Maybe I’m asking way too much. Either way, this beats the “who painted that?” thing by a mile-and-a-half. Easily.

So creepy.

So anyway, that’s where we’re at. Back to the subject at hand: It’s play-gotcha-with-women day, it seems…and no, I don’t think Memeorandum started it, I think it’s a prevailing theme. Perhaps the time was right and Hillary’s incompetence ignited something. The whole Palin thing, clearly, is a solution-in-search-of-a-problem. Like most other Palin dirt, when you check it out there’s nothing there.

Nothing but somebody’s agenda. In over her head? Good heavens, you wanna find people in over their head, look no further than the White House. You want to fly to Alaska to get that kind of a story? I thought we were supposed to be worried about carbon emissions.

It’s an interesting study in contrasts:

With the Clinton story, I know immediately why she disappointed someone. With the Palin story all I know is what some nameless faceless strangers want me to think, and I have to grind through paragraph after paragraph after paragraph to figure out why I should think so.

What would’ve happen if Sarah Palin, noted for her staunch pro-life stance, asked “who painted that?”…I wonder? Could it be we’d end up talking about that for awhile longer than we’ll be stewing over this?