Cabbage Patch Palin

There's really no escaping Sarah Palin right now, is there? For instance there is the Sarah Palin Cabbage Patch Doll that will be auctioned off on Ebay along with Obama, McCain, and Biden dolls.

And then I was also reading one of the main articles this morning linked to MSN's home page about Matt Lauer's interview with Palin that aired today. She seemed a lot more likeable now that the election is over and she wasn't giving such divisive speeches. And I'm sure that having Lauer interview her in her kitchen with her family while she prepared a meal was meant to convey her "down-home" qualities. However, reading about it did make me feel like it could have been a little overly Martha Stewart to have the Governor of Alaska making a salmon and halibut casserole on national television. Not that she shouldn't be cooking, but isn't it a little contrived? Is she playing up the whole "supermom/governor" angle or is that really who she is? And does that mean that Matt Lauer is also going to do an interview with Joe Biden while he fires up the grill? I don't know how to feel about the obvious gender stereotyping that Palin seems to represent.

Powerful Women: Not Just Oprah Anymore!

In my internet browsing (read: homework avoidance) I was looking at an article on the 25 highest paid women. There a few women I'd heard of (Ebay's Meg Whitman and uh... Meg Whitman), and many that I hadn't. I thought it was great that they weren't all white; for example Pepsi's Chairman and CEO--Indra Nooyi, or Avon's Chairman and CEO--Andrea Jung. And I said "Chairman" because that's what it said for their titles in the article.

And it seemed like they were making bank too! Andrea's total compensation for 2007 was $11 million. Indra took home $14.7 million. Sharilyn Gasaway at Alltel made $38.6 million in 2007! (Too bad about her name.) But when I clicked on the link to see the 25 highest paid men, well, there wasn't really any comparison. Steve Schwarzman topped the list with $350 million. In fact, the lowest paid out of all of them still made more than Ms. Gasaway at $41.9 million (Larry Fink of BlackRock). Additionally, only one of the men is not white (#20, Kenneth Chenault of American Express). Trust me. I Googled the three in the article that didn't have headshots to make sure. Compared to the (at least) three women top 25 earners who weren't white, I thought that said something.

But I'm too tired to really figure out the ultimate significance right now. Instead, I will go make some sketch models out of paper and leave you, gentle reader, to come to your own conclusions.