Malkin blows up one double-standard on Palin

From TownHall.com...

Let's talk Mommy Wars, double standards and the media elite. Last Friday, Howard Gutman, a member of the Obama campaign's National Finance Committee, attacked Sarah Palin's ability to be a good parent and have a high-powered public life at the same time. In a finger-wagging appearance on the Laura Ingraham radio show, Obama's operative scolded the Republican mother of five children for not putting her professional career on hold.

"Your responsibility is to put your family first," Gutman lectured as he singled out Palin's Down Syndrome baby and pregnant teenage daughter. "The proper attack is not that a woman shouldn't run for vice president with five kids, it's that a parent, when they have a family in need" should get out of the public sphere and stay home.

The Gutman standard has now been proffered by countless Obama hacks and water-carrying commentators. Damningly, it's high-powered working mothers in the journalism business who are helping to broadcast the anti-Palin slams or doing nothing to defend her.

Malkin continues by noting the same sorts of choices made by four prominent women in the media (with a liberal leaning)-- Katie Couric, Soledad O'Brien, Campbell Brown, and Meredith Viera-- before concluding with grace and (true) tolerance...

As a working woman in the media for 16 years and a working mother in the media for the last eight, I know the commitment and energy it took for these women to get to the top. I've filed columns from hospital beds, written books while nursing, brought my toddlers to TV studios, and told bedtime stories on the cell phone while boarding planes. I've worked hard to strike the "balance" we all seek. I've made good choices and bad choices, and have no regrets about the opportunities I've taken or the opportunities I've rejected. I couldn't have done it without a supportive husband willing to forego his own career goals -- the kind of spouse the media has ignored in Todd Palin and the kind of spouse I'm sure the Sisterhood of the Protected Female Journalists all have.

I don't challenge the commitment these fellow working mothers in the media have to their home lives. What I challenge is their silence and complicity as the Palin-bashers impose a "Family First" double standard on conservatives. The sorority is closed to the Right.