Our Mom2Mom editor-type-person, the other Sarah, asked if any of us would be interested in writing about Sarah Palin.

Several if us said "yes" - me among them. And then, of course, I was beset by doubts. What to say, how to say it, what angle would I take? What perspective? I mean, it isn't as though she has ever said - or done politically - any single thing that I remotely agree with, since I harbor an old abiding love for Judy Blume and have real issues with people in positions of power (or even just some uptight parent) trying to ban books at local libraries a la Mrs. Palin.

What I find interesting is that other mothers are wowed by her - by the fact that she has five kids, (as though she is actually the one getting them all out the door in the morning, lunch boxes in hand, before heading to a job after frantically cleaning the house, doing tons of laundry, grocery shopping, then racing back home for hockey practice and then starting supper), that one of them has Down syndrome, that her daughter is "with child" as they say politely.

And I can't help but wonder why any of this makes her someone to admire, to "respect," to emulate. Because me? I can't really relate to a family with a combined salary of over $225,00 per year. And I can't help but think that any mother with a full-time job is, in fact, writing some pretty hefty checks for childcare. And a cleaning service. And someone to shop for her, pick the kids up and so on. How the fact that she calls herself "a hockey mom" makes her just like you and me.

How irritatingly insulting to assume that I, or any voter, might swing for her based on just her gender and the fact that she is a mother. I mean, who cares? So she has five kids, so what? I don't CARE about her family, beyond the pity I feel for her poor daughter, used as some sort of photo op/symbol for her mother's rabid Right to Life position, a position she holds even in cases of rape, but NOT a position she holds if you happen to be a moose or an inmate on death row.

Here's what I DO care about: Someone who doesn't use their own personal vision of God as some sort of Santa Claus-list-maker of who is "naughty or nice." Indeed someone who might just skip services at a church where the preacher instructs that anyone opposed to Bush and his politics is going to hell. Someone with a little check on reality when it comes to honest-to-gosh science, something I would expect from governor of a state that is rapidly melting. Someone who doesn't need to kill animals to prove that she is just "one of the boys." Because we might both be mothers, but she sure doesn't speak for me. No one with her politics ever will.

I hate reverse sexism because let's face it: Were Alaska's governor a MAN with little experience, dogged by a string of ethics violations and a history of excessive fiscal spending with a teenaged daughter that was apparently skipping the "abstinence only" class along with her I-don't-want-kids boyfriend, do you really think he would have even caught McCain's eye, let alone gotten a nod for VP?

Of course not.

Leigh usually appears every Monday on TriangleMom2Mom. Read more about Leigh at her blog Flipper and Me.