Wed, 09/10/2008 - 8:01am — lambert
As a Democrat I am horrified that Sarah Palin is the one who snagged the deeply profound — and absolutely ignored by professional smart people [cough] — emotional real estate of “P.T.A. mother.” I too am, in fact, not just “my kids’ mom” but their Title I Los Angeles public school P.T.A. secretary. This unheard female howl is, for better or worse, what Ms. Palin has set out to tap into; it is real, and I am sick that we’ve let the Republicans charge this ground.
Is this true? Maybe so. Readers?
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What a coincidence, Lambert
The big front-page story of the print edition of the Denver Post (no link, the web story is different) is all about "PTA moms"--women who don't identify with traditional feminist positions on women's issues, but who want to see themselves represented.
I blogged about this when Palin was first elected--the notion that many women who are more culturally conservative might be jazzed about seeing someone who looks like them and shares their point of view in high public office. I'm with Tsing Loh.
The argument has also been made
that anybody who can cope with PTA politics should find the Village
a breeze.
Maybe so.
I know that PTA mom is one of those quasi-inane memes that will go zombie over time, like "Reagan Democrat" or "soccer Mom" but I did think that Loh had something to say -- and that "mother, governor, moose-hunter" was going in exactly the wrong direction.
[ ] Very tepidly voting for Obama [ ] ?????. [ ] Any mullah-sucking billionaire-teabagging torture-loving pus-encrusted spawn of Cthulhu, bless his (R) heart.
First they ignore you, then they ridicule you, then they fight you, then you win. -- Mahatma Gandhi
PTA moms vs soccer moms
I think that "PTA mom" is a much stronger and far more meaningful concept than "soccer mom" -- "PTA mom" implies engagement with larger issues than just driving your kids to soccer games. And it is this sense of engagement that makes the PTA mom idea so effective.
"Soccer mom" also implies a fairly limited "class" designation -- it conjures of images of white upper middle class suburban women in their gas-guzzling SUVs. "PTA mom" transcends most class barriers -- and this is especially true in the minds of the PTA moms themselves. "PTA moms" are "serious" and involved in the "community" while "soccer moms" are "indulgent" and very "me decade".
Indeed, women who identify themselves as "soccer moms" generally do so with a sense of irony -- its an external description of them that they have adopted for themselves. But "PTA mom" is self-descriptor that can be said with pride, and without irony.
They are formidable
Everytime they showed up at a school board meeting, I got the willies. You don't want to meet them on a dark playground. Before you know it, you'll be on three different committees and badgering the board of ed on a weekly basis.
Scary.
Come together at The Confluence
Come together at The Confluence