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[Adventurer]

By CNN European Political Editor Robin Oakley

LONDON, England (CNN) -- There's no doubt about it. The European media has given Sarah Palin a hard time.


One European newspaper called the idea of a Palin presidency a "half-baked Alaskan nightmare."

Things started quite well, with the curiosity factor. To many Europeans there is something exotic about snowy Alaska. Viewers and readers were intrigued by the shots of the outdoorswoman with her eyes squinting fixed along a gun barrel, the thought of a vice president who had once been a beauty queen.

Columnists were approving that here, for once, was a politician in the higher reaches who probably actually knew the price of a loaf and a pint of milk. Women writers in particular responded warmly to her joke about the difference between a pitbull and a hockey mom --"Lipstick."

But soon the carping began, and it was not confined to what U.S. rightists like to dismiss as the "liberal media elite."

We were, the Irish Times warned, "just a heartbeat away from the biggest half-baked Alaskan nightmare." Britain's Financial Times said his selection of vice president raised serious questions about John McCain's judgment and added: "The Palin appointment is yet more proof of the way that abortion still dominates American politics."

Prominence was given to an onslaught on Palin's environmental and animal rights record by veteran ex-film star Brigitte Bardot. Spain's left wing El Pais described Palin as "a figure who comes from the America that is farthest removed from and incomprehensible to the European spectator."

Since then the scorn has been constant, the jokes unrelenting, the YouTube exposure devastating. But let us dispel one bit of nonsense from the start. It is nothing to do with Sarah Palin being of the feminine gender. Sound Off: Is it fair for Europeans to criticize Sarah Palin?

Europeans have been astonished that America has never had a woman president. After all we in Britain elected the redoubtable Margaret Thatcher three times as prime minister. Norway did the same with Gro Harlem Brundtland. Germany has a female chancellor, Angela Merkel, even if she does tend to underline the remark I once heard from a British Ambassador: "A German joke is no laughing matter."

Nicolas Sarkozy's socialist challenger for the French presidency was the elegant Segolene Royal.

When Sarah Palin first became McCain's running mate there were even headlines in some British media suggesting that America had found its own Margaret Thatcher.

That certainly was overdoing it. So much so that after 20 years close up reporting on the original I can't resist the temptation to paraphrase Lloyd Bentsen's comment when Dan Quayle unwisely compared himself to John F. Kennedy. "I've interviewed Margaret Thatcher, Governor Palin and I can tell you that you are no Margaret Thatcher."

That was summed up for some by the appearance of those women at McCain rallies wearing T-shirts emblazoned "Small Town Gun-Totin Christians for McCain."

For Europeans, who were alienated during George W. Bush's first four years by a president who showed little interest in their continent and patently cared nothing for the opinions of its leaders, the turning point probably came with the appearance on the Katie Couric show when Palin confessed to not having had a passport until 2006.

INTERESTING

[mises]

I play pick-up roller hockey a few evenings a month with a group of 20-30 something dudes that includes a few Russians. They are all full of jokes about always having to watch their back when jerking off etc cause Sarah's watching.

Though we have almost 80 pages on this subject... The woman is a joke.

[Gopher]

Adventurer: Canadians and Western Europeans have claimed to stand above the fray while harshly dismissing, mocking, and scorning Americans, especially conservative Americans, since Graham Greene.

[Adventurer]

[mises]

Or, Palin is a joke.

[Gopher]

[JMO]

If being from western europe means you are a snob, smug and elite as you contend, then i suppose I'll take the sophisticated mantle as well.

People are laughing at her, simply because she is unintentionally funny. Those news interviews she did were hilarious.