The real problem with Sarah Palin's 'baptism' remark

A silly reference to "baptism" is one thing. Misappropriating Christianity for political gain is something else entirely.

Sarah Palin
(Image credit: (Justin Sullivan/Getty Images))

On a strictly human level, it's hard not to feel a little sorry for Sarah Palin.

Like most women in the media, she seems oftentimes to be at pains to perform a particular character to keep her career afloat. This is not to say that she isn't really conservative — she seems sincere in her beliefs — but the rhetoric and issues she has confined herself to seem to be the preference of the audience that first imagined her as the mascot of a kind of fantasy about a recent conservative American past, beehive hairdo and all. The impetus to galvanize continued support seems especially desperate now that her star appears to be waning, as Robert Costa notes in The Washington Post:

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Elizabeth Stoker writes about Christianity, ethics, and policy for Salon, The Atlantic, and The Week. She is a graduate of Brandeis University, a Marshall Scholar, and a current Cambridge University divinity student. In her spare time, Elizabeth enjoys working in the garden and catching up on news of the temporal world.