WASHINGTON - Almost two weeks after her surprise pick as John McCain's running mate, Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin remains a lightning rod for fierce debate, even among Canadian hockey moms.
Some dyed-in-the-wool Canadian hockey moms are doubting whether the Alaska governor can truly be of their tribe, joining a chorus of Palin critics that include feminists like Gloria Steinem to Facebook enthusiasts who have started up groups with names like "I Have More Foreign Policy Experience Than Sarah Palin."
"I don't know how she can possibly be a hockey mom if she has five kids and one is disabled and she's trying to become the next vice-president of the United States," Margot LeBlanc, a Toronto mother of three, said Tuesday.
"I have one child in hockey and I had two in hockey last year, and I'm at the rink four, five times a week," she said.
"I think Sarah Palin is trying to portray herself as being a regular person, but the people I know who are true hockey moms either work part time, work out of their home or have a really helpful spouse who' s sharing the load many nights a week."
Liz Goddard, one of the founders of the Edmonton-based website www.hockeymoms.com, suspects Palin's hockey mom-dom has more to do with politics than reality.
"She's a politician so she's going to use whatever she has to in an attempt to get people to relate to her and to tell them something about herself," she said. "But being a hockey mom is just one small part of what she's about, and people need to look at the issues and decide if being a hockey mom has anything to do with what she has to offer."
Palin's explosion onto the political scene after McCain stunned Republicans and Democrats alike with his choice of running mate has proven to be a gossip-obsessed society's dream come true.
Blogs, websites and tabloids are all hard at work casting doubt about the Alaska's governor's sincerity and buzzing with all manner of conspiracy theories involving the Palin brood.
It all reads like a story arc from the set of "The Young and the Restless." Among some of the more prevalent and sordid rumours, all of them utterly unsubstantiated:
- Eldest son Track Palin joined the army to avoid jail time for drugs and/or vandalism charges. Wasilla, Alaska, the rumour mill asserts, is the crystal meth capital of the state.
- Sarah Palin had an affair with a former business partner of her husband's. The National Enquirer published the story, but has since offered up only a lukewarm defence of it after the divorce papers of the supposed "other man" revealed nothing detrimental to Palin. The McCain campaign has denied the story.
- Sarah Palin faked her last pregnancy and, in fact, newborn Trig is Bristol's baby, which would mean Bristol would be on her way to becoming a teenaged mom for the second time and, arguably, not paying much attention to her mother's insistence that "abstinence only" sex education is effective. The McCain campaign has also denied this claim.
- Levi Johnston, the apparent father of Bristol Palin's unborn child, will not marry his girlfriend because he has no interest in living in Washington and his parents are balking at the strong-arm tactics of the Palins.
Every day, some sort of new allegation about the Palin brood emerges.
The most recent involves a black teenager named Kevin who's claiming, via YouTube, that he is, in fact, the father of 17-year-old Bristol Palin's unwed child. He says they met and were intimate while he was visiting his uncle in Wasilla. His YouTube claims, largely believed to be a hoax, was garnering tens of thousands of views by mid-day Tuesday.
For political junkies, Palin is providing more fun than even John Edwards did last month when it emerged he'd had an affair with a woman who later gave birth to a child. Edwards has insisted that the child is not his.
Cal Jillson, author and politics professor at Southern Methodist University in Dallas, says that so far, it's a win-win situation for the Republicans.
"There is that old advertising adage that any publicity is good publicity, and so far she's been a boon to the Republicans -- she met and far exceeded their expectations of her at the convention, and it could have been a disaster right from the start," he said.
"But as time goes on, and the focus goes back to McCain and Obama, I think you'll see people take a closer look at her positions and find them to be concerning, or even deeply troubling," Jillson said, referring to Palin's pro-life and pro-creationist beliefs.
Americans will get a closer look at Palin via a series of interviews that begin airing this Thursday with ABC's Charlie Gibson, who will be invited into the Palins' home for a sit-down interview with the governor.
The Republicans are also trying frantically to neutralize the chorus of voices who have derided them for their choice by subjecting Palin to serious cramming sessions on foreign policy and national security issues. She's apparently been getting schooled all week by experts while on the campaign trail with McCain.
Jillson isn't convinced those efforts will work in the end.
"I suspect that for many people, the idea of Sarah Palin as vice-president will remain a bridge too far due to some of her beliefs that simply don't resonate with most Americans."
