Was Katie Couric threatened by Sarah Palin?

David Brooks got hammered by many of his readers today for his NY Times op-ed that gave Sarah Palin credit for rebounding in the vice presidential debate from earlier setbacks. Brooks concluded: “The race has not been transformed, but few could have expected as vibrant and tactically clever a performance as the one Sarah Palin turned in Thursday night.

I scanned 70 of the 855 comments posted before the Times stopped accepting them before I finally came across one that agreed with David – written by a Democratic male, no less, Charles of MA. Charles’ comment wasn’t just favorable, though. He expressed in-depth insights into the Left’s treatment of Hillary Clinton while recognizing the same unconscious misogynous forces at work in its treatment of Sarah Palin.

Since the debate ended last night, I’ve read the coverage of many online news sources in both the MSM and the blogosphere. I have to say, though, that Charles’ comment, which I’ve copied and pasted below, far surpasses anything I’ve read so far.

Read it for yourself:

Reader’s comment # 71.

“David, I'm a Dem, but I expected this debate to show Palin as energetic, focused, and intelligent. It was all there in her convention speech below the red meat. Since then, much of the media have begun to demonize her and have been framing statements and judgments about her as if she were a dumb hick, if not a so-called bimbo, and the constant assault on her qualifications and even basic right to be in the race is even stronger than were the constant calls for Hillary to just get out of the race because she didn't belong there any longer. The intensity of the attacks seems to be based on unconscious misogyny and not on the actual qualifications of either Hillary Clinton or Sarah Palin. I think Palin is especially threatening to a liberal like Ms. Couric, who seems to believe that only liberal women can advance women's status in American society. Her questions to Palin and the way she often interrupted Palin showed her constant, thinly-concealed lack of respect for much of what Palin stands for.

“Palin is clearly not intellectually challenged, yet her intelligence is constantly being belittled by commentators who unintelligently and superficially judge intelligence not by mental flexibility, creativity, and decision-making ability but by the use of certain words and mannerisms that city people tend to look down on. The debate format showed Palin to be quite intelligent when she's in her own element and not being domesticated by Washington-culture Bush handlers.

“If McCain/Palin win, two years from now Palin will very probably appear to even us East Coast urbanites as just as intelligent as Obama appears to us now. An awful lot of what we take to be indicators of intelligence are actually nothing more than the manipulation of words and other cultural icons that ratify our own membership in a certain social group within American society. Palin belongs to an out-group when viewed from New York, Washington, or Cambridge. Once she learns how to straddle various cultural groups, she will mysteriously also make rapid gains in perceived intelligence to go with her executive experience. Though I disagree with many of her policies, I have no worries about her ability to act as president, if the need should unfortunately arise.”