on sarah palin

ok, i've been thinking about this for a long time and first of all, i want to pre-empt this by stating that I think Sarah Palin is awful. AWFUL.
However..... I'm continually disturbed by how she is being criticized. Yes, she deserves criticism but she seems to be getting more criticism than male politicians who share her views (or have worse ones). I'm totally guilty of doing this and when I realized the extent that I was demonizing her, I began to question why I was doing this. Why wasn't I holding McCain, or even Obama for that matter, up to the same standards that I was expecting Sarah Palin to exemplify?
It seems that we're holding Palin up to this standard that because she's a woman, she should automatically be a feminist, should automatically have good politics. Why aren't we holding the male politicians (and all males in general) up to these same standards? McCain is totally awful. Bill Sizemore is totally awful. We all know that Bush is awful but it feels like we're quick to equate their awfulness with their male gender and subsequently write it off. We should be holding all of our political leaders up to the same standards, male, female, trans etc. We were all born into a patriarchal system. We all know that there are anti-feminist women. Just because someone was born into it female doesn't automatically make her any more or less capable of resisting patriarchy. So I will continue to criticize Sarah Palin's politics and will probably continue to think that she is awful, but I'm going to try to be just as critical of her male cohorts. Isn't that the essence of equality?