Everyone knows there is a media obsession with Sarah Palin, but I don’t know if everyone has quite realized that the obsession has become a fetishization. The further I got into my book tour last month, the more paranoia set in as I started questioning the idea that the only thing that made me interesting to some people was my association with Sarah Palin. Sarah Palin, not my father John McCain. And for that fact, it seems that the only thing that gets any kind of major media attention when it comes to women in politics is either Sarah Palin or her numerous impersonators. These are the people that are creating and dominating the political narrative for women in this country. In the Nashville airport in the midst of my book tour, I picked up the recent “Mama Grizzlies” cover of Newsweek which asks this very question. Why are only women like Sarah Palin getting nominated for elected office and receiving all of the media attention? This is the question that has been plaguing me since the release of my book.

Are women only interesting in today’s political discourse if they are Sarah Palin or Sarah Palin impersonators (no matter how bad or poorly knocked off the impersonation is)? Is this it? Is this it for my generation of women for all foreseeable election cycles in the upcoming years? The media has become so obsessed with all things Sarah Palin related—even dare I say, eclipsing the obsession with President Obama—that they seem more concerned with her versus anything or anyone else. Maybe this isn’t a surprise to everyone in the media, but for me on my book tour it was…

Then just as I reached the point where I woke up and elected to stop focusing on the media’s obsession with Sarah and to continue my own one woman revolution (if you will), Sarah Palin made it known to me via an e-mail to a third party that she was not pleased with me or what I wrote in my book. I found it surprising but I had to see the humor and, of course, appreciate the obvious irony. It seems the Sarah Palin media obsession goes both ways.