I grew up in a small town in Indiana with a population of about 5,000. The town had two stoplights, one on each end of the downtown area, which stretched for one block.

As an expert on small-town America, I would like to provide a little insight into those salt-of-the-earth, small-town values we’re sure to hear about to justify the forehead-slapping choice of Palin.

Those Norman Rockwell values are mythical. Small towns are often small minded, mean-spirited places. My favorite story about my own town is how our leaders reacted after a train derailment on the edge of town. You know the small-town image: Everybody in town pitches in to do anything they can to lend a helping hand. Our town fathers descended on the train derailment, all right. But because it was a freight train, rather than a passenger train, their primary concern was for the cargo. The mayor and several members of the town council were arrested for looting the boxcars.

Now I realize small towns in Alaska may be a little different from small towns in Indiana. From my limited knowledge based on “Northern Exposure” and a few real-life characters I’ve met over the years, small towns in Alaska are wilder and woollier.

My wife had an Uncle Gobel and Aunt Marie living in Alaska who would appear unexpectedly at family gatherings every decade or so. Gobel and Marie were colorful and delightful—their language was especially colorful—but I never really saw them as potential international diplomats walking the hallowed halls of government.

It would be totally sexist to suggest Palin looks exactly like one of those schoolmarms in the movies who becomes ravishingly beautiful just by taking off those big glasses and letting down all that hair piled on top of her head. But it’s even more sexist and insulting for McCain to choose Palin, a woman with no apparent qualifications to lead the nation, just because he thinks angry Hillary Clinton supporters are upset over the nomination of Obama.

Do Republicans really think women are so irrational as to vote for any woman put on the ticket, no matter how offensive to women her political beliefs might be? What possible appeal to hard-core Clinton supporters could there be in a right-wing, evangelical woman who opposes women’s rights, abortion even to save a woman’s life and equal pay for equal work? The claim is that Palin is a political reformer. In Alaskan politics, that means she’s one of the few Republican officials who is not currently under indictment. She’s merely under investigation.

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