Sarah Palin's understanding of wildlife appears to be no better than her tenuous grasp of social history. Mrs Palin has been very much in the news over her enthusiastic promotion of a band of crazies thoughtful, conservative candidates who agree with her own views on education and "traditional family values". The women in this band she likes to describe as "mamma grizzlies", most recntly Christina O'Donnell in Delaware.
[caption id="" align="aligncenter" width="400" caption="Sarah Palin, With Bear"]
[/caption]The problem with the conservative view of the "traditional" family and its values is that has little relation to history, and is in fact a relatively modern invention. The problem with her adoption of mamma grizzlies as her model is that they too scarcely embody the "family values" she claims to support. Real life mamma grizzlies do not live or mate in the nuclear families she so admires. Rather, they mate in promiscuous, polygamous groups, then raise their young as single mothers - or in collaboration with other females, as family units headed by two women. The closest human counterparts to real-life "mamma grizzlies" are lesbian couples, with kids - not exactly Christian O'Donnell.
