There's word rumbling around Great Britain and beyond that Sarah Palin is angling to meet Margaret Thatcher, the first woman to become that nation's prime minister.
It's a photo op that would be a triumph for Palin: an image supposedly showing the solidarity of conservative female leaders.
But it would be bogus. Not photoshopped-bogus, but dishonest nonetheless.
Baroness Thatcher is suffering from dementia, according to her daughter, Carol. Writing in the Daily Mail more than a year and a half ago, Carol Thatcher chronicled her mother's decline: "On bad days, she could hardly remember the beginning of a sentence by the time she got to the end.''
For a woman of Thatcher's formidable intellect and unflagging energy, it's a terrible decline. For Palin's camp to use her as a human prop, as in a photo op, it's unforgivable.
For one thing, Thatcher was never about female solidarity. For another, she did not suffer fools gladly; her exacting impatience with anyone not up to snuff was legendary. And what the woman who fought to become prime minister and fought harder to stay there might have said of a governor who walked away from her elected office can be vividly and acidly imagined.
Read the rest of my post here.