Quotes of the Day

In the movie Annie Hall, Woody Allen's character, Alvy Singer, is standing in a movie line, listening to some blowhard intellectual hold forth about media scholar Marshall McLuhan. When the loudmouth cites his own academic credentials, Singer produces the actual McLuhan to refute him: "You know nothing of my work!" Alvy 1, Egghead 0.

Sarah Palin likes to position herself against the eggheads of the world, but she was on the receiving end of her own "I happen to have Mr. McLuhan right here" comeuppance when she got in a public feud with the Fox animated sitcom Family Guy. In the Feb. 14 episode, the character Chris goes on a date with a young woman who has Down syndrome. When he asks her about her parents, she tells him, "My dad's an accountant, and my mom's the former governor of Alaska." Palin's 1-year-old son Trig has Down.

Palin posted on Facebook that the scene was "another punch in the gut." This time, however, Palin's outrage prompted not an apology but a smackdown, from Andrea Fay Friedman, a Family Guy voice actress — who actually has Down. "My parents raised me to have a sense of humor," she said. "My mother did not carry me around under her arm like a loaf of French bread the way former governor Palin carries her son Trig around looking for sympathy and votes." Ouch. Cartoon 1, Politician 0.

The Family Guy scene was a personal shot — but at Palin, not Trig. Friedman's character was assertive, intelligent and confident (and a young woman, not an infant boy). Palin seemed to be defending neither her son nor the disabled generally but herself, a public figure whom a cartoon had the temerity to poke fun at.

But what's more important is the way Friedman bested her supposed defender: by beating her at her own game. As a public figure, Palin is the embodiment of the "I have Mr. McLuhan right here" argument, taking her authority not from policy papers or résumé credentials but from her biography.

Do you believe that white-male conservatives are hypocrites for limiting women's abortion rights? Why, we have Mr. McLuhan right here: Palin — a woman! — says that when she was pregnant with Trig, she had the fleeting thought that she could have an abortion but didn't. Disagree with her foreign policy? Her son Track went to Iraq! Reject her claim that health-reform "death panels" will cull special-needs children? She's worried about her own special-needs child! With Palin, the political is always intensely personal. She styles herself as someone who has given bodily to her beliefs, and that makes her connection with her followers visceral, a blood tie.

Likewise, having a baby with Down meant that Palin had the authority to condemn Rahm Emanuel for calling politicians he was arguing with "retarded" but to excuse Rush Limbaugh for using the same term because he's "satirical" — a dispensation that somehow did not apply to Family Guy. You say that's illogical? Well, do you have a special-needs child?

Palin is a master practitioner of identity politics, with an ironic twist. When it comes to social issues or the academic canon or civil-rights legislation, it used to be conservatives who would chafe at liberals playing race, gender or other such oppressed-group cards. With Palin, though, conservatives have a champion who uses group identity — rural, female, military mom, special-needs mom, etc. — as her seal of authenticity. But against Family Guy and Friedman, Palin, for once, was outranked by someone enlisting her own biography and personal experience. This time, Palin was not the McLuhaner but the McLuhanee.

Now, Palin and her defenders could argue that Friedman is simply one woman with Down and cannot decide for everyone — disabled or not — what is and is not offensive. That response, by the way, would have the advantage of being correct. But it would also implicitly undermine Palin's claim to authority. She would then be just one more military mom, one more teen mom's mother — one more hopeful pol looking for attention.

She'll still get that attention, though, because the Family Guys and the David Lettermans can't resist giving it to her. (On March 2, she's scheduled to stick it to antagonist Letterman by guesting on Jay Leno's Tonight Show. And despite Palin's objections to "Hollywood" intruding on her family, daughter Bristol will play herself as a teen mom on ABC Family's The Secret Life of the American Teenager.) Just as she has made her personal life the basis for her politics, so are the attacks on her consistently personal. That in turn feeds the victimization that only strengthens her connection with her fans: Hollywood is mocking me, personally, so it is mocking you, personally.

Did I say Cartoon 1, Politician 0? Maybe we should call it a tie.

• James Poniewozik
• Sarah Palin, a master of cultural outrage and personal offense, meets her match -- an animated character on 'Family Guy' with Down syndrome