“Hockey Mom” fades, “Lipstick Season” awaits

“Hockey Mom” is still pulling great ratings, but I saw my first “I’m sick of” comment in the media pages today. Tomorrow, “HM” episodes will have been on the air 24/7 for two weeks, with almost no change in the dialogue. Sarah Palin says the same lines, over and over again. It’s worse than being forced to watch nothing but “Survivor” 24/7 for two weeks. Pretty soon, nothing helps. You could put lipstick on “Survivor” and it would still be “Survivor.” 

That’s where we are. You could put lipstick on “Hockey Mom,” and it would still be “Hockey Mom.” The novelty is wearing off, as the novelty always does. If the show’s producers expect Sarah Palin to get John McCain elected, look for some re-invention soon. God help them if the audience starts calling for guest appearances from Joe Lieberman. 

Wherever that goes, “Hockey Mom” has been responsible for a great spin-off, “Lipstick Season,” which may be topping the Nielsens long after the election. At last, the media has a reality show that means something. Millions of American women are coming onstage to talk about what it means to be a woman in a society where “Hockey Mom,” which portrays a woman as a marketing tool, can become a hit. 

Millions of American men should be drawn to “Lipstick Season” too, but I’m only interested in one of them. Me. Karen has poured thousands of rounds of cannon fire into the television since “Hockey Mom” came on, and I find myself mystified. It is as if she is speaking a second language that I never heard before. I have fancied myself a hard worker where understanding women’s issues is concerned, but now I have to borrow a line from Olympia Dukakis: what I don’t know about women is a lot. 

I think it is a matter of women finally having a double standard placed so everyone can see it, and placed there by a woman in the employ, of all agencies, the Republican Party, which women think wouldn’t know a double standard if one came up and bit it on the leg. It’s very convoluted, very hard to follow, totally new in my experience. Someone on morning television speaks of Palin’s right to privacy, and Karen fires back, the kitchen shaking with the thunder of the barrage. She is visibly incensed and combative, that same intensity I have sensed in the national air since Palin came on the scene. 

I ask Karen to explain it to me, and she growls that the right to privacy is the bedrock principle of a woman’s right to choose what she does with her body. I try to put it together, but I have always been weak with any thinking that involves inverted or over-under-around-through logic: if this is right, then that is wrong, which makes this other thing right. It takes the form of, well, how can Palin do this, when that is so, or not so? 

It may be that Palin has pulled the pin on a gender grenade starting a war that women have been itching to fight, but couldn’t, because before, it was always a man pulling the pin. Is this a war that can only be fought with lipstick? Am I making any sense? I wish I knew, but I do know that I am feeling decidedly grateful in an over-under-around-through way to the GOP producers for “Hockey Mom” and the way it is setting the stage for “Lipstick Season.” I think it will be an epochal production.