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Echidne being right again, this time about the unanswered question about Sarah Palin’s inadequacy as a mother of five and governor of a state…

Now for the invisible elephant. I think it’s called Todd, a stay-at-home dad whose parenting skills are not much discussed. You remember? The guy married to Sarah Palin. I’m not sure what his role in that family is supposed to be if Sarah Palin is the one expected to mind the children and do politics, too.

Just do a reversal on that. Pick any male politician with a stay-at-home wife. Then ask how he manages to both work and care for the children. Make him the responsible party in anything the children do wrong. Try that and see the humongous waves of discussion you develop, even among feminists. It’s probably because we prefer the elephant invisible.

She said it here.

Another interesting question is why so many people wish the elephant should stay invisible. Double standards cut both ways. Yeah, it’s fine to say the Governor should or should not have kept up. But where’s the expectation that Todd Palin should have stepped up? Oh right, we only set low expectations for men.

As I’ve said often enough to make some of you sick of hearing it, human beings are very good at meeting expectations but usually more miss than hit at exceeding them. If you set low expectations the results are going to be… just about what you expected.