I was watching "Morning Joe" on MSNBC. They had a guest, Lesley Seymour, Editor in Chief of More Magazine, who was giving Palin points for opening doors for women. I couldn't stand it. I stopped my housework (all right, that was a no-brainer) and wrote them a letter, as follows:

Your guest this morning, Lesley Seymour, said Sarah Palin “overall” was a plus for women because she had opened a door, “no matter what you thought of her." Any woman tapped to be a vice presidential candidate, can be said to have "opened a door" for women. But the fact is that the door was already open when McCain asked Palin to be his running mate. Already open, as in women were already perceived in the public mind as viable candidates. If this were not true, McCain would not have asked a woman. And he chose her, in specific, following truly destructive advice from his handlers, to counter the Clinton factor, and to appease Right Wing Evangelists who wanted a rabid advocate of their religious views.

If you want to know why McCain lost, you can look to Sara Palin. Intelligent voters who were not in denial about what had happened to the Republican Party, viewed her performance as a candidate as a travesty of female behavior, and, in particular, because it seemed she had that "special needs" baby at all because she knew it would make a sympathetic television prop.

If you want to say a woman opened a door, you perhaps should begin with Geraldine Ferraro, or look to any number of cabinet appointees in recent years, but, more significantly, Hillary Clinton. Clinton, in her masterful understanding and handling of the major issues of the day, can be said to have blasted that door to smithereens. Without Hillary knocking obstacles over, McCain would not have considered Palin but would perhaps have reached out to Romney or Huckabee, religious advocates both.

The failing of many who champion women's causes is that they will glorify any woman in the public eye, no matter how incompetent, no matter how flawed, no matter how primitive her private life. Have you seen those photos of Palin with her family at a back-yard barbecue where she and her children are cradling large guns with a look of pride and brandishing bottles of liquor, as if, somehow, they were a rite of passage? The scenes were so adolescent, they defy imagination. This in a leader?

Palin closed more doors for women than she opened. The very suggestion that women would flock to her because of gender grossly underestimates us. Please get that straight before your guests blether on about how Palin helped us.

Sincerely, etc.