What kind of hockey mom is Sarah Palin?
Maybe pit bulls should be kept away from the rink
BY Dave Bidini
Photograph by Rick Harris
Baseball, certainly. Football, absolutely. Basketball, possibly. But never in the history of American politics has the game of hockey been its sporting flashpoint. At least not until a few weeks ago, when a northern hockey mom, Sarah Palin, goosed the Republican convention to life. On the floor of the Xcel Energy Center in Minnesota—home of perennial playoff bridesmaids of the NHL, the Minnesota Wild, no less—party wonks waved blue and white HOCKEY MOM signs and thrust small novelty hockey sticks at the camera lens. And in the gallery overlooking the stage, Levi Johnston, the 17-year-old Alaskan bruiser and boyfriend of the hockey mom’s pregnant teenage daughter, held up the players’ side, embedding the Palin family circus with the frozen lore of early morning dressing rooms fat with the stink of sweat and ammonia. One surmised that if she could survive the world of puck bruises and bad arena coffee, Palin could surely survive Washington.
In her acceptance speech, Palin talked a lot about being a hockey mom, but, in the end, she was undone by her own kind of hockeymommishness. The mere evocation of the game was probably enough to win acceptance from those who know and play the sport. It’s long been accepted in Canada that hockey players are among the world’s toughest, most relentless athletes, a pedigree that would serve anyone well in the cutthroat game of American federal politics. Just knowing that Sarah was tough enough to run with the helmeted Alaskans—or that her daughter was tough enough to stay in a relationship with a hockey bruiser, or that the bruiser himself was tough enough to choose to feed himself into the spirit-chewing political machine—was plenty of evidence upon which Americans could measure her strength or resilience.
But since hockey is a far more complicated game that many dilletantes would give credit, Palin’s comparison between being a hockey mom and a pit bull was one brush stroke too many, an extra, glove-drunk gesture to a hockey community that knows better. This is not to say that much of the northern U.S., Canada and the NHL isn’t atwitter at seeing mention of their game imbued in every American op-ed column, but the very passion that produces such a fine game can also be its downfall. As my wife—not so much a hockey mom as a hockey player—said after hearing Palin’s “pit bull” comment: “It’s those pit bulls that we’re trying to keep away from the rink.”
Alas, the history of the game at a minor-league level is strewn with bad-attitude hockey moms and dads whose pit-bullishness embodies only the throat-locking part of the canine’s character, and none of its bright-eyed companionship. You don’t have to look too far from the Xcel Energy Center to find examples of hockey parents gone awry, whose coach-choking and ref-baiting gives the game a bad name. Of course, a great number of hockey moms are important to the grassroots game in their organizational efforts, working within their hockey communities to keep teams, arenas, and youth forces together to play the game they love. But judging by Palin’s (and her party’s) mocking of community organizers, it’s clear that this hockey mom is all throat-lock and no bake sale. An atypical hockey everywoman she is not.
Were Palin a player herself, one might be more encouraged with her potential as a worthy leader. One of the problems with lipsticked pit bull hockey moms and their famous rage and intensity is the fact that too many of them are only hockey moms, and never hockey players. You never hear the term “hockey dad,” because most hockey dads are hockey players. It’s only now in Canada that women are realizing en masse that moms who play hockey experience a kind of liberation that moms who only watch from the stands and scream at the refs do not. As participation in women’s hockey in Canada goes through the roof, the term “hockey mom” has become ever more dinosauric, exposing the sexism inherent in the old term.
On a minor hockey league level, Hockey Canada, the nation’s governing body, has tried to drum the pit bull from the recreational game. They’ve worked to extricate the machismo from the community, enforcing more severe penalties for badly behaved parents as well as badly behaved players. And on most international or select teams, players and coaches who can score or skate well are chosen above those whose only strength is brawn or the ability to instill fear in the opponent.
In this sense, Mrs. Palin is yesterday’s hockey mom despite her apparent progessiveness in supporting a game that is still largely unpopular in the United States.
