Not Mary, Joan

A reader writes:

You wrote this afternoon, “[Palin's] being turned into a kind of Marian figure, a blessed icon whose mere touch bestows some kind of aura on a candidate or race.” Not a Marian figure, I suggest.

The Wasilla warrior is more like a Maid of Orléans sort of figure. Sarah Palin has become a latter-day Joan of Arc to the populist or “Jacksonian” elements of rural, red-state America.