Hockey mom, governor, juggler?

Let's all calm down.

Yes, Sarah Palin delivered the speech of a lifetime.

The Republican vice presidential candidate and former sportscaster knew how to play to the camera. She was confident, tough, funny.

But a "folk hero," as one commentator called her?

Easy now, Pokey.

Palin did the job she was picked to do. She not only prettied up the Republican Party, she reached a faction it has struggled to tap into: the blue-collar crowd who feel forgotten amid the suits. Until Palin, they heard themselves only in the folksy songs played between convention speeches.

Palin talked of her sister the service-station owner; her PTA and hockey mom days.

The message: Like the rest of us, she knows what it's like at the checkout line, buying food and school supplies for the kids. Good for her.

But shame on her, too.

Because along with her just-folks stories, she aimed her hunting rifle at the easiest of targets: the media.

That message: How dare we question the unknown? How dare we try to match the walk with the talk?

Much easier to play the privacy card, and talk only to the famously accommodating People magazine. Much easier to play the victim, the everyday mom from Alaska skewered by the press. How very tiresome.

She also was smug and sarcastic. She took shots at Barack Obama, who, in the midst of the storm over Palin's family, took the high road and said candidates' children should be spared scrutiny.

That I get. One of the cardinal rules of parenting is to never judge how another does it. For Palin, though, I will make an exception.

Five kids. One of them a baby with special needs. Another with the special need of being 17, currently unmarried and pregnant. A son about to go to war, and two other daughters at home. The very thought brings me to my knees.

But Palin thinks she can do it, along with adjusting to the high altitude of the West Wing.

My panic over Palin isn't just that she's a gun-totin', book-bannin' abstinence-pusher.

My bigger worry is that, if elected, Palin will take on 300 million other charges — us. And not even Justice herself could finesse that balance.

Friends call me sexist: Tom Leykis in a bra and lipstick.

Why can't Palin help run the country while raising five children with a husband at home?

My question back: Why would she want to?

I admit I don't know if the Palins have hot-and-cold running nannies, or if their extended family has moved next door.

But even if Palin's husband is Mrs. Doubtfire, he, too, will have official duties that will pull him away from the people who need him the most.

People reported how Palin initially hid her last pregnancy "and her pain" from the public and her own children.

"I didn't want Alaskans to fear I would not be able to fulfill my duties," she says. "Not knowing in my own heart if I was going to be ready to embrace a child with special needs ... "

Months later, Palin thinks she can handle the demands of not just a state, but a national office.

That's politics, I guess. Just not mine.

Nicole Brodeur's column appears Tuesday and Friday. Reach her at 206-464-2334 or nbrodeur@seattletimes.com.

Lose the gum, Levi.