Sarah Palin's been getting a lot of flack from both sides since she was nominated for VP late last month. But perhaps no criticism has been as harshly personal as freelance blogger Heather Mallick's piece on Palin, A Mighty Wind Blows Through the Republican Convention, which appeared on the Canadian Broadcast Corporation's website. The article, has been taken down and apologized for by the corporation, managed to stir up national debate with Mallick's portrayal of Palin as appealing to "the white trash vote" with her "toned-down version of the porn actress look."

Though the CBC took down the article, you can still find it on several mirror sites, including this one. The highlights, besides the one mentioned above, is when Mallick goes all Where the Wild Things Are with female genitalia:

It's possible that Republican men, sexual inadequates that they are, really believe that women will vote for a woman just because she's a woman. They're unfamiliar with our true natures. Do they think vaginas call out to each other in the jungle night? I mean, I know men have their secret meetings at which they pledge to do manly things, like being irresponsible with their semen and postponing household repairs with glue and used matches. Guys will be guys, obviously.

But do they not know that women have been trained to resent other women and that they only learn to suppress this by constantly berating themselves and reading columns like this one? I'm a feminist who understands that women can nurse terrible and delicate woman hatred.

Yeesh, you can see where some people over the CBC message boards might have had a problem with Mallick's article, especially calling into question GOP men's sexual adequacy the way it does.

While Mallick appeared unprofessional and inappropriate by any journalism standards, the comments that her essay roused were equally telling of this nation's greatest fears and prejudices:

In the wake of her column, Mallick has said she's faced a slew of abusive comments. She was called a "pig" by a Fox News anchor and branded an insane Pakistani Muslim on Fox message boards.

She has also received threatening email, some of which include anti-Semitic slurs - despite the fact she's neither Jewish nor Muslim.

A Pakistani Muslim Jew? Pretty sure there aren't many of those out there, but if there were, they certainly couldn't be bothered writing smear pieces for a cable channel's website.