Who would the New York Times' Maureen Dowd describe last week as having "erratic and egotistic behavior"?

Was it President Barack Obama, who appears to have an ego larger than what can be contained within the constitutional limits of a mere superpower? Or perhaps it was Michael Jackson, the totally erratic and now dead "king" of pop culture? Maybe it was Bernie Madoff, who cheated investors out of billions, or perhaps South Carolina Gov. Mark Sanford shedding tears over true love while shaming his wife and young sons?

No.

It was Sarah Palin.

In my many years of observing the public scene, I have seldom seen a figure who an entire philosophical class instinctually disliked more than Palin.

She seems to be a perfect litmus test. No matter how marginally a person accepts leftist ideals, he and especially she, cannot stop themselves from getting personal and nasty when it comes to Gov. Palin. The reaction makes a knee-jerk reflex look voluntary.

As Don Surber explains, "They mocked her Down syndrome child. They misquoted her and then mocked that. They picked on her 14-year-old daughter. They filed 15 frivolous ethics complaints that nearly bankrupted her. They blamed her for that awful, disorganized mess that John McCain ran."

When the progressives finally got what they wanted and Palin stepped down, Dowd said that "Caribou Barbie" was displaying "erratic and egotistic behavior."

During the election, a governor of a state was said to have no experience by people who were supporting a first-term senator with a penchant for voting "present." A candidate who could get her message across without any aids was said to be an illiterate bumpkin by people supporting a candidate who was reduced to short cliches without a teleprompter.

A candidate who would draw larger crowds than their own candidate was said to have a popularity that was only a fluke.

A female candidate was called every name in the language by people who claimed to champion women's rights and dignity.

Their disgust of her is so deep that it is unacceptable to even appear to defend her. I am opening myself to ridicule for simply writing this.

Sorry folks, but this is not rational behavior. Something very deep and dark is going on here.

A number of hypotheses have been advanced for this insanity. Some have suggested that a strange Oedipus-like reaction is occurring. Sarah Palin is attractive and she is activating some taboo and deeply hidden sexual motivations that the left is especially uncomfortable with.

Palin is attractive, but the left has turned sex into a sacrament to be "celebrated" in all of its various and deviating forms, so that hypothesis must be rejected.

I think the animus toward Palin is more directed by two other factors.

Progressive liberalism is essentially elitist and radically unequalitarian. The devout constitute a philosophical group which in many ways preserves the attributes of the upper classes of 18th century Europe, which ironically many of its founders abhorred.

Palin is a woman from the wrong social class. She has the wrong political views. She does not come from the correct locations, and does not have correct schooling. She does not speak correctly. She does not wear the right clothing. She does not have a correct religion. She incorrectly has family values.

But even worse, she is popular. There is a certain outside probability that she could become the top political figure in America. In a philosophy in which everything is political, this is simply intolerable.

It is akin to having a commoner with a handicapped child on her hip walking into the Sun King's mansion and taking control of 18th century France.

Even marginal progressives know to the bottom of their souls that this aberration, this insult to all they are and stand for cannot be allowed.

These mean and irrational reactions tell us more about her attackers than it does about Palin.