So Sarah Palin can no longer abide attacks by political opponents. So she is unwilling to endure the unconscionable smears from the media. So it has become too much to ask her and her family to stand by idly as she is demonized and disparaged. All of these laments were included in Palin’s resignation speech on Friday.

Her defenders in the rightist media concurred with her and launched a PR campaign to spin Palin’s cowardly retreat as an unconventional response to an environment wherein she was mercilessly battered and besmirched. They condemned what they characterized as unfair attacks against the poor defenseless governor and conservative icon.

I wonder if those same Palin defenders will now condemn Randall Terry, founder of Operation Rescue, who is promoting a campaign to defeat Supreme Court Justice nominee Sonia Sotomayor with the flier pictured here. The flier that this image comes from describes Sotomayor as “a radical supporter of child-killing.” I wonder if they will consider it to be an unfair and disgusting personal attack. I wonder if they will condemn the rest of her far-right critics who have cast Sotomayor as a racist, or stupid, or Marxist, etc.

It is instructive to note how these two very different women respond to the slings and arrows of public life. Palin, who has a record of quitting when the kitchen gets too hot, is fleeing the scene and leaving the state she pledged to serve in the lurch. Sotomayor is soldiering on and will soon take her place on the nation’s highest court.

The truth is that everyone in public life has had to dodge mud and worse. The only way Palin can expect to avoid getting hit is to stay out of the ring. Yet she seemed to imply that a higher calling compels her to further service on her country’s behalf. Does she think that when she reappears there will be no one who disagrees with her policies or agenda? And when they do, as they inevitably will, is she going to quit again?

Hopefully the lessons learned from these confrontational days are that the real heroes are those who stand for something. The true role models are the ones who don’t back down from adversity. In the future women, and all Americans, will be able to look up to Justice Sotomayor with pride. And, in the best case scenario, we will look back at Palin and laugh.