Liz Forgan on Any Questions?

I've been wondering about something for more than a week now. On the BBC Radio 4 Any Questions? programme, one of the panellists was Liz Forgan and in answer to a question about Sarah Palin she said:

I have been a card-carrying feminist for 40 years and this woman has found somewhere in me a little kernel of sexism. She causes me to make a failure of sisterhood. Sorry Charlie but I cannot stand her candy-coated philistinism, I hate her crass creationism, I loath[e] her parading of her family about the place, God forgive me I even hate her teenage hair[.]

I can get behind part of this. There is a lot about Sarah Palin to dislike and to distrust, and it is deeply scary that she could be a heartbeat away from the nearest office that there is to leadership of the "Free World". Do not do this to us, America!

However, as I read this Forgan is saying that it is "sexis[t]" and "a failure of sisterhood" to dislike Palin - which I take in context to mean opposing her candidacy - at least for the reasons she gives - because Palin is female. This is not the same as saying that if a man and a woman are equally qualified, it would serve a wider purpose to choose the woman; or even that a woman should be chosen over a man so long as both are minimally qualified. This is saying that no man should get the job so long as there is any woman candidate, however badly she will do it; this gets some ugly names when men do it to women, and women shouldn't do it to men either.

I don't know if this is what Liz Forgan really thinks - I rather hope not. She has picked on a few presentational points - even though they are of a piece with Palin's character and attitudes - and not mentioned the bridge to nowhere, earmarks, troopergate or the other issues; so perhaps Forgan is expressing a personal dislike rather than a judgement about Palin's fitness as VP. I had expected a rather more considered answer based on substantive issues, but that could be my mistake.

It bothers me that nobody on the audience seemed surprised, nobody on the panel protested or asked for clarification. There may have been comment on the related Any Answers programme, which no longer seems to be online. Have I misread this, or should I worry that great numbers of people really believe that feminism is just inverted sexism?