Today in her syndicated column today, conservative writer Debra Saunders compares “Hunger Games” heroine Katniss Everdeen to Sarah Palin, saying that just like the maverick-y former Republican vice presidential candidate, Everdeen is “fearless” and “does not submit to authority”:

Panem throws in extra incentives — special homes for the victor, and the winner’s district receives extra rations for a year. The games work, President Coriolanus Snow observes, because the contestants impart “hope.”

In contrast, New York Times columnist Maureen Dowd sees a downer trend in the “Fifty Shades of Grey” trilogy, which involves a dominant male and a submissive female; its hot-seller status, Dowd writes, is a sign of modern female self-debasement.

Maybe. I haven’t read those books.

But I’ve read “The Hunger Games,” and I know that American girls (and boys) are lining up at movie theaters to watch a skilled huntress — a young Sarah Palin, if you will — who does not submit to authority. Everdeen might be a girl, but she has a chance of surviving because she mastered the bow and arrow to feed her family after her father’s death. Everdeen is not cruel. She always strikes a squirrel in the eye so that it doesn’t suffer. She is fierce, but not fearless.