by Reading, watching, and listening to the mainstream media lapdogs this morning, I guess I am the only person in America who thought Sarah Palin’s speech last night at the Republican National Convention was a complete and total failure. She destroyed her now and infected our future.
I don’t fear Palin. I do not respect Palin. I find her a pale imitation of a real person with standard values. Her cartoon catch phrases and read meat pandering are not noteworthy, and when she had the gall to blame the media for her troubles, I laughed as I changed the channel on her to dismiss her righteous fantasy.
It’s dishearteningly unfunny how Republicans so successfully claim the media is against them when the media has done nothing but licked their feet and suckled their every whim and ninny for the past eight years:
The media’s contempt for both John Kerry and Al Gore was matched only by their reverence for George Bush’s swagger. The first several months of media coverage this year was dominated by Jerimiah Wright, lapel pins, bowling scores, Bittergate and elitism. And it is highly unlikely that there has even been a time in American history when the media was as subservient to Government as they were during the Bush era. It’s literally hard to imagine a claim that ought to be more discredited in general than the notion of the “liberal media” and its “anti-Republican bias.”
The “liberal media” could not line up fast enough behind G. W. Bush and his War Co. to get the invasion fires lighted in Iraq and then train their video cameras on the wounded suffering.
Brian Williams, Katie Couric and Charlie Gibson are the ultimate unholy trinity of war profiteers and it is to their total dishonor that none of them stood up against the party line and dared to cross their insider connections in exchange for the higher calling of truth — an impending truth that will stab the rest of us in the heart and betray our pocketbooks in the years to come.
I don’t like politicians or television analysts that claim the moral high road and then turn around and preach the low ground that they alone know the best way to reach the top of the mountaintop while the values and morals in their own work life and families curdle into degeneration and crumble with irresponsibility.
No matter what the Christian Fundamentalists claim, the pregnancy of Palin’s daughter is a failure of mothering and the firestorm created by that public, political, hypocrisy is no longer a private matter when Palin claims her superior backwoods mommying is just what this country needs after eight years of Republican ruination.
We don’t need another mother. We need a brutal truth-teller.
When there is a failure of self-control in the home where Palin is the parent for modeling — and abstinence erupts and a teenage pregnancy happens — Sarah must be smited with the same coil she has whipped at others and she must not be celebrated as a new star on the Republican platform unless duplicity and irresponsibility are the fresh covenants of the day.
Sarah Palin had a great opportunity last night to make her name in a positive light and to persuade independent minds that she just might be something new and noteworthy.
She failed.
Instead of offering a new way of thinking, she relied on the old Republican chestnuts of name calling, mocking, denigrating and insulting those she felt were not as patriotic as she.
When I watched her contemptuous preening, her look-at-me smirkiness, and her smarmy personality that relished the applause celebrating her hatred, I was surprised by the false shout outs of admiration from the audience for her barely concealed boiling hatred for science and community cohesion and social responsibility — and I could only wonder what punishing world created, and then crushed, her humanity — and then I tried to figure out in which universe she spun where a preening morality was excused by a fallow God, febrile, gun toting, hunters and pregnant teens.
I’ve had my fill of fundamentalist, self-righteous politicos — they have shoved us far enough down the craven path of death and war paved with the loss of economic stability — and I’m not interested in ever repeating the sins of those conservatives that claim intellectualism and thought and education are fodder for mocking and cruelty.
If folks like Sarah Palin are the future of the Republican Party, then I am quite comfortable in knowing the whole of them will implode and begin to eat their bile-filled young and roast them over a fire of burning books — but not the unborn young, and never a burning Bible… they’ll use Mark Twain to spark their paginated celebration of the hatred of the foreign and the dispossessed and they’ll wait until the foetuses are fully viable before they start chowing down on toes.
I am also quite certain the reasonable-minded among the rest of us that are offended by a sarcasm pretending to be policy and by a joking Ole Boy management style that fails to create an international reality that isn’t covered in the blood of our soldiers and wrapped in the tattered flags of the fallen – will refuse to laugh off the ruse of applauding lies as truth and they will not accept the belief that death is the only salvation from the ferocity of a fundamentalist lifestyle.
It is from the rational middle where the rest of us hope to find protection from those that prey to pray to condemn us — and it is up to that mainstream core to see through the viperous Palin and shun her failed prophecy of forcing us all to live her private purgatory in public.
Hi David,
I’ve been reading a little press about her and it seems apart from being pro-gun and anti-abortion she has also tried to fire a librarian who refused to go along with her book-banning policy and has referred to the war in Iraq as “God’s plan”.
and didn’t McCain say somewhere that he was going to pick a VP with foreign policy experience? Going with Palin seems a little too token and a bit of a gimmick.
Dananjay —
You’re right that Palin is a cynical choice and conservative speech writer Peggy Noonan called her selection “political b.s.” on live television even though Noonan didn’t know she was live:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2008/09/03/peggy-noonan-mike-murphy_n_123647.html
The right-wing political “analysts” on Fox News say Palin has “foreign policy experience” because “Alaska is so close to Russia”… and they claim it with a serious face.
Imagine if McCain had picked a strong, well-known, Republican woman like Olympia Snowe:
http://snowe.senate.gov/public/
Or even Mary Matalin:
http://www.matalin.info/html/bio.html
He’s be leading Obama by miles today if he’d done the right thing instead of radical bullying.
David,
Peggy Noonan’s analysis is pretty much on the dot. It’s amazing how McCain, even though he wasn’t short of worthy candidates, went with Palin.
Here’s the clip about Palin’s views on the war –
That’s an excellent clip of Palin, Dananjay — it spits everything right out of her mouth all over the rest of us.
ABC News confirmed that, despite Palin’s claims, was a big supporter of the Alaska succession party and that fact, more than any other, seals her doom:
http://blogs.abcnews.com/politicalpunch/2008/09/members-of-frin.html
McCain wanted Liberman — but Charlie Black talked him out of it at the last second — so I think McCain turned spiteful and picked Palin and he’ll blame her for the loss in November.
In a way, David, the choice does seem to suggest how spooked the McCain camp is by Obama. It will be interesting to see the Biden-Palin debate!
Dananjay —
I think Biden’s only choice is to play the avuncular father and correct all the mistakes she’s likely to make. If he attacks her as she deserves, she’ll play the wounded princess. If he goes easy on her, she’ll peel his face off.
She’s a bully — and the only way to fight a bully is with a punch in the nose — but she has a gang of crybabies surrounding her who will go run and tell tell their media nannies that “Joe is picking on Sarah again.”
Biden has a tough road.
David,
That seems very likely! And yes, it looks like Biden is in a bit of a catch-22 situation. But sooner him than Obama. Obama is just too nice to play dirty.
You’re right about Obama, Dananjay. He needs to play tougher and rougher to keep his lead. Can he? Biden can’t be the only one sucking out the venom.
I think Democrats are, by nature, smarter and kinder than Republicans — and it just isn’t in the Democrat DNA to be intellectually or emotionally nasty just for the sake of being mean:
http://www.salon.com/opinion/greenwald/2008/09/04/gop/
Obama better learn how to burn back — and the fact that he could do it with a smile would be extremely effective.
It was sickening watching my mother and stepfather watch her and chant USA at every opportunity possible.
Gordon!
Ewsh. Did you spray them with a garden hose?
Seriously… what’s her appeal for them as East Coast intellectuals?
My father put it best.
As people who were terrorized by the extreme left (the Communists of Romania) they cling to the right because it is anti-communist.
It doesn’t help that they are brainwashed by Faux News every night.
I don’t know why the Democrats even pretend to try to play nice with the Republicans, Gordon.
I hear Barack is going on O’Reilly — and he’ll earn the beat down waiting there for him just by showing up. It’s ridiculous to even appear on Fox because all they do is slander him all day long and there will be no convincing them of his merits or fairness. They loathe him. He should accept that, acknowledge their hatred, and move on…
That’s an interesting rationale for Palin support — I just hope the more reasonable among us see through her cartoon story. The blogs are doing the mainstream media’s job now of vetting truthfulness in her claims and let’s hope they keep digging deeper into her earthiness fantasia.
I used to believe John McCain stood for something. I blame Palin on him. Wasn’t he supposed to run as Kerry’s VP?
Anne —
Yes, Kerry would’ve killed for McCain to be his VP and I think McCain gave it a bit of thought. If McCain had done that, he would still be universally beloved and respected. Now… he’s sold out everything he stood for to the lowliest bidder.
Nice article there on Salon, David! Thanks for all the links!
I’m not so sure if Obama has it in him to do that, to fight back on their level, much less to do anything to win.
Hi David,
I first came to know about her when she spoke on “environment” –
http://www.time.com/time/politics/article/0,8599,1837868,00.html
I have nothing to say about her personal choice of supporting her daughter getting married at 17 – but I vehemently oppose the idea of bragging about it as an “ideal situation”.
I have only one question:
Do these people really believe in it or they just display it to achieve their goal – I handle the second one I guess – for the sake of winning, but a if the belief is deepseated it is even more dangerous.
Dananjay —
I don’t think he’s a fighter, either — if he can win by taking the high road, he’ll set the new standard for political behavior in America. That’s a change we desperately need.
Katha —
Oh, Palin is a “True Believer” and that’s why the fundamentalist base of the party is so in love with her. She’s no pretender!
Yesterday, I read an article written by a doctor that called Palin a hypocrite in her rationale for keeping her “Down Syndrome” baby as proof of her commitment to the pro-life movement.
The doctor argued that a woman in her 40’s will ALWAYS have a serious “Down Syndrome Talk” with her doctor when she is pregnant. Then it is the WOMAN’S DECISION to have amniotic testing — a blood test is not yet enough — to determine if the baby has Down Syndrome or not.
The doctor said if Palin were truly pro-life, she would not have been interested in knowing if her baby had Down Syndrome or not because, in Palin’s mind, all life is sacred and precious no matter the deformity or cause of pregnancy and that includes rape, Incest of danger to the life of the mother.
Hi David,
Yes, that’s what it is – hypocisy.
We have witnessed a very peculiar situation here very recently –
A Gujrati couple appealed in court asking for an abortion of their 25 week old fetus who had severe heart blockage and malpositioned arteries which would surely require a pacemaker implantation soon after birth and the chance for the baby to make it is 40%-60%.
Even it makes it – it will lead to serious complication later on…
http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/articleshow/3325144.cms
They were denied the permission as Indian abortion law says the abortion of a fetus has to be before/ on 20th. week.
Hi Katha —
What a sad story! No one will win. I hope the government that forced that child into birth is prepared to pay for every penny of the medical services the child will require for the rest of its life.
We live in dangerous times when governments begin to tell us how to live and die and give birth — and the whole idea of the original Republican party in the USA was to get the government out of our lives to let us live in peace and to trust us enough to make our own decisions. My, how times have changed!
Hi David,
That was the couple’s main cause of anxiety – they won’t be able to pay for the kind of specialised treatment the kid would have needed which didn’t guarantee a 100% cure.
The latest news is – The would-be mother had a miscarriage.
http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/articleshow/3363293.cms
India has a reason to be strict about abortion-law because of female infanticide but there should always be a room for “exception”.
http://www.time.com/time/world/article/0,8599,1159964,00.html
Katha —
How can a government force a birth but then not take on the responsibility for paying for that unwanted birth?
Do you think the “miscarriage” was medically encouraged or by chance?
Hi David,
There is nothing called coincidence – I learnt it from you.
I think to claim the treatment expenses they had to file another law suit, as far as my knowledge goes govt. doesn’t have any special program for carrying on treatment for children like this.
http://www.mumbaimirror.com/net/mmpaper.aspx?page=article§id=2&contentid=2008080620080806023433469647fa686
Hi Katha —
I love your links today!
Yes, I believe as you do — some kind soul came in and saved that family with a certain remedy that solved all their problems and rendered the government intervention moot.