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Sep
5
I guess freelancers and editors and publishers should thank Governor Sarah Palin for the outpouring of prolific pontificating. It’s hard to keep track but here are a few I’ve read - in no particular order:
Katekilla on Babble Playground: One Hockey Mom’s Vote:
So I figured, when Republican presidential candidate John McCain picked Alaska Governor Sarah Palin and it was revealed that she’s a hockey mom, too, that we must have more than a thing or two in common. And that must be what McCainn figured, too. Women like me – white, 40ish, married with children – are considered to be one of this election season’s swing demographics. Granted, I was never a Hillary supporter, though I would have voted for her if she had won the nomination. But even though I’m a solid Obamaniac, I wanted to see what Palin would have to offer a voter, a mother, a hockey mom like me.
Let’s start with the things we don’t have in common:
1. Palin doesn’t believe global warming has been proven.
2. Palin is in favor of teaching creationism alongside evolution in public schools.
3. Palin believes abortion should be illegal, even in cases of rape and incest, except in limited cases in which it might be necessary to save the life of the mother (presumably so she can go on to have more children!).
4. Despite saying she has many gay friends, Palin does not support gay marriage.
Even on just one cup of cheap hockey rink coffee I can figure out that Palin would never gain my vote. And I’m guessing other mothers, whatever sports they ferry their small charges to and from, will mostly share that view.
Still, it turns out that I was right; we do have a few things in common:
1. Neither one of us has any foreign policy experience, but seriously, we are willing to learn.
2. We both have kids.
3. Through forced experience, we both have learned how to wake up at ungodly hours, wash and dress in total darkness, and attend to whatever needs doing, from finding lost shoulder pads to fitting new mouthguards, all while charging up lonely highways to points north (or at least, points cold).All of which leads me to ask, if Palin’s candidacy falls through, could we round up another crew of hockey moms and find another one? Maybe a pro-choice, global-warming-and-evolution believing one? Trust me, there are more than a few of us out there.
New York Times Hockey Blog, The Morning Skate: Is Sarah Palin the Universal Hockey Mom?
Now, you may agree or disagree with Sarah Palin’s values and positions; that’s your right just as she has hers for taking them. But it’s a gigantic leap, and an reckless one, to say her’s are the values shared by hockey moms and hockey dads in general.
To portray hockey moms and hockey dads as some symbolic monolith of “suburban values” (and we’ll refrain from getting into the whole suburban/urban dichotomy and its real meaning at the moment) is just plain wrongheaded.
Frankly, we deeply resent hockey being dragged into this campaign and made a pawn in the game. Compared to Canada, the US hockey community is pretty small, but we suspect it’s also very diverse.
What Tami Said: Why Sarah Palin is an abysmal veep choice and what that says about John McCain:
I was worried ya’ll would get it twisted. When I posted Heart’s passionate essay about sexist coverage of Sarah Palin, I was concerned that some folks would see it as an endorsement of the Republican vice presidential candidate. It was not. Sarah Palin is an abysmal choice for vice president of the United States and the decision to pick her is proof that John McCain lacks the judgement to be the leader of this country. Here are some reasons why (go read them!).
…
Barack Obama may not be able to say that John McCain puts politics before country, but I can. Sarah Palin is a cynical, political choice. It is a gambit to grab the votes of women that McCain thinks are too stupid to pay attention to issues like equal pay and reproductive rights. (See, when white men vote for white men, they are assumed to be voting on the issues. When black people vote for black people, or women vote for women, we’re only voting for people who look like us…or so it goes.)
What does it mean when you choose an anti-choice, book-burning fanatic with regressive views about women as a running mate? It means you either share that person’s views or, at the very least, don’t find them abhorrent. So, added bonus: tapping Sarah Palin allows the Republicans to bring back all those nasty, divisive wedge issues they have been using to distract Americans while raiding our wallets. To steal a line from Joe Biden: That’s not change; that’s more of the same.
Tanya Tarr: A Vlogged Thank You, Sarah Palin Must-see video response after Palin’s RNC speech
The Eclectic One: McCain and Palin: Science Doesn’t Matter:
One of the better lines at the DNC last week was from former Virginia governor Mark Warner.
“Just think about this: In four months, we will have an administration that actually believes in science!,” he said.
Unfortunately, that’s not true if the Republicans have their way.
We just finished eight years of national governance by an administration who stifled, censored and ignored every bit of scientific data they ever saw if it disagreed with their own partisan idealogy, extremist religious opinions or might have interfered with their corporate buddies making an extra buck.
Judith Warner, NYT’s Domestic Disturbance’s Blog: The Mirrored Ceiling
It turns out there was something more nauseating than the nomination of Sarah Palin as John McCain’s running mate this past week. It was the tone of the acclaim that followed her acceptance speech.
Heather Armstrong, aka Dooce: And…boom
I am angry. I am infuriated. And I don’t think I would be if Sarah Palin were a qualified or competent choice as McCain’s running mate. But the fact, the reality is that she is not. And instead of demanding better from their party, instead of going, wait a minute, no, we deserve better than this, many Republicans are contorting themselves into a denial of reality. (please read this, it’s a report from the AP, not some spooky liberal blog that wants to kill babies) And that right there is what has been going on for the last eight years.
And I am just so damn sick of it.
Any time I engage with one of my conservative friends or family members, or sometimes the conservative commenters on this website, it usually devolves into them screaming about WELFARE! and TAXES! and THE GOVERNMENT IS TAKING MY MONEY AND GIVING IT TO PEOPLE WHO DON’T WORK! And what they don’t understand is that this is not the issue at all. What I and many of my more liberal friends want is to HELP people, not give them a free ride, but also not to ignore those who would benefit from us tossing them a life jacket.
Case in point: Because Leta was diagnosed with plagiocephaly when she was two months old, she cannot qualify for private insurance until she is thirteen years old. So the only insurance we can get her is high-risk insurance that costs us upwards of $300 a month. Just for her alone. And even then that insurance won’t cover anything until she has reached a $3000 deductible. I am fortunate enough to have grown up in a white, middle class family who could afford to send me to college, as did my husband, and we have enough work experience to run a business that makes it so that we can afford this insurance for our daughter. We don’t have to make the choice between buying food or insuring our daughter. We are really fucking lucky.
But what about the family who cannot afford that insurance for their child? The family who can barely make rent, and if they stretch the budget they can eat three meals a day all week, let’s hope nothing bad happens to their kids because then they’re screwed. Kids, go hug your father, he’s off to one of his three jobs, none of which provide him insurance. And it’s not because he’s lazy or unwilling to work, it’s that his family couldn’t afford to send him to college, or he came from a family that didn’t know they should encourage him to go to college because they were busy trying to survive. If giving up more of my paycheck could help get this family adequate healthcare, then PLEASE. TAKE MY FUCKING MONEY.
Feminist Law Professors: Marriage for 17 yr-old Bristol Palin How 1950’s:
Of all the legal and social changes of the late 1960’s and 1970’s, none is more significant than the end of “illegitimacy” as a legal category and the reduction in social stigma associated with nonmarital birth. Women now have the choice to bear children without a husband, with the knowledge that the law won’t discriminate against those children. They also can choose an abortion…although I doubt Bristol Palin really had that choice, in spite of the fact that the Alaska legislature this year kept a bill requiring parental consent from passing. (You might want to donate to Planned Parenthood Alaska to help keep it that way.)
Linda Hirshman, Slate: Do As We Do:
Sex happens. As near as anyone can judge, Sarah Palin’s daughter Bristol was raised in a loving, intact family. There is no obvious sociopathology in view. Maybe her teen pregnancy was attributable to a moment of inattention, or ignorance, or just a warm spring night. That she would get pregnant at all reminds us that any teenage girl is at risk. That moment of risk will now determine the course of much of the rest of Bristol Palin’s life, and every statistical indicator is that it will not be for the better. For the millions of women each year who do not want to make that choice, and for the parents who do not want that fate for their daughters, the cruelty of the Republican position on abortion rights is now graphically laid bare.
Gloria Steinem: Palin: Wrong Woman, Wrong Message:
I can see two long-term bipartisan gains from this contest.
Republicans may learn they can’t appeal to right-wing patriarchs and most women at the same time. A loss in November could cause the centrist majority of Republicans to take back their party, which was the first to support the Equal Rights Amendment and should be the last to want to invite government into the wombs of women.
And American women, who suffer more because of having two full-time jobs than from any other single injustice, finally have support on a national stage from male leaders who know that women can’t be equal outside the home until men are equal in it. Barack Obama and Joe Biden are campaigning on their belief that men should be, can be and want to be at home for their children.
Elissa Berman: A Mom Who Puts Her Children First is not an Anti-Feminist
There has been a lot in the news about Palin’s 17 year old daughter and her pregnancy. What I hear less about is the 4 month old baby. Why is that?
Why is it, that we live in a country where it is politically incorrect to say that the baby should come first?
Why does talking about children first become reason to call people anti-feminist?
Think about it. Is there really something controversial about saying that children are important and need to be cared for by parents?
So I will go out on a limb and say something heretical.
Mothers are important.
BlogHer, Megan Smith: Get to know Sarah Palin By Video on the Web: collection of five videos providing a history of Sarah Palin, on the web
Reno and Its Discontents: Everything You Always Wanted to Know About Sarah Palin: another good round up of must-read links
Ellen Bravo: McCain and Palin are Extremists not Mavericks:
John McCain is trying to pass off Gov. Palin as a career mom who knows the difficulties of balancing job and family – hoping women won’t notice the ticket’s opposition to every measure that would ease those difficulties, from expanding family leave to paid sick days to equal pay.
The real question isn’t why McCain chose Palin, but why the media continues to give them both cover, pasting on the “maverick” and “moderate” labels as if listing these terms were equivalent to listing party affiliation and state.
Recently I conducted an informal poll among my friends, all smart, politically aware people who keep up with the news. A dozen of the fifteen people I asked had never seen the clip of a befuddled Sen. McCain stroking his chin when a reporter asked if he’d voted against a proposal to require insurance companies that cover Viagra to cover contraceptive products. “I don’t know enough about it to give you an informed answer because I don’t recall the vote,” McCain replied. “I don’t usually duck an issue, but I’ll try to get back to you.”
Had that clip – or any of numerous examples of McCain’s other extremist positions and slip-ups – been played more than 600 times in four days, as the Dean scream was, today’s polls would be very different.
This post by Gina is specific and full of first-person impressions and so hard to cut and paste (I’m sorry Gina - I just didn’t know how to do it - it’s so in the moment to me), including reflections on how Clinton supporters aren’t rabid and a prediction about what McCain is trying to accomplish. I hope Gina continues to look at her prediction because I want her to meet and talk to white women like me and all the white women I know - including Hillary voters who had considered McCain, until he selected Sarah. Gina, I promise, we are not going to get peeled off. Or ripped off in the general election. I’ll be at a meeting in my neighborhood of mainly white women - who are all working for Obama. Please, give us a chance.
Aunt Jemima’s Revenge: Last Night at the GOP Convention - White Women on Parade:
Women of color better be paying attention to this election or start learning how to play hockey, because the white women of the GOP are ready, willing, and able to sell all women of color down the river to get Sarah Palin’s crazy, extremist ass in the White House.
If Sarah Palin represents all women, why couldn’t the GOP produce one prominent Republican woman of color to help introduce and welcome her as the GOP’s VP nominee? Are John McCain and Sarah Palin running for the Presidency of the White States of America? I am pointing out this fact for the second time in two days. Am I the only one that finds this absence of women of color to be very glaring omission for a campaign that is tying to sell Palin as a historic vote for women?
And I keep wondering why the media fails to even address such a glaring failure by the GOP to even engage millions of women of color. And why aren’t the women of color in the GOP asking these same questions? That’s why being a black Republican makes no sense to me, it’s like being a gay Republican, you’re allowed to be at the party, but don’t expect to be let into the VIP section. So, how exactly are your views being represented?
I fear that Palin will become the poster mom for the right-leaning pearl & pinstripes sorority girls who may have felt apathetic about a John McCain presidency, but are now energized to vote. I fear that Joe Trippi’s analysis of Palin as being seen as an “agent for change” may actually resonate with young women out there who want to see a woman achieve something great, despite the fact that she may be tearing down the rights of other women at the same time.
I fear that many young women will look past what is another sexist choice by the male paradigm and see it as a win.
Ladies, do not be fooled. This is not history changing before your eyes. It is just history repeating itself.
Leslie Adler: Do Politics and Motherhood Go Hand in Hand?
Many moms whose 17-year-old daughters were impregnated by an 18-year-old guy whose MySpace page reads “Ya’ F**k With Me, I’ll Kick Your Ass” would be screaming “Statutory Rape” and lamenting about how they wish their child had been better educated in the avoidance of teenage pregnancy–but not Sarah Palin.
Byron York, National Review online’s The Corner, from before Palin’s speech:
Perhaps I’m focusing on an irrelevant issue, but the presence, or non-presence, of Johnston on the stage tonight strikes me as important. It’s one thing for delegates to be understanding and compassionate about the fix these two teenagers have gotten themselves into. It’s another to actually celebrate it. And, given what we’ve learned in the last few days, if Johnston is up on stage with his girlfriend and the Palin family, and Republicans are wildly cheering, it will certainly look like they are celebrating this situation.
I don’t usually engage in these scenarios, but I’ll do it here. If the Obamas had a 17 year-old daughter who was unmarried and pregnant by a tough-talking black kid, my guess is if that they all appeared onstage at a Democratic convention and the delegates were cheering wildly, a number of conservatives might be discussing the issue of dysfunctional black families.
Sundays With Stretchy Pants: Fabulous:
Fabulous speech, Mr. McCain, but even seeing you with all of that make-up and with your lips actually moving a little bit when you talk didn’t make me forget that you are super old and near death. And Sarah Palin is your VP choice. That was dumb and it won’t be forgiven.
P.S. You’re old. And Sarah Palin was a poor choice. Because you’re old and everybody thinks you’re going to die soon. But you and Sarah have a super good speech writer. Kudos on that.
P.P.S. You’re not very young. And Sarah Palin makes my ovaries angry.
Momocrats: Special Needs Budget Cuts Remain Unexplained, even while Palin says she’ll be there for such families.
There’s been a lot of discussion about my “Sarah Palin Slashes Budget for Special Needs Kids” post. I’ve been called names, had my article and data interpretation questioned and described as incorrect (to put it nicely, and sometimes it was put nicely), and (my favorite) had my intelligence questioned because I cited the”liberal” CBS.
Here’s the thing. I read those budgets personally. I ran the math and asked for several additional reviews and checks of my math, whch I got. See, when I ran the numbers, I didn’t get the 62%. A helpful expert explained how the other writers had arrived at 62% but you’ll see that while I explained the 62%, I went with my own math.
The bottom line is that the budget changed. The majority of the media have decided that the budget was cut. Most cite that 62% number.
Anyone suppose John McCain will swoop in to stop that bullying that fosters partisan rancor he wants to abolish?
LaToya Peterson at Racialicious: Women v. Women on Sarah Palin:
This post does a fantastic job at pulling together a variety of points made by different women bloggers (I’m not sure that they’re WOC though) in trying to figure out, what do we do with her.
I am absolutely chafing that Palin is being targeted as unfit for the Vice Presidency because of ideas rooted in gender norms. But I feel like Penelope [the writer LaToya quotes just above this graph] (and my readers) also have a point.
So, maybe we should be changing the narrative a little.
Instead of “How can Sarah Palin run for VP and manage a family?” should we ask “How can we define family values when running for public office?” (Especially when dealing with the party that wraps itself in “family values.”) Or, should we even be asking these questions at all?
The White House Project’s Marie Wilson: Hostage to Abortion Politics:
The crusade against choice pivots around the deep societal fear of women’s power to act as the authors of their own lives, the keepers of their own bodies. As Kristin Luker wrote in “Abortion and the Politics of Motherhood,” the real issue at stake is the fear that women will abandon their traditional role and decide not be mothers, if given the choice. So who better to squelch that fear than a woman who is staunchly anti-choice– even in cases of rape or incest. Like Gov. Palin, I have five children, one of whom has special needs. I know what it takes to parent, and I deeply understand the work/family tradeoffs in the current American workplace. But unlike the governor, I want my children and grandchildren to inherit a world where those in power cannot make choices over female bodies. I want them to concentrate instead on the larger body politic and what best serves every woman, man and child in this country — decisions on home loss and job loss and health care loss, national security, rising food prices, our standing in the world, climate control.
Updates:
…THE POLITICS OF CHOICE IS BEING RAISED, WITH THE EMERGENCE OF A WOMAN WHO IS ANTI-CHOICE, EVEN IN CASES OF RAPE OR INCEST AND WITH NO TALK OF HOW FOR WOMEN OF COLOR, CHOICE GOES BEYOND AN ABORTION AND MEANS THE VERY RIGHT TO HAVE CHILDREN (FORGET 5!) IMAGINATE IF MICHELLE OBAMA HAD FIVE CHILDREN? IMAGINATE IF ONE OF THE OBAMA CHILDREN WERE OLDER AND PREGNANT? IMAGINE THE HATE AND STEREOTYPES THAT WOULD BE UNLEASHED? OH WAIT, I don’t have to imagine, as a single mami of color, I live it. Palin’s large brood isn’t seen as a strain on the system. They are a beautiful portrait of an “American” family making every other family, families like mine, ugly.
And let’s talk about the perceived double standard, that if a man had five children no one would be making a big deal of it, that men are held to a different standard, as stated in the video above. Claro if you take race out of the picture, it’s easy to follow along, PERO IF OBAMA WAS THE FATHER TO FIVE INSTEAD OF TWO CHILDREN, YOU DON’T THINK THE MEDIA AND POLITICOS WOULD BE MAKING ALL SORTS OF REFERENCES TO BLACK MEN AND THEIR HYPER-SEXUALITY? OR BLACK MEN AND RESPONSIBILITY? I HEAR NO ONE TELLING PALIN’S HUSBAND TO PUT ON A DAMN CONDOM.
Hattip to Mamita Mala for pointing to For Working Moms, It’s ABout Choice at Jack and Jill Politics:
This is not to dismiss the issue of sexism. Perhaps Palin has been asked questions about home and family that the media might not ask of a man. BUT . . .let us also not forget the fact that Republicans deliberately chose to introduce Gov. Palin as a “hockey mom” with five kids. She’s already on magazine covers with her baby and Republicans say she’ll appeal to women because of her “working mom” status. If she can benefit from her status as a working mother, then the media has every right to question her thoughts on just how work and family should and (more importantly CAN) come together. She put it out there.
Make no mistake about it, this is a matter of POLICY. And it should remain as such. Ms. Palin should not be attacked or held to a different standard simply because she is a mother of five children. However, if Mrs. Palin and the Republicans wish to paint a picture of the ideal working mom, I see no reason why we shouldn’t scrutinize the Republican policies behind their vision.
And Wherein I proceed to tear into the Palin faux feminist memes at CNN at Culture Kitchen:
First, go watch Liza Sabater on CNN (the clip is at that link) then read the post from which this is an excerpt:
Let me just come out and say this right off the bat : We need more black and latina feminists on TV tearing into the right wing’s forced pregnancy frame to reproductive rights.
I had the honor again to participate in Melissa Long’s livecasting from the conventions. In the first one at the DNC we barely spoke of women’s issues. Ironically here in St. Paul and with Palin’s nomination the discussion was almost exclusively about her and about women’s rights.
Which is why am being very candid about the need to put more colored feminists into these traditional media settings. Our perspectives on reproductive and women’s rights are not filtered necessarily through the need to curtail our ability to have children as much as having the right to not have the government control our bodies by claiming surrogate ownership.
Which is why it is outrageous to me that someone as young and seemingly intelligent as Amanda Carpenter from Town Hall will go on wailing about how Palin is being vilified for not aborting her Down Syndrome child.
Is she serious?!?!
I am not amazed at the expression and excellence of it in the blogs. I’m only fiercely angry that the MSM, which still reaches so much further than most of our blogs put together, fails to and/or refuses to expose their millions of readers to our voices which, far more than Sarah Palin’s are in fact like pretty much every one else out there. I’ll keep updating this list.
Updatex2: Love this blogger whom I met at BlogHer (and hattip to PunditMom for the link), Mocha Mama, and her post titled, She Wasn’t Talking To Me:
While I don’t give much credence to people who can read a teleprompter or pronounce nuclear correctly because it was phonetically spelled out for them or even for people who feel they must rid libraries of books, I have to state here that neither McCain nor Palin speak for me. They don’t even KNOW me.
What I heard last night in her beauty pageant comedy show was a person who didn’t take seriously any of the things that affect me.
I don’t know what a snow machine is. She clearly wasn’t talking to me.
I don’t know anyone who plays hockey. Do hockey moms somehow replace soccer moms? At last night’s high school soccer game that I had to attend as an administrator, I saw a sea of faces that crossed cultural lines. In my experience, white wealthy kids get to play hockey. She wasn’t talking to me.
By Jill Miller Zimon at 5:18 pm September 5th, 2008 in Politics, Sarah Palin, Vice President
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15 Responses to “[updated] Post o’Palin Perspectives”
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Jill that was an absolute tour de force of blog comments.
As someone who has worked on five daily newspapers (all of them mainstream) and commercial AM talk radio, let me answer the question you posed at the end.
The simple answer is they are gatekeepers for the same corporate America that bought and paid for both political parties.
If you notice when bloggers get into the MSM, most often that not they are conservative and their views fit in with the mainstream corporate and political paradigm. Follow the money. Do I need to type “wide open blog?”
The voices of ordinary people must be carefully filtered and edited lest any real truth seep into the corporate MSM.
But take heart - mainstream newspapers are dying and the death is deserved. And that is hard, very hard for me to say since print was my first love. More and more thinking people are abandoning mainstream news sources for the Internet news sources and blogs. Yes it can be the ‘wild west’ of news and information, but it’s a great deal more vibrant, authentic and informative than the dying mouthpieces of the elite.
Corporate journalism reflects the values, attitudes and beliefs of corporate America. And they would just as soon die as change.
Thanks very very much, Kegbot. I’ve been watching them collect and there are in fact so many more - BlogHer is a treasure trove all by itself.
I understand what you are saying - I do see the revolution is here but it takes time. I wonder if that new video game Spore has anything like the evolution of the news industry in it.
See this is why I am not afraid of November. I believe the Dems got this. Why? Because for each one of those comments there are thousands more who feel the same way. They may not come and post. They may not comment. They go about their lives without voicing their opinions. They know what they want and they know what they need to do.
Great post Jill Baby!
Great roundup, Jill. Although I did check a couple of sites you might have overlooked: Concerned Women for America and Moms for Ohio. CWA loves the Palin pick, of course.
They’re even coincidentally posting about “special-needs” children for the first time since 2006. As you know, I kept an eye on them when I was actively blogging. They have only rarely published anything on the topic — and prior to Palin, only in the context of abortion.
Interestingly, Moms for Ohio (and its national counterpart Moms for America) has nothing to say about Gov. Palin.
I think you are right - I hope you are right - and I hope we can really work with those who can’t quite get behind Obama or who still want to cling to McCain to believe and trust Obama and to let go of McCain because of the obvious direction he’s chosen - away from the center.
Thanks, Babz.
Grrr…forgot the link to that CWA endorsement above.
Hi Len - yeah, you know - I chose to include posts that represent what I’m reading - not what I imagine must also be out there. But again, BlogHer really does have some of the best pro-Palin writers and posts so people who want to read that can go there.
CWA’s support for Palin is unsurprising, although the interestingly timed interest in special-needs kids is sleazy and cynical, even for them.
Be that as it may, I figured that Moms for Ohio — of all people — would be enthusiastically supporting the ultra-conservative “hockey mom.” Frankly, that “PTA moms” thing is their whole schtick and they are unquestionably a conservative Republican PAC, so why no comment at all on Palin? She should be their paragon, their ideal, their new mascot.
You have to admit, she’s a better example of the type than MFO’s own cdesign proponentsist on the state board of education, Colleen Grady.
I know MFO has gotten a whole lot quieter since their patron Betty Montgomery has been out of office, but I just don’t see how they could let Palin’s nomination go by without some comment.
[...] Post o’Palin Perspectives posted on September 5, 2008 at 11:25 pm [...]
Palin probably has had experience dealing with a foreign government, possibly on a daily basis–Alaska has a 2,000 mile long border with Canada, actually. You can’t say the same for Obama.
And I don’t know anyone who plays soccer. That means they must all be communists.
McCain would choose who to run what cabinets? He seems to me to be and that he always has always been indecisive and far from brilliant, not even that good with common sense, when he met his wife they both lied to each other about their age…why to get what they wanted? UGH
We need a brilliant creative minds and Obama is as close as it gets this time. He picked a senior senator as his running mate, actually that is intelligent, to understand what is and how it all works, the good the bad and the ugly Biden has seen it. Washington is big and complex.
This could be a pivotal point in history or it could bring about more of the same, either way we get more of the same actually. When they address the opposition they need to do it outside of the political rhetoric, always agree and call for more insight and consideration. Not bigger government not more spending a more efficient government, smarter government. Its not about winning a war, its about taking it in a direction that makes us more secure not less. We already won the war in Iraq now its a matter of maintaining security and defending against random acts of violence and those that instigate them. Its about dispelling misconceptions of who we are and what we represent. We are all about freedom and civil liberty. We are not about a nanny state, we can do better and we can bring back respect and dignity.
Palin serves better as governor of Alaska for access to resources without control of the oil companies for that she is astounding. McCain serves well as a bipartisan senator, he is not the ideal president, he needs to accept that, its not his destiny. He seems to have bought Palin and if she is an outsider than why corrupt her? Its actually rather deceitful and self serving, she is compromising the integrity of her family for it. He is parading her around and using the power of her daughters first love to what win votes, yes the scenario is charming and endearing, but what does it have to do with besides PR?
I prefer Obama consulting and deliberating over McCain blithering indecisively. Palin is a smart woman and I bet she is contemplating whether she should have said no to this offer, she admitted to it already we should never second guess ourselves, sometimes the obvious choices are not the correct choices…slow down America.
[...] Jill Miller Zimon rounds-up a variety of female perspectives on Sarah Palin, remarking: “I guess freelancers and editors and publishers should thank Governor Sarah Palin for the outpouring of prolific pontificating. It’s hard to keep track but here are a few I’ve read - in no particular order…” [...]
The hurricane-force level of these anti-Palin blogs and comments are inoculating her against criticism in the future. Calling Palin an “abysmal choice”, or a “book-burning fanatic”, “nauseating”, and a “crazy extremist” only makes you sound scared.
This isn’t changing any minds, other than making people who don’t have a strong opinion wonder why you’re so keyed up about her. No one really knows her very well yet, so how can you be so sure you hate her?
You would be better served by picking your battle lines more carefully, and acknowledging why people might like her, even as you make your argument that Biden is a better choice.
Thankfully we have the Internet, which acts as a conscience of the people when our political leaders like Palin and McCain seem to satirize who we are and where we need to go. The repression of the past eight years has taken enough of a toll. We want, we need and we must have change. So change is going to come. I hope we are the authors, the change agents, the brige builders because it is necessary. We are in a transition of massive proportion, and can hardly grasp where we are in the wave of change. I could hug each one of these bloggers for their courage, committment and voice of ferocity. So here we are, and the question is what’s next?
Avery - thanks for the great comment. I agree with you - and there ARE blogs that are pro-Palin and anti-asking her about the mom part of the working mom moniker and they are well-written too - I just don’t agree with them.
I love the expressions in the blog - and I don’t read the ones I don’t like. I don’t know why some people read what they hate. Doesn’t make sense to me.