Note from GH–this probably applies less to the DocuDharma crowd, who don’t get so easily distracted by bright, shining distractions
These are serious times, and they call for a serious debate about where we need to take the nation.
–Barack Obama
Now, I admit to having a few guilty pleasures in life. Watching back episodes of “What Not To Wear”. Buying earrings at the Kohl’s in the 80% off clearance section. Getting that chai tea latte at Panera. Doing that powerwalk through Ikea and promising myself that someday, somehow my house really will be this organized.
Sarah Palin, over these last fun-filled days since the announcement that she would be Old Man McCain’s Vice President, has been one of these guilty pleasures. But like all guilty pleasures, it doesn’t take a whole lot of exposure to just get, well, a little tired of seeing it day in and day out.
I know now really everything I need to know about Sarah Palin, and I can sum it up in one sentence for ya: She’s A Republican. Trust me. That’s all you need to know.
Before the bridge to nowhere before she was against it? Well, yeah, she’s a Republican.
Being investigated for abuse of power, and hiding behind executive privilege? Well, yeah, she’s a Republican.
Firing – or threatening to fire – civil servants who don’t tow the line, who “go off the reservation” or who just plain and simple think she’s wrong? Whaddidya think – she’s a Republican.
Refusing to talk to journalists unless things are so absolutely on her terms that the outcome is as wilted and trite as a Meredith Baxter Birney TV Movie of the Week? Well, sure – she’s a Republican.
And as fun as the chatter and the handwringing and the theatrics have been, and as amusing as it is to see the party whose standard bearer voted against equal pay for equal work for women suddenly cry “sexism”…
…it is time to Move On Dot Org.
If the Republicans wanted to have a serious debate, they would have put a serious candidate on the ticket. There’s plenty of them left in the Republican party, even among the women.
But they chose to have as John McCain’s running mate a person they introduced as a moose-shooting hockey mom whose depth of experience comes from a twenty month governorship and a few years as a small town mayor.
This isn’t a candidate – it’s a punch line. And to watch the Mighty American Cable News Wurlitzer go on a 24/7 Sarah Palin News Binge…well, it’s like eating chocolate cake for breakfast, lunch and dinner for a week. You start asking, “where’s the beef”?
I admit it. I’m Palin-ed out. Suddenly sick of Sarah. I’ve got Alaska Moose-Huntin’ Mom Fatigue.
So, an appeal, both to my fellow bloggers and the news media at large. Isn’t there something else we can talk about? I mean, come on, this is America. We’ve got a failing economy, a failed energy policy, unchecked global warming and the anemic “war on terror” (remember that one – it has something to do with why we went into that Afghanistan place, the one that’s next to Iraq). Surely, there is enough there to fill a twenty-four hour period of talking heads.
But if you must dish, how about the latest from Brangelina or TomCat? After the Palin Place soap opera, that’s looking more and more like the hard-hitting issues I can really sink my teeth into.
There’s less than sixty days to go before the election, people. Can we talk about our futures? Please?
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Please!
Since McCain’s Campaign Manager Rick Davis, and presumably McCain and Palin as well, would much prefer that This Election is Not About Issues, it’s probably a good idea to get back to talking about issues, because republicans fail every political test there is when it comes to issues, and as long as issues were being discussed Obama was holding the lead in virtually all national polls.
Palin is not an issue. McCain’s judgment or lack thereof in choosing her, is.
Every statement criticizing Palin in the remaining weeks to the election should be prefaced with “McCain’s bad executive judgment in choosing Palin is highlighted by Palin displaying lack of experience and ability and/or corruption in doing…”
McCains choice of Palin wasn’t just a punchline. It was a dirty bomb…. delivered by McCain, not by Palin.
Sunday the National Enquirer went on sale, including the story about Sarah Palin. I was curious, I was at work and there were copies, I put it up on the counter and I read it.
Not very good (what do you expect from the Enquirer?) but my coworker, Nick, was also curious…and he read it. Now, Nick is young (20) and not too politically inclined, but very smart, and we’ve had a couple of brief conversations about politics.
So I gave him the back story: about her misuse of office, etc., and watched his eyes get bigger and bigger. See, here on these sites, we are political junkies. Nick is not.
But all the ammo I had to give him about what a piece of work she is, I got from the Palin-fest at kos. And it made Nick interested in Googling to learn more. I’m hoping he’ll register to vote: but you see, he was getting the (Republican) party line about her here in PA, and the Palin diaries gave me the ammo I needed to fight the lies.
Guess you could say, I agree there are more important topics…but I’m not sorry I had the info when I needed it.
like your friend and mine, the non political. She’s a gift in disguise. I truly think that this is a cooked up media shit storm. The polls are dicey, even the mainstream is questioning their validity. She is not only a Republican but she’s a joke, a not funny insane clinker. Will the stupid among us buy this? God knows they bought Bush twice. My fear right there.
Of course there are more qualified Republican candidates, she’s a slap in the face of intelligence. According to the right that means were elitist. I do not think so. she is not just a Republican but the worst of the Republicans, the extremist right, the religious nuts, the insane Bomb, the leave your brain behind type.
She is lipstick on a pig, an apt description. No sexism but a lie walking and talking. So sad that she is even in this race to see who will rule our world. So tragic she is a woman.
is what we need everybody to feel before November.
It took me little time to pick up on the “character” of Palin. She is first, a pathological liar! We’ve seen these types before — you know, the instant rhetoric, etc. — acted as though she’d been a lifelong friend of McCain and who, in reality, had only met him once. Her ability to “mimic” with almost precision-likeness the mouths of Bush, Cheney, McCain, etc. — a true Republican, replete with the religious platform, even if practically, demonic, it not altogether. She was “hand-picked” (whether by McCain or other Repugs) to represent the interests of the neocons. Together, with McCain, both of them will be the absolute epitome of the finest messengers ever of the neocons — maybe, exceeding the messengership of Bush, if that’s possible.
been sucked into the endless “all Palin, all the time” discussions? I’ll confess to reading & writing a lot of comments re: Palin.
But I got tired of it all in a short time, and when I realized that I, and far too many progressives have been sucked into the republican distraction game, I quit playing.
The GOP’ers have easily managed to put the focus of the media on Palin–first getting them to concentrate so much time and attention to all Palin’s baggage; then, manufacturing their fake outrage about how the Democrats/ blogs/ etc. are being “mean”, “sexist” or “unfair”–blah, blah, blah–and succeeding in keeping the media & voters focused on Palin. It’s been almost nothing but Palin-this, Palin-that in the media and on the blogs.
A little of this has been good, because IMHO, the media has picked up legitimate reports of Palin’s lies, exaggerations, lack of experience, etc. But, the continued focus on Palin distracts from Obama’s message and keeps the GOP’ers from having to address the issues and how they ARE the people that are responsible for the awful mess the country’s in at this poin.
Corporate media, to Sarah Palin:
“If we’d thought a bit ’bout the end of it
When we started painting the town,
We’d have been aware that our love affair
Was too hot NOT to cool down!”
It’s cooling down already. Palin hasn’t been on the front page of the L.A. Times in three days. She was buried on A-16 today. There’s no way the corporate media, no matter how madly partisan, could have sustained the insane Palin frenzy of the first week in September for two more months at the same level of intensity. McCain should have hought of some way to avoid nominating her until about October 20 if he was really hoping to ride her skirttails to victory!
Palin has peaked, and the electoral race is still only tied, roughly, in meaningless “national polls,” and, more importantly, the electoral college vote doesn’t seem to have shifted (according to the most recent polls) in any state larger than New Mexico, and that shift probably won’t be permanent.
Now about those budget deficits, that tanking economy, the 100-year bog-down in Iraq McCain wants, and the approaching point-of-no-return in global warming . . .